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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 4029713" data-attributes="member: 11">Happy Groundhog!Session #18 – “The Broken Circle” (part 2 of 3)The blinded dervish in the hall made his way awkwardly to the curtain and began to call through it in his tongue.Victoria let out an exultation to Anhur as she felt her spear puncture something inside the dervish’s body. No man should have been able to continue to fight after such a blow, but fight on he did, the rage within him seeming endless in the long moments of the melee.“Drop your weapons or your friend dies!” The marked one called out. Timotheus’ eyes widened, flat on his back, as he felt the point of the great sword touch him on the neck just under the chin. One false move and he was dead. [sup]1[/sup]“Maxima material! Markos muttered at the end of his long incantation and Dunlevey grew so tall the top of his head nearly touched the ceiling, and the swings of his sword became awkward.“Call off the dervish and we will talk,” Markos negotiated with a smirk.  Crusta stood beside him, long sword in her hands.“I think the only ones fighting are the ones frothing like maniacs,” Telémahkos said with a weak smile.  He threw down his sword and looked to the marked man and then to his helpless cousin.  Bleys followed suit, tossing down his sabre as he stepped over to the doorway.  “I am now unarmed,” he said. “Call off the dervish or the militant will keep fighting until one kills the other…”“Bleys…?” The blue-eyed new arrival drew the scarf from around his face, revealing deeply laid freckles on a normally pale face, now sun-drenched.  “Uri!” He looked to the man holding Timotheus at his mercy. “Call him off!”But in that same moment, the spear-wielding dervish leapt out of the way of one of Victoria’s thrusts and slammed Dunlevey so hard across the face with the haft of the weapon, the sellsword fell to the ground, coughing up blood as he passed out.“Baqir! Havase! <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Uri+the+Marked" target="_blank">Uri the Marked</a> called to his man as he raised his sword from Timotheus’ neck in a sign of good faith.  Tim scrambled up to his feet, his back to the nearby corner.The dervish pulled back his spear and shuddering, collapsed to the cold hard ground, bleeding.  Victoria of Anhur panted with her spear held over him, but taking a deep breath let it out slowly.“Fiss’iss! We need healing in here, now!” The scarf-wearing man called out.Victoria knelt beside Laarus and called to Anhur to close the priest’s wounds before he died.“Is someone going to help Dunlevey?” Timotheus never hid his concern and responsibility for the hirelings.  Bleys was already hurrying over to do what he could, saying to Ethan. “You know I am honorable. I need to tend to my man…” Crusta crawled over to help.“Put your finger there…” Bleys commanded the half-orc witch and she obeyed. “Not so hard!” [sup]2[/sup]Telémahkos looked over at Falco, noting that the guide had not raised a weapon during the entire fight.“Who is that? Another watch-mage?” Markos asked Bleys.  Bleys just nodded, busily working to save Dunlevey’s life.  “Can you ask him if we can trade warriors?”  As the lean young sailor-turned-mage chuckled, he looked up to see a lizardfolk step into the chamber and hurry over to squat by the dying dervish.  The creature was mottled green and brown and had crests on the top of its head. It had a scimitar hanging from each side of a webbed belt, and wore a necklace of scored and twisted chain links holds an ankh.“I am Ethan the Pearl,” the formerly scarfed man said with a smile.  “That is Fiss’iss of Nephthys, and this…” He gestured to the scarred man. “…is Uri the Marked.” [sup]3[/sup]  The disguised watch-mage looked at the scattered piles of treasure and wondered aloud where it might have come from.“Well, we may not know where it came from, but we certainly have ideas on how we’re going to spend it,” Markos replied with a frown.“That will have to be discussed with Fallon,” Ethan the Pearl looked to Markos with seriousness,“Fallon? The goddess…?” Timotheus’ voice was filled with a mix of awe and skepticism.-------------------------------------------When the wounded were brought to another chamber off that from which the Signers had first heard the voices of the dervishes, Basit and Baqir, in order to rest on thick straw pallets, some explanations were given.These caves were on the far northwestern side of the great black hill rising out of the moors. The same hill that the tomb of Dalvan d’Amberville was located in, but if not for the inadvertent direct route carved out by running water, many miles around from where the adventuring nobles had first entered, it would have been a difficult place to find.  Ethan the Pearl was a part of a group calling itself ‘The Broken Circle’ and they had recently wrested control of this lair from a group of Rubar bandits who were using it as a base of operations in their abducting of slaves for sale to the nefarious slaver group known simple as ‘<a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/The+Nine" target="_blank">The Nine</a>.’The caves gave way to a rocky shore on a thicket-covered lake recessed into a nook in the hill.  