Hippogriff Down!

“Die, dandy!” someone shouted. “Death to the false Queen!” The party found their way blocked by a mob of rioters. They were surrounding a beardless young nobleman and a gruff-looking Korvosan Guardsman. “You all go on home and sleep it off, and no one will get hurt. Otherwise, you’ll spend the night in a cell, or worse!” the Guardsman warned, his sword drawn protectively, but the mob was uncowed. “You can go to hell, Queen’s Man!” someone shouted, and the circle began to tighten around the pair.

Jax was looking for an alternate route out when Nat spoke up. “Hey!” he exclaimed, peering at the guardsman in the light of the streetlamps. “I know that guy!”

 

“Who? The rich guy?” Jax asked, but Nat shook his head. “No, the Guard. That’s Sgt. Soldado – he’s a friend of mine!”

Jax rolled his eyes; Nat definitely ran with the wrong crowd. But Erin drew her sword, a eager look in her eyes. “Then I guess we need to kill these lawbreakers.” She took a step forward.

“Slow down just a minute!” Shadow interjected, blocking her path with an outstretched arm. “No need to be so hasty. Let me try talking to them.” Taking a breath to calm his nerves, he advanced towards the crowd, trying to look relaxed. Erin shadowed him, looking anything but relaxed.

“Hold on there, friends!” Shadow called as he drew close. “Is this really what you want to be doing tonight?” The rioters turned their attention on him. Several bounced their clubs off open palms; their expressions said “Why no – what we’d really like to be doing is beating you up instead.” But Shadow acted like he didn’t notice.

“What about your families?” he asked. “Look at everything that’s going on in this city tonight.” He waved his arms to take in all of Korvosa. “Are they safe? What if there’s a mob marching down your street right now? Shouldn’t you be at home, protecting them?”

There was a moment of tense silence when the mob’s mood hung in the balance. Then a young man spoke. “He’s right - I’d better check on Lucy and the kids.” He turned and strode off down the street. “My Jemmah’s pregnant,” another said, as he too left. “Ma must be scared shitless!” said a third, a catch in his voice, and he dashed away.

Not all the rioters were swayed by Shadow’s suggestion. Perhaps they didn’t have families, or had the sort of family they wouldn’t mind seeing beaten senseless by a mob. But they saw their numbers melting away into the darkness, and they saw Erin with her naked sword standing behind Shadow, and behind her a shadowy group of armed figures, and they decided this wasn’t the fight they’d come looking for. Grumbling, they moved on. One spat at the nobleman as he left, the gob of phlegm sticking to the ruffles of the man’s shirt. At last, the only two figures left in the intersection were the nobleman and the Guardsman.

Grau Soldado

“That was a close one!” the Guard sighed with relief. “I’m not sure I could have fought them all off without this fellow getting hurt.” There didn’t seem to be any doubt in his mind that he would have prevailed in a battle with a dozen or more rioters. He stuck out his hand to Shadow. “I’m Grau Soldado – thanks for your help!” Then he spotted Nat, who was hurrying forward. “Young Mr. Dorré!” he exclaimed. “You’re the last person I expected to see tonight! But I’m glad that you and your friends came along.”

The nobleman was also profuse in his thanks. He had a slender rapier, but he handled it awkwardly, and his hands shook so badly it took him several tries to get it back in its sheath. “Thank you! Thank you!” he said, shaking everyone’s hand over and over. “I’m Amin Jalento. I don’t know what they had against me – I’d never even met them. But I think they would have killed me if you hadn’t come along!” He pulled an ornate gold ring off one finger and pressed it on Shadow. “Here! I don’t have any cash on me, but please take this as a token of my thanks!”

Grau turned his attention back to Shadow and Erin. “I like the way you folks handled yourselves tonight. As you can imagine, the Korvosan Guard is stretched to its limits right now. I’ve heard of a lot of my comrades being hurt or even killed tonight already. We could use some extra help from folks like you, if you’re willing. If you go to Citadel Volshyenek and tell Field Marshall Kroft that I sent you, she’d probably be willing to pay for your help around the city – she’s been known to hire mercenaries in the past. Now I need to escort Mr. Jalento here back home.” They said their good-byes, and the group continued on to Madame Zellara’s. They finished the trip without incident, and opened her front door with a sense of foreboding.

The door creaked open onto an empty room. No tapestries hung on the walls, and the floors were bare of rugs. The table still stood in the center of the room, but no rich green tablecloth covered it, and the chairs were tipped over and scattered around the room. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, disturbed only by the footprints they had left themselves earlier in the day.

