Rath's PoV (The Rogue Perspective)

[vimfuego]

Back to PennWood

Played on 5/7/03

Back to PennWood

8/20/1224

Cael showed up when we were about five miles from PennWood Keep. We decided to camp here.

8/21/1224

I rode up to the checkpoint, got passes for our party from the guards there (cheap medallions to be worn at all times). I rode back and explained it, in parts, to the rest of the gang.

Aramore mercenaries were providing security around the Keep, their symbol is a fist holding a lightning bolt. There are also some wierd, tough looking manticore constructs guarding the area. Good thing we didn't wander into the woods or we would have been slaughtered.

We got to the Keep. Stored the horses, headed to the Keep itself. Someone ran up to Cael and the two of them wandered off.

I found out later that Cael ran into Peron Tinmar, a freelancer, not associated with any guild.

We picked up some useful informtaion. Venoman voss (venom) is the leader of the industrial guild, aparently he supplied all the manticores. The other guilds present are the Underfoot, Indigo Brotherhood (my guild), the Blood Claw, Treachers Point (Aramore's most powerful guild) and Talant'goths Elves, fallen guardian archers outcast from Cuar'Vakh.

An massive double-hulled airship showed up. It was Venoman.

I saw Cash in the Keep from a distance.

Originally post at: http://nightmare.org/dnd/thay/backtopennwood.html

 

[vimfuego]

Calamity

Played on 5/14/03

Calamity

There was quite a bit going on in the Keep. Since illegal activities would be severly punished it proved a unique opportunity to have some fun and gather some intelligence.

I made a killing on knife throwing. I knew I was decent, and made a little money in right-handed throwing but when we switched to left-handed throwing I was unbeaten.

I heard a Blood Claw guild member was found dead behind the Out Houses, his throat was cut.

Also heard theat everyone had arrived. A week ago an Underfoot Lieutenant went missing (a wench told Marsten).

Heard some other interesting information. Tagus Rackson is the leader of the Black Serpants, I don't like them much. Artanus is the leader of Blood Claws. Most surprising, and I double and triple checked this one, was that the top two leaders of the Indigo Brotherhood were Cash and Wolf. But I also found out that Wolf is a woman, and an Elf. Not too sure how I feel about that. Romig Wild, Peron, and Thoefel Fleason are the three freelancers at the Keep. Henava is the leader of the Underfoot, apparently a short stoky woman. Dargon leads the Treacher's Point. They ousted the Black Serpants from Aramore.

Most of the meetings were happening in sequestered quarters upstairs. I noticed that there didn't seem to be any other Indigo Brotherhood guys around anymore. I wondered where the hell they all went.

A guard droped me a note: "North OutHouse, Five Minutes. Cash"

I went to the north outhouse and exchanged passphrases with th gentlemanin the next stall. It was Cash.

He told me there had been a major change of plans, and to get out of town tonight when everyone else was sleeping. He also told me that we should try to be well rested when we leave.

While I walked back to the Keep, the Airship started up. I saw Cash climb aboard and the Airship left.

Later, I saw Cash up on the balcony. I knew I hadn't had too much to drink, and I was damn sure I saw him leave on the Airship, but there he was again up on the balcony. I didn't know what to think.

I arranged some bunks in a guard tent. Three of them went to sleep. I found Marsten and told him to wake me up in two hours. He was singing as usual.

Caught some sleep, then some drunk guard dumped a load of ale on me. I went to get cleaned up, saw a guy tatooed with chains all over his body and long black hair in one of the cleansing tents.

Woke up the other three back at the guard tent, noticed some wierd distortion around the main tower, it exploded in flames. Through the smoke, debris, and dust, I saw another distortion running through the chaos. It looked like an invisible person running. He tossed a orb into the courtyard, we got the hell out of there. The orb spewed out stuff and then exploded wasting about sixty people.

We collected Marsten. The courtyard stunk! Peron led us to the hall to checkout the tower. Why everyone will follow this no-name freelancer without question but give me grief at every corner I have no idea.

We got up to the tower, there were construct parts everywhere, including "doppleganger" construct people parts. It all fell into place then. The real Cash was gone, along with the rest of the Guild Leaders and they left these decoys in their place.

A lot of guards were dying in the courtyard.

Chains was in the courtyard killing people. Manticore contructs shot rounds at Chains and he deflected them. Fallen Elves were shooting arrows at him too. A lot of arrows. Chains deflected them all. The tatooes had detached themselves from his body and now were actual chains deflecting all the arrows and bolts.

Something grabed my security medallion, all the other badges on eveyone else were gone! An invisible guy had taken my security medallion. Get him!

Fight, fight, fight, he knocked me down, punched me in the jaw. Ouch. He got lit on fire and tried to run away but bled to death from my earlier kukri assault before he could go too far.

We found 7 security passes, an Acanarian detonator, a shortsword, parrying dagger, sack-o-something and a ring.

Then the Airship showed back up while some horns sounded in the woods around the Keep. We ran to the Airship docking tower.

We got up onto the Airship, hanging on rope ladders. I saw the Keep surrounded by Thay soldiers. Looked like anyone that wasn't dead was about to be arrested.

