ADVENTURE 33: CLUBBING ALL NIGHT
PC Roster:
Ageratum Purslane, halfling rogue 9
Alistair Mandelberen Pastlethwaite, human sorcerer 9
Chaevaris Noarunal, elf archer 9
Harlan Starblade, half-elf paladin 9
NPC Roster:
Orchid, elf druid 9
Game Session Date: 13 September 2023
- - -
"Are you sure about this?" asked Alistair. "You do realize that the women there are...rumored to be of somewhat...ill repute. They say they even take their clothes off. For money."
"I'm well aware," reassured Edna Louise Grimwade. "And it isn't like I've never been in a burlesque club before." She smiled and leaned over conspiratorially to the young sorcerer. "I haven't
always been a prim and proper old lady, you know." She winked knowingly at Alistair, who immediately blushed. "It will give me a chance to unwind from the things I've seen with your little adventuring band."
"Very well," Alistair agreed nervously. "When did you want to go to this 'Topsy-Curvy Club?'"
"No time like the present!" enthused the writer, grabbing up her pocketbook.
"Are you headed out?" asked Ageratum, seeing the two gathering up their gear. "Where to?" When Alistair told her, the little halfling just grinned. "You do realize that's the place that used to be the Wild Coast Club, right? Where we stole back Blorkane's stuff, and we saw that vampire as we were leaving."
"That's the one," remarked E. L. Grimwade. "I wanted to see another site where you've had your adventures," she explained to Alistair.
"Ah, yes, well then," sputtered Alistair, feeling better about it already. His favorite author merely wanted to see for herself the locations where some of the deeds performed by the Trained Professional Adventurers went down - that made a lot more sense!
"I'll get the others!" Ageratum announced, dashing off to fetch the rest of the adventuring team, despite Alistair's protestations - he wasn't quite sure how he was going to get a paladin of Pelor into a club where women stripped down to nearly nothing (if the stories he'd heard about such places were even remotely true). But Harlan insisted that they all come along, and in full combat gear - he saw their group as E. L. Grimwade's bodyguards for the duration of her stay and wanted to ensure nothing happened to her while she was under their watch. And her stay was coming to a rapid conclusion, for she'd announced she was about ready to return to her home shortly, in a day or two, for she was eager to start writing her next book after having seen a bit of adventuring first hand.
And so it was that the group of six found themselves walking over to the Topsy-Curvy Club: four women, a holy paladin of Pelor, and a young nobleman looking nervous at the prospect of entering such an establishment. Ageratum warned them all to keep their eyes open, for the club was rumored to be the headquarters of the new thieves guild that had sprung up after the Wild Coasters fled, seeking a new place where they could ply their ignoble trade without falling prey to undead vampires. "If we're lucky, we might even meet up with the thieves who took your silver dagger, Alistair," the halfling suggested. The sorcerer would be well and truly pleased to get his dagger back; he didn't use it very often, but it was a gift from the elven parents of the young girl they'd rescued from kobolds early in their adventuring careers, and Alistair would hate to meet up with them again and have to explain why their treasured gift was missing. To that end, he kept the dagger's leather sheath stashed inside his vest, where the missing dagger wouldn't be so noticeable as it would be if he continued wearing an empty scabbard on his belt.
By group agreement, Chaevaris, Alistair, and Harlan were the first to enter the Topsy-Curvy Club, as they were the ones who had gotten a good look at the dwarf who had stolen Alistair's dagger, the other dwarf who'd been casing Harlan but opted not to try to steal anything from the sharp-eyed holy man, and the wizard who had been leading the dwarves on to their next targets. Right before entering the building, Alistair cast hasty
mage armor spells on himself and Miss Edna. Harlan stepped inside the bar and scanned the customers, but didn't recognize the dwarf who'd approached him in the crowd, although there was a different dwarf just about falling off his chair in a drunken stupor who looked somewhat similar. But then Alistair entered the bar and recognized the drunken dwarf as the one he'd been talking to in the crowd when E. L. Grimwade first appeared in Ghourmand Vale. "That's him!" he whispered over his shoulder to Chaevaris. "That's the one who stole my dagger!" He frowned in irritation at the dwarf, not only because he was a lowly thief but also because it seemed he could barely hold his liquor - here it was, the sun not even having gone down completely yet, and he was already falling-down drunk!
