Watson: The Convalescing Chronicles 1 - 3

Watson: The Convalescing Chronicles 1 - 3

I have finally escaped and am free to make my own destiny, but before I leave the city there are a couple of issues from my past that need to be resolved.

Currently I am recovering from wounds and poisoning I suffered recently. For the first time these were injuries not inflicted as a punishment, the poisoning was not due to part of some experiment. I’ve been hurt worse and if f a bit pain and poison is to be the price of freedom, then bring it on.

It all started not much more than a week ago. Having ended my sufferance at the hand of Fyffe taking what I could before putting the place to the flame, I received a Harrow card from a messenger stating that they know of my past I should meet with them if I want revenge on Gaedren Lann.

Lann, a name from so long, all the pain, all of the suffering, he caused it all when he took me all those years ago.

I am not surprised he has made other enemies. It looks like I may have found an ally in my quest.

“It might be a trap.” I thought.

“It’s not a trap.” I reassured myself.

The address was for a fortuneteller in the Shingles district. I checked it out for a while and observed an odd mixture of people arriving at around the same time.  The first was a weathered warrior with a great-sword strapped to his back. Turns out he was known as Gritt. Had a bone to pick with Gritt after he strangled him and left him for dead as a child.

There was Justin, a young human with a big chip, a bit hot –headed too. Strapped to his side was a gun. I’ve heard of these things. They use various kinds of alchemical components to channel an explosion so that it forces a metal projectile or projectiles out tube “barrel” at target. By channeling the explosion the projectiles move very quickly and can cause significant damage targets its pointed at. Very innovative indeed! I remember Fyffe talking about such devices when he thought I was not listening. Fool, I was always listening.  Fyffe also had ingredients and recipes, which he would not be missing at the moment.

It wasn’t a trap. There were six of us in total, seven if you count Artox, the summoned reptile belonging to to Mandraiv.

Cautious introductions were made, turns out we all owe Lann.

Our host finally entered Zellara, a fortune teller who thanked us for coming. She had been wronged by Lan too. He had taken a rare harrow deck that was both a treasured family heirloom and her means to make a living.  She had sent her son to retrieve it, but all she got was his murder at Lann’s hands. .

We agreed to retrieve the missing harrow deck, though I suspect our motivations were not all altruistic and that vengeance was the main goal. 

Before we set out Zellara read each of our fortunes. I don’t really believe in that mumbo jumbo, but she was quite insistent and said it would provide us with some aid and guidance.  The only guidance I needed was directions to where Lann was hiding.

It was apt that Lann was holed up in a fishworks. A filthy front for a filthy, puny man. Justin watched the street while the rest of us entered the factory.

The factory was manned (if it can be called that) by half a dozen broken and battered lost boys and a couple of Lann’s thugs as supervisors.  The bosses saw us and ordered the boys to attack, laughing all the time.

I remember little of the fight. I was temporarily felled by a lucky blow to the head.

My companions made short work of the one of the thugs and captured the other when the dirty little gnome surrendered. He was so weak he even tried to dress pass himself off as a human child.  We tied him up and let the kids go. Sent them to one of Lady Linsday’s orphanages. Hopefully they made it there and did not end up as a new guinea pig for a deranged alchemist.

A quick search revealed little in the fishworks, however my keen eyes noted a gap between the fishworks floor and the water below. Climbing down I found another walkway suspended below the floor that ended in a door.

We opened the door and there he was, Gaedren Lann.

“You son of a bitch.”

He was a lot smaller and weaker than I remember. With Lann was another shifty character and his pet crocodile. 

Lann showed some recognition in his eyes and haughtily said we were fools to come back. After I nearly split his friend in half with dagger and Gritt smashed his with his huge sword, he was not nearly so cocky.

Artox moved in for a pet on pet grudge match with the croc. Sparrowhawk executed the scum I nailed with a well-placed arrow, but it was Mandraiv who ended Lann’s reign. His crossbow bolt went straight through the fiend’s head before embedding in the wall behind.

His pet slinked off into the river rather than share his fate. Probably a good choice over becoming snake food for Artox.

Savouring our victory for a moment, Sparrowhawk considered feeding him his nut sack, but reluctantly decided against it. 

