Jon Potter
First Post
[Realms #206a] Earlier that same morning...
... and several miles southeast of Rherram's infirmary.
For Fat Gurnie, the day began like any other. He arose before Orin's Shield had done little more than paint the eastern sky with pinks and oranges and fetched his breakfast of fresh eggs and leftover bread. As he fried the eggs, he hummed a tune that he'd heard performed by the bard at Hammond's Rest the Freeday prior and kept look-out through his kitchen window. From his vantage point in front of the fire, he could clearly see the barn where he parked his pushcart each night.
On most days, he would follow breakfast by taking his cart to the caravanserai where he would buy fresh fruit and vegetables from the merchants moving through the Junction. Sometimes, if a caravan was leaving too early in the morning for him to conduct business, he would collect his produce the night before and lock his cart securely in the barn. Lately, whenever he collected his wares under the moons' light, thieves had been sneaking into his barn and pilfering from his pushcart. They never took very much, and Gurnie rather suspected that it was the work of a nimble-fingered child.
The most likely culprit was the young scalawag, Oswald Honeycutt. Gurnie had seen the boy skulking about with some of the seedier elements in Strenchburg Junction. The fat man knew that there was a small but active thieves' guild in town despite Baron Wicaop's assertions to the contrary. With all the money to be made from exhorting protection money from the caravans passing through the Junction, the Baron was a fool to think otherwise. Constable Boralle knew of the guild's existence if not its membership and actively worked to keep it a secret from the law-abiding folk in town. So long as the thieves confined themselves to shaking down the caravan masters for loose coins and didn't disrupt the lives and livelihoods of the citizens of the Junction, the Constable was content to turn a blind eye to their activities.
This arrangement was apparently good enough for the local guild. Fat Gurnie, himself, had never been approached to pay protection money to anyone. But that didn't mean that the thieves didn't exist, merely that they were clever enough to know a good arrangement when they saw one. They were most likely associating with young Oswald for largely the same reason; the boy was so eager to please that he could be counted on to run minor errands and keep his mouth shut about the particulars.
Gurnie hated to see a child lured into such a shady world, which was why he hoped to catch whoever was stealing from his pushcart in the act of theft. Perhaps a lesson could be imparted. At the very least, Gurnie might make it clear that he would willingly part with a piece or two of fruit; there was no reason to steal from him.
"No reason at all," he mused, stepping out of his small house, eating an egg sandwich - the other three were wrapped in a handkerchief and stuffed inside his purse. As he walked across the barnyard, he could plainly see that the lock he'd placed to secure his pushcart was unmolested. He grinned, and then a sudden gust of wind ripped through his hair and his day took a most unexpected turn.
A roiling knot of luminescent cloud began to swirl in the air above the barnyard. Lightning crackled and the wind whipped and swirled. Fat Gurnie had time only to gasp and stare dumbly before the center of the cloud dilated, revealing a glittering black hole in the sky. Over the howl of the wind could be heard the increasing sound of a woman screaming. The screaming grew louder and louder and an instant later, a woman fell out of the hole. She belly-flopped in the barnyard with a bone-jarring thud and her screaming stopped abruptly.
The black hole in the sky began to close, but not before it also vomited out a gleaming sword that tumbled end over end through the air. Gurnie found himself unable to move, his eyes transfixed by the sword tumbling blade over pommel toward him. For an instant he was sure that he was going to be skewered by the falling weapon, but it embedded itself in the ground at his feet. Gurnie watched the blade's hilt waggle back and forth in the air and suddenly realized that he hadn't been breathing. He sucked in a lungful of air and took a frightened step backward.
The woman groaned and started to get to her feet. As she rose, Fat Gurnie's first thought was that she was beautiful. The next was that she was huge, standing fully half-a-head taller than he did. And finally, as he got a more complete look at her, he thought that he might be in serious trouble. She was dressed in fine - if a bit odd - clothing: leather boots and pantaloons, a frilly shirt beneath a tight-fitting leather vest and jerkin. Over it all, she wore a heavy traveller's cloak. Her head was bare and surmounted by fiery red hair, pulled back in a thick braid that hung to the middle of her broad back. Her complexion was ruddy and as she regarded him with honey-yellow eyes, he thought that he saw fine, iridescent scales on her cheeks and along the line of her strong jaw. Her sparklingly white teeth might have been a little pointed.
"Nunca confíe em um pixie," she grumbled as she dusted herself off and looked in the direction of the closed gate. "Näo podem ajudar-lhe mas fazer batota."
... and several miles southeast of Rherram's infirmary.
