On the way back to the trading post, the party met a group of six hobs who started talking to Frankel (still disguised as Orr the hob) in hobgoblin, which nobody there understood. They managed to convince the orcs that Frankel had gone mad during an encounter with the Insanity Priests, and the hobs went off yelling about burning the Temple District (which doesn't actually contain a branch of the Insanity Temple). Rogroc was somewhat surprised that the hobs recognized him when he was pretending to be a totally different berserker named Rogash.
Just for fun (and since there were no Leomund's anythings to be cast), that night the party rented the Stronghold, a room/gimmick on the second floor of Silvator's inn with chains on the walls for interrogations (and because the room looked bare without furniture), a toolchest with various implements, a trapdoor into the adventurers' common room, and another exit in the ceiling.
Rogroc and Yves headed downstairs to do some gambling and sat down with a thin beak-nosed guy in a classic wizard's robe.
- Nexus: [to Rogroc]
- "A game of chance, worthy warrior? It's called `The Daedalus Duel' -- it's a game from Silverton. The rules aren't too hard. Goes like this: We roll two dice. If you get a `2' you win. If you don't, I win. Sounds good, eh?"
- Rogroc: "You play wrong."
- [Rogroc patiently explains the usual C-Ra rules as many times as needed until Nexus gives up.]
(Daedalus, incidentally, is a Silverton evoker who adventured with the party in AK 575-579, back before Khambeer. Gambling cons and similar schemes were his specialty, though he was generally considered "a good-natured swindler," and he later retired from adventuring and established the Fireball of Fun, one of Silverton's foremost brothels and gambling houses. When the spiders took over the city, he set up an adventuring shop in Sunrise.)
Nexus didn't do too well, despite probable attempts to cheat, and then offered to wager a big chunk of gold against 50ep. Yves, suspecting something like fools' gold, went upstairs, ostensibly to get 50ep from the party. The party didn't see why Rogroc couldn't just refuse the bet if the gold seemed iffy, but Yves seemed to want to party to come down and meet the mage, so they did.
Yves told Nexus that he needed to inspect the bet before putting up the money, so Nexus tossed him the nugget. Ganeth sized up the mage's probable strength and decided that if the nugget were really 60 cubic inches of solid gold, there's no way Nexus should have been able to toss it like that. The gold felt ok to Yves, but when he put it down, G walked up and grabbed it, much to Nexus' dismay. It didn't feel right to him. Nexus tried to explain that the gold had special dwarven enchantments to make it less encumbering, but G whacked it with his dwarven cold iron spearhead, and it shattered into a pile of glass beads. Nexus pulled out a wand and pointed it in G's direction.
- Rogroc:
- "Is this a fight?"
- Nexus:
- "Yes! Errr...no! Hmm...I don't know. I demand justice! Those dwarven nuggets are exceedingly rare, and now it's been polymorphed into a bunch of glass."
- Ganeth:
- "Nice variation on the spell. Getting it to work on glass is a definite enhancement."
- Nexus: [looking at G's spear]
- "You a mage? What would you know about these things? I'm from Silverton. You're not trifling with some neo-pansy-Mikazuki-mage here."
- Ganeth:
- "I trained at the School of Magic too...before the crash. Now that we're done with the name-dropping, let's get to the interesting conversation part. Or else we can all just go to bed."
- Nexus:
- "Really? Who did you train with?"
- Ganeth:
- "Sometimes Hajmola. Did some work with Xaxol too."
- Nexus:
- "You trained with Hajmola and Xaxol? Oh my god..."
By now, the altercation had attracted the attention of four adventurers who'd been huddled over a map at a nearby table. A woman came over, saying she was a priest and offering to arbitrate. Nexus ranted about his magic item being destroyed, Ganeth gave his point of view, and the woman decided that Nexus was wrong and asked for a 10ep arbitration fee.
- Nexus:
- "Hey! I'm the victim here!"
- Frankel: [bearing down on Nexus]
- "You seemed to accept her arbitration."
- Nexus:
- "Who the hell are you? Go away!"
- Frankel:
- "Not until justice is done. Ignore me, I'm just watching."
- Nexus:
- "Want to see some justice, pal?"
Nexus fired his wand of wonder at Frankel, getting a stream of gems that pelted Frankel within an inch of his life. (Granted, Frankel was pretty badly hurt to start with.) Silvana, feeling the stench of LE, gave the "arbitrator" 10ep so she'd go away, while her party eyed the gems from across the room. And now that Nexus had some assets, he was in a much better mood and settled down for a chat.
Nexus was one of Daedalus' students, and he'd gotten both the fool's gold item and the WoW from the master. He was quite impressed that the party had adventured with the big D in the old days, and the elves were happy to hear that Daedalus was still doing well for himself.
Frankel headed back upstairs, where Beeel heard him talking to someone. He later admitted that the "arbitrator" approached him, and while he's confused about the details, he wanted some kind of revenge against Nexus and the woman was willing to help him get it. He then went back downstairs, asked to speak with Nexus privately, and offered him his shield ring in exchange for his time. They went off with Yves (who was there to keep the peace) and had the following conversation:
- Frankel:
- "What can you tell me of Sunrise's current stance towards the war?"
- Nexus:
- "Hmm... I'd have to say that most of us are pretty apathetic. But some see it as an opportunity. We don't want the East to win, of course, but hopefully those crackpots with the artifact will just get killed and we can go back to status quo. Sunrise would like to see the spiders get kicked out, but no one cares about doing that with this silly war."
