28/04/2020 - Talking Terms, Wise Words and Horse Harrassment

## TL: DR

* Kunai negotiated terms with Finnian. It is agreed that if Finnian provides the group with guides to get them to the region they are looking for, then the group would first try to persuade Officer Horden to give the Halflings better living conditions before smuggling in weapons for them if that failed.
* Ash imparted much wisdom to a very stressed Scribbulus .
* Early next day, some sneaky fairy-like creatures snuck into camp and scared away all of the horses!
* After recovering most of the horses, the group found themselves being chased back to camp by a seemingly undying troll...

## Finnian the Merry

As Khrom continued his private conversation with Finnian, Blagden  slipped his consciousness into Ratty and went for a quick recon of Finnian’s camp. He observed that the camp was pretty scant and that there was a second halfling hiding quietly in one of the tents. After silently relaying this information to Tamsin  and Kunai , Blagden and the others approached Finnian and Khrom , whose sizeable head was still wedged firmly inside Finnian’s tiny halfling tent.

After a few minutes, Finnian and Khrom  emerged, and Finnian formally introduced himself as Finnian the Merry, ATC  outlaw extraordinaire! His admission to being an outlaw prompted Blagden  to question why Khrom , the ex-guard captain and lawyer, was happy to work with such a law-breaker? Khrom  pragmatically replied that it was sometimes OK to break the rules ***if it was for good**.* However, unfortunately for Khrom , Blagden’s  selective hearing kicked in hard and all he heard was “it’s OK to break the rules”. Finnian then inquired as to why the group were on Cypropa . After a somewhat over-simplistic explanation centred around finding a “stick” by Khrom , Kunai  took over talking duties and outlined the specifics of how they needed to locate a divining rod lost by a previous group near the Anks Mountains. Kunai then shattered Finnian’s hopes of them being revolution-allies by saying that the groups mission was incredibly time-sensitive, and that they needed to leave ASAP. As a very down-crested looking Finnian tried in vain to appeal to Kunai’s honour, Blagden  piped up and asked why Finnian had been singing so loudly it hurt his earses if he was an outlaw? Finnian explained that few sheriffs bothered to venture this far from the ATC  mines and that most of the guards weren’t bothered enough to stalk outlaws through the forest. Tamsin then asked whether Finnian knew any more about the monster that attacked the previous group? He said that there were rumours of a creature in rags that used magic to lure people away, never to be seen again... As he said this, the more perceptive of the group noticed a second halfling quietly approach. Finnian introduced this newcomer as his Brother, Artrad, explaining that he was a poet who had saved his life many times.

## Talking terms

Imbued by the comforting presence of his brother, Finnian asked the group if there were any deals that could be struck, saying that he knew of guides who could lead them to where the previous group were attacked, and that as the group weren’t Halflings they could be “useful” to the outlaws. Irritated by the cryptic use of the word “useful”, Kunai asked if for the love of God Finnian could just say what he wanted. Chastised, Finnian explained that the outlaws needed weapons, that the Island was strictly locked down by the ATC , and that they had a shipment of weapons due to arrive, but no ship to smuggle them through the port. Kunai asked why they couldn’t just offload the weapons at a remote part of the coast, but Finnian explained that the rest of the coast was far too rocky and dangerous for such a landing. He continued to propose that if the group agreed to use their ship to smuggle the weapons through the port, he would arrange the groups guides. As Kunai expressed his distaste for the deal, Finnian gave a passionate spiel about how the ATC  use their economic power to force the local Halflings into indentured slavery. Kunai then made a counter-offer, proposing that instead of smuggling weapons, the group could use their relationship with Officer Horden to persuade her into giving the Halflings better conditions, adding that if that fails *then* they’d get the weapons. Finnian counter-countered that persuasion would never work, and that they should get the weapons before attempting any dialogue. Finally fed up of the whole conversation, Kunai placed a steady hand on his whip-chain and made it clear that the group had the greater numbers right now, and that he insisted Finnian agree to his terms. Even as Khrom moved to stand protectively next to Finnian, Finnian realised that Kunai  was right and reluctantly accepted the terms of the deal. Then, cheering slightly, he said that with a deal must come music, and he and his brother went off on one with songs, poems and fables, the latter of which even Blagden kind of enjoyed.

