Chronicle: Session 2

We begin chatting to Moira over dinner. When asked, she says she last saw the kids yesterday...apart from the already missing Sally. Spindle refuses his beef stew after asking if it was meat. Faeleth tries to convince him that cows are a vegetable, of which he is....faintly sceptical, and continues to only eat his bread and confirmed veggies.

Alf arrives to check on us, and Nothing tries to fill him in on the gang's discoveries: that funny business is afoot for sure, look, see this letter? Alf agrees that it warrants investigation, and comes with us to the market where we are likely to encounter Mr Hand at this hour. As predicted, he is there, making a purchase at the exotic (or, more accurately to the signage, "ecksotic") fruits stall. Nothing initially plays safe and sends Alf to question him....but Alf comes back saying all seems innocuous. Spindle, meanwhile, noticed Hand slipping Alf some coin - bribed silence! It must be! At some point Spindle also manages to blag a free orange from a friendly, if baffled, vendor after he spends some time sniffing the fruits.

Incensed by the apparent subterfuge, Nothing storms up to Hand and demands answers, waving the letter at him and threatening that if he has /anything/ to do with her missing kids, then.....then....!!!! She realises she doesn't have much of a plan there. He demands to know where the letter was found, claiming forgery, (we refuse to state any more specifically than that it was 'on the floor in a house') and a slip of the tongue reveals him to know full well it was in a basement. Proof!! Hand is more than faintly intimidating, however, and staunchly denies Nothing's accusations, and attempts to pay the vocally flippant and sceptical Spindle off with...even more oranges. The kid is rolling in oranges. Time for a more concrete plan...

Oh, and there are more dogs. There are more dogs than usual in town. As Mr Hand leaves, we see him kick one very hard. Spindle growls at Hand as he leaves, but it's the dog that growls back.

Leaving Hand to continue his day, the group hatch a scheme. Spindle disregards the scheme and makes for the house we visited before, but...that works fine. He (and maybe Holgar?) can stand guard at the house, while Faeleth and Nothing stalk Hand and try to discern his movements.

The stalking doesn't go super great (Holgar comes with) - we lose track of Hand during our discussion and also an old bud of Holgar's comes over to chat with him and briefly mentions disappearances of mine workers down at his own town (Nothing takes great note: perhaps that is relevant to her kids!) and slips Holgar a freebie potion. We don't know what it does, but it's blue.

There's a large group of dogs nearby. One stands, watches us for a while.

But yeah, the stalking. We go down the road towards the manor, but fail to locate Hand, only one of his attendants doing what seems like legitimate business at the local cobbler. Said attendant does spot us as he leaves (though we do a decent job of pretending to not be following him) and we realise that means we have to call off this plan - if we keep heading to the manor after this guy we are going to look so, so suspect.

Meanwhile, Spindle encounters something curious: boot prints near the sewer entrance that....stop being boot prints and start being canine paw prints. Hmm....

New plan! Holgar wants to camp out in some bushes near the manor to keep watch there. Spindle wants us to meet back up with him. He has entered the sewers (after a tight squeeze through the bars) and discovered newly lain trip traps that sure weren't there before. We agree: a good plan would be to watch the sewers, the house above, and the manor - clearly someone plans to return, and if so, this should mean someone's gonna spot them. Holgar can radio in if he sees anything, and Spindle can update Holgar if anything goes down over here. Sorted.

So, how that goes...

Spindle sees eyes in the darkness, which vanish with the sound of footfalls heading down the sewer - it must be cornered! Nothing and Faeleth follow, ordering Spindle to run back up and guard the house front door.....thud goes the trapdoor, and Spindle is moments too late, someone or something has already fled. But he knows which way it was going! Spindle uses his knowledge of tracking to follow the fleeing creature into some woodland nearby the Cairn Road, with Nothing and Faeleth in hot pursuit.

Holgar, meanwhile, sights a hooded figure exit the manor and make for the Cairn Road, and gives quiet, sneaky pursuit. He tries to wrench the bush out of the ground as portable cover but only succeeds in triumphantly bursting out from the foliage with a few leaves in his hands, startling some halfling passersby (but luckily not alerting the travelling Hand). He tracks him until he loses him in woodland near the roadside.

