- Frankel:
- "So to save Elbleem's life, he agreed to share his body with him...whoa..."
Silvator/Elbleem and the party retreated into Silvator's study, where they were less likely to be overheard or scried. The skeletons and flesh golem were no longer in evidence, and Silvator had spotted and dealt with the farastu figurine (which happened to have been stolen from Elbleem). Elbleem and Silvator had actually been sharing Silvator's body for some time ("for a reasonable price") after Elbleem's body was fatally "sabotaged", and the ceremony they'd performed was necessary to transfer the council amulet from Elbleem's body to Silvator's without a backlash. Several items for the procedure had been stored in Elbleem's warehouse, which is why they needed the party to clear it out without damaging anything there (and presumably why the Thin Man was occupying the place). As for who was behind this...
- Elbleem/Silvator:
- "It is generally easier to try to count one's friends, especially in times of trouble. On the council, none of us have any. No doubt Boutros has something to do with this, but he is not acting alone -- whether he knows it or not. The council is too divided to act as one against me. No...there is one individual who is manupulating the others from the shadows -- and I don't mean Rheebuk."
Silvana ran down the extent of her interest in this affair: making sure Silvator was all right, getting the party's items, getting mage training for Ganeth, and keeping C-Ra out of the war.
- Silvana:
- "This Banzeel sister city idea is nonsense -- a notion undoubtedly concocted by Eastern Empire to draw C-Ra needlessly into the war. I support the idea that Banzeel and C-Ra will one day be strong trading partners, but I feel that the Easteners are trying to make this war seem like its everyone's problem, when in reality it is their problem."
- Elbleem/Silvator:
- "Actually, I am in favor of Chthul-Ra/Banzeel Sister Cities. But it's important to determine which of us is the bigger sister."
Ganeth wanted to know if Elbleem or Silvator had any idea how the Thin Man had managed to cast through those 32 points of damage. They believed that the Thin Man was hosting a leech- or slug-like symbiote that was granting him special abilities in exchange for blood, explaining his emaciated appearance and uninterruptability. G's take on this possibility is that if the Thin Man and the symbiote have separate consciousness but shared hit points, it was actually the symbiote that was damaged by Elissa's special ability. In any case, Elbleem has heard rumors of a secret Eastern cult that bonds powerful members to creatures like the slugs; there is some speculation that this cult represents an aspects of Asmodeus ("stressing themes of flexibility, feeding from within and subtle control").
After hearing that bit of information, Ganeth naturally wanted to know if Elbleem/Silvator knew anything about Kharnzeel. They didn't, but they'd heard of a priest named Q'Ranzil who'd come out of the desert about ten years ago and joined the Death Temple in Marakeel. He was already name level when he converted to Death, which was quite a coup for them. He later began questioning some basic tenets of the religion, causing a schism and perhaps even a war within the temple. The Ravens have not split, but they've been working on both sides of the conflict, which is unusual for them. The desert connection led Silvana to speculate that Q'Ranzil would be an expert on ruins and relics in the area, which in turn led Ganeth to wonder if he was responsible for shipping Streck off to the Eightfold Path.
Next on the agenda was getting information out of the rakshasa. Silvator brought out a circlet that forces its wearer to relive memories in response to three questions; these memories are copied into the circlet and can be replayed by the device's next wearer. It took many applications to overcome the rak's 90% magic resistance, but Silvator eventually got some answers to his and the party's questions. (Quotes are from El/Si.)
Ganeth had never heard of such a mage in the Auramkil court when he lived there, but this was 20 years before magical ink disappeared, and he was comparatively young at the time. He was very curious about just who would have files on the Thin Man; from the memory, it seemed to Elbleem/Silvator that these files were somewhere under Chthul-Ra, possibly in the demi-god's secret temple.
Finally, there were a few more small questions for the rakshasa.
- Frankel:
- "What happens to those of your race when you are killed on this plane?"
- Rakshasa:
- "We are reborn as rakshasa back home."
- Ganeth:
- "How do some of them get stuck on a ship in phase space waiting for a chance to swap places with a mortal?"
- Rakshasa:
- "Many of our race make foolish pacts when we are young. We are more alike than either of our races realize..."
Later that evening, Rikozum showed up with a set of scary-looking metal shackles to retrieve the rak, which he did.
The next step in the master plan was getting Elbleem/Silvator to the Western forces surrounding Banzeel, picking up the party's promised items on the way. To do this, Silvator would have to teleport them to House Jeltha's headquarters in Banzeel, with the party's more conspicuous members once again disguised, this time as Fungol warriors, dressed in authentic furs purchased in town.
- Rogroc:
- "Smell good like Rogroc!"
