Woke up insanely early this morning – around 10:00 am – and picked
up some paper bags and a mirror. I feel
massively relieved, as if the unthinkable happens and I ever need to take
another one for the team, I’ll be prepared.
Shortly after I awoke the hideous elf woman bought the warrior back from
the dead. After much complaining from
four-arms that he had to pay for it. The
nerve of the man, complaining about the need to lend the group cash to bring
back my primary meat shield from the dead.
As if we could adventure without him – I mean, I might get injured. After we had the warrior back, it was time to
start looking for our missing people, but first we went to see the captain of
the city watch. Turns out that the queen
had survived an assassination attempt by the head of the Sable Marines, and had
disbanded the organisation. Those
wishing to remain had been rolled into the city watch, although apparently most
of them were headed to greener pastures elsewhere. We saw the watch captain and discovered that
she was holding the clerics of the inner beauty temple until they could be
transferred to the castle that night for questioning. She asked us to get them out of the
city. Suggested we find the sword-master
and get him out too, preferably to Harse.
We stashed the clerics at the dead soothsayer’s house and snuck back
into Old Korvosa to find the sword-master.
Given that we were apparently still beholden to the ugly elf cleric
chick (some people just can’t seem to put an appropriate value on the kind of
sacrifice I made – I mean, what has she done since helping us in that fight?),
we started out looking for her artist, figuring that he was linked to the sword
master and may have a cue to his whereabouts.
We also found, at the sword-master’s house, that there were a couple of
thugs the ugly elf cleric had captured or killed, as well as some student of
the sword-master – a noble we had rescued from one of the riots when the queen
first came to power. We released the
student from the closet that the ugly elf cleric had locked him in, discovered
that he had no useful information except that apparently the sword-master had
met with our missing artist a few days ago.
So we advised the noble that he should flee the city, as his association
with the sword-master would place him in danger, and suggested Harse as an
option.
We then went to the theatre where most of the artist’s works were
displayed only to find it burned down. As
we approached I grabbed my season passes to gain admittance, only to be stumped
by its new status as a former theatre. A
real pity, that place had by far the most risqué shows in the whole city, very
entertaining. We thoroughly searched the
rubble, finding nothing and decided to start asking the locals. Or at least the ugly elf chick cleric did –
she walked straight to the nearest house and started banging on the door while
the rest of us were still discussing what we should do next. I was on the brink of convincing everyone
that we should forget about this artist and look for the sword-master when I
noticed this, and figured I’d better intervene before she started torturing
civilians. Might be a good option, but
probably slower than just asking nicely.
Anyway, just as her gruff manner was about to result in bloodshed (the
poor woman living opposite the theatre has no idea how close she came to death)
I stepped up and smoothed things over. An
opportunity to practice my sleight of hand arose immediately, as the housewife
started complaining about the nature of the performances that the theatre was
known for, and I was able to slip my passes into a pocket without her noticing. I soon established that she knew little or
nothing about much, but she apparently did know where the artist (she wasn’t
much of a fan of his either) lived.
We immediately headed to the given address, which was a hovel
right on the riverfront. Maybe if we
could clean it up it would make an appropriate base of operations for our group
– assuming of course that we could also grab several of the neighbouring
buildings and there is a decent bathhouse nearby. Anyway, the place was in pretty bad shape and
as four-arms went around the back, the rest of us headed in the front. Inside we found little of value. There were signs that the occupant had been
kidnapped by four men, and a room that held a bunch of candles with skulls
creatively used as candle holders. This
seemed to turn the ugly elf cleric chick on, but we soon left, hoping to get
some useful information from the artist’s neighbours before heading back to the
sword-master’s house to search it properly.
