Mandraiv's Diary 6

After waiting a couple of hours for Artox to recover from poison, with the big idiot also recovering, we decided to clean up anything remaining in the graveyard complex.  We came across some mutant, moron, inbred, hideously ugly – like ugly enough to make our resident troll-woman seem attractive,  half-ogre gaoler with another crazy little derro companion, took care of them and rescued a bunch of prisoners who knew nothing of value and all seemed to be suffering from some kind of disease.  The big gay warrior took them to the church of Saranrae to be looked after, and we were soon back at it.  We then found some new kind of corpse-construct, “killed” it and found the remaining body parts to complete our quest, saving the city again from a war.  Amusingly, the torso of the body had one arm when we found it, apparently animated by some kind of necromancy, not the torso, just the arm. 

Very odd, but perhaps useful. I asked Artox if he’d like some undead arms grafted onto him, and he was somewhat dismissive of the concept.  Maybe he’s thinking that his nightmarish appearance doesn’t really fit in with all this saving the city and hanging around with queers, hags and general do-gooders we’ve been doing recently. Might make him look like some kind of celestial being, see if that makes him happier.  Need to remember to get him to train a bit on his grappling too, given he’s very good at it, appears less capable than out two large, foolish fighting types at straight up smashing, and incapable of grabbing things his size.  Or maybe just enlarge him more often.  The trick of making him permanently larger eludes me at the moment, but I have heard of people able to do it and have a few ideas to work on to get him there.  I think I may even be able to make him truly enormous – a couple of my ideas have the potential to make him as big as I want.  This may need to be approached with caution though, as we have been finding some pretty tight little passages and doorways in out adventures so far.  I’d hate to have to leave him behind just because he didn’t fit in a room.

Anyway, we handed the body (in a sack, naturally) to the head of the city watch and returned to our inn to digest the latest news the marshal provided us with – that the hot chick we captured earlier had been tried, found guilty and was scheduled to be executed the next evening.  The guard who had confessed to letting her into the king’s bedchamber has also apparently gone nuts and tried to escape, and didn’t survive the re-capture process.  So the truth of his presumed (by us, at least) innocence had gone to the grave.  The big gay warrior was amazed, struggling to believe that the woman that we all figured was innocent was going to get the chop.  I pointed out once more that it was a frame job, clearly masterminded by the queen, but he still can’t accept it, and immediately tried to figure out how she’d been found guilty.

First he set off to speak to the Archbanker of Abadar, the priest who’d cast the truth spells for the trial.  Not overly surprisingly, the cleric was unimpressed by his questions, informed him that she was guilty and that the interview was over.  Our warrior also continued to try to pick up the queen’s right-hand woman, despite being told over and over again that she’s gay.  At least he managed to confirm that she is, indeed, seeing the queen, and apparently deeply, truly, madly in love with her.  The queen’s not a bad looker, so I guess I can understand it, but there’s better around.  I guess power is attractive as well as just being good looking.  His recounting of the discussion indicated even more clearly that the frame up is courtesy of the queen, but regardless of how many times I pointed this out, he refused to listen.  Even when I gave him the Blue Steel while waiting for him to ponder some of my finer logical points.  Props for his massive, pig-headed, stupid persistence and obstinacy though.

I finally gave up on trying to convince him when the ugly chick invited me to come along to the church of Sheyln.  I was still a little undecided on how to proceed about the ugliest women I’ve ever met getting involved with the church of beauty, but the invite was too good to turn up when the big idiot with the social skills of a small potato decided he’d come along too.  When I pointed out his unsuitability for the church, his responses showed him to be as self-deceptive as the woman – he insisted that he wasn’t ugly, and that he just finds it hard to talk to people “real goodly”.  I tried explaining that as well as being a freak with no manners and a bizarre speech impediment, he had clearly suffered a run in or two with the ugly stick at some point in time, but he insisted that he is actually quite good looking.  This trip to the church should be hilarious.

We got to the church and headed over for the painting class.  The big fool declared that he wanted to be a model for it and then stripped naked and posed before the poor priestess taking the class had a chance to answer him.  She took this surprisingly well and decided that he’d be our model.  I mentioned the amusing concept of these hideous people getting involved with the church, and the crazy woman took offence, claiming that Sheyln worship is all about identifying the inner beauty of people, not just the way they look.  A lovely message in theory, but looking around I couldn’t identify anyone apart from my companions in the complex who’d need to concern themselves too much with inner beauty to fit into this environment.  She did mention a temple to Calistria in the city.  Maybe I’ll check that one out too.  Sounds like a more realistic place, which recognises that beauty is important and that “inner beauty” is a concept reserved for the ugly so that they can cope with their hideous, unbearable existences.

In the end, the ugly broad made a decent go of painting the big fool in his pose, while I painted him passed out from the poison as seen for several hours while under the city.  I showed the priestess my work and started discussing the finer points of beauty and my big companion’s lack of it, inner or otherwise, and for some reason she decided that she had an issue with me and that I was insulting him.  It was really strange, I mean I’ve had instant hostility from ugly people before, I mean it can be hard to accept someone who is so utterly, ridiculously good looking when you’re ugly yourself, but never from an attractive woman, and certainly not from one who works at the temple for the goddess of beauty.  Maybe it was just that time of the month, but she wasn’t so attractive that I’ll be bothering to talk to her again, or visiting her church, unless I really need something they have to offer.

