Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kid Charlemagne" data-source="post: 113075" data-attributes="member: 93">Ulfang, June 3rd, AE 420Rewind several hours…Jalea heads out from the Gold Dragon Inn on a mission to find out as much as he can about the wizard named Quinn.  Jalea is fairly certain that this is the same “twitchy” wizard he has seen accompanying Kentfield, and who was staying at the Kentfield country manor.He decides to start by checking some of his old thief-ly haunts, hoping that no one will recognize him.  He goes to the first place on his list, a dockside dive on the west side of town.  He asks around for Quinn, indicating that the wizard had intended to hire him for a job, but gets no reaction.  No one here has heard of the man.  Jalea notices that the place is fairly deserted for early afternoon.  Ordinarily the place should be filling up with guild members looking to make connections, find jobs, or just hang out.The second place he picks, another dive a little further up the west side, doesn’t seem any busier.  The bartender just looks at Jalea blankly when the name “Quinn” is mentioned, and shrugs wordlessly.Then Jalea hears a noise behind him.  The bartender’s eyes go up, looking at something.  They widen in fear, and then the bartender faints dead away, behind the bar.  Jalea looks to a mirror behind the bar to see what is in the room behind him that could cause such a reaction.Standing about fifteen feet behind the elf is an immense spider-creature.  It has four eyes, and eight legs.  It’s front four legs have knife-like appendages for claws, looking like huge butcher’s cleavers.  The thing appears more golem than spider, and there is no physical way for it to have entered the room via the door.Atop the spider-thing is a rider in a saddle.  The rider is a woman, with long, red hair.  She carries a lance, held out to her side because the roof is too low for her to hold it straight up.  She also carries a greatsword slung across her back.  She swings the point of the lance towards Jalea……And that’s all Jalea needs to see, from his point of view.  He dives over the bar, as the lance comes sweeping down, smashing glasses and bottles into little pieces.  The elf tumbles into the backroom of the bar, and starts looking for the backdoor.  Just as he sees it, the door splinters inward, and a trio of thugs rushes into the room, led by Tuck, the half-orc assassin from the Gregarious Gargoyle.Jalea leaves by the window, instead.He somersaults into the alley behind the bar, and checks behind him.  He notices a crow fly out of the window he exited by, and land on a barrel nearby.  He unleashes two arrows into it, but they bounce off harmlessly.“Aw, hell,” he thinks to himself.  He runs for it, heading for the nearest big marketplace, hoping to lose his pursuers in the hustle and bustle.He makes it to a dockside market, and by hiding here and there, he manages to size up his pursuers, and, he think, lose them.  There are seven of them in addition to the spider and its rider.  He sneaks into a building, and makes his way to the rooftops, where he begins making his way towards Kentfield’s neighborhood.  Jalea is adept at this sort of thing, and the building s in Ulfang tend to be close together, so he is able to avoid the crowds below.  There is no sign of his pursuers……Until he leaps onto a building, and feels the sweep of a claw, just missing his neck.  Suddenly, the spider and rider are there on the roof with him, just becoming visible!  Jalea stumbles to the side, and falls off the rooftop, three stories up, but with his Ring of Feather Falling, he lands safely.Five or six blocks down, he hears a noise, and he looks to that direction.  He sees a carriage being driven hard through the streets, with pedestrians either diving out of the way or being run over.  It appears that the other seven pursuers are on board, trying to keep up with the Spider-thing.  Jalea looks back up to see where it is, and sees it FLY off the roof, and hover there.“Oh, man, that is so not a good thing…” the elf mutters to himself.A grey beam shoots out of one of the spider-thing’s four eyes, and everything goes black.</blockquote>

Verification