CH. 5: Vying Factions

[mgbevan]

"And I Gregeddin " the bard announces as he joins the conversation with the villagers. "We heard of your plight and assembled this company to end the giant's tyranny.May we know your names?"
ThE bard wondered how close Esker was and if it would be a suitable stopping off point for the night. He was unsure how long it might take the party to make it back to Haven, especially if they were carrying more spoils.
"Magnus, would you mind having a look over the giant's possessions, I'm sure a mage of your experience would be able to tell if there was anything of particular interest among the collection. Please " Gregeddin asks hopefully.

[JadedDM]

"I am Thom," says one of the men. "This is Sera and Bryce," he adds, gesturing to the woman and the other man.

Jaymes gets to his feet and approaches. "We passed the trail to Esker on the way here," he says. "I know of it. I have no reason to return to the city, either. I will escort these three back to their village."

"Thank you," says Bryce. "Thank all of you, for what you have done."

Magnus looks around. "Giants are notoriously anti-magic, so I doubt we'll find anything magical. They tend to destroy what they don't understand. But I'll take a look around, nevertheless."

Raena is already dividing up the coins, meticulously counting them one by one.

[Haahque]

In response to Jayme's offer, Haahqae gives him his thanks, and genuinely too. Haahqae is fairly done with this quest and just wants to get back to the Steel Tankard as soon as possible.

As Haahqae had suspected, there wasn't very many interesting things in this mission. He was glad that he could save some innocents while on the mission, but it would have been more fun to find a dark cult, or an ogre mage or something magical or divine lying around. With Magnus's comment this sounds rather unlikely, so Haahqae looks towards the exit.

[JadedDM]

"By the way," asks Ismene, approaching Haahqae. "What was in that other tunnel?" She is referring to the fact that there were two tunnels, one to the northeast and one to the southeast. The southeast tunnel led to this chamber.

[Haahque]

Haahqae's gloom from the realization of how mundane this quest was vanishes upon hearing Ismene address him. "I... don't know, I didn't have time to go down that way. Shall we go check it out? Perhaps they have an ogre mage or interesting secrets in this cave after all!"

Excitedly Haahqae takes Ismene's hand to lead her off down the other tunnel.

[BishGada]

After the humans are freed from their cage, Tulbas goes near Magnus and says, "Good work. Without your spells the fight would be much tougher." Then he continues, "Do you know if the giant's or ogre's organs can be used in spells or in creating magical items?"

[JadedDM]

Haahqae takes Ismene by the hand and leads her out. Arcane follows quickly, trying to keep pace.

"Good work. Without your spells the fight would be much tougher."

"I imagine you haven't seen much actual Art use in the field," Magnus speculates, rubbing his chin. "Your uncle never was the adventuring type. Now you have seen the kind of power that will one day be available to you, if you keep up your studies."

"Do you know if the giant's or ogre's organs can be used in spells or in creating magical items?"

"Sadly, neither creature has the least bit of magic in them, even in their bones and organs," Magnus replies. "But excellent thought, nonetheless. You'll be a true magi someday with that kind of thinking." Going over the cave, Magnus turns to Gregeddin to confirm. "Nothing magical here at all, I'm afraid. A pity, too, as the Tower of Wayreth is always searching for new artifacts to study."

Raena finishes dividing up the coins, based on the contract they all agreed to beforehand. Although all of the extra muscle the party brought helped make this job far easier than it would have otherwise been, bringing so many--and several far more experienced than themselves--spreads the treasure pretty thin. Still, it's not bad for a single job, especially one where the party didn't have to do much of the heavy lifting.

Meanwhile, Haahqae and Ismene return to the entrance chamber, but this time take the other path. The tunnel eventually ends with an opening--a sort of back entrance. But there is no place to go, as the cliff is too sheer here to climb down. A giant might be able to hop down okay, but nobody in the party could continue beyond without some climbing equipment--ropes and pitons and such.

It's night now, and the stars and moons have shown themselves. But mostly what the two gnomes notice is the view--they have an excellent view of Haven Vale. It's filled with little glowing dots of light--hundreds of campfires. It would appear that a very large army is heading toward Haven...and will likely arrive the following morning.

==========

Haahqae receives 80 STP, 16 PP.
Gregeddin receives 80 STP, 16 PP.
Tulbas receives 80 STP, 16 PP.
Raena receives 80 STP, 16 PP.
Burzan receives 80 STP, 16 pp.
Ismene receives 120 STP, 24 PP.
Miriam receives 160 STP, 32 PP.
Magnus receives 200 STP, 40 PP.
Jaymes receives 120 STP, 24 PP.