“Hasta la vista. Lann”

 

……

Searching through the ill-gotten gains the Harrow deck was located as expected, along with some various objects of jewelry, including a brooch that I was pretty sure belonged to Queen Ileosa. How the hell Lann get his grubby claws on that. As surprising as the brooch was, the most surprising of all was fly ridden box that contained a severed head, that in itself is not surprising, Lann had strange tastes after all, but there are no question of about the head’s identity. It belonged to Zellara, not only that; it was obvious the head had been removed from its body quite some time ago.  Something was very, very wrong.

It was not the only thing wrong, after stuffing the gnome neatly into Gritt’s backpack we left the fishworks into a maelstrom of yelling, rioting, burning and general civil disorder. Maybe Lann was the glue that held society together.

It was not the case, it turns out the King has died and if you were to believe popular opinion, the Queen terminated him. The Queen is not very popular with many of the natives, and the death of the King was used as an excuse for people to act like spoilt little girls.

Opposing the little girls were city guard, the marines and looking for any excuse to pretty much kill everyone, the Hellknights.

We attempted to stop a group of from looting a bakery. Gritt nearly had them convinced, but one ran and so the Hellknights cut them all down as an “example”. An example of what? Apparently it is the “Law”.  If this is the case, the law sucks.

No riot could be complete without the beating of a noble. Gritt was a lot more persuasive with this group. At his suggestion they all returned home like good little girls.  I think the pocket gnome helped.

Sol managed to pick up the clap from some dirty man. He swears he is cured and doesn’t swing that way, but you can never be too sure.

We pressed on towards the centre of  town where the majority of the action was happening, but another run in with the hell knights at a guard outpost, this time we managed to convince the crowds to move on before they were butchered, convinced us to turn back.

The gnome was handed over to the guard, he was not entirely happy with this and he started protesting like a little girl, but the alternative of being handed over to Artox was less appealing and we stop his whining.

In an effort to avoid any further issues and cases of mistaken identity and breaches of curfew, we stuck to the back streets on our journey back to Zellara’s.

Turns out the back streets are near as dangerous. In addition to the problems you might expect when a city is rioting, the normal problems of vermin and the like seem to get worse. Vermin in Korvosa is not rats and wild dogs, but evil little imps. Apparently the college is unable to control themselves very well and as a result there is an infestation of these demonic little pests. They would not be such a problem if they were not poisonous and quite resistant to normal weapons.  Still where there is a better mouse, there is a better mousetrap. Korvosa also has an abundance of pseudo-dragons, the natural enemy of imps. Fortunately a nearby flight were attracted to the kerfuffle and assisted us with the squashing of the imp bugs.

Turns out the head we collected was not some sick prank by Lann, he had indeed murdered Zellara sometime ago and that we had been meeting with her spirit. She thank us for avenging her son’s muderer and reclaiming her property. We were all happy to be rid of Lann, but she offered a further gift, the cards themselves. Not only were they able to identify magical items, she was bound to the cards and agreed to provide further readings and advice where she could.

We rested the night and set off to return the Queen’s bauble in morning.

Turns out that it was hers and she agreed to meet with us. The queen is quite striking, so too is her bodyguard, a female warrior called Sabina. The queen didn’t seem as bad as people made out, she talked like she cared for the city and people. For a girl she wasn’t whiny at all. Go figure. She gave us a reward and asked if we would continue to help as the city needs more people like us (good luck finding anyone like us).  It is not really possible to say no to the queen and so were shanghaied into service.

Turns out we’d be working for Field Mashal Kroft, leader of the city guard. Our first job was to bring back some deserters from the town guard, led by a soldier called Verick They were operating out of a butchers shop called All the Worlds Meat.

Finding the place was pretty easy, but there was a fair crowd of people out front so we decided against a frontal assault. I slipped over the back wall and unlocked the rear gate to let the rest of the party in. We entered the slaughterhouse and were quickly accosted by the ragtag group of deserters.

We pleaded for their surrender, but Verick and his subordinates elected to fight on not realizing the folly of their struggles. As our generous offer of surrender was reject, I was forced to use non-lethal means to subdue the Verick and his crew, unfortunately they were not bound in this and elected to use lethal force against us. Some of my compatriots were similarly unconcerned about the use of lethal force. They too lack discipline.