“It looks like no one’s been here in weeks,” Tomas whispered as they entered in a hush. Jax made a quick pass through the rest of the house, confirming it was all as empty and abandoned as the front room. Wren took the sack off her back, and removed the jar containing Zellara’s head. She swept away the dust with her sleeve, and set the jar in the center of the table. Then she removed the box she’d found in Lamm’s lair from her pocket and opened it for the first time.

As she had expected, it contained a Harrow deck. Hand-painted images decorated the cards, and their frames were gilded in silver so that they sparkled and flashed in the light of the lantern. Despite the worn condition of the card backs, the images on the faces were so vibrant they almost seemed to move when viewed out of the corner of the eye. The deck handled with surprising ease, almost shuffling itself.

As she thumbed through the cards, the dust they had disturbed with their entrance began to swirl in the air, coalescing into a ghostly image – Madame Zellara! “Thank you, my friends,” the image said. Her voice sounded like it was coming from far away. “Forgive me for deceiving you. I was afraid that if you knew my true state, you would fear me, dismiss me as some form of evil undead, and I needed your help to avenge the death of my son, and of my own murder, so that I could find rest.

“Avenge me you have, and I thank you. But I find now that I still may not rest. I have seen things in the cards that tell me that my work is not yet done. That your work is not yet done. Please – keep my Harrow deck with you, and when the spirits tell me your need is great I will visit you again, and use the Harrow to help guide your path. Farewell!” The image evaporated into individual specks of dust, and she was gone.

“But … But, we didn’t succeed!” Nat stammered. “Lamm got away!”

“We did a lot of good tonight,” Wren disagreed. She placed one hand tenderly on the side of the jar, almost as if she were cupping Zellara’s cheek. “We killed Lamm’s men – they’ll never hurt anyone ever again.” Tears were spilling down her face, and she seemed to be speaking directly to Zellara. “And most importantly, we freed the Lambs. No matter what happens with Lamm, they are safe from him.”

“I’m not so sure we are, though,” Nat said. “I think Lamm’s going to be out for revenge. Especially if he knows we have this.” He held up the coded ledger they’d found in Lamm’s room. “What do we do now?”

“Well, we do have an offer of employment,” Shadow said. He’d been going through all the cupboards in Zellara’s kitchen, hoping the wine she’d served that afternoon had not been illusory, but they were all empty.

“I’m not working on that side of the law!” Jax said firmly. “If we’re going after Lamm, we can’t have our hands tied by petty legalities.”

“But they might give us badges!” Shadow pointed out. “Badges can open a lot of doors.”

“He’s right, you know,” Wren mused. “We’ll need access to information and resources that the authorities might have that we don’t.” She caught Jax glaring at her. “Let’s sleep on it – we don’t have to decide anything right now.”

When they awoke, they found Nat at the table, Lamm’s ledger and pages of scribbled notes spread out before him. “I figured it out!” he exclaimed. “Lamm’s code! It was really just a pretty simple transposition cipher, but it used Varisian words in place of Common.” He didn’t look as if he’d slept all night. “Look here – he lists what they stole from where, how much they fenced it for, and who the fence was. I’ll bet this would let the Guard close all sorts of unsolved robbery cases! And look here! In the last six months or so, his business in shiver has just exploded! He’s got records of all his shiver purchases, and the names of all the distributors he sold it to. This would let the authorities practically shut down the shiver trade, or at least a big part of it!”

Tomas was looking over his shoulder at his notes. “Does it say who Lamm’s supplier was?”

Nat shook his head. “It lists all his buys, but there’s no hint of who he was buying from.”

Tomas looked at the rest of the group. “I know you’re not all convinced we should throw in with the Guard, but we can’t let this slide. We have to give them this information, so they can get all these pushers off the street. And if they need our help to restore order to the city, I say we give it to them.”

“And get badges!” Shadow agreed eagerly.

And so they set out for Citadel Volshyenek. Shouting and the sounds of fighting still rang throughout the city, and smoke rose into the morning sky. Korvosa was at war with itself. With the king’s death, tensions that had been simmering beneath the surface for years had suddenly exploded. Many of Korvosa’s poor had always held King Eodred responsible for their plight. Now a new monarch had taken the Crimson Throne, one who many Korvosans – rightly or wrongly – viewed as a Chelish outsider, a grasping gold-digger who didn’t care about Korvosa’s people, but only about her own personal gain. Generations-old fault lines – rich vs poor, Varisian vs Chelish, separatist vs loyalist – fractured into violence.

