Rule of Three for the Price of Two (updated 14Aug06)

[Monty Tomasi]

This is the story hour of a game that has started only just this week (31 July 2006). The party consists of:

TelBach Harry - male Tiefling Priest
Sephus - female Tiefling Rogue
Ash - male Whisper Gnome Ranger
Good Morning - Rogue Modron Wizard
Steun de Aarde - male Earth Genasi Knight
Veedevee - female Half-Orc Fighter

Currently all level one and the game meets on a weekly basis. More details will be posted here as the game progresses. In the mean time - enjoy!

 

[Monty Tomasi]

My name is Telbach Harry. I’m a man of the cloth, a middle-man, chant-broker, Knight of the Post and an all round genuine cutter.

This here is my diary, a place to spill the chant on what’s rattling in my brain-box. See travelling the planes can leave a berk with many a foolish notion. So it’s best to jot them down on parchment, lance any curious notions and let them spill out clean with a quill and some bladder ink. That way the mind stays fresh and sharp.

Now if by some chance you happen to be reading this and you’re not a rogue modron called Good Morning, I’d just like to say: Give it back you sodding thief!

If you’re reading this my dear and close pal Good Morning, I hope that you gave me a decent burial. If you didn’t well then sod you! By the way, since I’m in the process of educating you and all, here’s another phrase to add to your gear-box (or what ever it is that passes for a brain-box in modron physiology). The phrase is:

Knight of the Post

It means someone who is a reputable berk; they’re guaranteed to deliver your messages and suren. Neither strong winds, high water nor the armies of the Abyss will stand in their way to make sure that your messages, post, parcels and what-have-you will get to where they need to go. You can trust a Knight of the Post if there’s anyone in this Multiverse that you can truly trust.

Anyway, seeing as this is a diary I probably should be getting to the story part of it. Or the bit that is sometimes referred to as: What I did today.

I had a friend who worked at the Palace of Judgement on the Outlands. He used to greet me each day by wishing me a life in interesting times... Well, my life has been anything but boring and no mistake.

Having toured the Outlands for a good few months working as a horse doctor in various villages, burgs and towns I was running low on supplies and stumbled across a Bariaur town. Those goat-boys and gals move around a fair bit them being nomads on the whole and this herd was in a bit of a bind. Seems that they’d had some Tanar’ri trouble recently and they were looking for somewhere quiet to lick their wounds.

Lucky for them a horse doctor was on hand to mend their ills. I’ll confess to never having treated a Bariaur before but I thought it was a sure bet that it wouldn’t be too hard. Bariaur, centaurs, horses for courses they’re all one and the same you’d be forgiven for thinking.

Alas, those goat-boys were none too forgiving when I made a couple of school-boy errors and before you know it yours truly was high-tailing it out of that town faster than a Hollyphant shot from a ballista. Bariaurs as I learnt to my displeasure can run pretty fast and for long periods of time too. When your enemy can outrun you and starts flanking to close the circle – that’s when it’s time to use your brain-box and step to it smartly.

I’m still amazed to this day that I can sit here and write: “The Caverns of Thought saved my life” but sure as Telbach Harry is my name they did. You see the Outlands is a broad expanse and it’s by no means devoid of any interesting features or places. With the Bariaur hot on my tail I had to use Terrain to lose them and though I did not venture far in to the tunnels, the Bariaur wisely stayed well away.

Having done my tour of the Outlands I felt it was time to hit the Cage and see what had changed. Chant had it that there’d been a big barny (Good Morning: barny means trouble) and the Factions had had their notice handed to them. Well, it seemed a mighty shame to see all those wonderful Factions go but a place like that is never short of philosophers with clubs. Sooner or later someone else will step in to their shoes and it sure as the Spire aint going to be guilds.

Personally I can see why berks form guilds, makes perfect sense forming a like-minded club based on a common profession or trade. But a place like the Cage is a veritable ocean of belief jammed in to a crucible and then stirred with a heavy helping of sods with egos the size of… well of Sigil. In any case, I wanted to look up some old friends and re-establish some contacts so now seemed a good a time as any.