There were three large huts built on the beach, but there was no obvious way through the immense thicket to escape the area. “We finally were able to trace them to their lair, and had to wait until one of them led inadvertently by the secret path through the thicket to get here,” Ethan the Pearl explained.  “This was nearly a fortnight ago, but some of the bandits escaped and we were forced to go after them, and only recently returned.  We had not finished searching the whole place, thus our failure to discover the secret treasure room you found your way to…”Bleys the Aubergine explained of their quest for the amulet of Fallon and the tomb of Dalvan d’Amberville, and how they had luckily been able to take advantage of the passage of time and the running of water to escape the chamber of the masks. [sup]4[/sup]  “Did you know of the tomb’s existence?” Bleys asked.Ethan nodded. “The bandits used the reputation of the tomb as a means to keep locals away, but it proved their undoing when a source I had access to was able to tell me where the tomb was,” he explained. “We needed only wait for sign of the bandits and pinpoint their lair.”“But the tomb itself…?“Not as immediate a concern to us in our reason for banding together, the destruction of the Nine and the slave trade that they control,” Ethan replied.Uri the Marked was an escapee from the dervish camps, who had come to hate the <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Missionaries+of+the+Red+God+of+the+West" target="_blank">missionaries of the Red God of the West</a> and had recently returned from <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Herman+Land" target="_blank">Herman Land</a> where he had adventured from some time.  Basit and Baqir were in a similar situation, having recently been led away from such a life by Uri’s efforts.  Uri was seeking his younger brother said to been sold to such a camp. <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Friars+of+Nephthys" target="_blank">Friars of Nephthys</a> were natural allies to their cause. In addition to Fiss’iss, another friar was counted among their number, but he was out patrolling the area. The leader of the Broken Circle was a woman they called ‘Fallon,’ though Ethan offered no insight as to the origin of her divine name or who or what she might be. “I must go speak to her of your arrival and get her advice on where to proceed from here,” Ethan said, excusing himself.  Uri the Marked followed him out, but the lizardfolk priest remained behind. Baqir stood just outside the door.“Will we get to meet her?” Markos asked.“You have already found this place… I cannot see the harm, but that will be for her to decide,” Ethan replied as he left, giving a short bow.Markos turned to Fiss’iss. “I greatly honor the work you are doing here,” he told her in the tongue of lizardfolk.“Thank you,” she replied.“What did she say?” Timotheus asked, fascinated by a <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/lizardfolk" target="_blank">lizardfolk</a> priest of the goddess he revered.“She said, ‘Tim should mind his own damn business,’” Markos smirked.“Why must you always be an ass?” Timotheus snapped back angrily.  The lizardfolk looked back and forth between them, her alien face unable to contort to reveal what subtleties of emotion she may have been feeling.“Bleys, tell me… do you trust this Ethan the Pearl?” Victoria asked her watch-mage companion in quiet tones. Telémahkos stood nearby straining to hear without trying to be obvious. “You went to school with him?”“Yes… Well, he was a few years ahead of me… We were both there for one… Maybe two years…?” Bleys absently scratched at the dark beard growing in patches on his angular face.  It was said he went missing soon after his graduation.  Many feared him dead… It seems to me that he may have good reason to prefer having people think of him as such… But he as far as I know he is an alumnus in good standing, and have no reason to not trust him…”“That is enough for me,” Victoria replied in her stolid way.Markos took the masks to one corner, along with one of the party’s pearls and cast identify.  He was puzzled when he found no dweomers to identify at all!  A quick detect magic spell revealed the magical auras were gone.  The pearl was wasted.As they waited for Ethan to return the other friar of Nephthys came in and called to his goddess to heal Laarus and Dunlevey’s wounds. Moments later they were awakening.“I am called Harber of Nephthys,” the young priest said. He had the dark brown hair common to many Thricians, and he wore it in the long shaggy style in back, clipped short in front.  He was clearly very athletic, and his physique accentuated the good looks hiding behind the layers of dirt on his face. Only his crooked yellow teeth marred his beauty.“You are a Winter?” He turned to Bleys after he introduced himself. The watch-mage nodded.  “But not of the Winters of Tribunisport, eh? I know some of them well, and have spent many months at a time in that town…”“No, I am of the Devenpeck Winters,” Bleys said, his steady eye never moving from the friar’s gaze. “Though I would be made happy to know my honorable cousins as you do…”It was nearly an hour later when Ethan the Pearl finally returned.  In the meantime, Telémahkos made sure to let the others know he was against returning to the tomb.  Timotheus agreed with his cousin, finding the traps and puzzles of the place not to his liking.  Markos was ambivalent, but Victoria did not relish a return as well.“Anhur would have me prove my skill versus worthy combatants, not mechanics and magic,” she said.  Informed of what had happened during his unconsciousness, Laarus withheld judgment until it could be discussed at length.“Fallon will see you in the morning,” Ethan said to them.  “She and I talked for a long time and agreed to try to recruit you to our cause.  We are at your mercy having discovered our hiding place, and require your silence on our presence here, but hope that we can bind our fates together by committing ourselves to aiding each other in the good…”“If you are asking us to help you, for my part I am more than willing to pledge what coin and knowledge I have to your cause,” Markos said with an uncommon earnestness. “Hey! I want to help, too,” Timotheus added. “Is there slaver ass-kicking involved?”  He was smiling eagerly.Ethan laughed. “Well… We were hoping for something requiring a little more delicacy, but there may be plenty of opportunity for ass-kicking in the long run…”“You mean that you would have us aid you in your work against the Nine?” Bleys asked.Ethan nodded. Basit carried in a large pot full of steaming porridge and Harber opened a sack containing half a dozen large hard rolls.  The porridge was divvied out in bowls and the rolls ripped into enough pieces that everyone had the same amount; that is, except for Fiss’iss.  She did not eat.“You have to understand that we may be slitting our own throats in sharing this information with you,” Ethan continued.  “But as it is, we have no choice.  We cannot hold you and we certainly cannot kill you.” He smiled weakly. “So all we can do is trust you…”“And you can trust us,” Timotheus replied.“We may already have information on the Nine to offer you,” Telémahkos said. “That blue demon that Hezrah was breeding the orcs for… Could it not be working for the Nine?”“That would connect the Nine to the efforts of the hobgoblins,” Laarus said.“Blue demon? Hobgblins?” Ethan was puzzled.“This…” Markos showed the watch-mage the ivory plaque they had found among Hezrah’s things. [sup]5[/sup]“Stygian Demonborn!” Ethan hissed. He pointed to the rune above the image on the plaque. "That is the rune of the Nine.  You see how there is a smaller rune within the loop of the nine-shape? That is his personal rune, showing him as one of the nine ruling slave-lords of the organization.  We know of him as a powerful illusionist or warlock, not as some kind of demon ogre… This may just be a form he uses to intimidate the rabble.”“Or else, this is his true form and whatever human form you know for him is the illusion,” Markos offered.“Where did you find this?” Ethan asked. “Is it magical?”They explained about Hezrah and her breeding pit for ogrillions, and how they thought that this ‘Master’ she served might be working with <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Hobgoblins+of+the+Blue+Claw" target="_blank">the Hobgoblins of the Blue Claw</a> to raise troops of <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/ogrillions" target="_blank">ogrillion</a> slave-warriors.“It bears no dweomer that we can detect,” Bleys added.“Be careful with it,” Ethan warned. “It may still serve some nefarious purpose, even if it is simply as the focus for scrying.” “You were explaining what you hoped we’d help you with…” Laarus brought the conversation back to the matter at hand.”It is very important that you keep whatever we share with you to yourselves,” Ethan continued, reminded that he had had a point. “You should not even mention ‘the Nine’ when you return to civilization, for we have good reason to believe that there is a high-ranking member of Thricia’s nobility in the Nine right now, and whomever it may be has spies in one or more of the House courts.”“If that is so, such corruption needs to be rooted out!” Laarus said, sternly.  Bleys and Victoria nodded.“We agree, but as I said, delicacy is important,” Ethan explained. “The Nine are powerful and ruthless.  If they learn your names and your involvement then you will not be safe, nor will your loved ones, or servants.  Fallon will be able to explain more the situation and what we need of you on the morrow, until then you should rest.” He turned to leave, but then stopped. “Oh, and about the treasure, Fallon is happy to split it sixty-forty…“Will you be satisfied with forty percent?” Bleys asked.“No, you will get forty, we get sixty, though the statue is yours to take if you like, it is too inconvenient to get out of here and resell,” Ethan responded.