Harlan used his paladin training to scan the auras of the customers in the bar. He picked up low levels of evil as might be expected in such an establishment; nobody serving demon lords or sacrificing babies to Arch-Devils, just the kind of "looking out for number one" mannerisms so common in the lower districts of any city. Ageratum entered the bar next and a half-clad waitress asked her if she wanted a drink. "Sure," she replied. "You can put it on her tab." She pointed a thumb over in Miss Edna's direction; this venture had been her idea, after all.
Chaevaris, in the meantime, walked over behind the drunken dwarf,
Burkin, noting he wasn't wearing any armor and didn't seem to have any weapons on him. If he were in fact a member of a thieves guild, he was a fairly poor example. She slipped her hand to her quiver, reaching for a
sleep arrow with which she could stab the dwarf if he tried anything. Alistair followed, disappointed that the dwarf didn't have the silver dagger on him - he'd have liked to have caught the thief red-handed.
Just then, a wave of spell energy of some type went cascading across the bar, and the five heroes - and Miss Edna - put a hand to their brows, fighting off what seemed like a sudden headache. Somebody nearby had cast some kind of a spell at them, and while it seemed to have failed - there were no debilitative effects that any of them could see - there was also no indication of who in the bar might have cast it. Ambrose, riding upon Alistair's shoulder, squawked loudly in irritation, the grackle having likewise felt the ineffectual mental attack.
"Excuse me," said Orchid to a nearby waitress. "I would like to see the manager." The serving girl pointed a finger down the steps leading down from the bar into a long corridor of columns. "She's down there," the girl replied. Orchid nodded her thanks and started down the steps.
Harlan was still examining the auras of the customers in the bar and was focusing on where the most evil resided. He was a bit surprised to see Burkin's aura free of the taint of evil, for he was fairly certain both dwarves in the crowd had "pinged" as evil to his senses when he'd first seen the two. There were two women and one man in the bar registering slight evil in the bar area, all three of them human; dismissing them, Harlan turned to the stairs and followed Orchid. A woman's voice could be heard coming from down there:
Mabel, the leader of the Topsy-Curvy Club, entertaining a rich client. "Our girls are the absolute best in the area," she boasted. "Pick one out, and see for yourself!"
Burkin, up in the bar area, had raised his head and didn't look quite as ready to pass out from overindulgence in ale as he had been a moment ago. He grabbed a passing girl, haggled a quick price, and got up to slink off in the back using a different set of stairs - only to find Chaevaris blocking his way,
sleep arrow in hand (although her bow was still on her back). And then Alistair cast a
touch of idiocy spell on the dwarf, hoping to addle his senses to the point where he'd be easier to interrogate. "I believe you have something that belongs to me: a silver dagger, of elven make, with an ornate design upon the blade," he accused.
"I don't got nothin' what ain't mine," Burkin slurred, dropping back into an "I'm so drunk I can barely stand" routine. Chaevaris was fairly certain the dwarf was faking it, so she stabbed him with the point of her magic arrow in a meaty thigh. She'd hoped he'd have passed out into a blissful slumber, so the group could take him outside and interrogate him at their own leisure, but he just roared, leaped up onto the table before him, scrambled across it, and ran for the door. Alistair whipped his rapier from his belt but was too slow, for the dwarf had already made it to the door to the street. But fortunately, Miss Edna was there and she snagged his ankle with her cane, causing him to face-plant into the street just outside the club. Ambrose leaped from Alistair's shoulder and flew over to Burkin, dropping a load of white poop on the dwarf's head, then flew off to the branch of a nearby tree to avoid any immediate retaliation. Burkin rose on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his nose - and immediately got another
sleep arrow in the keister, this time propelled by Chaevaris's powerful composite longbow. He went down - hard - and this time didn't get back up. Alistair went over to pull him back into the club, afraid of attracting curious onlookers. But while the dwarf was definitely unconscious, he didn't appear to be sleeping. After pointing this out to Chaevaris, the archer replied, "Those
sleep arrows were the worst purchase I ever made."
Down at the colonnade, Orchid and Harlan were observing a whole bunch of female employees chatting up customers and ensuring they all had drinks in their hands. A wizard with a raven perched on his shoulder approached Mabel and scowled something in her ear, but then she was also approached by a waitress from upstairs, telling her boss about the commotion going on in the bar area. But Mabel focused in on one specific detail, and gushed, "E. L. Grimwade is
here? By the gods!" She went running up the stairs to go meet her favorite author, surprised to see her here in her burlesque club. The scowling wizard in dark robes stood his ground, hands clenched and staring at Harlan, who was still concentrating on evil auras. He cast a
protection from evil spell upon himself, while trying not to notice how little clothing the employees of this establishment actually wore. Any strip show they might perform would likely be over in about ten seconds, he reckoned, then did his best to turn his mind from such thoughts. He didn't notice when the wizard's raven flew off from his master's shoulder and advanced further back, by another dwarf, this one wearing leather armor and sporting a short sword on his belt. They ducked further into the recesses around the far corner and departed from immediate view.
