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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2474209" data-attributes="member: 1210">Sir BorsThe tavern is called the Lumberfell Inn.  It is smoky from the pipes of the various drinkers within.  The sour smell of lumberjack sweat permeates the place, mixing with the aroma of ale and cooking potatoes.  Sawdust on the floor soaks up wasted drinks.  Here and there something scuttles across the ground.In the back corner of the place is a table where a card game is being played, and dominating it is- Sir Bors?He is dressed in the heaviest armor our heroes have seen.  He also has the biggest sword they have seen- a monster of a blade, just waiting to hack through flesh and bone.  Plainly, he’s winning at the table. The party wants badly to identify him for sure, and they aren’t at all certain that they want to confront him.  (Look at that sword!)  But he is suspicious and almost as soon as they try to talk to him he gives them a very dangerous look.  Mere moments afterward, he punches one of the gamblers playing against him, takes all the money and leaves.“Do you think that was him?” Dahlia asks breathlessly.“Well, it matches the description, at least initially,” admits Jorgen.  “Should we confront him?” wonders Cur.  “Maybe we should follow him,” suggests Kyle, and Dahlia darts out the door to the Lumberfell Inn to get a glimpse of him.  Almost immediately, she screams, and the others bolt after her.But she is unharmed, at least so far.  The party draws up short.  The man (Sir Bors?) has mounted his horse and drawn his massive sword.  He points it at Dahlia warningly, then wheels his horse and trots away.“Are you all right?” asks Jorgen.  Dahlia, her face pale, nods.“I’ll follow ‘im,” Kyle volunteers.  “I might be a little more stealthy than you.  The rest of you, stay a little ways back.  Maybe we can find out where he’s going.”“And what do we do about him?” asks Goer.  “It’s not like he’s going to surrender to us.”“Don’t worry, mate- we’ll figure somethin’ out!”  With that, Kyle dashes away after the horse, and the others follow a little more slowly.“What do we do about him?” asks Goer again, and Jorgen frowns.“Perhaps we could capture him somehow.  Maybe he will surrender if we arrest him.”Goer guffaws.“Maybe we could poison him somehow,” suggests Cara.“We can’t do that!” Jorgen exclaims.  “Poison is for evil people!”  Cara shrugs by way of reply. The party follows Kyle, who is following the mounted figure, and unfortunately, they soon pass a badly wounded man on the side of the street.  A small crowd has gathered around him; the party can hear from their conversations that the man was brutally cut by the armored horseman just a moment ago, for no crime greater than not getting out of the way fast enough.“This guy is brutal,” Cara breathes while Dahlia administers a goodberry to the wounded man.  Then they hurry on after their quarry.Moments later they find Kyle walking back to them.  “He’s in that hostel,” gestures the elf-blooded lapidary.  “His horse is in the stables next to it.  And it’s Sir Bors, all right- I asked ‘em in there.”“Well, great- now what?” murmurs Jorgen.  “If we try to take him, he might well be able to slaughter us all...”“Did you see the size of that sword?” Kyle interjects.  “It’s huge!”“We can’t just let him go,” Dahlia objects.  “He’s hurt a couple of people just in the last hour!  Who knows what he’ll do given more time!”“We can send word back to the Whitewater estate and see if the knights can come subdue him,” Goer suggests.  He frowns.  He certainly doesn’t look forward to crossing swords with a knight!“That will take a couple of days.  By the time they get here, he could be long gone.”Sheriff Jorgen sighs.  He looks at the entrance to the hostel.  “Maybe we could slow him down if we took his horse,” he muses.“I bet he’d come out if we took his horse,” comments Kyle wryly.  “Hmm...”  Jorgen rubs his jaw.  “I think I’ve got an idea.”***While Dahlia moves into the stable, Jorgen and Kyle crouch on either side of the door, a rope stretched between them.  Their hope is to lure out Sir Bors and trip him.  