“You get sixty?” Markos sputtered. “We found it!”A debate upon the splitting of the bandit treasure ensued, that led to everyone getting up and going back to that chamber to look more closely at what was there.  Bleys the Aubergine, however, made an offer that seemed fair to Ethan, and the Broken Circle were willing to take their share of the coins from among the money of the <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Kingdom+of+the+Red+God+of+the+West" target="_blank">Kingdom of the Red God of the West</a>, as it was what was commonly used in the Western Conurbation.“That is the second time you mentioned that place,” Markos said. “What and where is it?”“It is a league of villages west of here amid the Levar Ach Piedi Hills,” Ethan explained.  “It falls under no jurisdiction of <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Thricia" target="_blank">Thricia</a> or the Kingdom of the Red God of the West, and can be a wild place. There are Thrician ex-patriots, less traditional Rubes, bandits, slavers, Setites, homeless barbarians, all kinds of people.  It is a place that the Nine can use to their ends.”“I thought no one was allowed to settle in the Disputed Territories,” Laarus said.“The law and reality are two different things,” Ethan replied.  “Those people have been there for over a century, and nothing short of an army is going to get them out… Who is going to send an army to remove common people to enforce a treaty no one likes?”Ethan the Pearl also said that the Signers of the Charter of Schiereiland could take the holy books that were found among the treasure.  They should be very valuable back in civilization, but would be suspicious among the pious people of the Conurbation because of the tradition regarding the handling of such holy texts. [sup]6[/sup]By the time the treasure discussion was over, exhaustion was really settling into their bones and muscles and they began to stretch out their bedrolls in the large cave with the straw mats.  They could all still feel the cold of the emanations they had suffered through in the chamber of masks. Timotheus went out to the gravelly beach to spend some time with Harber of Nephthys in prayer and discussion before going to sleep.  The bastard Briareus explained about what had happened with the orc women in Hezrah’s breeding pit, and his uncertainty on how to handle such a situation.“You were right to let them go, I think…” Harber replied.  “Nephthys teaches us that everyone deserves the trust to make the right choices…”“What about hobgoblins?” Tim asked.  “Are they not inherently evil?”“Some say the same about lizardfolk or half-orcs, but look at Fiss’iss or your own companion…”“Crusta?  I’m not too sure about her. She’s just saving her own skin…” Timotheus replied.“What does it matter why she does it for now?  If it can teach her something about true freedom and doing good, then it is worth it… The ideology of freedom is not about words or intentions, but about actions…” Harber said.Meanwhile, Markos fought off tiredness long enough to follow Fiss’iss part of the way through the thicket to have their own discussion in her tongue, far from the ears of others.  Ethan the Pearl led Bleys the Aubergine to one of the huts out on the beach, and they had their own private discussion as well. [sup]7[/sup]…to be continued…-------------------------------------------------------------Notes:(1) You can see the rules used for “covering” someone on the Aquerra Wiki, <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Covering" target="_blank">here</a>.(2) This group uses the “aid other” option for skills a great deal, especially for healing checks to stabilize someone.(3) Both <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Ethan+the+Pearl" target="_blank">Ethan the Pearl</a> and <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Uri+the+Marked" target="_blank">Uri the Marked</a> are former PCs.  I played Ethan the Pearl in a short-lived campaign set in Thricia that Sean (aka Rastfar on these boards) ran back in ’97 or ’98.  Uri the Marked was a player character from <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/The+Oath+Campaign" target="_blank">The Oath Campaign</a> that lasted less than a full session, having been arrested and left to his fate before he could bond with the existing party of player characters.(4) See Session #17(5) Click <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Stygian+Demonborn" target="_blank">here</a> to see a replica of the plaque.(6) The two holy texts were <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/The+Sacred+Journey+of+Man" target="_blank">The Sacred Journey of Man</a>, and the much more rare and poetic, <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/The+Prophetic+Visions+of+the+One" target="_blank">Prophetic Visions of the One</a>.(7) This conversation was handled after the game session using the group’s forum on some private message boards. See InterSession #18.1, which will be posted soon.</blockquote>

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