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Life's Bazaar - Chapter 5
Life’s Bazaar – Chapter 5
OOC Notes:
650 exp. Loot split was 189gp from sell-off early in the session.
This Week’s Adventure:
With Starbrow safe and sound, the group set into what was becoming an established routine of tending to business. But as they split up to tend to matters in town, Astrid had a thought and pulled Elizabeth aside. The two of them discussed an idea then put it into play.
Elizabeth set off for Maavu’s to dispose of the recent load of spoils. Astrid slipped out a minute later, and then once safely out of sight, altered her appearance to one of her other personas and followed Elizabeth. Having heard the plan, I thought it would be more interesting not to mention more useful to stick with Astrid.
Astrid was now just an unknown face in the crowd and she followed Elizabeth, who had waited so Astrid had time to change out of sight. Elizabeth did nothing unusual as she made her way to Maavu’s Imports, while the two of us kept a careful eye out for anyone who might be following Elizabeth. Astrid’s thinking was that they may have attracted some attention by now so it was a smart thing to check.
And “attention” was exactly what we saw. Astrid started to notice a half-elf who seemed to be traveling the same direction. After a time it became clear he was following Elizabeth. She would have had a tough time spotting him – he was clearly experienced in these kinds of things, and only the fact that he wasn’t trying to avoid notice by us allowed us to pick him out. When Elizabeth entered Maavu’s, the half-elf waited outside in a very casual way, but when she left, he did not continue to follow.
It was a busy day in Maavu’s. There was probably some kind of regular schedule to business and this was just one of those times – perhaps a shipment arriving or departing. Elizabeth was getting the hang of how things worked and immediately went to the right person to discuss the sale of the armor that came from the last run into Jazadirune.
Her usual clerk, upon seeing her, immediately waved her over and pulled out a small necklace. It was a token on a copper chain, marked with the seal of the House of Arlintal and on the back her name. As he handed it to her, he said “This token marks you as someone we have done business with. It will help us serve you better in the future by demonstrating we have done business before.”
In Cauldron, relationships are everything.
Once it was clear that the half-elf was no longer following Elizabeth, the girls got back together and Astrid resumed her normal appearance and they sought out a blacksmith. Elizabeth had done some asking around and learned that most of the smiths belonged to a guild run by one of the noble houses. However the most skilled smith in town – Phallian Gurnezarn – was independent. Word was he refused to bow to the pressure to join, and his skill allowed him to remain in business offering wares the others could not produce, albeit at slightly higher prices.
Finding the shop was easy enough – it was a large forge and likely had quite a few apprentices working there and it sat a good ten paces away from all the buildings around it. The girls entered and found a woman at the counter scribbling in a ledger. Around the walls of the shop area were examples of Gurnezarn’s craftsmanship – fine weapons and armor, most of them elaborately decorated. His reputation was obviously well-earned.
Astrid inquired about commissioning a masterwork halberd, and soon a massive shirtless man in a leather apron came out. He watched her swing, took measurements, and examined the wear of her current halberd to see how it was used. He was every bit the craftsman. He said he could have it ready in a couple days, but would prefer a week to do a proper job. Astrid wanted a proper job, and agreed to a week.
While this went on, Elizabeth spoke to the woman – Gurnezarn’s wife – about use of the forge. Mrs. Gurnezarn asked some questions probing the depth of Elizabeth’s knowledge and seemed satisfied with what she saw. She said she would discuss it with her husband and decide on a fee, whether money or service-in-trade.
The following morning, the group made arrangements for Jenya to lift the curse from Bellsin. That helped him, but there was nothing to be done for Glyph, who had faded away substantially during the night. When it was time to return to the enclave, Keygan emerged from his room, shrouded in blankets and wearing goggles and hurried the group through the door so that he could barricade it again.
There seemed to be no sign of defense in the entry room, so the group elected to investigate the secret door they’d found on the landing of the stairs coming in. In this case, “investigating” seemed to entail triggering a trap that dumped half the group roughly into the entry room and sprained a few ankles and wrists.
Behind the door (once opened properly) was a room whose floor was a wooden platform. At each corner was a stout chain with another chain going through a hole in the center. On the wall was a promising-looking lever. No doubt this was the passage down to the Malachite Fortress that they had been looking for.