After the musical interlude, Kunai asked where they should go to find these guides. Finnian explained that they were near the town of Rocksend and that he would meet the group there in a day and a half. With this agreed, the group headed back to spend the night with Scribbulus  and Ash . As they traversed, Tamsin worriedly pointed out that if they tried to persuade the ATC  to give the halflings better terms then they would be prime suspects if soon after those halflings became inexplicably armed! Kunai just somewhat ominously stated that in his opinion they were under no obligation to do anything…

## Words of Wisdom

Whilst the main portion of the group were meeting Finnian, Scribbulus  was nervously pacing back and forth across the camp, instinctively making lil’ druid flowers and weather orbs (in the process discovering that it was going to rain at somepoint in the next 24 hrs). He then anxiously asked Ash what he made of all this, adding that he didn’t think violence could be the answer, but that he couldn’t just leave the Halflings in such conditions either! Ash then shared many morsels of wisdom, conceding that the situation was complex, but making it clear that as representatives of the guild it would be wrong of them to risk the guilds reputation by doing something rash. He also admitted that he had concerns over the lack of morals amongst some of the group, and that without full group unity it would be hard for them to do anything. Scribbulus  added that he just couldn’t stop thinking of their poor little faces, and that he couldn’t possibly imagine arming them – halflings were not known for their competence in combat! Ash agreed, and pointed out that a failed revolution could lead to the halflings being killed or suffering even worse treatment. Ash  also re-iterated that whatever they do cannot reflect back onto the guild, and finished off with the wise nugget that “without people archaeology is pointless”. Scribbulus , who now seemed to be much less stressed, thanked Ash  for calming him and wondered out loud whether the rest of the group had found anything good across the river. He then randomly offered Ash some grass…

## Poor old Gimble

As the rest of the group finally made it back across the river and into camp, Khrom suddenly noticed that Gimble  had been with them the whole time and asked him what he thought. Gimble  wailed that people should be nice to each other and actually talk to Gimble , and that revolutions are for equality. Khrom said he liked Gimble  because he was sensible. Gimble  said he liked Khrom because he talked to him. Khrom  then hugged Gimble , causing a single tear to run down Gimble’s  little gnomish eye. Whilst this touching moment occurred, Tamsin  began protecting the camp with a well-placed alarm spell. Khrom then offered the little people use of his tent. Gimble  was super keen, but Blagden and Scribblulus declined, leaving Gimble  looking very crestfallen and upset. As Gimble  sadly walked over to sleep with the horses, the ever-opportunistic Kunai claimed the empty tent for himself (he clearly enjoyed it as he didn’t snore once all night). Before everyone retired for the night, Blagden told Ratty to keep watch. However, not keen to trust Blagden (let alone Blagden’s companion!) for such an important job, the rest of the group set up a watch order too. Ash  agreed to take first watch, so Blagden ordered Ratty to watch with her. For the next few hours, Ash , Kunai and Scribbulus  rotated the watch, before finally Tamsin  took over. However, as dawn began to break, Tamsin  suddenly found herself asleep, and woke up to the sound of the group’s horses going absolutely mental before bolting off…

