"Well, most of a stick will have to do."
I climb out and look for some clothes.
You climb out of the hole into the courtyard of Anglefork Castle, and waste no time conversing with the common folk. Instead you go and look for a place that could provide you with some clothing - the keep seems the obvious direction, so you head toward its large front door, which is fortunately entirely open. The door guards, a respectable, middle-aged pair of red-nosed women you'd probably have trouble telling apart, give you a puzzled look, but do not try to stop you from entering. After all, you are clearly unarmed and probably mean no particular harm.
The keep's interior is pleasantly spacious, but carries in it an overall air of utter austerity. Dirty wooden floors, dark stone walls, only the bare minimum of daylight able to make its way in through the ridiculously tiny windows. All the torch brackets and candelabras appear to be empty, and in fact you can spot a few areas where torch brackets are conspicuously missing by virtue of being torn from the walls. And if anything, it actually feels colder in here than outside.
You head up the central set of stairs and take a left down a particular corridor, barely able to see anything as you get further from the exterior walls, and you only manage to orient yourself by a light shining from a room at the end of the western wing. You step carefully on the creaking floorboards and peek into the lit doorframe.
The room is a very nice one, or at least so you would suppose from the way that the nicer bits of bedroom furniture appear to have been pushed about to make room for a clearly appropriated table from a far cheaper origin. Upon it are two goblets and a green, upturned bottle of what you assume to be wine. Around it sit two people - an elderly, affable-looking man wearing a formidable set of whiskers and a set of noble clothes, while opposite him sits a teenaged, fair-haired girl, barefoot and wearing a long white nightdress. Both are dull-eyed and clearly very drunk - the man in particular seems to be half-asleep and about to slip right to the ground, and the girl is staring out into emptiness wistfully.
As you consider leaving politely, the girl turns her head your way. "Need something?" she asks thickly, slurring her words. "The Crown provides, as you can see," she looks down at the bottle, smiling weakly.
"Okay so first things first, what's with the bricks? They did some weird stuff I'm not quite sure I fully comprehended."
As Mr. Erikson gives up you resume your questioning.
"Bricks?" the man asks, puzzled. You show him your inscribed brick, presuming there's a fancy word for it or something.
"That's one of the things them minders keep in the chamber?" he asks after a moment's examination. You nod. "In a big pile?" he asks, and you nod again. The shrouded man strains his think pan for a moment.
"Nope," he says after a few seconds' thought. "Can't say I know anything about these. Anything true, anyway."
Give up on clothing and ascend through the hatch.
You head over to the center of the room, having accepted perpetual nudity, and jump for the chain. You don't manage to reach it, so you jump again, and find you are very far off the mark still. Stepping over to the pile of bricks, you do a jump off that, and your hand grasps the chain tantalizingly before it slips out of your grasp, sending you tumbling along the room into a particularly moldy set of pots and jugs that shatter at your mere touch, filling your back with a wide assortment of clay shards and unspeakable ancient filth. As you sit there miserably, you emit one last great sigh as Mr. Johnson makes a running jump off the bricks and grabs hold of the chain much more securely than you do.
As the chubby fellow flails and pants his way up the chain, his sweat dripping down even after his naked body disappears from sight, you start to wonder how exactly you're going to die down here. Thirst, you bet. It's always thirst in these situations.
"Effing terrorists... You! Guide me to the local bathing facility and prepare me some clothes!"
Make demands again, pointing random person who's not the person I made demands first time. Make him/her guide me to the baths. If he/she is not willing, then give her/him few encouraging slaps. Hopefully I can get to bathing this time.
You wander up to a woman carrying a bucket of water, her hateful expression indicating that she's probably one of the serving folk, and demand that she guide you to the nearest baths. She looks up at you, stopping in her tracks, looking at you incredulously for a second.
"Get your own bloody clothes, you filthy idjit," she replies, and you decide you cannot let this slide. You prepare your hand and give her an elegant slap to the face. She bares her teeth and pours her icy cold bucket of fresh well water all over you. You shriek like a little girl and reflexively punch her in the gut, which she takes as a sign of escalating hostilities, stepping closer without delay and giving you a very hard knee to the left kidney. You curl up and tackle her against a wall, knocking the air out of her, and she brings an elbow down on your spine, causing you to fall on your knees in pain. You start to bite her in the hip very sharply as she starts punching you in the head rapidly, and this goes on for a good ten seconds until you feel something poking into your back. You pause in your determined biting and turn around to look what that's about.
Behind you are three guards - two solid women that you think must have rushed over from the keep's door, and a tall, thin, elderly guard who seems to have emerged from one of the buildings. One of the door guards is currently pressing a very sharp-looking spear into your back.
"Fighting in the castle is strictly prohibited," says the tall, thin man in a very dull, even voice.
"This dirty idjit started it, slapped me right across the gob. Thinks he's some lord, he does!" the woman says indignantly, half-punching, half-kicking you off herself in short order as you are distracted. The guardswoman pokes you over to the wall.
"I saw it, yes," the woman menacing your back with the spear nods.
"Mm-hm," the tall guard nods, and you can almost hear him making a mental note. The water on you evaporates steadily, giving you an incredible chill. You also feel a mite dizzy from all the blows to the head you just received. "Has the offender anything to say for himself?"
Exit the tunnel and request directions to the nearest weapon shop.
You decide to brave the chain, and after Mr. Calverly makes a thorough fool of himself you make a very difficult running jump off the pile of bricks and barely grab on to the chain. And you must say, climbing up a chain does look a lot easier in a game. You grunt and pull and flail and occasionally scream as you push your underutilized body to the limit, sweating a day's worth of water as you climb upward, and eventually...
eventually you make it out, flopping nakedly on the dirt as you pant with exhaustion. Mr. Codeburn and a nearby shrouded man look at you in slight confusion, but you don't let that get you down. Today you've shown physical prowess unlike any you've ever displayed in life, and now it is time for some 30, 60 or perhaps 180 minutes of rest as you catch your breath and try not to vomit.
Eric Codeburn, COMPUTISTICS SPECIALIST
- Wounds: 1
- 6514 gp (non-sequential)
- Gold-Backed Burlap Torso Garment
- Inscribed Brick ('Water')
- Anglefork Castle: A Guest
Benny Calverly, Barber
- Naked
- Burlap Potato Sack, the Original Diptych
- Burlap Potato Sack, a Tragedy in Two Parts
Leif Erikson, Miner
- Traces of Gore: Bits On One's Bits
- Reappropriated Skirt
- 1 gp
- License to Bathe
- Wet and Freezing
- Anglefork Castle: Troublemaker
Robert Johnson, MLG
- Naked
- Exhausted
- A Word: WATER
- Traces of Mischief: Blackened Fingers
- Traces of Mischief: A Choking Odor
- Heavily Improvised Sack-Flail (110 gp)
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Naked
- Sticks: 0.95 (total)
- Rat Pantheon: Disliked
- Traces of Mischief: Mouthful of Blackness
Author
Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 263667 times)