We returned to the inn, where Artox was vastly amused by my painting.  You’d think h might have some sympathy for our fighting companion, given his own experience with the same poison, from the same source, but no.  It seems a few of our companion's more cowardly and stupid decisions in fights have really rubbed Artox the wrong way, and there is little chance of my eidolon ever managing more than a barely civil tolerance of the man.  After he recovered, and I can assure you that I’ll be careful not to amuse him too much again, as the sight of a serpentine outsider wetting itself and almost choking on it’s large, forked tongue was far from pleasant, he suggested I show the fighting man.  I figured this was a little cruel, but should be good for a laugh (hopefully not such a massive loss of control from Artox) and gave it to him.  I guess I’ll really never understand how ugly people think.  The weirdo actually liked the picture, or at least claimed to (and I doubt he’s a good enough actor to have been faking it) and asked if he could keep it.  I gave it to him, of course, and he seemed genuinely happy.  If he’s interested in collecting painting about his more embarrassing moments, I may have to consider taking the pastime a little more seriously.  Artox’s idea more than mine - maybe I’ll grow him a couple of arms and see how he goes at it.

We then headed for the execution.  It seems as though our ugly chick has some common sense, even if none of the others do, as she was against trying to rescue the bard.  I asked everyone, because I wanted to be sure to be disguised if we were going to be committing treason, and so I was disguised and without Artox as we went to watch proceedings, with only our female group member against a rescue.  The execution looked to be going fine, with the queen arriving, announcing the verdict and signalling the headsman.  So far, none of my companions had reacted, and we would hopefully manage to get through this without attracting negative attention from our ruler.  The big gay one tried to speak out, but was ignored and the axe was about to fall when Blackjack, the city’s masked protector, leapt in, pinned the headsman’s foot to the floor and freed the girl.  Having been reminded of how attractive she was, I decided to help, and managed to put an air elemental between Blackjack and the headsman just as the axe was being swung in a cowardly, rear attack - just what you'd expect from an executioner, and messaged Blackjack as he fled with the girl that those of us who had helped him were staying at the Three Rings inn.  I didn’t point out that I was the only person who actually did anything, but then again time was short.  He should be able to figure it out pretty easily anyway.  An impressive bounty of 5,000 gp was put on the girl’s head, but I figured I wouldn’t be interested in handing her in until I’d exhausted my patience with her in bed, so I pretty much ignored this and relaxed at the inn, waiting for more work.  Everyone else, naturally, felt that the girl had been wrongly convicted and that we shouldn't persue her just for the bounty, but however miguided their motives, if it suits me I can go with it.

Sure enough, work found us within a couple of weeks, as Grau, the drunken guardsman asked us to help with some sick kid.  Naturally, there was no way to convince my companions that exposing ourselves to disease wasn’t a good idea, and we headed off with the guard.  At the house, we saw the priest of Abadar who we’d employed previously, cooking up some herbs apparently unwilling to use his magic to heal the child as the family couldn’t pay.  Our two big warriors (incidentally, did I mention that the stupid one had now grown an extra pair of arms) and the woman all chipped in to buy healing for the kid, and she was fixed and told her tale, or at least some of it.  We established that she had found some cash at the beach and spent it at a nearby bakery.  The baker told us she’d headed into the city proper to buy some fancy sweets, and so we returned to further question the girl.  Apparently she’d disobeyed her parents in going into town, but we were able to ascertain that she’d gone to a fancy bakery and headed there.  At the bakery it became clear that there was trouble for the city, as the baker was sick and apparently the cause of the girl’s infection, presumably as well as the infection of all of his customers over the last couple of days.  We convinced him to destroy all of his stock and to close up for a bit, but the damage may already have been done.  I’m really worried that this disease may become a plague infecting a lot of people in Korvosa.  I mean, it involves a hideous rash and pustules – the kind of thing that might leave someone disfigured even if they are able to survive the disease.  We headed for the city watch to warn the captain that there was a good chance of a plague happening.  She promised to take action and told us that Vencarlo, the venerable fencing instructor and our lead suspect as the alter-ego of Blackjack, was looking for us.

We went to Vencarlo’s school and found that it was closed for the day.  Worried that the plague may have struck here too, we were relieved when asked to come in and help the man with a problem.  He had the hot bard hidden in his place and asked us to smuggle her out of town and to a nearby village, now that the heat had died down a little.  We immediately agreed to do it, although by “we” I mean the big gay warrior, although I didn’t object as a few days escorting the hottie to somewhere safe would give me a good opportunity to “get to know her”.  Our cleric then jumped up as though he’d bee goosed, and it turns out that his magical harrow deck was trying to get his attention.  He pulled it out and the gypsy ghost appeared and gave everyone another harrow reading.  Still pure hokum of course, but it sounded a lot like there is going to be a plague in Korvosa, assuming there’s any truth at all to what she said.  On top of the evidence we've found that there's likely to be a plague in Korvosa, my suspicions now lie with there being a good chance that there will be a plague in Korvosa.  Wonder how the ghost found out?  All in all though, another very good reason to spend a little time escorting a fine looking woman away from the city.