Mandraiv's Diary 4

Wow.  The big gay bastard with the two handed sword is a bloody-minded freak with no consideration of the damage his actions might cause me.  His desire to put himself at massive personal risk is great when, as a group, we’re in a fight – but to deliberately risk my incarceration and potential execution, if not assassination simply to pursue what is, by his twisted personal barometer “right” is just plain madness.  Has he no regard for my safety?

To recap the actual events of the last couple of days, we spent a few recovering from our massive, crucial and potentially city-saving battle with the spider king.  The rioting was put down effectively by the hellknights, until a rumour sprang up that the king’s assassin had been identified.  Apparently, one of the royal guards confessed to letting the king’s artist into his bedchamber late one night, and he was found dead the next morning.  The woman’s identity was spreading around the city like wildfire, prompting the city watch captain to come to our inn and enlist our assistance in locating the suspect, in order to ensure that she survived to stand trial.

Having the supposed assassin’s address, we made our way into the shingles to grab her.  Unfortunately she saw us coming, and a hectic roof-top pursuit almost saw her get away, with the other big dumb one managing, at the end, to outdistance the rest of the party and catch the slippery bitch.  Once we had her, turned out she was incredibly hot, and so stripping her of her armour was quite entertaining, although given the sensibilities of some of the others, our questioning of her was less entertaining than it could have been.  Anyway, we questioned her thoroughly, established that she almost certainly didn’t kill the king, put her in a sack and took her to the city watch captain.  Further questioning, aided by a truth spell from the cleric indicated pretty conclusively that she was innocent.  Regardless, we left her with the guard captain to face trial.

It was at this point that the gay warrior decided that since she was innocent, we’d have to get involved in trying to get her freed.  This led to a long argument between us, where despite my immaculate logic he refused to accept that the queen or her right hand lady were most likely involved in setting the girl up, and that we were definitely best off letting the matter go to trial.  I even suggested that we would have a better chance of helping the girl if we tried to rescue her from her sure to be public execution after the trial.  He never mentioned a concern that she mightn’t make it to trial, and listened to everything I said before agreeing with me a deciding to see the queen’s second in command anyway.  So despite agreeing that the scheme had to have been initiated by one of the two women, he was going to talk to one of them about it.  I gave up arguing at the citadel gates and returned to the inn to await the royal guard escort to the royal dungeons.

Eventually, the fool returned, and apparently he’d managed to ascertain a few truths without landing us all in hot water.  He apparently asked the royal handmaiden out, convinced her to let him speak to the royal guard being held for letting the assassin into the king’s bedchamber and convinced himself that she had no part in the plot.  His visit to the guard apparently indicated that he was probably lying and was accepting the blame (and death penalty) on the basis of helping his family.

Naturally, his gayness was still unwilling to let this now apparently royal plot alone, and we went to visit the guard’s family.  Finding out about the address from the drunk guard we spoke to a couple of weeks earlier, we also found out that the queen’s handmaiden plays for the other team, perhaps explaining why our gay warrior is trying to pick her up – surely a harmless way for him to conceal his natural tendencies with no risk of a successful campaign to woo the maiden.  Despite convincing arguments of the presumed truth, the guard’s wife wanted nothing to do with us or any of our very sensible advice (like fleeing the city) and we were shortly on our way back to the inn.

We then went to report this lot to the captain of the city watch, she offered us more work.  Finally, something we can get paid for while leaving royal plots alone.  Anyway, apparently some Shoanti bloke was killed by one of the recent mobs, and unless the body is returned to his people, there will be war.  How many times can we save the city from war in a month?  Anyway, the captain told us that the body was taken by some alchemist into the catacombs beneath the city’s main cemetery, and we headed off immediately.  Apparently there is a connection to one of the group with this alchemist, but since the big fool refuses to talk about it, we let the matter drop and soon found ourselves headed down through a trapdoor in the floor of a mausoleum and down into the catacombs.  We were attacked shortly thereafter by a bunch of skeletons, which we destroyed and then prepared to continue on to find this alchemist.  Hmm, a necromantic alchemist.  Interesting.  Wonder what kind of loot he’ll be hoarding?