KidCthulhu
First Post
madriel said:
Both Nolin and Velendo are NG. I think Tao might be now.
Defenders of Daybreak, The Early Years.
- Thread starter Sialia
- Start date
Both Nolin and Velendo are NG. I think Tao might be now.
KidCthulhu
First Post
madriel said:
Well, you're right and wrong. Dilly and the outgrabe were comic, but at the wrong time. And the search for a blunt weapon was more panicked and frantic than funny.
And Alix. Well, when Alix taunted something, he let loose all that bile and self-loathing. He was taunting his enemy, but he was hating himself. And you knew that deep in his heart, he didn't care if the Djinn's protection worked or not. It wasn't funny at all.
Sialia
First Post
Yah. It's a true thing. If Alix's player were posting on this board in that mood, he'd violate Eric Noah's Grandma so fast even (contact) wouldn't be able to catch up with him as we threw him out the door.
(Er-- violate the rule about Eric Noah's Grandma, that is. Not the Grandma. Alix's player may be devious and potty mouthed, but he's also a gentleman.)
Technical points--Bandeeto posted while I was sleeping--the key was stuck on the underside of the bottom shelf of the bookshelf.
And the support that became the Outgrabe was circle shaped.
And while Piratecat was very kind to Dylrath (temporary substitute character, remember?) in letting him get away with the Mirror and the Outgrabe (I don't think he had planned to give Dylly the Outgrabe--that just sort of happened), you have to imagine my horror as I watched the villain--now an NPC--slash the throat of my own character. After I had spent weeks, months even, helping Piratecat set up the party.
There was worse to come.
When Cadrienne recovered from the wound, and came to her senses, the body she was in was loaded down with trapped items. The boots were boots of stumbling, and the bracers --don't remember the name--made her throw herself into the path of missile attacks.
Mirata had planned to dump her body all along.
Without her dragon-destroyed holybooks (spell books/holysymbol), her weapons, or even the ability to walk along and stay out of combat, she was worse than useless in trying to help stop Mirata.
Her magic girdle was gone and never recovered, too, as were some of her other items.
"Used," does not begin to cover the feeling Cadrienne was overwhelmed with. Not to mention "guilty" for aiding and abetting someone who tried to hurt her best friends.
Worse, Cadrienne's player was having a grand old time careening around smacking her/his head into things and not caring about the moral implications of her/his behavior or anyone else's and didn't really want to come back to playing den mother anymore.
We had one more adventure to go before all of this really settled in. And then it was time, and high time, for Cadrienne to seek her absolution elsewhere.
Which is probably worth knowing about before I tell you how we got out of the sand.
(Er-- violate the rule about Eric Noah's Grandma, that is. Not the Grandma. Alix's player may be devious and potty mouthed, but he's also a gentleman.)
Technical points--Bandeeto posted while I was sleeping--the key was stuck on the underside of the bottom shelf of the bookshelf.
And the support that became the Outgrabe was circle shaped.
And while Piratecat was very kind to Dylrath (temporary substitute character, remember?) in letting him get away with the Mirror and the Outgrabe (I don't think he had planned to give Dylly the Outgrabe--that just sort of happened), you have to imagine my horror as I watched the villain--now an NPC--slash the throat of my own character. After I had spent weeks, months even, helping Piratecat set up the party.
There was worse to come.
When Cadrienne recovered from the wound, and came to her senses, the body she was in was loaded down with trapped items. The boots were boots of stumbling, and the bracers --don't remember the name--made her throw herself into the path of missile attacks.
Mirata had planned to dump her body all along.
Without her dragon-destroyed holybooks (spell books/holysymbol), her weapons, or even the ability to walk along and stay out of combat, she was worse than useless in trying to help stop Mirata.
Her magic girdle was gone and never recovered, too, as were some of her other items.
"Used," does not begin to cover the feeling Cadrienne was overwhelmed with. Not to mention "guilty" for aiding and abetting someone who tried to hurt her best friends.
Worse, Cadrienne's player was having a grand old time careening around smacking her/his head into things and not caring about the moral implications of her/his behavior or anyone else's and didn't really want to come back to playing den mother anymore.
We had one more adventure to go before all of this really settled in. And then it was time, and high time, for Cadrienne to seek her absolution elsewhere.
Which is probably worth knowing about before I tell you how we got out of the sand.
Last edited:
the Jester
Legend
Awesome... I love to look in a character's head like this!
Your guys' campaign is awesome. I love the layers and layers of detail. Fantastic stuff.... thanks for posting, can't wait for more!
And I say again, I'm _really_ interested in the story of Alix trying to take over the world (hint hint).
Your guys' campaign is awesome. I love the layers and layers of detail. Fantastic stuff.... thanks for posting, can't wait for more!
