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Dreams of Erthe
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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9102314" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 56: THIEVES IN THE NIGHT</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: </p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 12</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 6</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 6/paladin 6</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 6/rogue 6</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 12</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Robin the Balladeer, human bard 3</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Scarlie Besker, half-orc commoner 5</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 12 August 2023</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>Three days of sustained travel can quite often be rather boring, especially when moving at he pace of a wagon being pulled by two not overly enthusiastic mules. But Thurloe had made the best of it; rather than spend the day in the saddle like most of the others, he had opted to ride along in the back of the wagon, studying the spellbooks he'd gathered up over the months and seeing if he could make sense of them. He managed to figure out three distinct spells out of the bunch: <em>fog cloud</em>, <em>summon monster III</em>, and <em>haste</em>. He wasn't exactly sure just when he'd use the first two spells, but the third seemed eminently practical.</p><p></p><p>Zander Quilson had had a good three days of travel as well. When they had stopped during the first night, he had cast forth his senses and summoned forth a familiar, basically broadcasting the desire out among the arcane pathways and seeing what - if anything - might respond. It ended up being a pseudodragon, a red-scaled dragon small enough to perch upon the sorcerer's shoulder. Xandro had immediately asked if the elf was going to bother coming up for a name for the creature, as Zander's <em>jade cooshee</em> had done without a true name for so long he more of less just inherited the name, "Cooshee." (Much like Thurloe, not one for much in the way of sentimentality, had simply named his horse "Horse.") But Zander surprised everyone by coming up with the name "<strong>Petey</strong>," although it was only after everyone started calling the little creature that that he admitted he had meant "P. D." - but by that time "Petey" had become common usage amongst the group so the elf just decided to go with it.</p><p></p><p>It was getting close to dark on the third day that they rode into the town of Waymont, the location of the next dream victim on their list. As was their habit (as it usually paid off), they hit the first tavern they encountered and asked the townsfolk if they knew of anyone who had been sleeping for an unusual amount of time. Usually, word of mouth spread about such an odd occurrence so that somebody knew of the dream victim, but this time was an exception: nobody was aware of anybody stuck asleep. Since the dreamwalkers had already experienced what the dream was about, they were able to describe the older woman in the dream, but their description didn't offer up any insights to any of the tavern-goers. "Strange," admitted Xandro.</p><p></p><p>They moved on to another tavern and met up with the same response. "This is silly," snorted Alewyth, bringing <em>Sjondra</em> up by her face. "Mogo?" she called. "Can you hear me?"</p><p></p><p>"Hang on, kupo!" came a voice through one of the dreamstones embedded into the sides of Alewyth's dwarven warhammer. "I'll go get Mogo for you, kupo!" Once their moogle dreamwalking instructor's voice came on line, they admitted they couldn't get a location on the dreamer.</p><p></p><p>"You need to head further north, kupo!" advised Mogo, observing their progress from the Dreamlands. He could track a dreamer on the Material Plane by their dreams, although that didn't always give him any idea about who the dreamer might be; sometimes the dream gave clues, but the dreamer seldom blurted out their name and address. Still, by triangulating the heroes' location on the Material Plane with where the dream was coming from, Mogo managed to steer them to a small house on the outskirts of the far side of town. "She should be in there, kupo!" Mogo advised.</p><p></p><p>"I wonder why nobody knew about the dreamer this time," mused Xandro aloud.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe we have it all wrong," theorized Wakuren. "We assumed it was the woman in the dream who was having the dream, but maybe it was the table." The woman in the dream had been alternating between staring at her own hand in wonder (almost as if she'd never seen it before), and glancing nervously down at the table before the sofa upon which she sat, which was quite visibly breathing.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe the <em>table's</em> having the dream?" repeated Thurloe in astonishment.</p><p></p><p>"Mimic," answered Wakuren, and the spellsword had to admit that was a distinct possibility.</p><p></p><p>"Well, let's try the obvious approach first, shall we?" asked Alewyth, stepping up to the front door and rapping on it several times with her knuckles. There was no answer, and Xandro volunteered to walk around the house to see if there were any others ways in, while Zander activated his <em>scout's headband</em> and channeled all of its power at once, granting him a minute of <em>true seeing</em>, where he was able to determine the house was just as it looked, with no illusions covering secret doors or anything like that. Xandro returned shaking his head. "All the windows are shuttered up," he said.</p><p></p><p>"Then she must be the only one inside," Alewyth deduced. "We need to get in there if we're going to wake her up...Xandro, do you think you can open this lock?" She'd tried turning the door knob, but the house was locked.</p><p></p><p>"I'll give it a try," promised the young rogue, taking out his masterwork lockpicks. Alewyth gave a nervous glance around, to make sure they weren't being observed by any of the neighbors. This would be a bad time to be seen by the locals: while trying to break into a house, with everyone armored and wielding weapons. Xandro chose a particular lockpick from his collection, placed the tip into the key opening, and--</p><p></p><p><em><strong>WONK! WONK! WONK! WONK!</strong></em></p><p></p><p>The rogue practically jumped out of his skin at the loud noise emanating from the door - apparently, he'd triggered an audible <em>alarm</em> spell. And sure enough, the neighbors on either side of the house and from across the street were exiting their own homes to see what all the commotion was about. Xandro had just enough time to stash his lockpicks away before they could see he'd been trying to force his way into the house. "Sorry, everyone," he said. "I'm the cousin of the person who lives here, and I'm afraid I fumbled deactivating the <em>alarm</em> spell like I was supposed to." The rogue chose his words very carefully, not sure exactly whose house this was. But Thurloe had his back: activating his <em>ring of silence</em>, he steeped closer to the door so the <em>alarm</em> spell, still blaring away at full volume, was covered in the spell's area of effect and it suddenly shut off. "There it is - got it at last!" Xandro declared, stepping away from the door so he'd be outside the area of magical silence.</p><p></p><p>This was enough to satisfy most of the neighbors, who turned away to go back to their own houses. One enterprising (or possibly suspicious) man offered to help them bring their things inside, but Xandro shooed him away. "No need," he said, "but thank you very much for the offer. I say, do you happen to know where my cousin might be?"</p><p></p><p>"If he's not here, he's probably down at his gambling hall - the <em>Honest Hand</em>, on the other side of town - you can't miss it."</p><p></p><p>From that, Xandro gathered his "cousin" was male, then, and changed his own vocabulary when talking about him. "Have you seen him around lately?" Xandro asked. "He knew we were coming, but not when we'd be getting in."</p><p></p><p>"Come to think of it, I haven't seen <strong>Justin</strong> for a couple of weeks now," the neighbor declared. "I guess our schedules haven't matched up."</p><p></p><p>"Justin?" Thurloe called into the house, after deciding the <em>alarm</em> spell had probably run its course and deactivating his field of <em>silence</em>. (Fortunately, he was right on that front.) "We're here! Anybody home?" The neighbor followed the heroes inside the house as they went checking room to room - and that's where they found the older woman from the dreamscape, laying atop a fully-made bed in her clothes, a nightgown hanging on the back of the door to what was obviously a guest bedroom.</p><p></p><p>"Do you know who this lady is?" asked Wakuren.</p><p></p><p>"Never seen her before," admitted the neighbor. "Is she even breathing?" He held a hand up to her throat to feel for a pulse and was a bit surprised when the woman didn't even seem to notice - he'd half expected her to be startled awake. "Hey, lady, you okay?" he asked, shaking her shoulder softly and then frowning in puzzlement when she refused to wake up. "She slept right through that <em>alarm</em> noise," he mused aloud. "You think she'd been drugged?"</p><p></p><p>"She's in a dream coma," Alewyth told him. "We've seen this sort of thing before and we may be able to help. But do you think you can go fetch Justin, and bring him back here?" She was eager to try to awaken the woman and didn't want to do it in front of a nosy neighbor who'd be asking a whole lot of questions. He'd said the <em>Honest Hand</em> was across town; that should give them plenty of time to perform the dream-waking ritual. The neighbor agreed and raced off into the night. Zander closed the door behind him after he'd left. "How do we want to handle this?" he asked. It was a small building, and the guest bedroom wasn't big enough for them to be able to sit around her bed in a circle.</p><p></p><p>"Into the lamp with her," suggested Thurloe. "We can do the ritual in there."</p><p></p><p>Wakuren lifted the woman - she looked to be in her early fifties - and stepped over to <em>Hesperna's lamp</em>, saying the command word that shunted the two of them inside. Zander activated his <em>jade cooshee</em> and bade him to guard the lamp with Robin - Scarlie was outside with the wagon and animals - and the rest of the dreamwalkers followed Wakuren inside the extradimensional lamp. They set things up as usual, with a dreamstone held in place on the woman's forehead with a leather band, while they sat around her wearing their own dreamstones, and then slowed their breathing in preparation to falling asleep.</p><p></p><p>Once in the Dreamlands, they were escorted by their individual moogle guides to the Corridor of Dreams, where Mogo was waiting. "Good luck, kupo!" he offered to his five dreamwalkers as they entered the woman's dreamscape. They recognized the setting at once: it was the living room of the small house in which she had been staying, only the colors were unusually vibrant. She sat upon the sofa, staring at her hand in wonder, turning it back and forth in rapt admiration. In front of her, the low table was in fact breathing, slowly, in and out, in and out, in a steady rhythm.</p><p></p><p>"Hello? Can you hear me?" asked Alewyth, approaching the lady. She slowly turned her head to look at the dwarven priestess. "Be careful," she admonished. "I think the table wants to kill me."