Guy and Mugul escaped the duke's castle and Clarys, Ephraim, and Ladiana met them halfway on the bridge over the moat.
Some guards were killed (by Ladiana) and a handful of Halflings paid the ultimate price in a fiery blaze of glory (and were run over by an ass-drawn cart of onions!
Par Aurelia, the high priestess of the Temple of Mystra, joined in the politics to dethrone Magistrate Calavia. She and Soren, along with Lord Devlin Asher, invited the magistrate outside of the city walls in order to discuss the proper ascension of power.
The group discovered that Calavia intended to use the Orcan army in the caves to lay ambush to Aurelia and the others.
Mugul and Ladiana commanded the Orcs to surround the negotiations but not join with the magistrate upon his signal to attack.
It was discovered that the banker, Max Azalea, was in fact a fairly powerful wizard and was protecting Calavia.
Guy dazed Azalea and Ephraim stabbed him with his rapier, effectively ending his spellcasting.
Lord Malus cut the magistrate down, slicing open his calf. The battle ended quickly thereafter.
It was adjudicated that the magistrate, Max Azalea, and Dom Culleebire be put to death immediately.
Corporal Kemp returned from a scouting mission to the north, along with nearly 20 Halflings, and reported that “many, many orcs” were seen coming from the north. The orcs had raided and pillaged many Halfling villages along the way.
Par Aurelia gave the command to assemble the duke's army! War was coming.
The group was promoted to 4th level and Clarys FINALLY made her Oath of the Ancients.
Mugul was promoted to captain of the southwest quarter's militia, seeing that Captain Pol Ben Ben had yet to be found.
The group decided to continue to uncover the secrets of the blue crystal trade.
Nobody knows what became of the scout that was sent south, but Ephraim was wanting to investigate on his own!
Something doesn’t add up. The magistrate hired us because he wanted to make a show of doing something about the Blue Crystal. I buy that. And I buy that he overpaid us to make it look like he was hiring the best. Mugul’s promotions? Part of the same show. Mugul’s handy with a sword and all, and when you bribe him, he usually stays bribed, but who would trust him with dozens of armed guards? I’ll tell you who: someone who wants a figurehead hero who’ll drink away his gold before he solves any problems.
So that all makes sense. The magistrate wanted to make a big show. Except that he didn’t make a show. If he wanted publicity, he should have paraded us through the town as heroes, spread the word that he was fighting the Blue Crystal, but he didn’t do that. He kept us secret, let us work in the shadows, as if he really wanted to stop the Crystal. The only people he was fooling were us, and maybe the captain of the guard and a select few others.
And the pay. A hundred gold a week is pretty outrageous, but I get it, if he wanted to pretend to be hiring the best, but what about the five hundred gold bonuses? There was no reason to do that. We were happy with the hundred, whoever he was trying to impress was happy with the hundred, his treasurer was begrudgingly non-argumentative about the hundred. It just doesn’t make sense.
We rescued the guy’s daughter — another thing he didn’t make a big show of.
I’m thinking more and more that the Magistrate really did want us on the job, that he wanted rid of the Blue Crystal without getting blamed too much by his buddies in the underworld, and that he was genuinely grateful for the work we were doing, hard as it is to place the word “genuine” on a politician. After all, he didn’t make a move against us until he thought we knew about the cave. He was behind the orcs, no doubt about that now, but he didn’t want his city overrun by drug addicts while he was conquering it.
Claris — smart woman, that one; too bad she’s a paladin — thought he’d have his army fight off a staged orc attack, making him a hero so the emperor would forget about the whole “paladins are supposed to rule the city when the Duke is gone” thing. How would things have turned out, with the crystal gone, the underworld crippled, and the city secure with a popular leader?
I wonder if we chose the right side.
Previousplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigChapter 6: Malus Triumphant
After his mistress left the caves, Lord Malus called upon the ten battle captains that had previously served the Orcan War Chief. The ten stood inside the large tent, breathing heavily through foul smelling tusks and poor hygiene, their snouts gruffly snorting, and their beady eyes darting from one Drow warrior to the other. The battle captains knew that the one in the middle had bested Godarr the Mighty, and they feared and loathed him for it.Indexplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigThe Story So Far
Chapter 1: The Blue CrystalChapter 2: Beating up a FriendChapter 3: The Battle of the Wyrm HoleChapter 4: Mugul Unleashed!Chapter 5: Queen of the OrcsChapter 6: Malus TriumphantChapter 7: The End of the MagistrateChapter 8: Efraim's GambitChapter 9: Mad with PowerChapter 10: Splintering PartyChapter 11: Ladiana's TrialChapter 12: Dutchess ClarysChapter 13: Malus's HistoryChapter 14: The Legend of the ThoraciChapter 15: Allentian VoicesChapter 16: Orcs BoundChapter 17: The Sheng…Nextplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigChapter 8: Efraim's Gambit
Ephraim sat at his usual corner table in the Widow’s End and shuffled the deck of cards. He had won yet another night of Five Kings and was about to count his coins when a familiar figure entered the tavern, looked about at the crowd, and spotted Ephraim in his corner. Daisy, the Halfling barmaid that had served him his third tankard of ale, served him his fourth. She smiled at Ephraim with that special twinkle in her eye and a light bounce to her step.