16. Choices

Having agreed to fight a fourth round in the Proprietor’s
Spectacle, Malak, Clwyd, Pyt, Clark, and Vic rushed into the Garden of Sand’s
arena once more, scattering among the rocks and cover, and awaiting their
opponent. The far doors shunted open and the roar that filled the colosseum was
distinctly bovine, aggressive and scared. An enormous metal-skinned bull
charged out from the black of the tunnel, noxious green fumes spewing from its
nose – a khalkataur. It charged around the room, kicking up sand with each
heavy hoofbeat. A plume of choking fumes billowed out, swallowing Clwyd and
threatening to halt her body and freeze it in time. The goblin coughed and
spat, covering her face and ducking low, getting most of the gas out her system
and resisting what remained, even as little chunks of sand and grit on the
floor coalesced into stones and pebbles.

Pyt was banging his drum furiously, mouth rushing out the
necessary Draconic. The bull was wheeling around the arena, looking for an
angle to rush its assailants. When at last his spell was finished, a flourish
of the bard’s fingers plucked at the strings of the Weave as if it were his
viol, sending out a ripple to warp a piece of reality. The iron hide of the
khalkataur began to glow. A spot of red appeared on its flank, no larger than a
pinprick at first, but it grew in size in an instant, shifting to that deep
orange of metal in the forge as it infected the creature’s hind quarters. The
bull roared from the pain of it, and Pyt skipped away, willing the metal hotter
and hotter as he went.

This was enough for Malak. He’d got himself in front of the
beast’s charge anyway, ready to take the thing form the front and figure out
what came next as it happened, but Pyt’s attack had shifted its focus now. The
triton still took the brunt of the charge on his shield, side-stepping at the
last moment and throwing his arm up to knock the horns and head to the side.
The force and weight of the metal behemoth rocked him all the same, and
numbness rushed up his left arm. That didn’t matter now. The beast was roaring
from its blazing flank, but it should have paid Malak more mind. His shield
bash exposed its neck enough to slip the point of his spear between the
lobstered plates of this beast’s skin. As ever, thunderous energy coated the
blade. There was a tiny pause, a moment between the beast’s hoofbeats when the
spear just rested in its neck. Then it took another step. Thunder boomed out
the wound, bending and blowing open the metal from the inside. A bolt whizzed
past Malak’s ear, burying itself in the new opening. By the time he looked, Vic
was already elsewhere, darting behind the rocks and boulders they’d so nicely
left for her to hide behind.

The fury stretched on, and the crowd’s cheers drowned out
the exhaustion of the five in the ring. Clark’s bell could scarcely be heard
over the cacophony, but he tolled it relentlessly, keeping as far from the
khalkataur as he could while beckoning it towards the Land Beyond Life, the
ring of the bell guiding its path beyond. The beast made a few more passes, and
rocks cracked under its thunderous steps. It shrugged off most of Clwyd’s
alchemical acid like it was nothing, but where Malak had opened the neck, a few
drops managed to sneak in and cause havoc. The thing was desperate and had
never looked more dangerous.

But Malak was there again and oathmagic spilled from his
lips as his spear whipped out like a vicious sea serpent. His
spell danced along the Weave, rushing into the creature and providing all the
translation necessary to make a beast understand what Malak compelled of it: ‘*fear me*.’

A good performer never misses their cue. Pyt was up on a
boulder, surveying the land, and could figure well enough Malak had probably
just done something useful. Just a whisper should do it then. And so, he sent
out the spell, and the bull fled, like skittish prey flees a hunter. Like this
they pinned it to the wall, Malak’s spell forcing the beast to not approach
him, and Pyt’s having forced away all its escape. Vic, Clwyd, and Clark pelted
the poor thing again and again, a hail of acid and projectile and necrotic
magic that sought to end this show as soon as possible. They advanced as they
attacked, confident in the creature’s inability to escape the fetters of
Malak’s spell. But they got too close.