</p><p></p><p>"Well, we won't let that happen," replied Alewyth, bringing <em>Sjondra</em> up and sending it crashing down upon the wooden structure. The legs shattered beneath the initial blow, and the dwarf continued her attacks until the table was nothing more than a pile of splintered fragments of shattered wood. "There!" Alewyth declared proudly. "Now it can't hurt you."</p><p></p><p>The woman looked down at the pile of debris. "Wow," she said in a subdued voice, then turned back to look at her hand, which had become no less fascinating to her.</p><p></p><p>"Ma'am, may I ask your name?" offered Xandro.</p><p></p><p>"Hmmm?"</p><p></p><p>"Your name, ma'am?"</p><p></p><p>"<strong>Marjorie Peccadillo</strong>."</p><p></p><p>"And do you know where you are?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm visiting my son, Justin."</p><p></p><p>"You're actually asleep and dreaming," Wakuren corrected. "We found you asleep on the bed in what looked to be the guest bedroom. You've probably been asleep for many days, even weeks."</p><p></p><p>Marjorie took this in with another subdued, "Wow."</p><p></p><p>Alewyth peered into her eyes and saw the woman's pupils were dilated. "Marjorie, did you take any kind of...medicine before you went to sleep?"</p><p></p><p>"Hmmm? No, just some salad."</p><p></p><p>"Any mushrooms in that salad?" Thurloe asked brusquely.</p><p></p><p>"Mushrooms, yes. And onions, carrots, lettuce...." Marjorie's brow furrowed as she tried to recall the contents of her salad, but Thurloe wasn't really interested. "Here, he said, offering her a glass vial. "Drink this."</p><p></p><p>Moving in slow motion, as if unsure of her every movement, Marjorie took the proffered vial and drank down the <em>potion of neutralize potion</em>. It mirrored exactly the contents of the potion vial Thurloe kept on his person in the Material World, and its effects here in the Dreamlands was the same as the would have been there - Marjorie shook her head, as if waking up from a long slumber. And the fact that the walls of the room started melting showed that was exactly what was occurring. The five dreamwalkers each shook themselves awake, and their consciousnesses returned to their bodies on the Material World, regaining their senses a moment before Marjorie awoke fully, to find herself surrounded by five strangers seated all around her in a circle.</p><p></p><p>"Who are you? Where are we?" she demanded, looking around at the confines of the interior of <em>Hesperna's lamp</em>. Her eyes in real life were dilated, just as they'd been in the dream - the effects of the dream-potion didn't carry over to real life.</p><p></p><p>"You're perfectly safe," replied Alewyth, before introducing herself and the others and explaining all about the dream plague. Wakuren said the command word and everyone was shunted back into the living room, where Robin stood waiting and the cooshee wagged his tail at seeing his master once again. Thurloe gave her the real <em>potion of neutralize poison</em> and let it do its work for real.</p><p></p><p>"Where's Justin?" she asked, looking around. Xandro explained he wasn't home, and the neighbors hadn't seen him for weeks. This was confirmed when they found the bowl with the leftovers of the salad Marjorie had been eating before feeling strange, having eaten mushrooms not intended to be made part of a dinner salad. The vegetable matter was rotten, as if left to decay for a couple of weeks. Marjorie ran a finger along the tabletop and frowned at the dust she found there. "You mean he just left me here, all alone, for weeks? And what was he doing leaving those mushrooms out where I'd stumble across them? How was I to know they were an illicit substance? Oh, that Justin's got some explaining to do!"</p><p></p><p>Alewyth explained a neighbor had gone to the <em>Honest Hand</em> to fetch him, but they hadn't returned yet. Seeing the indignation rise in Marjorie's expression, and not wanting to remain here with her to hear her tirades, the heroes promised to go find him at his gambling hall and bring him back home. In the meantime, she gathered up some cleaning supplies and started on the kitchen table.</p><p></p><p>"I wouldn't want to be him," Zander replied, when they'd remounted their steeds and were heading across town to find the gambling hall.</p><p></p><p>"What kind of son leaves his mother alone for a couple of weeks like that?" fumed Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>They found the <em>Honest Hand</em> without much trouble, and Scarlie took the wagon and animals around back to the stables while the others went inside. The building was a single-story structure, made of wood, with a sign above the double doors in middle of the front side, depicting a disembodied hand holding five playing cards. There was a wooden porch out front, with a railing along either side.</p><p></p><p>Stepping inside the building, the heroes went their separate ways. Off to the right was the gambling section, with a window directly ahead where you could convert your coins to gambling tokens, with a placard below the window explaining the color code of the chips. Wakuren wandered over that way, observing several gaming tables where cards were being played, as well as roulette wheel in the back. There was a blazing fireplace along the eastern wall, with candles and oil lamps providing light elsewhere. A row of strange metal boxes flanked one wall, each with a slot for coins and a handle you could pull on.</p><p></p><p>Thurloe went to the left, where he caught up with one of a pair of bouncers and professed to be looking for a job between adventures. He asked if the owner was about. Robin went straight for the bar, with Xandro in tow, and she bought herself a drink. The bartender tried hitting on her, until Xandro stepped up, ordered a drink for himself, and informed the bartender that Robin "was with him." They also asked if Justin Peccadillo was about, as did Alewyth, although she was asking the lady behind the counter off to the far left, where one could book a room for the night. In each case, the response was the same: Justin hadn't made an appearance yet that night, as he didn't usually come out of his rooms until midnight, when the doors were closed to new visitors and he engaged in his standard poker game with a few of the local noblemen. As it was still an hour or so until midnight, he was likely still in the room reserved for his use when he opted to stay in the inn.</p><p></p><p>"Could you fetch him?" Alewyth asked the innkeeper. "There's been a problem with his mother at his house." The woman apparently decided that was important enough to go bother the boss, and hurried off to fetch him. She returned shortly with a tall, lanky man in tow, dressed in dark colors: pants, shirt, vest, and boots.</p><p></p><p>"What's going on?" asked Justin Peccadillo. Alewyth filled him in about their exploits with his mother at his house, and her desire for them to bring him back home with them.</p><p></p><p>"So she's okay, then?" he asked. "You woke her up with no problem, and she's all right?"</p><p></p><p>"Well, physically she's fine," agreed Alewyth. "She is a little concerned about you abandoning her for several weeks, and she has some questions about those mushrooms she ate...."</p><p></p><p>"What, she got into my mushrooms? Damn! They're uh, for medicinal use," he explained. "Well, in any case, if she's okay, I'm sure she'll be fine."</p><p></p><p>"You're not going to go check on her?" sputtered Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"Nah, no reason to. And I've got duties that keep me here." Wakuren had noticed Alewyth talking to the dark-garbed man and assumed he was the guy they'd been looking for, so he stepped away from the "one armed bandits" he'd been examining and headed in that direction; Alewyth was starting to look perturbed. Instinctively, he concentrated on the man's aura and detected no signs of evil hidden there - that was a good thing, in any case. Zander stepped beside the half-orc and they approached Alewyth and Justin together. Thurloe, who'd been listening to the bouncer's tales of how much Justin usually made playing poker with the aristocrats each night - they were apparently not close to being the card sharks they believed themselves to be - headed over himself to see what was going on.</p><p></p><p>"Hey," Justin said as the three approached, as he looked over their armor and weapons. "Are you guys adventurers? 'Cause if so, I might want to hire you for a task of my own."</p><p></p><p>"Go on," prompted Wakuren.</p><p></p><p>"Someone's trying to kill me," Justin replied. "Maybe I could pay you to take out the assassin."</p><p></p><p>"We should go see your mother first," insisted Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"Nah, she's fine."</p><p></p><p>"Tell him the other thing," suggested Thurloe, gathering him a bevy of puzzled looks from his companions, who had no idea what he was talking about - not surprising, given he was about to spout some of the nonsense for which he was becoming known. "One of the noblemen you play cards with is getting tired of losing and is planning on burning the place down with a <em>fireball</em>, tonight."</p><p></p><p>"Oh, he is, is he?" laughed Justin. "Well, he's certainly welcome to try!" Thurloe frowned, not sure why his bluff was being ignored - he'd have thought a threat of losing his entire business would have gotten more of a reaction from him. "So, what do you say?" Justin asked. "Will you take the job?"</p><p></p><p>Wakuren asked if there was somewhere they could talk more privately and Justin took them back into the inn, through a door marked "EMPLOYEES ONLY." It was a breakroom for those who worked at the gambling hall and inn, and it had a large table and seats enough for everyone. "So," the half-orc said once everyone had taken a seat at the table, "who's trying to kill you, and why?"</p><p></p><p>"Well..." Justin began, clearly nervous about the subject. "Let's just say there's this wizard, who might have gotten it into his head that I had a certain valuable of his that went missing...."</p><p></p><p>Wakuren again concentrated on Justin's aura, detecting no traces of evil. Alewyth surreptitiously cast a <em>detect magic</em> spell, to see if Justin had any magic items about him, and she also got no indications.</p><p></p><p>"What kind of valuable are we talking about?" asked Thurloe.</p><p></p><p>"Well, let's just say, <em>hypothetically</em>, it was a <em>pearl of power</em> - a magic pearl that lets wizard cast more spells than they'd normally be able to do each day."</p><p></p><p>"And hypothetically, do you have this missing pearl he's looking for?" asked Xandro.</p><p></p><p>"Well, let's just say that I have one fitting the description of the one he's missing, although there's no way of proving the two are the same."</p><p></p><p>"And where did you get your <em>pearl of power</em>?" asked Alewyth.</p><p></p><p>"I could very well have just found it lying around," Justin offered up. "If, hypothetically, whoever stole it from the wizard, say, maybe dropped it, and I found it later on, well that's not me having done anything wrong...."</p><p></p><p>"There are an awful lot of hypotheticals in this scenario," observed Zander.</p><p></p><p>"What about the assassin?" asked Wakuren, trying to learn something Justin was willing to admit to without weaseling away from the truth - the half-orc was already sure the man had probably stolen the <em>pearl of power</em> from the wizard. "Have you seen him? Can you give us a description?"</p><p></p><p>"That's the thing - I can't. The assassin is completely invisible, which is cheating if you ask me."</p><p></p><p>"An invisible stalker, most likely," asserted Wakuren.</p><p></p><p>"And it attacked you?" demanded Thurloe.</p><p></p><p>"Right as I was entering the <em>Honest Hand</em>," admitted Justin. "Almost got me, too, but then I made it inside. Only now, when I try to go back out, it's there, waiting for me. That's why I can't go with you to go see Mom - it'll get me as soon as I step foot outside."