[sblock=Mri'Thas]
The figure is small, the size of a dwarf or halfling, although its billowing cloak makes it hard to tell exactly how its built. Before you can take in any details, it steps back and the mists hide it from you. By the time the chill of your spell has dissipated enough for you to follow, it's gone.
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[sblock=Callen]
The figure is small, the size of a dwarf or halfling, although its billowing cloak makes it hard to tell exactly how its built. Before you can take in any details, it steps back and vanishes into the mist. Vanishes. You can tell from the way the mists swirl about the place where it was that it's teleported away. By the time the chill of your spell has dissipated enough for you to enter the area where you saw it, there's no way to tell where it went.
[/sblock]
You return to the square in front of the Hanged Man and are greeted by cheers and shouts. The townspeople are covered in soot and sweat, and sagging from exhaustion, but still jubilant. Although the damage was high, there were amazingly no deaths and few injuries, and you managed to stop the fire before it could spread into another district.
People begin to clap as someone strikes up a fiddle tune. The Hanged Man bartender begins handing around mugs of beer, matched a few minutes later by similar largesse from the Silver Scales. Weary firefighters stretch out on the ground, finally able to relax, while the less weary begin to dance. The fiddler sees you and beckons you over:
"Well done, friends! Come join us, and celebrate a job well done!"
Then another jet of flame springs up, off in the distance.
The celebration turns instantly to cries of astonishment and rage. Folks begin dragging themselves to their feet and preparing for another round, with much less enthusiasm. The fiddler cries,
"'Tis uncanny! Evil magic, for certain!" He sees you still standing nearby.
"You all seem to be stout warriors, and you've surely shown your skill. Can you run ahead and see what's to be seen? If there's an evil force behind these fires, it must be dealt with! We'll follow behind to mop up when it's safe."
The new fire has sprung up inside a nearby park. As you approach through the scattered trees, you see a high wall surrounding an open courtyard which faces a stage - a public theater. The gates stand open, and through them you can see a row of seats like pews facing the stage. Fires have sprung up before the stage, illuminating with a hellish glow a short, black-cloaked man who paces back and forth. Even from outside the courtyard you can hear him giggling and muttering to himself:
"Yes, yes, fires will BURN it all... burn EVERYTHING. Burn all the world! HA HA, and it starts here, with a stage - all the world on a stage. And we're merely players. We have our passions and our parts to play. Leave me alone - I've played my part. I set your fires! I watched it all burn! LEAVE ME ALONE! I played the part you set me!"
He falls silent, staring avidly into the flames. In the shadows of the courtyard, something else moves among the pews - little points of light trundle back and forth, low to the ground, and occasionally you see brief spurts of fire issuing from black jaws. As you watch, one of the crawling creatures rears back and issues a gout of flame onto the first row of seating. The fire momentarily illuminates its entire body - a hideous giant beetle with red and black carapace the colour of ash and embers. It doesn't take much knowledge of nature to realize that these must be Fire Beetles.
The Gnome Arsonist continues ranting.
"Yes, good, well done, my pets! Burn it all up! Set it ALL to burn! When it's all ablaze I'll have some peace.... YES, PEACE! MAYBE THEN YOU'LL LEAVE ME ALONE! ...What? Who's here? Someone's coming?" He suddenly stands stock-still and stares out into the darkness, directly in your direction.
"Someone's coming! BURN THEM ALL!"

(click for big)
[sblock=Status]
First, a recap of the resources spent so far:
Kama'zer used Lead the Attack (Daily power)
Mri'Thas used Freezing Cloud (Daily power)
Callen used Freezing Cloud (Daily power)
Ts'iri used Armour of Agathys (Daily power)
Solitaire used an Action Point
I'll award XP and run through the list of treasures and benefits you gained at the very end.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Terrain]
The wall around the courtyard is 12 feet high, with open doors at Q4, R5 and U12. Climbing the wall will take a DC 17 Athletics check. The entire area in front of the stage is open to the sky, but the rooms behind are covered over. The two buildings to the north and south are 20 feet high.
The stage itself is 6 feet high - to move onto it without using the stairs you'll have to jump. (You can move up and down the stairs with no penalty.) The pews, trees and all the furnishings backstage are all difficult terrain. The organ takes up squares R12/S12 - to enter these squares takes a DC 12 Athletics or Acrobatics check to jump up onto it, as well as being difficult terrain.
The green tent at I12/J12 is a prop from a play. The billowing fabric grants concealment to anyone inside, but does not completely block line of sight. The wooden square on the stage is a trapdoor leading below the stage.
Oh, that thing at E14 is a door. Of course it's a door, otherwise how could you get on stage from backstage there? That's my story, and I'm sicking to it.
If you move into a square that's on fire, or start your turn in one, you take 1d6 damage. Since this fire is just starting to spread, you can automatically douse a square of fire that's adjacent to you with a standard action, or stop it from spreading with a minor action.
There are also doors at B5 and N20 - forgot to mention those.
The southeastern building is actually a sort of open pavilion, with no walls, just a roof held up by pillars to keep the rain off, filled with picnic tables.
The northern building is a private house, whose door is off the map. To get to the window at the top by going inside will take at least three rounds - one to get inside (the most obvious way is to pick the lock with a Thievery check, but you might come up with something else), one to find the stairs, and one to climb the stairs and get back to the window. It'll take longer if you need to try several times to get inside.
You could also climb up the outside of either of these buildings, which takes Athletics DC 17, just like the wall.
If there's anything unclear about the layout, please ask!
[/sblock]
[sblock=Tokens]
I've used little pictures to represent the monsters, plus single-letter abbreviations so they're easy to refer to in the text:
A = Gnome Arsonist
B1 to B8 = Fire Beetles
For the players I've used a letter icon - mostly. There are
way too many of you whose names start with SOL, I couldn't even use the second letter to distinguish you!
K =
Kama'zer
M =
Mri'Thas
C =
Callen
T =
Ts'iri
Card Suits = Solitaire
W = Soldier the
Warforged
R = Galinndan
Rithkan
S =
Solon
G =
Goeth
Clear?
[/sblock]
[sblock=FIGHT!]
Everyone please roll initiative and place your character somewhere outside the courtyard wall. (Beyond the cobblestones, where the map is black, is grass. Feel free to place yourself anywhere.)
[/sblock]