And I say again, I'm _really_ interested in the story of Alix trying to take over the world (hint hint).
madriel
First Post
KidCthulhu said:
Thanks.
Didn't mean to make fun of that session or anything. It was very dramatic, but my sense of humour sneaks up on my brain when I'm tired and takes it over.
Rereading it now I can see how intense it must of been, especially the threat to Cadrienne and Tasha. Poor Cadrienne, waking up to find her body tried to kill everybody.
Sialia said:
I gather from this that there is a period (which Bandeeto is just on the brink of describing, I would imagine) in which Dylrath and Cadrienne were both active members of the Defenders? How did this work out at the gaming table? Did you play both or did PC take care of Dilly while you had your last 'fling' with Cadrienne?
Yours,
Altin
Sialia
First Post
I can't quite remember how it worked. I know I ran Cadrienne after the Academy through the "we are arrested and locked up in our own King's dungeons" bit, up until the battle with the dopplegangers,and I don't rememeber Dylrath being there in the dungeons. But right after that she retired, and then I was Dylrath For good. Or ill, depending on how you see things.
As promised, here is some of the out of game chatter for those of you who really like the behind the scenes peek. This stuff occurred after Piratecat Buried us in the sand and before we got out. We had 2 weeks to think about it. For those who don't like this sort of stuff, the story part begins next post.]
The Buried up to the Neck incident had us all worried. Really worried for the very first (but not the last) time in Piratecat's campaign. We used to call him our "warm fuzzy DM" to distinguish him from the "nasty sharp pointy" kind (like Bandeeto.)
So we scrambled to make use of the two weeks between the cliffhanger and our impending demise next session.
Sito Rotavele: If anyone else has seen the movie Blackbeard, you know how awful this death can be. Let's try to avoid it. First, let's list our assets. What can YOU do buried up to your neck in sand?
Claris can cast two command spells, and if we can't think of one word that means "forgive the death of your sister and free us immediately," I'll just sleep him.
Tomtom: I can shift to shadow form, but I don't want to do it while the guy is conscious and nearby. If he's a mage, I'll still be vulnerable to lightning bolts and the like.
Sialia: 1. Squirm, barely. 2) itch, see item 1. 3) note that this is a particularly boring way to die and that nobody is going to get to see me do it. 4) bite the villain's toes if he comes close enough. 5) wait for the party to do something clever and then capitalize on it. 6) blow bubbles if it takes them very long. 7) wonder whether Calphas would answer a god call from a new convert. 8) wonder whether Glimmer's deity would answer a god call from a new convert, even though he couldn't think of her name just at the moment. 9) wonder whether Bahamat would answer . . . .you get the idea . .
Piratecat specified that Dylrath has no items whatsoever. So we've got a naked 14 year old, who's confused because the last thing he knew, he was getting some action from a total babe, and now it appears she's taken advantage of him in a most unusual way. Also, everyone else seems to be here, he's not sure why, but he's laying odds they're going to be upset with him.
Sagiro: If I can Disbelieve . . and get out of my sand trap, a minute is more than I'll need to clock our (hopefully sleeping) nemesis with a Suddenly Appearing Divine Brick (tm). . . I'd rather not try this while he's awake and armed. . . .you should probably not sleep him until you see that I'm getting free, and once I'm on ground level you should all shout at me to remind me what's going on. It's possible that in order to disbelieve in our predicament, I'll have to disbelieve in our captor as well.
Kidcthulhu: O.K. Here's what Nolin can do for us.
1) Grovel.
2) Sing a song of woe to turn the villain's hard heart
3) Screech. For those of you who have heard it before, you will know the screech I'm talking about. It will freeze him in place for a moment, delaying his init and generally giving him a headache.
4) Did I mention groveling?
Sito: Please do not deafen him before Claris has a word with him.
--------------------------
Sito:Top Ten Deus Ex Machina Ways to Get Out of This:
10. Nolin moves our captor to pity us with a tender song.
9. Claris reveals that she is in fact a juvenile Steel Dragon.
8. Rex comes by, looking for a halfling he buried in the garden
7. Sherida makes a god call (Is this a good thing?) [note: Sherida was Alix's slave and a demon worshipper]
6. Dylrath finds the party in the shower and realizes that it was all a bad dream.
5. The island isn't uninhabited . . . we're saved by a fat man with a skipper's cap and a skinny man in a red shirt and white pants who were shipwrecked here.
4. Frostblossom freezes the whole ocean. [Frostblossom was a very small fey who occasionally showed up to talk to us and could freeze the surface of wineglasses and beer mugs]
3. Alix's father, returned to his senses, retrieves us in the ship he uses to mine clouds. (who knew?) [Alix's father had been swindled into a cloud-mining scheme and lost much of the family fortune, and, much to Alix's chagrin, not by Alix.]