There are few things more terrifying than a beast with its
back to a wall, death staring it in the face – and these five had seen their
share of terror in the last two months. The khalkataur wheezed, metal organs heaving
deep within. It inhaled sharply and the plume of toxic green that washed out
was deeper and stronger than any it had spat before. It washed over all of them
but Clark, who’d managed to dive away at the last instant. The smoke cleared
slowly. Pyt had avoided the worst of it, high on his rock as he was. Clwyd,
perhaps used to the fumes from her last exposure, pushed herself through the effects of the stuff and
began rifling in her bag, putting together a vial of acid more caustic than
usual – something that could deal with this monstrous, terrified creature for good.
Malak felt his body tightening, seizing up, turning to stone. But there was a
storm in Malak’s veins, one that leapt from him with every chance it got. And
the storm would not be contained like this. Lightning arced from his blue skin
as he willed the magic of his blood to keep him moving – he still had too much
to do. And with a crack of thunder, he expelled the rocky pieces that were
beginning to form on his body, blowing them away in every direction.

The smoke cleared, and Clwyd’s acid was ready. It was
violent and bubbling in the vial, shaking it a little as she held it in her hand. She tossed
the thing and found her mark on the beast’s shoulder. The green liquid began to
eat and chew at the metal, dripping further into the beast and causing ruin. The
khalkataur dropped to its knees, then to its side, huge metal-rimmed
eye staring blankly upwards, legs giving a little kick each time the acid dug
down to another layer of organs within. And then the beast was dead, and
the party saw what they'd missed in the confusion of the fight. Vic had not shrugged off the final plume of the khalkataur’s
petrifying breath. There she was, skinny eleven-year-old frame, crouched in

hiding, face contorted to cough, finger poised on her crossbow trigger, and all of her just as stone as the rock she hid behind.

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> *Slaughter the opponents mercilessly in the fifth round and I'll provide the means of returning your girl to normal - Kind.*
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Being presented with such a note during the intermission, the party were immediately apprehensive. They recognised that most of the combatants they’d faced up to now were in varying states of desperation and

near-helplessness. What could come next that would have the Proprietor’s
dragonborn force them into an agreement in such a way?

As they waited and debated their options, Vic’s statue in
the room with them, adjustments were made to the walls and doors of the arena,
and soon water was pouring into it from tube-like holes around the place. A set
of seven women, the Siren Sisters, were announced as the next piece of
entertainment. They arranged themselves around the Garden of Sand as it filled
and led the audience through an enchanting dance and swimming display, two of
their number manipulating the water into ribbons that flowed in the air around
them while they twirled.

The party received more tips from the crowd for their

performance and then another message came:

> *Impress me in the fifth round and I'll agree to Badger's offer - Nix.*
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 After a short debate about whether that would be good or bad for them, the group decided it might be best to disregard it for now. They’d do the fifth fight, but they’d do it for coin and for Vic.

The arena was filled, the water stopping just a few feet
short of the first row of seats – a 15-foot depth to it. The party were guided
out and stood at the base of the arena, the crowd of thousands cheering for
them all the while. Kind looked on from the far side of the room, reptilian
expression blank, studying them. Then doors below the clear water’s surface
opened and the party saw what emerged. Ten merfolk, none of them wearing
armour, all looking hungry, scared, or angry. Half held spears like amateurs
and the other half held nets in young, boyish grips – those five had surely
just entered their teenage years. Here it was. The crowd that had cheered the
party’s destruction all evening was still hungry for this final bit of
bloodshed, screaming and chanting for Driscoll’s little crew to keep killing.
But Kind just watched on, knowing what the group had to puzzle over: kill these
children or Vic stays a statue.

But they wouldn’t do it. The four of them spoke briefly and
were in agreement. Be it for how Driscoll would be viewed, for the wording of
the offer Nix had just given them, the morality of the bloody spectacle, or
just to slight the dragonborn who had led them blindly up to this moment, the
group declared loudly that they wouldn’t kill the merfolk.

