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Message: <blockquote data-quote="amethal" data-source="post: 3663111" data-attributes="member: 22784">Act 2 – Retrieving the CaseScene 1 - The Depository, Free City of Gate PassJanuary 1st, 1 amWhen they finally reach the depository, it’s a small oasis of calm. The only entrance to the grounds is via a gate in the fence, and as usual it is manned by four guards. Unsurprisingly, the night shift consists of two dwarves and two orcs, both races being able to see in the dark.“So, how do we get in? Did Torrent explain the correct procedure?” asks Solsus.“Um, no,” replies Caryk.The resistance member walks up to the guards.“Hello. Torrent asked us to come here and inspect her locker.”“Okay, no problem,” replies a cheerful dwarf. “I’ll just let you in. Just like to mention two things. Firstly, there are some more guards inside, and they might misunderstand if you ‘accidentally’ try and open someone else’s locker.“Also, a while back we let in a gnome. He’s so darn ugly he could give you the fright of your life if you come across him unexpectedly.”He leads the party through the gate, and towards the tower. The heroes can now see that it’s several stories high, with each floor apart from the ground floor ringed by a balcony. In the grounds are a pair of beautiful fountains. The one on the left depicts the four elemental spirits of local legend. The one on the right features a massive statue of Emperor Coaltongue, which has been decorated with flags and streamers in celebration of the new year.The ground floor consists of a massive circular room, packed with lockers. There is a ramp leading upwards.“Right, lets see if we can find Badger-whotsit,” says Gribron. The dwarf guard is heading back to his post on the gate. The promised interior guards are conspicuous by their absence.“He must be upstairs,” says Caryk, and leads the others up the ramp. His companions have grown used to his shuffling gait, but they can’t help wishing he would move a bit faster.A gnome is waiting for them on the next floor, near to a stack of lockers and a door which presumably leads out onto the balcony. As promised, he is very ugly.“Greetings,” he splutters. “I am Rivereye Badgerface. Apologies for the croak. I have a cold.”“Greetings, noble Gnome,” relies Caryk.“Welcome,” says the Gnome to Caryk. “You must be Perrin. The case is in there.” He gestures casually to a nearby locker, and coughs. “You will need your password to open the case.”“Who is Perrin?” asks Caryk, puzzled.“You never mentioned a password,” says  Solsus to Caryk.“That’s because I don’t have a password. And none of us are called Perrin. There must be some mistake.”Jonathan is intrigued by the way the gnome has apparently chosen a locker at random at which to point. As usual, nothing is making sense, and this time he decides it must be the gnome’s fault.“Why are you lying to us?” he demands.A thoughtful expression flits across the gnome’s face, and then strangely he seems to straighten up somewhat and grow taller - to his evident relief. “Stupid conversation anyway,” he mutters, and heads for the balcony door.Eerily, the door opens by itself and shuts again once he has gone through.Caryk is the first to react, and sets off in pursuit. However, he can’t match Gribron’s long legged stride – or the human’s love of brawling when the odds are five to one in his favour. Gribron gets to the door first, shoves it open – with some difficulty, almost as if the wind was trying to hold it shut.Once out on the balcony, he spots the impostor to his left, finishing off the contents of a flask of some kind. “I’ve got you now!” he thinks, just as a glowing ball of light emerges around the side of the balcony to his left.“What the fu …” he says, then howls in anguish as a beam of searing light flies from the glowing ball and impales him. The light seems to penetrate to the very depths of his grubby soul, and his myriad sins cry out in agony.“Such a beautiful creature,” marvels Caryk, arriving beside Gribron a second later. “I wonder what it is.”Meanwhile, wisely deciding not to add to the congestion out front, Deirdre and Jonathan each take one of the other two balcony doors. Once outside, Deirdre heads towards where she imagines the gnome must be. As she reaches him, the gnome discards his empty flask and runs up the side of the building, heading for the roof.“He’s heading for the roof!” yells Gribron.“Two can play at that game,” she replies, and follows the gnome effortlessly up the wall.Jonathan finds his path blocked by the glowing ball of light. The necessary information appears in his mind. A minor celestial, a lantern archon to be precise. Most unusual to find one here.A shimmer of energy appears in front of Jonathan, then surges towards the archon. Its feeble defences are no match for Jonathan’s powers, and it drops off the balcony, its light extinguished. A second later there is a dull thud as it hits the ground.Deirdre arrives at the snowy roof hard on the gnome’s heels. Spotting her, he sprints across the treacherous surface, only just managing to keep his balance, and hurls himself off the roof into the void.