2. Golden Bricks fall from the sky, holding back the tide until Velendo says "I don't believe you're doing this!"
1. The sun goes out. At least we don't drown.
-----------
Note from Sialia to Piratecat
Hmm, as I recall one of the notes on the Ambassadopple's papers was "11/2 Clith and Peggus: Good Gift"
Lessee . . .today is just about 11/2 by my reckoning. . . .Now let me see, is there anything around here that looks giftwrapped?
Response from Piratecat: Yes. You.
-------------
Note from Sialia to Piratecat (creatively adapted for brevity):
"Actually, I'm kind of impressed. You did come up with something Alix can't buy or burn his way out of. (Although, truth, I'm still kind of hoping to see him try and wind up fusing himself into a solid block of glass.)
----------------
Note from Sialia to Piratecat, referring to TMoSaT:
. . .I wonder if Arcade could Fabricate this Stick here into a shovel . . . ?
-------------------------------
note from Sialia to the party:
Any votes for calling Kevin's bluff? Would he really drown all of us? How many rounds before he starts sweating, too?
naah . . .me neither.
--------------------
note from Sialia to Piratecat:
you brute.
I'm not telling you nothin'
------------------
As promised, here is some of the out of game chatter for those of you who really like the behind the scenes peek. This stuff occurred after Piratecat Buried us in the sand and before we got out. We had 2 weeks to think about it. For those who don't like this sort of stuff, the story part begins next post.]
The Buried up to the Neck incident had us all worried. Really worried for the very first (but not the last) time in Piratecat's campaign. We used to call him our "warm fuzzy DM" to distinguish him from the "nasty sharp pointy" kind (like Bandeeto.)
So we scrambled to make use of the two weeks between the cliffhanger and our impending demise next session.
Sito Rotavele: If anyone else has seen the movie Blackbeard, you know how awful this death can be. Let's try to avoid it. First, let's list our assets. What can YOU do buried up to your neck in sand?
Claris can cast two command spells, and if we can't think of one word that means "forgive the death of your sister and free us immediately," I'll just sleep him.
Tomtom: I can shift to shadow form, but I don't want to do it while the guy is conscious and nearby. If he's a mage, I'll still be vulnerable to lightning bolts and the like.
Sialia: 1. Squirm, barely. 2) itch, see item 1. 3) note that this is a particularly boring way to die and that nobody is going to get to see me do it. 4) bite the villain's toes if he comes close enough. 5) wait for the party to do something clever and then capitalize on it. 6) blow bubbles if it takes them very long. 7) wonder whether Calphas would answer a god call from a new convert. 8) wonder whether Glimmer's deity would answer a god call from a new convert, even though he couldn't think of her name just at the moment. 9) wonder whether Bahamat would answer . . . .you get the idea . .
Piratecat specified that Dylrath has no items whatsoever. So we've got a naked 14 year old, who's confused because the last thing he knew, he was getting some action from a total babe, and now it appears she's taken advantage of him in a most unusual way. Also, everyone else seems to be here, he's not sure why, but he's laying odds they're going to be upset with him.
Sagiro: If I can Disbelieve . . and get out of my sand trap, a minute is more than I'll need to clock our (hopefully sleeping) nemesis with a Suddenly Appearing Divine Brick (tm). . . I'd rather not try this while he's awake and armed. . . .you should probably not sleep him until you see that I'm getting free, and once I'm on ground level you should all shout at me to remind me what's going on. It's possible that in order to disbelieve in our predicament, I'll have to disbelieve in our captor as well.
Kidcthulhu: O.K. Here's what Nolin can do for us.
1) Grovel.
2) Sing a song of woe to turn the villain's hard heart
3) Screech. For those of you who have heard it before, you will know the screech I'm talking about. It will freeze him in place for a moment, delaying his init and generally giving him a headache.
4) Did I mention groveling?
Sito: Please do not deafen him before Claris has a word with him.
--------------------------
Sito:Top Ten Deus Ex Machina Ways to Get Out of This:
10. Nolin moves our captor to pity us with a tender song.
9. Claris reveals that she is in fact a juvenile Steel Dragon.
8. Rex comes by, looking for a halfling he buried in the garden
7. Sherida makes a god call (Is this a good thing?) [note: Sherida was Alix's slave and a demon worshipper]
6. Dylrath finds the party in the shower and realizes that it was all a bad dream.
5. The island isn't uninhabited . . . we're saved by a fat man with a skipper's cap and a skinny man in a red shirt and white pants who were shipwrecked here.