I’d not been in the Cage a day having just seen a bosom buddy who’d put his life on the line for me (and all I was after was some more horse medicine) when this tiefling taps his hand on my shoulder. I’ve got nothing against tieflings being one myself, salt of the earth they are and never a more maligned and misunderstood people you’ll find. Beneath their little horns, spiny tails and black bottomless eyes you’ll find a heart of gold. Just ‘cause a sod has a little taint of fiendish blood don’t make him a thieving, back-stabbing, lying and conniving Knight of the Post.

Sorry, got a little carried away there. Anyway, this tiefer (a nick-name for a tiefling Good Morning, the word originally comes from thiefling but after a simultaneous sit-down protest of every tiefling in the Multiverse - the Powers that Be decided it was an unfair name and had it changed to tiefling)… this tiefer was wearing fancy clothes, looked like a high-price messenger or herald of some sort. He hands me a note says that his employer knows about the mishap that occurred in the Bariaur township and that he’d like to get me to do a job for him.

The tiefer bows and walks away without a second glance. He’s done his job and on the parchment he’s just handed me is the outline of my next job. Sure enough it contains enough details of the Bariaur incident to make it clear he knows the dark of it and I’m to go to the former Ubiquitous Wayfarer at anti-peak. With a few hours to kill I pick up the horse-nip I was after, have a final slap-up meal for the condemned and head over with half an hour to spare.

Standing outside the door of the broken-down ruins of the tavern that once was the Ubiquitous Wayfarer is a little figure in a long robe. Sounds silly? Well it certainly looked a little odd and before yours truly could crack a joke the little sod pulls a bow and points an arrow at me in the blink of an eye.

Now I’m thinking that either this is a child with fast reflexes or one of those short races I’ve been hearing about in the taverns and inns. I made the mistake of asking if it was fully grown and the bowstring went so taut that I could bear the bow creaking in protest.

As I slowly back away from the paranoid gnome he tried the handle and a voice tells him that he’s early. I didn’t laugh or even crack a smile, that bow had an arrow knocked and pointed at me within a heartbeat of him letting go of the door-handle. Fortunately an earth genasi knight and half-orc barbarian woman came towards us from opposite ends of the street and the gnome soon learnt he could not point his arrow in three directions at once.

I’ve heard that there are elves that can pull a trick like that. Shoot arrows in all four directions at once but the way I figure it you’ll never witness one doing it. By the time she’s loosed her arrows and your brain-box registers the incoming trouble you’re already well on your way to being written in the dead-book. (Good Morning: there is actually a dead book, it’s kept in the Palace of Judgement on the Outlands and I’ve seen it. Had to get a friend’s name removed and I only borrowed the book for a couple of minutes. Needless to say it’s pretty heavy).

A tiefer girl with blue fur, a cat’s tail and cat-like ears does a perfect double somersault off the roof next door and lands straight. She starts chatting away when a rogue modron turns up and it keeps chirping on the phrase: Good Morning. Well, it’s almost anti-peak and the last thing that I wanted to do was argue time (and possibly space) with a modron – so luckily I was saved when the door went ‘click’ leaving all the threads of conversation hanging in the air.

Inside the two-story building that was once called the Ubiquitous Wayfarer was a lot of ash and soot. There was a sulphurous smell to the place as well and it looked like the tavern had either caught fire or someone had left a delayed-blast fireball trap under one of the tables for a laugh. We did not stay t check the place out long and instead headed up the stairs. “Third door on the left” the instructions had said and as it turns out we each had received a similar letter.

What is it about doors and cutters having to check them for locks, traps and such like? Perhaps I’ve simply led a charmed life and never had to worry about someone leaving a nasty surprise inside a door-lock. The third door on the left happened to be unlocked and in the room beyond we found more broken furniture, ash, soot and not much else. The only other thing of interest was the doorway further in that began to glow with a pal silvery light.

Two big, ugly reptilian brutes with ridiculously large falchions step through the glowing portal. They check us out as well as the room and then this scarred elf steps through behind them. He’s not a pretty sod and his pock-marked face does not do him any favours either. Seems that even his robe has holes in it, as if someone had splashed him with acid from the side.