“Now that’s a game I’m not playing!” says Deirdre, and carefully picks her way across the icy roof. It appears the gnome’s leap has carried him beyond the perimeter fence. It will be interesting to see what state he’s in after falling eighty feet or more.As it happens, the gnome drifts to earth as gently as a feather. Once safely on the ground, he turns to grin mockingly at his audience …. At that point a sling bullet appears out of nowhere, and there’s a dull thunk as it strikes him in the chest. Immediately afterwards, a brown, feathered streak of fury flashes past and gashes open his face with its talons.No longer smiling, the gnome heads off at full speed into the nearby streets. Solsus considers pursuing him, but on sober reflection decides the powers the gnome has thus far demonstrated mean it would be folly to risk the mission by allowing himself to be distracted into a dangerous solo operation.The rest of the party have decided to take the boring option and head for the roof via the stairs. However, their progress halts when they spot the half dozen or so bodies on the next floor. A quick inspection reveals that there are four uniformed dwarves, a uniformed half-orc and a civilian gnome. All are tied up, and all are alive but bound and unconscious – except for the half-orc, who appears to have been killed by some kind of energy ray. It seems he was struck the fatal blow after he had been knocked out and tied up.Caryk, needing to prioritise in the face of so many casualties, tries to bring round the gnome. This proves easier said than done, but eventually, with Jonathan’s assistance, the gnome recovers consciousness.Blearily, the gnome focuses on the wrinkled green apparition in front of him. Caryk smiles reassuringly.“I know you,” says the gnome. “You’re one of us… The resistance…. You’re the tortle…. Your name is … your name is … Hargreaves?”[First session ends in gales of laughter, in response to that very bad joke from myself, the DM. If you are one of the overwhelming majority of people who don’t get the “joke”, it really isn’t worth the effort of getting it explained to you.]The heroes busy themselves with freeing the gnome and the bound guardsmen. It emerges that they were jumped by a bunch of elves. The unfortunate half-orc was murdered by the lantern archon, who took exception to something in the guard’s aura. Some taint of “evil”, whatever that means.“So what happened to the case, Mister Badgerface?” asks Solsus.The gnome, the real Rivereye Badgerface, looks startled at being addressed out of thin air. Belatedly Solsus remembers he is not visible, and slowly his short, winged form fades into sight.“The elves took it, after they jumped us. Gods, those guys were dumb. I told their leader I was waiting for a guy called Perrin, who was the only one who had the password to open it. Of course, there’s no Perrin and no password, but I reckoned when Torrent arrived they’d be behaving so strange she’d be bound to figure out there was some funny business going on.”“Any idea where they went?”“Who knows where elves go? Into the ghetto, maybe. Although, I did hear them talking to that glowing ball thing. They were speaking in Elvish; can’t speak it meself, so dunno what they were saying. Except, funny thing is, I could understand that light easy enough, so I followed its side of the conversation. Was saying summat about them elves having a contact at the College of War.”“What’s in the case?”“The case is quite big, and made of black metal. I reckon its adamantine. Can’t tell you what’s in it, but its information vital to the resistance. Got me hands on it when I was working as a servant in the capital, Ragos. All us servants are under a geas not to tell people stuff we learn doing our jobs.”At this point, worn out by the effort of conversation, the gnome slipped back into unconsciousness. Thus he was mercifully spared from having to listen to the heroes discuss the correlation, or otherwise, between a potent magical spell and a species of bird.The situation has an air of anti-climax. The guards come to take away their injured comrades. The gnome recovers consciousness, and heads off into the night. The heroes head out into the street, and discover even the bombing has stopped. The streets are deserted.Scene 2 – The Streets, Free City of Gate PassJanuary 1st, 1.30 am“So, do we try the College of War, or head for the elf ghetto?” asks Gribron.“Given that the College is on the way to the ghetto, I suggest we try the College first,” replies Jonathan, with unanswerable logic.At this point the more keen eyed members realise that a ferocious aerial battle is taking place above their heads, between the bat-winged flyers of the Ragesian second army and the feathered griffons used by the elite units of the Gate Pass army.One such battle is particularly close overhead. There is a loud crack as griffon and wyvern come together, and in this instance the wyvern has come off worst. It spirals down from the sky and smashes into a building at the end of the street. Almost at the same time a broken lance falls from the sky and thuds into the ground at Deirdre’s feet.