And I suppose the two hobgoblins deserve a mention as well. They were ready and threw javelins at Glyphandar who, by this measure at least, wasn’t quite invisible enough.
Astrid moved in and smashed her halberd into one, while Krisfallion dropped the other. Swiftness was important here – hesitate and they could have used the elevator to retreat and left the group staring at a large empty shaft.
When they were ready, they pulled the lever. The platform descended for nearly a minute, and by Tzaddik’s estimation took them some two hundred feet down. The platform landed in front of an iron reinforced door that opened into a large hall that seemed to be carved from solid malachite and polished to a high shine. Two empty iron cages hung from the ceiling, while a hunk of raw stone and crystal decorated the middle of the room.
Fortunately there were no guards on this end. Bellsin, fearing the cages were part of some trap, unlocked the first one. But before he could reach the second, the stone artwork made a grinding noise as stone grated on stone and it attacked Tzaddik.
Once it was moving, Krisfallion realized it was a stone spike – a minor earth elemental. Krisfallion invoked the power of his god, and the elemental recoiled in fear and scrambled away. Glyph made a few glowing runes in the air where they hung for a moment before he gestured them to encircle Elizabeth’s falchion. She moved in – step, step, step, slice – and the creature shattered into inert pieces on the floor. She looked at her now-enchanted weapon and smiled at Glyph approvingly.
The smile however was short-lived. A door at the end of the room flew open, propelled by a massive, filth-covered foot, and into the room lumbered an ogre covered with all manner of slime, filth, and excrement. It roared with battle lust and swung a filth-encrusted falchion at Astrid, cutting her deeply.
The group was not well-positioned, and Astrid was without support. She tried to do a fighting withdrawal, but the creature brought the blade low in an arc born more from brute force than skill and the force of the blow knocked her unconscious.
Elizabeth knew her falchion well and had studied its use. She knew how to use the curve of the blade, to use grace and skill, and to flow effortlessly from parry to attack. This brute hardly knew which end to hold, and was getting by on nothing but raw strength. It was this strength which Maris sapped away, the green energy of her spell starting the turn of the tide.
The creature lunged at Tzaddik and he just managed to turn aside its clumsy swing. I moved in behind it with Bellsin and they began cutting the creature apart. Between swords and arrows, the disgusting ogre fell before it could bring its blade to bear again. Fortunately Astrid was only badly wounded, not killed, and Kris was able to revive her.
The room from which the creature came was foulness itself, with effluvia and filth encrusting every surface. The place would disgust even an ogre and it was difficult to understand why this particular ogre would embrace such sewage. There was no furniture as such, but there was a pile of refuse hardened into a crude chair. One corner held a chest, cemented into hardened excrement which held the creature’s valuables, but more than one party member wretched during the examination. I count myself fortunate I was not similarly inconvenienced – it looked quite unpleasant.
There were no obvious ways out of the entry hall or side chamber, leading to the search for the inevitable secret door. Dwarven stonework presented a greater challenge but the door was ultimately located.
The next room had two hobgoblin guards, who must not have heard the cacophony raised by the last battle – or they assumed the filthy ogre had won. There were some doors out of the room and a statue of a dwarven warrior in the center of the room, a spiked chain entwined around his arms and body.
The hobgoblins were smart and disciplined. The first thing one of them did was run off and raise the alarm. Good tactics, really. For them.
But things went from bad to worse for us. As Tzaddik entered the room, Glyph lobbed a flask of alchemist’s fire over his head. It splashed down splattering sticky fire on to one of the hobgoblins and onto the statue. And more pressingly, onto the chain around the statue, which immediately began writhing and moving. It unwrapped itself from the statue and threw itself at Glyph.
The scene was a mess. Hobgoblin and goblin reinforcements were coming from one passage while the chain flailed around in the room attacking. Astrid engaged the chain with Tzaddik while Bellsin and Elizabeth held back the incoming troops. The hobgoblins and goblins were far easier to deal with as it turned out and that wave was quickly killed.
The chain was far harder to handle. It was a piece of metal, and very hard to damage. Astrid was giving it all she had and still only nicking it. Tzaddik took to making tactical feints to help Astrid. The chain made several whipping cuts at Glyph who had to pull back or risk getting killed.
