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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sayburr" data-source="post: 170635" data-attributes="member: 92">Three Poisoned Beers for Here Please'oooooooooh my aching head! Why is it that everything must try to crack my skull' Other than the cat in the jungle which did actually send me to see Watcher and Risk, it seems that every other serious blow has been to my head. 'Amber'' I call weakly. She is not far, of course. She touches me with Mother's healing to restore me to good health after several spells. After that, she tells me that we rode out of town and came across this farmhouse and its family. The farmer has given us shelter and privacy after Ars paid them a few gold and brought in a deer to help feed everyone. The farmer has asked us to break bread with his family tonight. Amber tells me that the farmer has been trying to convince us that we need to go any direction except north. He does so again that night over the evening meal and we try to be polite and act as if we might take his advice after some consideration. It is a good meal and it is nice to be at a family table again. It makes me long for the one I left behind somewhat.     We set our watches and bed down for the night again in the farmer's barn. It seems like I have just begun to sleep when Ars is shaking me awake again. 'What is it'' I ask bringing Flamesinger into my hand. He says he thinks something is disturbing the cattle and he fears it might be more of that devil bitch's agents. Everyone is awake now and we go to the door of the barn to have a look. We are all looking out and Ars says he thinks he sees something and starts toward it. The rest of us see nothing and remain in the door. After a short while, he returns to tell us there are wolves out there and he has talked to them and they are hungry and want to kill some of the cattle. I tell him that is what wolves do and head back to bed. Later, he comes back and BRINGS ONE OF THE WOLVES INTO THE BARN WITH HIM! I start up the ladder into the loft and am almost half of the way up it before he is telling it (or us) that everything is ok as he rubs its neck. 'Get that thing out of here!' I yell. 'Can't you see it is scaring the horses!' He puts it outside and we bed back down for the rest of the night.     The next morning we are getting geared up for the road when we see some riders approaching the farmhouse. They ask if they can water their horses and perhaps get a bite to eat. We tell them that we are only doing just that and they should ask the owner instead of us. They start asking questions about us and where we have ridden from and I am sure it is time to go. I turn the tables on them by asking them questions in reply to their questions instead of giving them answers to them. I pretend we are sellswords who would like to join with the region's leader against this 'woman of power'. They are distracted by my tactics and we end up getting information from them and at the same time stop their inquires about us.  I ask them where we might find someone to talk to about earning some coin in this conflict. They give us directions to a manor house a day's travel north. They say we should find whom we need to talk to there. We thank them and move out rapidly before they start to question us again or talk to the farmer about us before we are gone.     We debate not taking the road but it will be a day's travel on it and more off so we ride on the road despite the obvious dangers. The cold is becoming more apparent. Towards the end of the day it begins to rain. As the sun is dropping out of the sky, we make out the manor house in the distance. Full dusk is upon us when we reach it. I am looking forward to getting out of the chill and into what seems a lively pub as I am tying off my horse. Just being close to a tavern has raised my spirits. But, as I am reaching for the door, a revelation occurs to me. We have been on the road. It is a well-known path to the bitch whose heels we are dogging. I don't remember seeing ANY other people in this whole day of riding with skin or hair dark like mine. Bells go off tolling the dangers of staying in a place like this in my mind. I almost turn around to go back to my horse but the others have already tied off their horses and have almost caught up with me. I can hear them talking about how good it will be to get out of the chill and the rain and how much better it will be sleeping in a warm bed rather than a barn. Make the best of it I tell myself. I go straight to the barkeep and get an ale and tell him to have a hot meal sent up right after he tells me which room is to be mine. I head quickly for the stairs acutely aware of how much I stand out here. There is a serving girl who is even prettier than I. I can tell from the hate in her eyes behind her smile that she is not used to nor liking even the few sets off eyes that look at me rather than her. She is used to all of them on her I am sure. I don't even slow down or acknowledge her anger to give it anything to catch on. I lower my head and get to my room as quickly as possible.     The others stay downstairs.      I eat and make ready for bed quickly. I am preparing to wash when there is a knock on my door. 