Mandraiv's Diary 15

We spend the first few days after the queen’s presentation ceremony preparing as much of the antidote for the plague as we could.  By which I mean Four-arms was pumping out the antidote and the rest of us were shopping, relaxing, and certainly in my case basking in the warm, glowing warming glow of the populous’ adoration of me.  I like being a savior of the city.  Makes life much better.  Can’t wait to see how the people respond when we take down the queen and I replace her.  The queen also started to produce the antidote – I’m sure she choked on every word of those orders – and soon we were unable to gain the supplies needed to continue production ourselves and thus started looking for things to do.

The warrior took the cleric of inner beauty out for dinner.  I guess he’s finally realised that his dream woman is actually a true and willing accomplice to the queen, and is moving on or on the rebound.  Either way, it was that night that the next plot of the queen made itself apparent.  Old Korvosa was to be quarantined.  Apparently the queen had decided that given the inability to produce sufficient cure for the plague, the poor section of town should be cordoned off while the rest of the populous was to be cured, and then presumably the cure could be applied to the filthy, faceless masses of the downtrodden half of the city’s population.  While I, and apparently the ugly chick, could see the value of this approach, most of the other members of Mandraiv’s Magnificent Seven led by the warrior felt that it was unfair to leave the poor until last.  

Seeing the barriers being erected between Old Korvosa and the rest of the city, we headed over to investigate and the warrior decided that he was going into the poor sector.  Despite the orders and protests of the Grey Maidens erecting the barricades.  The ugly chick went to the Sable Marines boss to find out what was really happening, and discovered that they were helping to enforce the blockade.  While everyone else felt that maybe we should go into Old Korvosa with the warrior, we decided that we would probably be able to do more to help in the nicer parts of town, and stayed out.  We investigated ways to mass produce the cure, but figured out that the queen’s alchemists were basically producing it as fast as it would be possible to, and anything we did would be detrimental to their efforts, and so figured we’d get in touch with the warrior to see what we could do to help him.

It turns out he’d been working, with the aid of some noble house based in Old Korvosa and the sword master we’d met before, to maintain order in the quarantined area.  The poor were becoming restless, not impressed at being left to fend for themselves while the wealthier citizens were saved from the plague.  The queen was sending in supplies, but nowhere near enough to support half of the city.

That night, we experienced our first taste of the queen’s displeasure with us.  The Grey Maidens were taking over our inn, and kicking everyone (including the inn-keeper) out.  We almost picked a fight with them, but managed to leave somewhat gracefully, with our dignity intact.  We then checked on some of our other helpers throughout our time in town only to discover that the church of inner beauty had been hit as well, with the clerics all arrested pending an investigation into their poor performance regarding healing victims of the plague.

We contacted the warrior and determined that he was heading back to the sword master’s house to continue planning their peacekeeping efforts, and agreed that we’d meet up with him once darkness fell to cover our stealthy breach of the blockade.  He never showed up at the agreed rendezvous, and so we headed to the sword master’s place to try to find him.  When we got there the front door was open, and the place was as silent as a tomb.  It turns out that this was a rather appropriate expression, as the first hint that there had been life there was the warrior’s head sitting on the mantelpiece in an upstairs room.  His midget corpse was lying on the floor.  I say midget only as I am now a head taller than him, and joking about such things is my preferred way of expressing (or pretending to express) grief.  We all marched into the room to begin searching for clues when two stepped out from places of concealment.  Two men in red bug masks, apparently members of the Red Lotus assassins’ guild.  They then went to town on us.  

Having completely surprised us with their cunning trick of hiding in the room, we were very effectively ambushed.  Four arms, Artox and the gun nut went down before recovering from the shock of the ambush.  The fight got ugly, really ugly – mostly because our female member became our focal point.  And she’s ugly.  Really ugly.  Unbelievably ugly.  And in this fight, ugly as well as ineffective as she became held by some kind of magic from the bug men.  The bug men also showed the ability to summon giant bugs, and so I started a bit of a summoning war with them while the ugly chick just stood there uglying up the place and the cleric exhausted himself trying to keep her alive.  Just as my summoned minions were starting to get on top of things, disaster struck.  Some ugly elf woman in spiked armour came into the house.  She offered to help if I would do something nasty to her afterwards.  After throwing up in my mouth a little at the prospect of sleeping with this aberration (although thankfully still significantly more attractive than our resident trollette) and seeing the state the cleric was in trying to save the ugly chick, I reluctantly agreed.  The elf woman proceeded to join the fight and proved most puissant, and soon the assassins were dead.  Then it was time to take one for the team.  The crazy woman apparently decided to change the terms of our arrangement at this point, insisting that I’d agreed to do something nasty with her, not to her.  I figured that the prospect, either way, was about equally repugnant, and so agreed to the new terms and headed off to the bedroom with her, leaving the cleric to do what he could with everyone else.

Note for later.  First opportunity, get a good supply of paper bags and a hand mirror just big enough to cover someone’s head.  Potentially riskable with just the mirror, but why take chances on something like that?

Anyway, she decided we should get started, and this without removing her armour.  Indeed, the hooks, barbs and spikes on her armour ripping my flawless skin seemed to be her major turn on.  I’m not sure if it was the sight of all the blood, or the sight of my beauty being marred.  Either way, I made sure she wouldn’t get the satisfaction of eliciting a sound from me with this crap, and after a while she changed tack.  I think that like most women she is mentally flawed, and that she just couldn’t understand that it is fundamentally impossible for someone as obscenely good looking as me to be really into someone as ugly as her.  I managed to fake enough enthusiasm that after an hour or so after the shredding of my thighs and stomach that she finally finished, but of all things she had the nerve to then complain about my performance!  I couldn’t believe it.  I managed to get through the whole thing with no mirror, nor even a paper bag, without throwing up once.  Although there may have been a hint of sick on my breath from my response to the initial proposition and then every time I caught a glimpse of her in the bedroom.  But I managed to catch it in the back of my mouth every single time – a herculean effort.  Biblical even.  Maybe I should see this as an adventuring opportunity, practicing averting my eyes from creatures like the medusa.  Then again, I think I would have rather been turned to stone than do what we did, although that probably wouldn’t stop her, so maybe it would be even worse.  Regardless, I am still, several days later, shocked that she complained about my performance.  I started to explain that there is simply no way that someone as ridiculously, really, really good looking as me could ever get into someone like her, and she simply continued to blame me.  Typical woman, can’t take responsibility for anything bad she does or causes.  Anyway, the job done I healed the not inconsiderable damage her viscous armour had caused me and returned to the group.  I just hope that they understand what I have done for them.  What sacrifices I have made for them.  I’m sure I’ll regret not telling her where to go and defeating the assassins myself for the rest of my days, but I know how unpleasant it is to be unconscious (and presumably worse to be dead), and so a personal sacrifice on my part should help to elevate me in their eyes and stop their bitching about the name of my adventuring group.

Chatting to the hideous elf woman afterwards, we established that she came to the sword master’s house in order to track down some artist.  Apparently he paints really gruesome pictures that this elf chick is right into.  We worked out that we should work together, given that we are basically looking for the same person / people, and that we should at least stick together until the next morning so that she can bring the warrior back from his unfortunate run-in with the assassins.  Hopefully we’ll be able to find this artist and the sword master in a couple of hours in the morning and we can be rid of this ugly elf woman.  This is just terrible.  I’ll be walking around the city with two ugly women.  I know it’s only the poor quarter, but still, the very idea of having two hideous hags in tow makes my skin crawl.  I desperately need that mirror and those paper bags.  Better get some makeup to disguise myself too, if this ogre of an elf “maiden” hangs around for long.