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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 3551952" data-attributes="member: 1210">With the morning light our heroes head back into Alathion. The city is criss-crossed with canals; each bridge requires a meager toll. Fortunately for Kifla and Barouk, they live here. The others must pay a smidge more. Kain grumbles about the pennies he has to spend; after all, for a jungle-dwelling insurrectionist, the opportunities to make money are... limited. He huffs. “I’m gonna sell some of the gear we got while you visit your master,” he tells Kifla. “What was his name, again?”“Uh...” Kifla thinks for a minute. Hmm, I never got his name, she realizes, but aloud, she says, “They call him Big Nose.”Kain snorts laughter. “All right, why don’t we meet after you’re done with Big Nose and I’m done selling loot?”“Sounds good,” grunts Barouk.Grom, who has accompanied the party back to the city, reminds them, “I can’t stay here long- I need to get back and help my folk.” He smiles his tusky smile. “Don’t forget- they’ll probably reward you guys if you can help us.”For a half-orc, Grom is surprisingly persuasive. The party agrees to try to hurry things along so that they can go to his people’s aid. Then they split up. While Kain tries to sell a bunch of weapons and armor to the neighborhood smith (and discovers that he isn’t buying or selling anything until some stolen property is returned), Grom, Barouk and Kifla head towards the Scintillating Tower, surrounded by its Garden of Glass, to see Kifla’s master within. After knocking, they are greeted by a construct that leads them into a sitting room- and then turns into a gnome, but not the one that they met before. Clearly, this is ‘Big Nose’. When they show him their captive, he is overjoyed, giving the party a bag of gold and handing Kifla a scroll. “The spell on that scroll is somewhat unusual,” he tells her. Upon closer examination, it turns out to hold the spell paint memory, which will allow her to create an image, perfect in every detail, of something that she has seen.“Do you know anything about the kidnapping of the daughter?” Barouk asks. “We met a sheriff who was looking for her- the daughter of someone important, apparently.”Big Nose shrugs. “Oh, yes, everyone is talking about it. The rumors that I heard said that she’s the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, and she was kidnapped for extortion purposes.”This seems like a logical story, and our heroes talk briefly about pursuing the matter, but again, Grom reminds them, “We need to get moving soon.”“Well, we’re staying the night in town tonight, right?” Kifla says, as the party exits the tower of Big Nose. “We might as well keep our eyes open while we’re here, and maybe we can tell the authorities about anything we hear.”As the party moves down the street, they run afoul of a trio of sneering young men. They eye the party and call a few insults at our heroes, who respond in kind. “Fools, don’t you know you’re in Lion Gang territory?” one of the gang members taunts as the three thugs assume fighting stances. They are unarmed, but to Barouk’s eye, they look like practiced unarmed fighters.  “Yeah?” the dwarven monk returns, taking up a stance of his own. “Well, I think the authorities need to hear that the Lion Gang had something to do with a certain recent kidnapping that is the talk of the town.”“Huh?” The shortest of the street thugs seems confused.The one who spoke earlier, a blond man with a dusting of moustache, pipes up. “We didn’t have anything to do with that, none of us!” He seems uneasy at the accusation.“But I bet you know who did,” Grom accuses.The Lion Gang members move close together and have a quick murmured discussion. The blond one turns back and states, “She isn’t kidnapped, anyway. She joined up with the Furies.”“Who?” Kifla asks.“They’re our rivals,” another of the gangsters tells them. “Girls. No matter what they start off as.”The two groups drift apart, having managed to avoid violence. “Thanks for the info!” Kifla bubbles, waving at them.It starts raining. Everyone goes back to the tenement building where Barouk and Kifla live. Kifla gladly lets Grom sleep in her room; Kain and Herb, who has gotten very quiet, are left out in the common room. Kain sleeps on a couch, Herb in a chair. When he awakens, Kain finds that he is missing some money and goes into a cold, murderous rage. He is unsure as to who the culprit is, but he knows that if he finds them, he will extract payment from them one way or another. As the morning moves towards noon and our heroes buy gear with which to travel, he looks again and again at Herb. Finally, Kain accuses him of stealing his money in the night. Herb looks horrified at the very thought, and a shakedown reveals that he is completely broke. “Damn it!” Kain curses. “Who took my money?? Argh!!”“I think it is time for me to leave you,” Herb says abruptly. “What?” exclaims Kifla. “It is clear that I am not trusted here, nor do I have much to offer you. I... I must find myself. My path.” He heaves a sigh. “I am lost. I must find my way.” And with that, he walks away, into the city. In the distance, thunder peals.“Good riddance,” spits Kain. The others give him a collective hard look.By noon the party begins winding its way through the thronged streets and across the canals, and by about two in the afternoon they reach- and pass without- the city gates. During their shopping, they bought a beast of burden, a bosoch- a large beetle, domesticated by dwarves. Soon they are on their way down the trade road that parallels the Alathion Canal- they will be following the same route that they have for all of their adventures so far, only this time they will be following it much farther. Grom tells them that, when the time comes, they will turn north off of the road, head into the Deadgrass Lands again, and cross to the north end of them.The traffic on the road is thick as always. The rain grows heavier, splattering our heroes’ legs with mud from the road. Squabbling brothers wearing wide-brimmed hats against the downpour drive a load of hay; a wagon plods along, pulled by more of the great domestic beetles, either bosoch or bodokod. A man and his dogs herd a muddy flock of ducks and a few geese. A fellow with a cart of soaked firewood grumbles sourly to himself.When night draws her curtains, our heroes set up the driest camp they can manage, stretching some blankets from branches and erecting Grom’s two-man tent. Better than nothing...Our heroes do their best to settle in for the night while thunder rumbles. Flashes of lightning illuminate the night for an instant now and then. Kain takes the first watch. The wind blows through the camp; the rain flies nearly sidewise at times. Kain shivers. Hell of a night, he thinks. There is another flash of lightning, closer; ozone tickles at his nostrils. Wait a minute, he realizes, that didn’t come from the sky.Kain draws his weapons. He squints into the darkness. Something’s moving, he realizes. “Wake up!” he shouts. “Beware!”There is a buzz of electricity, and a strange flying beast charges at him through the night, its tail crackling with electricity. It looks almost worm-like, but it has a distinct head and eyes, and strange, hair-like growth along its head and around its mouth. The long tail glows with the power of lightning.Kifla summons a celestial own, which swoops in and strikes the weird monster. It spits and squeals, and its tail lashes out, the electricity racing around it. It misses, and as it moves forward, Grom springs, swinging his weapon, and lands a solid blow to the head! The electrical worm thing spins away, its uppermost bits a bloody ruin. “Wow, nice blow!” exclaims Kifla.“I’m going back to sleep,” grumbles Barouk.The next day the party moves forward along the trade road. The rain has slackened, but it is still coming down, and the road is a muddy mess. The party stops to help an old man unstick his wagon from the mud; in thanks, he gives them a chicken and a dozen eggs. The rain finally stops, at least for a while. Soon enough our heroes move off of the road, and along the track heading north through the jungle and then into the Deadgrass Lands. The skies are clearing. As they cross into the grasslands, everyone notes that the flashes in the distance are still visible, and those who have not seen them before gape in wonder. Whatever is happening, it is happening far away. The power being displayed is unfathomable.As they move north through the tall, brittle grass, the party is assailed by a pair of weird wolf-like things that peel their faces back when they attack, but they are defeated easily (despite Kifla’s color spraying most of the party!).It isn’t until the toad that things get ugly.Next Time: The Toad!!</blockquote>

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