</p><p></p><p>"That seems odd," remarked Wakuren. "Do you have wards in place barring extra-dimensional creatures?" He was well aware that invisible stalkers were beings from the Elemental Plane of Air.</p><p></p><p>Justin laughed. "Better than that! The <em>Honest Hand</em> is built atop an <em>antimagic field</em>! That's why it's the prominent gambling establishment in the area - everyone knows everything's on the up-and-up! No illusion magic changing the faces on the cards, or copper pieces into gold! No enchantments causing you to throw a bet or fold when you've got a winning hand! Nope, it's just pure skill - and normal luck, of course." Wakuren and Alewyth's faces showed they now realized that their negative findings with their attempts to detect evil and magic, respectfully, were now completely suspect.</p><p></p><p>"We could certainly take out an invisible stalker for you," declared Thurloe. "How much are you paying?"</p><p></p><p>"One hundred pieces of gold," offered Justin.</p><p></p><p>"Each?"</p><p></p><p>"Total."</p><p></p><p>"Each," insisted Thurloe.</p><p></p><p>"Fine, each then," replied Justin. "How are you going to do it?"</p><p></p><p>That was indeed a good question. Zander had already used up his daily allotment of enhanced vision from his <em>scout's headband</em>, or he'd have been able to attune it to allow him to <em>see invisibility</em> and he'd have been able to see the invisible stalker's exact position when it approached. They were working on the assumption that it was nearby, casing the <em>Honest Hand</em> for when Justin might exit it. They also assumed it had been summoned by the wizard upon finding his <em>pearl of power</em> had been stolen, and sent it off to find it. Invisible stalkers were astoundingly good trackers - they assumed it had tracked the gem by its unique arcane signature, and thus it probably had no idea who Justin Peccadillo was, merely that he was the one with the pearl.</p><p></p><p>"You have the <em>pearl of power</em> it's looking for?" asked Thurloe. Justin replied by pulling it out of a pocket from inside his vest and holding it up for the others to see.</p><p></p><p>"Well then, we'll use you for bait."</p><p></p><p>"I don't like the sound of that," Justin informed the spellsword. "I don't like the sound of that at all."</p><p></p><p>"Well then, we'll use the <em>pearl of power</em> as bait," Thurloe corrected. "I assume you wouldn't want to just hand it over to us?"</p><p></p><p>"That would not be my first choice, no."</p><p></p><p>"Then here's what we do," the spellsword outlined to the group. "We all stand outside the door, you stick your arm out of the door, while holding the pearl, the invisible stalker detects it and comes running over, and we kill it for you." He purposefully left out the part where he was planning on pushing Justin completely outside the building, just in case the invisible stalker was keyed in on the thief instead of the stolen treasure. Justin agreed to the plan, but wanted to use a side entrance instead of the front door - it was out of the view of the customers, and he didn't want anyone thinking the <em>Honest Hand</em> wasn't a perfectly safe place to go gamble away your hard-earned coins. There was a storage room with a door to the outside along the western wall of the building; that was where Justin wanted to spring the trap for his invisible assassin.</p><p></p><p>"Get your spells ready," suggested Thurloe, casting a <em>shield</em> spell upon himself from his wand. Xandro cast three <em>heroism</em> spells, one each upon Alewyth, Thurloe, and Wakuren, then summoned his dire elk by playing the appropriate tune on his <em>Dardolian Lute</em> with his magic pick. Wakuren enhanced himself with <em>shield of faith</em>, <em>bull's strength</em>, and <em>bear's endurance</em> spells, while Alewyth cast a <em>bless</em> spell on the assembled group. Finally, Zander cast a <em>mage armor</em> spell upon himself and Petey, followed by a <em>haste</em> spell on the assembled group. Robin started playing the initial chords of her song of inspirational courage. Then, declaring themselves ready, Thurloe nodded at Justin - the only one still inside the building, and thus the only one still inside the <em>antimagic field</em> - and the manager of the gambling hall stuck his fist through the open doorway, keeping a tight grip on the <em>pearl of power</em> that was the cause of all this trouble in the first place.</p><p></p><p>Thurloe grabbed Justin's wrist and pulled the man completely out of the building. "Wakuren?" he called.</p><p></p><p>"Evil," the half-orc declared, having finally gotten a true reading of the man's aura.</p><p></p><p>"What the Hell, man?" sputtered Justin. "You guys are the worst bodyguards ever! You're supposed to keep me safe, not open me up to danger!"</p><p></p><p>Thurloe had a snide retort on the tip of his tongue, but then Justin screamed as three parallel lines ripped through his vest, shirt, and the flesh beneath it. Blood pooled on his chest as the invisible stalker made its initial strike.</p><p></p><p>"Get it!" Thurloe called out instead, channeling a <em>touch of fatigue</em> into the man who'd hired him. He couldn't tell for sure if the spell had any effect, but it didn't look like it.</p><p></p><p>The heroes were crowding all around Justin, but they had strategically left an open spot beside him to give the invisible stalker a place from which it could attack. Xandro stabbed his short sword <em>Deathwhisper</em> into that space, as his dire elk likewise swung his massive antlers into the gap. But neither attack struck anything - the invisible stalker, a being of the Elemental Plane of Air, had attacked from directly above Justin. Zander figured that out on his own and cast a <em>cone of cold</em> spell above the heads of the assembled heroes and their current employer. A coating of frost momentarily encompassed the invisible stalker, revealing an outline of its form (humanoid in build from the waist up, tapering down to a point below like a genie or a ghost) for a second or two before the frost itself was rendered invisible by contact with the invisible stalker.</p><p></p><p>Petey flapped off of Zander's shoulder and stabbed at the invisible stalker with its stinger-equipped tail, hitting the mark; unfortunately, creatures whose bodies are composed of air are immune to various types of poison, and the little dragon's venom did nothing to incapacitate the unseen assassin.</p><p></p><p>Alewyth was too far away from the action to try to attack the invisible stalker with <em>Sjondra</em>, but she had a <em>dismissal</em> spell on hand.... Casting it while she was still somewhat certain of the creature's position, she was glad to see by the sudden burst of light and the popping sound of displaced air that the spell had worked and the invisible stalker had been shunted back to the Elemental Plane of Air. And while they hadn't killed it outright, it wouldn't be able to report back to the wizard who had summoned it of its success or failure. There was no telling how long the wizard would wait before trying to follow up on his hired assassin's progress, likely through divination spells, but they had at the very least bought Justin a number of days in which he wouldn't be bothered.</p><p></p><p>"That was completely reckless!" Justin scowled at Thurloe, before demanding to be healed of his wounds. Wakuren stepped up to comply, himself aghast at the spellsword's actions, which put the whole group in a bad light. Once healed, Justin went to storm back inside the building, intent on not missing out on his card game with the noblemen who often hung around this late for that very purpose. The heroes prevented him from entering, wanting to talk to him at once for several reasons: Alewyth wanted to try to convince Justin to go visit his mother, now that it was safe to do so; Wakuren wanted to know Justin's intentions about the <em>pearl of power</em>, hoping to convince the rogue to return it to the wizard from which it had been stolen; Thurloe wanted to make sure they'd be getting paid the amount they'd agreed to for getting rid of the invisible stalker.</p><p></p><p>"Hey, I got an idea," Justin said, turning on the heroes. "This <em>pearl of power</em> is valued at 70,000 pieces of gold. How about I sell it to you for a mere 35,000 pieces of gold as your payment for taking care of that invisible assassin? That way you're saving a ton of money, and you can do whatever your conscience desires about the pearl."</p><p></p><p>"It sounds like you'd be earning 35,000 pieces of gold for a piece of stolen property, welching out on paying us, and setting us up to be hunted down by the next invisible stalker the wizard sends hunting for his bauble," pointed out Alewyth, a fierce scowl on her dwarven features.</p><p></p><p>"Allegedly stolen," corrected Justin.</p><p></p><p>Wakuren had had just about enough of this. Before he allowed the rogue to re-enter the <em>Honest Hand</em>, he cast a <em>bestow curse</em> spell on him, preventing the smooth-talking rogue from being able to tell a lie. Granted, the curse would be temporarily negated while he was inside the <em>Honest Hand</em>'s <em>antimagic field</em>, but it would prove to be valuable in the meantime. "Did you steal the <em>pearl of power</em>?" he asked Justin outright.</p><p></p><p>Justin tried to keep the words in his mouth, but he eventually blurted out, "Yeah, I did."</p><p></p><p>"Why?"</p><p></p><p>"...A client paid me to. But I've been stuck inside the <em>Honest Hand</em> since, so I haven't been able to deliver it to him. He's probably getting pretty antsy about it, too, I imagine." Then, aghast at having spilled the beans so willingly, he wrestled past the half-orc and entered the safety of the gambling hall, where he would once again gain mastery over what exactly he admitted to.</p><p></p><p>"That's better," Justin replied, walking down the hallway back over to the gambling area. "Gentlemen! Sorry to keep you waiting! Let's get the poker game going!"</p><p></p><p>"Don't forget our payment," Thurloe warned.</p><p></p><p>"Yes, yes, I haven't forgotten. Say, how'd you like to be paid in chips? Then you can try your hand at any of our gaming tables."</p><p></p><p>"I think we'll take it in straight cash," Thurloe replied.</p><p></p><p>"Fine, cash it is." Justin called over to the girl behind the cash counter. "Fetch these fellows 100 gold," he said.</p><p></p><p>"Each," Wakuren reminded him.</p><p></p><p>"Yes, right, each." The heroes stood around by the cashier cage, accepting their stacks of coins in order.</p><p></p><p>As it was now past midnight, the front doors had been closed and barred, preventing anyone else from entering the establishment. This was the time of night when Justin and his noblemen friends - or, as he secretly referred to them to himself, "patsies" - settled down for some no-limit-stakes poker. Despite the <em>antimagic field</em> preventing any magical shenanigans, Justin was still an adept at sleight of hand and had no trouble ensuring he was dealt a winning hand each time.</p><p></p><p>There was a sudden thump at the front doors, as a deep voice from outside called out, "HELP!" Everyone turned to look in the direction of the front doors, but they were still barred, preventing entry.</p><p></p><p>Xandro was the only one close enough to the doors to hear the immediate response, said in a much lower voice. It said, "No - higher. You're a girl."</p><p></p><p>"HELP!" came the deep voice, this time a falsetto that sounded like nothing so much as a large man trying to pretend he was a woman.</p><p></p><p>"There's someone outside, wanting in," Thurloe said to Justin, who was engaged in his card game. "Tell them we're closed," Justin replied, paying more attention to the cards in his hand than the commotion outside his establishment.