4. Frostblossom freezes the whole ocean. [Frostblossom was a very small fey who occasionally showed up to talk to us and could freeze the surface of wineglasses and beer mugs]
3. Alix's father, returned to his senses, retrieves us in the ship he uses to mine clouds. (who knew?) [Alix's father had been swindled into a cloud-mining scheme and lost much of the family fortune, and, much to Alix's chagrin, not by Alix.]
2. Golden Bricks fall from the sky, holding back the tide until Velendo says "I don't believe you're doing this!"
1. The sun goes out. At least we don't drown.
-----------
Note from Sialia to Piratecat
Hmm, as I recall one of the notes on the Ambassadopple's papers was "11/2 Clith and Peggus: Good Gift"
Lessee . . .today is just about 11/2 by my reckoning. . . .Now let me see, is there anything around here that looks giftwrapped?
Response from Piratecat: Yes. You.
-------------
Note from Sialia to Piratecat (creatively adapted for brevity):
"Actually, I'm kind of impressed. You did come up with something Alix can't buy or burn his way out of. (Although, truth, I'm still kind of hoping to see him try and wind up fusing himself into a solid block of glass.)
----------------
Note from Sialia to Piratecat, referring to TMoSaT:
. . .I wonder if Arcade could Fabricate this Stick here into a shovel . . . ?
-------------------------------
note from Sialia to the party:
Any votes for calling Kevin's bluff? Would he really drown all of us? How many rounds before he starts sweating, too?
naah . . .me neither.
--------------------
note from Sialia to Piratecat:
you brute.
I'm not telling you nothin'
------------------
Sialia
First Post
(backstory you need to know to understand this: After the fiasco with the Academy of Flamecraft and an ensuing mental battle with a doppleganger which ended badly for all parties, Cadrienne retired from adventuring. Permanently. She took a vow of nonviolence and resolved never to kill any creature ever again, including for food.
After some time elapsed, the Defenders rescued/destroyed a village, and decided to rebuild a village on the site. They asked Cadrienne to come help, and she decided that her calling in life was to help build a Shining City in the wilderness with a great University and Library that would be dedicated to knowledge and tolerance and the proposition that there had to be some other way to become rich and powerful in life than to become a high level adventurer by killing things. They named the city "Daybreak," and she has been living there ever since. By the time the Buried Up to the Neck in Sand story took place, enough time had passed for Dylrath to achieve 7th level, which is the level Cadrienne was at when she retired.) ]
[Further notes: by our estimates we had about 7 minutes to get the party out before the tide drowned them. We did not know Peggus's class or level, or whether he was really alone or had more back up handy. We knew the size of the force the Brotherhood had sent to take us down, so they presumably knew who they were dealing with and weren't leaving us in the care of 2 weaklings we could take easily. But it wasn't at all clear what we were going to have to face apart from being naked, unarmed, marooned, drowned and . . .]
[ Also note: I told Piratecat what I had planned (although not how I was going to execute it) and he said he honestly doubted it would work. He gave me fair warning I might want to try something else, and I ignored it.]
Right, where was I mates? Right, on the beach. Naked, apart from the sand and the seaweed.
Admiring the view. Wondering whether it would be the last view I ever saw and why there weren't any naked women in it. Well, Tao was naked, but she was also buried way off to my right, and I couldn't see her at all. And Claris don't count, 'cause even if I could get a peek it wouldn't be worth the price I'd pay for it.
Well, anyway, I wish I could tell you how the Lady who did show up made her entrance, but all I could see was the water pulling back down the beach before smacking that gritty saltwater up my nose and into my eyes again. And me without so much as a fingertip free to wipe my nose, or flip off the bastards who did this to us.
I'd've shut my eyes, but I was trying to keep a watch on the big bald guy with the scimitar, who looked like he was loosening up his arm for a little golfing practice, just in case any of us got too wiggly. And hey, if I gotta die a nasty painful death, I'm not gonna miss the show when I've already gone and paid a heap for front row seats. So I did a lot of squinting instead.
Anyway, I remember hearing Tomtom say, "I'm in. That ought to soften him up," which meant he'd begun a psionic attack on one of our captors, but I don't know what he had planned.
And I remember catching a glimpse of Nyquil--he was a bit out in front of us, closer to the water--but he's an owl, see, so he could turn his head back to look at his master while he blew bubbles, and I could tell he saw something behind us, but I couldn't tell what he saw coming over the dunes.
And then I heard her speak.
"Hey there," she said, and I thought I knew the voice, but I couldn't quite remember who it was at first. But everybody else knew who it was, and their expressions--well--I'd like to say they were all hopeful and relieved looking, but honestly, well, of all the folks TMoSaT might have gone to ask for help, I'm not sure the rest of us would have picked her if he'd asked us first.