To help avoid problems, Elbleem did a sending to Horon, asking him to arrange a clandestine meeting with Elbleem's head person in Banzeel. The party planned to arrive unexpectedly half an hour before that meeting, ensuring that the Banzeel guy would be in a hurry and not asking too many questions (since most of the party didn't know Eastern Common, and none of them knew much of anything about Banzeel).
Frankel very much wanted to spend the night at the Temple of the Moon, so Silvana went over with him and had a chat with the High Priestess. She got the name of one of the Temple's contacts in the sewers, a woman known as "Sickle." Frankel got some healing; the rest of his evening is left to the reader's imagination.
The next day was a quiet sit-around-and-heal day. Late in the afternoon, Silvator's assistant (the real one) showed up with a rumor that the city's hobgoblins were talking about some sort of religious crusade and were planning to attack the trading post that night. (Kharuz and Typhor were still away on their "family business.") Silvana went to the Fighter's Guild to look for Rogthug, a hobgoblin fighter/thief who she thought might be able to head off the attack, but Rogthug was nowhere to be found. Neither were any other hobs. The assistant went to the Baby Roc for the night, Silvator secured whatever valuables were in the trading post, and the party (with El/Si) headed out of town to ride out the evening, planning to return in the morning to teleport from Silvator's pentagram.
Several hobgoblins were manning the gate when the party left.
- Hob 1:
- "There's an exit fee today, in celebration of our religious festival."
- Silvana:
- "What festival is that?"
- Hob 2:
- "It's the one where we celebrate brotherhood and slay traitors."
- Hob 1:
- "Any traitors in your group today?"
- Beeel:
- "No, not today."
- Hob 1:
- "Okay, exit fee is 1ep for everyone. 2ep for our special racial enemies: elves and rich, slimy merchants."
- Elbleem/Silvator pays the fee.
Hobs chuckle.- Silvana:
- "Good day to you."
- Hob 2:
- "Good day and good riddance."
The night was uneventful, but in the morning, Elbleem/Silvator expressed a strong preference for trying to use wraithforms and reduces to reduce the party's weight enough to teleport out from where they were, without a pentagram. Though he didn't say this, he'd apparently gotten some warnings and/or threats through the amulet, leading him to believe that returning to C-Ra was extremely dangerous (or perhaps that his pentagram had been rigged to cause some kind of teleportation accident?). Yves had a quiet word with Elbleem/Silvator, relaying some suspicions he's had about Frankel's recent behavior. Meanwhile, G cast det invis for a casual scan and noticed an invisible sphere in Frankel's mane. He used Silvana's thief's hand to transfer the item (possibly one of Shaqueel's scrying devices) to a holding device of Elbleem/Silvator's.
- Elbleem/Silvator:
- "It happens that a lot has been going on without anyone telling me, and it seems to center somewhat on you, Mr. Frankel. Let's bring this into the open. What's going on here? Are the hobs really after the Trading Post, or are they after the party? How is Frankel involved in any of this? And what is so special about the Ring?"
Beeel suggested that the party move at least a quarter mile before doing anything else, in an attempt to throw off scrying, so they did. In the rush to get to Banzeel before whatever trouble was headed their way arrived, not much was gotten out of Frankel besides a vague account of his conversation with the mediator the night of the encounter with Nexus. (Nexus, incidentally, had checked out of the trading post right after the Thin Man attacked.)
- Ganeth:
- "If I wanted to have mornings like this, I could have moved back to Auramkil."
- Elbleem/Silvator:
- "Or are we warming up for the East?"
- Ganeth:
- "What's the difference?"
The suddenly urgent departure threw off the timing with the bogus Horon meeting and forced the party to move with most of the duration on various reduce spells still to go. And since wraithformed Fungols aren't remotely credible, some changes to the disguises were in order. After several minutes of chaos and argument, the party finally settled on the following:Character Cover --------- ----- El/Si Elbleem (disguised as himself with a death's head mask) Yves Yves (employed by Elbleem) Beeel Beeel (employed by Elbleem; reduced) Stealth Seel (human longbow kensai apprenticed to Beeel; wf) Ganeth Bujeel (human spear kensai apprenticed to Beeel; wf) Silvana Nightwing (human priest-thief operative, as before; wf) Frankel Orr (human swamp barbarian charmed by Nightwing; reduced) Pepper Peroc (same deal as Frankel) Rogroc Rogash (as before, but charmed; reduced)After a briefing on the House Jeltha pentagram traps (heavy crossbow slits in the walls, pit under the pentagram, flaming oil ports in the ceiling), the mostly reduced and wraithformed party 'ported out.