Desperate citizens already stifled by Eodred II’s spendthrift reign — salty dock workers, soot-covered smiths, and all manner of artisans and laborers — roared at the thought of Ileosa taking the throne. Stevedores abandoned the seafront wards and caravan guards left Northgate. Frustrated merchant ships and wagon convoys turned around when they found no one to offload their goods, or protect them from looters. The movement of food and other staples into the city slowed to a trickle, and thousands vied for the last sack of flour or bundle of firewood in the market. Riots erupted throughout the city. Those who did not rove the streets with cudgel and torch in hand instead locked their doors against the gathering mob. The Bank of Abadar closed its gilded gates, and a contingent of the Coin’s Faithful stood at the ready, armed with crossbows to repel would-be looters. In the space of a dozen hours, all of Korvosa’s oppression and anger exploded into chaos. The city perched on the edge of anarchy.

The world-famous (some would argue infamous) institution of learning known as the Acadamae closed its doors as well, shutting students and professors within its walls until order could be restored. This prompted some grumbling among the citizens about how much the wizards of the Acadamae really cared about the city that housed them, but so far no one had had the courage (or foolhardiness) to challenge the wizards directly.

Ill-equipped for this level of civil calamity, the military arm of the city faltered, and even the hippogriff-mounted marines of the Sable Company were pushed beyond their limits. The Korvosan Guard did its best to quell the riots, yet its members were cut off from each other and forced to operate on their own. Several junior officers, thrust into the harrowing responsibility of command, broke under the pressure and abandoned their posts, or worse, became part of the problem by attempting to institute martial law. Even the fearsome Hellknights of the Order of the Nail found themselves caught off guard; over-confident of the people’s fear of them, many found themselves surrounded and slaughtered by angry mobs hungry for payback.

Yet, not everyone believed Queen Ileosa was necessarily a disaster for Korvosa. Among the upper and middle classes, even some of those who viewed her as a petulant gold-digger at best believe she might bring closer ties with Cheliax, and the political and economic stability that entails. Yet the rumors out of the palace were disturbing: wild tales of mutiny and fighting inside the castle walls themselves.

The party gathered all this as they made their way towards Citadel Volshyenek, speaking to citizens who were boarding up their windows against another round of violence, or, like them, searching in vain for somewhere to buy food. They had not eaten since mid-day yesterday, and Zellara’s illusionary bread and wine had not filled their bellies.

Citadel Volshyenek looked to be operating with a skeleton crew; not surprisingly, almost all of the available Guardsmen were out in the streets, trying desperately to restore order. A pair of Guards manned the gate, nervously barring the party’s way, but the mention of Grau Soldado’s name gained them immediate entrance and directions to Field Marshall Kroft’s office. They were ushered into an anteroom, where a secretary (an older Guardsman with a pronounced limp) asked them to wait. After cooling their heels for a quarter hour, they were finally allowed to enter.

A harried and tired looking woman with short dark hair and wearing red armor glanced up from her desk. “What do you want?” she asked brusquely.

Shadow took the lead, turning on all his charm. “We helped Sgt. Grau Soldado out of a little jam last night, and he said you might need our help. He said you’d hired mercenaries before.”

The woman grimaced. “I don’t like that term. I prefer ‘free-lancers’. But yes, we need all the help we can get right now, and if Sgt. Soldado recommends you, that’s good enough for me.” She rose from her seat. “Forgive my rudeness – it’s been hell. I’m Cressida Kroft, commander of the Korvosan Guard. Or what’s left of it. I don’t even know how many men and women I’ve lost – a couple of dozen injured, and at least four I know of dead. You’ve been out on the streets – you know better than I do what it’s like out there.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I’m just not sure where to send you first.”

At that moment there was a brisk knock on the door, and the secretary stuck his head in. “Commandant Endrin here to see you, sir.” Before he even finished, the door was pushed the rest of the way open, and a tall, broad-shouldered man strode in. He was past middle age, but his bearing was erect and he didn’t appear to have an ounce of fat on him. He wore the uniform of the Sable Company Marines, and despite the hectic times there was not a ribbon out of place.

“Cressida,” he nodded. “Hell of a time, isn’t it? I’m sure your Guardsmen are getting it just as bad as my marines. You holding up?” Kroft simply nodded in return. “Stupid question, I know,” Endrin applogized.

“Let me get right to it. I need your men on the streets to help me track down one of my own. We’ve had a lot of casualties, but they’re all accounted for save one. One of my marines, Lt. Sykes, got separated from his squadron last night while chasing some looters over North Point, and didn’t come back. I’d like your folks to help look for any sign of him, and put out the word to the citizens that there’ll be a handsome reward if they find him and get him back alive.”

