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Largo locks another bolt into his crossbow. He scampers toward the mouth of the chamber to seek clear shot at the ghouls. The bolt case bangs against the halfling's hip and he notes the weight, or lack of, with discomfort. Didn't I tell myself last time to pack more than a score of bolts? Not that I'm desperate enough to go digging about in these corpses for seconds.
"Feel free to hack a few limbs off while your over there!" Largo shouts to Ander, as he reloads his crossbow.
Largo stretches his jaw, trying to pop his ears in the wake of the druid's roaring invocation. "You could warn a fellow next time!" he shouts across to Raina, though the ringing has already begun to subside.
"What've you got there?" Largo sidles up next to Ander, his sodden boots squelching with each step.
Glaring up at his taller companions, Largo hoists his pack above his head and prepares to venture into the murky water. After a moment, he sets it back down, and begins digging through his equipment. He curses, and stands back up. "We could use some rope here, on further consideration." Back in Phlan, hitching my mule. That's where I left it.
Boot-steadied, the halfling yanks his dagger out of the back of the de-animated construct. He sheaths it, and hefts his crossbow.
"Immune to enchantments?" Largo huffs. Taking a hand off his crossbow, he yanks a short blade from a sheath at his thigh. "Let's try Plan C!"
The bard grunts in alarm. Gripping his crossbow by the stock, he seizes a small brass horn from a loop at his side. This works. Usually. Can they hear us, or... "Go for the... joints!"
Largo inhales deeply. He brings the horn to his lips, set into a practiced embouchure. His fingers trickle across the valves of the horn as a discordant melody fills the chamber.
Largo unslings his crossbow as he closes ranks with his companions, too startled to make a quip.
Largo grunts in agreement. "When I kick it, I'll insist that my skeleton be smash to bits."
Largo swivels his hooded lantern up and toward the alcove. He backs away until he reaches the opposite wall of the tunnel, but from his height is still unable to see the back wall of the alcove. "Nyeah, tall folk, can you see a wall at the back of that way?"
"Myeah," Largo agrees, "she went through all the trouble to lure us here. It'd be terribly rude to not see her scheme through."
Largo shifts atop his stool as he peers over the table where the book had been set. "A 'head surrounded by tentacles'?" He scratches his suddenly prickly nape. "Whose treasure were these folk after, exactly?"
"Is there anything in there?" Largo calls through the opening. "We should have tied a rope to him," he mutters to the rest of the group. "One tug for yes, two tugs for no, and thirty tugs for 'retrieve my half-eaten corpse'."
The halfling strains himself against the weight of the armoire, with predictable results. "Can't tell under that mask. Plant some boots here and I'll vouch for two out of three."
GM:
Largo follows the lead into the tower and blinks through the sudden haze of dust. Motes swirl in the light of the open door like slum flies around a week-dead horse. "What's the lady want us to find this time..." His eyes flit around the room and stop on a patch of floor against the far wall. He walks over and crouches down to draw a finger across floor, to where the dust covering the edge of the room suddenly stops to form a rectangular outline. Largo looks to his right, at the antique wooden armoire towering right at the edge of the dust-shadow. He looks back to the group. "Who's got the strength to move this?"
"Nice place for a lighthouse keeper," Largo quips, idly fondling the elegiac tapestries. "But this lot means about as much to me as a orc's diary. Anyone else find anything this ghost might be keen on?"
Largo nods to the caretakers as they pass. "The investigation continues."
Largo pulls a small leather pouch from a pocket. Loosening the drawstrings, he takes a single iron ball bearing and tosses it into the pit.
A stray hair is plucked from Largo's chin and flicked westward over the balcony. A breeze carries the strand off over the water. "Hmm. The mysterious commotion's been worse in the eastern tower, if you believe the caretakers," he replies to Yarroth. "So I'll cast my lot for the west."
He shuffles around the glimmering brass contrivance. Largo extends a hand towards one crystal facet. The hairs on his knuckles raise on end like desert grass in a sirocco. He draws back. "Sorcerous, and you can bank on that," he agrees. "If I could tell what school it's from, well, wouldn't that be nice." He steps back towards the companions. "Doesn't feel... out of tune, if you get me. If it's not beaconin', I can't say why."
GM:
"Myeah, good instinct," the halfling mutters. He squats down to peek under a bunk. The glint of metal catches his eye. A moment later he stands up, turning over a tin bowl too large for his hands. Crushed oats flake off where his fingernail scrapes inside the rim. "Dry," he observes. "This fella wasn't around for breakfast this morning." "We may as well crack that lock to the beacon. No one's around to mind. By the looks if it, not for a day and change."
"This isn't quite the welcome I had hoped for," Largo mutters to his companions. He sifts through belongings and scans the floors as they explore the deserted outpost.