About this time, barked orders could be heard in goblin from behind the group – another wave of reinforcements had come around through another secret door and was moving in from behind – the same direction Glyphandar had retreated in – and cutting off any possible escape up the lift.
With the first wave of goblinoids dead, Elizabeth moved in to help with the chain. The situation was becoming desperate and they needed to destroy this chain before the latest wave of slavers closed in.
The girls swung for all their worth. And swung. And swung.
“What happened to the hobgoblins?” Astrid asked, ducking a swipe of the chain.
“I think Glyph is holding them off to buy us time,” Kris said.
That didn’t sound good. I looked out the door to see, and Kris was, after a fashion, correct. The goblin skirmishers in the line had completely swarmed over Glyph and knocked him to the ground and were in the process of binding his hands and gagging him.
While unconventional, and I assume unintentional, it bought the time needed. With the combined effort of nearly the entire party, one final blow was struck and the chain flew apart into two pieces and fell to the ground. And none too soon.
The girls exchanged looks and Astrid called “Fighting line!” and they moved through the door into the hallway, shoulder to shoulder. The hobgoblins shouted and they and their goblin troops surged forward. What followed was the combined product of skill, tactics, teamwork, and some amount of luck. As each goblin or hobgoblin moved forward, it was met by a sweeping arc of a falchion or firm thrust of a halberd. The girls moved together in a coordinated flow of movement, slaver after slaver stepping up and being crushed or cut. Between them arrows flew off Kris’ bow, and as they advanced, Bellsin and Tzaddik flanked in and brought down even more slavers.
It was quick and it was bloody. And it was over. Or at least partly – there was no sign of Kasmogen, despite one of the hobgoblins clearly calling his name earlier. But a dozen dead slavers was certainly a good start.
Loot:
2 Studded Leather
2 longswords
100s
100cp
huge falchion, 25% of book value due to wear
large iron key
2 deep green spiniels (room M-4)
5990 copper
2248 silver
potion of cure moderate
10 studded leather
10 light shields
10 longswords
Life’s Bazaar – Chapter 5
OOC Notes:
650 exp. Loot split was 189gp from sell-off early in the session.
This Week’s Adventure:
With Starbrow safe and sound, the group set into what was becoming an established routine of tending to business. But as they split up to tend to matters in town, Astrid had a thought and pulled Elizabeth aside. The two of them discussed an idea then put it into play.
Elizabeth set off for Maavu’s to dispose of the recent load of spoils. Astrid slipped out a minute later, and then once safely out of sight, altered her appearance to one of her other personas and followed Elizabeth. Having heard the plan, I thought it would be more interesting not to mention more useful to stick with Astrid.
Astrid was now just an unknown face in the crowd and she followed Elizabeth, who had waited so Astrid had time to change out of sight. Elizabeth did nothing unusual as she made her way to Maavu’s Imports, while the two of us kept a careful eye out for anyone who might be following Elizabeth. Astrid’s thinking was that they may have attracted some attention by now so it was a smart thing to check.
And “attention” was exactly what we saw. Astrid started to notice a half-elf who seemed to be traveling the same direction. After a time it became clear he was following Elizabeth. She would have had a tough time spotting him – he was clearly experienced in these kinds of things, and only the fact that he wasn’t trying to avoid notice by us allowed us to pick him out. When Elizabeth entered Maavu’s, the half-elf waited outside in a very casual way, but when she left, he did not continue to follow.
It was a busy day in Maavu’s. There was probably some kind of regular schedule to business and this was just one of those times – perhaps a shipment arriving or departing. Elizabeth was getting the hang of how things worked and immediately went to the right person to discuss the sale of the armor that came from the last run into Jazadirune.
Her usual clerk, upon seeing her, immediately waved her over and pulled out a small necklace. It was a token on a copper chain, marked with the seal of the House of Arlintal and on the back her name. As he handed it to her, he said “This token marks you as someone we have done business with. It will help us serve you better in the future by demonstrating we have done business before.”
In Cauldron, relationships are everything.