“As a matter of fact,” Kroft smiled, “I was just looking for an assignment for this new group of … deputies.” She motioned to the party. Endrin turned and nodded, then did a double take when he spotted Tomas, but said nothing. “I’ll send them to North Point right now, to look for your missing marine.”

“Actually,” Nat interrupted, “since you’re both here, it might be a good time to show you this.” He pulled out Lamm’s ledger. “We, um, found this in the hideout of a certain fugitive and thought it might be of interest …”

“Oh stop beating around the bush,” Tomas took over. “This belonged to Gaedren Lamm. He was working out of an old fishery at Westpier 17, and this details all his illegal activities.”

Kroft took the ledger and thumbed through it, Endrin looking over her shoulder. “This is all gibberish,” she said.

“It’s in code!” Nat explained excitedly, and started showing her his notes. As she saw some of his translations, she also grew excited. “So Lamm was behind the Old Port robbery? And you say these record shiver transactions? Falco!? I know that piece of scum – we’ve suspected him of drug dealing for a long time, but never had proof.” She smiled for the first time. “In normal times, this would have made my week. You have no idea how many cases we’ll be able to close with this. I’m already glad to have hired you!” To show her gratitude, she pulled a form out of her desk and wrote out a chit for a handsome reward.

“Good work men, ladies,” Endrin chimed in, then turned to leave. “Any word on Neolandus?” Kroft asked as he reached the door.

Endrin looked grim. “No. No one’s seen him. There was heavy fighting around the castle when word of the King’s death first went out. It took an assault by the Hellknights to finally drive the mob off. If I know Neolandus, he’d have been in the front lines, leading the castle guard in defending the palace. But they haven’t found a body yet, either.”

Endrin left, and Field Marshall Kroft returned to her paperwork; clearly the party was dismissed. "Excuse me - do we get badges?" Shadow asked hopefully.

Kroft rubbed her temples in exasperation. "Seriously? You want trinkets? Just get out there and find that marine!"

“Who do you think ‘Neolandus’ is?” Wren asked after they'd left the office.

“Neolandus Kaleopolis is the castle seneschal,” Tomas explained.

“The seneschal?” Nat furrowed his brow. “Isn’t that just a type of clerk, somebody who administers the castle staff? Why would they be so worried about him?”

Tomas shook his head. “That’s part of his duties, sure, but in Korvosa the seneschal’s a much bigger deal than that. He’s really sort of the second-in-command, behind the King. If King Eodred had died without a wife or heir, Kaleopolis would have become the ruler of Korvosa, at least until the magistrates could select a new monarch.”

Feeling both appreciated and richer (although no less hungry), the group set out for North Point. While by no means unscathed, this district seemed to have suffered less violence than the waterfront and working-class neighborhoods of Midland. They began asking for any word of a missing marine, and quickly hit pay dirt.

“Yeah, I saw a hippogriff chasing a bunch of looters over by Dead Shoanti Way,” a man told them. “He swooped down, and I never saw him come back up.” They heard similar stories from several others, and followed the reported sightings to a cluster of industrial buildings just beyond Jeggare Circle. They emerged from an alley at the side of a large wooden building with big hole in its roof – a hippogriff-sized hole. A rope had been stretched taut between the rooflines of two adjacent buildings.

“Looks like somebody set a trap for the marines,” Tomas said, pointing to the rope, which would have been invisible in the previous night's darkness.

The building only had a single entrance, a set of barn-like double doors that opened on rollers. Jax listened at the door; he could hear voices inside, laughter, and what sounded like singing. Then there was a terrible screech of pain. “That’s a hippogriff!” Tomas shouted. “Let’s go!”

They threw the doors open and rushed in. The building housed some sort of workshop, and the single open room inside was littered with piles of crates and boxes holding raw materials and finished goods, and worktables with work in progress. Slumped on the floor beside one of the tables was a Sable Company marine. His hands and feet were tied and his face was bloody, one eye swollen shut.

Eight looters were celebrating inside. They were armed with home-made pole-arms, eight-foot long sticks with simple daggers lashed to one end. One was poking at the captive marine, while in the far corner another group surrounded a badly-injured hippogriff, chanting a little song as they stabbed at the poor beast.

Caught a tasty little treat

It’s a meal both fowl and meat!

A tall pile of crates in the center of the room effectively divided their lines of attack into two. Wren and Nat charged down the right side, towards the wounded marine, and Nat blasted the looter taunting him with a Force Missile. He spun, caught by surprise, but stabbed at Wren as she approached, drawing blood before she could even get close enough to swing at him. Jax followed them, and skirted around another stack of boxes to slip behind the thug, sinking his blade into his back. Realizing his poledagger was no longer of use, the thug threw it aside and drew a regular dagger from his belt.

