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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ao the Overkitty" data-source="post: 1522168" data-attributes="member: 9758">Journal of Seth Lochmar - July 9thJuly 9th, 1002    While Fiona, Arvin, and myself were out meeting the rest of our tenants on a truly abysmal day, a woman fell from the sky while lightening cracked.  Rushing over to her, we were attacked by some creature that was gnawing on her head, but seemed to be going right through it.  We were able to fight the creature off, but not until it did the same thing to me, clouding my brain and making it much harder for me to think.  Checking out the woman, we were attacked by some kind of scarab.  When slain, a rip in the air formed where it died.  The rip was closing too quickly for us to safely venture in and still get back out.  Seeing that the woman was a tricolor, Arvin was dead set against bringing her home.  He seemed to want to just leave her there in the ditch.  Luckily, Fiona agreed with me that it was not an option and we carried here back to the estate, Arvin sulking all the way.    When we got back, we discussed what to do with her.  Wallace, Leetah, & Padraic were off elsewhere at this point, so the discussion fell between Galibur, Miriam, Dancin, and the three of us that brought the woman in.  Olva was also around, but she knew her opinion wasn’t required.  I should point out at this point that Galibur was in a frightful mess.  He had been horribly beaten while trying to acquire a scroll of remove deafness for Arvin & Dancin.  Of course, as I have mentioned, the church isn’t too happy with our family, and when they finally connected him to our clan, they beat him severely and were going to kill him.  But, luckily Galibur is quite the charmer and wooed one of the female attackers to smuggle him back to our estate, with promises of marriage.  When she arrived with a severely beaten Galibur on horseback, Arvin pulled him off his horse forcibly, smashing him to the ground and knocking him unconscious.  I was seriously tempted to deck Arvin at this point for his deplorable behavior, but it would not have looked good in front of our “guest.”  While Fiona and I were trying to politely explain to this woman that Galibur was in no state for any type of courtship at the moment, Leetah was much less diplomatic.  She threw some coins at the woman, told her to take it and leave, cause Galibur would not be marrying below his station.  The woman rode off with tears streaming down her face.  Unfortunately, we did not have the transport or the time available to go after her.    Anyway, in the arguments about what to do with this tricolor, Arvin & Dancin were all for tying her up, throwing her in the basement, and beating what she knew out of her.  Galibur, who was still recuperating in the bedroom after his ordeal in the city, asked how cute she was and offered to give her a private interrogation session.  Miriam wanted to nurture this poor woman back to health, doing whatever was needed to do so.  We were able to come to a compromise of sorts.  We removed the woman’s belongings and placed all of it in a corner of the room, but she was left untied.  Arvin did not consider this to be a good choice and stormed off outside to sulk.    After reviving her with some minor healing spells, we were able to get out of her that she had been on the Astral Plane fighting something called a Githyanki and she needed to reach her family, the Bluestones, immediately.  She was quite dismayed that we did not have a priest capable of Sending a message to her estate.  She wanted to ride off for her estate that night, but she was in no condition to do so.  We were also not in much shape to go out that night either.  But, before we could discuss any further what to do, Arvin return to Taggert’s house, with something in tow.    Looking behind him, we saw what could only be the Githyanki Heather Bluestone spoke of fighting, claymore raised to chop Arvin in half.  With our warning shouts, Arvin dodged the blow and a great battle ensued.  Everyone present except Olva fought valiantly and, by the end of it, Galibur had retreated back to the bedroom, Miriam was hiding in the kitchen, Olva cowered in the corner, Arvin & Heather laid unconscious and bleeding, Fiona was staggering but still upright and Dancin laid dead, along side the Githyanki.  It had a very nice, magical mithral suit of armor which Arvin claimed, a Claymore of superb craftsmanship with Githyanki writing upon it which I took, several blue stones (soul stones of the house Bluestone), and three moderate cure potions, which were used to heal up those that could be healed.    Picking up the house and burying Dancin, Wallace returned from where he had wandered off to.  He also felt we should help this woman, but worried about getting the horse back if we just let her go on her own.  So, I decided that I, at least would travel with her to as far as she needed to go.  Arvin seemed very upset that I would choose to help a tricolor, whom he was always told were not to be trusted.  He didn’t seem to have a rebuttal when I reminded him of our own reputation as devil worshippers and that we had to give trust in order to earn trust.  Fiona, Wallace, and Miriam also chose to go along, though Miriam knew I had another reason for her going along.  I had been trying to get the family to go to the city for supplies for a while now.  We were dreadfully low on healing potions, antitoxins, paper, and several other minor necessities.  As to be expected, Arvin was always against going into town, stating that we should be securing our lands first and there was nothing in the city that could help us.  Still, he decided to go along with us.  His arguments were seriously tempting me to not do the one thing I really wanted to do in town, which was get him cured of his deafness.  