21 Schemes and Ponders

Ponders. Is that somehow related to people who like to make small lakes? Hm.


We are now heroes of the day, that's for sure. I have heaps of new little friends, being unexpectedly a hero of the halflingkind. It is a reason for me to study their language enough to get by. I'm also practicing my makeup skills.. those came handy with the orc nest infiltration, and trying to come in terms with how to ride Neigh without needing to bribe him with apples all the time. He's a good horse, strong and skilled with how to carry a rider... only polite that I also learn to do my part. But there are things that have left me puzzled, so more on those in a moment. There is something very rotten going on.

Emma... she's a darling. Very pretty but that's just a part of it. She's strong, can hold her own in a fight, has a nice smile and good manners, a fine personality. Smells good too, like females tend to. Isn't that all that one would need in a companion? Having her around would be good.. she's somewhere now, last I heard working with the town watch when not hanging around at the adventurer guild house or using the treasure.

Rivyre has been busy teaching the dog new tricks, but more so, with the halflings and laughing at my accent. We'll see if they will return to the village or stay in the walled town for now. It could be that there are more orcs out there.

And Drai.. his exploits have gotten me worried. Decimating the orcish force has made him and Emma famous.. but they also make him a target. Killing folks is dangerous as everyone who dies tends to have friends, relatives, and people whom he or she owes money to. He also annoyed the dragon by leading the orcs to its nest, so I hope the big lizard is more understanding than motherly. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially if the said woman is protecting her offspring, big as a house, and has a breath that can set places on fire.

And then... the palace. The prince asking us in person to save his fiancee. Actually paying us money. Letting me pat him on the back. Not protecting a village right outside the town walls.. and his daddy is gone to place unknown. A surprisingly heavy fiancee with an affinity for the dragonkind, and the absence of dead orcs, and the presence of swords, near the broken carriage. And then the over-confident orcish horde that outnumbered us ten to one, and that's counting Neigh, but was slaughtered with only one of us so much as taking a scratch. Well, two scratches.. with an actual treasure chest of jewelry, gems, and coins.

My guess? The orcs never touched the fiancee, who is herself a dragon, either half or fully. She was being escorted, and the mommy dragon rescued one of her own from human captors. The mystery box we carried enabled the prince to extort her to come to the town anyhow. There is intrigue afoot, involving the palace at least and the city watch, and enough money to bride 50 orcs to loiter in the vicinity perhaps as excuse for something. They hit the halfling village because they were bored, and had no reason to expect anyone to intervene. Well. It was not a bad plan, I guess, except that when we intervened, things went awry for the schemers.

And now they are scurrying, making secondary plans. They are probably also very annoyed at us.

And we have no idea who they are.

20 Drai's Side Quest

I was having a chat with Drai about the strengths and weaknesses of various professions, in this case the close-quarters prowess of fighters versus rogues. Drai however, being a hands-on kind of guy, wanted to test the theory in practice, and volunteered to serve as a member of the town watch for a few days. As a single action, I applaud that, but it also sets a dangerous precedent to the thieves' guild if the constabulary starts hiring adventurers as vigilantes even as experiment. Something good came out of this; now Drai summarises his findings as "the role of a fighter when there are rogues around is to be a sitting duck waiting to be killed." I wonder what Emma thinks of that... the rogues I spoke of that with had a raucous laugh over Drai's words, and agreed. As they put it, "fighting fair is for show and for idiots." They too were worried about an experienced battle priest joining the town watch, and for good reason.

The guardsmen had gotten something right. They had traced the Dulltone gang to a derelict building that had once been a mansion. The Dulltones are not guild members anymore so don't enjoy the protection thereof, which means they find their safehouses where they can - if they can. To be a maverick rogue ... a rogue rogue? ... one needs to be very discreet or very good, or have friends in high and low places. Far as I know, none of that applies to the Dulltones, so they are just a disruptive presence.. causing suffering and damage to the general populace, excuses to the powers-that-be, and harm to the guild. As such, I wouldn't be surprised if that the location of their hideout was leaked to the town watch by the guild.