 After I was nearly being stuck down twice (I must get stronger and more powerful) all of the weak little men were subdued and restrained, ready for delivery.

We interrogated, Verrick revealed he had gone AWOL in an attempt to help the populace by reestablishing the butchers, handing out food.  Although a noble idea, he was misguided and we were unable to compel him to talk even though we were sure he was covering for something/someone.

 We searched the premises and found little in regards to Verrick’s motivation. Much worse than what we didn’t find was what we did find.

 In the drain below the slaughterhouse we found the remains of several humans that had been butchered. I have seen such things in Fyffe’s lab, however some of my weaker companions found the gory scene very disturbing.

Gritt was not one such companion, he was angry. Rarely have I seen such anger. As soon as he grabbed one of the puny captives, they spilled their secrets. Turns out they had been murdering locals and using them as the source of their meat.

Verrick was shocked and I genuinely believe he knew nothing of it. Gritt was ready to pass judgment and execute them on the spot. I sympathized with how he felt. They were nearly as evil and depraved as Fyffe, still, it was not right now that they were in chains, give them fighting chance. If they do not want to die as a man in battle, then let others pass judgment and sentence.

 

….

 

We butchered and handed out the remainder of the animal livestock, less Clarabelle, we took the villains back to Kroft. She seemed surprised, but pleased that we took them all alive. We explained the story, not surprisingly the little bastards tried blame Verrick for everything and he did nothing to defend himself. They were subsequently charged and sentenced to be executed the next day.

That night we met another deserter, a guy named Grau, turns out he had a drinking problem and not surprisingly got along well with myself and Gritt. Sol managed to convince him not to shirk his duty and to return to duty. He knew he was going to cop a spray the next day and he thoroughly enjoyed his last night AWOL. Well he got pretty hammered at least.

I attended the execution, the right thing to do. If your actions condemn a man to die, have the conviction to look them in the eye when their life ends.

Kroft wasted no time in assigning our next task. Turns out there was another Chelaxian stirring up trouble. This time a diplomat who was, blah di blah di blah. He was bad man. A local criminal overlord known as the Spider King, had some information that could be used against this diplomat. We were to visit this bug king and get this information.  We were given 1,000 GP for expenses (bribery) and offered 1,000GP for successful completion.

Sounded pretty easy.  We walked some of way with Vencarlo Orisini. head of the Orisini fighting guild. He told us some stuff about the Spider King.  He ran the Eel’s End, was a bad man, but a known quantity who paid his dues and kept Eel’s End sort of under control. He also knew a bit about Grau and Sabeena, pretty sure there is some history there that he wouldn’t talk about 

Getting an audience with the bug king was pretty easy, you just had to ask in the right way. Unfortunately in addition to being resenting getting up early he also took a disliking to …. I know she is not very pretty, but to react as violently as he did was a bit over the top.  He and his bodyguards attacked us. Fools. We started mowing through his minions so bug-man turned invisible and fled like a little girly ladybird bug. Gritt and I pursued him down into his bowels of his boat.

The bug king called on help from his spidey minions and we were soon hip deep in eight legged freaks, some little, one big one and an ettercap thing. I got bitten a couple of times and started feeling a bit clumsy (this is why I am resting up now), but they were little bugs and they all got squashed. Justin blasted a couple with his gun. The gun was very loud and made a lot of smoke. I like it. 

 

The bug king was subdued and the evidence we needed located along with a little something for fixing his vermin problem.

“Great party Spider King. Next time, my place.”

The king was not needed and as he paid his taxes we left him alive and behind as an example of those who mess with us. Let him explain to his subjects how weak and puny a leader he is.

We returned the evidence to Kroft and she was pretty happy with the result. We were we could keep the expense money in addition to our fee, nice. A few of us were feeling pretty beat up so we agreed to take a few days off.

I’m feeling a bit better each day and I’ve been using the time to read through some of the notes I liberated from Fyffe.  I think I cracked some of the details of the elixirs he used. Going to get some components and try them for myself.

 

…