With five days to spare until the Tournament of the Giantess Morwenna, five adventurers woke up in the captured Dwarven outpost in the mountains northeast of the lake.
- The Prospective Suitor Aldrich Brisbane (polymorphed into the beast Umbrich Brisbulk)
- The Mage Laguna Tempest
- The Elf Datura
- The Thug Zigar Kneecapper
- The Herdsman Jack Fatherd
Jack Fatherd suspected that Wilusa's Warriors had their main base
somewhere in the vicinity of the hill where the group previously met two
of their number. That put them uncomfortably close to the Bastards'
hideout. Umbrich did some remodeling of the dwarf fortress, burying the Dwarven treasure and plugging up some holes. The adventurers handsomely paid the Dragoon Sabul to clandestinely observe the base from the hunting blind in the foothills, reporting any comings and goings.
With the base secured as best they could, the Lute Bastards set off down the mountain path. Their destination: Gorrister's keep, Iron Cup and Ishizaka's blockhouse. Their mission: cause problems for the Brigands of All Nations, buy cool stuff and hire mercenaries.
The Lute Bastards revisited the church where Morwenna's soldiers had besieged the townsfolk. The villagers had fled and the place was infested with giant freshwater crabs. The bastards killed the oversized crustaceans one by one, exploiting their lack of solidarity and instinct to quickly cannibalize one another's remains. The church was empty save for the big painting of the Grain Goddess on the wall. The inhabitants clearly fled northwest into the forest, and the group wasn't interested in pursuing a bunch of penniless villagers who had a day's head start on them.
A light rain fell on the Bastards as they passed through the abandoned town. At the edge of the forest the untended cabbage fields were being devoured by flailsnails. The monsters were difficult to kill and their giant shells were a pain to haul around, so the adventurers decided not to bother hunting them. Beyond the snails was a bowl shaped depression in the forest floor, noticeable even a couple miles away.
Cory Trego-Erdner
Gorrister's tower loomed overhead, a hundred feet tall and a hundred feet in diameter. Neanderthals camped at the base, tending wooly rhinos and grazing them in the abandoned fields beyond. The Bastards thought about sending Umbrich burrowing under the tower to topple it, but by that point they had already been spotted by the cavemen, and probably by the Bullywugs in the swamp as they walked past. A grove of ancient trees stood tall at the edge of the traveled right of way, untouched by axes or billhooks or fire - suggesting a monster or ancient force guarding the grove.
A yeti jogged endlessly down the dirt path to the crossroads, the same one the Bastards saw playing cards at the bar blindfolded. He turned and leaped back the other way, never seeming to tire. When he saw them he waved and looked them all right in the eye. He did this to paralyze them with fear as a joke, but the joke was on him because he met Umbrich's gaze and was confused. Jack Fatherd amused himself by taunting the shaggy monster-man, darting around him until the Yeti got dizzy and sat on the ground. The monster, whose name was Lobsang, appreciated the amusing prank. He figured the adventurers were part of the fourth faction contesting the tournament. He worked for Gorrister the Great and the Brigands of All Nations. Jack established such a rapport that Lobsang let slip an interesting tip: there were representatives from three of the Brazenkragg Trade Wardens at the Iron Cup tent. They might know a thing or two about hiring mercenaries.
A hundred feet above and a couple miles away, Gorrister the Great rode out of the domed structure atop the tower on an evil black horse, billowing strange smoke and ignoring the dots moving around on the ground below. The group took that as their cue to leave. Lobsang jogged away.
Alfred Friedländer
The Bastards arrived at the crossroads just in time to see a rapid reaction force of Dragoons ride out of the earthworks fort. Jack estimated half the soldiers had left the fort, leaving a skeleton force to defend any valuables. He took Laguna and snuck up to the perimeter, juking the defending musketeers. The commanding officer's tent had a pay chest trapped with an alarm spell, and was filled with lead shot to stop thieves from simply carrying the whole thing off and opening it somewhere else. Laguna's ring of telekinesis took enough of the weight that the two adventurers could lift the rest with their hands, and they carried the box off without getting caught.