This was the main reason why Miriam was going along, since she was in charge of her dowry money and had been a little bit ignored lately.  Of course, I knew the city was dangerous, and I’d have to make sure Miriam was safe.  She was, after all, the most like a proper lady between the three female family members that have shown up.    Heading out in the morning with the horses and Miriam’s Wagon, Wallace, Fiona, Arvin, Miriam, Heather, and myself headed to town.  This was the first time it actually looked like our plans to head to town would work.  Every time previous that we had decided to head to town, something would crop up to distract us.  Actually, that was happening a lot whenever we’d make a decision in the beginning.  It’s like the lord or the devil did not like our decisions and decided to make us do something else.  Quite frustrating, to say the least.  But we made it to the city with only a minor incident with a hobgoblin horse thief.    While we were prepared to go all the way to the Bluestone estate if necessary, Heather directed us to the Bluestone townhouses.  We returned her to her family, along with her belongings and the soul stones found on the Githyanki.  Preventing Arvin from making several social blunders was quite a chore.  I mean, you don’t just bluntly say, “Minister Nicene tried to kill us,” in front of people you just met; especially since we have no admissible proof of his actions, just coincidental circumstances.  The Bluestones seemed nice enough, though.  When we later returned to the Lochmar estate, they sent us a thank you gift for the safe return of Heather and the blue stones in the form of a magical light mace capable of hitting creatures either incorporeal or on the ethereal plane.  Our chats with them were nice, if a bit awkward due to our lack of common topics.    They informed us of where the Lochmar townhouses were and provided us with some mercenaries for our protection, so we headed there without further delay.  We found the place in renovation.  Someone had hired an interior decorator in our name and credit.  This, of course, pleased us to no end.  More credit debts to deal with.  At this time, I am not sure who hired him.  My guess is that it was either one of Minister Nicene’s lackeys dressed in our colors or Dancin at the Minister’s insistence.  We let it be for now.  Only Arvin & Dancin to this date had had proper nobles’ clothes, which would have aided the sheriff’s case, if he had seen to bringing it up at the trial.  So, we retrieved nobles’ clothes for each of us at a local tailor which Galibur had commissioned for us.  Fiona was the only one who could afford to pay for her clothes straight out, so most of it went on credit.  Since it is illegal, at least in the church’s view, to give credit we could only ascertain that there was indeed interest, but not how much.  I must also point out that shortly after we left the townhouses that Arvin wandered off.  I should have been more worried about him, but decided if he wanted to wander off, he could take care of himself.We knew someone had been watching us throughout our time in the city, because we kept seeing this black cat around.  I figured it was someone’s familiar, which was being used to Scry through, but that was never confirmed.  Someone spooked a knight’s horse into attacking us, which Fiona had to put to sleep for a little while, pleasing the knight wearing a tripple blue coloroed kilt to no end.  While staying the night at the townhouse, Miriam went upstairs to sleep while the rest of us sat in the kitchen a little bit before going to bed.  Of course, that cat we had seen earlier was back, and this time he brought friends.  I cannot stress enough how humiliating it is to be beaten up by a bunch of kittens.  I mean, how sad is it that a group of four humans can be taken down and almost killed by a pack of ordinary housecats.  Even if it were those fiendish crows that had taken up residence in our manor house, at least then it would have saved us some face, since there was something special about them.  But these were just ordinary kittens, egged on by some spell caster into doing his bidding, I guess.  I’ll say one thing about this guy; he certainly knows how to demoralize us.  Even being beaten up by kobolds is less degrading.They barged through the back door in the kitchen, taking us by surprise and left me staggering after their first attack.  I had used my minor healing spells earlier when dealing with the horse, so I was lucky and managed to get my light healing spell off, but was unable to move away from them before they could attack me again, leaving me staggering once again.  Seeing I’d be of no use in this fight, I managed to get out into the hall.  Luckily, the little pests didn’t pursue me.Wallace faired a little better against them.  He managed to take several out before they dropped him to the ground bleeding.  Fiona did much better, getting atop a table and letting loose several magic missiles.  Arvin took down several with his crossbow.  After the battle was done, Fiona had to use what was left of her minor healing magic to bring Wallace back to consciousness.  We had hoped to get some sleep that night, so that we could regain our paltry amount of healing, but the caterwauling outside all night kept everyone but Arvin (who’s deafness was actually a benefit for once) up all night.  Lucky for us, the downpour the following morning scattered the cats for a while.  Bleary-eyed and staggering, we started to make our way out of town.  Some how, we managed to find a small church with a priest who did not recognize our family colors.  Donating pretty much all of our gold, we were able to get healed up enough to travel and get Arvin’s hearing fixed.  I don’t think we ever heard a thank you; just grumbling about misuse of family funds.</blockquote>

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