Once it was clear that the half-elf was no longer following Elizabeth, the girls got back together and Astrid resumed her normal appearance and they sought out a blacksmith. Elizabeth had done some asking around and learned that most of the smiths belonged to a guild run by one of the noble houses. However the most skilled smith in town – Phallian Gurnezarn – was independent. Word was he refused to bow to the pressure to join, and his skill allowed him to remain in business offering wares the others could not produce, albeit at slightly higher prices.
Finding the shop was easy enough – it was a large forge and likely had quite a few apprentices working there and it sat a good ten paces away from all the buildings around it. The girls entered and found a woman at the counter scribbling in a ledger. Around the walls of the shop area were examples of Gurnezarn’s craftsmanship – fine weapons and armor, most of them elaborately decorated. His reputation was obviously well-earned.
Astrid inquired about commissioning a masterwork halberd, and soon a massive shirtless man in a leather apron came out. He watched her swing, took measurements, and examined the wear of her current halberd to see how it was used. He was every bit the craftsman. He said he could have it ready in a couple days, but would prefer a week to do a proper job. Astrid wanted a proper job, and agreed to a week.
While this went on, Elizabeth spoke to the woman – Gurnezarn’s wife – about use of the forge. Mrs. Gurnezarn asked some questions probing the depth of Elizabeth’s knowledge and seemed satisfied with what she saw. She said she would discuss it with her husband and decide on a fee, whether money or service-in-trade.
The following morning, the group made arrangements for Jenya to lift the curse from Bellsin. That helped him, but there was nothing to be done for Glyph, who had faded away substantially during the night. When it was time to return to the enclave, Keygan emerged from his room, shrouded in blankets and wearing goggles and hurried the group through the door so that he could barricade it again.
There seemed to be no sign of defense in the entry room, so the group elected to investigate the secret door they’d found on the landing of the stairs coming in. In this case, “investigating” seemed to entail triggering a trap that dumped half the group roughly into the entry room and sprained a few ankles and wrists.
Behind the door (once opened properly) was a room whose floor was a wooden platform. At each corner was a stout chain with another chain going through a hole in the center. On the wall was a promising-looking lever. No doubt this was the passage down to the Malachite Fortress that they had been looking for.
And I suppose the two hobgoblins deserve a mention as well. They were ready and threw javelins at Glyphandar who, by this measure at least, wasn’t quite invisible enough.
Astrid moved in and smashed her halberd into one, while Krisfallion dropped the other. Swiftness was important here – hesitate and they could have used the elevator to retreat and left the group staring at a large empty shaft.
When they were ready, they pulled the lever. The platform descended for nearly a minute, and by Tzaddik’s estimation took them some two hundred feet down. The platform landed in front of an iron reinforced door that opened into a large hall that seemed to be carved from solid malachite and polished to a high shine. Two empty iron cages hung from the ceiling, while a hunk of raw stone and crystal decorated the middle of the room.
Fortunately there were no guards on this end. Bellsin, fearing the cages were part of some trap, unlocked the first one. But before he could reach the second, the stone artwork made a grinding noise as stone grated on stone and it attacked Tzaddik.
Once it was moving, Krisfallion realized it was a stone spike – a minor earth elemental. Krisfallion invoked the power of his god, and the elemental recoiled in fear and scrambled away. Glyph made a few glowing runes in the air where they hung for a moment before he gestured them to encircle Elizabeth’s falchion. She moved in – step, step, step, slice – and the creature shattered into inert pieces on the floor. She looked at her now-enchanted weapon and smiled at Glyph approvingly.
The smile however was short-lived. A door at the end of the room flew open, propelled by a massive, filth-covered foot, and into the room lumbered an ogre covered with all manner of slime, filth, and excrement. It roared with battle lust and swung a filth-encrusted falchion at Astrid, cutting her deeply.
The group was not well-positioned, and Astrid was without support. She tried to do a fighting withdrawal, but the creature brought the blade low in an arc born more from brute force than skill and the force of the blow knocked her unconscious.
Elizabeth knew her falchion well and had studied its use. She knew how to use the curve of the blade, to use grace and skill, and to flow effortlessly from parry to attack. This brute hardly knew which end to hold, and was getting by on nothing but raw strength. It was this strength which Maris sapped away, the green energy of her spell starting the turn of the tide.