'Jza, it is Amber. Open the door quickly,' comes thru the door in a muffled urgent whisper. I rush to the door to find it is all 3 of them, not just Amber.  They all push into the room and close the door behind them. 'What is going on'' I ask.      They tell me that they had noticed some of the customers at one table looking at them more than they thought to be reasonable interest. Amber had told Pan and Ars that she would go outside to cast detect evil unnoticed and then return to the table. When she returned, she immediately told Ars and Pan that there were several evil entities in the room. She concentrated on her spell a little longer and numbered them as 5. By now, Ars and Pan are having trouble not staring at the people they caught staring at them. 'But there are only 4 of those guys,' Ars said. 'Where is the fifth'' he asks. 'The fifth is standing right there with them,' Amber says. Pan turns and is amazed to see the serving wench is the only one close to the ruff looking bunch. 'And the standing one is the strongest source of evil,' Amber says after a little more concentration. 'The serving wench is the only one there with them,' Pan says. This breaks Amber's concentration. She looks suddenly at the mugs the wench brought to their table just before going to the ruffians table. Ars and Pan have less than a half a mug left each. She calls on Mother to tell her if anything at the table is poisoned. All the drinks change to a sickly green-black color as do Pan and Ars. (Evidently she had not told them what she was casting and until she tells me, they must not have known what dire straits they were in. The look on their faces as that realization dawns is priceless.) Amber says that she remembered when the little desert boy was suffering from the jellyfish stings that I had something to help him so she asked the 2 of them to come upstairs with her. She asks if I have any left to try to help Ars and Pan because she doesn't have any spells that will help other than to make the poison take longer to kill them.     I nearly tell her I only have one and am prepared to let Pan deal with it herself. But she may be of some use against the queen bitch, Daresh, so I hand over two of the four vials I had been holding in case someone was particularly wicked in their use of traps. Ars and Pan quickly grab the vials and gulp their contents down. We wait a few moments to let it work and Amber casts asks Mother if they are still poisoned and is relieved to find out that they are not. I use a charge from my wand of armor and invoke Risk's shield. I empty what is left of my ale (damn glad I got mine directly from the barkeep) into the chamber pot and head out the door and down the steps.     I stagger purposely as I make my way to the main floor. I hold my empty mug up and call for the serving wench to come over and refill my mug. She points out to me that the barkeep is right there and that he will be glad to refill it while she is waiting on these customers. I continue my slightly drunken charade as I cross the floor to where she and the rest of the murderous scum are. 'But, I want you to fill it my sweetling,' I say with a slur as I set the mug onto her serving tray. As she is trying to puzzle out what exactly to do, I will 'Singer into my hands and drop to one knee to slash her belly underneath the tray she is still holding. Then all Hell breaks loose!     I can hear the rest of the group charging across the floor to come to my aid as I continue my spin coming back up to my feet. Using Watcher's Aim, I open up her belly like a cook does a fish with a second cut to spill even more of her blood. The shock has worn off now and the scum seated around the table are leaping to their feet and pulling their weapons. There is a sudden terrible stench of burning sulphur and just as suddenly there are four demons among us! By now Ars has come to her and has driven a terrible blow right thru the wench in addition to my slashes. One of the demons is right next to me but I am intent on sending this summoner to her grave before giving her any chance to do any more damage. Ars strikes her again. There is that terrible smell again as four more devil spawn step into the room via some portal to hell. I wonder just how good my plan was at this point but quickly discard that wonder to keep my battle focus. Remember the kaleidoscope. Distractions and hesitation kill as surely as steel. I invoke Watcher's Aim again and send the tramp down to the floor in a bloody jumbled heap.      I step quickly from between two demons to avoid a terrible position of being flanked by them. Just in time too! Pan's efforts manifest in one of her sticky web spells to trap some of the scum and demons close to where I had been standing moments before. Ars has both blades flashing displaying his advancing skill with them. The familiar screams of Amber's battle cats are quite loud inside the hall. Blood runs freely from us, the scum, and a couple of guardsmen that have come to our aid. There are 2 more demons added to the fray at some point even tho the wench has since crumpled. The demons don't seem to have blood in their veins. They rather gushed some sort of thick viscous black ichor from their wounds instead.      