## Equine expedition: Part 1

As she shouted for the rest of the group to awaken, Tamsin sent up Ellie, her raven familiar, to scout out the horses. Following Tamsin’s directions and Scribbulus ’ excellent tracking, Scribbulus , Kunai and Blagden dashed off after two of the harassed horses.  As they approached, Kunai heard giggling and relayed this info to the others. Blagden  suggested that Kunai should sneak round behind the giggles whilst he got the horses. As usual, Kunai approached his prey in absolute silence, getting close enough to see two tiny fey/fairy-like creatures. However, just as he went to throw his net over them, they spotted him, and darted out of the brush. Now seeing them, Blagden quickly incapacitated one of them using his trademark sleep manoeuvre. However, the other creature once again evaded Kunai’s net before summoning some sort of magical hand to slap one of the horses, sending it bolting off once again. Thankfully, Scribbulus  and Wilbur were on hand to catch and calm the horses, whilst Blagden and Kunai attempted to catch the remaining sneaky little creature. However, the creature proved extremely tricksy and cheekily fired a small dart at Blagden . Angry at himself for not immediately catching his prey, Kunai then expertly whipped his chain towards the creature, successfully wrapping it tight. As Kunai tried to drag the now grappled-but-flying creature towards Scribbulus  and Wilbur, Blagden  used the distraction to steal a smooth-as-stone and a fork-shaped stick from the sleeping creature’s pocket. However, as he did this, the grappled fey managed to wriggle free of Kunai’s chain and slipped up out of reach, mocking them with high pitch giggles as it did so. This prompted Blagden  to angrily un-sheath his dagger, hold it to the sleeping creatures throat, and threaten to cut its head off unless the tricksy one stopped being silly. This succeeded in doing nothing more than amusing the creature, at which point an extremely irritated Kunai mounted one of the horses collected by Scribbulus  and told the others to ignore the creature and just leave. As Scribbulus  followed Kunai on the second horse, he sent Wilbur to go and pick up Blagden . Blagden quickly tied up the sleeping creature as tightly as he could, shoved a dirty rag in its mouth, threw it over his back, and hopped onto Wilbur who promptly romped off after the others.

## Equine expedition: Part 2

Whilst this was occurring, Kelda and Khrom  set off after two of the other horses. Kelda, realising that they were not fast enough to catch them, transformed into a tanky-as draft horse and charged off after them with Khrom  on her back. As they approached the panicked horses, Kelda tried to use her horse-speak to calm them down. The two horses explained to her that they had been attacked and harassed by some horrible giggly things! Kelda calmly tried to convince the horses that everything was OK, that they’d scared off the horrible creatures, and that it was safe to return back to camp now. The horses seemed convinced, but then suddenly they all heard more giggling nearby. The two horses exchanged a terrified look, before something suddenly smacked one of them, causing it to bolt off once again.  Kelda dashed after them, yelling that is was fine, whilst Khrom  politely asked the mysterious giggling noises to be nice. Unfortunately, Kelda’s persuasion did not go well, and the two horses continued to yell hysterically at each other to keep running...

## Equine expedition: Part 3

Whilst the rest of the group frolicked about after the horses, Tamsin watched their progress through Ellie’s eyes, epically relaying everything back to Ash , Gimble  and Elyan . Tamsin then spotted the final two horses hiding behind a burnt-out farmyard not too far away and directed them all towards it. As they got close to the horses, Elyan suggested that they should very very naughtily sneak through the fields of wheat to try and approach without alerting themselves to any watching fairy-creatures. As they got closer, they still didn’t see any creatures, so Elyan  suggested that Ash went to get the horses whilst he watched in readiness to surprise anything that might attack (Tamsin  continued to watch at a safe distance with Gimble  at her side). As Ash  crept forward, he quickly noticed a giggling sound coming from an old well in the centre of the weedy farmyard. Rolling his eyes, he appealed to the better nature of the hidden creatures, saying that they’d had their fun, but the group had things to do so could they maybe stop!? His pleas seemed to cause the creatures to engage in a whispered debate. Their chatter was completely unintelligible to Ash , but Elyan could hear and understand that they were excitedly planning more shenanigans and clearly had no plans to behave! As Ash and Elyan watched on, two tiny fairy heads proceeded to rapidly pop up and down whilst giggling maniacally. Suddenly, the two critters flew out of the well towards the horses. But Elyan  and Ash were ready for such a manoeuvre. Elyan  rapidly cast a spell on one of them, attempting to persuade them to behave, but sadly the critter just said lol no. Ash  however, was not down with such a peaceful approach and struck at the other one with his astral fist, seemingly killing it with one hit. The surviving critter then zipped over to the two horses, and attempted to harass one into moving away. However, the horse was having none of it and stubbornly refused to budge. This gave Elyan  time to attempt another spell, this time opting for a less peaceful approach. With an irritated swirl of his hands he magically summoned screeching dissonant whispers into the mind of the creature, causing its brain to literally explode out of its ears. For a brief second Elyan  and Ash  thought that was it, but then to their dismay they heard further giggling from the largely destroyed farmhouse across the yard, followed by a large roar and stomping noise. They then gasped as one of the horses (Baxter) came charging out from behind the house, with a huge lumbering troll chasing in its wake.