“Call me Agatha,” says the person formerly known as Deirdre, obviously disturbed by the incident.Solsus, invisible once more,  flies off down the street to investigate the crash. He sees a house with a demolished roof, and an obviously dead wyvern. A rope hangs down to the ground from the wyvern’s empty saddle. There is no sign of any rider.The rest of the group arrive soon after, and Caryk spots footprints in the snow leading from the bottom of the rope into a nearby alley. There is a large, unidentified bundle lying at a point in the alley about a hundred feet away.Jonathan draws his crossbow, and unerringly sends a bolt into the bundle. Those members of the party with keen hearing hear a muffled squishy sound. Gribron takes out his shortbow and tries to hit the bundle with an arrow, but at that range he is unable to hit even a stationary target and the shot goes wide.Caryk shuffles down the alley to investigate the bundle, and is horrified to discover it is actually the corpses of a man, a woman and a youth. Jonathan’s crossbow bolt protrudes from the youth’s chest. All three have died recently from axe wounds. Bloody footprints lead into a nearby house. The door shows signs of having been forced.The party regroups. Solsus flies over the house, and confirms the snow outside the back door is undisturbed. He elects to guard the back door.Everyone else enters the house by the front door, and are faced with a passageway leading the length of the house. The back door is ahead of them, there are stairs leading up, and there is a door to either side. Caryk opens the door to the left, and finds an empty kitchen.Jonathan opens the door to the right, which opens into a living room of some sort. There are clothes strewn across the floor, and an armoured man is rummaging through a wardrobe. The man is battered and bruised, and covered in blood. However, not all of it appears to be his own. A young boy is cowering in fear in the corner.The armoured man turns around as Jonathan enters the room, and reaches for his battleaxe. However, before he can draw it Gribron moves through the doorway and makes a complicated gesture with his hands. The armoured man makes no further effort to draw his axe, and seems at a loss for what to do next.“Somebody do something!” says Gribron. “My spell won’t hold him for long.”Agatha hits the man with a blast of power, rocking him back. Jonathan tries to follow up with a bolt of electricity, but his power fails him and all he can manage is a feeble spark which barely injures its target.The man is recovering from Gribron’s enchantment, but Gribron follows up with a second spell and once again the enemy’s resolution drains away. Seizing her opportunity, Agatha hits him with a second blast, and the man falls to his knees.Jonathan and Caryk move forward to see what they can do for their fallen foe. Caryk rummages in his pack for his healing herbs, and Jonathan sees his kind hearted ally’s distraction as an opportunity to apply a coup de grace to the man, whose uniform clearly identifies him as a Ragesian soldier.The Ragesian is swiftly looted of his valuable equipment, and then the party turn their attention to the terrified hostage. Despite their best efforts, he refuses to be calmed, and eventually Caryk is forced to sling him over his shoulder. At Solsus’s suggestion they leave by the back door, sparing the lad the sight of his family lying dead out front (one of whom has Jonathan’s crossbow bolt sticking out of him).Caryk knows that of a nearby temple to Olladra, which doubles as a resistance safe house, and the group decide to take the lad there. The temple is packed with over a hundred people, and the atmosphere is explosive. A female half elf, dressed in black, is sat just inside the front door. She is sardonically parodying “Auld Lang Syne”, an ever popular song used to celebrate the new year, in a minor key and turning it into a dirge. This does nothing to help feelings in the temple.Our brave heroes, sensing the crowd is bound to erupt at some point during the night, unceremoniously dump the lad at the feet of the first priest of Olladra they see, then continue on their way to the College of War.Scene 3 – The College of War, Free City of Gate PassJanuary 1st, 2 amGabal’s school for evokers, the College of War, is a small campus guarded by four towers and a moat. The locals mockingly refer to it as “The Castle”.The evokers are a key part of the City’s defences, so our heroes might have expected it to be a hive of activity, given the ongoing Ragesian attack.Instead, it is deserted apart from a lone figure at the gate. The man wears blue robes, has a paunch and a receding hairline. He is carefully cupping a cigarette between his hands, and stamping his feet in an effort to keep warm.Gribron wandered towards him.“Evening mate, could I cadge a fag?”The man smiles, and seems glad of the company. He hands over a cigarette and lights it for Gribron. “What brings you out on such a cold night?” he asks.