The creature lunged at Tzaddik and he just managed to turn aside its clumsy swing. I moved in behind it with Bellsin and they began cutting the creature apart. Between swords and arrows, the disgusting ogre fell before it could bring its blade to bear again. Fortunately Astrid was only badly wounded, not killed, and Kris was able to revive her.
The room from which the creature came was foulness itself, with effluvia and filth encrusting every surface. The place would disgust even an ogre and it was difficult to understand why this particular ogre would embrace such sewage. There was no furniture as such, but there was a pile of refuse hardened into a crude chair. One corner held a chest, cemented into hardened excrement which held the creature’s valuables, but more than one party member wretched during the examination. I count myself fortunate I was not similarly inconvenienced – it looked quite unpleasant.
There were no obvious ways out of the entry hall or side chamber, leading to the search for the inevitable secret door. Dwarven stonework presented a greater challenge but the door was ultimately located.
The next room had two hobgoblin guards, who must not have heard the cacophony raised by the last battle – or they assumed the filthy ogre had won. There were some doors out of the room and a statue of a dwarven warrior in the center of the room, a spiked chain entwined around his arms and body.
The hobgoblins were smart and disciplined. The first thing one of them did was run off and raise the alarm. Good tactics, really. For them.
But things went from bad to worse for us. As Tzaddik entered the room, Glyph lobbed a flask of alchemist’s fire over his head. It splashed down splattering sticky fire on to one of the hobgoblins and onto the statue. And more pressingly, onto the chain around the statue, which immediately began writhing and moving. It unwrapped itself from the statue and threw itself at Glyph.
The scene was a mess. Hobgoblin and goblin reinforcements were coming from one passage while the chain flailed around in the room attacking. Astrid engaged the chain with Tzaddik while Bellsin and Elizabeth held back the incoming troops. The hobgoblins and goblins were far easier to deal with as it turned out and that wave was quickly killed.
The chain was far harder to handle. It was a piece of metal, and very hard to damage. Astrid was giving it all she had and still only nicking it. Tzaddik took to making tactical feints to help Astrid. The chain made several whipping cuts at Glyph who had to pull back or risk getting killed.
About this time, barked orders could be heard in goblin from behind the group – another wave of reinforcements had come around through another secret door and was moving in from behind – the same direction Glyphandar had retreated in – and cutting off any possible escape up the lift.
With the first wave of goblinoids dead, Elizabeth moved in to help with the chain. The situation was becoming desperate and they needed to destroy this chain before the latest wave of slavers closed in.
The girls swung for all their worth. And swung. And swung.
“What happened to the hobgoblins?” Astrid asked, ducking a swipe of the chain.
“I think Glyph is holding them off to buy us time,” Kris said.
That didn’t sound good. I looked out the door to see, and Kris was, after a fashion, correct. The goblin skirmishers in the line had completely swarmed over Glyph and knocked him to the ground and were in the process of binding his hands and gagging him.
While unconventional, and I assume unintentional, it bought the time needed. With the combined effort of nearly the entire party, one final blow was struck and the chain flew apart into two pieces and fell to the ground. And none too soon.
The girls exchanged looks and Astrid called “Fighting line!” and they moved through the door into the hallway, shoulder to shoulder. The hobgoblins shouted and they and their goblin troops surged forward. What followed was the combined product of skill, tactics, teamwork, and some amount of luck. As each goblin or hobgoblin moved forward, it was met by a sweeping arc of a falchion or firm thrust of a halberd. The girls moved together in a coordinated flow of movement, slaver after slaver stepping up and being crushed or cut. Between them arrows flew off Kris’ bow, and as they advanced, Bellsin and Tzaddik flanked in and brought down even more slavers.
It was quick and it was bloody. And it was over. Or at least partly – there was no sign of Kasmogen, despite one of the hobgoblins clearly calling his name earlier. But a dozen dead slavers was certainly a good start.
Loot:
2 Studded Leather
2 longswords
100s
100cp
huge falchion, 25% of book value due to wear
large iron key
2 deep green spiniels (room M-4)
5990 copper
2248 silver
potion of cure moderate
10 studded leather
10 light shields
10 longswords
