There they are greeted by Lady Stehlen and she is overjoyed to hear of Ondine's demise. One step closer to the downfall of The Order. Azalea and Oor decide to go into the lower city, to the Order's keep to retrieve stool from one of The Order's generals, Onthar Frume. Lady Stehlen offers her personal carriage for them and Azalea and Oor ride in style through the Upper city down towards the Lower city's keep.
Disappointing Onthar
Once at the keep, the pair walk in to Onthar's personal receiving room and there they are greeted with the site of Onthar and Stool, the young myconid, chatting like they were old friends. Onthar is spraying Stool with a mist from a pump-like device and telling Stool of how he once, in his youth, defeated a group of kobolds by himself using nothing more than his dagger. He had stumbled upon a group of them in the woods setting traps for unwary travelers. He has saved the dagger ever since.
Once Stool spies Azalea, he waddles as fast as he can to embrace the dragonborn's leg. She scoops him up and tells Onthar that they are leaving. Leaving the city. Now.
Onthar stumbles for words, as he grasps for excuses which would leave Stool still in his care. They have grown close over the past few days. Azalea is insistent. Onthar quickly switches the conversation and asks what they have discovered regarding the corruption within The Order Of The Obsidian Dagger.
Oor proudly pipes up that they have killed Ondine, the Order's leader.
There is a awkward silence in the room.
Oorr, less proudly says quietly, "well, he was bad. He tried to kill us."
Onthar is obviously taken aback by this news. He questions the two as to why and subtly asks if perhaps they were attacking Ondine at the time he tried to kill them. Did he perhaps monologue and confess to a nefarious scheme? Do they have any evidence of wrong doing?
Well, no. Not exactly.
Onthar, tells the two to have a seat. He would love to hear more. He will just pop out and get them something to drink and they can tell him all about it when he gets back.
As soon as Onthar leaves the room and closes the door, Oor and Azalea run out the other door. As they are fleeing, Oor stumbles catching the attention of several soldiers within the grand receiving room and then quickly casts himself invisible. Azalea is making a full run for the exit and is now being pursued by the soldiers as they draw their weapons. Onthar can be heard from another corridor yelling for soldiers to capture the two potential murderers.
The Wrongly Accused (sort of)
Azalea and Oor are running full speed down the last corridor and are yelling for the driver of the carriage to open the door. They are pursued closely by several soldiers so Oor casts behind him, without even looking, cloud of daggers. A dark swirling cloud fills the corridor and three of the lesser experienced soldiers charge through. As Azalea and Oor jump into the carriage and bang on the roof for the driver to go, they look back and get a brief glimpse of the blood filled corridor and three bodies lying dead on the floor. They return to Lady Stehlen's mansion at haste.
An Empty Inn
While Azalea and Oor are burning bridges at the keep, Yeava visits the Goblin King Inn, her previous connection to the assassin's guild, where they had stayed before. Under disguise, she moves down the alley towards the cellar entrance to the inn. Inside it is quiet and dark. Yeava moves upstairs into the main inn room and there is signs of a struggle. Chairs and tables over turned and perhaps even a bit of blood on the floor, but that in and of itself is not too unusual. She looks through the places where they would keep the valuables, coin box behind the bar, lockbox under the gambling table. There is nothing missing. This fits with what she already knows. Sarrah, the comely barmaid, and Boyle, the burly bartender were both apprehended by the Children Of Gwynt. Poor Sarrah had been sorely abused by them when the group rescued her from within Ondine's tower.Pulling Stakes
Lady Stehlen hesitates only briefly before calling upon her manservant, the halfling Bertrand. She tells him that their time here in Baldur's Gate is up and they must move on, again. She tells him to inform the staff that they have only one hour to pack their essentials as they will leave via portal before The Order can make their way in and investigate. She is worried that The Order looks too closely they will find her hand in trying to dismantle The Order, in retaliation for The Order killing her father, Ameal, the steel dragon.
