--ACT TWO--
-Continuing their adventures, the party sailed to the fort town
of Balentyne. They made it through the gate by disguising themselves as members of a
traveling theatre troupe led by the famed thespian William Marcus
Marlowe, the beloved Bard of Balentyne himself, who writes his own descriptions. Anyone who described
himself as such was very easy to bluff and flatter resulting in the
party actually landing roles in the play. They also discovered that, to
no-one's surprise, he was sleeping with the female lead.
-Once
they were in Balentyne they all set to infiltration. Nalethar found her
place in the aristocracy and impressed her way into the wizards school.
Dave joined in with dwarven engineers repairing the wall along with
helping out Mama Giuseppe with her cooking. Midas enlisted with the city
guard and found a friend in the old and grizzled captain of the guard
Samuel Barhold. Viktor set to co-running the local inn and introduced
both tapas and karaoke to the local populace to mixed results along with
making friend in the local Dwarven smithy and securing weapons and
armour for the party.
-The party found Balentyne to be
the most goody-goody law abiding town they'd ever encountered with any
attempts at finding an underworld being unsuccessful and the only shops
of note being; An apothecary named Jazzin who was definitely not a
vampire and sold them a bunch of rat poison for later use and Majid's
Magnificent Emporium, the greatest outfitters this side of Qadira. Majid
kitted them out in noble attire and won them over with his charm and
love of gossip.
-Nalethar's main connection in the
aristocracy was with the most beautiful woman in all of Balentyne,
Kaitlyn Mott who was trapped in an arranged marriage to the boorish
captain of the guard Franz Mott. This resulted in her being left to host dinner parties
whilst Franz spent all his time up at the watchtower. Nalethar told her
about the joys of traveling and adventuring and so became close friends.
Close enough in fact that Nalethar discovered Kaitlyn's other past-time
was the young, dashing Captain Zack Eddarly. The rest of the party also
managed to blag an invite to one of Nalethar's parties where Viktor's
alter ego Professor Ziggibaecious, an eccentric zoologist with an eagle
in his trousers made his first appearance. Dave also made friends with
Prince Gaius Vestromo who talks, looks and acts like a vampire whom the
party decided was a vampire. After a heavily disguised conversation Dave
was invited to visit him in the city of Ghastenhall if he wanted to
pursue vampirism further.
-The party then used their
knowledge of the affair to goad Franz Mott via a tip-off into finding
the two lovers in bed together. This resulted in Eddarly jumping out of
the window and being challenged to a duel to the death at the next dawn.
Both came to the duel instantly removing any chance of them returning
to duty, as dueling to the death is a grave offence in Talingarde. It
was a close duel with Mott having raw strength and fury on his side but
Eddarly managed to turn this to his advantage and used his agility to
eventually out-manoeuvre
Mott and place his sword straight through Mott's chest. As the guards arrived to
arrest Eddarly and break up the huge crowd that had gathered to watch
the duel Kaitlyn broke free from the crowd and ran to him. As she jumped into his arms they both vanished with a loud crack which Nalethar recognised as a teleportation spell.
-Meanwhile Dave had gotten
in with the dwarven engineers thanks to Midas matching their leader
Barnabus in a drinking contest which resulted in them both passing out. Turns out drinking competitions are a sure way to win dwarves over and as such Dave was invited to come along with them on the job. He later
used this as a way to sabotage the repairs and the siege weaponry on
top of the watchtower, massively weakening it against the bugbear
invasion.
-The
party were staying at an inn called the Lord's Dalliance which was so
named because a previous Lord Commander of the fort used to sneak off to
this inn that at the time was more of a brothel. To aid him in this a
secret tunnel was built from the castle to the cellar of the inn.
Viktor, having gotten involved with the running of the inn and using his
innate dwarven knack for spotting hidden tunnels, managed to find the
entrance and used it to sneak the party into the fort.
-The
party infiltrated the fort in a rather unprecedented fashion with most
of the party not being particularly proficient at stealth so Dave
improvised and scouted the castle playing his lute expertly. Using
the cover that he was merely there to raise morale by playing his lute with the others and Midas simply wearing his guard uniform to play the part of an escort. Due to some spectacular
bluff and perform checks the party navigated through most of the castle
unhindered and performed various acts of subterfuge. Apart from where
Viktor accidentally snuck into a Mitran church service and gave himself
away causing the guard to be called for, luckily that guard was
Midas so no real harm came of it.
-Meanwhile the fourth and final captain of the guard
Varning was out on patrol in the local forest. Co-incidentally this was
also where Grumblejack had been sent to hide out because human
settlements aren't particularly friendly to ogres. He couldn't believe
his luck when lunch walked right into his hunting grounds and set up
camp for the night. Long story short another guard captain was taken
care of.
-Having dealt with 3 out of 4 of the guards
the party decided it was time to deal with the rest in one big sweep.
Their cover was the grand play that they'd landed parts in earlier. Dave
turned on the charm with Mama Giuseppe the morning before the play and
helped her make the stew for the guards adding his own special
ingredient, rat poison, debilitating or killing over half the guards in
one fell swoop. The party then swiftly dealt with Mad Martin, an old
druid who dealt with the messenger ravens and considered them his only
friends. The Lord Commander and the final captain of the guard were at
the play so they were too exposed to be a target so the party went after
the elusive Magister Tacitus, a man who loved hair gel and fireballs
equally. Dave and Nalethar went in under disguise of being doctors
coming to check up on him having heard a rumour he'd been affected by
the food poisoning. Unfortunately the Magister saw through the ruse and
bluffed them that he had been badly sickened by the food whilst
concealing his wand of fireballs under the duvet. As the two entered his bedchambers he let loose with two deadly fireballs, killing them both within
seconds. Fortunately Midas was waiting outside and upon hearing the
commotion kicked down the door and cleaved down the Magister where he
stood before he could raise the alarm. Midas hid the bodies and with a
grim determination, set off with Viktor to finish what they'd started.
They ran to the gatehouse and talked their way past the few remaining
guards using Midas' guard uniform and Viktor's disguise just in time to
open the gate as the bugbear hoard appeared on the horizon. The first
thing the public knew about this was the triumphant roar of Sakkarot as the hoard charged through the open gate and set about doing what a
hoard of monsters does best. The remnants of the party fled to safety as the Lord
Commander tried desperately to hold the fort, even taking out one of
Sakkarot's eyes before he too fell before the Fire-axe.
-Meanwhile
in hell... Nalethar and Dave awoke in a baroque hall filled with
infernal iconography. However there didn't seem to be endless screaming
souls or rivers of fire, and there was only one devil. A rather well
dressed and slightly built devil at that. He introduced himself as
Dessiter of the Phistophilus, a representative of the ruler of the hell
that they found themselves in. He offered them a deal, a very reasonable
one in fact. Their souls would get another chance before being
consigned to hell, however they would have to sacrifice an angel named
Ara Mathra to his master, Naburus. They gladly took this deal and
rejoined the party.
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