The elf in the robe introduces himself and tells us he has a job for us. The tiefling girl is chatty, the earth genasi is surly and the rest stand round silently waiting to see how things play out. The game that our new employer wants us to play is to find a two-copper chant-monger called Lothar the Shiv in the gate-town of Torch. The deal is to bring him back alive and presumably then our work is done.

I’ve come across operators like this elf before. They’ve unfortunately got a criminal mind and the sad part is that they can’t think in a non-criminal way. Rather than just hiring us for jinks he has to blackmail each of us. It’s a perverse little game these berks like to play and to be honest they get very little respect from me. This approach lacks style, sophistication and about the only thing that impressed me was the fact that the elf had done his home-work on us. Knowing my luck he’s probably just a mouth-piece for a bigger and nastier Knight of the Cross Trade.

The pitted elf steps back through the portal and takes his dragon-kin bruisers with him. Well, there we were a bunch of strangers all staring at each other wondering what to do next. A half-orc warrior-woman with a mighty big axe, an earth genasi knight all decked out in resplendent chain (even if the rest of him did look as scruffy as a bubber), a rogue modron called Good Morning, a serious gnome and a tiefling girl with a spring in her step that looked like she had a fair amount of cat blood in her veins.

Now I’m not normally one to go rushing off with complete strangers on a mission that can generously be classified as a suicide mission. So I start chatting and when the gnome asks: “Does anyone want to do anything before we go?” The only thing that I can think of is to write a last will and testament.

Seeing as the only berk in the room that speaks up when I ask for a volunteer to be my heir is Good Morning – he’s the one that I write my will out to. So Good Morning, if you are reading this, I hope that you like all the things that I’ve picked up along the way. Please don’t experiment with any of the items until you have clearly identified each and my final piece of advice is: stay away from the Yugoloths!

Having completed my business we step up to the portal and take out one of the two slimy little legs that the elf has left us as a portal key. Not being sure what to do with it I tried breaking it, having various malign thoughts whilst holding it. Turns out that the earth genasi is not as thick as he appears as he figured out how to activate the portal. He took a nibble, the archway glowed a dull, menacing red and we all stepped through.

 

[Monty Tomasi]

Torch… ah, what a sight!

Here is a list of three nice things about Torch:

1. I’ve never been here before
2. I’ll never come back here if I have anything to say about it and
3. well there is no third nice thing to say but perhaps there should be, else it’d invalidate the Rule of Three

The Rule of Three, Centre of All and Unity of Rings are fundamental laws of the Multiverse. If one of them gets invalidated then everything ceases to exist. No refunds, no warrantee cover, nada. So Good Morning if you are reading this and yours truly – your dear and much beloved mentor, friend and personal saviour – has passed away and you should remember these rules. If you have learnt only one thing from me it is those three rules.

Oh yes, the gate-town of Torch that’s right. It’s a pretty miserable place and the berks who call it home are an angry and nasty bunch of sods. If the burg had a town planning department they would probably have sat down one day and said: “wouldn’t it be nice if we planned this place with the theme of someone having picked up the town and hurtled it against the side of a mountain?”

Chances are though that if the place did have a town-planner he’s likely to be buried in the festering and plague-ridden swamp outside of town. Might makes right on the plane of Gehenna and that philosophy spills over in to the gate-town which connects it to the Outlands.

Near the bottom of town is the roughest part and closest to the horrid swamp. Plenty of berks here have boils, diseases and random puss-filled swellings from living too close to the swamp. Up the side of the mountain from there are some better off kips that stronger cutters hold on to and usually pay a local gang to look after their interests. Up near the gate (a red disc suspended between mountain peaks with a half a bridge span leading up to it) are the high-ups – literally – who as you guessed it are the toughest bloods to call this burg home.