“Looking for a bunch of elves,” replies Gribron. “How about you. How come you’re standing at these gates in this weather?”“Waiting for trouble,” replies the man. “In times of crisis people turn to Gabal and his evokers, but they’ve all done a bunk. They’ve put up with the mages swanning about during peace time, and now when they need them they are nowhere to be seen. I reckon our neighbours are going to turn nasty pretty soon.”At this point Gribron belatedly realises who he is talking to. Diogenes, an enchanter who studies at the College of War for reasons no one can fathom, and whose relationship with the other students (almost all of whom are evokers) can best be described as mutual contempt.“You’re Diogenes, right? Name’s Gribron.”“Pleased to meet you Gribron. Hey, you must be Gribron the Sneaky, one of those ‘alley mages’ who gives the City Watch such a headache. How come you’re still here? Rumour is the City will be letting in the Inquisitors soon.”“I’m working on a plan to escape. Anyway, I could ask you the same question.”“Heck, there aren’t that many Inquisitors. I thought I’d stick around and give them a hard time.”“Fair enough. You here on your own?”Diogenes laughs. “No, I’ve got the charming Shealis to keep me company. I think she’s packing. At least, I hope she is. I can’t stand the snooty Elf bitch! If she hadn’t had all those visitors tonight, she’d probably have left already.”“What sort of visitors?”“Elves mainly, and that damn familiar of hers. I don’t see the point of a familiar at the best of times, let alone a glowing ball of light that just screams ‘shoot me’. ““Did the Elves have a black metal case on them? And where did they go?”“They might have done. I didn’t see. That big glowing target tends to distract me. Afterwards, the Elves headed off into the middle of the city, towards the ghetto, but the familiar went the other way, back the way they’d come from.”The rest of the group, left out of the conversation, have nothing better to do than study their surroundings. One of the college’s towers has been cracked, presumably by a Ragesian bomb. The moat has a griffon and its rider floating in it, but its clear the missing students have looted the body on their way to wherever it is they’ve gone.Caryk wandered up to Diogenes.“Hi, do you mind if we come in and speak to Shealis?”“Help yourself,” came the reply. “I’ll lead you to her room. I don’t think anything is going to happen here tonight, its late and its too darn cold.”Shealis lives up to everybody’s expectations. She’s a beautiful, blond, blue-eyed elven woman dressed in red robes, and she is not in the least bit interested in Caryk’s inane politeness or Gribron’s blather. She is in the middle of packing, and eventually slams the door in their faces.“Told you she was a bitch,” remarks Diogenes. “She hates my guts, as well. If you wanted to delay her, I could challenge her to a spell duel. It doesn’t matter how much of a rush she’s in, she can always find the time to kick my arse.”“So can she defeat you?” asked Solsus.Diogenes is surprised to be addressed by what he had assumed was Caryk’s ‘imaginary friend’. “She thinks she can, but she’s arrogant and predictable. I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve and I think I can surprise her.”“Can we help?” asks Caryk.“Of course not,” replied Diogenes. “The spell duel has strict rules. Even though its late at night, the college is deserted, and you are probably going to be the only spectators, it would clearly be cheating if you were to wait until she has cast her best spells, then rush into the arena and grab her.”“What a pity,” says Caryk, crestfallen.It emerges that the arena is a circle sixty feet in diameter, surrounded by seating. Inside the arena, powerful wards ensure that all spell damage is non-lethal. The spectators are not so lucky.Diogenes challenges Shealis to a duel, which she gladly accepts. She has finished packing, and has her valued possessions in her pack on her back. Solsus searches her room after she leaves, just to be on the safe side, but finds nothing of interest.The combatants enter the arena, and the party spread themselves out on the seats behind Shealis’s end. She laughs scornfully at this. “You ought to be at Diogenes’s end. That’s where all the carnage is going to be.”The spell duel is a cagey affair, with both combatants concentrating on negating their opponents’ spells rather than casting spells of their own. Diogenes vanishes behind a magical mist, and the bored spectators take this as their cue to attack Shealis.Solsus hovers above her, and fires a sling bullet. He is surprised to discover that, despite being a wizard, she is wearing metal armour underneath her robes. Agatha, unfazed by armour, fires off an eldritch blast but the nimble wizard dodges.Diogenes was last seen vanishing into his mist, so Shealis is surprised to hear his voice whisper from close behind her, “I’ve got the drop on you; surrender or die!” However, something about his choice of words doesn’t ring true, and Gribron’s illusion peters out when confronted by her disbelief. Similarly, whatever