Guns & Banditry
Evelais (Saints' Day), Martenin 11th, 838 ID
After a night spent ferried across the Well, Ginkwrench wakes up in the Armory Square at the PCs' barracks, where he 'freshens' up and exercises, while awaiting his assignment. He's approached by a Fourth Eidolorn cleric, Prelate Akstra, who was sent to fetch the gnome over to Commander Vhelok. He takes breakfast with the two, and gets to know Vhelok, who tells him that they've got a potential 'lead' on the bandit raids happening between Floivin and Toul Tabor on the Great Westermarch Road. The three will ride out to Livenoak, where there's a witness available who might know some of the bandits' proving grounds. After eating, Ginkwrench is given a light warhorse, and Akstra drags along another spare, while Vhelok rides his heavy warhorse Stamper, somewhat slowing the journey. The three ride out from Floivin Keep, passing through Halehusk uneventfully before arriving at Livenoak, which is in the process of being rebuilt. They head off to the Leaping Knuckle Lodge, where they are greeted by the barkeep Mersaun, and then locate their star witness, one 'Lord Ballyhoo' an entertainer.
It turns out Ballyhoo had been hired some weeks earlier by Baron Mordanc and his band, known as the Not-So-Gentlemen, to serve as a traveling minstrel. Most of them were very cultured scoundrels, with an appreciation of the arts, and Ballyhoo had been highly recommended. On the journey East, across the Great Westermarch Road, the 'Lord' would provide nightly tales and music, while by day he'd be left at various camps and watched over by a number of Mordanc's pistol-slinging minions. The others would often arrive back at camp worried, occasionally injured, and sometimes with large quantities of goods, but Ballyhoo was always reassured that it was simply 'business'. Still, the bard grew suspicious, and even more so when another entertainer, a black-lipped freak known as the 'Jester of Rataa' joined the band with a pack of shadowy hounds. After hearing the Jester's haunted voice one night, Ballyhoo realized his gig must be up with the Not-So-Gentlemen, and perhaps they had decided to get rid of him due to his suspicions. One night, Ballyhoo crept out of camp, but was unfortunately caught by the Jester and his hounds, gnawed up a little and then somehow delivered a wasting disease that disfigured his charming countenance! He still managed to escape the troupe, and slowly crawl his way back to Livenoak, where he was attended by clerics and eventually revived to his former, charismatic self.
Vhelok asks Ballyhoo if he'd like to tag along and potentially exact revenge upon the Jester and the Not-So Gentlemen, and after speaking with Ginkwrench, the 'Lord' agrees. He grabs some of his supplies, and the quartet rides out, Ballyhoo on the extra spare horse. They ride through the Westermarch Pass in the Vernal Valley uneventfully, but in the evening hours, when they emerge, they find a homely older woman weeping by the road. The newly widowed Ol' Batty Blarn tells the group that her husband has been mysteriously murdered, and since darkness is approaching anyway, they decide to follow up and investigate. They learn that the woman's husband, Buford Blarn was mysteriously slain the night before. In the morning, Batty and her children, and the dwarf aide Rakoth discovered that Buford had withered to death in his chair. Lord Ballyhoo recognizes the disfigurement on the corpse as similar to what he suffered at the hands of the Jester! Batty offers the group the barn, while they try to convince her to take her family to Floivin Keep and safety. At night, on watch, Ginkwrench discovers a band of ragged looking, impoverished bugbears traveling west to Floivin, but if they spot him on the mountainside, they do not attack (nor do they harass Blarn Stead).
Aric, Martenin 12th, 838 ID
The next morning, after convincing the Blarn widow to pack up and head to the city, the group continues their ride. The next stop suggested by Ballyhoo is the Old Spoke Inn, a roadside institution on a branching road to the Westermarch, where at one point the Not-So-Gentlemen had shacked up. After several more hours of riding, they arrive, and Ballyhoo and Ginkwrench are sent inside to speak with Aygus, the inn's proprietor. His daughters, Brachla and Bovva, continuously ogle Ballyhoo while ignoring the gnome's amorous, desperate advances, and Ginkwrench becomes disheartened after he is reprimanded by the suspicious Aygus. Oh, how he longs for his Vettlar whores! Ballyhoo finds in conversation that the bandits have not revisited the Old Spoke since, and graciously departs, gently 'letting down' the sisters and bringing word out to Vhelok. They ride south to the Westermarch Road, and avoiding another path to the south, proceed East along the main trade road, since Ballyhoo remembers some other stops Mordanc's gang had made.
