After a couple of days rest and recuperation (read healing)
hiding out in the shingles, we decided that we were healthy enough to finally
flee the city. Securing a boat, we
waited for the cover of darkness and headed into the main city, returning with
the priests we had hidden earlier and headed for Harse. The trip was uneventful, and we arrived in
the town and then the farmstead where the sword master’s old adventuring
buddies lived. Quite pleasantly, the
bard we escorted here weeks ago was still around, even better looking than I
remembered, and she clearly hadn’t forgotten my astonishingly good looks. A couple of lines, and she was mine.
We also, that evening, finally managed to get the seneschal
to reveal his secrets. The queen was
responsible for the king’s death. We
waited a long time and travelled a long way for that little gem of
information. And he didn’t even have any
hard evidence. He did have some useful
information though, as he had determined, before being taken in by the
rakshasas, that the queen’s new crown was the source of her ability to survive
being shot through the head. Apparently
it was constructed from some ancient Shoanti artefact, the teeth of some
ancient, evil dragon. Presumably the
evil force that possessed the artist and abandoned him for the queen. Also hints that regardless of some of my more
innocent companions’ arguments, the queen was clearly not accidentally
possessed, but had sought the evil power.
We determined that our next course of action was to find out
some more information regarding the toothy crown from the Shoanti, which would
involve a trip to the cinderlands to see the shoanti shaman we saw about saving
Korvosa from was a few months ago. We
headed to where we suspected he’d be camped, bringing along the bard as well as
the rescued cleric who had developed some attachment to the warrior, the cleric
of inner beauty. Maybe he isn’t gay
afterall, or perhaps he swings both ways.
Anyway, she’s pretty enough, although clearly still delusional, but mine
is better looking, and that’s what really counts. But not before our trusty deck of cards
provided us with another dubious set of predictions.
This time, she seems to have backed off a bit on the
stupidity and suicidal nature of four-arms’ fighting style, and seemed to be
hedging her bets a bot, predicting trouble with powerful strangers, bear-like
figures (clearly could be a man or beast, we’re bound to run into some kind of
man or beast on the plains tracking down the savages) and tentacle beasties. All pretty standard, non-specific stuff which
will be of no value whatsoever, and will be able to fit pretty much any set of
events after the fact.
The shoanti shaman told us that we would have to muck around
a lot in order to get the information we needed from his people. We need to see the sun clan about it, but
they will apparently refuse to talk to us unless we have done something to gain
their respect. One of us needs to be
swallowed by a cindermaw, some kind of horrific monster, and be reborn as a
shoanti. But first, we need to go
somewhere to get some mark before we can find a truth speaker who will witness
this swallowing and rebirth, else we will not be believed and never find out
what we need. We headed for the marking
shrine in the morning.
We were followed across the plains, but were unable to do
much about it and discovered shortly after our arrival at the shrine that it
was a shoanti warrior and his mates.
This warrior was apparently all fired up about going to war against
Korvosa, and felt that we as intruders on his peoples lands should be put to
death. A couple of us wrestled with him
and he seemed to back off a bit, but still followed us. Inside the shrine we found trouble. There were a bunch of red mantis assassins
and a huge tentacle beast we had to fight, as well as a priestess of Zon Kuthon
and her demon companion. These two
helped us escape the tentacle beast after the assassins were slain, but the gun
nut was separated from us in the battle and fled down an elevator to areas as
yet unexplored.
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