Like a Thief in the Night
Nov. 25th, 2006 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothFriday night we had a session of Lazar's Wheel of Time themed Shadake game, in which Fezzik did not burn down an entire city. Although it was a close call.
The next day they headed over to the Feriphal noble's place to get a look at the maps and a cart to haul back treasure with. To their surprise, the 'guards' the noble had promised to send with them were both people they'd already met -- the crazy witchhunter from the forest (who claimed that he'd 'taken care of' the witches in the ruins) and the thieftaker from the night before.
The plan was to head to a warehouse in Four Kings, long abandoned, where according to rumors a cache of ter'angreal was hidden on 'the seventh' floor of the three story building. 'Basement levels' was the initial guess on that one. After that, if things went well, they'd head on to Ebu Dar to search for several caches of angreal and sa'angreal hidden in the city using the one power, by a somewhat... eccentric Aes Sedai. Fezzik was confident he'd be able to find them, with a thorough search.
The noble's motives were somewhat suspicious -- he wasn't claiming a share of the treasure or anything, just hoping that they'd sell their finds to him for what they considered a fair price -- but why look a gift horse in the mouth? They left without (intentional) delay, that same day.
It took several days to get to Four Kings, during which it rained constantly. And when the rain finally *did* let up, they found themselves flooded with Whitecloaks, completely occupying a town outside the borders of Andor and Cairhein, obviously preparing to go to war with someone.
They found a relatively whitecloak free inn to stay the night in, and Sophia asked around. Apparently, the whitecloaks were planning to attack and occupy Cairhein, which explained why all the city guards had vanished in the past couple days -- obviously, they'd gotten wind of the attack, and didn't feel like fighting. Unfortunately, someone recognized Sophia, or seemed to, and when she trailed him, she saw him talking to several Inquisitors. This was bad news, since it would be suspicious to leave in the middle of the night, and yet if they stayed until morning... well, they probably wouldn't be there in the morning.
"If only we had a reason to leave, like someone sent us a message or something..."
So Sophia snuck to the edge of town and found some kids, and told them to go send a fake message to the party. Her message was very fake, though, and the kids ran off quickly upon hearing that they were delivering it to a Gleeman (Hariim) without paying much attention to it. So, instead of getting a message, all the rest of the party knew was that Hariim was telling a lot of stories to some fascinated children.
This meant that it was time for the contingency plan -- creating a distraction to flee. Fezzik went to work on the distraction he'd been planning -- massed lightning strikes on every roof in town, to set the entire city on fire.
"But... we're IN the city."
"I'm just setting the roofs on fire, so we'll have time to get out of the building. This city has harbored whitecloaks, and the penalty is death." Fezzik was not feeling very charitable towards the whitecloaks, after Jacen (the thieftaker) gave him a long lecture about their principles and methods, both of which he found repugnant.
"It'll be pretty suspicious if we flee town while everyone else is working to put out the fires, though..."
"*sigh* Fine, fine, how about a big cloud of mist, then? Maybe we can sneak past the whitecloaks without being seen... that's my only weave that's designed not to look like magic."
That was enough to get them out of the city. They caught up with Sophia on the road, and continued on into Andor, where the whitecloaks were banned and they were probably safe. After another day in Caemlyn -- a very nice city, whose only flaw was a lack of hidden ter'angreal -- they continued onto Four Kings, which was a pit of crime and corruption. So much crime and corruption, that the thieves had basically stopped really trying to be sneaky. They just hung out in groups of two or three on the street every fifty feet, breaking into carts and snatching purses... okay, okay, it wasn't THAT bad.
It was getting late, but the party didn't see any reason NOT to try to break into the warehouse at night, so they set out immediately, after finding an inn Jacen thought was honest to park to cart at. Jacen stayed behind to guard it while the crazy guy set off on his own errand, and the party hurried to the warehouse.
There was a brief detour through the city's bazaar, shut down for the night, as Sophia's ferret decided that it wanted to do some late-night shopping, and after getting rid of some suspicious (and suspiciously skillful) muggers shadowing them by putting up a giant invisible force field behind them, they reached the warehouse to find that someone else had already broken in -- that very night.
Then they stepped through the door, and all of Fezzik's tied-off weaves were severed. This annoyed him, a LOT, since he relied on those to be at all effective in combat (although it turned out later that only the active tied off weaves were cancelled, and not the suspended spells, so he wasn't as screwed as he assumed at the time), and also because it meant he had to keep concentrating on a stupid light spell (since Kanwei's 'conventional' lantern was very dim), and a dowsing spell to find 'metal', and a 'cover our tracks' spell, leaving him no concentration left for anything else.