The watch sent a dozen to catch four, with Drai there to keep them alive. Drai's magics blasted the door to pieces along with the staircase beyond it, and impressed the watchmen who promptly approached. One of the Dulltones had been hiding under the stairs and had to flee. An eager would-be hero charged after him, but Drai stopped him with a verbal command, Heel!, humiliating the guardsman, teaching him a lesson, and saving his life. After that the team moved on more slowly and cautiously.. but entering the house caused one of them to take a crossbow bolt straight to the forehead, instant damage so extensive that not even a priest could heal such. After that the guards closed ranks with shields high, but scattered to all directions when a glass bottle was tossed among them from a window above. Two of them charged into the building, fearing fire or poison gas.. and there was silence. The Dulltones brought one of them to the door, with a leash on his neck, pleading that the guards back off so that he would not be killed.

That stopped the guards, but it didn't stop Drai. He surprised the guards by stripping off his armor before heading in to capture the Dulltones single-handedly. The guards protested, stating such was a suicidal move, but Drai had a reason for it. He didn't want his armor to slow him down or jingle, and then filled the whole lower level of the building with fog before entering. Unseen and safe he started preaching in the mist and ignored the crossbow bolt that missed him so close he could feel the draft. His voice carried well, and even though the Dulltones couldn't see him, they heard him and soon two of them could do nothing but listen to his words - the two that had kept the guard on a leash, and been ready to slay him. The other two used a pre-planned escape route and left the building.

When Drai had had enough with the sermon he took a triangle, and chimed it.. causing a discordant noise to blast through the building, hoping to catch the remaining two Dulltones with it. The captive guard was hit with it too, but Drai's healing skills saved his life, and the guards captured the two Dulltones that had been listening to Drai's sermon, and were now stunned and bleeding from the ears.


With one guard killed and two wounded in addition to all earlier crimes, it seemed unlikely that the two captive Dulltones would find clemency. A thorough search of the house found that the Dulltones had been hiding there for a long while, and even some of their loot was reclaimed when Drai led the guards to search the upper floor. However, the remaining Dulltones, Bill and Jake, were not apprehended, so only Joseph and Avery were taken into custody.

19 Decimation

Orcs filed into the clearing, two-score of them or more, frustrated at not seeing the only one they had to blame for fights and arson and lost captives and hurt pride, the human in armor too heavy to flee in, and they knew they had him, he could hide for a moment and die scared, or flee for a moment and die tired, but with 40 or more orcs to chase him, the one thing they knew was that they had him. And in that moment of imminent orcish victory the sound they heard was that of an indignant, alarmed wyrmling crying for mommy. The orcs spread out in the clearing, searching Drai's trail and drai and the source of the sound...

...and then a dark, angry shadow covered them all, and the dragon's breath, a gas that rendered them unconscious, roiled over them. A few near the edge of the woods had time to turn to flee before they fell, a few had time to wet their pants.. but most just fell. The dragon landed, and fire and claw and fang brought death where gas had brought oblivion. Emma rode from the forest and joined in the slaughter,

With the orcs in the clearing slain, Emma and Drai chased the few that had escaped, and a few more of the remnants of the force met their end. Drai got his vengeance on the orc that had tossed two javelins at him, and the leader of the orcs died by Emma's sword. The best estimate we had was that no more than a half a dozen orcs managed to escape.

Emma and Drai found some valuables in the orcish camp - a crown, some bracelets, coins and gems.. all of which sounds atypical of what one would expect. If the orcs had simply been here to raid, their hoard would've consisted of the kind of things farmhouses might have.. smaller denomination coinage, an occasional piece of silverware, furniture, clothes, arms, maybe an occasional weapon. A chest of coins and gems was for me a giveaway about what the real story was, together with the other clues, such as how they felt safe despite being near the town, the relatively bloodless attack on the halfling village, the lack of town guard involvement in all this, the way the prince had spoken with us in person. I wonder if my team members figured it out too.. but I'll definitely be speaking about it with my new friends in the shady alleys and hidden pathways.

18 Disguised Rescue

So we set out again, this time to rescue the halflings.

The one thing I didn't expect to put my theatrical skills to use as was to disguise myself as an orc, but that's what I did, with Emma's gracious help, when we were outside the town. We then rode to the reservoir lake and found the camp of the orcs there. There were lots of them.. close to 50.. and several halfling captives. It seemed that the orcs had decided to have their own gladiator games, halfling versus halfling, with betting going on to general merriment. Most halflings were kept in a cage at the side of the camp with a cageful of turkey as an alarm system.