TMoSaT--the Master of Space and Time--Arcade's psionic staff --could teleport, see? And though the bad guys had stripped us naked and confiscated all our stuff, they hadn't restrained any of it. So, naturally, TMoSaT went off to find someone to pry his "walking appendages" out of the sand. Why he picked Cadrienne, I'll never know.
I'm sure he regretted it. Rumor has it she made him ask nicely.
Anyway, Cadrienne -- I mean, the lady had thrown in the towel on adventuring years ago, and, worse, taken a vow of nonviolence, and another of poverty, and sold all her weapons and donated the proceeds to charity. Not exactly a cavalry charge come to mow down our enemies. What was she going to do, talk him to death?
And also, well, she was Cadrienne. When she said "Hey there," she wasn't talking to us. She was saying hi to Peggus.
"Cadrienne!" Nolin called.
"Who are you?" Peggus said, wheeling around. I couldn't see his fighting stance to tell whether he was a swordsman or a spellcaster or what, but I tell from the way he said it that he was dropping into one. "Do you know these people?"
The big bald slave with the scimitar remained resolutely fixed on us, taking a couple of practice backswings to gauge the stroke on Alix's head..
"I'm a friend, Cadrienne. And yes, I know them," she said. "They've gone and caused a lot of trouble again, haven't they?"
"These murderers killed my sister. I'm going to see them executed," he added defensively. "I deserve my chance to avenge her death."
"I'm sure you do," she said. "I know they've certainly caused all sorts of trouble before."
And at about this point, I recalled hearing that when Nolin's ex-girlfriend showed up once with a meat tenderizer to kill Nolin, Cadrienne had actually agreed that Cinda deserved a chance to kill him and loaned her a magical flail to make a better job of it. Later, she rationalized that she had been carrying raise dead and just didn't want to Nolin to have to suffer a lot of little painful blows when it could be handled with a clean kill, but that's beside the point. The point is, Cadrienne actually thought about stuff like whether somebody deserved a chance to kill you for something you'd done. Why, out of all the folks we knew back home, hadn't TMoSat picked someone else--anyone else?
"Their days of murdering are over," Peggus said smugly, "Their doom is assured and they will pay for what they have done."
Another wave leaned in and suggested heavily that my account was in arrears.
"You must have loved your sister very much," Cadrienne said. "If their doom is assured, why don't we go walk a bit so you can tell me about her? We needn't stay here to watch the unpleasantness of these people receiving justice. I'm sure it's well in hand."
And she began to walk down the beach, and Peggus followed her like a lost puppy who has found a tenderhearted housewife carrying home a leaky basket of ground round.
I got a glimpse of them as they crossed my field of view, and then I heard them until they passed over the dunes. I tell you now that she was cheating.. Nobody who has been seasick in the cargo hold of a ship for three days looks that good. Cadrienne was always a bit of a looker -- in a strictly too pure to be much fun defiling kind of way-- but that day, she was . . .well, she was cheating or I'm no Birdhouse.
I mean, apart from the smell, which Peggus didn't seem to notice. Probably he was walking upwind. She was wearing ratty blue canvas trousers with manure stains on 'em, and a white tunic with blue embroidery on it--really bad embroidery, I remember that. And her hair was mostly escaping from that blue kerchief she was wearing--if the outfit weren't Morphatian blue, you'd swear she was an ordinary farmwife, except that she was looking too charming to be merely mortal. She took his arm, gave him a sympathetic ear, and Peggus fell for the distraction, easy as that.
We didn't especially care whether that was her intent or not. It was a distraction, and since the salt cure was starting to be a nuisance, we figured it was as good a time as any for us to get to work.
Arcade disappeared under the sand in a blink so fast the slave didn't even have time to draw back the scimitar before there was nothing left to hit. Tomtom slipped into what little shadow he had, and was also silently gone. Enraged, the big slave turned back to the nearest target at hand. If I hadn't been craning my neck trying to see where Cadrienne and Peggus had wandered off to, I might have noticed and warned my dear old master, but I'm not sure what good that would have done him. Something--Alix always thought of something. But it was too late, and the blow to his head was sickening, and I'm glad I missed seeing it. The sound was bad enough.
"I don't believe this is happening," I heard Velendo say, and though he was too far down the beach for me to see, I knew that probably meant he was out.
For what it's worth, I did try wriggling my way out, but the folks who planted us knew their business, and I wasn't making much headway. Legway. Armway, whatever.
