Rings of Deception

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: Rings of Deception
GM: Bernard
Season: Winter 804 WK
Night: Someday
Level: Level

Party

• Shizane, a Fire Mage, Healer, Herbalist and Cook among other things
• Faith, a short Elven E&E
• Rowan, an Elven Binder and our Military Scientist, with her staff Eyelor, and golems Titch, Dolly, Ralf and Eeyor.
• Sau Rus, a Necromancer and Party Leader
• Hamish, a Wiccan
• Theodonna, a Namer and party spokesperson
• Tanis, an Air mage and scribe

Time on adventure

tbc 826 WK to tbc 826 WK

Employer

Duke Argent

Mission

Make inquiries as to why the King is accusing the Duke of treason, and sort things out.

Original Scribe Notes

Media:Snwi0401.zip

Scribe Notes

1st Frost After the Guild meeting, we all gather at the designated room, to find Marvin the jester waiting for us. I know him from a previous Guild contract, and he says that he is now a Guild member, and is in training to be an illusionist. He is also still the aide of Duke Argent who is the party employer. Several quarters ago another Guild party were responsible for escorting the then Baron to meet the King to gain his title of Duke, then another party, including me and Rowan, rescued a missing young lady from the wilds north of his lands. Marvin explains that the current problem stems from that second trip to his plane. We had a bard in our party by the name of Brigetta who was sending back magical bardic messages, and bards are rather common there. The King's bards intercepted these messages, and the King subsequently accused Duke Argent of treason, and plans to burn his lands and seed the land with salt. The Duke doesn't know exactly where he got the idea that he was planning treason – he is not, and the messages were very innocuous. Anyway, he wants us to make discrete inquiries as to the reason for the declaration of treason, and hopefully sort things out. After this briefing, we send Marvin off for a while, sort out the party leader, scribe, Military Scientist roles, and discuss our options. Turns out Faith and Hamish are good at 'gentle persuasion', and Thedona can get us into places that we aren't supposed to get into, but we need to find out what we can get away with. Shizane, who is currently sitting in the fireplace, adds that he is not the least bit subtle, so we might have to keep an eye on him. Going on past experience, we are going to need horses, and courtly clothes so that we fit in if we have to mingle with the King's court. Shizane offers the females in the party free use of his wardrobe – apparently he has a good collection of female clothing, although I have no idea why. However we will have to get horses on the other side of the portal, as it opens into a basement with the only access being a ladder. We get Marvin back in, and ask him more questions. It should be OK to borrow horses again, but he does mention that they would like them back in one piece (there was an incident with an explosive vial and a bonfire – most of the horses didn't survive that on our last trip). Apart from that, we can't think of anything else, so we head off to pick up supplies. Thedona and I go with Shizane to his residence, and pick out some appropriate clothing, and some supplies from Shizane's farm. All of us get lesser enchantments cast on us, and Faith says she can now cast Greater Enchantments, and will cast them on the party once we get off-plane. We also get some healing potions. By now it's evening, and we all meet back at the Guild. Shizane suggests a drink and a good night's sleep. I agree, but the rest of the party is eager to get going, so we head down to the portal. It is a fairly standard rune portal. Marvin walks through, and the rest of us follow. We step through into a small underground room, with a rune portal on the wall behind us, and the other walls covered in runes, feeling like we have been walking for a day. We climb up the ladder and emerge into a small alley. Marvin leads the way to a small manor house. Shizane and Faith drop behind a bit, and later report that there were invisible guards watching the entrance to the portal room, and they did see us. However they appear to be the Duke's guards. The manor house is small and empty. Given that it appears to be the small hours of the morning, we set watches and settle in for some sleep. 