Fortunately for us, the orcs didn't seem to care much about security. Oddly little, in fact, considering they had just raided a village and were a few hours from a major town. Either they knew something we did not or.. just thought that people usually try to get away from orcs, rather than seek them out, especially when they are in great numbers. It seemed more likely they knew something, a reason why they would not be attacked.. which ties back to the weirdness at the palace. Even the prisoners' cage was without guards.

We made a quick plan. Drai wanted an Orcish word he could use to cause fights, a single word. Fortunately, Orcish has plenty of words like that, being a language fond of both descriptive violence and very short phrases, so I gave him one, then took Rivyre with me as 'captive' and rode into the camp. No one minded much.. which was odd, as even if my disguise would've been flawless, in a group of 50 it should've raised suspicion that no one knew who I was. But no one cared, so I tossed Rivyre to the halfling cage to free the captives.. being a trained monk, sticks set in fairly loose waterline sand were no problem to her. I then cut the turkey cage so the birds could escape into the forest, building an escape route for the halflings, and wandered back. Drai's tricks had caused a brutal fight to start between two orcs, and I added to the confusion by setting fire to their betting agency and the orc chief's tent before leaving the area with the halflings. It all worked far more smoothly than I had expected.

After that, we split into two groups.

Rivyre and I took the halflings quickly to their village and gathered the children from there, then evacuated to the walled town. As I had half-expected, the prince had not managed to send any guards to defend the halfling children.. how could he have, as he was unable to mount a rescue mission of guards to save his own fiancee? The children took turns riding Neigh and had a good time on the way to the safety of the walls, and as they needed a place to stay I took the halflings to the ailing stables where I had bought Neigh, leaving the horse there too to be cared for. The stable master promised to take care of temporary lodging issues, so that too worked without mishap.

Drai and Emma though didn't have it quite as easy. Drai fought with an orc with his crossbow, and mainly succeeded in taking two hits from javelins before using a fog spell to disengage so he could flee. Emma found her horse so evading the orcs was easier for her. In armor, Drai was slow and left a wide track which the orcs followed. Enraged at having lost their captives, their fun, and their leader's tent, they were out for blood in great numbers.

Drai fled to the only possible place where he could survive - the dragon's clearing and the magical stone tower in the middle of it. He hid the entrance, climbed all the way to the princess's room, and waited.

17 Shallow Pit Trap

Next we followed a trail north, and it led to a clearing with a tall stone tower in it. A new clearing, a new tower.. but no cat ladies in this one, and the entry was easier. I stayed to the side, watching, as Drai explored the tower from bottom to the top, finding the princess at the top chamber. My sling stone to the skylight of the tower had also located her there. She was reluctant to be rescued, however - and stated she felt happy and protected at the clearing. A depression filled with huge eggs and a brass dragon wyrmling gave some idea of what that protection might be.

Drai speaks Draconic, which proved highly useful here. The wyrmling said we were intruding, and that the princess should stay, which gave us a few options.. to go with or without the princess, leaving the wyrmling alive or not, taking the eggs or not. As we have a dragon priest among us, it was clear we would not be stealing eggs or killing dragon cubs, which narrowed opportunities. Good thing too, as a huge shadow covered us all when an adult brass dragon joined us from the sky.

We didn't insist to take anyone anywhere, with a creature the size of a medium-sized castle disagreeing with us, so instead, we headed to the palace empty-handed, save for an I am safe letter from the princess to the prince and the dragon cub, which made no sense to me as the dragon insisted on staying hidden. The prince bawled again, and sent us back with a token of his affection.. or something.. but whatever it was, it convinced the princess that her place was with the prince. Again we returned to the castle, this time with a sad princess along for the ride, and traded her for a bucketful of honor tokens and a thousand gold pieces' worth of gems for each of us.

Not bad for a day's work.. but there was still the matter of halflings and orcs to settle. The adventurer guild has a bank, so we stored gems there, and set out to have a look at the nest of orcs.