The portal that we stepped out of was formed by a tree branch sagging down and creating an arch. The tree was located just outside of town and at the outskirts of the swamp. There were plenty of snakes, toads, flies and other fauna around that thrives in the mouldering swamp. Personally I’d rather ritually disembowel myself than be forced to live in a place like this, but seeing as we had a job to do and I had no rusty spoon handy the simple choice seemed to be to head in to town.

We found a reasonable tavern somewhere in the middle of town. The reasonable thing about the tavern was that they were not that likely to stab you as you stepped through the doorway. Some of the dives lower down in town looked like the kind of place where you only went in with plenty of bodyguards and a good selection of poison anti-dotes. This tavern that set up shop in had a miniature Cyclops behind the bar who seemed friendly enough once Sephus began to chat him up.

Being a chant-monger, middle-man, general trouble-shooter and murder detective extraordinaire I volunteered to scout around town to look for our Mr. Lothar the Shiv. The whisper gnome and the tiefling girl also volunteered and seeing as we all appeared to be lone wolves – we came to a spoken agreement to go our separate ways.

The tick to surviving in a town like Torch is not to be there in the first place. If you are forced to go there then be sure to act tough and never show a single moment of weakness. Yours truly cruised the local taverns, got the lay of the land and tried to get Lothar to come out of his hole by spreading the chant that we’d come about an inheritance that he was fortunate enough to recently become eligible for.

The whisper gnome and cat-girl tiefling did their own thing and we all met back at the tavern after a couple of hours. In the mean time the earth genasi knight had knocked back the brown, murky pints that the barman had poured, the modron had analysed every single measurement of the tavern and the half-orc female was rapidly losing her patience.

I’ve had this burning desire to find out for a long time to find out which races have a good sense of humour seeing as it might save my skin one day. Also I figure that you can tell a lot about a cutter by what she finds funny. So I asked the modron:

“What do you call a modron with its brains bashed out?”

The mordon blinked, whirring and gear ticking sounds came from inside and it eventually said: “I don’t know.”

To which I replied: “Thinking outside the box!”

Alright, alright I admit that it was one of my worst attempts at humour. If it’s any consolation I got my usual abdominal pain after telling a really bad pun and when I’m feeling particularly paranoid I ponder the notions that it’s the gods dishing out punishment. In any case, the half-orc laughed a couple of minutes later and the rogue modron never laughed at all; so that answered my question about humour.

We stayed an hour longer in the vain hopes of Lothar coming to meet us. One suspicious-looking berk slipped out of the tavern and another suspect cutter slipped off after him. With the whisper gnome on the trail of that first berk we waited awhile longer when the half-orc slams down her fist and says: “I’m tired of waiting!”

Half-orcs… they may not have much in the way of wits but they sure know what they want. Anyway, I was not about to argue and seeing as I was not going to buy another round of drinks for the earth genasi - off we all trudged in the direction of town where Lothar was known to be a small-time mover and shaker. I’d got a rough idea of where about he was located but not the details of the building where he could be found. Seeing as I had some angry muscle with me this time I stopped a random merchant in the street and asked him if he knew where Lothar was hiding.

The wart-covered man opened his jacket to display a variety of frogs, toads, salamanders and albino newts hanging off hooks on this inside of his coat. Some of those animals were still alive and in a voice that was slimier than the film covering the surface of the swamp he said:

“Toads, get your lovely toads here good Sir guaranteed to give you a good time.”

Well, he was not a bad salesman I’ll give him that. But when you have an angry half-orc standing only two feet away it’s really not the best time to try to sell mind-warping fauna for questionable leisure pursuits. After I hinted in very strong language that he’d be walking as funny as some of his merchandise if he did not cooperate – the merchant pointed to the building that Lothar was known to frequent. The merchant was even kind enough (after a little more coercion) to give me a free sample and I happily stuffed the live bright red toad in to my medicine bag.

.Since we were all strangers we’d never been in a conflict situation before and so each person took up position in the place of their choosing. I went up to the front door with the still very much irate half-orc and knocked on the door. The others went around the side, into an alleyway and elsewhere out of sight.

