'A good question Petrus. I think we should serious look at something faster than walking. Especially if we plan to be there in time to help Tanaila. A carriage might be a bit pricey, a wagon might be a good compromise.'
'And congratulations are in order to Baern. I don't know what you told your father, but it worked.'
'Hopefully our adventure will be more successful than last time.'
"Well, we already have a wagon, unless you sold the one we reclaimed a couple years ago... You... haven't sold it... have you?"
"Well, we already have a wagon, unless you sold the one we reclaimed a couple years ago... You... haven't sold it... have you?"
Umm not sold... but its desperate need of washing. I've been using it to haul manure for the last little bit... and we'll need horses (or at least mules to tow it.)
'Hmm, just how we want to rescue folks... in a wagon built for poo.' ~ Kylar's voice drips with sarcasm.
'Unfortunately, I guess beggars can't be choosers. I'll go and start drawing some water to try and wash out some of the filth. Maybe we should get some straw to at least cover the bottom of the wagon as well.'
I'll help.
Baern did your father mention anything about borrowing some weapons or armor from the dueling academy?
If not I'm finding a sling or at least some throwing knives. I never want to get hit with an ax again... it hurts too much.
After only a few days back in Korvosa, Kylar and Petrus were making plans to head back to Tanaila’s family estate to look for her. Baern initially refuses to accompany them, not wanting to risk his father’s further displeasure. Kylar and Petrus convice Baern to speak to Kordan about assisting them, and Kordan actually volunteers to accompany them to the estate.
A day later the group is trouping up into the hills, armed and provisioned for a week of travel and riding in a cart pulled by a rented mule. They arrive at the estate in much less time than their last journey, and leave the wagon at the bottom of the hill with the mule. Petrus also stays behind to guard the wagon and provisions. The rest of the group heads back up the hill to the house and find the trap door again. Strangely, they find more orcish bodies outside the ruins, mauled by unnatural claws. They head back down to the cellar and Baern searched again, this time finding the concealed door he was convinced was there. The group ventures into the dark corridor behind the door.
The corridor seemed to shortly end at a room full of barrels of a potent alcoholic brew. Footprints in the thick dust on the floor, however, led to another concealed door in the back wall. Behind that door was another long, dark corridor, with a pair of parallel rails in the floor. The corridor ran for miles, and the group walked nearly half an hour before reaching the end of the corridor.
They spied a four-wheeled cart resting on the rails and a figure within the cart. They could not see clearly, and Kylar crept ahead to get a better look. He spooked, however, and swung at the figure with his staff before coming back to report that he had found Tanaila. Baern and the others looked at Kylar a bit disgustedly and Baern gave Kylar a cuff to the back of the head. Baern took a vial of healing potion from Kordan and fed it to Tanaila, who was lying unconscious and bleeding in the cart. She soon awoke and blearily greeted them. As she regained her strength she switched from thanking them for finding her to berating the group for their slowness and dull eyes and rough treatment.
She told us a tale of her hiding in the tunnels from orcs that had apparently commandeered the buildings outside. It was a distillery that had been operated by her grandfather. Kylar had some crazy suspicion that the distillery was being used to make Shiver, and we decided to battle the orcs in the distillery and shut it down. Just on the other side of the cart was a set of doors leading outside, where the distillery was to be found. Kylar silently opened the doors and snuck out. Only 20 feet from the doors of the corridor was a massive building: the distillery. They could hear no orcs at the door, only a few piping voices inside, lamenting their lot. The group burst in; though Kordan stayed just outside, out of sight. There were some children in the building, moving barrels around. A single older boy stood up on a raised platform, directing them. He sees the group and assumes they were sent by Gaedren, telling them to get inside and get to work, and grumbling about how long it has been since Gaedren sent any kids.
Kylar asked him about the orcs and he said that the orcs were enforcers hired by Gaedren, and not to worry about them. Baern concealed his crossbow and wandered closer to the older boy, then quickly drew the crossbow on him, ordering him to keep still. The boy raised his hands, but blustered at the group, telling them that Gaedren would punish them for their actions.
Shouting of orcish voices outside disrupted the little tableau inside the distillery. Kordan listened to the voices for a few moments and looked at the older boy, asking him if their enforcers had been paid. The boy’s face grew intensely frightened as he listened to the shouting and peered out the windows. He told the group that the orcs had taken to banging on the doors at night, shouting for Gaedren, but they always left after they got no answer. The boys recently started barricading the doors in the evening before the orcs came to the building. The shouting grew intense and Baern looked out the windows to see groups of orcs rushing at the doors to the distillery, though they squinted and shielded their eyes from the sun.
The group gathered the boys together to quickly barricade the doors to keep them out. Baern tried to shoot the orc’s leader, an unholy shaman of some kind, but the orc’s foul magic protected it and drove reason from Baern’s mind for a time. Kordan easily dealt with the orcs attempting the doorway they had originally entered, and the rest of the group managed to fend off the orcs attempting the other doors until a horn call outside drew the orcs away.