Chains became incorporeal and disappeared into the earth. I need to start a list of people to take care of.

The next morning, just west of Jarspar the Airship droped us off.

I met up with Cash later, didn't get much scoop from him, he seemed pretty busy, but he paid more than he promised. I need to have a sit down him in the near future to figure out whats going on in the Guild and what my future role will be. I also need to know if the hierarchy of the Guild is what I heard it was. If so, it may mean that the Guild is much smaller than I thought, so while I might be closer to the top, it might be the top of a less power guild. I also need to find out what the situation is with the Black Serpants.

Originally posted at:
http://nightmare.org/dnd/thay/calamity.html

 

[vimfuego]

Intrigue

Played on 5/21/03

Intrigue

Jon made a masterwork shortsword for me. It's sweet.

Six days after the incident the military returns. They report that most of the Jarspar underworld population is dead. I found out that many of the rogues that survived formed their own guild(s) thinking that the leadership was dead. The Indigo Brotherhood had advance warning and left before everything came down (except us, but we were on our way out, just a little late in leaving). The remaining guilds dropped some anonymous tips and most of the Black Serpents have been picked up. Most of the goods stolen by the black serpents have not been recovered.

02/13/1225

A few brothers stumbled into the Indigo Light, one of them had a severed hand. One of the others, named Bruce, told us they were roughed up down at the docks. Cash told us to go take care of it.

We ran down to the docks, Bruce showed us the way. I saw a group of Underfoot among others, I recognized one of the group as one of my contacts to move merchandise, but he didn't seem to be mixed up with the other group.

I walked out to try to talk to the guy I know, four of the ruffians barred my way, one of them seemed to be leading a few Underfoot. He moved in, I sliced him with my kukri. Tesmian shot him in the hand, I called him a dumbass.

Some other stupid jerk threw knives at me, I gutted the leader in the name of the Indigo Brotherhood. The fence took the lump of gold they were trying to sell.

We found nine gold, 19 silver, a diamond necklace, a ruby ring and two scroll cases.

They were trying to sell a mangled symbol of Mithras. They were some Underfoot that went independent and were following a Black Serpent, now dead.

Jon came looking in on us in the morning. I filled him in with the whole story. He told me the architect (Earl) of the temple had disappeared, he had maps of the sewers which might be of interest to my organization. Also, someone had stolen stuff from the church repository recently.

I went back to sleep. Pulverized some perfectly good gems for Cael when I woke up.

Jon showed back up at noon, filled us in again. We are going to some Cleric's house who has maps of the sewers.

Cael needed to buy some more gems or something, and then asked me to smash them up.

We made it to Earl's house, talked to the maid, checked out his study. The maps were missing, an errand boy had come by to get them.

We headed to the city work's department, a couple of workers there gave me the eye but I refrained from killing them. We found the charts, Jon stole them, very poorly. Took them back to the temple and checked them out. They were maps of the sewers, some of the sewers intersected the temple and the repository.

We went to the repository and found a concealed door in the north east corner.

Cael summoned an earth elemental, it went through the wall and opened the door. We made our way down a passage and found Earl (Architect/Engineer) dead. He was shackled to a grate that had been pried open.

Tesmian fell into a trap so we had to backtrack to get him healed up and to drag Earl's body out.

Originally posted at:
http://nightmare.org/dnd/thay/intrigue.html

 

[vimfuego]

Marsten Smells

Played on 5/28/03

Cael wandered away saying he couldn't stand the smell.

We went back into the passageway and into the sewers. Went across a sewer room with water in the middle. Came to a corridor/sewer 10 feet wide, it was smelly and slimy, cones of light every 20 feet.

We heard someone saying "help me, I'm wounded." I suspected it was a trap but no one listened to me. It was a trap, three guys with glowing red eyes attacked us. I killed all three with throwing daggers.

We moved further in to a T junction, turned to the left, two more zombie-types ran toward us. I dropped them with throwing daggers, I'm pretty good at throwing daggers, need to get some more.

Three more followed the last two, I killed more. I really can throw these things, need to get more. I borrowed a couple from the guys and we moved on.

We came up to a big room, I came up with a big plan. We tried the big plan. It kind of worked, they followed me out into the passageway but our surprise attack never happened so we just started hacking them apart. Juan was in trouble, he was surrounded by a bunch of them. They must have seen us hiding. We killed them.

At the end of the corridor was a large room filled with nasty water. Marsten went swimming. He found the nicest dagger I had ever seen, some platinum pieces, a copper & silver ring, a rusty helmet with gems, 77 silver, 140 copper, 35 gold, a brooch, and a dinner plate. Marsten smelled really, really bad.

We decided to leave the sewers at that point since we were all pretty banged up. The next day I felt a whole lot better, almost like I had taken a healing potion. Tesmian still looked pretty bad. Cael showed up later and asked how things went, we asked him to cast detect magic on everything we found. We he tried it on the dagger he literally passed out. It's a really nice dagger. I thought about having someone else take a look at it, but they might try to keep it. It's a really nice dagger and I intend to hang on to it.

Originally posted at:
http://nightmare.org/dnd/thay/marstensmells.html