</p><p></p><p>"HELP!" repeated the falsetto voice. "SCARED!" After a few moments, it added, "BEARS!"</p><p></p><p>"Again," said the quieter voice only Xandro could hear.</p><p></p><p>"HELP!"</p><p></p><p>"Let us in!"</p><p></p><p>"LET US IN!"</p><p></p><p>"For all that's holy, let us in or our deaths will be on your heads!" prompted the suggestive voice outside.</p><p></p><p>That was apparently too much for the owner of the deep voice to remember all at once, for all that came out was, "...HELP!" - again in the ridiculously high-pitched voice.</p><p></p><p>"Shut them up and send them on their way!" snarled Justin, and one of the burly bouncers pulled the bars away from the doors to comply. He opened the door to chew out the latecomers, and was surprised to see standing on the porch before him a well-dressed gentleman and a female aristocrat hanging on his arm, neither of them seeming to match the voice that had called from outside. But more surprising was the fact there were four grizzly bears scattered across the front lawn, shambling forward. "Crap!" the bouncer swore. "I guess you'd better get in here, quick!" He pulled the door wide open and ushered them inside.</p><p></p><p>With friendly smiles on their faces, the noble couple stepped inside the <em>Honest Hand</em>. But as soon as they crossed the threshold and stepped fully into the <em>antimagic field</em>, a horrible transformation came over them. They were instantly covered in blood, their human skins dangling in strips hanging over the ursine bodies of two strange creatures, each covered in mangy fur, with heads very similar to the grizzly bears just outside and sporting massive hands each sprouting eight long, clawed fingers. The "male" aristocrat looked down in surprise at this sudden transformation and called out, "Aw - broken!"</p><p></p><p>Wakuren and Thurloe, seeing these monsters step into the building, grabbed their weapons and moved forward to intercede, as the casino workers getting a good look at the skin thieves screamed in fear and backed away. Xandro and Robin, over by the fireplace along the western wall, the area supporting empty tables where customers could sip their drinks and nibble on platters of cheese and sausages, moved to a nearby door and stepped inside, finding themselves in a storage room filled with stacks of cordwood for the fireplace. There was another door from this room leading outside, and Zander beat them to it, stepping outside into the night air. He found himself nearly face to face with another of these skin thieves, this one in its true, ursine form, standing on its hind legs like a human.</p><p></p><p>In a flash, Petey leaped from the elf's shoulder and stabbed his tail-stinger at the skin thief. He hit the upright beast, but its hearty constitution prevented the little dragon's venom from having any immediate effect. The burly brown grizzly bears ambled up, and one of them stepped into the building through the front doors, where he was instantly revealed as yet another skin thief, this one wearing the ragged pelt of a brown bear over his own shaggy fur - for as soon as he entered the <em>antimagic field</em>, the magic of his bear pelt was shut off, exposing it for the uncured skin it was. The skin thief snorted in disgust, shook off the pelt, and said, "Guess I need a new one!" He then stepped menacingly towards the bouncer who had opened the door.</p><p></p><p>Alewyth raced up and brought <em>Sjondra</em> - currently merely a well-crafted dwarven warhammer with no magic abilities whatsoever - crashing into the skin thief wearing the human skin of the male nobleman; this was the leader of the small band, who had been feeding lines to the member standing beside him wearing the skin of a slain noblewoman. Wakuren raced up from another direction, bringing his now-nonmagical <em>shield of Cal</em> crashing into the skin thief menacing the bouncer. His well-placed slam, striking the brute in the throat with the bottom edge of his shield, slew the intruder at once. It was heartening to see that these creatures, vile as they were, weren't particularly tough to a seasoned adventurer.</p><p></p><p>The familiar strains of the song of inspirational courage came strumming in from outside, through the open doors of the western firewood storage room. Of course, the music, which could be heard just fine inside the building, had no magical effect to those within, as its magic was blocked along with all other types, but Thurloe was heartened just be hearing it in any case. He swung <em>Spellslicer</em> into the side of the skin thief leader, cutting through the ragged human aristocrat skin dangling around the beast and into his own thick pelt. Outside, Xandro stabbed at the skin thief with his magical short sword <em>Deathwhisper</em>, glad to see it at full strength outside the confines of the <em>antimagic field</em>. But the skin thief, he saw, had some rogue training himself, for he dodged out of the way of the blade with practiced ease. He then lashed out at Xandro with teeth and claws, but the bard/rogue put his own training into practice and avoided all of the beast's attacks.</p><p></p><p>The bouncer brought his club crashing down on the skin thief leader's head, while calling out for his partner to come help. "We've got intruders!" the other bouncer called to his boss as he headed to join the melee.</p><p></p><p>"Deal with it - we're busy!" Justin called back; he was facing away from the melee and couldn't see what all was transpiring back there, but he did know it was interfering with his poker game, and that was unforgivable. If he lost this hand to these rich fops, he swore he'd dock his bouncers' pay for the night.</p><p></p><p>Zander raced around Xandro and saw he had a perfect opportunity to attack not only the skin thief rogue standing before him, but the three remaining grizzly bears and another skin thief about to skirt around the east side of the building. Calling out the words to a <em>lightning bolt</em> spell, he sent the blast of electricity charging through all five targets, slaying the skin thief at the far end of the blast and shocking the bears into halting where they were - about to climb the steps onto the porch - and face in the elf's direction to see who had hurt them in so unexpected a fashion. The skin thief rogue had cried out in pain as well, but his cries were cut short when Petey caught him again with his tail-spike, and this time the venom had its desired effect: he fell crashing to the ground, sound asleep. Xandro took the opportunity to step over the prone form and bring his blade slicing along his throat, slaying him instantly.</p><p></p><p>As the grizzlies started shambling in his direction, Zander caught a motion off to his left and saw another skin thief trying to open the side door where the heroes had recently fought off the invisible stalker. The brute was intent on trying to get the locked door open, ignoring Zander and the others back at the front of the building. But the elf had no time to worry about the skin thief, for the grizzlies were almost upon him. Fortunately, a second <em>lightning bolt</em> spell took care of them, slaying all three of them at once. The last remaining skin thief out front by this time had also entered the <em>Honest Hand</em> via the front door; he'd worn no skin and thus appeared in his true form inside, the same as he'd looked when outside.</p><p></p><p>Snarling as he was attacked from multiple sides at once, the skin thief leader, <strong>Jurbok</strong>, swung a paw filled with eight curved claws at Alewyth, catching her on the side of her weapon arm and slashing deep enough to draw blood. She cried out in pain and retaliated with a blow to the head with <em>Sjondra</em>, which even in its nonmagical form packed quite a punch. Wakuren attacked the fighter from behind with his shield, while Thurloe took out the newly-arrived skin thief with one blow of his blade. The bouncers helped gang up on Jurbok, while outside Petey flew over to the skin thief trying to enter the storage room and sent him to slumberland with a well-placed stab of his venom-tipped stinger.</p><p></p><p>Jurbok, realizing he was fighting too many foes at once, and that what had seemed like a simple task - trick the humans into letting him and his band inside the building, where they could gain enough new skins to go around to those of his band who lacked them, plus get enough fresh human meat to satisfy their grizzly bear companions and themselves as well - was not only much more than they were able to handle, but could easily wipe out the whole band of he didn't call for retreat immediately. But the sting of such absolute failure was too much for the proud skin thief, and he was determined to at least take out one of these foes before slinking away. He snapped an ursine jaw at Alewyth, catching her in the crook of her neck with his wicked teeth. The dwarven priestess could feel the creature's venom being pumped into her system, but if the skin thief were really smart he wouldn't have tried such a maneuver on a dwarf, of all people - her folks were renowned for their overall heartiness! And such proved to be the case this time; Alewyth never did learn what skin thief venom was supposed to do, for she successfully shrugged off any detrimental effects it might possess.</p><p></p><p>And then, to really drive home her disdain, she slew Jurbok with a final blow of <em>Sjondra</em>.</p><p></p><p>That left the sleeping skin thief outside as the last surviving member of his band of raiders. But he didn't survive very much longer, for Xandro's blade slit through his throat as easily as it had done to his roguish partner moments ago.</p><p></p><p>"Okay, I think we're done here," Thurloe said, looking around and seeing no other foes.</p><p></p><p>"And so's yer card game," decided Alewyth, grabbing Justin by the ear. "Come on - yer poor mother's probably worried sick about ye by now!" Thurloe noticed once again that whenever Alewyth was truly upset, she started falling back into her dwarven brogue. Justin fussed and complained, but soon found out the dwarf wasn't kidding, and he shortly accepted his fate. He rode in the wagon with Robin, Wakuren, and Scarlie back to his home, while the others escorted them on horseback. There he got the scolding of his life (which he couldn't argue against, as Wakuren's magical <em>curse</em> was now back into effect and he couldn't help but speak the truth to his mother), after which Marjorie insisted he pay them for freeing her from her drug-induced dreams. He handed each of the five dreamwalkers a pearl, which he said was nonmagical and which Wakuren believed due to his curse, although Zander cast a <em>detect magic</em> spell on them to be absolutely sure.</p><p></p><p>"We should try to hunt down the wizard he stole the <em>pearl of power</em> from," suggested Wakuren once they were back outside with the wagon and their animals. "We could at least let him know who took it, and who has it now."</p><p></p><p>"We got better things to do with our time," countered Thurloe. "Plus, the wizard sent an invisible assassin after the thief - he's probably as evil as Justin. I say let them fight it out - they deserve each other."</p><p></p><p>The logic made sense. They made it out of town, not wanting to have anything more to do with Waymont, before pulling over to the side of the road and catching some much-needed sleep, Scarlie sleeping in the wagon so he could hear the animals if they caused a fuss, the others bunking down in <em>Hesperna's lamp</em> as always. Tomorrow, they'd head over to the next dream victim in line.