Erin went to the left, towards a pair of looters who had hung back from the fun their friends were having with the hippogriff. She dodged the thrusts of their poledaggers, but couldn’t hit herself.

The rest of the looters abandoned their future meal and rushed to join the fray. Two went to the side with Jax and Wren; one flanked Jax, and stabbed at him from a distance. The other charged at Nat, who suddenly wondered what on earth had made him decide he needed to rush into the room instead of casting spells from a safe distance. Luckily, this thug had been drinking heavily, and his thrust went wide.

The others charged at Erin, who suddenly found herself confronted by a phalanx of foes who were stabbing at her without her being able to riposte. Thrust after thrust found their mark, and she was left drenched in blood from multiple wounds. She managed to hit one, getting close enough to force him to also discard his long weapon, but she feared she wouldn’t survive long.

Suddenly a blue light flashed past her head and killed the thug he had just hit. “Got ‘im!” Shadow chortled. There was a whistling sound as a pair of arrows flew past to bury themselves in the chest of the man beside him. He too crumpled to the ground. Nat took a step back from his assailant; despite the imminent danger in front of him, he could see that Erin was in bad shape, so he changed his target at the last minute and fired his Magic Missile at one of the foes confronting her instead.

Jax killed the looter who had been torturing the marine, then spun to face the one behind him. Wren, no longer in immediate danger, cast Bless then darted around a table to come up behind the marine, debating whether to try to free him to enter the fight.

Erin swung her sword and managed to gash one of her assailants, but found herself harried on all sides, having to move carefully lest one of them find an opening for their long weapons. Nat fired another Force Missile at the one she’d just hit, but found himself having to continue to dance away from his drunken pursuer. Shadow added a Magic Missile of his own, then Tomas finished him off with an arrow. He was holding back by the door, shifting back and forth to find clear shots as the battle raged.

Wren abandoned her idea of freeing the marine; by the time she could cut him loose and find his weapons, her friends might be dead. Instead she stepped forward and bashed the thug threatening Jax with her mace. As he turned to face this new threat, Jax did a neat sidestep, and slid his dagger through the thug’s ribs, dropping him in a heap.

The tide was shifting in the party’s favor. Shadow dropped another enemy with another Magic Missile and Tomas feathered another with arrows. Erin charged, sidestepping her enemy’s thrusts as she closed with him, then drove her sword through his sternum.

There was only one left, and that was the drunk who was staggering after Nat. He seemed oblivious to anything else going on in the room, with all of his (admittedly limited) focus on the wizard. Nat blasted him with another Force Missile but he kept coming, swinging wildly with his poledagger. Jax stabbed him, and he belatedly realized there were other threats in the room. He turned to thrust at Jax, but Wren brought her mace up in an underhand swing. It caught the thug under the chin, lifting him off the floor and into a graceful (the only graceful thing he’d done all day) arc through the air and back onto the floor.

Tomas rushed to the marine’s side, slicing through the ropes binding him. Wren drew out her holy symbol and prepared to Channel Positive Energy. “No! Wait!” the marine called through bloodied and swollen lips. “You need to help Ripper, too!” He pointed at the hippogriff, lying barely breathing on the floor on the other side of the room. Tomas carried the marine to his mount’s side, and Wren called on the power of Pharasma to heal them. It took another Channel, but the hippogriff gave a screech and struggled unsteadily to its feet. Lt. Sykes threw his arms around the fearsome beast, tears streaming down his cheeks, as Ripper nuzzled him tenderly.

The party made quite a sight as they paraded back to the Great Tower in the company of a hippogriff (Ripper was still not heathy enough to fly). Commandant Endrin personally came out to welcome back his missing marine, and to thank the party for his safe return (and present them with the promised reward).

“This has been a good day!” Tomas declared as they made their way back towards Zellara’s. Jax had noticed his eyes well up as Endrin had shaken his hand, and wondered what that was all about.

“It would be better if we had something to eat,” Jax groused. “All this money in our pockets, and nothing to buy with it. That’s just wrong. I wonder if they have a cafeteria or something at Citadel Volshyenek. I mean, Guardsmen have to eat, right?”

Shadow was staring up at Castle Korvosa, looming over the city. “You know, I keep thinking about that brooch we found. I’ll bet someone would be really grateful to get it back.”

The party earned 634 XP, putting them at 1,927 with 3,300 required for Level 3. We’ll be back at Joette & Rich’s next week.