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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 1517223" data-attributes="member: 15043">Inside a Dark CityIt took the party an additional three days travel to move down the opposite side of the river from the city to a position safe to cross.  From there, they obtained some boats left by the Guild, crossed the river (here only about two hundred feet across), and came up to the compromised gate.Once again, memories filled Tess’ and Siabrey’s heads.  This was the same gate, so many months ago, that those two, an old cleric named Dingalas, and a roguish man named Rogar had rode out of to the south, in search of goblin heads and then Lord Lucius.  It was the same gate that the party took the parched boy back through.  So much has changed since then... Lucius is now a man, Siabrey thought slightly wistfully, her combat reflexes too much to the fore for her to go completely into reminiscence mode.  “This is the Alba Gate,” Zhenya whispered when they were afar off.  “Here, don these cloaks.  This gate is still manned by a human.  The Countess fears the Imperial armies to the north, her spies have gone to track it.  She does not expect any army to approach from the south.”  The thief gave a slight chuckle.  “Then again, she dismissed us thieves as a nuisance to be dealt with later... little does she suspect...” the young woman bared stark white teeth that contrasted with her raven black hair.  “Play the part of travellers who want to learn of Graz’zts power.  The rest shall fall into place if you follow my lead.”The party donned thick, drab robes, red and silver with a twisted eagle on the back... the Countess’ personal symbol.  Spurring their horses onward, they approached the gate in question.  A challenge arose from the only person manning the gate.“We are friends of Her Majesty!” Zhenya called.  There was a noise of cranking, and one of the windows in the gatetower opened.  A wizened old man stuck his head out.“That’ll be 10 gold!” he called, looking around anxiously.“Let me handle this,” Orion said.  Taking ten gold out of his pocket, the monk then leapt up to the window ledge, to hand the gold to the keeper in person.  The old man collapsed backward in shock... Orion left the gold at his feet.  Once inside the city, Zhenya gave a brief, snappish hiss of a lesson to the party on subtlety.“We will be taking alleyways and backways!  No clanking, no shouting or carousing or screaming!” she hissed.  As the party continued, however, Siabrey’s and Hidalas’ armor clanked, despite their best efforts.  Unfortunately they clanked just as a battalion of guards came by, and one orc heard the noise.  He came nervously down the alley.  None of his comrades saw the fiery arrow that struck him down, and Zhenya quickly grabbed the body and with Shaun’s help, pushed it underneath a pile of refuse on the side of a tavern.“Dammit!” she hissed directly at the fighter and the cleric, “no noise!”It was another half hour or slinking through the city before the party was able to reach a rather large cottage a few blocks from the city walls.  Zhenya quickly hustled the party inside, and then hustled down some stairs into the cellar.“Wait here!” she hissed.  “No noise!”  As quickly as she pushed them down, she disappeared, closing the cellar door behind her.  A few minutes of darkness later, the door reopened, and she came back with a few oil lamps.“The sewers have traps in them... some of our members are currently going through and getting rid of them... we’ll have you wait here until it is safe.  Here... I brought some lamps.  Obviously, we need you to stay quiet... though as the windows are shuttered up now, you can wander upstairs if you like.”“How long are we going to be down here?” Siabrey asked.  Zhenya gave a shrug.“A few hours, likely.  You might want to catch some sleep... there are a few bedrolls over there if you don’t have any.  We’ll fetch you when its time, and lead you to the cistern where you’ll enter the sewer.”Inside the cellar, the minutes seemed to drag into hours.  Tess nervously restrung her harp Fortuna, Orion found a quiet place to meditate, while Shaun opened the last present Elenya had given him before leaving Irulas... a locket that had her picture magically put inside of it.  Siabrey and Luke were busy holding each other, worried and concerned, Hidalas finished a short prayer to Tarantor, while Pyrion cleaned his pistols.  Geoffrey, however... whined.“Its been two weeks since I’ve had a drop of anything good,” he groaned quietly for the fifth time in ten minutes.  Tess, who was forced to sit next to him, rolled her eyes.  “This halfling can’t survive on water alone!” he grumbled.“Here!  Take a sip!” Tess, annoyed, pulled out her wineskin and thrust it to the halfling.  “One sip though! That’s it!”  Maybe it’ll shut him up for a few minutes!The halfling eagerly grabbed the wineskin, and began to guzzle.  When Tess tried to grab it from him, he dashed to the far side of the room, and finished it.  