NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DoctorB" data-source="post: 21902" data-attributes="member: 903">Azar (story)AzarThe unassuming servant woman ducks into Lord Gunter’s study.   Standing in his gray cowled robe, he is waiting for her.  Only the lower part of his face is visible beneath the dark hood.  All she can clearly see is a stern mouth and strong jaw, though occasionally she glimpses something not at all human in its place.  Azar quickly kneels at his feet.“Master” she says with conviction.“Gather your gang and discover what those adventurers are doing.”  She hears the order with her mind rather than her ears.  The master does not have to speak aloud.She nods, “I am going to meet with them now”“Good, report back to me when you have more information.  Use care.  These so-called Champions of the Lady are powerful.”Azar bows again and quickly takes her leave.  As she winds her way through the corridors of the governor’s palace, she reflects on what she has already lost.  The armor and war hammer acquired for murdering the leader of Corovade’s underworld, lost, taken by these Champions.She had designed two ambushes to kill these foreigners.  The first failed even as she had the hobbit priestess in her sights, and the second one when her arrow went astray.  She had warned the master against alliance with the priestess of the Triad, but to no avail.  Now the paladin and his band knew of her and possibly her master.  They would probably be hunting for both.  The adventurers had taken the governor out of the master’s reach and now threatened all of his plans.Carefully winding her way through the merchant quarter of town, she seems only a palace servant on an errand from the governor.  She makes her way through the new walls of Sazon and into the slums beyond.  How mighty the city must once have been to cover so much space!  The remains of the old walls sit more than half a mile from the new ones.  In between are ruined shops and villas from the distant past.  Now these are the homes of the destitute and the desperate.  Azar ducks into one of these homes and unwraps her disguise kit.  Turning her dress inside out reveals rags and tatters.  She dirties her face and changes the color of her hair.  The master said to be careful.  The poor woman who exits from the rear of the hovel looks nothing like the one who had entered the front.Careful to take a circuitous route and assure herself she is not followed, Azar comes at last to the meeting place.  It was the foundation of some ancient shop with a tarp thrown over the top.  Inside are her three remaining boys.They are deep in a discussion about scouting when all hell breaks loose.  The tarp above them explodes downward in flame.  Two of the rogues die immediately.  As the third one runs away, Azar sees several armored people charging through the ruins at her.  The Champions!As she fights desperately for her life, she goes over every step of her way here.  She was careful!  Even as the enchanted war hammer that used to be hers slams her to unconsciousness in the hands of the paladin of the Lady, her last thought is:How did they know?-----Though her face is calm, Galena seems to be beaming.  If only we could take the Crystal Ball with us, she thinks.  The loremasters of the Great Library have little use for it anyway.“Ok, now we ah have to deal with this master of hers” Cobbe points out“I couldn’t scry him, but I did make a map of the path the assassin used to get out of the palace.  We could follow it back in and finish with him,” she responds.“Tomorrow,” Toiva reminds them.  “Joy is out of miracles and several of us are hurt.  At least this troublesome assassin is dead.”</blockquote>

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