They continue through the day until they find a heavily trampled wagon path leading north off the main Westermarch road, and follow it to a camp. The place has seemingly been abandoned, with no carts around, but a number of stripped corpses! Ballyhoo performs reconnaissance while the others wait with the horses, but he is soon surprised by pistol fire, and jumped by a number of monocle-wearing brigands and a pair of shadowy looking, vicious hounds. After hearing the shots, Vhelok and the others enter the fray, and though the bandits are able to dish out great amounts of damage through their firepower, our heroes inevitably overcome them through Ginkwrench's savagery, Ballyhoo's mind influence magic, Akstra's healing and the Commander's mounted combat skills. They manage to capture one of the Not-So-Gentlemen alive, and he gives them what they believe to be a fake name. He won't answer questions directly, but he does tip off the heroes that one of his fallen companions might have a map back to the Baron's hidden lair. After debating whether or not to leave the bandit naked and helpless, or outright kill him, it is decided that Ballyhoo will lay a magical compulsion on him and send him marching back to the Keep to turn himself in. It works...
While looting the dead, the PCs acquire a cloth map, upon which several landmarks note a passage back West to a cave network in the Vernal Wall. They decide to follow the directions, unaware that the map was in fact a trap meant to mislead authorities, sending them on a goose chase that might end up with their inevitable deaths! They spend the rest of the day riding back West, until they come upon a ruined wagon in the woods, with a pair of dead horses. The cart seems to have been pulverized, and only a few strips of cloth lying about as evidence that there was a merchant caravan. The place is also marked on the map, but it has become dark enough that the heroes decide to camp up and then proceed the following morning.
Tault, Martenin 13th, 838 ID
After a few hours of travel the next morning, the quartet comes upon the cavern entrance marked off on the map. They tie off the horses, and then enter, soon finding a massive cavern where a bunch of animal carcasses are strewn about on cheap wooden spits and racks. Something seems incredibly 'wrong' about the place, but the PCs surmise that Mordanc must have set it all up to throw them off the scent. They push on further into the caves, and trigger a massive spike trap. More diversions! Without a proper rogue about, they implement an idea to tie off Commander Vhelok with rope and have him probe the cavern floor ahead, and it succeeds in setting off a second pit trap. However, this pit is quickly reset by an ettin living in the next cave area! It turns out that the PCs have indeed been tricked onto a giants' lair, and the occupants, three ettins and two brown bears, immediately press their attack to drive off the invaders. The fight is brutal and quick, but thanks to Vhelok and Ginkwrench's wall of hacking, and Ballyhoo judicious uses of buffs and a haste spell, our heroes emerge victorious! They loot the ettins' cavern, ignoring a strange goddess statue in the area, and find a gnome's corpse in the base of the ettins' drinking water pool. He's got a signet ring of the Nibblebuck family, but little else is known.
Now realizing they've been 'had', the PCs ride rapidly back to the Westermarch Road, and decide next to test the path south of the road that led to the Old Spoke inn. They pass a number of primitive booby traps, and arrive at an abandoned lumber mill. Ginkwrench spies a small humanoid tucked into a pile of lumber, and realizes to great horror that it's a kobold! His ancient racial enemy! Cooler heads prevail, though, and Ballyhoo and the others manage to initiate a conversation with the kobold, who turns out to be a resourceful tracker and trickster named 'Nesh'. Nesh knows of the bandits they seek, and he believes he can trace them to a particular location in the Blue Barrens. He was given the information by a passing trader named D'Loss Tarr, a peddler who seemed ignorant of the same racial enmity that Ginkwrench emits. Much to the barbarian's dismay, they decide to bring Nesh along and use the kobold's information. Thus the quintet rides out, back to the Westermarch, and presses ever eastward to an abandoned elven shrine. Ballyhoo can recall that the bandits did stay here with him once, though he wasn't allowed to leave the ruin. Searching the area, he locates a jeweled elven blade and a hidden religious text (a bible for the lost deity Corellon Larethian) under one of the defaced statues in the old shrine.
From the shrine, Nesh knows how to follow the line of the Blue Barrens to an abandoned ranch, which in recent weeks had been occupied by the Not-So-Gentlemen. They come upon the area later in the day, and find it strangely abandoned. Ballyhoo does some initial scouting, but finds no one inside, though clearly there are wagons loaded with varied supplies, and they've come to the right place! It is decided that the heroes will wait outside the walls, in a camp hidden over a rise, for Mordanc and his men to inevitably return, and then perhaps ambush them in the night. Alas, the brigands never return through the night!