## Troll! In the farmyard!

Ever quick to react, Ash  immediately attempted to strike the troll with his astral fist, but unfortunately the troll deftly dodged the attack. Seeing Ash’s  melee attack fail, Elyan  tried to incapacitate the troll through the medium of laughter, which succeeded excellently, causing the troll to collapse to the floor trollololing. However, as the troll collapsed, four more fairy dudes appeared beyond the farmhouse, causing Elyan  to suggest that perhaps it was time they made their exit. Fortunately, at this point the motley crew of Scribblulus, Kunai , Wilbur and Blagden romped up the path towards the farmhouse. Seeing the irritating little fairies, Blagden hopped off Wilbur and once again cast his sleep spell, this time causing three of them to fall into a deep sleep. With just one conscious foe remaining, Kunai rapidly whipped out his chain, thus ensuring it was not conscious any longer. As Scribbulus  and Wilbur ran over to the other side of the farmhouse to calm down Baxter, Ash  soothed the other horse, hopped onto it, and began to make his exit. Elyan , seeing all of the bad guys either laughing, dead or asleep, ran over to help Scribbulus calm Baxter, then climbed up and followed Ash  away from the farmhouse.  Back on the other side of the farmhouse, blissfully unaware that his allies were running away, Blagden  was happily plundering the pockets of all the critters he’d put to sleep. Unfortunately, this plundering was met with mixed success, as despite finding a nice grass whistle, Blagden also found his mage-hand becoming (magically?) stuck in one of the pockets! Thankfully for Blagden  this was easily solved by simply cutting off the entire pocket. As the rest of the group were either making their exit or thieving, Kunai remained focused on the task at hand and ran over to hide behind a well near the laughing troll. This was fortunate, as just as he ducked behind the well the troll realised that it really didn’t get the joke, stopped laughing, and began once again charging towards Elyan  and Baxter. As Scribbulus  continued to lead the other horses further away, Elyan  once again cast his laughter spell, causing the troll to almost immediately forget that it didn’t get the joke, and once again fall down laughing. This gave the Kunai the opportunity to deal a mighty strike into the troll with his chain before again ducking behind the well. Keen to leave, Elyan  sang a quick song of inspiration to Kunai , and then charged off towards the camp with Ash  on his heels. Scribbulus was about to follow, but suddenly realised that Blagden  was nowhere to be seen! Concerned for the young goblin, Scribbulus handed the remaining horse reigns to Gimble  and told him to head back to camp with Tamsin . Scribbulus then transformed into a speedy little Ornithominidae and sprinted off to look for Blagden , whilst Kunai struck at the troll again. Thankfully, Scribbulus quickly located Blagden , but unfortunately Blagden  clearly had no idea this strange dinosaur approaching him was Scribbulus , and proceeded to back away from it, crossbow in hand. As Blagden  nervously backed away from Scribbulus , he sneakily crouched down to thieve one final pocket, but this time was rewarded with nothing more than a hand covered with sticky oil! Unfortunately for Blagden  his day did not improve, as with a roar the troll once again broke free of the laughing spell and this time charged towards him. Now trapped between a strange dino-bird and a troll, Blagden  dashed off towards Kunai with exceptional speed. Grateful that Blagden was at least now going in vaguely the right direction, dino-Scribbulus also dashed away from the Troll. As Scribbulus and Blagden  passed Kunai , he shouted at them to hurry up before also beginning to run away. However, it was quickly apparent that the troll was not only following them, but easily as fast as them. Seeing this, Scribbulus  summoned a mighty blast of warding wind to keep the troll at bay, whilst Blagden  and Kunai  shot at it with their rogue weapons. This continued for several minutes, until Kunai  realised that the troll appeared to be healing itself as quickly as he and Blagden  could damage it! Armed with this new information, Scribbulus , Blagden  and Kunai  decided to just make a run for it, hoping to get back to camp with enough time to warn the others that there was a seemingly undying troll on their tails…