Ageratum finished her drink, set the glass aside, and surreptitiously activated her new bracelet, slinking away into invisibility. Then, using the power of her
cloak of arachnida, she walked up the side wall of the stairway and headed over by Orchid and Harlan. Orchid had a
baleful polymorph spell readied, in case anyone tried attacking Harlan, but it seemed as if the customers were too focused on the scantily-clad women and the women took no notice of a Pelorian paladin in full armor in their midst. But then the dark-clad wizard,
Elway, stepped forward as if to confront Harlan. However, upon reaching the paladin, he brushed past him and went up the stairs in Mabel's wake.
Mabel, in the bar, had pinned E. L. Grimwade and was gushing about how much she enjoyed her stories. Edna, for her part, seemed genuinely pleased to talk to a fan and didn't even seem to notice the way Mabel was dangerously close to bursting out of her tight-fitting top. Elway entered the bar and Chaevaris, noting his approach as she helped prop Burkin against a back wall of the bar, saw something odd about his face: it was immediately recognizable as that of the wizard she had accosted in the crowd during Miss Grimwade's arrival speech, but then it changed, blurring for a moment before taking on the countenance of a similar, but definitely distinct face from that which she'd seen when he first entered the bar area. There were several perfectly valid reasons this could have happened, for the archer was well aware of the existence of such spells as
disguise self and
alter self, but instead she blurted out her gut feeling: "Alistair--that wizard's a doppelganger!" She voiced her suspicion in the Elven tongue, knowing full well Alistair spoke that language (if only barely passably), and not recalling that a doppelganger would be able to read her mind regardless of what language she spoke her thoughts aloud.
Chaevaris's outburst brought Harlan and Orchid (both of whom spoke fluent Elven) running back up the stairs, the paladin unsheathing his
holy flaming burst longsword on the way. Even Ageratum reversed course to see what was going on upstairs, although she remained on the ceiling so as not to be jostled by anyone on the ground, for she was still invisible. When she got there, she saw Alistair butting in on Edna and Mabel's conversation to accuse her employee Burkin of having stolen his elven silver dagger, and Mabel offering her condolences but claiming ignorance of the alleged theft. "I'll have you know I'm a close personal friend of E. L. Grimwade," the sorcerer declared, hoping to throw a little weight around on the basis of the famed author's name. Edna patted Alistair's hand in an "I'll handle this, dear," manner. "Would it be possible," she asked the owner of the Topsy-Curvy Club, "for us to get a tour of your facility?"
"But of course!" gushed Mabel, only too happy to show her favorite author around. Alistair fully intended to accompany Miss Edna on the tour; he especially wanted to check out this Burkin's room, where he hoped to find his silver dagger.
"I don't think--" began Elway, but Chaevaris cut him off. "We know you're a doppelganger!" she said. "Just what kind of a scam is going on here? You know what? It doesn't matter; we just want the dagger back!"
Elway frowned at the elven archer, as if reading her mind for the truth of the matter. He was apparently satisfied by what he saw, for his manner changed abruptly. "I'm afraid we don't have your dagger. We" - and here he indicated the unconscious "Burkin" propped against the wall - "are in the employ of the new thieves guild. We impersonate individual members and make ourselves publicly seen, thus establishing an alibi should any of their activities come to light. Your dagger, if it were indeed stolen by Burkin, is no doubt with the real dwarf now."
"And he lives here? This is the new guild headquarters?" demanded Alistair.
"He and his brother
Pipkin do in fact live here, but this club is in no way associated with the thieves guild," affirmed the doppelganger posed as Elway. "And we doppelgangers do not live here; our presence here is just a means of establishing an alibi for Burkin and the real Elway." Mabel's jaw had dropped open during this admission; she'd had no idea there were doppelgangers in her midst.
"Very well," said Chaevaris, believing the doppelganger. She stepped away from the unconscious "Burkin," allowing the fake "Elway" to pick him up and lift him over a shoulder. Once he had his burden in place, he nodded his appreciation at the archer and she nodded back in return. Then the two doppelgangers were out the door and gone.
"About that tour?" asked Miss Edna in a sweet, old-lady voice.