The Bastards took the chest into the forest to open it, and came up with a truly devious plan. They'd open it up in the woods where nobody would hear the alarm, take the treasure, bury the loot and then come back with the empty box. They'd tell a bullshit story about catching Gorrister's goons robbing the fort. To really sell the story, Laguna cast polymorph and turned Datura into a bullywug, so she could rub slime all over the chest and make it "obvious" that one of the Brigands of All Nations had done it. Becoming a bullywug also gave Datura chameleonic skin and made her better at hiding in the forest.
With the loot buried and the empty chest contaminated, the Bastards went south through the woods to see where the Dragoons went. They found a siege in progress, dismounted horsemen in blocking positions outside the hills where the Tower of Pain stylites dangled from hooks. Strange skulls came sailing out of the forest from unseen catapults and burst among the refugees at the base of the poles, sending them fleeing beyond the protective umbrella of the Clerics. The Clerics spent their power judiciously to neutralize the fear effects, but it was clearly a losing battle.
Jack Fatherd had enough of this shit. He had watched a lot of atrocities and he wasn't going to watch another one. He was answerable to three Gods now and he set off across the field to find the catapults flinging the skulls and do something about it. He didn't invite the rest of the Bastards and they didn't follow - because they would only blow his cover, because they had better things to do, or because they were actually fine with atrocities. They went to Iron Cup for a drink.
An Ettin lounged outside the Iron Cup tent under an awning, drinking coffee from a normal sized cup held by a Deep Dwarf with a wand of mage hand. Inside, a pair of ex-adventurers tended bar, guarded by four Iron Hand monks. The barkeeps were spiderwebbed with clerical scarring, the kind you got when you fought on the front lines in dungeon after dungeon and had all your parts stapled back on by magical healing. A hydrocephalic Halfling phocomelus sat on the bar counter and read out the news in a high, clear voice, attended by a team of personal doctors, stenographers and bodyguards.
Interpreting for Umbrich, who couldn't form human intelligible words with his Umber Hulk mouthparts, Laguna asked where a man might procure some of that magical healing. The barkeep pointed to BIG ECLIPSE, priest of O Sun and Great Moon, who sat drinking at a scarred oak table.
Big Eclipse was drunk. He wanted to hear stories about bravery and treachery, so Umbrich told him the story (mediated through Laguna) about how his human form lost his arm. He made it all about the hog battle and left out the part about the Giantkilling. Big Eclipse loved it, and offered to grow the arm back in exchange for the Magic Sword Bedbug. Bedbug wasn't happy with the trade, but Big Eclipse cast Remove Curse so Umbrich could divest himself of the blade. The Cleric struck the table with a sun mace and a moon dagger and hit Umbrich with a healing spell and Umbrich felt a strange sensation of a phantom limb regrowing inside his Umber Hulk claw. If he ever regained his human form, he'd have two hands to work with.
Laguna recognized the Halfling as a Rat King, a twisted product of the Old King's magical experiments who could telepathically speak to any other Rat King on the planet. Most Rat Kings worked as psychic newsreaders for Bellman, the Commonwealth's largest news corporation. They transmitted stock information, news stories and advertisements around the planet. Laguna waited until they took a water break to approach and ask about buying an ad. The Halfling wrote on a chalkboard to preserve his voice between transmissions, holding the chalk curled in a flipper. The group's Magic User quoted Laguna an obscene price for an advertisement and he decided to just advertise to the room instead: he was a powerful Wizard looking for an apprentice to help him create cool golems.