Kind said he was surprised but didn’t seem overly
concerned. His crowd would have their show in the end. A whisper in someone’s
ear and a moment later more sliding grates opened below the water’s surface,
freeing three frenzying sharks that began tearing into the largely helpless
merfolk, staining the water red. The party, now so reduced in size, took to the
water, rushing to the air of the merfolk. They were able to keep some of them
alive despite the grave shark wounds through their many healing abilities, and
Malak positioned himself as a bastion between the predators’ teeth and the
helpless sea people. Pyt took to gleefully tearing into the sharks with his
rapier, Clwyd struggled to get her acid to work properly under water and
focused on feeding healing draughts to the hurt merfolk children instead, and
Clark made his way around the arena’s seats, excusing himself past people as he
ran his bell of death at the sharks below the surface.

The fight looked to take a turn when two more sharks were
released, far larger than the previous three. One tore a merfolk child in half
while the other looked to be a threat before someone from the crowd jumped into
the water, plunging a zweihander deep into the creature – Ingela had joined the
show. Malak backed her up and together they quickly dealt with the huge beast.
At that point, it was easy enough for the group to finish off the last shark while
keeping the remaining merfolk safe. In the end, two of the merfolk teenagers
were dead, and the other three were badly hurt. The adults of the group were
distraught, but one of them was composed enough to share a few works in Aquan
with Malak, thanking him for his and the party’s help. He didn’t know how long
they’d been kept prisoner - they’d been in the dark most of the time – and when

Malak said he’d get them out the merman warned him not to cross these people.

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After the show, it was a long time before the crowd cleared out and the arena was drained. The party were met by Kind in the waiting room

they’d been using all day and yet another tense conversation passed between
them. The dragonborn had brought the money that the party had earned, ten
percent of the entrance sales for the evening since they did five bouts, a sum
of 2739 gold pieces. But Kind pondered if he should give the group the money at
all, since their original agreement had not included any clause about the group
earning gold for their time in the Garden. Pyt began chastising the dragonborn
and the Proprietor for their penchant for killing kids, but Kind wasn’t
bothered by the attack so much as by being interrupted. He said the whole deal
had been for the sake of getting the measure of the group after all, and he’d
been able to do that. Furthermore, they were the ones who’d done what killing
there was this evening, so the moral high-ground on which they stood appeared
to be a precarious foundation at best.

Kind looked to the statue of Vic and said it was in a way
quite pleasing to him that it was she who was rendered in such a state. For
she’d been the one to compromise the Proprietor’s business relations with the
Rumidians, informing them that the Proprietor was directly hindering their
politics by harbouring Wilfred Seabottom. This was a full violation of the
spirit of their agreement, if not the letter of them, in Kind’s eyes – though
he did mention that the Proprietor had thought her shrewd to notice the lack of
a Sylvan oath on their second agreement. The dragonborn took a moment to
explain that his name hadn’t been bestowed on him in irony, like Pyt suggested,
but he wasn’t a compassionate or forgiving person, and he always had his
reputation to consider. His name came from how he conducted business: he always
did so in Kind. Respect begetting respect and rudeness begetting rudeness, for
example. He felt he’d been slighted and he wouldn’t stand for it – in
particular, he wouldn’t stand for Driscoll’s new crew to go running about on
Tortuga thinking they can conduct themselves however they want when they dealt
with him. So, he gave them a simple offer: they take the coin and they leave,
but they leave the petrified Vic behind.

The group scrambled for a more favourable outcome. They
tried flippancy, and then double-speak, leveraging the Crooked Warden’s
interest in Vic as best they could. While Kind had initially given the
impression he’d simply destroy the statue when the mood took him, they were
able to talk him into giving them a year and a day, the traditional length of
time given for such matters in the dealings of Faerie. During this time, if
they impressed him, he’d relinquish the statue to their care, but he didn’t go
into many specifics of how they could do this, and he refused to swear any more
Sylvan oaths with the group, thinking they’d simply look for loopholes and gaps
in the wording again. Thus, they were left with little more than a gentlemanly
agreement that he’d keep the statue intact and that he’d give it over if they
upheld their end of the bargain. They did manage to land on one thing they
might do to win Vic back: The Warden has some means of communicating and
transferring his information on Tortuga, but Kind, as adept in the arcane as he
was, did not know anything of it. If the party could uncover and divulge the

Crooked Warden’s means and method, Kind would give Vic back.