The likely seeming pings from the dowsing spell were 'up' and 'down'. The person who'd broken in ahead of them was 'up' (they heard him stumbling around), so they went 'down'. And found that the 'down' signal was from a massive, featureless steel door, which two sets of tracks led right up to and through, but which didn't seem to have any obvious way of opening.
But then it opened itself, and there was the crazy witchhunter guy, looking terrified and happy to see the party. Behind the door was a maze of sorts, in which he was sure his quarry was hiding, but also... well... Hariim recognized the tracks melted into the floor as belonging to a dangerous and very scary monster out of legend.
There were many side passages visible from the entryway where they paused, but they could also see the stairs down to the next level, so Fezzik (dropped the dowsing and trackless weaves and) made a tube of air from them to the stairs, to block out any potential monsters, and they hurried along past crypts, with panting and other monstery noises dogging their steps.
The second level down was different -- wetter, muddy, and looking more like a natural cave, as well as more like a maze. They couldn't see the stairs, here, as the passages were twisty and branched less frequently, but still frequently enough to get them lost. Fezzik maintained the wall of air as a barrier behind them, following them, to keep the monster at bay, which was find until they suddenly came to a dead end.
"This is level... three right?"
"Two I think."
"And how deep did you say you had to go?"
"Level seven."
So they reversed course, with the wall in front of them now, and sure enough at the first intersection back the melted footsteps had made the other turn, in the time it took them to pause at the dead end and head back. Fezzik blocked off THAT corridor with his wall as they passed, and again had the wall behind them as they searched for another turn-off to try...
...until they heard the sounds of another monster in *front* of them. And slavery teeth sank into Fezzik's airy barrier from behind...
last session | next session
*Urghl* And today, I'm feeling all sick and stuff... obviously, I caught the cold that my sister and her family had. Not really a surprise, I knew I was doomed the instant I walked in the door and saw them coughing.
On the plus side, I went through this 'chinook book' that I'd bought from them as part of a fundraiser for their kid's preschool and found some coupons I thought I could use, including a couple for $5 off at Top food and drugs, which is just over at crossroads. Of course, getting there, I was suddenly struck by how MUCH food it would take to get to the $25 required to get the discount. I tried to game it by buying a paperback and some other stuff, but still... quite a bit of food. Organic foor, since other coupons in the booklet were for specific brands of organic stuff.
Organic rice cakes suck ass, even compared to ordinary rice cakes. Soy ice cream is okay, although the soy taste is heavy and kind of distracting. I haven't tried the other stuff yet.
The next day they headed over to the Feriphal noble's place to get a look at the maps and a cart to haul back treasure with. To their surprise, the 'guards' the noble had promised to send with them were both people they'd already met -- the crazy witchhunter from the forest (who claimed that he'd 'taken care of' the witches in the ruins) and the thieftaker from the night before.
The plan was to head to a warehouse in Four Kings, long abandoned, where according to rumors a cache of ter'angreal was hidden on 'the seventh' floor of the three story building. 'Basement levels' was the initial guess on that one. After that, if things went well, they'd head on to Ebu Dar to search for several caches of angreal and sa'angreal hidden in the city using the one power, by a somewhat... eccentric Aes Sedai. Fezzik was confident he'd be able to find them, with a thorough search.
The noble's motives were somewhat suspicious -- he wasn't claiming a share of the treasure or anything, just hoping that they'd sell their finds to him for what they considered a fair price -- but why look a gift horse in the mouth? They left without (intentional) delay, that same day.
It took several days to get to Four Kings, during which it rained constantly. And when the rain finally *did* let up, they found themselves flooded with Whitecloaks, completely occupying a town outside the borders of Andor and Cairhein, obviously preparing to go to war with someone.
They found a relatively whitecloak free inn to stay the night in, and Sophia asked around. Apparently, the whitecloaks were planning to attack and occupy Cairhein, which explained why all the city guards had vanished in the past couple days -- obviously, they'd gotten wind of the attack, and didn't feel like fighting. Unfortunately, someone recognized Sophia, or seemed to, and when she trailed him, she saw him talking to several Inquisitors. This was bad news, since it would be suspicious to leave in the middle of the night, and yet if they stayed until morning... well, they probably wouldn't be there in the morning.
"If only we had a reason to leave, like someone sent us a message or something..."
So Sophia snuck to the edge of town and found some kids, and told them to go send a fake message to the party. Her message was very fake, though, and the kids ran off quickly upon hearing that they were delivering it to a Gleeman (Hariim) without paying much attention to it. So, instead of getting a message, all the rest of the party knew was that Hariim was telling a lot of stories to some fascinated children.
This meant that it was time for the contingency plan -- creating a distraction to flee. Fezzik went to work on the distraction he'd been planning -- massed lightning strikes on every roof in town, to set the entire city on fire.