Handing the empty skin back to her, he gave a hiccup... and was only tipsy.“That there was some good good wine,” he grinned, and Tess groaned.Meanwhile, Siabrey grew more and more interested as Pyrion continued to fawn over his weapons.“Pyrion?  How exactly do you use one of your ‘pistols?’” she asked, pulling away from Luke, who was now dozing.“C’mere,” he grinned, happy someone was showing interest in his trade.  He pulled out one of the pistols, and she watched as he pointed its open end towards the ground, and an iron ball fell out into his hand.  He then pulled a small level near the bend in the pistol back, and poured a bunch of powder back into the little horn pouch it had come from.“There, its empty, so you can’t fire it on accident,” he grin.  “Here, I’ll show you.  First, you’d pour the powder in... here,” he simulated pouring the powder, and then putting an iron ball in.  Finally he told her to point it like a crossbow, and pull the trigger.  A metallic crack came from the gun as the wheel-lock snapped its flint against the steel.“Its that simple,” he grinned, “which is why I use these babies.”It seemed like an eternity later (it was actually about 12 hours) when Zhenya next appeared, and told the party to come upstairs and hustle.  She pulled Siabrey, Tess, and Orion aside to give them directions... which all three memorized.“Most of the traps are cleaned, but we’ve been forced to go a little faster than planned.  The army is arriving on the north end of the city, you must go quickly.”  She lead the party into the backmost room in the large house... a foul smelling cistern.“There is your entryway.  Its a 15 foot drop, but the landing is soft, if foul smelling,” the rogue gave a wry grin.“Tess?  Noseplugs?” Shaun groaned, and the bard used her musical ability to fashion a few so the party would not choke on the nauseous smell.  The bard then used her levitation ability to float down just above the refuse... while the rest of the party was forced to rely on a rope tied to several parts of the house walls.  Within a few minutes, they were slogging through the sewers, on their way to an unscheduled palace visit.Zhenya had told them that the route they would take might take two or three hours.  After what seemed a short time underground, the party felt, rather than heard vibrations... rumbles... bangs.  The noise grew in level, and as the party passed under other cistens above, the could hear the blasting sounds of bombards at work... Alexander had arrived.About two hours into their slogging, the party spotted two shiny glints of something up ahead in their dim sunrod light.  Siabrey, with her special sight, coudl tell that there were three small magical objects... seemingly floating in midair.  A few steps closer revealed a shimmering sheen several feet in front of those objects... rings the party could now see.  Tess gave a sigh and chuckle.“Its a gelatinous cube... the adventurer’s annoyance,” she chuckled, pulling out her harpbow.  Several volleys of arrows later, and the cube had collapsed to the ground in many pieces, and the party rushed forward to seize the three rings (Ring of Elemental Resistance, Major, Ring of Blur, and Ring of Speed).  In the course of their pillaging, they didn’t notice two other figures until the two rogues were amongst them.“Gah!” Siabrey yelled at suddenly seeing an unfamiliar face.  The two rogue’s growled at the party.“Not paying attention are you?!  We jsut finished clearing the traps up ahead!  You need to be more sharp-eyed if you are going to take on the Countess and her minions!” one of them snapped.  Tess rolled her eyes at hearing the same lecture twice.“And you might have taken care of the traps, but these cubes!  You left this one... how many more did you leave for us to take out!” she complained.“Oh, these?” the other rogue laughed.  “We call them walking treasure chests!  They’re slow, and they have neat things in them.  We guessed that if you were going to take on the Countess, you could easily handle these on your own.  We didn’t have enough time to deal with both!”Siabrey groaned, and motioned for the group to trudge onward.  As the noises of booms and rumbles grew louder and louder, the party surmised they were getting close and closer to the palace, which was on the northern part of the city.  Finally, after a fseries of twists and turns, the party saw they faced a dead end, with light streaming in from above.According to Zhenya, it was a fifty foot climb up.  Then, the party would be in the cistern linked to the Royal Bedroom Chambers of the Countess’ Royal Palace...==========================================DM’s Note: Considering what the party was to shortly face, I threw in the gelatinous cube with the three rings as a way to...’give’ them some items they would find useful but they hadn’t bought.  Otherwise, at the time, I was afraid for a TPK if a couple dice rolls went bad. The actual results... well, you’ll have to wait and see for those.... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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