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After a fairly uneasy night’s sleep in the drum-yurt down an alleyway in the Sinner Side, the party awoke, found a rickshaw, and were keen

to go to the bathhouse and try to get this final thing binding them and the
Proprietor together dealt with. The urchins, however, told them that the Warden
wanted to speak with them. Once they agreed, they were taken on a very long
rickshaw journey, travelling all the way up the Sinner Side, skirting around

the Ridge, and eventually arriving in the Pieces, Tortuga’s favela. On the way, tragically, a particular message came from Duster:

> *I hope you are well. Have you made progress on the traitor? What of the tensions in the city? . . .Tell Vic I think I found a message.*
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 Pyt said they’d got nothing on the first, too much trouble on the second, and they need more information about the third point.

The group waited in a small, sparsely stocked shack in the
Pieces. A human boy of fifteen or sixteen years called Guren was with them. He
said he’d be their liaison for communicating with the Warden, but they needed
to wait for one more person. Eventually, the door swung open and an aged human
man was shown into the room. He greeted everyone, took his seat, and the
meeting began.

Guren said he would be speaking for the Warden, and as such
the meeting had a delay in communication from the end of the things the party
said and the Warden’s response. The man himself, through Guren, was jovial and
friendly enough, though he expressed that he had a problem that had cropped up
recently. Something was stalking the streets of the Pieces, spiriting away
children in the night – and the Warden couldn’t bear to stand by while so many
of his little friends suffer. He suspected the thing, whatever it was, had
arrived on Tortuga with all the recent traffic to the island, but since he’d
had so much demand for information on the party’s activity since they arrived
on the turtle, he hadn’t had the eyes spare to observe the Pieces enough to
find out what it was.

Thus, he arrived at his current situation. There was still
money to be made in telling people about the party, but he could do that while
he manipulated the information, and that was his offer to them. He would hide
them away for a time, saying to those who were paying him that either they’d
left or perhaps some other lies of their own design – they were free to choose.
In exchange, they’d hunt what was troubling the Pieces. The Warden had hoped to
use a child as capable as Vic as bait for the situation, but wasn’t too put out
when Clwyd displayed that she could disguise herself well enough and could be a
stand-in. The new man, ‘Cormorant’ MacTavish, knew the Pieces well and could
serve the group in the hunt. In turn, he was after some information that the
Warden teased at having. Despite the group not being able to speak about their
deal with the Proprietor, the Warden figured out that Wilfred was in the Shell
Lord’s care and assured the group he could have some of his friends among the
Proprietor’s ranks deliver a message or two, and then eventually whisk the
gnome away to join them once his tenure was finished.

When evening came, the group were shown down into some of
the sewers of Tortuga, and from there to some secret sub-passages of the
Warden’s own use. They eventually came to a large open area filled with tables,

books, and urchins in their later teens. They were shown to a room with beds and some simple amenities, and like that, they stayed in the Warden’s care for a week.

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Meta things:

·
Wilfred is joining the group after he’s spent
one week in the Obsidian Villa, so four days into the party's stay. The Warden had
him taken such that no Rumidians or otherwise knew about it.

·
Everyone has 7 days downtime in relative
confinement except for Wilfred who has 3. You can decide to do things in this
if anything comes to mind. Message me out of game so that we don’t bog down the
start of the next session with this stuff.

·
You can do a minimum of 7 communications between
yourselves and Duster during this time – more if Clark uses his sending spells
himself, but that’s Dan’s call. Maybe we should make a google doc for this?

·
You’ve all levelled up. Please do this and tell
me what’s new so I can look up spells and abilities.

·
Fill out the feedback form if you have the time!
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