- Frankel:
- "How about Daedalus specifically? It would aid us greatly to enlist the aid of the Great One, though that is not, I think, our immediate plan."
- Nexus:
- "The Great One says that he is not yet ready for adventuring. He is building his reserves of wealth and will resume adventuring when The Price is Right. You guys know what The Price is, right? It's a mage thing."
- Yves:
- "I was a little late joining the school."
- Nexus:
- "Shame. There's nothing like it in the world. Maybe someday, when the Price is Right..."
- Yves:
- "When might that be?"
- Nexus:
- "Probably when we get enough mages back in action..."
- Frankel:
- "Do you know where I might find Tiger, a horsethief who's also a bandit chief, from the Banditlands but not there anymore?"
- Nexus:
- "Hmm... sounds like that bandit in Sunrise maybe. Can't guarantee that it's the same guy. He's got a bunch of bandits, reputation for being aggressive and dangerous. Calls himself either Lion or Tiger. Probably the same guy, yeah."
While the group was heading out of the room, Frankel nonchalantly tossed something into Nexus' bag, working smoothly enough for his action to go unnoticed. When Nexus later returned to the main room, he gave Rogroc a small red gem (worth about a gp) and left.
- Rogroc:
- "That weird. Pretty rock, though."
The next day, Silvator proposed another job to the party: The merchants have decided to negotiate with the Westerners to get trade routes reopened between C-Ra and Banzeel. Silvator has been chosen to negotiate, but he'd need an escort to get him there in one piece -- his plan is to teleport to Banzeel, slip out through the sewers, and then make contact with the Western forces. On the way, he'd be picking up payment for the party's jobs from his suppliers in Banzeel.
Silvator was also unconvinced about the quest spell -- he can't quite believe the Easterners would turn on Banzeel like that -- but he and Elbleem have been working with Horon (who's infiltrated the Insanity Temple) to get more information, and there could be further developments on that front.
After getting some healing, Frankel headed out into the town, saying he wanted to get some more information about Tiger. Beeel, concerned about the centaur's unusual recent behavior (even compared to Frankel's norm), sent Yves out to trail him. Frankel met with the mediator, and Yves heard the following bits of conversation:
- Mediator:
- "...magic fly...successfully..."
- Frankel:
- "...beat him up but don't kill him..."
Frankel returned to Silvator's, and Yves attempted to trail the mediator. He was slowed down by an encounter with a beggar (perhaps another thief), but he saw her meet with someone else and heard the following words: "Sunrise", "caravan", "gems", "barbarian", "scry again", "Hakima", "Silvator", "sabotage", "Elbleem", "investigate", "plant", "gaseous form". Yves made it back to Silvator's without further incident.
The party did some preliminary investigating of Yves' sword; they discovered that it was mostly LN with Evil tendencies and gave a dual Prime/Alternate Prime reading on plane source (possibly one reading for the physical sword and one for the spirit inside it). It also didn't seem especially bothered by being around elves, which seemed very odd for a Grummsh sword. Ganeth asked it how many eyes Gruumsh had, and the sword said, "two, same as everyone else," so it was obviously unfamiliar with the story of Corellan putting out Gruumsh's eye and the resulting orc-elf hatreds. Apparently the sword either predates the arrival of elves on this plane or comes from a plane where elves never appeared; when/where the sword was made, the orc-goblin enmity was probably tops on the agenda, and the goblins were allied with some variety of spider.
Noting that swords like this tend to be trouble for their wielders, Silvana asked what Yves wanted done if he died on a mission. Yves assured Silvana that if something happened to him, she'd be contacted.
Frankel felt the need to commune with the Beastlands about something. There were no allied temples in C-Ra, but Silvana figured the Temple of the Moon (chaotic and associated with lycanthropes) was the closest available thing. So Frankel headed over that night, accompanied by Yves.
- Silvana:
- "Anyone going on the Temple of the Moon expedition should note that the priestesses charm people....on the plus side they are very attractive so that might not bother anyone."
The Moon Priestesses basically ignored Yves, but they found Frankel rather interesting. ("The powerful combination of horse and man into a creature of surprising grace and form excites us.") It turned out that Frankel was extremely disturbed by the tracks he'd found in the valley, indicating that one centaur was driving the rest of the tribe in a forced march. The priestesses offered Frankel a meal and some sympathetic ears; the Head Priestess gave Yves an ep and sent him on his way, asking him to tell Silvana that Frankel would be staying the night.
- DM:
- "So the priestesses listen to Frankel's tale, read his mind, feed him good food and drugged wine. Frankel relaxes and remembers little of the rest of the night. Frankel wakes up feeling more healed and feels friendly with respect to a number of the priestesses. They release him with their best wishes (and all his items, in a sack)."
Silvana determined that Frankel had been charmed by the Head Priestess, using a version of animal friendship that works on males of lower level/HD than the caster.
- Silvana: [to Frankel]
- "They are not trustworthy (by Western standards) but not evil either. They are more of a danger for lone adventurers....I'm sure they knew that we would be concerned about your absence so there was no point in keeping you. All the same, it isn't a good idea to go to sleep in a strange place. And it's certainly not a good idea to take your items off...whatever else you decide to take off."
Fortunately, no major harm seemed to have been done, and Frankel did get some healing out of it. But the experience didn't seem to get him any closer to the Beastlands or a resolution to whatever's been bothering him.