2 nd Frost We wake up at sunrise, and Shizane prepares us breakfast. While we are getting organised for the day, there is a knock at the door. Marvin answers, and it is a messenger from the Duke – he would like to see us after breakfast. So we finish eating, make ourselves vaguely presentable, and follow Marvin to the Duke's residence. We have a short wait while Marvin talks to the Duke, then they come into the room. After a quick discussion on payment, and what we can and can't get away with, we ask about how we can solve the current problem. He suggests we speak to his 'spychief' for more information. Apart from that he does not know why the King would accuse him of treason and confirms that he has no aspirations to the throne. Considering what the party did last visit, we ask if the King would have felt threatened by the Duke negotiating with the orc tribes to the north. He is surprised by this question, but says he doesn't think so. We also ask what would happen to the lands if he were to die, and he says they would go to the current highest Baron in the Empire – and adds that this is how he came to be Duke of this area. We ask who highest Baron is at the moment, and he gives us a name, adding that he is a good friend of his. We also query if his current problems might be related to the earlier issue of someone unknown hiring assassins to kill him before he became Duke, and he says it's possible. That Guild party never found out who had hired them. By this time, the Duke appears to have had enough of our questions, and politely but firmly ends the conversation. Marvin brings in the 'spychief', and we quiz him for more information. Turns out it's all a bit out of date. They used to use bardic messages a lot, but given the current situation, they have had to stop, and so he is out of touch with all his contacts, and has been for some time. There are still a few people around who he trusts, but he has no idea if they are still around. We get names, locations just in case we need them. Not even written messages have been getting through, but this may be due to the fact that the borders of the Dukedom have been closed, and there are frequent raids across it. The most recent information he has says there had been disturbances in the Western Baronies, leading to a number of changes in fortune for a number of the Barons down there, but he doesn't know if that is related to the current problems. Again, we get the names just in case. We ask about traveling in the Empire, and he says we should be fine once we clear the Duke's borders, and if we are not associated with the Duke in any way. He also adds that border feuds between the Barons are quite common, but they have all been put aside for now as they band together for the planned assault on Duke Argent's lands. We check if he knows of any one Baron who might have the King's ear, but he doesn't know of anyone – the King was generally fairly careful not to show favour. After a quick consideration of all this, we decide our best option is to get out of the Duchy, disguise ourselves as a merchant with a group of guards, and head south to try resolve the current problems. As part of this, Thedona volunteers to carry a lance, and ride a warhorse – Faith does as well, but hers will have to be a cut down version. Shizane and a few others in the party use the time while they are getting some basic lance training to do some reading in the Duke's library. We get details of a few raiding parties that will cross the border near the main road north in a few days time, and we hope to use one of them to cover our tracks as we slip out – and to hopefully conceal that we are associated with the Duke. Just before dark, we slip out of town, riding on palfreys supplied by the Dukes' stablemaster, except for Thedona on a warhorse and Faith on a mustang. We head south into a small forest, and after a few hours riding we settle down for some rest, once Faith cast has cast greater enchantments on us. All is quiet until third watch, when we hear a group of horses nearby, heading to the west. Hamish and I wake the rest of the party. Faith disappears, while the rest of us try to keep the horses quiet. After about 10 minutes the group moves on, and suddenly we notice that Faith is back with us. We manage to get some information from her – they were a raiding party wearing the badge of the Baron of Partridge, who is one of the Duke's barons. 3rd Frost Looking at the sky, it's overcast and lightly drizzling, and is probably going to rain. Over breakfast we consider our possible tactics, nothing immediately springs to mind. We do our standard morning spellcasting, but after 6 failures, I decide we are not going to have feather falling this morning, and go and sulk for a while. Meanwhile Thedona and Faith practice with their lances, stopping when Thedona takes a spectacular but luckily not too damaging fall. We then head out, riding through light farmlands all morning. We stop for some lunch, Faith and Thedona practice again, with the same result. However they also spot a burned out cottage, farmhouse and fields behind a nearby stand of trees. We head over to check it out, and Shizane finds multiple tracks – 1 raiding party came through 2 weeks ago, 2 more came through 1 week ago, and 1 was last night. The cottage was a storehouse – nothing of value survived the fire, however Saurus detects a death occurred there, and casts a spell to question it. We determine that the person was a soldier in the employee of the Baron of Gamlin – an enemy of Duke Argent. There were 10 or so in the raiding party and they attacked at dawn – he was killed in the combat, and this happened a week ago. We also check out the farmhouse, and find signs of a struggle and looting before the building was burned, but