And then, just as the slave decided to try chopping at some more of the heads he could still see, the earth moved. And up from under Nyquil the sand rose, and rose, sprayed in all directions, and an enormous carapace broke through with a startled Nyquil still sitting atop. A real living Umber Hulk, just like the shell of the one we had seen back at the Academy of Flame', only this one was alive. With a single utterance Arcade had transformed himself, and was burrowing through the sand at tremendous speed.
There was some business with taking care of the slave, but he was nearly witless and didn't last long, and the rest of us were soon free, if somewhat battered, weak and completely sand-in-everywhere naked.
But I couldn't seem to catch my breath. Even after I got out of the sand, I was still choking like a fish.
So was everyone else.
There was something more we hadn't reckoned on--Peggus had poisoned the lot of us, just in case.
We went off to have a word with him about it. A good, sharp, pointed one.
It didn't take us long to find him. Peggus and Cadrienne were sitting under a tree, very close to each other. He was sitting quietly with his eyes closed, and she was sitting beside him, staring intently, almost anxiously, at him, but not quite touching him. She turned and looked at us coming and put a finger to her lips and held up her other hand in a gesture that meant "wait."
Wait. Oh bother. She wasn't going to let us take him in fair combat. She was going to make us parley with the poncy git. Oooo-oooh, and we were gonna have to spare his life, 'specially since Alix was out of commission and we couldn't expect anybody else to make the necessary "mistakes." I missed my old master, and his body wasn't even cold in the ground yet.
And then Peggus opened his eyes and there were tears in them. Not so they'd drip, but full anyway. He looked and looked at her, with strange things in his expression I'll never understand. And then he saw us, and it clouded over, his face settling back into the mask of hatred.
"Except that they're going to kill me now," he said. "Not that that will do them any good. They will die anyway." He shook his head. "It's just as well. We will make an end of it today, and the hurting will end."
"No," she said urgently, "it's not just as well. It doesn't have to be that way. You know it. You can change how it ends. You can."
"Why should I?"
"Because it won't end your pain. If you die this way, today, you will spend eternity in the place where your sister's deceivers will spend theirs. If you live today, if you set yourself free from them, then you will have a chance to choose your eternity. I do not hate those who are Evil, but you have not chosen Evil for yourself. You were led into it, and will never be comfortable there. While you live, you can still choose. Choose a path that is better for you."
Or something like that, anyway. That sort of thing, approximately.
And he gave us the antidote.
Honestly, he did, just like that. Oh, there was some bargaining and bickering, general distrust all around, but we never really had to lean on him. He took us aboard his ship and gave us back our clothes and stuff, and took us back to Oursk and let us go. We returned the courtesy and let him go, too. Mostly because Cadrienne asked us to, and it was the only thing she asked for to clear the debt for rescuing us. Pathetic.
Cadrienne for some reason refused to set foot on the ship. She tried to walk up the gangplank and then shuddered and pulled away and said she couldn't go. He offered to stay to protect her, but she sent him on with us--we were in a hurry to catch up with that bastard illithid Sla-mori who had set the whole thing up, and said she could transport herself home safely in the morning.
We'd had enough of our beach holiday at that point, and had work to do, so we left her there, alone on the beach.
--------------------------------------
After some time elapsed, the Defenders rescued/destroyed a village, and decided to rebuild a village on the site. They asked Cadrienne to come help, and she decided that her calling in life was to help build a Shining City in the wilderness with a great University and Library that would be dedicated to knowledge and tolerance and the proposition that there had to be some other way to become rich and powerful in life than to become a high level adventurer by killing things. They named the city "Daybreak," and she has been living there ever since. By the time the Buried Up to the Neck in Sand story took place, enough time had passed for Dylrath to achieve 7th level, which is the level Cadrienne was at when she retired.) ]
[Further notes: by our estimates we had about 7 minutes to get the party out before the tide drowned them. We did not know Peggus's class or level, or whether he was really alone or had more back up handy. We knew the size of the force the Brotherhood had sent to take us down, so they presumably knew who they were dealing with and weren't leaving us in the care of 2 weaklings we could take easily. But it wasn't at all clear what we were going to have to face apart from being naked, unarmed, marooned, drowned and . . .]
[ Also note: I told Piratecat what I had planned (although not how I was going to execute it) and he said he honestly doubted it would work. He gave me fair warning I might want to try something else, and I ignored it.]
Right, where was I mates? Right, on the beach. Naked, apart from the sand and the seaweed.
Admiring the view. Wondering whether it would be the last view I ever saw and why there weren't any naked women in it. Well, Tao was naked, but she was also buried way off to my right, and I couldn't see her at all. And Claris don't count, 'cause even if I could get a peek it wouldn't be worth the price I'd pay for it.
