June 26, 5634 AE
We've been on the road for a week, and the events of the last day were harrowing, but more than rewarding. However, I was chronicling our group's previous exploits...
We took a quest to hunt down some assassins, and decided (as a group, to my surprise) that it would be prudent to set up a base of operations within the city limits, so that we wouldn't have to walk for an hour each way every time we wanted to leave The Wizard's place. A beggar overheard our conversation (I'd been telling everyone that we shouldn't be talking about MURDERING ASSASSINS in a CROWDED STREET, but nooo, who would listen to the pragmatic, ruthless, benevolent rogue...) and recommended an abandoned tavern that we could use. Part of me wanted to beat the beggar unconscious, drag him anywhere nearby that was neither crowded nor that tavern, but my colleagues naturally traipsed their merry way over to the tavern as fast as their unsuspecting feet could carry them.
And lo, were my suspicions correct. No less than 10 minutes after we had entered the (smelly, dingy, generally unkempt and rotten) building than the beggar showed up, grinning an overconfident man's banana-smile. My colleagues seemed to think he was there to politely ask us how we liked the inn he had suggested and how the stale (or so I heard) alcohol was (I don't drink). I took a hint when he uttered the words "none of you will be leaving here alive", and jumped through the doorway (over his head, naturally; I suppose I should have noticed he wasn't a particularly malnourished beggar), and looked around; I saw a bottle of liquid near the door, and an archer taking aim at it on the adjacent roof. I reached the bottle before the sniper could shoot it (which turned out to be a wasteful effort, as the vial contained well water) while The Orc (who had also apparently "gotten the hint"; he's cannier than we collectively give him credit for) cleaved the suddenly-armored-in-shining-full-plate beggar in twain.
At this point, I summoned the power of speed the moon conferred upon me at birth, and gave chase to the archer... along the ground, as the walls proved too slippery to climb. I would have much preferred to jump along the rooftops, as I am more surefooted than most, I could easily make the jumps with enhanced speed, and it would have provided a much better vantage point. As I ran, I found another vial (which I left) and a discarded bow (which I kept; it was magically enhanced). I also came across the path of a golem delivering alcohol on a wagon... which, having lost the archer, was my only lead for the moment towards finding our assassins.
My colleagues caught up with me (I've no idea how, they have no sense of urgency when it is called for, and they do not run as fast as I do), and when the golem finally reached an inn, we entered. The barmaid wouldn't listen to a word I said- no matter how forcefully- she simply steered me towards the nearest available seat and set down some drinks and a note. The note was a threat: "I do so hate the persistent ones that don't die." And then suddenly the room went quiet; the patrons were, if I am not mistaken, illusory, and the barmaid was some kind of semicorporeal conjuration. We tried to leave, but the door was locked; in the time it took me to get my trusty tools out of my haversack, the back door (of course taverns don't have their alcohol delivered to the BACK door, that would be conspicuous and silly, wouldn't it? I need to learn to keep my head cooler in combat...) opened, and in came a ragtag bunch of misfits: some spellcasters, some petty thieves, the elven hunter who had mistaken us for bandits on the way back to The Wizard's house from the dwarven ruins, and one extremely attractive woman. Most of them were dispatched with ease; even the elf, who was able to elude us in the darkness of the forest, was killed quickly when escape was not an option for her. But the woman, was not human. She was far more resilient than The Orc or myself, and even with my precise strikes (right between the ribs; she kept moving her head, so her neck wasn't an easy target, even from behind), she still almost killed me. In fact, I fell unconscious from the exertion when I finally delivered one last dagger to her throat. The Bard promptly restored me to health, we took the assassins' magical equipment (which was, understandably, most of it), and left hastily.
It turned out that THOSE were the assassins we were meant to kill, and they had found us; I consider us lucky that we survived, having walked into TWO of their traps in quick succession.
And at this point the curiosities surrounding The Sorceress started... but right now it is late, and I think my colleagues are being annoyed by my candlelight (produced by a vial of alchemist's fire; the economical adventurer's candle), and so I will continue this later.
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Topic: D&D: The mercenaries - Game Concluding (Read 125655 times)