We went straight across the street, where I knocked on the first
door we came to. It was opened by a
young woman of impressive beauty. I
mean, she wasn’t as really, really good-looking as me, but she was close. Seeing an opportunity to get over my recent
sacrifice, I immediately turned on the charm and managed to get inside, where
we spent a couple of hours very enjoyably forgetting my ordeals of the previous
evening. After I finished “pumping her
for information”, I pumped her for information and discovered that she had
heard the artist being kidnapped, but done nothing about it, and hadn’t even
bothered to get out of bed to take a look through her bedroom window, which
after a little cleaning afforded a wonderful view of the artist’s front
door. She did, however remember hearing
something from one of the kidnappers, which was that they were taking the
artist to the emperor. Upon leaving the
house I noticed that the ugly elf chick gave this new, hot chick a really
filthy look. According to a couple of
the others, she’d done the same as we went in.
Should probably warn the girl that she may have made a powerful enemy
today, but then again, no point in worrying her too much – stress and worry are
the kind of thing that can ruin a young woman’s good looks, and that would be
unfortunate, since I may well be back for a repeat of this afternoon’s
shenanigans.
None of us had any idea who this emperor might be, but figured it
had to be some underworld kingpin – maybe whoever replaced the spider king
after his unfortunate accident all those weeks ago. The warrior started to hassle every dodgy
looking person within sight, but like with the ugly elf cleric chick, his
somewhat crude methods were pathetically ineffective, and we all watched him
for a while. Probably watched for too
long, but then again, it was very funny.
Regardless, after he’d frightened off several criminal-looking people,
we all started to help and soon enough we knew which rock the emperor generally
hides under.
Information gathering complete, we headed back to the
sword-master’s house, where we finally remembered to thoroughly search. We found a small box hidden in the back of a
closet – sure to contain something relating to his injustice-fighting
persona. Four-arms proved his competence
again being unable to open the box, and the gun nut’s quality idea of cutting
the box open was refused by everyone except me.
I guess now we’ll have to wait until we find the sword-master before we
get his key. Having little else to do
here, given the group’s stupidity in deciding not to open the box, we set about
splitting up the treasure we’d gained from the assassins.
I was unable to identify the function of one of the magical items,
and so the cleric pulled out the deck of harrow cards to see what it could
do. Unfortunately, the spirit of the fortune-telling
hag immediately manifested and proceeded to give us all another taste of her
vague, irrelevant drivel. On the other
hand, some of what she had to say this time was pretty accurate, although her
foretellings remained vague enough that they are all sure to happen, if one
chooses to interpret events such that they fit the vague ramblings of a dead
charlatan. I actually listened pretty
closely this time around, so that I can hopefully convince everyone of the scam
that this “art” really is. Here’s a
brief rundown of what she had to say to everyone:
Four-arms – you’re an idiot.
Cleric – You’re going through some changes and like to dance.
Ugly chick – You are beginning to understand who you are, and
should feel free to move about. Problem
there is that the ugly slag won’t move around somewhere I won’t be associated
with her.
Warrior – You’re an idiot.
She also mentioned the emperor, the very man we’re looking for. Unfortunately, she mentioned him only by
title and added nothing whatsoever of value.
Unless you wanted to use this as a means of proving her predictive
talents – after we spend an hour or two discussing the emperor, including
questioning his own people about him, you predict that there will be a man,
let’s call him “the emperor” in our future.
I might go out into the street where I can fashion a crystal ball out of
mud which will be clear enough to pick this one.
Gun-nut – You occasionally come up with a useful idea.
As for me, there seemed to be quite a bit that was relevant to the
whole group of us. For my past, I
apparently have told the odd fib, have a hidden truth (like the discovery of
the identity of my father which I’m sure I’ve talked about in front of her) and
that I’m extremely, even unreasonably and certainly unfeasibly good-looking. Good old peacock card. I guess if you pull enough cards from a deck
enough times, and assign values to each then at some point you’ll draw
something that is actually right.
1,000,000 monkeys working on 1,000,000 printing presses and all that.
For the present, firstly, we will need to leave Old Korvosa, or
we’ll be killed or captured here.