A voice in my head that sounded remarkably like our whisper gnome friend confirmed that we were heading for the right house. Ash, that’s his name by the way, was even kind enough to fill me in with how many bashers were likely to be inside the building. Speaking in to a sods mind is a neat trick, something that I’ll have to get the hang off one of these days.

Anyway a bruiser with the wits of a dretch opened the door and even though I tried crossing his palm with silver, he seemed only interested in the kind of diplomacy that involves sharp implements moving at rapid speed towards vulnerable body parts.

Luckily for me he took the time to pour some flaming oil on to his rather flash hand-a-half sword that gave me sufficient time to command him to then drop the sword shortly thereafter. Several of his mates had come rushing to the door and I knew that there was more trouble when they each drew their swords. Fortunately for me the now unarmed thug saw fit to charge me and push me all the way across the road away from his weapon-wielding buddies.

Steun de Aarde was a real rock solid cutter who stepped up to the doorway and single-handedly knocked down one basher after the next. It was like watching a game of “knock the mephit’s head off”; that unfortunately I did not have time to watch as this berk still had me cornered against the building. I tried stuffing the livid red frog down his throat to give him something to chew on, but the silly sod turned his face to the side and he ended up with a big red smear on his cheek.

I did the one thing that any good sales-man would do in that position and I improvised. So whilst muttering a curse about how the frog would bring him bad fortune I was desperately looking for a way to get out of the sticky situation. Good Morning was kind enough to come up and cause a little damage but on the whole he was not of much use.

The berk pulled a knife and I pulled a sickle, he tried to rejoin his friends and Veedevee stepped up and took his head off in one clean sweep of her large axe. So you see – my frog curse actually worked! Anyway, once the half-orc had the taste of blood she went charging up to the house and to avoid running through the now flaming doorway she simply ran through the wall a few feet to her right. One stroke of her axe later and the last of the thugs joined his compatriots in the after-life.

As it turns out Lothar the Shiv had skipped town well over an hour before out little scuffle. Seeing as he lived near the bottom end of town I should perhaps have guessed that he would be a great coward. After all, if he had any sense of self-worth, wits or courage he would have been located higher up in the town instead of at the bottom with the riff-raff and other swamp scum.

Sephus did locate a few interesting pieces of information about a weapons sale to a group of goblins living on Acheron. The sensory stone that we had for tracking Lothar was working once again now that he had skipped town and was some distance. So after one or two members of our merry band had finished their stealth looting we set off to track down this irascible chant-monger of little courage.

And thus it was that I discovered the second nice thing that I lied about Torch… namely leaving it. All being well it’ll be the last time that I visit that hell-hole of a town. But if there’s one thing to remember about planar travel it’s never say never. Well you can if you like but just don’t expect it to always be true.

Actually one more thing, Good Morning if you are reading this, if there is one piece of advice that you would listen to it should be the following: wear oil of flame resistance. You never know when it might come in handy.

 

[Monty Tomasi]

I like to always start with a little anecdote, a lesson or something to stimulate the mind. It's a bit like having some of that cold stuff to clear the palate and get a taste for something better to come. If I had a table in front of me with three cards on it that I'd be shuffling around – there would be a man or woman already winning some jinks of me (much to my not-quite-over-the-top chagrin) that would draw some hopeless rube in.

You see in the business they call me a cony-catcher. What that means is that I am in the business of tracking down and exposing con men. Cony, as any blood will tell you, is a nick-name for a conman. So the catcher part is pretty self-explanatory. Lothar the Shiv happens to be a rather shoddy cony and hence I felt it a little below my station to be sent to get him. Never the less I am a professional and I'll play the game just as hard and fast as the next blood.

By way, in case you're ever curious about that card game with the three cards – the one they call Chase The Lady of Pain – well it's a rube's game. The dealer holds two cards in her right hand. The upper card is held between thumb and forefinger and the lower card is held between thumb and middle finger with a small gap between both cards.

According to common sense, the dealer should drop the lower card first, but the dealer surreptitiously ejects the upper card first which causes the rube to lose track of the right card. This is especially difficult to see if the dealer's hand makes a sweeping move from her left to her right while she drops the card.