nothing else besides a dead dog. Thedona and Faith go back to practicing, with the same result again, however after Shizane checks her over, he says that Thedona has a concussion from the latest fall. They decide to hold off on the practice for a little while, and we head off again. Part way through the afternoon, we find a small village. On seeing us coming, they set up some basic defenses, however we manage to convince them we are friendly and just want to purchase some supplies. We pick up some grain for the horses and some fresh vegetables for tonight's dinner. We then ride on, after a slight detour to conceal our direction of travel from the villagers. At dusk, we camp. On 2 nd watch, Faith hears horses moving quietly along the road. After alerting Saurus, she heads off to investigate. Saurus wakes the rest of the party, and we concentrate on keeping us and the horses quiet. Suddenly I hear an obviously fake owl hoot from somewhere between us and the riders – Faith is up to something. However the riders decide to investigate, and combat ensues. Faith gets cornered by two of them, Shizane takes a few of them out with fire magics, and some of them cast at us – they have a namer and a celestial at the least. Hamish takes a painful leg wound, then the remaining riders decide to split up and leave after we kill a couple of them – 2 going one way, and 3 followed by a horse with a dead rider going another. Shizane casts a fast movement on us, and Rowan and I follow the first group, and Faith and Thedona follow the second. I am scouting around looking for the tracks of my group when I am ambushed – I take an arrow, then everything goes black. I wake up over the saddlebow of a horse to see Faith finishing off the rider. Turns out she had found the tracks of her group, and they had suddenly disappeared – she believed they had taken to the air in some way. Fearing an ambush she had headed back to camp, then out after me and Rowan. Between the two of them they had managed to catch up with the two riders, and take out the one carrying me. The other got away. They untie me and we head back to camp with the horse and the rider. When we reach the camp Saurus has animated the 2 dead riders to guard the camp, then has some sort of backfire and starts screaming in pain. Hamish and Faith take turns knocking him out until we realise that it's not going to go away quickly, and Faith uses something to make him sleep for longer. We settle back down, and the rest of the night is quiet except for Saurus' nightmares. 4 th Frost In the morning, we are preparing for breakfast when we hear more riders, this time they are heading directly for the camp. We prepare for a fight, but they stop when they see us, and we can see they are wearing the badges of one of Duke Argent's Barons. With them they have one of the warhorses from the raiding party. We have a polite chat about what had happened, and mention that we have a prisoner. They say they would like to take him with them, preferably dead, and if we could bring him over to their camp at some point. They then set up their camp about 100 feet away from ours. Faith questions our captive, but doesn't get any useful information, so kills him. Hamish casts question the dead, and he is now more informative. Apparently Duke Argent has been declared a traitor because he is consorting with orcs and something to do with the blight they have to the north. Rumours also say that he is a demon or consorts with demons – standard rumour mill stuff. Also the King's mages include dark celestials, namers and shamen among others. After exhausting our questions we hand the bodies of all the dead raiders over to the Duke's troops, after sorting through the loot. We have assorted weapons and armour, all are masterwork items of some form or another, and some warhorses. Shizane and Hamish decide to take one of the warhorses each, then we load the rest of the loot on to the remaining warhorses and leave them with the troops to keep safe for us. Meanwhile Shizane is dealing with the various wounds we picked up from the skirmish. About mid morning we head off to the south. More light farmlands, more burnt out buildings. By mid afternoon we can see a forest ahead of us marking the border of the duchy. The main road is to the west, and to the south-west we can see the haze of something burning. Shizane and Rowan say there are people down there with using shadow-wings. Feeling that discretion is the better part of valor, we stealthily move past leaving as much distance as posible between us and them, and enter the forest. We ride until after midnight, eventually reaching the far side of the forest. We camp just inside the forest, and settle in for some much needed rest. Shizane spots a village off in the distance, and uses the campfire to check it out – and finds that the village is burning, and combat is in progress. We decide that this is not a safe place to camp after all, and quietly move out, heading west across the main road. After a few more hours we settle in to camp in a small copse of trees.