From the edge of my vision, I see that Pan has been trapped in a web just like her own. Amber seems to be using her cats to shield her from the brunt of the demons brutal hand to hand attacks while she wounds them from just touching them. Ars and I are just standing toe to toe with these brutal outsiders and thugs as best we can. Ars is concentrating on the thugs and I seem to have drawn demon duty. No matter. They are all the same to one of the chosen. Their terrible claws are finding a way past my dancing defenses sometimes even with all of my protections and skill. And the wounds they leave make me all the more glad that the breeches are few. One of the guardsmen, the younger of the 2 in leather goes down hard. I don't know if he will ever get back up. The rest is mainly a haze of dodge and parry. Strike and counterstrike. Pain and blood. Furious battle yells and sickening steel inspired screams.      I had just put down a demon on one side of me while his companion on the other side was taking advantage of my Shield being away from him. I turned Risk's Shield to protect me from the remaining demon. I had just slashed at it twice when I saw several magical spheres of energy streak from the wizard thug toward me. They impacted upon Risk's Shield but could not penetrate it! That served to remind me of how close to death I really was. The terrible wounds from the demons had been mounting and I am sure that the missiles from the wizard would have surely taken me out of the fight, and maybe this life. I called upon the healing powers in the coin. My worst wounds were unfazed but my fatigue was lifted from me. I struck the demon and called forth the flaming sphere from inside 'Singer to appear right on the wizard! Some of the thugs had made their way out of her web spell and were closing on Ars and her. I saw what must have been the beginnings of another web spell from her but as soon as it hit my flaming sphere it became a mini fireball. It engulfed the wizard, the three who had just freed themselves, and unfortunately for Pan, the edge of her web; which of course sent it up in flames as well. She lays still upon the floor, burned and bloody.     We have reduced our foes little by little to where they no longer have us badly outnumbered finally but all of us are badly wounded now too. Amber goes over to help Pan. A demon follows her and puts Amber down shortly after Amber has just saved Pan. Ars goes over to help Amber and he falls prey to the same fate but just by a different foe after saving Amber. The older guardsman has just finished the archer who dropped Ars, so I yell for him to help Ars since I still have a demon trying to rake my face off and one last one working its way out of Pan's surviving web. I put the demon down and the guardsman has saved Ars.      This leaves the guardsman and me and one unharmed webbed demon. I turn to him and ask if he is ready and he says yes. We close to the demon in position to flank it. I tell him to be ready after my first strike consumes the web and slash the demon mightily. As soon as the flames of 'Singer touch the web, it goes up instantly. The 2 of us double team the demon furiously. With it untouched and two of us sorely wounded, it is a close match. The guardsman goes down after a few exchanges but I send the demon down shortly after him. I stop the guardsman's worst bleeding and check on the others. All are still alive except the young guardsman. I stomp out the burning curtains and throw out into the cold rain what tables and chairs I can't put out. I loot the bodies of the fallen foes and start carrying the unconscious upstairs so they can rest better in their beds. I put a chair under the door knob of the room we are all in and hope it will at least give us some warning and time in case some one wants in that we don't want in. I pour all the healing potions I can find into Amber. After I have the 3 of them resting as well as I can, I lay down myself. Sleep is dragging me down into the darkness and I do not go kicking and screaming. I go quietly and with no resistance-like a good captive should...     I go downstairs in the morning to get some breakfast and check on the guardsman. He is gone as are the bodies. Interesting...     Amber is up and does some serious healing on herself and the rest of us. We debate pressing northward or heading east to get to a large town to find something to aid us after trading the magic we have gathered from the undead swordsmen in Raddick and from the murder squad from downstairs. I show the others the map and ambush layout and instructions I lifted from one of the would-be assassins. We finally decide to trade and arm ourselves as best we can in the east. We ride and get our items identified. No one wants the cloak that the spellcasting assassin wore so I tell them I would like it if no one else wants it. I pay them each a little gold on the money I owe them for keeping the coin. The rest try to find things to help them against Daresh. We hear that she is pressing her advantage and heading our direction. Now I have to ponder how to finally overpower and kill that bitch...</blockquote>

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