NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 5204122" data-attributes="member: 60965">Session 30, Part 13<Note: I took a slight bit of creative license at the very end of this post compared to what "really" happened to make the story fit the mechanics a bit better.  Some Prestige Class powers are hard to justify story-wise, so I had to get a bit creative. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />No one but my players would know the difference, but a couple of them are/were reading this, so I thought I'd post this up front> Harold had woken up once before being beaten back into unconsciousness, a stolen glance through swollen eyes at soot-stained wood, a sniff of smoke and coal, the sway and vibration of the blood-stained wood beneath him, and a strange chugging sound was all he caught before black boots appeared before him and iron-studded cudgels fell again. He had no idea how long it had been since then, but he had been days alone in his black cell, five paces by four, short enough that his hair brushed damp stone of the ceiling as he paced feeling back into his legs.  The only light was the flickering illumination around the edges of the moldering, iron-bound door of his cell when they slid a metal food tray of crusty bread and watery gruel and a cracked mug of filthy water through a slot in the door. He'd tried talking with the jailers but gotten only crude jokes or curses in return.  Without weapons, unarmed, unarmored, unequipped, he felt helpless, hopeless.  He brooded alone in the dark, his mind ceaselessly grinding away at being trapped there, his imagination playing over and over the horrors that his people faced while he sat huddled in the dark.  He'd pounded on the door until his hands ached and bled, shouted at the guards until his voice was hoarse, and paced until the heaps of moldy straw were a pressed mat on the floor.  He hadn't slept more than minutes in days and was almost ready to chew through the door. Then it opened. As he squinted at the blinding flame of the guard's torches they rushed forwards and seized his arms, dragging him bodily out of the cell.  He tried to resist, cursing them all the way, but he was still blinded by the light and weak from days with little or no food or rest.  They dragged him up several flights of stairs and threw him into a room full of the assorted machines, tools, and instruments of the torturer's trade. A fat young man wearing gaudy, rumpled yellow silks and thick white lace sat overflowing a small chair on the other side of the room, four heavily armed, grim looking men standing close behind him. “So, this is what a foreigner looks like.  How disappointing,” the young man said, his voice surprisingly high-pitched considering his size. Harold resisted the urge to leap up, dig his fingers deep into those quivering jowls and squeeze.  Instead, he stood up, straightened his dirty, tattered uniform, and cleared his throat.  “Why are you holding me?” he growled, his voice still rough.  “Do you treat all diplomats from other nations this way?” “He talks!  What a strange accent too.  He'll make a wonderful pet!” The young man looked between his impassive guards as if expecting them to giggle along with him. “I'm no pet,” Harold said, clenching his fists at his sides. “How do you work that flying chunk of rock Hadral told me about?” “Where are my things?” “You are a thing, belonging to Tondron Argia, I own you.  Learn my name well, for I am your master now.  The others will be so jealous, I have a foreigner!” Harold glanced at the bodyguards, trying to guess how long he'd live after he murdered the bloated popinjay sitting in front of him. “What would you think if I killed one of your guards barehanded?” Harold said. Tondron seemed taken aback by the question, but it was his guards' time to be amused.  They chuckled and sized him up. “Well, if you killed one of them, I guess I'd need a new bodyguard.” “What would you do if I did it?” Harold said.  Some distant part of his mind realized he was literally betting his life, but he was beyond caring. Tondron thought for a minute, a pleased smile slowly coming across his face.  “I think I'd hire you as a bodyguard.  A pet is one thing, a foreigner who can kill with his bare hands is another.” Pudgy fingers snapped and in seconds Harold was fighting for his life – and losing.  He was literally backed against a wall, bleeding from several wounds, at least one serious, his legs shaking from lack of use, lack of food and sleep, and blood loss.  I'm going to die here, he thought, the realization striking him as his eyes fixated on the smirk of the huge, grizzled man that was killing him. Then the door opened beside him, one of the jailers coming in to watch the show.  In an instant, Harold was out the door.  The jailer stumbled back in surprise and fell as Harold grabbed the man and shoved, the man's keyring coming away in Harold's hand as he ran past.  Shouts rose up behind him as he sprinted full-tilt through the twists and turns of the massive jail.  When he got tired, he stopped at a huge public cell long enough to unlock it, tossing the keyring in and running on before the startled prisoners inside had time to react. He had no idea where he was going except up, taking every stairwell he could find.  Below and behind him the tumult grew.  The prison was quickly growing to a full-scale riot.  He managed to find a small guard barracks and changed into one of the uniforms there, grabbing a heavy club and a spear before hurrying on. Somehow he ended up at a small side gate to the prison, the gate guards barely gave him a second glance as they let him through, their attention focused on the shouts and sounds of combat behind him. The fog he walked through gave everything an air of unreality, the grimy haze of the streets mirroring his internal state.  Somehow he found himself to the city wall, its size – towering even higher than the one in Gleam – telling him that he must finally be in the Black City on which he had foolishly pinned his hopes.  His hurled spear killed one of the guards at a small, heavily warded gate through the city wall, his cudgel a second, the sword he picked up from the one he'd brained finishing the rest. Bloodstained, exhausted, amidst a sprawl of bodies, he lifted the double bars off the gate, slashed a dozen crisscrossing ward strips apart, then, straining, pulled the swollen, rust-hinged door open.  The dark forest pressed close outside, as though the trees themselves were trying to pry their way inside with limb and root and branch. Come in then.  He thought. They fear you here, more than anything it seems. Welcome to the Black City, may we pull it apart together. Something in the forest - a darkness in the deepest shadows - seemed to respond, pulsing and twisting at the edge of the light.  Harold felt it touch him, a gentle caress of dark power.  He smiled and turned towards the city, feeling the Fae pressing close behind like a living thing. Seconds later he stood atop the highest tower of the monolithic prison, staring down at the guards that scurried like ants far below, fighting to contain the chaos he'd created in the prison's depths. He wanted me for a pet and plaything.  Lets see who is the plaything when he crawls from his hole.  They have taken my weapons, but I'm far from toothless...</blockquote>

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