The hand is faster than the eye, that's a tiefling rule and that insight in to the dark of things is free. The other chant I'll throw in as a bonus is to never try to peel a Dabus with a game of Chase The Lady of Pain. Not because only a suicidal sod would consider it – it's also because the Dabus (The Lady's servants) always pick the right card. See they speak using rebuses, funny symbols that can be hard to decipher and being masters of symbols they have an affinity to it that even the top shelf Knights of the Post would not dare try to outwit.

Anyway, I'll discuss Her Serenity The Lady of Pain and her servants the Dabus another time. In fact I could spend a life-time trying to cover every theory and idea that every greybeard has thought up. But yours truly, the noted sage and planewalker Telbach Harry, is one of the few that really knows the dark of it.

So.... after a lengthy diversion on to the chase of Mr. The Shiv, known as Lothar to his enemies. I'd say friends but the only kind he seems to have is the type you buy. Not a nice way to go through life if you ask me. If you ask a Dustman she'd tell you that you're already dead but you've just not realised or accepted it.

In any case, the tunnel that Lothar apparently escape from Torch through was water filled along with a few hastily erected booby-traps. We followed him overland to the gate-town of Rigus that has a gate to the plane of Acheron. Like all the Lower Planes – Acheron is not a nice place. It's a reality of constant, grinding, pointless and spirit-crushing battle. Seeing as yours truly comes from the plane where battle is glorious and involves giants, the plane of Acheron is close to my idea of a personal hell. Well, that and being stuck in a room with Vecna. The, Vecna, the – this is all I'll ever comment on this matter.

The city of Rigus consists of nine rings, one inside the other, and has a gate in the inner-most ring. It's a very organized and disciplined place and if you're unlucky enough to be visiting – be sure to ask for a slate on a chain with the words “slave-soldier” on it. If you have nothing to designate rank anyone and everyone can order you around. If you have this slate then they'll go easy on you for the initial part of your stay. Step out of line too often and they're likely to come down hard. Considering that Acheron is a reality in which titanic metal cubes float through the void on which numberless armies clash in futile battle – coming down hard has a whole new meaning when you become aware that there are times when the planet-sized metal cubes collide.

After getting some slates we headed in to town and to cut a long story short we hired a guide and went through the gate in to Acheron. I could bore you with details of Sephus' inquisitiveness almost getting her killed. The part with the tattooed hobgoblin or the goblin throwing in the market-place, but I'm a busy man and there's only so much detail that I want to record. Good Morning, if you are reading this – you have it all stored in memory... just play it back you sodding hunk of scrap! He's like a walking mimir with a mathematics fetish, some days I find his obsession with law a little grinding. Then again it could be that a fun-loving Knight likes me is not comfortable around the law.

Our guide was good enough to take us through the gate and on the other side he opened something that looked like a planar compass. I'm not sure how it worked but it took us to a cube where the Gulkatesh tribe of goblins lived. According to the paperwork that we recovered from Lothar's kip in Torch he'd done business with them and was likely to go to them to throw of pursuit and find paid-for protection.

The compass-device took us to another cube and after a march that lasted longer than the Great Modron march we rested for the night. Steun woke us up during the night by having a metallic cat scratch his chain armour something rotten. The screeching was pretty awful and surprisingly it was the guides large cross bow that woke the rest of us. Turns out the guide has a trick or two in his handy haversack – at least I presume that is the pick-up line that he tries with all the Succubi. The cat was put down and we all lay back to get some more rest. I'm not used to doing ten-mile marches non-stop.

The next day we took a detour to get around a blade-storm. They're a natural and very nasty weather effect on the plane of Acheron that occurs when the blades don't stop fighting after their wielders have long since perished. Good Morning asked the guide which side 'wins' in a blade-storm. The guide responded with: “Certainly not the berks that enter”.

I was forced to explain that blade-storms only occur when hot and cold swords meet and that as soon as they reach the same temperature the storm dissipates. The modron thought it over for awhile, I could tell by the whirring, spinning and clicking sounds coming from inside, but he could not find any flaw to my logic. It's good to know that I am getting somewhere in making the modron think in a more normal fashion.