Now, the trio may have lost their quarry but they have found some distant, arguing voices and a clash of metal that sounds like sword combat. They try to radio in to Holgar, or rather, Spindle does. Holgar, for an assortment of reasons (starting with last session's fog and continuing with assorted petty social scuffles) is ignoring Spindle in particular. Spindle says his name louder...and louder...and LOUD. The stone crumbles to dust. Luckily the shout did send to the other stone before it broke, and hey, that's where Holgar must be, we just heard his stone! Spindle barrels into him full-force by accident. The squad is reunited!

On sneaking nearer, the voices get clearer - "They got away!" is heard. Nothing tries to get close enough to view the speakers...and she does. They're four sword-wielding men in armour, with a design emblazoned on the chest that features a demonic skull being consumed by fire. This looks like bad news. She steps on a twig. The men wheel round, the anger of their argument replaced by a much colder thing.

"Forget the shape shifters, lads, we've got a demon."

Nope nope nope nope nope!!! One of them rushes Nothing, who all the while yells out "No, you're wrong, I'm not, i'm not, I'm not!!! I'm not a demon I swear!" - this falls on deaf ears. "I don't listen to a demon's lies!" he swings his sword and hits for more than half of Nuth's total health...

And Faeleth, the only member of the party unseen by these dudes, rushes in behind him and deals two swift, critical, and very, very fatal stab wounds to that guy, quite possibly saving Nothing's life.

Spindle puts his fog to much, much better use this time: dropping it straight over two of the guys! They yell out - "They've got mages!" and carry on the attack, but another swiftly drops to Nothing's Eldritch Blast. Holgar takes a few ax swings that miss a lot.

One of the remaining attackers turns on Faeleth after she delivers an effective but non-lethal wound (intending to subdue him for questioning), screaming about how he's going to kill her for that, "you foul bitch!" - he takes a sword swipe at her neck that nicks her badly, there's quite a bit of bleeding. At the insult and near-beheading, Faeleth sees red and restraint goes out of the window - the guy goes down moments later as Faeleth puts her rapier straight through his throat. The blood from that is, uh, a lot. Spindle heals her all better!

Nothing levels her stave at the final man, hoping to cow him with the now-proven fact she could end him right there, and yells, "What shapeshifters?!"

He sneers that he won't answer to a demon. Nothing blasts him.

The last man standing takes a swing at Holgar (the nearest target), screaming about how if he's going to die he'll take Holgar out with him...and misses. How embarrassing! Holgar finally has a blow that hits home - the final hunter gets an axe straight in the mouth, mid-rant about I guess how much he hates us.

Nothing stands, stunned, for a little while, but then joins the others in looting the fallen demon hunters. They get a bit of money, some silvered blades (Spindle finds a pair of daggers and approaches Faeleth to do a swap - one of her regular daggers in return for one silver one. She finds that fair). Nothing fancy. Oh, and a tin hipflask, which Spindle pockets.

.....clap, clap, clap.

Mister Hand walks out into the clearing giving us the good ol slow-clap treatment. (Spindle claps in return because he doesn't grasp what's going on.) That crew of independent demon hunters had been a thorn in his side, he says. And as a gift for taking care of the issue, and as an incentive to stop poking our noses where it doesn't belong, he has something for Nothing.

He pulls on a rope he'd been holding and who else is attached to it, bound and gagged, but Sally. Nothing rushes to her, but Hand lifts an arm in the universal gesture of 'halt' made only more emphatic (and more than mildly threatening) by the violet crackle of arcane energy surrounding his hand, and she stops in her tracks. He stresses that this is all she's getting, and the rest are his.

He vanishes into thin air. Nothing rushes to Sally, unbinding and ungagging her and offering this terrified shaking kid water when she asks for it and generally fussing all over her. Sally keeps saying we 'have to get out of here'. Nothing insists the party return straight away to town, to Moira's place, because Sally needs food and rest and safety and if she's going to get it anywhere, that's where. She promises Sally that she'll get the others back, no matter what, she'll get them back.

The journey back...Spindle keeps seeing movement out of the corner of his eye. Canine shapes, lupine? He can never quite discern what he's seeing. He cautiously motions Faeleth over and whispers his disconcertion (so as not to make Sally any more shaken than she already is - the kid is a wreck) but she can't catch sight of anything of the sort.