Varony, Martenin 14th, 838 ID
Come the next morning, the PCs note a man and his horse dragging a cart to the abandoned ranch, and keep a close eye on him. He enters the walls, and within minutes, they begin to see columns of smoke pouring forth from the wagons inside. This man is burning the supplies meant for Floivin! Our heroes confront him once he emerges from the ranch, to learn that he's a down on his luck bumpkin named Lupis, who was paid a considerable sum the day before to head to the ranch and burn all the wagons, but leave the ranch's central structure alone. It turns out that Mordanc was on to the PCs after they slew his ambushers at the roadside camp, and then decided to abandon his operation! What's more, after a thorough search of the ranch, and realizing that some of the supplies included anti-siege weapons for Floivin Keep, Ballyhoo uncovered a letter hidden among paperwork in the ranch's central livestock tanning/branding center. It was addressed to one Shalabar Klasp, and was a notice of resignation signed by Mordanc! Apparently he no longer felt the Score's plans were tenable, and since half his 'beautiful boys' were killed, he was cutting his losses and heading Westward to find more profitable exploits in the Empire.
Saddened that they could not bring the Baron down face to face, but content that they managed to thwart his further designs on the Westermarch trade route, Commander Vhelok and Prelate Akstra decide that it's high time they headed back to Tarair in their home province. They wish Ginkwrench and Ballyhoo the best of luck, hand the gnome a promotion to Lieutenant rank (as approved by Hoary in advance), and send the pair back to the Keep with the spoils from the ettin lair and the bandits they earlier defeated. En route, Ballyhoo is surprised to learn that Ginkwrench is working in a unit that belonged to an old friend of his, Banghorn. He is shocked to hear of the Lieutenant's fate, and decides that this might be something he can help follow up on.
PCs: Ballyhoo, Ginkwrench
New Faith Unlocked: Corellon Larethian
New Prestige Class Unlocked: Battle Trickster (Nesh, Frail Forest)
Aygus Frull (human male): Proprietor and groundskeeper of the Old Spoke, a roadside inn located on a side path off the Great Westermarch Road, in the eastern reaches of the Frail Forest, and on the shore of the Palepool. He's a gruff, bearded, proud, and stout-mannered man, but takes offense quickly at anyone whose eyes dwell too long upon his homely daughters...
Bachla Frull (human female): One of Aygus Frull's daughters, she works and lives at the Old Spoke. Bachla is rather ugly looking due to her crooked teeth and an unkempt unibrow, but otherwise has fair skin and long, dark brown braided hair. She constantly conspires with her sister Bovva to seduce the better looking male patrons at the Old Spoke, but seems uninterested in nonhumans, as Ginkwrench found to his great dismay.
Bovva Frull (human female): The other of Aygus Frull's lascivious daughters, Bovva's an enormous and round woman with a far more curvacious figure than her sister Bachla, though the two share the same sexual appetites. She and Bachla are quite fond of Lord Ballyhoo and any other charming or good looking human male patronizing the Old Spoke.
Lupis (human male): A stumbling, drunken vagabond known to cart his belongings around in the eastern reach of the Frail Forest. Wears little else than a poor man's clothing, torn by brambles. Comes into contact with Commander Vhelok and several of the PCs after being hired by Baron Mordanc and the Not-So Gentlemen to burn the stolen supply wagons located at the abandoned ranch on the border of the Blue Barrens.
Nesh (kobold male): This small, youthful and scaly green humanoid wears a pot on its head with no ladle, a pair of eye-holes carved into the side. Its tattered leather armor is laden with bands of small knives, sharp sticks and other implements, while string, rope and small, self-made utensils are tucked into a pair of belts. He carries a gnarled walking stick with various tools strung to it on small leather straps, as well as a pair of lucky turkey bones. Nesh has made a hideout of the Withered Mill south of the Old Spoke inn, off the Great Westermarch Road in the Frail Forest. He's actually quite a crafty chap for his species, and ends up helping the PCs locate a trail to Baron Mordanc's hideout, despite some racial tension with Ginkwrench. Ballyhoo dismisses him, but Nesh offers to help out whenever needed.
Old Batty Blarn (human female): The widow of Buford Blarn, a mountaineer and guide who owned a homestead on the Eastern side of the Vernal Wall, near the Westermarch Pass in/out of Floivin Province. She accosts Ballyhoo, Ginkwrench and Vhelok when her husband is discovered desiccated and murdered in their home. She has several young sons with Buford, and makes a decent root stew. The PCs beseech her to take her family and the dwarf Rakoth to Floivin Keep.
Rakoth (dwarf male): A scarred and mute dwarf mountaineer who was the assistant to the late Buford Blarn, he feels indebted to help the widow Batty Blarn and her children make their transition to a new life, since the Blarn Stead is dangerous.
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