Can you believe that he thinks that the One and Only Primus will take him back? If he was still a proper modron he would not even know of Primus unless he was a secundus. I tried weaning him off the idea without success. Then I tried to get him to agree to being painted red to give him some personality – but he did not find the idea of being a rouge modron in the least funny. Even my comment of him being called a rouge modron instead of a rogue modron as being a clerical error was not well received.

See – there's that stomach pain again. I swear that the gods punish me every time I try to make a funny.

Later that day we reached the mountain where the Gulkatesh tribe of goblins covers in fear of their enemies the Black Arrow tribe of orcs (our guide was kind enough to share that bit of dark with us for the princely sum of five gold). If I do not get reimbursed I'm going to have to peel our employer all the way back to soup kitchens in the Hive. I'm wasting valuable time and jinks all the while I could be cony-catching elsewhere.

There's a detail of our stay in Rigus that I'm desperately trying to remember as it was of some vital importance. That's what a diary is for – so that I can remember the important things for later and should I die before I wake; well then Good Morning should at least have some amusing and educational reading material in amongst his vast inheritance.

Oh yes, I remember now. I, the noted sage, explorer and top shelf cony-catcher, discovered that we had a traitor in our midst. It's little details like that which are worth noting. That and where to get good bub, chase some pretties in a skirt and get some healing.

Since I started with a little educational piece I'll finish with another piece of succinct and valuable advice. Whilst most tieflings are cursed with an outwardly unnatural appearance (compared to boring humans) and underneath have a heart of pure gold. Be wary of a tiefer called Ashenbach. Oh and not forgetting Wintery Noj, a creature called the Montyloth, Shemeshka the Marauder (of course) and any clueless. The list as you might have gathered is longer but my ink supply is limited.

If I survive travelling with the traitor I may get around to explaining that statement above. Can't make any promises though, us tieflings are honour bound by our word and hence we are reluctant to give it to others.

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[Interesting link with information about Rigus: Here

 

[Monty Tomasi]

It's takes a Knight to catch a Knight. Any child playing on the streets of The City of Doors will tell you that. In order to beat a Knight of the Cross Trade a cutter's got to be able to think like one. Being able to think like one makes you just like them – with the difference being how many rubes you've peeled. Even if your current score is none, some day that may change.

Alright I'm being a little bit narrow-minded and harsh, but the manner in which our employer procured our services has been bothering me the entire time that we've been travelling across this accursed cube in the plane of Acheron. I mean, what's a blood to do beside admire the scenery?

So I started to try to think like our employer. I use that word in the loosest possible sense as he's not paying us and we have no contract aside from blackmail and possible other means of coercion. I'll peel a clueless green Prime as fast as the next sod, but this character had a certain style that really rubs the wrong way. You know – this is probably the way a Baatezu feels trying to share a table with a Tanar'ri in a dive in the Lower Ward. Something is wrong at a fundamental level.

So having established this rather uncomfortable mind-set (which admitedly is not as bad as trying to think like a modron) I asked myself: how is this sod going to keep tabs on us? If it was me I wouldn't want a bunch of berks running around bringing back this Lothar without at least some inkling of what they were up to. So then it hit me... you get someone on the inside.

This left the rather uncomfortable notion that one of us is either not whom he or she claims to be. Or that they lied about why they've come along. Suddenly it's no longer a quick peel and then away with the booty.

This is what we call in the business... actually I probably should not be putting all of this in writing. Never know who might read it. Suffice it to say that this type of game is referred to in some circles as: “having tea with the Yugoloths”. It's all sweetness and light, all the while they're messing with your mind in so many ways that the moving to the Pandemonium will probably seem like a nice retired plan where the locals make sense and the beer is cheap.

Right – I'm getting far too introspective and for a man in my line of work 'introspective' is a big word and should not be treated lightly. We put words like in a nice teak wood cabinet with frosted coloured glass and stare at it admiringly when we're feeling all intellectual and Guvner-like.