"Yes, of course," Mabel replied, glad to be about something a bit more mundane that she could handle. She led the group down the stairs, through the colonnade, and over to the stage where the dancers performed their maneuvers for the crowd. Taking them backstage, she advanced down a hallway, turning a corner once she got to an area sporting two large statues of robed figures, each about nine feet tall. "This is the room I've been renting to Burkin and Pipkin," she said, opening the door with a key she removed from her cleavage. Surprisingly, the room was all but bare, with only a pair of beds and a wooden dresser. "They've moved out all of their stuff!" she exclaimed, gasping in outrage. "And they haven't paid me last week's rent!"
They exited the empty room and stood in the narrow hallway when the real elven wizard Elway stepped out of his own nearby room, over by the two massive statues. He began combat by casting a
slow spell on everybody lined up before him, but the Trained Professional Adventurers (including Ambrose) were able to shrug off the intended effects; only Mabel and Edna were affected. But now that the first attack maneuver had been implemented, it was on! "Get him!" commanded Harlan. He could tell, even at this range, that the auras of both the dark-robed wizard and his raven familiar - the latter currently perched upon one of the tall statues - reeked of evil.
Ageratum, just now getting her first good look at the elven spellcaster, immediately recognized him as someone who used to hang out with Shambles, a bumbling, low-life thief the group had run across several times now, only to see him carved up by weretigers in the market square. And Alistair called out, from the back of the line in the hallway, "I say, you blighter! Give me back my dagger!"
"Burkin's got your stupid dagger," Elway sneered at the affronted sorcerer. "He's gone, but I'll make you a deal: I'll get it back for you, in exchange for the
Blood Mirror!"
Harlan chose to let his actions answer for him. Charging forward with his flaming sword high above his head, the half-elf paladin channeled Pelor's holy smiting energy into the blade and swung it into the spellcaster's body with all the strength he could muster. He could tell by the crashing of his blade upon the elf's body that the blow would normally have cut him into two had there not been some sort of magical protection in place. Harlan suspected a
stoneskin spell, but there were plenty of other possible explanations at hand.
Ageratum had tagged along with the others while still invisible, and she'd been around a corner when Elway cast his
slow spell, so she hadn't even been in the area of effect. Now she raced along the ceiling, getting into position behind the elven wizard before dropping silently to the floor, her magic short sword sliding quietly from its sheath at her belt. Chaevaris, who had been at the front of the hallway lineup, took a step around the corner to allow others to pass her as she loaded an arrow into her composite longbow and sighted down the shaft, lining up her target. But then Orchid let fly with her spell, and just that quickly...Elway was no longer a black-clad elven wizard, but a white-furred bunny. Nose twitching, it hopped to the side, hoping not to be noticed by all of these larger creatures who were all around it.
Alistair had just used his metamagic rod to power up a
touch of idiocy spell and had transferred it to Ambrose, with the idea of having his grackle go cast it upon Elway. But Elway was no longer a threat; even his mind had taken on the standard bunny configuration, and his primary concern right now was finding something tasty to eat. But Ambrose, not wanting the spell to go to waste, took wing and flew straight at the raven familiar,
Missy. Unfortunately, the raven dodged the incoming attack and the spell remained, untriggered, as latent spell energy in the grackle's talons.
Missy took wing herself and tried flying past Ambrose, and the grackle managed to collide into the raven's path and trigger the spell after all. Slightly confused by the sudden reduction in intellect, the raven flew erratically for a bit before regaining control of her flight path.
And then, suddenly, an unknown actor entered the scene - although "entered" isn't entirely accurate, for he had been there the whole time. Before attaining sudden rabbithood, Elway had given a command to his shield guardian, to cast its stored spell on anyone who attacked Elway. Dutifully, it discharged its
confusion spell upon Harlan and Chaevaris, who both fell under its sway. The archer dropped her longbow and started running back the way they'd come, heading for the backstage area. Harlan just stood there, babbling quietly to himself. But surprisingly, the shield guardian did not then take advantage of this situation, for Elway had given it no further orders beyond the first, expecting to be able to command his faithful construct as events warranted - and not expecting to be turned into a bunny rabbit in the midst of combat.
Ageratum, also deprived of her intended target now that Elway was a rabbit, pulled a pebboulder from her pouch and tossed it at the shield guardian. It missed, but the attack caused her to return to full visibility. By then, Chaevaris's panicked flight brought her onto the dancing stage, where a few customers thought she was part of the show until they saw her bespoke armor covered her from neck to wrist to her feet - not much of a strip show, to say the least.