Well, anyway, I wish I could tell you how the Lady who did show up made her entrance, but all I could see was the water pulling back down the beach before smacking that gritty saltwater up my nose and into my eyes again. And me without so much as a fingertip free to wipe my nose, or flip off the bastards who did this to us.
I'd've shut my eyes, but I was trying to keep a watch on the big bald guy with the scimitar, who looked like he was loosening up his arm for a little golfing practice, just in case any of us got too wiggly. And hey, if I gotta die a nasty painful death, I'm not gonna miss the show when I've already gone and paid a heap for front row seats. So I did a lot of squinting instead.
Anyway, I remember hearing Tomtom say, "I'm in. That ought to soften him up," which meant he'd begun a psionic attack on one of our captors, but I don't know what he had planned.
And I remember catching a glimpse of Nyquil--he was a bit out in front of us, closer to the water--but he's an owl, see, so he could turn his head back to look at his master while he blew bubbles, and I could tell he saw something behind us, but I couldn't tell what he saw coming over the dunes.
And then I heard her speak.
"Hey there," she said, and I thought I knew the voice, but I couldn't quite remember who it was at first. But everybody else knew who it was, and their expressions--well--I'd like to say they were all hopeful and relieved looking, but honestly, well, of all the folks TMoSaT might have gone to ask for help, I'm not sure the rest of us would have picked her if he'd asked us first.
TMoSaT--the Master of Space and Time--Arcade's psionic staff --could teleport, see? And though the bad guys had stripped us naked and confiscated all our stuff, they hadn't restrained any of it. So, naturally, TMoSaT went off to find someone to pry his "walking appendages" out of the sand. Why he picked Cadrienne, I'll never know.
I'm sure he regretted it. Rumor has it she made him ask nicely.
Anyway, Cadrienne -- I mean, the lady had thrown in the towel on adventuring years ago, and, worse, taken a vow of nonviolence, and another of poverty, and sold all her weapons and donated the proceeds to charity. Not exactly a cavalry charge come to mow down our enemies. What was she going to do, talk him to death?
And also, well, she was Cadrienne. When she said "Hey there," she wasn't talking to us. She was saying hi to Peggus.
"Cadrienne!" Nolin called.
"Who are you?" Peggus said, wheeling around. I couldn't see his fighting stance to tell whether he was a swordsman or a spellcaster or what, but I tell from the way he said it that he was dropping into one. "Do you know these people?"
The big bald slave with the scimitar remained resolutely fixed on us, taking a couple of practice backswings to gauge the stroke on Alix's head..
"I'm a friend, Cadrienne. And yes, I know them," she said. "They've gone and caused a lot of trouble again, haven't they?"
"These murderers killed my sister. I'm going to see them executed," he added defensively. "I deserve my chance to avenge her death."
"I'm sure you do," she said. "I know they've certainly caused all sorts of trouble before."
And at about this point, I recalled hearing that when Nolin's ex-girlfriend showed up once with a meat tenderizer to kill Nolin, Cadrienne had actually agreed that Cinda deserved a chance to kill him and loaned her a magical flail to make a better job of it. Later, she rationalized that she had been carrying raise dead and just didn't want to Nolin to have to suffer a lot of little painful blows when it could be handled with a clean kill, but that's beside the point. The point is, Cadrienne actually thought about stuff like whether somebody deserved a chance to kill you for something you'd done. Why, out of all the folks we knew back home, hadn't TMoSat picked someone else--anyone else?
"Their days of murdering are over," Peggus said smugly, "Their doom is assured and they will pay for what they have done."
Another wave leaned in and suggested heavily that my account was in arrears.
"You must have loved your sister very much," Cadrienne said. "If their doom is assured, why don't we go walk a bit so you can tell me about her? We needn't stay here to watch the unpleasantness of these people receiving justice. I'm sure it's well in hand."
And she began to walk down the beach, and Peggus followed her like a lost puppy who has found a tenderhearted housewife carrying home a leaky basket of ground round.
I got a glimpse of them as they crossed my field of view, and then I heard them until they passed over the dunes. I tell you now that she was cheating.. Nobody who has been seasick in the cargo hold of a ship for three days looks that good. Cadrienne was always a bit of a looker -- in a strictly too pure to be much fun defiling kind of way-- but that day, she was . . .well, she was cheating or I'm no Birdhouse.
I mean, apart from the smell, which Peggus didn't seem to notice. Probably he was walking upwind. She was wearing ratty blue canvas trousers with manure stains on 'em, and a white tunic with blue embroidery on it--really bad embroidery, I remember that. And her hair was mostly escaping from that blue kerchief she was wearing--if the outfit weren't Morphatian blue, you'd swear she was an ordinary farmwife, except that she was looking too charming to be merely mortal. She took his arm, gave him a sympathetic ear, and Peggus fell for the distraction, easy as that.