"But... we're IN the city."
"I'm just setting the roofs on fire, so we'll have time to get out of the building. This city has harbored whitecloaks, and the penalty is death." Fezzik was not feeling very charitable towards the whitecloaks, after Jacen (the thieftaker) gave him a long lecture about their principles and methods, both of which he found repugnant.
"It'll be pretty suspicious if we flee town while everyone else is working to put out the fires, though..."
"*sigh* Fine, fine, how about a big cloud of mist, then? Maybe we can sneak past the whitecloaks without being seen... that's my only weave that's designed not to look like magic."
That was enough to get them out of the city. They caught up with Sophia on the road, and continued on into Andor, where the whitecloaks were banned and they were probably safe. After another day in Caemlyn -- a very nice city, whose only flaw was a lack of hidden ter'angreal -- they continued onto Four Kings, which was a pit of crime and corruption. So much crime and corruption, that the thieves had basically stopped really trying to be sneaky. They just hung out in groups of two or three on the street every fifty feet, breaking into carts and snatching purses... okay, okay, it wasn't THAT bad.
It was getting late, but the party didn't see any reason NOT to try to break into the warehouse at night, so they set out immediately, after finding an inn Jacen thought was honest to park to cart at. Jacen stayed behind to guard it while the crazy guy set off on his own errand, and the party hurried to the warehouse.
There was a brief detour through the city's bazaar, shut down for the night, as Sophia's ferret decided that it wanted to do some late-night shopping, and after getting rid of some suspicious (and suspiciously skillful) muggers shadowing them by putting up a giant invisible force field behind them, they reached the warehouse to find that someone else had already broken in -- that very night.
Then they stepped through the door, and all of Fezzik's tied-off weaves were severed. This annoyed him, a LOT, since he relied on those to be at all effective in combat (although it turned out later that only the active tied off weaves were cancelled, and not the suspended spells, so he wasn't as screwed as he assumed at the time), and also because it meant he had to keep concentrating on a stupid light spell (since Kanwei's 'conventional' lantern was very dim), and a dowsing spell to find 'metal', and a 'cover our tracks' spell, leaving him no concentration left for anything else.
The likely seeming pings from the dowsing spell were 'up' and 'down'. The person who'd broken in ahead of them was 'up' (they heard him stumbling around), so they went 'down'. And found that the 'down' signal was from a massive, featureless steel door, which two sets of tracks led right up to and through, but which didn't seem to have any obvious way of opening.
But then it opened itself, and there was the crazy witchhunter guy, looking terrified and happy to see the party. Behind the door was a maze of sorts, in which he was sure his quarry was hiding, but also... well... Hariim recognized the tracks melted into the floor as belonging to a dangerous and very scary monster out of legend.
There were many side passages visible from the entryway where they paused, but they could also see the stairs down to the next level, so Fezzik (dropped the dowsing and trackless weaves and) made a tube of air from them to the stairs, to block out any potential monsters, and they hurried along past crypts, with panting and other monstery noises dogging their steps.
The second level down was different -- wetter, muddy, and looking more like a natural cave, as well as more like a maze. They couldn't see the stairs, here, as the passages were twisty and branched less frequently, but still frequently enough to get them lost. Fezzik maintained the wall of air as a barrier behind them, following them, to keep the monster at bay, which was find until they suddenly came to a dead end.
"This is level... three right?"
"Two I think."
"And how deep did you say you had to go?"
"Level seven."
So they reversed course, with the wall in front of them now, and sure enough at the first intersection back the melted footsteps had made the other turn, in the time it took them to pause at the dead end and head back. Fezzik blocked off THAT corridor with his wall as they passed, and again had the wall behind them as they searched for another turn-off to try...
...until they heard the sounds of another monster in *front* of them. And slavery teeth sank into Fezzik's airy barrier from behind...
last session | next session
*Urghl* And today, I'm feeling all sick and stuff... obviously, I caught the cold that my sister and her family had. Not really a surprise, I knew I was doomed the instant I walked in the door and saw them coughing.
On the plus side, I went through this 'chinook book' that I'd bought from them as part of a fundraiser for their kid's preschool and found some coupons I thought I could use, including a couple for $5 off at Top food and drugs, which is just over at crossroads. Of course, getting there, I was suddenly struck by how MUCH food it would take to get to the $25 required to get the discount. I tried to game it by buying a paperback and some other stuff, but still... quite a bit of food. Organic foor, since other coupons in the booklet were for specific brands of organic stuff.
Organic rice cakes suck ass, even compared to ordinary rice cakes. Soy ice cream is okay, although the soy taste is heavy and kind of distracting. I haven't tried the other stuff yet.