Orchid pushed her way past Mabel and Edna and cast a
flame strike spell, catching Elway, Missy, and the shield guardian in her cascading flames. Alistair cast a
maximized scorching ray spell at the shield guardian, catching its robes alight. But they both noticed it wasn't fighting back and decided to cease their own attacks on it, realizing if they could get the control amulet from Elway they'd be able to use it themselves.
Ambrose, however, had no intention of stopping his own battle, for he finally had a foe his own size to fight. He flew up to Missy with his claws extended like that of a raptor, and caught the raven's neck between his talons. Missy fell to the floor, unconscious, and Ambrose cawed his triumph to the rooftops.
Harlan suddenly had his own sudden
confusion-spurred mental abnormality, and he dropped his flaming sword and ran after Chaevaris, fleeing at top speed. He easily caught up to her, but only because she'd stopped her own flight; with a look of incomprehension on her face, she pulled the rapier from the scabbard at her belt and attacked Harlan with it, momentarily seeing him as a deadly threat. "Is this part of the show?" asked one half-drunken customer to the man standing next to him.
"Beats me," the other man shrugged. "Can't even tell if that elf's a dude or a chick, though."
Alistair, realizing they needed to stop Chaevaris and Harlan until the
confusion spell wore off, cast a
haste spell upon himself, Orchid, and Ageratum. The trio raced off after their fleeing adventuring partners, and Ageratum cast a
web spell that pinned them both to the floor, unable to move. "That'll hold them for a while," the little halfling said proudly. The men in the audience yelled their appreciation, which Ageratum took to be a recognition to her combat tactics, until one of them yelled, "Take off your top!" Scowling, Ageratum realized they were only glad to finally have a no-doubt-about-it female on stage, even if she was only about half as tall as a human woman. Her hand strayed to her sword - it was imbued with the
human bane weapon property, making it particularly useful in the current situation, she thought to herself - until Alistair placed a hand over her own and talked her down. "Consider the source," he advised. "A Trained Professional Adventurer is so far above this riff-raff to make the combat not even worth the bother."
Sighing heavily, Ageratum returned her short sword to its sheath. "Okay, show's over!" she called to the few audience members. "Go on, beat it! Yeah, I'm talking to you - and you look like you beat it on a regular basis! Go on, get out of here, all of you!" Not finding the prospect of a halfling woman yelling at them anywhere half as interesting as one who'd be putting on a strip tease as they'd hoped, they wandered off to seek out the ministrations of the half-clad waitresses.
Eventually, the
confusion spell wore off and Ageratum released her
web spell. By then Orchid had retrieved their dropped weapons, and she passed them over to the chagrined pair of adventurers. "Believe me, I know the feeling," Alistair reassured them, thinking about how he'd been affected by the ghost of Lum back at the Mistbrenner farmhouse.
They consulted with Mabel who wanted nothing to do with the shield guardian, whose fires by this time had gone out and, the heroes were pleased to see, had started automatically repairing its own damages by some unknown magical means. "There's usually a magic amulet that goes along with the shield guardian," Alistair informed the others. "Elway would have been wearing it, no doubt, but it would have gotten subsumed into his body when he was turned into a rabbit."
"Oops," offered up Orchid. "Sorry."
"It's not an insurmountable obstacle," reassured the sorcerer. "Elway the bunny will revert to his normal self upon his death, and likewise with anything he was wearing at the time of his transformation."
"So you mean...?" asked the elven druid.
"I mean," replied Alistair, "that Shushitan has been a very good boy of late, and I think it's high time we rewarded him with a rabbit dinner." He had no compunctions about slaying an evil wizard who had tried to kill all of them - and who apparently was working for Jasgund Singh, if he was trying to get his hands on Harlan's
Blood Mirror. But as the magic gem had prevented the bunny from dying - stabilizing him in a state of unconsciousness - he was ripe for the slaying.
At Chaevaris's suggestion, though, they waited until she could kill a real rabbit with one of her arrows, so they'd have a suitable replacement meal on hand when they let Shushitan bite into Elway's neck, slaying him and reverting him back to elven form. That would likely be the following day, though, so they got assurances from Mabel that it would be okay to leave the shield guardian where it stood for the evening.
"I suppose so - it's not hurting anything, I guess."
"I had a really lovely time," E. L. Grimwade assured her hostess. "I may pattern a character after you in my next book, if you wouldn't mind."
"
Wouldn't mind? I'd be
thrilled!" gushed Mabel, and that's all it took to get the housemistress's mind off of the attacks in her establishment.
- - -
So now we have a shield guardian! That'll be a welcome addition to the TPA - although now we have to figure out a name for it and decide which hero is best suited to wear the control amulet.