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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 153866" data-attributes="member: 41">34—To Marner, To Marner and Rally to the Cause.After the fight with the Red Wizard at the portal leading to Faerun, Kyreel finds herself standing alone inside the strange structure.  Several attempts to unlock the portal fail, and after a few minutes, the drow cleric sits down to wait.Vognu flies into the room, a toad protruding from a mud-filled satchel clutched in the faerie dragon’s claws.  Kyreel watches as Vognu plops the satchel down at her feet, and lands nearby, waiting expectantly.The toad hops around in a circle, croaking agitatedly.  In her mind, Kyreel ‘hears’ Vognu’s reedy, ticklish voice in her head, translating the toad’s tirade.“What’s that, my friend?” Kyreel says to the toad.  “Vognu, I think Indy’s trying to tell us something.”The toad hops a figure eight, croaking all the while.Kyreel squints at Vognu, hoping to ‘home in’ on the faerie dragon’s telepathic sending.  “What’s that, Indy?  Someone fell in the well?”Vognu hisses.“Oh, you said we should try to dispel.  Well of course we will, Indy, but I must rest first.  Vognu can help you stay moist and comfortable until we can return you to your normal form.”The toad hops straight up in the air, and lets out a stream of acerbic chirrups and burraps.“Well, a halfling is your normal form now, Indy, and no magic I have will change that fact.”-----After a night’s rest, Kyreel manages to dispel the Red Wizard’s polymorph.  Vognu, mysteriously, has disappeared during the night, and is nowhere to be found.“We’re no longer bonded, Vognu and I,” Indy says by way of explanation.  “Ever since we were reincarnated, our link has faded.  At first Vognu stayed in his pouch much of the time, but he’s started to really understand that he’s no longer a toad, I think.  Alas, I find myself without a familiar, deprived of the means to secure my lady-love, and two feet shorter.”Indy holds up the Red Wizard’s spellbook, left on the Greyhawk side of the portal.  “I suspect this will tell us how to follow our friends, but this isn’t the sort of thing I can study sitting up to my neck in monster-infested ruins.  We need to go back to Marner.  You have a hat of disguise and I have a whole new form.  We should be safe from Justice for a few days, at least.“But we’ll need new names.  You should call yourself Leeryk, and I will be Ydni.”Kyreel stares at the halfling.  “Using your own name backwards is the stupidest naming convention I have ever heard of, Indy.”“No it’s not.  Look at Xagyg, or Ollidimara.”“Don’t blaspheme, Indy.”“I’m only saying, Leeryk . . .”“You may call me Asahasa, if you must.”“How am I supposed to remember Asahasa?”“How do you remember Kyreel?  How do you remember your spells?”“Leeryk is easy.  Asahasa sounds like a wizard’s name, anyway.”Ratik is bustling when the duo arrive.  The year-end Fairwinter festival is beginning, before the first snow of the year.  A huge nomadic halfling community has arrived via river barges, bringing trade goods, entertainment, and kegs of halfling bitter stout—a Ratik favorite.Understandably, the guards at the gate are pleased to admit a gaily-dressed halfling in the company of a beautiful half-elf, and no questions are asked.  The duo make their way through the crowded marketplace and discover that there are no rooms at any of Ratik’s inns.“This is ridiculous,” Indy says.  “I offered that innkeeper ten times his normal rate, and he still wouldn’t put that family out.”“The woman was pregnant, Indy,” Kyreel says.“There’s room in the manger!  Let her sleep with the horses—I’m allergic.”“The gods will punish you soon, I think,” Kyreel says as she turns away from Indy.After a few hours of fruitless searching, a member of the Ratik Watch informs the group that his family is thinking about renting out a room during the festival.  Indy and Kyreel follow the man’s directions, and offer his elderly mother the equivalent of his monthly salary per evening, provided she can secure peace and quiet for Indy’s studies.The woman eyes the two adventurers, and bites the offered coins.  “If it’s peace and quiet you want, sir and lady,” the old woman says between the gold piece in her teeth, “you’ve come to the right place.”-----Indy announces that he’ll need proper materials if he is to decipher the Red Wizard’s spellbook, and the duo return to the marketplace to buy arcanist’s supplies.  An afternoon’s search convinces them that they are in the wrong district.  If they are looking for down-cloth, elven silk, sparkle-spice from the Pale, roasted rabbit, finger puppets, winter-wolf pelts, sharpened stakes, breech-caulk, candied apples, manticore spikes, folding screens, cast-iron pots, tindertwigs, new boots or gnomish wind-up toys they are in the right place.  But every drop of ink for sale in Marner is in the clerk’s district.As Indy is negotiating with a halfling tanner for a pair of lavender riding breeches there is a cry of terror from a few stalls down.  Kyreel and Indy shove through the crowd in time to discover a half-dozen giant rats running wild and attacking everyone in sight.  The rats have overturned a pair of stalls, and started a small fire where an oil lamp has burst.The adventurers leap into the fray, attacking the rats and driving them into the tight spaces between stalls in the overcrowded marketplace.  Kyreel smites one of the rats on a hunch, and her Holy blow literally quarters the rodent in a spray of blood and fur.“These rats are evil,” she says under her breath to Indy.“Tell me about it!” the halfling exclaims, “the damn things chewed a hole in my new boots!”“No, Indy, these rats are Evil.  There is more to this than meets the eye.”The heroes have order restored and the fire put out by the time that the first guards arrive on the scene.  After a brief conversation, the guards praise the adventurer’s quick action, promise to put them up for an official commendation, and recommend that they report to Captain Shella, the guard’s interim captain.  When asked why their captain is “interim”, the guards explain that the former captain was murdered, presumably by thieves, three nights ago.Something is rotten in Denmark, and Kyrell smells a rat.</blockquote>

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