Jonathan attempted is shrugged off.Caryk moves to help his friends, and his punch connects solidly with Shealis’s unarmoured face.Spitting with rage, Shealis turns to her new attackers, and unleashes a fiery inferno. Cleverly, she has deduced the position of the invisible Solsus, but she is unprepared for his fey heritage and the spell fails in his vicinity.Caryk and Agatha are not so lucky, consumed by the flames, they collapse to the ground. Fortunately for them, they are now inside the area of the arena’s warding effect, so are merely unconscious rather than dead.Diogenes emerges from his protective mist, and strike his enemy with an arrow of acid. Jonathan follows up with a blast of power, and the elf is beaten.Diogenes uses two of Shealis’s healing potions to revive Caryk and Agatha. He also claims her spellbook for himself, whilst the party take the rest of her items.Flicking through her spellbook, Diogenes can be heard muttering “Evocation spell. Another evocation. What’s next. Oh, guess what, evocation. No use to me .. hullo, what’s that?”A piece of paper has fallen from the spell book.Jonathan investigates it. It appears to be a map of part of the Elven ghetto, with a carpenter’s shop highlighted. There is also a note, in Elvish “Arborea before Elysium before Celestia.”The note means nothing to the rest of the party, but Jonathan’s eyes briefly glow blue as he calls upon his talented memory.“Arborea, Elysium and Celestia are part of the Great Wheel,” he says, “an explanation early philosophers came up with to explain the nature of the universe before the real planes and their actual characteristics became known. They envisaged three competing realms of goodness, each with a set level of law or chaos, and arbitrarily allocated the various types of celestial between them.“Of course, modern thinkers realise it’s a lot more complicated than that. Archons come from Irian, the Eternal Day, and Savareth the Battleground. Angels come from Syrani, the Azure Sky. Eladrin hail from Thelanis, the Faerie Court and guardinals come from Lamannia, the Twilight Forest. I can see where the attraction of the idea of Wheel came from, with its three planes of absolute good, as opposed to the ambiguity of the real world.”“So it’s a fairy story,” said Gribron.“No,” replied Jonathan. “It’s a code of some sort.”“Code or not, its very late and I need to rest,” says Gribron.“How about the temple, the resistance safe house?” says Caryk.“No thanks, that place seemed far too volatile, and I need my beauty sleep” replies Gribron.“Why don’t we spend the night in the house of that lad we rescued?” suggests Solsus.Everyone agrees this is a great idea, apart from Caryk.“Fine then,” says Caryk. “I’ll meet you in the morning outside the temple, and then we can head to the elf ghetto and see if the case is there.”Caryk heads off back to the temple. On the way out, he mentions to Diogenes that, if he needs any help in causing problems to the inquisitors, the temple is a meeting place for those with similar views.He fails to notice Shealis, still unconscious, has been tied up and left in the kitchen. A sign around her neck has the word “Wizard” written on it in Jonathan Farrier’s handwriting. Interlude – the Temple of Olladra, Free City of Gate PassJanuary 1st, 3 amTrudging into the temple, Caryk notices that the half elf is still playing dour songs.“I don’t think your choice of music is helping the situation,” he says to her.“Oh, I’m sorry,” she replies sarcastically. “I left all my happy tunes in my house, and unfortunately it burned down.”It is not long before a fight breaks out. A pair of youths suddenly and irrationally decide to blame a  half orc woman for the entire Ragesian invasion. Caryk tries to intimidate them into backing down without a fight, but fails miserably.He interposes himself between the youths and their victim. The sight of the tortle, protected by his thick shell and bristling with weapons, makes them pause.At this point the head priest, Buron, spots the altercation and harangues the youths. Shamefaced, they disappear back into the crowd.“Caryk, isn’t it?” says the priest. “I’m Buron, head of the temple here.”“Pleased to meet you,” replies Caryk. “I’ve been trying to stop that half elf from playing her music. Its making a bad situation much worse. Is there anything you can do?”“Hm,” responds the priest. “I see what you mean.” He strides off towards the musician.“Mulysa,” he says,” that’s enough of your depressing tunes.”She turns to him belligerently, a cutting remark on the tip of her tongue. Before she can say anything, he snatches her guitar from her and dashes it to pieces on the temple floor. Then he heads back to Caryk and offers him a bed in the hidden cellar, sometimes used by the resistance as a safe house.“No thanks,” replies Caryk. “I’ll sleep up here in case there’s any more trouble I need to get you to deal with.”[Second session ends with the other players moaning that Caryk got some extra XP for the above interlude. I deflect the blame onto Ryan Nock.]</blockquote>

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