Hopefully, Dahlia will be able to cause enough of a distraction to bring the corrupt knight forth.Dahlia enters the stable and pauses.  There’s a groom there too.  She starts clucking and whinnying at the horse, and the groom stops brushing the horse he’s working on.  “Hey, what are you doing?” he asks suspiciously.“Oh, ah- nothing, it’s all right,” Dahlia bluffs, then starts trying to take the horse from its stall in the stable.Outside, the groom’s cry of, “Help!  Thief!” is loud and clear.  So far things are going well, and then it all changes.  Sir Bors’ head pops out a second story window and his visage darkens until it goes purple.  One second later he drops from the window, fully armored, right on top of Jorgen.  There’s a terrible crash and Jorgen stumbles back, nearly knocked from his feet!  Goer gives a cry and draws steel, but the blow he directs at Sir Bors deflects with a clear ring from his breastplate.  The sound of Cara’s singing suddenly fills the air, harmonizing with the ringing of metal on metal as Goer and Sir Bors fence.  Jorgen leaps forward.  Time seems to slow down as he sweeps the knight’s leg with a spinning kick, and with a crash Sir Bors collapses to the ground.  Then Jorgen makes a valiant attempt to disarm him, but the knight maintains his grip on his sword. “Hey, I’m over here, I’m stealing the horse!” Dahlia shouts, and the screams of the groom are still ringing out from within the stable.With a curse, Sir Bors tries to lever himself to his feet, but both Jorgen and Goer strike as he does.  Jorgen slices open a great hole in the knight’s breastplate.  Worse yet, Goer thrusts and sticks him through the neck!  Sir Bors collapses, twitching, and it is clear that he is dead.“He wasn’t so tough,” Goer comments bravely.“We got lucky,” replies the sheriff bluntly.“Damn fine armor ‘e’s got there,” Kyle remarks.“We’re going to have to return that to his family,” says Jorgen.  “What?” Kyle exclaims.  “It’s got to be worth a thousand gold or more!  What are you talkin’ about, return it??”“Yeah, and it’s covered in his heraldry.”“Besides,” Goer adds, “there’s a reward for bringing him down.”“Well, let’s have it!” chortles Kyle.“It isn’t from me,” Goer says patiently.  “You’ll have to talk to Sir Martin.”“Well...”  Jorgen pauses, thinking aloud.  “We should get back and tell his lordship about this.  Then he can send word to Kamenda and let the Baron know.”“What about Drougal Traveler?” asks Kyle. “Drougal Traveler will have to wait.  This is more important.  Besides,” Jorgen adds, “he comes through Whitewater about thrice yearly.  He’ll come to us if we just wait.”***The party makes their exeunt from Lumber.  Goer is relieved that Dahlia can mostly heal the horse’s leg; though its gait is a little funny, it is able to walk and even to support his weight.  Nonetheless, he often walks it instead out of sheer caution.  At noon of the next day they cross paths with a dusty looking but formidable man.  They pass a word or two and the man proceeds on his way (towards Lumber, it would appear).  About two hours later it starts to rain, the first cold rain of the season.  Winter is coming soon.  The next day the party easily overcomes a pair of weasels afflicted by a terrible, often lethal disease called the frothing madness.*  Kyle suffers a bite, as does Dahlia’s mule.  This makes everyone nervous; the frothing madness can take hold and overwhelm one’s senses.  Kyle tries to laugh it off, but it’s a sort of forced, frightened laughter.A few hours later, at dusk, as the rain thins and becomes intermittent sprinkles, the party reaches Whitewater.  The Roaring River seems already to have risen on its banks a few inches; the influence of the rain upstream, no doubt.  The sky is getting cloudy.  They cross the bridge and head immediately for the Whitewater estate.  The corpse of Sir Bors is slung over the back of his horse.It’s a long mile to the estate, especially through the rain in the dark.  And winter is coming; it’s much colder than it has been in months.  As the party moves along, they suddenly here strange barking noises in the bushes.  