(OOC: One share is 80 STP and 16 PP, which equals to 160 STP total. This doesn't affect anyone's encumbrance.)

[Haahque]

Finding the tunnel leads only to the outside, Haahqae's thoughts start wandering elsewhere. "I was meaning to ask you, I mean ask everyone. There's this girl I know that I asked for advice. She said it would be a good idea if we all went to a pub after we killed the giant to celebrate, that way I can get to know you better. Err, I mean that way we can get to know each other better. Then we..." Haahqae stops abruptly as they reach the cave mouth.

"Wow, isn't it beautiful? I never saw sights like this back in Nevermi..." Haahqae stops his train of thought once again as it registers in his mind that he's looking at a field of campfires, like that of an army.

"Oh no." He whispers, Ismene probably able to hear him only because of the resounding silence proceeding it. "We've got to skip town quickly, before it gets consumed in the fires of war! I just have a couple things in the Steel Tankard, I can pack in minutes, how long do you need to get ready?"

[JadedDM]

"She said it would be a good idea if we all went to a pub after we killed the giant to celebrate, that way I can get to know you better. Err, I mean that way we can get to know each other better."

"That could be fun," Ismene says. "And we did do a great deed, so it would be nice to celebrate. Maybe we can do other big things, too, and become world renown. Oh, but I guess we'll need a name! You know, it's kind of strange being around another gnome. I haven't seen any since I left home."

"We've got to skip town quickly, before it gets consumed in the fires of war! I just have a couple things in the Steel Tankard, I can pack in minutes, how long do you need to get ready?"

"Oh, dear," she says, realizing what she is seeing. "That's a big army. Maybe they're going to pass Haven? Maybe they're going somewhere else." She frowns. "It will take hours to get back to Haven on foot. And where would we go? I think we better tell the others."

[Haahque]

Haahqae sincerely agrees with Ismene, the others should be warned, and quickly! This he does, leading her back to the rest of the group with significantly more haste then they had left them. Breathlessly he tells the others of what he saw.

"There's an army! It's huge! I mean not the people in the army, I image they're huge too since I don't think a gnome army would travel this farm from Nevermind and I've never heard of a kender army. But I don't know because all we saw were fires. Campfires, lots of them, tens. Hundreds. Thousands! I don't know, just a huge number of them. They're going to attackthe city. We gotta get out of here now! Did I mention how big the army is? It could take haven easily with all them cultists and seekers fighting and all that. Idunno but it probably would take the city even if they unite."

[mgbevan]

Gregeddin look over somewhat confused, "An army? Are you sure it's not the campfires of the refugees by the city?... I thought there was a war quite some distance away from here... But what would an army be doing down here with no one to fight?"

[Haahque]

"Nono, these weren't campfires near the walls of Haven. These were in Haven Vale. Tons of campfires, well maintained. This issan army. Idunno what they want to do with a bunch of washed up seekers who stopped seekingand a cultthat probably follows Fistandantilus, but they're an army and they're here and they're huge and we're all in danger."

[mgbevan]

"Oh... Oh my... They need to be warned, the people in Haven!"

Gregeddin wondered if people would even flee to avoid conflict. So many had voyaged to arrive at Haven, fleeing a war. And it followed them here

[JadedDM]

"Gregeddin is right. We must return to the city and warn the people," Miriam says.

"It took us all day to get here," Mateo points out. "Won't it be around morning by the time we arrive?"

"That might be too late!" Zoya points out.

"The city is safe," Burzan says. "Darewind will repel the army with the Master's power. We have nothing to be worried about."

"Do what you must," Jaymes says. "I still intend to escort these people home." He rounds up the three prisoners from Esker, then turns to the party. "Thank you again for your aid in slaying this beast. Good luck with that army. I'd pray for you, if I still believed in any gods." He then leads the three villagers out.

[Haahque]

"OK Haahqae, think for a second. We're a group of great heroes and we have two gnomes, getting somewhere faster shouldn't be too much of a problem, all we need is locomotion. Right, locomotion!"

"This is simple, all we need to do is disassemble that cage over there, we can use the top of the cage as a platform and two of the bars as axles, then we can cut a couple of coin shaped wheels from those logs in the fire and use the other bars from the cage to help push and steer our landraft all the way back to haven. We're at the top of the mountain, so having wheels should make the trip back down a lot faster and we probably won't have to push until we're half way back to the city. The only thing I haven't figured out yet is how we can keep the axles in place. Maybe we can use the rope that held up the cage. Oh right the rope! that's even better, we can use it to connect the axles to a crank system that Burzan can turn for us and power our cage-cart."