The party happen across a bear. It's busy eating a deer, but Holgar, still full of unspent frustration from his lack of real battle-action in the previous fight....rushes it. He rushes the bear. He fights the bear. (At this point I was genuinely convinced the party might die for realsies.) Faeleth sticks to the treeline and takes potshots with her crossbow, first missing but then getting in some real good shots. Nothing ushers Sally behind a tree and fires off Eldritch Blast after Eldritch Blast. Holgar wails on it with an axe. Spindle doesn't attack at all, too busy being distracted by his attempts to see what's following us.

Just as the bear rears up after giving a battering swipe to Holgar, Nothing manages to hit it with a bolt of arcane energy square in the chest and that's that. Or, you know, that's that until Spindle becomes determined to nosh down on the deer carcass (ew. spindle's body doesn't take it well either, thanks to a dismal constitituion roll. it doesn't take the repeated rolls to keep trying to eat it well either. or the attempt to try eating bear instead: he gets a mouthful of blast-charred bearmeat and while it doesn't make him quite as sick as the deer, it tastes like absolute garbage) and Holgar decides he wants to take a trophy of his victory in the form of a bear face-skin mask.

After some difficulty, Holgar does a great job of skinning the bear head in the end and it fits like a dream! What a Badass Look(tm).

The group finally get back on the road to town. The boys decide tonight is drinkin' time and head off for the local tavern, The Bended Bough, leaving the girls behind.

Faeleth, Nothing and Sally arrive at Moira's place, asking if Sally can stay here and recover at least for the night. Moira agrees, giving Sally some bread and cheese and a drink with a drop of some kind of sleeping draft. Then she levels her gaze at Nothing and Faeleth and says they ought to leave. Her tone is off. The pair are suddenly very, very reluctant to leave the groggy, now out-cold Sally here alone, but Moira gets very stern and...oddly cold, in response to their requests to stay.

"You know what I've said, Nothing. This isn't a hotel."

No attempt to sway her seems to be working - Nothing wheedles to her, bargains, literally pulls out the little money she has and offers to pay as much as she can for just one night. Moira stares daggers at them both (particularly Faeleth!), tapping her foot.

"I have my own reasons and they are my own," she says, when Faeleth tries to question her on why she even feeds the streetflock but won't let Nothing bunk for just this one night. (Or, uh, something like that.)

Faeleth isn't having any of it, and her only natural 20 skill check of the night is for intimidating this old lady into letting us stay with a long, unflinching stare. Moira's not happy about it, though, and she roughly gestures to a bare corner of the room for us to sleep in, but we get to stay the night.

....Back to the tavern. Turns out that The Bended Bough is exactly where Holgar started the bar fight, and the staff are having none of it, the boys are barred. Holgar and Spindle protest strongly at this, but nope, no can do. Spindle tries and fails to claim his arrival with Holgar was pure coincidence. Holgar grabs someone else's drink and chugs it out of spite. Spindle demands to at least have his hipflask filled, or else. Or else what? Or else he stabs the guy in the ankles.

(Spindle SOMEHOW manages to be more intimidating than the dwarf twice his size, and gets his flask filled with near-luminescent green booze. He takes one swig. He's a tiny teenage gnome and is utterly plastered within moments. He tries to jump on Holgar's back for a ride but sort of just ineffectually jumps /against/ his back instead.)

They still can't go in The Bended Bough though. The guy suggests they go to The Green Dragon down the road instead. So they do that!

....The Green Dragon is near empty. The barman seems to barely be paying attention when they order, there's only a couple of other patrons. Spindle cracks out his ukelele and plays a surprisingly competent little tune for a shockingly inebriated gnome. A couple of people (humans? I think?) slink out not long after they get there, and Spindle gets a....canine vibe from them. He growls at them, one growls back and gets cuffed upside the head by the other. Spindle growls harder, and they whine as they leave, metaphorical tails between their legs. Spindle chugs on down his second drink of the night - a serving of vodka and rum that would be fine for a human, but is a devastating amount of booze for someone two feet tall, and he passes out on the floor. Holgar has an okay beer.

Oh! The barkeep actually knows this one beer that goes down really well with dwarves, does Holgar want to try it? It's called Basilisk Venom - not actual basilisk venom, of course! just a cool name, it's spiced, you see.... Holgar, of course, is down for that. The guy pours out this veritable cocktail of beers, ciders, and sprinkles some herbs and powders into it that make it go all fizzy. It looks pretty great.

Holgar drinks it, and starts feeling some kind of a way. This isn't drunkenness. This is sleepiness. This...is being drugged.

He hears Hand's voice say something smug that I the writer can't heckdamn remember before he falls unconscious.