For Fat Gurnie, the day began like any other. He arose before Orin's Shield had done little more than paint the eastern sky with pinks and oranges and fetched his breakfast of fresh eggs and leftover bread. As he fried the eggs, he hummed a tune that he'd heard performed by the bard at Hammond's Rest the Freeday prior and kept look-out through his kitchen window. From his vantage point in front of the fire, he could clearly see the barn where he parked his pushcart each night.
On most days, he would follow breakfast by taking his cart to the caravanserai where he would buy fresh fruit and vegetables from the merchants moving through the Junction. Sometimes, if a caravan was leaving too early in the morning for him to conduct business, he would collect his produce the night before and lock his cart securely in the barn. Lately, whenever he collected his wares under the moons' light, thieves had been sneaking into his barn and pilfering from his pushcart. They never took very much, and Gurnie rather suspected that it was the work of a nimble-fingered child.
The most likely culprit was the young scalawag, Oswald Honeycutt. Gurnie had seen the boy skulking about with some of the seedier elements in Strenchburg Junction. The fat man knew that there was a small but active thieves' guild in town despite Baron Wicaop's assertions to the contrary. With all the money to be made from exhorting protection money from the caravans passing through the Junction, the Baron was a fool to think otherwise. Constable Boralle knew of the guild's existence if not its membership and actively worked to keep it a secret from the law-abiding folk in town. So long as the thieves confined themselves to shaking down the caravan masters for loose coins and didn't disrupt the lives and livelihoods of the citizens of the Junction, the Constable was content to turn a blind eye to their activities.
This arrangement was apparently good enough for the local guild. Fat Gurnie, himself, had never been approached to pay protection money to anyone. But that didn't mean that the thieves didn't exist, merely that they were clever enough to know a good arrangement when they saw one. They were most likely associating with young Oswald for largely the same reason; the boy was so eager to please that he could be counted on to run minor errands and keep his mouth shut about the particulars.
Gurnie hated to see a child lured into such a shady world, which was why he hoped to catch whoever was stealing from his pushcart in the act of theft. Perhaps a lesson could be imparted. At the very least, Gurnie might make it clear that he would willingly part with a piece or two of fruit; there was no reason to steal from him.
"No reason at all," he mused, stepping out of his small house, eating an egg sandwich - the other three were wrapped in a handkerchief and stuffed inside his purse. As he walked across the barnyard, he could plainly see that the lock he'd placed to secure his pushcart was unmolested. He grinned, and then a sudden gust of wind ripped through his hair and his day took a most unexpected turn.
A roiling knot of luminescent cloud began to swirl in the air above the barnyard. Lightning crackled and the wind whipped and swirled. Fat Gurnie had time only to gasp and stare dumbly before the center of the cloud dilated, revealing a glittering black hole in the sky. Over the howl of the wind could be heard the increasing sound of a woman screaming. The screaming grew louder and louder and an instant later, a woman fell out of the hole. She belly-flopped in the barnyard with a bone-jarring thud and her screaming stopped abruptly.
The black hole in the sky began to close, but not before it also vomited out a gleaming sword that tumbled end over end through the air. Gurnie found himself unable to move, his eyes transfixed by the sword tumbling blade over pommel toward him. For an instant he was sure that he was going to be skewered by the falling weapon, but it embedded itself in the ground at his feet. Gurnie watched the blade's hilt waggle back and forth in the air and suddenly realized that he hadn't been breathing. He sucked in a lungful of air and took a frightened step backward.
The woman groaned and started to get to her feet. As she rose, Fat Gurnie's first thought was that she was beautiful. The next was that she was huge, standing fully half-a-head taller than he did. And finally, as he got a more complete look at her, he thought that he might be in serious trouble. She was dressed in fine - if a bit odd - clothing: leather boots and pantaloons, a frilly shirt beneath a tight-fitting leather vest and jerkin. Over it all, she wore a heavy traveller's cloak. Her head was bare and surmounted by fiery red hair, pulled back in a thick braid that hung to the middle of her broad back. Her complexion was ruddy and as she regarded him with honey-yellow eyes, he thought that he saw fine, iridescent scales on her cheeks and along the line of her strong jaw. Her sparklingly white teeth might have been a little pointed.
"Nunca confíe em um pixie," she grumbled as she dusted herself off and looked in the direction of the closed gate. "Näo podem ajudar-lhe mas fazer batota."
I enjoy playing Finian almost as much as I did Big Z and I too love how the party works well together (or so at least it seems as the story goes) We have different ideas about how to go about doing the right thing, but with a common goal, we are doing a good job. 
