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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 446063" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chinese Take-outChapter 20, "The Hendry Family Saga", September 17, 1018, 3:00 P.M. Rainville begins his story: “OK, the day after returning to your island, and before we could persuade Morgarth's high cleric Roger resurrect our father, Morgarth teleported us all away again.   There had been a dispute between Roger, who had assumed leadership of our team, and the leader of another team, as to who should be declared the winner of our competition on your island.   Morgarth decided to send both teams out on another mission to resolve this, namely the elimination of a hobgoblin king who had defied Morgarth.   Roger led our team on a direct assault of this King’s lair, but the hobgoblin King managed to escape, his escape route leading him directly into the path of the other team, who killed him and therefore won.  Before Morgarth came to collect our two teams, my older sister and brother were able to recognize that this particular lair was located on the same continent as our homeland, the Forest Dawn Kingdom, being around 1,000 miles away from it.  Rather than going back with Morgarth, they decided to go home from there instead.   They wanted to bring father’s body with them, which my twin brother and I strongly objected to.  We felt that our grandfather, the King, would still blame father for our mother's death, and have it destroyed.   We could not resolve this and split the group, with my brother Hendry Junior and I deciding to come back here with Roger, for Roger to attempt resurrection on our father.  Our sister, older brother and sister-in-law to set off on their own.  The following day Roger brought father back.  Father became despondent over both the failure of our mission on the Island and the fact that his oldest children had not only abandoned him but were also willing to leave him dead forever.  Father declined Morgarth's offer for us to stay on at the castle, and received permission for us to leave.   Two other adventurers asked to accompany us.  They were a cleric of the Egyptian pantheon named Barry and his associate, the fighter Kenneth.  We later found out that they had also negotiated a truce last month on the island.    Leaving however, proved more difficult than we had imagined, as the forested land surrounding Morgarth's castle is the home to a race of unique creatures that can assume both human and animal form.   We had traveled no further than a mile from the castle when a large group of these creatures attacked us.  We teleported away to horizon, to just inside the edge of the anti-magic shell, the bottom 100 feet of which is a dark opaque color.    Once there another group of these creatures attacked us.   We quickly made our way through the anti-magic shell, only to then be attacked once we reached the other side by a group of fifteen oriental humans.   Because of our traveling through the barrier the spell casters were now without spells and our magic weapons and armor did not function.  Kenneth and I were still able to defeat these foes, assisted by our three comrades whose above-average strengths and weapon proficiencies proved more than adequate.    We found the camp where these men had been staying, and a trail that we followed for the next day, ending at a much larger camp with close to eighty humans.  It was there that we discovered the full nature of these humans.  They were slavers, and they had captured twenty-three of the animal creatures, who were in cages and wearing magical collars.   Never a fan of slavery, Father decided then that we should rescue these creatures.    By this point our magic was now functional again, and the other three had regained their spells.  With the element of surprise was on our side the five of us proved to be sufficient in taking down these slavers.  Father then used his Comprehend Languages spell to speak to the animal creatures, who called their race the Hengeyokai.    Only then did we realize why both groups attacked us on sight.  Apparently, during the five days that the anti-magic shell was around your island it had vanished from this location.   That shell had kept the slavers away, and sensing the opportunity, they had invaded the home of the Hengeyokai to take captives.   The Hengeyokai that attacked us apparently mistook us for slavers, and the human slavers saw us exit the barrier and thought us to Hengeyokai in human form.   We freed the creatures from the cages, dispelled the magic from their collars and removing them.  This earned us the trust of these creatures.   We agreed to accompanied them back to the anti-magic shell to prevent other slavers from recapturing them.   During this journey back, Father gained a greater appreciation for these truly unique beings.  When we arrived back at the wall and Father had myself and Kenneth accompany our newfound friends to speak to the Hengeyokai Elders.    The Elders thanked us, and apologized for having attacked us two days earlier.  They explained that there had been a total of seven raiding slaver parties into their “biosphere” homeland, during which seventy-four Hengeyokai had been captured.  These twenty-three had been the final group.   We promised that if we came upon any of the other fifty-one during our travels, we would do what we could to rescue and return them.  We then headed back to the rest of our party.Father was immensely pleased with the promise we had made to the Elders and declared that that was to be our new mission.   He felt responsible for what had happened to the Hengeyokai, as he had been an advisor to Morgarth, whose actions had indirectly caused their capture of these sentient beings.  He said that helping them now was the least we could do.    A week later we came upon our first lead to finding more of the Hengeyokai, at the city of Anchou.  Two separate slaving groups had recently traveled through this City, the destination of both groups being the City of Chempaka, around a hundred miles further.  We arrived in Chempaka three days later, and found that a group of eighteen Hengeyokai was to be auctioned off the following day.   We also found that a second group of slavers, holding twenty-six Hengeyokai, had also traveled through this city a week earlier but had continued on to the northwest.  That night, we managed to free the Hengeyokai without being seen, and Father returned them all to the biosphere.  The following day we attended the auction, which confirmed our suspicion that nobody knew how the creatures had escaped.  One of the auction attendees had a Hengeyokai, who we later rescued and returned, finding that it was not a recent captured, but had been captured and enslaved several years earlier.  We then headed off to the northwest after the next group of slavers.Two days later we arrived at a distant crossroad, where we found that the slavers had had passed through and then headed west from there to the city of Shosun.  Before leaving the crossroad they had sold two of their captives.  The new owners of these Hengeyokai had left traveling east.  One was going to a nearby shine at the E’bo Formal Gardens, the other heading further east towards the distant city of Chunming.   We soon found the shrine, and the businessman Hengeyokai owner, who sold the Hengeyokai to us for a reasonable price.  We were provided with a receipt that was validated by the priest.    That night father returned the Hengeyokai, and we then continued east."On the day following our legitimate purchase of a Hengeyokai we ran into the silk and cloth merchants who had purchased the other Hengeyokai, a female member of the cat sub-race.  Unlike the man at the shine, these were not reasonable men, which created a difficult situation.  This was exacerbated by the fact that these men had physically abused the Hengeyokai, who we later found out was named Ling.   A fight broke out, which we handily won.  The melee frightened Ling, who fled into the woods.   Kenneth had been trained as a tracker, and so he and father spent the next several hours searching for her.  They eventually found her, with Father explaining who we were and what we were doing, earning her trust.   While they were searching for Ling, Barry and I buried the bodies of the merchants.   We decided that their possessions might work for a good cover, so my brother studied for and then used many color cantrips to change the appearance of the horses, wagon, and some of the merchandise.”  “So that is why your group was listed in the hotel register as merchants of cloth and silk,” Cassie interjects.  “Makes for a good disguise,” Lono adds, “Since it’s hard to keep track of cloth merchants.  They tend to bolt.”     Ignoring the bad pun, Rainville continues: “Ling soon returned with the others.  She felt that our cause was noble and volunteered to join us rather than returning to the biosphere.   Since she was proficient in the local language, and also had thieving skills that the other five of us lacked, we accepted her offer.  As we also had a legal receipt for a Hengeyokai, from the previous day’s purchase, her being with us would also present no problem with authorities.  Ling has been with our team for fifteen days now and has proven to be a valuable team member.  She and Kenneth have also become rather close.  Our team then headed west, making a wide detour to avoid the town at the crossroad.  Aradyn says, "OK, so far you haven't hurt anyone other than the slavers and other people who deserved it.  How did you guys sink so low as to then go around killing the police?"  "You're asking when did father adopt a "The ends justifies the means philosophy?  That actually began after we reached Shosun." Rainville states.  He then continues his story.</blockquote>

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