Gulkatesh tribe of goblins, Black-Arrow tribe of orcs – that's where the action is at! Fortunately for us we saw very little of either. Our motley crew of spell-slingers and sword-muscle lay in wait at the edge of the mountain in which the Gulkatesh tribe eked out their subsistence. Yours truly had written an hofficial document (if it sounds like it belongs in the Lady's ward with the toffs it gets an 'h' on the front) stating that Mr. Lothar the Shiv had also been selling weapons to the Black Arrow tribe.

The plan was to use this document to convince Lothar to come with us quietly. Arms-dealers lead an exciting and often rather nervous existence, especially when they it comes to light that they have been selling to both sides of a conflict. Does not matter if that is pure screed, the planes are about belief and who knows... maybe he has been selling to both sides?

The first problem with our little ambush was that we were rather close to the gobber encampment in the mountains and when we saw with Lothar coming with a goblin escort we quickly revised our plan. Dashing down the mountain as stealthily as we could we positioned ourselves... well as we each saw fit to be totally honest. No fancy plans or coordinated strikes with fireballs and all that Morvun and Phineas music. We go in for the rush and hope to survive long enough to bring the other side down.

Sure enough the goblins spotted Steun de Aarde who was cunningly concealed behind a rock. The fact that there were two rocks, one covered in chain-mail kind of gave the game away. Their horn-blower reached for his horn and got rewarded with an arrow through the throat courtesy of Ash, our whisper-gnome friend. Then Pandemonium broke loose and people started running backwards and forwards trying to stop the goblins escaping or blowing the horn to call for reinforcements. As well as rushing to catch up with Lothar the Shiv.

Yours truly was smart enough to get some Divine protection and I picked up the horn with no worries of getting struck, but by then the main fight was already over. Good Morning put on a very impressive display of speed, even over-taking Lothar in the midst of his bid to escape. The rogue modron then reduced Lothar to the size of Ash. Lothar and Sephus jumped the now reduced Mr. the Shiv, wrestled him to the ground and eventually restrained him.

Of course there was the usual clean-up service afterwards. It's terribly poor show to leave corpses lying around with anything actually valuable or useful. If the planes were littered with corpses with all their possessions still on them then how would any dragon, despot or even deity hoard all their wealth in one place? The planes would be a total mess.

Lothar started blabbering on about us working for the Dragon or working for the Mountain. Seems something got knocked loose in his brain-box in the fall, but he soon calmed down. I can only presume that the Dragon links somehow to the draconic bodyguards of our employer that Ash seems to know something about. As for the Mountain, he could mean the Dwarven Mountain. If that is the case I'd rather not tangle in an affair involving a Moutain that's kip no less than three Dwarven powers.

So now we have Lothar as well as his agreement to come with us peacefully. I told him we needed him for a job and would pay well for it, but we need to check out some of his credentials first. We also have the agreement of our guide to take us back to the portal in the Outlands located next to Torch.

Sephus seems to have the right idea in mind as she's been trying to charm our dear Mr. the Shiv to get some information from him (I presume). But I can't help but feel like a pawn waking up to the fact that he's a small piece on a multi-dimensional chess set. The rules of this game seem far from simple. Perhaps I should get an artisan friend of mine in the Cage to make little figures of all the players to help clear things in my mind. Sometimes I find that helps. Other times just sticking needles in the figures works better.

Good Morning, I forgot all about giving you any advice this time. Hopefully the above will make you sufficiently paranoid never to trust any sod for the rest of your existence and if that is the case you've taken your first step towards becoming a true planewalker. If not.. well sod you in that case, I don't know why I bother why I waste my time. Fortunately for me, I have another able and talented student.

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Our GM is at GenCon (grrr) and hence why not much of an update. The grrr refers to envy of him being there and me not Next year perhaps.

 

[Fimmtiu]

Personally I’d rather ritually disembowel myself than be forced to live in a place like this, but seeing as we had a job to do and I had no rusty spoon handy the simple choice seemed to be to head in to town.

Great stuff. I love the "rouge modron" joke, but then I've always been a sucker for bad puns.