Dahlia recognizes them right away, but before she can say anything Otis has lit up the scene with a light spell cast upon his robes.  Perhaps it provokes them- for it is then that the pair of dire badgers within the scrub burst forth and race to the attack!“Oh no!” cries Dahlia.  “We’re being attacked by badgers!”And they are much bigger than her badger companion.They charge forth, moving towards our heroes with obvious harmful intent.  Dahlia gestures and can feel her energy shifting as she calls out wordlessly to the oncoming badgers.  One of them falters, then squats calmly on its haunches, panting.The other charges forward and tears into Kyle with a savage bark of glee.  Kyle gives a shout of pain as the badger nearly guts him, and he collapses into oblivion.“Oh no!” cries Dahlia, “Kyle!”Otis chants his own magic, and a blazing bullet of question mark-shaped force shoots into the attacking badger.  It yeeps, then arfs! and continues its forward rush, engaging Dahlia, who fends it off with her club, delivering a stinging rebuke to its nose!  But it presses forward at her and she is hard pressed to defend herself, taking a wound along one leg.  Behind her she can hear Goer struggling to dismount from his horse- he isn’t much of a rider tonight- and she divines from the thump! that he has fallen from the saddle.  Then Hrar, Dahlia’s badger, leaps at its dire cousin and begins fighting against it, chittering madly!  A moment later Goer is finally there, stabbing the dire badger deep in the body.  It is clearly enraged, and if not for that... if not for that, it might fall.  But screaming in fury, it instead fells Goer for his impertinence!  Another magic missile blasts the thing, and it weakens; and Otis presses forward with his spear.  It’s do or die, he realizes.  Still, he maintains his calm.Side by side, Otis, Jorgen, Dahlia and Hrar force the dire badger back.  Finally, Hrar strikes it down with a well-placed flurry of furry fury!**Panting, our heroes make to rest for a moment, but Dahlia warns, “The other badger will only remain calm for a couple of minutes.”“Uh, can’t you make it go away or something?” Jorgen asks awkwardly.  “All the rumors say that you can speak to animals.”She smiles briefly.  “I can try.”  Turning to the calm badger, she mutters to herself for a moment, then speaks to it.“Hi,” she says.“Hello,” it answers.  It yawns.“What are you doing here?”“We saw the light.  Yeah, the light,” the badger says.“Oh, but what were you doing before that?”“Umm... I don’t know.”  The badger seems a little confused.  “I like to fight,” he adds.  “Really?”“Yeah, it’s fun.  It’s fun to fight.”“Oh, well, um, you don’t want to fight us.”“No... I did a little while ago, but then, hmm, I decided not to.”“Well, I bet there’s a good fight over there,” Dahlia suggests, pointing away from the group’s path.“Oh, I don’t want to fight right now,” the badger replies.  “I don’t feel like it.  Hmm, maybe I’m hungry.  But I like to fight!” he adds brightly.  Shortly, the dire badger wanders away to its burrow to seek a meal.  Jorgen just shakes his head.Soon the party reaches the Whitewater estate.  Goer instructs Sir Martin’s footman, Bartholomew, to rouse him at once.  Moments later, Sir Martin arrives in his bed robe, a sword strapped to his side.  “What is it, Fwaigo?” he demands. “My lord, we believe we have slain the renegade knight, Sir Bors!”Sir Martin stiffens.  “Ahh...”  He takes a deep breath.  “Bors was once a good man,” he says sadly.  “You knew him, my lord?” Jorgen asks softly.  At Sir Martin’s nod, the sheriff says, “Perhaps you could positively identify the body.”Again Sir Martin nods, and he accompanies the party out to the stable, where Bors’ horse stands happily munching oats.  The body is laid out on a blanket next to it.  Sir Martin takes a deep breath.“His horse... his armor... his shield and helm and sword.  And yet,” he says, “that is not Sir Bors.”Next Time: Who was Sir Bors really?  Will Kyle survive the frothing rage?  And what will be our heroes’ reward?*Yes, call it a dnd-ized rabies. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />**I’m sorry.  I couldn’t help it.</blockquote>

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