</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>I was a little worried about running this adventure, because all five PCs are spellcasters and the majority of the adventure took place inside a permanent <em>antimagic field</em>. But I made sure to have plenty of opportunities to take the fight outside, and some of the players did just that with their PCs. And everyone seemed to like it. I was particularly impressed with the (totally incorrect) theory that Marjorie's dreamscape was actually that of a dreaming mimic, and was a little disappointed I hadn't thought of that angle myself - it would have been a nice surprise during a particular dreamscape. But now, with the idea voiced out in the open, the players will already suspect it if I try to pull such a gimmick off now. And they don't know it yet, but the whole "traipse around the continent waking up dream victims" part of the campaign is rapidly coming to a close, so I likely wouldn't have the opportunity to slip in such a dream in the time remaining in any case.</p><p></p><p>Skin thieves are an old Ravenloft monster that I thought were cool and wanted to send against the PCs, as one of my goals for this campaign is to use monsters I've never had a chance to run before.</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>T-shirt worn: My "DAD: Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult" T-shirt, to represent the skin thieves' penchant for disguising themselves with the skins of their previous victims.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 9102314, member: 508"] [B]ADVENTURE 56: THIEVES IN THE NIGHT[/B] PC Roster: [INDENT]Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 12[/INDENT] [INDENT] Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 6[/INDENT] [INDENT] Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 6/paladin 6[/INDENT] [INDENT] Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 6/rogue 6[/INDENT] [INDENT] Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 12[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Robin the Balladeer, human bard 3[/INDENT] [INDENT] Scarlie Besker, half-orc commoner 5[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 12 August 2023 - - - Three days of sustained travel can quite often be rather boring, especially when moving at he pace of a wagon being pulled by two not overly enthusiastic mules. But Thurloe had made the best of it; rather than spend the day in the saddle like most of the others, he had opted to ride along in the back of the wagon, studying the spellbooks he'd gathered up over the months and seeing if he could make sense of them. He managed to figure out three distinct spells out of the bunch: [I]fog cloud[/I], [I]summon monster III[/I], and [I]haste[/I]. He wasn't exactly sure just when he'd use the first two spells, but the third seemed eminently practical. Zander Quilson had had a good three days of travel as well. When they had stopped during the first night, he had cast forth his senses and summoned forth a familiar, basically broadcasting the desire out among the arcane pathways and seeing what - if anything - might respond. It ended up being a pseudodragon, a red-scaled dragon small enough to perch upon the sorcerer's shoulder. Xandro had immediately asked if the elf was going to bother coming up for a name for the creature, as Zander's [I]jade cooshee[/I] had done without a true name for so long he more of less just inherited the name, "Cooshee." (Much like Thurloe, not one for much in the way of sentimentality, had simply named his horse "Horse.") But Zander surprised everyone by coming up with the name "[B]Petey[/B]," although it was only after everyone started calling the little creature that that he admitted he had meant "P. D." - but by that time "Petey" had become common usage amongst the group so the elf just decided to go with it. It was getting close to dark on the third day that they rode into the town of Waymont, the location of the next dream victim on their list. As was their habit (as it usually paid off), they hit the first tavern they encountered and asked the townsfolk if they knew of anyone who had been sleeping for an unusual amount of time. Usually, word of mouth spread about such an odd occurrence so that somebody knew of the dream victim, but this time was an exception: nobody was aware of anybody stuck asleep. Since the dreamwalkers had already experienced what the dream was about, they were able to describe the older woman in the dream, but their description didn't offer up any insights to any of the tavern-goers. "Strange," admitted Xandro. They moved on to another tavern and met up with the same response. "This is silly," snorted Alewyth, bringing [I]Sjondra[/I] up by her face. "Mogo?" she called. "Can you hear me?" "Hang on, kupo!" came a voice through one of the dreamstones embedded into the sides of Alewyth's dwarven warhammer. "I'll go get Mogo for you, kupo!" Once their moogle dreamwalking instructor's voice came on line, they admitted they couldn't get a location on the dreamer. "You need to head further north, kupo!" advised Mogo, observing their progress from the Dreamlands. He could track a dreamer on the Material Plane by their dreams, although that didn't always give him any idea about who the dreamer might be; sometimes the dream gave clues, but the dreamer seldom blurted out their name and address. Still, by triangulating the heroes' location on the Material Plane with where the dream was coming from, Mogo managed to steer them to a small house on the outskirts of the far side of town. "She should be in there, kupo!" Mogo advised. "I wonder why nobody knew about the dreamer this time," mused Xandro aloud. "Maybe we have it all wrong," theorized Wakuren. "We assumed it was the woman in the dream who was having the dream, but maybe it was the table." The woman in the dream had been alternating between staring at her own hand in wonder (almost as if she'd never seen it before), and glancing nervously down at the table before the sofa upon which she sat, which was quite visibly breathing. "Maybe the [I]table's[/I] having the dream?" repeated Thurloe in astonishment. "Mimic," answered Wakuren, and the spellsword had to admit that was a distinct possibility. "Well, let's try the obvious approach first, shall we?" asked Alewyth, stepping up to the front door and rapping on it several times with her knuckles. There was no answer, and Xandro volunteered to walk around the house to see if there were any others ways in, while Zander activated his [I]scout's headband[/I] and channeled all of its power at once, granting him a minute of [I]true seeing[/I], where he was able to determine the house was just as it looked, with no illusions covering secret doors or anything like that. Xandro returned shaking his head. "All the windows are shuttered up," he said. "Then she must be the only one inside," Alewyth deduced. "We need to get in there if we're going to wake her up...Xandro, do you think you can open this lock?" She'd tried turning the door knob, but the house was locked. "I'll give it a try," promised the young rogue, taking out his masterwork lockpicks. Alewyth gave a nervous glance around, to make sure they weren't being observed by any of the neighbors. This would be a bad time to be seen by the locals: while trying to break into a house, with everyone armored and wielding weapons. Xandro chose a particular lockpick from his collection, placed the tip into the key opening, and-- [I][B]WONK! WONK! WONK! WONK![/B][/I] The rogue practically jumped out of his skin at the loud noise emanating from the door - apparently, he'd triggered an audible [I]alarm[/I] spell. And sure enough, the neighbors on either side of the house and from across the street were exiting their own homes to see what all the commotion was about. Xandro had just enough time to stash his lockpicks away before they could see he'd been trying to force his way into the house. "Sorry, everyone," he said. "I'm the cousin of the person who lives here, and I'm afraid I fumbled deactivating the [I]alarm[/I] spell like I was supposed to." The rogue chose his words very carefully, not sure exactly whose house this was. But Thurloe had his back: activating his [I]ring of silence[/I], he steeped closer to the door so the [I]alarm[/I] spell, still blaring away at full volume, was covered in the spell's area of effect and it suddenly shut off. "There it is - got it at last!" Xandro declared, stepping away from the door so he'd be outside the area of magical silence. This was enough to satisfy most of the neighbors, who turned away to go back to their own houses. One enterprising (or possibly suspicious) man offered to help them bring their things inside, but Xandro shooed him away. "No need," he said, "but thank you very much for the offer. I say, do you happen to know where my cousin might be?" "If he's not here, he's probably down at his gambling hall - the [I]Honest Hand[/I], on the other side of town - you can't miss it." From that, Xandro gathered his "cousin" was male, then, and changed his own vocabulary when talking about him. "Have you seen him around lately?" Xandro asked. "He knew we were coming, but not when we'd be getting in." "Come to think of it, I haven't seen [B]Justin[/B] for a couple of weeks now," the neighbor declared. "I guess our schedules haven't matched up." "Justin?" Thurloe called into the house, after deciding the [I]alarm[/I] spell had probably run its course and deactivating his field of [I]silence[/I]. (Fortunately, he was right on that front.) "We're here! Anybody home?" The neighbor followed the heroes inside the house as they went checking room to room - and that's where they found the older woman from the dreamscape, laying atop a fully-made bed in her clothes, a nightgown hanging on the back of the door to what was obviously a guest bedroom. "Do you know who this lady is?" asked Wakuren. "Never seen her before," admitted the neighbor. "Is she even breathing?" He held a hand up to her throat to feel for a pulse and was a bit surprised when the woman didn't even seem to notice - he'd half expected her to be startled awake. "Hey, lady, you okay?" he asked, shaking her shoulder softly and then frowning in puzzlement when she refused to wake up. "She slept right through that [I]alarm[/I] noise," he mused aloud. "You think she'd been drugged?" "She's in a dream coma," Alewyth told him. "We've seen this sort of thing before and we may be able to help. But do you think you can go fetch Justin, and bring him back here?" She was eager to try to awaken the woman and didn't want to do it in front of a nosy neighbor who'd be asking a whole lot of questions. He'd said the [I]Honest Hand[/I] was across town; that should give them plenty of time to perform the dream-waking ritual. The neighbor agreed and raced off into the night. Zander closed the door behind him after he'd left. "How do we want to handle this?" he asked. It was a small building, and the guest bedroom wasn't big enough for them to be able to sit around her bed in a circle. "Into the lamp with her," suggested Thurloe. "We can do the ritual in there." Wakuren lifted the woman - she looked to be in her early fifties - and stepped over to [I]Hesperna's lamp[/I], saying the command word that shunted the two of them inside. Zander activated his [I]jade cooshee[/I] and bade him to guard the lamp with Robin - Scarlie was outside with the wagon and animals - and the rest of the dreamwalkers followed Wakuren inside the extradimensional lamp. They set things up as usual, with a dreamstone held in place on the woman's forehead with a leather band, while they sat around her wearing their own dreamstones, and then slowed their breathing in preparation to falling asleep. Once in the Dreamlands, they were escorted by their individual moogle guides to the Corridor of Dreams, where Mogo was waiting. "Good luck, kupo!" he offered to his five dreamwalkers as they entered the woman's dreamscape. They recognized the setting at once: it was the living room of the small house in which she had been staying, only the colors were