Clearly the ghost is capable of hearing our conversations, and has
worked out, because we have stated it clearly, that the queen is out to get
us. Secondly, some kind of external
physical force of great power has begun to move. This is a malicious force moving slowly
towards Korvosa. Maybe it has something
to do with the evil magic the queen is now apparently commanding. Maybe it’s the queen herself. Either way, big trouble is headed for
Korvosa, and we are apparently headed elsewhere. All things that we know. But not all bad. Out of town still seems like a good place to
be when there’s big trouble. Like how we
could have avoided the plague. Still,
common sense and adventuring don’t really go together, so I suppose we
shouldn’t try to apply too much of it.
Oh crap, I just realised something.
We might be leaving Korvosa and heading into the wilderness for the next
part of our whacky adventures. This
means that there is little chance that the people of Korvosa will hear about my
great deeds. It also means that there is
a chance we’ll be heading somewhere I can’t take a bath every morning, night
and when allowed by our activities in the afternoon as well. I’m not sure if I can cope with the idea of
not being able to spend the time working on my appearance to really bring out
the best in it every day. Although I’ve
never really tried the rugged, stubbled / bearded look. Maybe I’ll go that way and thus remain
incredibly good-looking despite an absence of hot water. At least I have a mirror with me now that
will hopefully never leave my presence again.
You know, just in case of emergencies like the ugly elf cleric chick, or
a lack of proper amenities.
And then she went on to the “future”. All really hard to see, based on the events
of the last few weeks and the group’s conversations. There was the clear indication that I’m on
the right track towards gaining control over the city, as one of the cards
apparently showed me taking power by the reins.
So the ghost has a little faith in me.
Good to know, if completely irrelevant.
Apparently the paladin card shows me to be a shining beacon of goodness,
which is pretty obvious just from looking at my stunning visage. And then there was the card indicating that
the city is still not safe, despite all we’ve done for it, and that there will
continue to be events grinding it into the dust. Another hard one to pick. Finally, she indicated that there is a tormented
soul imprisoned somewhere and that fate favours us finding him. Another brilliant piece of foretelling, given
that we are trying to find this artist who specialises in horrible, disturbed
scenes and that he’s been kidnapped by the emperor. This ghost-woman is truly remarkable. Oh, and she also mentioned pigs a few
times. Hopefully seeing visions of us
all being feasted after we save the city again.
Having gotten this drivel out of the way, we headed for the
section of Old Korvosa where we should be able to find the emperor. As we approached the area, we were confronted
by a gang of six or seven thugs. Their martial
ambitions clearly outstripped their ability, and we were only briefly
interrupted. We continued on and were
soon confronted by a gang twice the size of the first. This interruption barely lasted seconds
longer than the first, and we were at the front door of the emperor’s “palace”,
several hovels all linked by rope bridges on the upper floors, with the ground
floors generally filled with rubble and inaccessible. We headed upstairs, dispatched the few guards
in the first couple of rooms and headed into the “throne room”. For a man calling himself the emperor, this
guy took no care whatsoever of himself or his surrounds. He was ugly, dirty and irritating, not to
mention surrounded by more thugs. He
also had Fife with him, and a midget warrior.
A gnome, I think. The emperor
demanded we kneel before him, and so it was on.
Fife lasted less than two seconds, as the ugly chick and the gun nut
opened up on him, and the rest of the fight went pretty smoothly. Until the emperor used a confusion spell. I had to dismiss Artox, who was affected by
it, as were several of the others.
Fortunately, so were the remaining thugs, and they provoked attack from
those of us who were confused, while those of us remaining unaffected finished
the job. We quickly looked and should
soon find the artist, who with any luck will know where we can find the
sword-master. And hopefully this will be
the last we’ll see of the ugly elf chick cleric. Urgh.
I think I’ll need to go back and visit my new friend once the ugly elf leaves
us, to help banish the memory of her appalling looks. Who knows, maybe our resident ugly chick will
go with her.
I should also point out that amongst the loot from the emperor was
the most wonderful thing. A headband
that magically took my incredible good looks beyond the normally viable, and
left me resembling some kind of god of beauty.
Maybe that inner beauty cleric will give me a fair go now, or at least
after we complete her rescue, as clearly my inner beauty is shining through as
real beauty, and I’ve become likely the best looking person she’s ever seen.
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