We didn't especially care whether that was her intent or not. It was a distraction, and since the salt cure was starting to be a nuisance, we figured it was as good a time as any for us to get to work.
Arcade disappeared under the sand in a blink so fast the slave didn't even have time to draw back the scimitar before there was nothing left to hit. Tomtom slipped into what little shadow he had, and was also silently gone. Enraged, the big slave turned back to the nearest target at hand. If I hadn't been craning my neck trying to see where Cadrienne and Peggus had wandered off to, I might have noticed and warned my dear old master, but I'm not sure what good that would have done him. Something--Alix always thought of something. But it was too late, and the blow to his head was sickening, and I'm glad I missed seeing it. The sound was bad enough.
"I don't believe this is happening," I heard Velendo say, and though he was too far down the beach for me to see, I knew that probably meant he was out.
For what it's worth, I did try wriggling my way out, but the folks who planted us knew their business, and I wasn't making much headway. Legway. Armway, whatever.
And then, just as the slave decided to try chopping at some more of the heads he could still see, the earth moved. And up from under Nyquil the sand rose, and rose, sprayed in all directions, and an enormous carapace broke through with a startled Nyquil still sitting atop. A real living Umber Hulk, just like the shell of the one we had seen back at the Academy of Flame', only this one was alive. With a single utterance Arcade had transformed himself, and was burrowing through the sand at tremendous speed.
There was some business with taking care of the slave, but he was nearly witless and didn't last long, and the rest of us were soon free, if somewhat battered, weak and completely sand-in-everywhere naked.
But I couldn't seem to catch my breath. Even after I got out of the sand, I was still choking like a fish.
So was everyone else.
There was something more we hadn't reckoned on--Peggus had poisoned the lot of us, just in case.
We went off to have a word with him about it. A good, sharp, pointed one.
It didn't take us long to find him. Peggus and Cadrienne were sitting under a tree, very close to each other. He was sitting quietly with his eyes closed, and she was sitting beside him, staring intently, almost anxiously, at him, but not quite touching him. She turned and looked at us coming and put a finger to her lips and held up her other hand in a gesture that meant "wait."
Wait. Oh bother. She wasn't going to let us take him in fair combat. She was going to make us parley with the poncy git. Oooo-oooh, and we were gonna have to spare his life, 'specially since Alix was out of commission and we couldn't expect anybody else to make the necessary "mistakes." I missed my old master, and his body wasn't even cold in the ground yet.
And then Peggus opened his eyes and there were tears in them. Not so they'd drip, but full anyway. He looked and looked at her, with strange things in his expression I'll never understand. And then he saw us, and it clouded over, his face settling back into the mask of hatred.
"Except that they're going to kill me now," he said. "Not that that will do them any good. They will die anyway." He shook his head. "It's just as well. We will make an end of it today, and the hurting will end."
"No," she said urgently, "it's not just as well. It doesn't have to be that way. You know it. You can change how it ends. You can."
"Why should I?"
"Because it won't end your pain. If you die this way, today, you will spend eternity in the place where your sister's deceivers will spend theirs. If you live today, if you set yourself free from them, then you will have a chance to choose your eternity. I do not hate those who are Evil, but you have not chosen Evil for yourself. You were led into it, and will never be comfortable there. While you live, you can still choose. Choose a path that is better for you."
Or something like that, anyway. That sort of thing, approximately.
And he gave us the antidote.
Honestly, he did, just like that. Oh, there was some bargaining and bickering, general distrust all around, but we never really had to lean on him. He took us aboard his ship and gave us back our clothes and stuff, and took us back to Oursk and let us go. We returned the courtesy and let him go, too. Mostly because Cadrienne asked us to, and it was the only thing she asked for to clear the debt for rescuing us. Pathetic.
Cadrienne for some reason refused to set foot on the ship. She tried to walk up the gangplank and then shuddered and pulled away and said she couldn't go. He offered to stay to protect her, but she sent him on with us--we were in a hurry to catch up with that bastard illithid Sla-mori who had set the whole thing up, and said she could transport herself home safely in the morning.
We'd had enough of our beach holiday at that point, and had work to do, so we left her there, alone on the beach.
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Last edited:
KidCthulhu
First Post
This was Cadrienne's crowning moment, the apex of the life of a complex, deeply played character. It beats out the "Trapping the Doppleganger in a Mind Reading Feedback Loop" and "Handing Nolin's Ex the Mace", and stands supreme as the shining pinnacle of a career of non-violence and understanding.
So now she can retire in triumph, and make way for Dilly's mindless, Brownian Motion fun.
So now she can retire in triumph, and make way for Dilly's mindless, Brownian Motion fun.
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