unusually vibrant. She sat upon the sofa, staring at her hand in wonder, turning it back and forth in rapt admiration. In front of her, the low table was in fact breathing, slowly, in and out, in and out, in a steady rhythm. "Hello? Can you hear me?" asked Alewyth, approaching the lady. She slowly turned her head to look at the dwarven priestess. "Be careful," she admonished. "I think the table wants to kill me." "Well, we won't let that happen," replied Alewyth, bringing [I]Sjondra[/I] up and sending it crashing down upon the wooden structure. The legs shattered beneath the initial blow, and the dwarf continued her attacks until the table was nothing more than a pile of splintered fragments of shattered wood. "There!" Alewyth declared proudly. "Now it can't hurt you." The woman looked down at the pile of debris. "Wow," she said in a subdued voice, then turned back to look at her hand, which had become no less fascinating to her. "Ma'am, may I ask your name?" offered Xandro. "Hmmm?" "Your name, ma'am?" "[B]Marjorie Peccadillo[/B]." "And do you know where you are?" "I'm visiting my son, Justin." "You're actually asleep and dreaming," Wakuren corrected. "We found you asleep on the bed in what looked to be the guest bedroom. You've probably been asleep for many days, even weeks." Marjorie took this in with another subdued, "Wow." Alewyth peered into her eyes and saw the woman's pupils were dilated. "Marjorie, did you take any kind of...medicine before you went to sleep?" "Hmmm? No, just some salad." "Any mushrooms in that salad?" Thurloe asked brusquely. "Mushrooms, yes. And onions, carrots, lettuce...." Marjorie's brow furrowed as she tried to recall the contents of her salad, but Thurloe wasn't really interested. "Here, he said, offering her a glass vial. "Drink this." Moving in slow motion, as if unsure of her every movement, Marjorie took the proffered vial and drank down the [I]potion of neutralize potion[/I]. It mirrored exactly the contents of the potion vial Thurloe kept on his person in the Material World, and its effects here in the Dreamlands was the same as the would have been there - Marjorie shook her head, as if waking up from a long slumber. And the fact that the walls of the room started melting showed that was exactly what was occurring. The five dreamwalkers each shook themselves awake, and their consciousnesses returned to their bodies on the Material World, regaining their senses a moment before Marjorie awoke fully, to find herself surrounded by five strangers seated all around her in a circle. "Who are you? Where are we?" she demanded, looking around at the confines of the interior of [I]Hesperna's lamp[/I]. Her eyes in real life were dilated, just as they'd been in the dream - the effects of the dream-potion didn't carry over to real life. "You're perfectly safe," replied Alewyth, before introducing herself and the others and explaining all about the dream plague. Wakuren said the command word and everyone was shunted back into the living room, where Robin stood waiting and the cooshee wagged his tail at seeing his master once again. Thurloe gave her the real [I]potion of neutralize poison[/I] and let it do its work for real. "Where's Justin?" she asked, looking around. Xandro explained he wasn't home, and the neighbors hadn't seen him for weeks. This was confirmed when they found the bowl with the leftovers of the salad Marjorie had been eating before feeling strange, having eaten mushrooms not intended to be made part of a dinner salad. The vegetable matter was rotten, as if left to decay for a couple of weeks. Marjorie ran a finger along the tabletop and frowned at the dust she found there. "You mean he just left me here, all alone, for weeks? And what was he doing leaving those mushrooms out where I'd stumble across them? How was I to know they were an illicit substance? Oh, that Justin's got some explaining to do!" Alewyth explained a neighbor had gone to the [I]Honest Hand[/I] to fetch him, but they hadn't returned yet. Seeing the indignation rise in Marjorie's expression, and not wanting to remain here with her to hear her tirades, the heroes promised to go find him at his gambling hall and bring him back home. In the meantime, she gathered up some cleaning supplies and started on the kitchen table. "I wouldn't want to be him," Zander replied, when they'd remounted their steeds and were heading across town to find the gambling hall. "What kind of son leaves his mother alone for a couple of weeks like that?" fumed Alewyth. They found the [I]Honest Hand[/I] without much trouble, and Scarlie took the wagon and animals around back to the stables while the others went inside. The building was a single-story structure, made of wood, with a sign above the double doors in middle of the front side, depicting a disembodied hand holding five playing cards. There was a wooden porch out front, with a railing along either side. Stepping inside the building, the heroes went their separate ways. Off to the right was the gambling section, with a window directly ahead where you could convert your coins to gambling tokens, with a placard below the window explaining the color code of the chips. Wakuren wandered over that way, observing several gaming tables where cards were being played, as well as roulette wheel in the back. There was a blazing fireplace along the eastern wall, with candles and oil lamps providing light elsewhere. A row of strange metal boxes flanked one wall, each with a slot for coins and a handle you could pull on. Thurloe went to the left, where he caught up with one of a pair of bouncers and professed to be looking for a job between adventures. He asked if the owner was about. Robin went straight for the bar, with Xandro in tow, and she bought herself a drink. The bartender tried hitting on her, until Xandro stepped up, ordered a drink for himself, and informed the bartender that Robin "was with him." They also asked if Justin Peccadillo was about, as did Alewyth, although she was asking the lady behind the counter off to the far left, where one could book a room for the night. In each case, the response was the same: Justin hadn't made an appearance yet that night, as he didn't usually come out of his rooms until midnight, when the doors were closed to new visitors and he engaged in his standard poker game with a few of the local noblemen. As it was still an hour or so until midnight, he was likely still in the room reserved for his use when he opted to stay in the inn. "Could you fetch him?" Alewyth asked the innkeeper. "There's been a problem with his mother at his house." The woman apparently decided that was important enough to go bother the boss, and hurried off to fetch him. She returned shortly with a tall, lanky man in tow, dressed in dark colors: pants, shirt, vest, and boots. "What's going on?" asked Justin Peccadillo. Alewyth filled him in about their exploits with his mother at his house, and her desire for them to bring him back home with them. "So she's okay, then?" he asked. "You woke her up with no problem, and she's all right?" "Well, physically she's fine," agreed Alewyth. "She is a little concerned about you abandoning her for several weeks, and she has some questions about those mushrooms she ate...." "What, she got into my mushrooms? Damn! They're uh, for medicinal use," he explained. "Well, in any case, if she's okay, I'm sure she'll be fine." "You're not going to go check on her?" sputtered Alewyth. "Nah, no reason to. And I've got duties that keep me here." Wakuren had noticed Alewyth talking to the dark-garbed man and assumed he was the guy they'd been looking for, so he stepped away from the "one armed bandits" he'd been examining and headed in that direction; Alewyth was starting to look perturbed. Instinctively, he concentrated on the man's aura and detected no signs of evil hidden there - that was a good thing, in any case. Zander stepped beside the half-orc and they approached Alewyth and Justin together. Thurloe, who'd been listening to the bouncer's tales of how much Justin usually made playing poker with the aristocrats each night - they were apparently not close to being the card sharks they believed themselves to be - headed over himself to see what was going on. "Hey," Justin said as the three approached, as he looked over their armor and weapons. "Are you guys adventurers? 'Cause if so, I might want to hire you for a task of my own." "Go on," prompted Wakuren. "Someone's trying to kill me," Justin replied. "Maybe I could pay you to take out the assassin." "We should go see your mother first," insisted Alewyth. "Nah, she's fine." "Tell him the other thing," suggested Thurloe, gathering him a bevy of puzzled looks from his companions, who had no idea what he was talking about - not surprising, given he was about to spout some of the nonsense for which he was becoming known. "One of the noblemen you play cards with is getting tired of losing and is planning on burning the place down with a [I]fireball[/I], tonight." "Oh, he is, is he?" laughed Justin. "Well, he's certainly welcome to try!" Thurloe frowned, not sure why his bluff was being ignored - he'd have thought a threat of losing his entire business would have gotten more of a reaction from him. "So, what do you say?" Justin asked. "Will you take the job?" Wakuren asked if there was somewhere they could talk more privately and Justin took them back into the inn, through a door marked "EMPLOYEES ONLY." It was a breakroom for those who worked at the gambling hall and inn, and it had a large table and seats enough for everyone. "So," the half-orc said once everyone had taken a seat at the table, "who's trying to kill you, and why?" "Well..." Justin began, clearly nervous about the subject. "Let's just say there's this wizard, who might have gotten it into his head that I had a certain valuable of his that went missing...." Wakuren again concentrated on Justin's aura, detecting no traces of evil. Alewyth surreptitiously cast a [I]detect magic[/I] spell, to see if Justin had any magic items about him, and she also got no indications. "What kind of valuable are we talking about?" asked Thurloe. "Well, let's just say, [I]hypothetically[/I], it was a [I]pearl of power[/I] - a magic pearl that lets wizard cast more spells than they'd normally be able to do each day." "And hypothetically, do you have this missing pearl he's looking for?" asked Xandro. "Well, let's just say that I have one fitting the description of the one he's missing, although there's no way of proving the two are the same." "And where did you get your [I]pearl of power[/I]?" asked Alewyth. "I could very well have just found it lying around," Justin offered up. "If, hypothetically, whoever stole it from the wizard, say, maybe dropped it, and I found it later on, well that's not me having done anything wrong...." "There are an awful lot of hypotheticals in this scenario," observed Zander. "What about the assassin?" asked Wakuren, trying to learn something Justin was willing to admit to without weaseling away from the truth - the half-orc was already sure the man had probably stolen the [I]pearl of power[/I] from the wizard. "Have you seen him? Can you give us a description?" "That's the thing - I can't. The assassin is completely invisible, which is cheating if you ask me." "An invisible stalker, most likely," asserted Wakuren. "And it attacked you?" demanded Thurloe. "Right as I was entering the [I]Honest Hand[/I]," admitted Justin. "Almost got me, too, but then I made it inside. Only now, when I try to go back out, it's there, waiting for me. That's why I can't go with you to go see Mom - it'll get me as soon as I step foot outside." "That seems odd," remarked Wakuren. "Do you have wards in place barring extra-dimensional creatures?" He was well aware that invisible stalkers were beings from the Elemental Plane of Air. Justin laughed. "Better