The orcs fortified positions outside each doorway, obviously waiting until darkness when they would not be pained by the sun’s rays. Baern and the others fortified their own positions as best they could, and Baern’s searches through the building discovered a pair of ensorcelled books, though there was no time to decipher them now. As the sun grew low through the smoke screen the orcs had made the orcs attacked again, flinging torches through windows and battering down the main door with a battering ram. Kordan came to the main door to repel them, smashing aside the orcs with ease. Then, out of the smoke came the orc shaman, roaring his anger at Kordan.
As Kordan faced down the orc shaman, orcish screams came sharply out of the smoke along with low unearthly moans. The sounds of the orcs pounding on the doors were replaced with more screams as unknown figures attacked the greenskins in the smoke-tinged dusk. Kordan attacked the orc shaman as Kylar and Baern raced to aid him. The orc shrugged aside Kordan’s blow and muttered a few guttural words. An inky blackness started from its fingertips and raced up its arm, seeming to shrink and shrivel its own flesh. The orc reached out and touched its black hand to Kordan’s chest. Kordan staggered back and caught himself, but then seemed to shrivel and dropped to his knees. His hair turned a sickly green-grey and his skin sagged on his bones, his flesh seeming to putrefy instantly. Baern watched with horror as the orc’s foul magic sucked the life from his father’s body. Kordan hunched forward, a wheezy sigh escaping from his lips, and the orc raised a monstrous fist and brought it down on Kordan’s head. Kordan’s head exploded in a spray of rotted flesh and bone, splattering Kylar and Baern.
Baern stared in horror and mounting rage at the body of his fallen father and the chuckling orc looming above him. He dropped his crossbow and pulled his heavy cudgel from beneath his cassock. Baern’s rage drove him to rashly charge the monster, swinging his club. Baern barely registered the figures coming out of the smoke, but they drove a cold feeling of fear and disgust into the others, as the figures were not natural. Cadaverous and filthy, corpse-like creatures dragged down and feasted upon the orcs and drove in upon the distillery.
A pair of these corpse-creatures attacked the orc shaman from behind, but he turned on them and bellowed a single word: Rovagug. The corpse-creatures shrank back from the orc, cowering on the ground before it. The orc shaman turned and charged through the door into the distillery, flinging Baern and Kylar aside. Orson dashed over and picked up Baern, who lay briefly dazed upon the floor and carried him back to the door. Baern, still consumed by his rage, wrenched himself free and flung himself at the orc yet again. The orc knocked Baern back contemptuously and then turned to the door at the rear, where the group had first entered the doomed distillery. He thundered the word Rovagug again at the corpse-creatures that stood at that door, then charged again, through the door and across the lawn to the cliff-side door, and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.
As his quarry disappeared from sight, Baern’s mind cleared, and he took stock of his surroundings. Nearly half of the distillery was engulfed in flames, punctuated by explosions of the vats and barrels of alcohol. Only he and Kylar remained in the building, Tanaila and Orson having fled at some point. Kylar ran up to the office platform and peered through a window before smashing it and leaping through. Baern’s tired body told him in no uncertain terms that any such exertion was too much to bear. He stumbled to the main door, averting his eyes from his father’s fallen form, and stumbled out into the smoke and darkness. He stumbled across Orson, lying face down in the dirt not far from the building. Though he could barely bring forth the effort, he drew on his healing powers to revive Orson, and the pair of them set forth for the river.
Baern and Orson spent a cold night in a small boat on the river, mooring themselves in a small cove under a cliff where the orcs and corpse-creatures would not discover them. As dawn broke, the pair went back to the distillery to find their friends. They could detect no sign of orcs or anything else, but shouting for their friends soon turned up Tanaila and Kylar, who had hidden in the trees all night.
The group looked over the burned out ruins of the distillery, finding charred and mauled bodies but none still living. Chillingly, Kordan’s body was missing, but no one could reason how it disappeared. Among the ruins Kylar found Kordan’s crossbow, miraculously undamaged from the furious fires. Baern tearfully cradled the crossbow as the rest of the group discovered something else. Hidden inside the shell of one the massive brass vats was an opening to an underground chamber and a sturdy metal ladder leading down. The group ventured down and found a small, bare, stone room and a massive pair of stone doors. The doors were completely covered with sigils and runes of arcane origin. Tanaila recognized them as powerful symbols of warding, far more powerful than she could defeat. She knew of a book in the library of the Academae where she had found a method that could be used to open it, but she could not recall its words. They concealed the opening to the chamber with scraps of metal and dirt to hide it until their eventual return.
The group, tired and defeated, circled around the hill of the estate to their cart. Though the cart remained, there was no sign of Petrus, and the poor mule lay mauled and partially eaten where it had been picketed. Shouting and searching turned up no sign of Petrus, not even a recognizable trail. The group did not want to be caught by orcs or corpse-creatures in another night at the estate and so, utterly without hope, they salvaged what provisions they could from the cart and started the long walk back to Korvosa.
Very nice recap Stuart... so nice that I've decided not to put mine up! ;)
Only one minor point... you didn't seem to mention Orson... ;)
Cheers!
Tanaila's last name is Cuvanta (SU-van-Ta).
Larcifer,
Is my father still in prison? If so how much will it cost to either pay his fine and get his freedom or bribe a guard to get him out?