Largo jostles past the ferryman to stand next to Yarroth. Drops of spray splatter his back, and he slaps at the back of his head. "The landbound Sokols are chewing off their lips over this lighthouse," he offers. "Sending their best warden to sort you out was the least they could do. He's a fixer, this one."
Largo nods with Kairon as the troupe of Samaritans tramps toward the dock. He chews his pipe ponderously, with all the intent of a bull staring down a branding iron through a mouthful of dry grass. "Myeah, I caught that as well," he mutters. "They wanna send us down like a buncha baying bloodhounds, flushing out some golden rabbit so they can collect it themselves and throw us the gristle. But," he winks up at the elf and taps his nose, "I've got a backup plan: Grim. This hound smells a bounty, if his debts are what his friends said. We pinch him on our way through, well, we've earn our fee even if Sokol's hiding the key to the family vault." A jabbed finger punctuates his final word. It bursts a smoke bubble.
"You may be on the job, constable, but some of us are less secure in our employment, see?" Largo has stowed his pipe. He stands with crossed arms, staggered feet, and uncertain balance on the surf-rocked deck. "I'll have your back in the bones start cracking, don't wear out your boots worrying about it. And if you'd rather rely on your own honest shadow than a man with an honest agenda, well, that luck's tough enough to crack an egg."
Two small, pale eyes narrow in the direction of Yarroth and Raina, like a pair of underripe blueberries pinched by a disappointed farmer. He has drawn a narrow pipe from a pouch. "A good heart is swell, see, right until it swells outta your chest, Largo scoffs. He twists toward the administrator. "I can tell you're a civilized dame, with a civilized house. And civilized people, they help each other." He takes a short puff on the pipe. A moment later, a lone bubble of smoke squeezes out the corner of his lips and flees toward the nearest window. "My friends can pass on their share. That's their choice. But the thing is, me and my other friends, we got families, see? Maybe here. Maybe somewhere else. Maybe nowhere. Point is, what're we gonna tell them when we get our swollen hearts ripped out by ghouls and chewed up by rats the size of a Waterdhavian towncoach? "I tell you what we're gonna tell them: nothing, cuz we'll be dead. Can you live with that? I know I couldn't." Largo takes a longer drag on the pipe. His nostrils flare like a tiger's pupils on a moonless midnight.
"And a generous consideration for the generous risk," Largo pipes in. Set the contracts up front. Everything always in writing. With a few critical exceptions.
Zhentareppin' over here.
The small man stretches his neck to nod up at the assembled entrepreneurs. "Largo, shepherd of lost souls. At your service."
The bard sucked his teeth thoughtfully. In recent days it had been nearly impossible to find a decent solo contract. At the first mention of peril or mystery, all manner of adventuring types seemed to burst out of the shadows like sewer rats onto a discarded chicken bone. "Where's a fella find the guard post from here?" he asks the second mercenary. "If your friend's in as deep as you say, a haunted quest for secret treasure's the right kind of tale to be throwing around. You find a corpse of the right carriage a few weeks on, all of the talk's of 'poor reckless Grim,' and he's snug as a fat hare in some Cormyr hidey-hole."
'Extra pay' - as soon as the words stumble out from the sot's flushed lips, they slip into the halfling's ear and shove aside any plans of joining the man in tap-numbed leisure. He slips back off the bar stool and tramps up to the arguing mercenaries. "Some friends need finding," he interjects, flitting his attention between the one called Thirus and the spitting sellsword. "In my experience it's easier to find enemies. But if you've had your fill of those, save yourself a few scars and I'll take the coin you would've spent on tomorrow's sticher."
A final tug on the hempen rope earns the creaking acknowledgement of woven fibers on polished wood. Largo squints up into one watery hazel eye as his mule duly regards its new berth, at the hitching post several steps - or two sleeping drunks laid end to end - away from the handworn door to the Laughing Goblin. Largo probably didn't need to go to such lengths to secure this beast each and every time, loops on top of knots on top of hitches. Shandy had never shown the merest inkling of escape, and even a one-armed mule-thief would never need more than a few hacks of a hatchet to liberate his apathetic transport, no matter how many bends and splices he wove. But then, a few months of observation was hardly enough to judge the intentions of mule or man. And hadn't he been greeted, one morning the week past, with a few frayed hemp strands jutting from the bundled knots that hadn't been there the night before? Yes, the sounder judgement erred on mistrust, he decided for the fiftieth time. Largo let the hitch fall. He uncurled his other fist to reveal a stunted carrot, and watched as the treat was quickly abducted between flares lips and long incisors. A small price for loyalty. Largo jostled the pack across his shoulders, and satisfied at the integrity of the leather straps, drifted towards the door of the tavern.
Speaking of equipment, turns out I had an old version of the ALPG which included the option to take max starting gold in place of your class & background junk. Apparently Strahd is one of those by-the-book types, since that choice got yanked from the current edition. We all good now.
Ready to roll. -Zah
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