16 Chariot Massacre

It was easy to find the lady's chariot. It awaited by the road, surrounded by dead guards and servants. The ground was marked with prints, and signs of combat, but there were no corpses from the attackers, and the defenders' swords were on the ground. That suggested to me that the attackers had not been orcs, as if they had been, they would've left their dead, and scavenged from the corpses.. possibly eaten them. What else could it have been, then..? Something or someone shifting the blame to the orcs? Wouldn't be the first time.. everybody always blames the orcs.

Checking the chariot we found that it was empty, and the door was not only open, but missing. It lay on the ground at a considerable distance, clearly having been yanked off with senselessly strong strength. The inside of the chariot, however, was intact, and between the pillows we even found a hastily penned note about how scared the occupant.. the aristocratic fiancee.. was about others dying to keep her face.

Fortunately, we didn't find her corpse there. It would've made for a very quick mission.. so we moved on, and followed a road sign to Village. Whoever they may be, it made sense that an orcish force nearby would be a threat to them.. and indeed, at the village things were not well.

The only living thing we saw was a chicken.

Drai bound it for reasons only a platinum dragon can understand. Some searching.. and we found two Halfling children. Fortunately Rivyre was with us this time and could help with the translations. It seemed that orcs had attacked the village and captured the adults, whereas the children had hidden. The orcs had not set fire to the place.. why, I don't know.

As the children were terrified, I took my lute and starting singing children's songs. eventually they came close, and Rivyre translated an offer that I could play songs of their choice too. Halfling songs for children are not my specialty, but I can carry a tune and play a song I hear, and soon the mood in the village had changed for the better. We learned a bit more, of how a sizable orc force had taken their parents away from the main city, carrying them in cages... which is also a novelty.Mostly orcs make their captives walk. Perhaps they wanted to make sure they could move fast, suggesting they feared a force somewhere near. But what..? The city response to a missing princess had been lethargic to use a kind word.

15 Neigh

A new adventure! And two await us this time. There is the lighthouse that Drai mentioned, but also a damsel in distress, which is as heroic as it gets. Now all we need is a dragon. The bride of the prince we saved earlier... is there no end to royal woes?... was missing, and someone needed to go rescue her. It was a puzzling mission, and as things went onward, things got weirder still.

First of all, we were tasked to go to the palace.. which I suppose makes sense, they don't want any random adventurer to go "rescue", and want to know who is going. But a princess rescue mission from right outside town is a military job, not adventurer - so why hire us? This time we were promised actual payment, and when I asked about a badge of honor like last time, the response was, "hundreds of those if you want." Which.. well.. made the badge I have lose a lot of its value. It's pretty, though.

And the weirdest of all was that we were greeted by the prince, in person. He broke into tears before us and bawled on the breastplate of our fighter Emma, and I wasn't arrested when I placed my hand on his royal back and tapped a few times. So it seems.. the prince controls some funds but not the troops. What are all the guards doing then..? Someone else controls them - if so, who? It doesn't seem like they'd be needed to fight off a revolution as the town is quiet. The prince said something about his father being out of town.. perhaps that explains it.Some royal infighting, and a poor would-be princess pays the price by being left undefended.

Figures. When aristocrats are involved, someone else always gets hurt.

So with a promise of hundreds of badges of honor and a thousand gold each, we.. Kab.. that is, me.. Drai, Rivyre, and replacing Coill from the first adventure, Emma, a well-shaped and attractive human female warrior... set off to travel, with a a map and a description of the prince's fiancee in our possession. The fiancee was a pretty young thing. Very young. Like nine or so, far too young to bear a child, and if one can't do that, why wed? Aristoc rats and their ways again.

At the gate I got myself a horse. That was the next weird thing. It seems there is an orcish force nearby, and no one is buying horses. Should that not be high season? Anyway, I got myself the best horse there was, a beautiful black heavy warhorse, and got it for pittance, plus equipment for good measure, and some basic horse maintenance and riding tuition. I asked the horse what it's name was.. and the suggestion was excellent. Neigh it is, and Neigh likes carrots and apples.

Carrots were in short supply so we headed out to an orchard of apple trees along the way, resupplied and moved on to find the young aristocrat, with a very happy warhorse to ride.