Long Term Plans

October 21, 2010

The group heads to their boarding house to look over the treasures.  As they get there, Bamarden decides they need some privacy, and so has everyone cough up two gold for a private room.  As they are paying for it, Teldryl notices that a knot on the wooden wall panel moves a bit, pinches on itself and then opens up and blinks with an eye now in it.  She immediately ducks and moves under it, hoping it can't see her.  When the others notice it, Bamarden moves up to poke it and that gets rid of it.  

The owner starts clammering that they had better not be bringing the Red Cloaks here or any other trouble and mutters about charging them more but the group moves past him and up the stairs to the room they rented.  When they get up to the room, Teldryl sets up some runes to stop scrying.  It's not her forte, though, so she doubts they will last more than an hour.  They then pull out the blades and look at them.  

Teldryl is quite shocked to see two elven moonblades.  One is from a major house of Evermeet and the other a minor, both still active.  She does not know if this means they were stolen or lost as she doesn't know about them specifically.  One has a cross guard of ivy and the other's cross guards are towers.  They ask a few questions about the blades and then Bamarden decides he wants to try to bond to them.  He starts the ritual to do that.  

As he is about halfway done, Teldryl senses that someone tried to break through the wards but did not succeed.  Bamarden keeps going with his ritual and when he finishes, readies himself and then grabs the sword with the ivy.  The ivy comes alive and crawls up his arm, thorns sprouting out into his hand.  Bamarden grimaces in pain but keeps holding on, wondering if this is a test.  As he takes more and more damage as the ivy wraps around him, he steels himself for more but screams and Teldryl finally pulls it away from him.  Darksouls sings a song of healing and Bamarden feels better.  Better enough to grab the other sword!

He starts burning right away and this time can't stop from screaming.  Again, wondering if it is a test, he holds onto it for a long time before letting go.  At the same time, another scrying eye appears in the room but Vahn gets rid of it.  Teldryl looks outside and sees movement outside.  It's very late at night for it to be a coincidence.  Vahn says to use the sword as the handle before leaving the room to go across the hall.  Darksouls joins him.  Teldryl goes to a different room down the hall, taking the ivy moonblade with her.  Bamarden takes the sword and removes the door handle, sticking the handle of the blade out as if it was the handle.  Then he goes jumping out the window, grabs the roof and swings to the roof.  To find several people on it, bow and weapons drawn.  

Vahn looks out into the hallway and the candles in it go out all at once.  Vahn is sure he hears movement from down the hall but waits.  He's hoping they will pass him on the way to the room.  Sure enough, the group passes him and in the dark, the first one grabs the handle to open the door.  He starts screaming and bursts into flame!  

Up on the roof, the elf archer fires but misses and the others throw daggers but all miss.  Bamarden moves over to one and hits with his sword.  While moving, Bamarden did not notice how carefully the others were moving until he hits his opponent.  The opponent shifts and into the wrong position, crashing through the roof into the room with Teldryl.  Bamarden then jumps down, grabs a rafter to slow his descent and lands in the room.  One of the attackers tries to jump down into the room but misses and barely grabs the sill before slamming into the wall.  As he tries to pull himself up, his foot slips and then his hands do and he falls to the ground.  Some of his friends come and grab him.  

Teldryl opens the door and blasts down the hallway with a spell but isn't as effective as she hoped.  The group in the hall run down into the room, attacking Teldryl and Bamarden.  This allows Vahn and Darksouls to attack from behind.  Most of them go down quickly, except for one of the wild elves.  As they have him cornered, he says he will have the word before fey stepping out of the boarding house.  

The group realizes that they have to leave.  Darksouls knows of a fence for weapons and so they head there.  However, Jandril is not happy with them on many levels.  She didn't like the late hour, although she was up doing some inventory.  However, she also recognized the moonblades and that her life would be in danger as long as she had them.  She refuses to deal in them and while not happy with the others, tells Darksouls she is still interested in other deals.  Just not with such dangerous ones.  

As they leave Darksouls and Vahn share a look and then both draw out a weapon.  Bamarden can't wait for them to be hurt as he was.  Nothing happens!  Soon, they put the weapons down and say they have been accepted by them!  Bamarden stews a bit about that.  Darksouls got the sword with the towers and Vahn the one with the ivy.  

They still have the gold trade bars to get rid of, so Darksouls takes them to another fence he knows, Dendren.  Dendren suggests a silversmith who can do the work for them, and they give him some gold for his time.  They make a deal with a silver smith to take the gold bars and give them 925 gold pieces in return.  

Having this much money in hand, Teldryl says that she wants to invest it.  They do some talking and decide to see if a local black smith is interested.  It turns out he is.  He wants to get into weapons and armor, as that's more profit, but needs the start up gold to do so.  They haggle back and forth but come to a deal.  They share a meal with him to get to know the blacksmith, Dulen, and his apprentices, Morth and Josper.  Dulen has to remind the apprentices that a lady is present as they get a bit lewd and they settle down.  Dulen then mentions that he has had some trouble with people wanting money for protection from him and can they help?  Vahn agrees to it immediately and they decide to stay with him for the night, as Dulen says they will be back early the next morning.  

The next morning, when the men arrive, Vahn is there to intercept them before they can get to Dulen.  He says any business with Dulen is business with him.  Darksouls then makes himself known, as do the others, and the two men, Irvar and Turko, talk to them.  They say that Dulen owes them money, as accidents happen.  Vahn asks if they know Trey.  Irvar, who does all of the talking, says that this isn't Trey or Avenel's area of town but Torsil's.  They don't like Trey being here.  Vahn says they aren't with Trey but with another group.  Irvar guesses Darkhold and Vahn doesn't discourage that thought.  

It turns out that Dulen had problems with Darkhold years ago.  The truth is that a soldier from there was harassing a halfling when Dulen was in Corm Orp, a village close to Darkhold and where Dulen had gone to see.  Dulen pushed the Zhent away from a halfling and he fell and hit his head, addling him.  However, in time, the story has grown to him protecting several halflings and taking on a bar full of Zhent soldiers.  In some stories, it was over a women and in a few, she leaves him anyway.  

Vahn hinting they were from someplace else brings the story to Irvar's mind and he apologizes and leaves, saying they will leave Dulen alone.  

GM Notes

• I was very happy with the fight in the boarding house.  I thought it was quite cinematic!  4E did a great job of allowing some fun things to happen.  And the idea of the sword hilt of the moonblade as the handle was hilarious!  In the dim hallway, it wasn't obvious and that's why the attacker grabbed it.  All in all, a very fun fight!  
• I was also VERY happy with the investing they did in the blacksmith.  It tells me that either they are going to be in the area, or at least to Scornubel often, as they are creating ties to the communities.  I like that as it really works for some of my plans!  And means the preparations I did were on the right track!  
• I completely made up the blacksmith and his story on the spot and liked how it went!  Very fun for me!
• I had not intended on giving them treasure and money but only money.  However, for various reasons, it worked out with the moonblades.  I had a few ideas on what they could do with them but this worked out as well as anything else.  

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