The Flesh Golem at the table by the door stood up. He was a cool golem! The Acrobat and Fighter at his table told him to relax, and invited Laguna over. They heard he was one of the Lute Bastards, looking for an apprentice but also a bunch of mercenaries to fight in the Tournament of the Giantess Morwenna. They could make that happen. They'd even foot the bill. All he had to do was sign a contract promising them certain rights if he won. Like a monopoly on all trade between the kingdom he created with Morwenna and the Commonwealth. The contract was even Geased to make it easy for him to comply.
The Bastards realized this trio was the one Lobsang mentioned earlier, agents of the Trade Wardens of Brazenkragg. Laguna said he would think about it, and took a nonmagical copy of the contract for his lawyer to inspect. The trio assumed that he was the brains of the operation, not realizing Umbrich was actually the prospective suitor polymorphed into a beast.
Heinrich Schlitt
- Ancient peoples commonly tossed weapons and other items into riverbeds as an offering to tutelary spirits or elementals.
- Legend has it that a meteor fell in the woods to the northwest long ago. The ground should be bowl shaped as a result.
- There’s a temple from the Ancient Empire somewhere around 1, 1. They usually have items buried underneath.
- Artifacts from an ancient battle dating before the Empire can be found in the marshes at 8, 3.
- There’s a cave at 9, 4 with a huge sculpture of Iron Hand at the entrance, indicating that something is contained inside.
- There’s a mechanical giant somewhere in the southeast of the region. He would be a great source on the region prior to the Monarchy’s failed colonization effort.
With all that taken care of, the Bastards went to Ishizaka's shop. His market was set up in a blockhouse built over an old Ancient Empire signal tower. They passed a strange Elf in plate armor and a Gnome clad in a buffcoat on the way in. The Genie was happy to see them. Reselling their treasure from the Mountain of the Mad Marquis allowed him to expand his operation. He was now the primary sutler in the region, selling ammunition and food to four mercenary armies. The Bastards rented rooms on the top floor and went shopping.
While all that was happening, Jack Fatherd ran across the field and into the forest to the south where the projectiles were coming from. He avoided the Dragoons and snuck past the skirmish line of Bugbears hiding at the edge of the forest with crossbows and muzzleloading rifles. He crept through the forest until he came upon an artillery park, where a crew of Goblins loaded skulls filled with worms into onagers. The skulls looked a lot like the one on the Worm that Walked from the Mountain of the Mad Marquis.
Jack read a Scroll of Sleep and knocked all the Goblins unconscious. He walked into the clearing and slashed their throats one by one. It was grim work but he wasn't bothered. The Goblins were using an indirect fire weapon to flush civilians out of cover so that soldiers could enslave them. If they wanted a fair fight they had a funny way of asking for it. The slaughter of the Goblins upset the giant rats hitched to the limbers used to tow the catapults. Jack calmed the rodents by feeding them a couple Goblin corpses. He took a bag of maggoty-skulls out of the ammunition tub and snuck up behind the Bugbears keeping watch over the field. Tossing the skulls broke them and activated the fear effect, scaring the snipers away. Making the most of his remaining time, he loaded one of the catapults and turned it roughly in the direction of the Dragoons. With no line of sight to his target and no knowledge of siege artillery he called on the Liberator and the Grain Goddess to guide his aim.
Jack let loose a couple shots, then hitched the catapult to the rat cart. He packed up the ammo tub and destroyed the other two onagers before setting off in the direction of the stylites. The Bugbears fired at him from the brush, hitting him in the back with a rifle ball but failing to penetrate his enchanted mail. He made it to the poles with the hooked clerics and saw that the Dragoons had been scared off by the skulls bursting among their positions. They were safe for now, but their position had become untenable. The clerics and the villagers under their protection had to leave.
The refugees uprooted the poles holding the Clerics and carried them. There weren't enough people to carry all the poles, sparking a debate over who would be left behind to hold off Morwenna's soldiers. The leader Trofim wanted to die defending his people, but the other ascetics insisted he flee - his high level magic was essential for protecting the group. Jack loaded the children onto the cart pulled by the rats and the procession set off away from the hill.
Hanna Hanuman
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