Difference between revisions of "Road to Kebnegard, Chapter Twelve"

Latest revision as of 09:52, 12 July 2013

Dueling, Possibly Staying, and a Little B&E
Friday, February 17th, 988 AD

We do all kinds of shopping for spell components and the like while Wong attempts to track down someone has challenged her to a duel. Apparently, while we were sleeping, a man came up to the Mayor's tower and asked to see Wong. The guard would not let him in, so he left a note instead. His name is Sabota Sulislavich. Wong finds the man's house/store, but is thwarted by his not being there when she knocks on his door. Afterwards, the party meets with the Lord Mayor and Sadko.

Sadko: The mayor and I have been talking and we think, after your bravery, courage, and intelligence in saving our city, that you should all stay in Novgorod as a permanent defense force.
Reynaldo: How much?
Sadko (chuckling): Well, you'd get room, board, and food for free, of course, as well as a stipend.
Jean-Claude: Somewhere to rest my head every night is tempting...
Reynaldo: So we'd be replacing that jerk Vasli, right? You're giving him the old heave-ho because of his awful, awful showing in this latest campaign?
Lord Mayor: Actually, he'd be leading you as you'd be replacing his fallen comrades.
Edward: You mean the ones he got killed in his foolish frontal assault?
Reynaldo: Fuck that. He's an asshole who should be fired. Don't you people have performance reviews?
Sadko: You have to remember that while you may have saved the city, Vasli was the reason that there was still a city to save when you finally got here. He has saved Novgorod countless times and will continue to do so until he dies. The people love him, just like the people will love you if you stay.

Murmuring amongst the party breaks out until Edward finally says that we'll have to think about it. We ask to use Sadko's library in the interim where Reynaldo and Edward find some interesting texts.

Later that night, Wong secretly asks for help from Reynaldo, Ivan, and Nicolae to break into Sabota's house. They break in through the back. Ivan stands guard outside and the others go inside and find a dead body in front part of the house/store, in front of the counter. Nicolae recognizes him as the blacksmith who was repairing Ivan's armor. He's been run through. Reynaldo looks for loot because, hey, let's not let it go to waste. Upstairs, they find a lot of sheets and garments soaked in blood, including what is possibly Sabota's bed. The four leave the house as stealthily as they came in and agree to report the murder in the morning.

The Kobold Dungeon, part I, CSI: Novgorod, and A Magic View-Finder
Saturday, February 18th, 988 AD

Wong and Reynaldo point the local constable in the right direction of the blacksmith's corpse after pretending to have been looking for him last night on the pretext of Ivan's armor not being up to snuff. The constable finds the body and begins his investigation.

Meanwhile, the party goes back into the Kobold Dungeon in order to finish off the monsters in there and explore whatever we didn't explore. We come up with a plan for the poisonous Scorpion-Man demon and then the Water Elemental that still resides in the previously polluted pool. The plan is to basically let Ivan fight the Scorpion-Man until he goes down because he is the most resistant to poisons, being the hardy dwarf that he is. Once the Scorpion-Man is down, we will just hit the Water Elemental until it stops hitting us back. These plans work beautifully and both monsters are destroyed in short order with no one on our side falling. We continue into the dungeon and get to a room full of garbage. At the bottom of it, there is a tentacled creature that Ivan immediately dives towards, spear first. With the help of missile fire from everybody else, the creature is easily destroyed, but Ivan smells really bad now. We continue exploring and then fight a demon who calls itself the Horned One. We kill it and move on. We find an amphisbaena, one of the creatures on Igwolf's list, so we decide to leave the caves until we come up with a plan on how to skin it alive.

We go back to Novgorod and rest so that Jean-Claude and Reynaldo can get some Clairvoyances to check to see if the sphinx brains (which are needed in order to cure Conrad of his Tarot card-induced ailment) and Kriemhild are still in the Tarot Dungeon.

Meanwile, Wong, Nicolae, and Ivan continue to investigate Sabota. Using the smartest urchins in the while world, they find out that when the Black Sword teleported Edward, it made him forget that he gave it to an urchin, who then hid it in some trash. Sabota then picked up the sword and started going crazy. He killed a man in an alley and then returned home, where he apparently killed the blacksmith. Ivan tells the urchins to canvass the city for him, but to avoid all contact lest he kill them too. They tell Sadko and the Lord Mayor about this.

Later, Jean-Claude Clairvoyances the room with the Sphinxes and he sees that the Black Pudding that jumped out of that magic box has eaten one and three-quarters sphinxes, leaving only two brains left. Reynaldo, Jean-Claude, and Edward quickly come up with a plan on how to get in there and grab the remaining brains before the Black Pudding eats them. They rush in through the Kobold Dungeon and get past the stupid lighted tunnels by having people press the buttons. Once there, Jean-Claude and Reynaldo fly around and get the Black Pudding to focus on one of them while the other one scoops out the brains. They are successful and return to Conrad, who makes horrible faces as he scarfs down the brains. "It's best not to think about it," says Edward. Almost immediately after eating the brains, Conrad regurgitates a black toad that immediately disintegrates. Conrad feels immensely better.

At the end of the day, Reynaldo Magic Mirrors the Black Sword and sees Sabota Sulislavich brooding over it in a partially destroyed building. Since the city had recently been under siege, this really could be anywhere. Sabota then notices that he's being watched and uses the Black Sword to slice through the spell, effectively ending it. We all decide that this sword is very, very intelligent.

End Chapter Twelve
Previous: Road to Kebnegard, Chapter Eleven
Next: Road to Kebnegard, Chapter Thirteen