than that! The [I]Honest Hand[/I] is built atop an [I]antimagic field[/I]! That's why it's the prominent gambling establishment in the area - everyone knows everything's on the up-and-up! No illusion magic changing the faces on the cards, or copper pieces into gold! No enchantments causing you to throw a bet or fold when you've got a winning hand! Nope, it's just pure skill - and normal luck, of course." Wakuren and Alewyth's faces showed they now realized that their negative findings with their attempts to detect evil and magic, respectfully, were now completely suspect. "We could certainly take out an invisible stalker for you," declared Thurloe. "How much are you paying?" "One hundred pieces of gold," offered Justin. "Each?" "Total." "Each," insisted Thurloe. "Fine, each then," replied Justin. "How are you going to do it?" That was indeed a good question. Zander had already used up his daily allotment of enhanced vision from his [I]scout's headband[/I], or he'd have been able to attune it to allow him to [I]see invisibility[/I] and he'd have been able to see the invisible stalker's exact position when it approached. They were working on the assumption that it was nearby, casing the [I]Honest Hand[/I] for when Justin might exit it. They also assumed it had been summoned by the wizard upon finding his [I]pearl of power[/I] had been stolen, and sent it off to find it. Invisible stalkers were astoundingly good trackers - they assumed it had tracked the gem by its unique arcane signature, and thus it probably had no idea who Justin Peccadillo was, merely that he was the one with the pearl. "You have the [I]pearl of power[/I] it's looking for?" asked Thurloe. Justin replied by pulling it out of a pocket from inside his vest and holding it up for the others to see. "Well then, we'll use you for bait." "I don't like the sound of that," Justin informed the spellsword. "I don't like the sound of that at all." "Well then, we'll use the [I]pearl of power[/I] as bait," Thurloe corrected. "I assume you wouldn't want to just hand it over to us?" "That would not be my first choice, no." "Then here's what we do," the spellsword outlined to the group. "We all stand outside the door, you stick your arm out of the door, while holding the pearl, the invisible stalker detects it and comes running over, and we kill it for you." He purposefully left out the part where he was planning on pushing Justin completely outside the building, just in case the invisible stalker was keyed in on the thief instead of the stolen treasure. Justin agreed to the plan, but wanted to use a side entrance instead of the front door - it was out of the view of the customers, and he didn't want anyone thinking the [I]Honest Hand[/I] wasn't a perfectly safe place to go gamble away your hard-earned coins. There was a storage room with a door to the outside along the western wall of the building; that was where Justin wanted to spring the trap for his invisible assassin. "Get your spells ready," suggested Thurloe, casting a [I]shield[/I] spell upon himself from his wand. Xandro cast three [I]heroism[/I] spells, one each upon Alewyth, Thurloe, and Wakuren, then summoned his dire elk by playing the appropriate tune on his [I]Dardolian Lute[/I] with his magic pick. Wakuren enhanced himself with [I]shield of faith[/I], [I]bull's strength[/I], and [I]bear's endurance[/I] spells, while Alewyth cast a [I]bless[/I] spell on the assembled group. Finally, Zander cast a [I]mage armor[/I] spell upon himself and Petey, followed by a [I]haste[/I] spell on the assembled group. Robin started playing the initial chords of her song of inspirational courage. Then, declaring themselves ready, Thurloe nodded at Justin - the only one still inside the building, and thus the only one still inside the [I]antimagic field[/I] - and the manager of the gambling hall stuck his fist through the open doorway, keeping a tight grip on the [I]pearl of power[/I] that was the cause of all this trouble in the first place. Thurloe grabbed Justin's wrist and pulled the man completely out of the building. "Wakuren?" he called. "Evil," the half-orc declared, having finally gotten a true reading of the man's aura. "What the Hell, man?" sputtered Justin. "You guys are the worst bodyguards ever! You're supposed to keep me safe, not open me up to danger!" Thurloe had a snide retort on the tip of his tongue, but then Justin screamed as three parallel lines ripped through his vest, shirt, and the flesh beneath it. Blood pooled on his chest as the invisible stalker made its initial strike. "Get it!" Thurloe called out instead, channeling a [I]touch of fatigue[/I] into the man who'd hired him. He couldn't tell for sure if the spell had any effect, but it didn't look like it. The heroes were crowding all around Justin, but they had strategically left an open spot beside him to give the invisible stalker a place from which it could attack. Xandro stabbed his short sword [I]Deathwhisper[/I] into that space, as his dire elk likewise swung his massive antlers into the gap. But neither attack struck anything - the invisible stalker, a being of the Elemental Plane of Air, had attacked from directly above Justin. Zander figured that out on his own and cast a [I]cone of cold[/I] spell above the heads of the assembled heroes and their current employer. A coating of frost momentarily encompassed the invisible stalker, revealing an outline of its form (humanoid in build from the waist up, tapering down to a point below like a genie or a ghost) for a second or two before the frost itself was rendered invisible by contact with the invisible stalker. Petey flapped off of Zander's shoulder and stabbed at the invisible stalker with its stinger-equipped tail, hitting the mark; unfortunately, creatures whose bodies are composed of air are immune to various types of poison, and the little dragon's venom did nothing to incapacitate the unseen assassin. Alewyth was too far away from the action to try to attack the invisible stalker with [I]Sjondra[/I], but she had a [I]dismissal[/I] spell on hand.... Casting it while she was still somewhat certain of the creature's position, she was glad to see by the sudden burst of light and the popping sound of displaced air that the spell had worked and the invisible stalker had been shunted back to the Elemental Plane of Air. And while they hadn't killed it outright, it wouldn't be able to report back to the wizard who had summoned it of its success or failure. There was no telling how long the wizard would wait before trying to follow up on his hired assassin's progress, likely through divination spells, but they had at the very least bought Justin a number of days in which he wouldn't be bothered. "That was completely reckless!" Justin scowled at Thurloe, before demanding to be healed of his wounds. Wakuren stepped up to comply, himself aghast at the spellsword's actions, which put the whole group in a bad light. Once healed, Justin went to storm back inside the building, intent on not missing out on his card game with the noblemen who often hung around this late for that very purpose. The heroes prevented him from entering, wanting to talk to him at once for several reasons: Alewyth wanted to try to convince Justin to go visit his mother, now that it was safe to do so; Wakuren wanted to know Justin's intentions about the [I]pearl of power[/I], hoping to convince the rogue to return it to the wizard from which it had been stolen; Thurloe wanted to make sure they'd be getting paid the amount they'd agreed to for getting rid of the invisible stalker. "Hey, I got an idea," Justin said, turning on the heroes. "This [I]pearl of power[/I] is valued at 70,000 pieces of gold. How about I sell it to you for a mere 35,000 pieces of gold as your payment for taking care of that invisible assassin? That way you're saving a ton of money, and you can do whatever your conscience desires about the pearl." "It sounds like you'd be earning 35,000 pieces of gold for a piece of stolen property, welching out on paying us, and setting us up to be hunted down by the next invisible stalker the wizard sends hunting for his bauble," pointed out Alewyth, a fierce scowl on her dwarven features. "Allegedly stolen," corrected Justin. Wakuren had had just about enough of this. Before he allowed the rogue to re-enter the [I]Honest Hand[/I], he cast a [I]bestow curse[/I] spell on him, preventing the smooth-talking rogue from being able to tell a lie. Granted, the curse would be temporarily negated while he was inside the [I]Honest Hand[/I]'s [I]antimagic field[/I], but it would prove to be valuable in the meantime. "Did you steal the [I]pearl of power[/I]?" he asked Justin outright. Justin tried to keep the words in his mouth, but he eventually blurted out, "Yeah, I did." "Why?" "...A client paid me to. But I've been stuck inside the [I]Honest Hand[/I] since, so I haven't been able to deliver it to him. He's probably getting pretty antsy about it, too, I imagine." Then, aghast at having spilled the beans so willingly, he wrestled past the half-orc and entered the safety of the gambling hall, where he would once again gain mastery over what exactly he admitted to. "That's better," Justin replied, walking down the hallway back over to the gambling area. "Gentlemen! Sorry to keep you waiting! Let's get the poker game going!" "Don't forget our payment," Thurloe warned. "Yes, yes, I haven't forgotten. Say, how'd you like to be paid in chips? Then you can try your hand at any of our gaming tables." "I think we'll take it in straight cash," Thurloe replied. "Fine, cash it is." Justin called over to the girl behind the cash counter. "Fetch these fellows 100 gold," he said. "Each," Wakuren reminded him. "Yes, right, each." The heroes stood around by the cashier cage, accepting their stacks of coins in order. As it was now past midnight, the front doors had been closed and barred, preventing anyone else from entering the establishment. This was the time of night when Justin and his noblemen friends - or, as he secretly referred to them to himself, "patsies" - settled down for some no-limit-stakes poker. Despite the [I]antimagic field[/I] preventing any magical shenanigans, Justin was still an adept at sleight of hand and had no trouble ensuring he was dealt a winning hand each time. There was a sudden thump at the front doors, as a deep voice from outside called out, "HELP!" Everyone turned to look in the direction of the front doors, but they were still barred, preventing entry. Xandro was the only one close enough to the doors to hear the immediate response, said in a much lower voice. It said, "No - higher. You're a girl." "HELP!" came the deep voice, this time a falsetto that sounded like nothing so much as a large man trying to pretend he was a woman. "There's someone outside, wanting in," Thurloe said to Justin, who was engaged in his card game. "Tell them we're closed," Justin replied, paying more attention to the cards in his hand than the commotion outside his establishment. "HELP!" repeated the falsetto voice. "SCARED!" After a few moments, it added, "BEARS!" "Again," said the quieter voice only Xandro could hear. "HELP!" "Let us in!" "LET US IN!" "For all that's holy, let us in or our deaths will be on your heads!" prompted the suggestive voice outside. That was apparently too much for the owner of the deep voice to remember all at once, for all that came out was, "...HELP!" - again in the ridiculously high-pitched voice. "Shut them up and send them on their way!" snarled Justin, and one of the burly bouncers pulled the bars away from the doors to comply. He opened the door to chew out the latecomers, and was surprised to see standing on the porch before him a well-dressed gentleman and a female aristocrat hanging on his arm, neither of them seeming to match the voice that had called from outside. But more surprising was the fact there were four grizzly bears scattered across the front lawn, shambling forward. "Crap!" the bouncer swore. "I guess you'd better get in here, quick!" He pulled the door wide open and ushered them inside. With friendly smiles on their faces, the noble couple stepped inside the [I]Honest Hand[/I]. But as soon as they crossed the threshold and stepped fully into the [I]antimagic field[/I], a horrible transformation came over them. They were instantly covered in blood, their human skins dangling in strips hanging over the ursine bodies of two strange creatures, each covered in mangy fur, with heads very similar to the grizzly bears just outside and sporting massive hands each sprouting eight long, clawed fingers. The "male" aristocrat looked down in surprise at this sudden transformation and called out, "Aw - broken!" Wakuren and Thurloe, seeing these monsters step into the building, grabbed their weapons and moved forward to intercede, as the casino workers getting a good look at the skin thieves screamed in fear and backed away. Xandro and Robin, over by the fireplace along the western wall, the area supporting empty tables where customers could sip their drinks and nibble on platters of cheese and sausages, moved to a nearby door and stepped inside, finding themselves in a storage room filled with stacks of cordwood for the fireplace. There was another door from this room leading outside, and Zander beat them to it, stepping outside into the night air. He found himself nearly face to face with another of these skin thieves, this one in its true, ursine form, standing on its hind legs like a human. In a flash, Petey leaped from the elf's shoulder and stabbed his tail-stinger at the skin thief. He hit the upright beast, but its hearty constitution prevented the little dragon's venom from having any immediate effect. The burly brown grizzly bears ambled up, and one of them stepped into the building through the front doors, where he was instantly revealed as yet another skin thief, this one wearing the ragged pelt of a brown bear over his own shaggy fur - for as soon as he entered the [I]antimagic field[/I], the magic of his bear pelt was shut off, exposing it for the uncured skin it was. The skin thief snorted in disgust, shook off the pelt, and said, "Guess I need a new one!" He then stepped menacingly towards the bouncer who had opened the door. Alewyth raced up and brought [I]Sjondra[/I] - currently merely a well-crafted dwarven warhammer with no magic abilities whatsoever - crashing into the skin thief wearing the human skin of the male nobleman; this was the leader of the small band, who had been feeding lines to the member standing beside him wearing the skin of a slain noblewoman. Wakuren raced up from another direction, bringing his now-nonmagical [I]shield of Cal[/I] crashing into the skin thief menacing the bouncer. His well-placed slam, striking the brute in the throat with the bottom edge of his shield, slew the intruder at once. It was heartening to see that these creatures, vile as they were, weren't particularly tough to a seasoned adventurer. The familiar strains of the song of inspirational courage came strumming in from outside, through the open doors of the western firewood storage room. Of course, the music, which could be heard just fine inside the building, had no magical effect to those within, as its magic was blocked along with all other types, but Thurloe was heartened just be hearing it in any case. He swung [I]Spellslicer[/I] into the side of the skin thief leader, cutting through the ragged human aristocrat skin dangling around the beast and into his own thick pelt. Outside, Xandro stabbed at the skin thief with his magical short sword [I]Deathwhisper[/I], glad to see it at full strength outside the confines of the [I]antimagic field[/I]. But the skin thief, he saw, had some rogue training himself, for he dodged out of the way of the blade with practiced ease. He then lashed out at Xandro with teeth and claws, but the bard/rogue put his own training into practice and avoided all of the beast's attacks. The bouncer brought his club crashing down on the skin thief leader's head, while calling out for his partner to come help. "We've got intruders!" the other bouncer called to his boss as he headed to join the melee. "Deal with it - we're busy!" Justin called back; he was facing away from the melee and couldn't see what all was transpiring back there, but he did know it was interfering with his poker game, and that was unforgivable. If he lost this hand to these rich fops, he swore he'd dock his bouncers' pay for the night. Zander raced around Xandro and saw he had a perfect opportunity to attack not only the skin thief rogue standing before him, but the three remaining grizzly bears and another skin thief about to skirt around the east side of the building. Calling out the words to a [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell, he sent the blast of electricity charging through all five targets, slaying the skin thief at the far end of the blast and shocking the bears into halting where they were - about to climb the steps onto the porch - and face in the elf's direction to see who had hurt them in so unexpected a fashion. The skin thief rogue had cried out in pain as well, but his cries were cut short when Petey caught him again with his tail-spike, and this time the venom had its desired effect: he fell crashing to the ground, sound asleep. Xandro took the opportunity to step over the prone form and bring his blade slicing along his throat, slaying him instantly. As the grizzlies started shambling in his direction, Zander caught a motion off to his left and saw another skin thief trying to open the side door where the heroes had recently fought off the invisible stalker. The brute was intent on trying to get the locked door open, ignoring Zander and the others back at the front of the building. But the elf had no time to worry about the skin thief, for the grizzlies were almost upon him. Fortunately, a second [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell took care of them, slaying all three of them at once. The last remaining skin thief out front by this time had also entered the [I]Honest Hand[/I] via the front door; he'd worn no skin and thus appeared in his true form inside, the same as he'd looked when outside. Snarling as he was attacked from multiple sides at once, the skin thief leader, [B]Jurbok[/B], swung a paw filled with eight curved claws at Alewyth, catching her on the side of her weapon arm and slashing deep enough to draw blood. She cried out in pain and retaliated with a blow to the head with [I]Sjondra[/I], which even in its nonmagical form packed quite a punch. Wakuren attacked the fighter from behind with his shield, while Thurloe took out the newly-arrived skin thief with one blow of his blade. The bouncers helped gang up on Jurbok, while outside Petey flew over to the skin thief trying to enter the storage room and sent him to slumberland with a well-placed stab of his venom-tipped stinger. Jurbok, realizing he was fighting too many foes at once, and that what had seemed like a simple task - trick the humans into letting him and his band inside the building, where they could gain enough new skins to go around to those of his band who lacked them, plus get enough fresh human meat to satisfy their grizzly bear companions and themselves as well - was not only much more than they were able to handle, but could easily wipe out the whole band of he didn't call for retreat immediately. But the sting of such absolute failure was too much for the proud skin thief, and he was determined to at least take out one of these foes before slinking away. He snapped an ursine jaw at Alewyth, catching her in the crook of her neck with his wicked teeth. The dwarven priestess could feel the creature's venom being pumped into her system, but if the skin thief were really smart he wouldn't have tried such a maneuver on a dwarf, of all people - her folks were renowned for their overall heartiness! And such proved to be the case this time; Alewyth never did learn what skin thief venom was supposed to do, for she successfully shrugged off any detrimental effects it might possess. And then, to really drive home her disdain, she slew Jurbok with a final blow of [I]Sjondra[/I]. That left the sleeping skin thief outside as the last surviving member of his band of raiders. But he didn't survive very much longer, for Xandro's blade slit through his throat as easily as it had done to his roguish partner moments ago. "Okay, I think we're done here," Thurloe said, looking around and seeing no other foes. "And so's yer card game," decided Alewyth, grabbing Justin by the ear. "Come on - yer poor mother's probably worried sick about ye by now!" Thurloe noticed once again that whenever Alewyth was truly upset, she started falling back into her dwarven brogue. Justin fussed and complained, but soon found out the dwarf wasn't kidding, and he shortly accepted his fate. He rode in the wagon with Robin, Wakuren, and Scarlie back to his home, while the others escorted them on horseback. There he got the scolding of his life (which he couldn't argue against, as Wakuren's magical [I]curse[/I] was now back into effect and he couldn't help but speak the truth to his mother), after which Marjorie insisted he pay them for freeing her from her drug-induced dreams. He handed each of the five dreamwalkers a pearl, which he said was nonmagical and which Wakuren believed due to his curse, although Zander cast a [I]detect magic[/I] spell on them to be absolutely sure. "We should try to hunt down the wizard he stole the [I]pearl of power[/I] from," suggested Wakuren once they were back outside with the wagon and their animals. "We could at least let him know who took it, and who has it now." "We got better things to do with our time," countered Thurloe. "Plus, the wizard sent an invisible assassin after the thief - he's probably as evil as Justin. I say let them fight it out - they deserve each other." The logic made sense. They made it out of town, not wanting to have anything more to do with Waymont, before pulling over to the side of the road and catching some much-needed sleep, Scarlie sleeping in the wagon so he could hear the animals if they caused a fuss, the others bunking down in [I]Hesperna's lamp[/I] as always. Tomorrow, they'd head over to the next dream victim in line. - - - I was a little worried about running this adventure, because all five PCs are spellcasters and the majority of the adventure took place inside a permanent [I]antimagic field[/I]. But I made sure to have plenty of opportunities to take the fight outside, and some of the players did just that with their PCs. And everyone seemed to like it. I was particularly impressed with the (totally incorrect) theory that Marjorie's dreamscape was actually that of a dreaming mimic, and was a little disappointed I hadn't thought of that angle myself - it would have been a nice surprise during a particular dreamscape. But now, with the idea voiced out in the open, the players will already suspect it if I try to pull such a gimmick off now. And they don't know it yet, but the whole "traipse around the continent waking up dream victims" part of the campaign is rapidly coming to a close, so I likely wouldn't have the opportunity to slip in such a dream in the time remaining in any case. Skin thieves are an old Ravenloft monster that I thought were cool and wanted to send against the PCs, as one of my goals for this campaign is to use monsters I've never had a chance to run before. - - - T-shirt worn: My "DAD: Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult" T-shirt, to represent the skin thieves' penchant for disguising themselves with the skins of their previous victims. [/QUOTE]
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