An Assassin AND A Thief
5,900 XP
During the bustle of the household staff packing, Yeava decides to re-visit Lady Stehlen's trophy room. Inside the room are shelves with various trinkets and wonders. Hovering above a large round wooden table is a book which hovers inside a magical glowing sphere. On the shelves are a cube shaped device, made from smaller cubes, each one's face one of six colors. The top line of cubes sits oddly askew making the cube's sides not completely finished. A glowing orb which contains a mist which continually roils and churns, An ancient brass oil lamp with an embossed script long since worn away from legibility. A pair of ivory dice and a clay jar, the size of two fists.
Yeava decides to take it all.She throws each of the shelved items into her bag of holding and then approaches the book. As her hand touches the glow, the glow ceases. She holds the large book and tries to push it into the bag of holding, but the book begins to vibrate and before Yeava can push the book into the bag, the book opens and papers begin to fly into the air.
The room is soon filled with flying pages which begin to collect together in the middle of the room until they form a shape which slightly resembles a very tall robed and hooded figure. A raspy voice can be heard above the noise of rustling papers, "You should not steal".
The figure lunges at Yeava and dozens of papers cut into her skin as well as many papers begin clinging to her body. Soon the papers begin to squeeze tight and begin crushing her bones. Yeava is able to flee into the next room but the Living Book relentlessly pursues. Yeava tries again and again to injure the creature but the only thing that seems to make much damage is her tinderstrike dagger. The daggers flaming blade burns the pages it touches instantly as if the pages were ancient and dry as kindling. It continues to admonish, Yeava, "You should not steal."
In Case Of Emergency Break Glass
Yeava is a bloody mess as she is able to run again into the next room and slam the door behind her. Using her body to blockade the door, Yeava feels a massive hammering upon the door at her back. She looks up and sees several household staff watching her in shock and horror at the site. The hammering stops but pages are now coming into the room from underneath the door and begin flying around the room beginning to reform the monster. In seconds the creature will attack again.
Yeava doesn't wait to see what happens. She runs out of the room with the sounds of screaming people behind her. She looks over her shoulder to see one of the staff drop to the floor, the insects having eaten much of her flesh. The insects lift off the lifeless corpse and move towards the next screaming human. Yeava runs into the next closest room and hides behind the door and casts an illusion on herself, making her look like a small table.
The Living Book,now reformed moves into the room and soon finds Yeava crouched, table-like behind the door. It is not fooled by the illusion. It attacks again. Yeava is hurting badly and will not last long.
Meanwhile, the screams of the servants and the sounds of the fight have roused Oor, who was waiting in Lady Stehlen's office and Azalea, who was saying her goodbyes to Lady Stehlen in her bed. They both enter the main hall and rush to the sounds.
Oor flies down and distracts the creature long enough for Yeava to stand and stab her tinderstrike dagger into the main bulk of the creature. The flames catch and the creature is soon the creature's body is consumed in fire, it's warning of "You should not steal" becoming hard to recognize as it's final pages flit to the ground, nothing more than bits of char.
Yeava, dusts her bloody self off of ashes and says, "We should probably go."
Another Getaway
After explaining her theft and destruction of Lady Stehlen's property the group rushes back up to the office, through the mirror portal, back into Ondine's tower. Once there they tip the mirror over on it's face, trying to prevent anyone else from coming through. They move quickly up to the next floor where the magical circle portal awaits.
Oor, having activated the portal once before, now begins to activate it again in haste. They step in and are engulfed in a bright white light. When the light finally dissipates, they find themselves somewhere cold, misty and windy. Oor believes that they should be on the mountain that he was previously transported to, so he flies up and soon finds himself above the clouds which encircle many mountainous peaks around him.
The group moves slowly down a very faint mountain trail until they come to a old looking stone bridge. Milling around and on the bridge are several giant mountain goats. The move around unworried about the precarious steps they take and graze upon the thin patches of grass and shrubs. The group decides that it has been sometime since they have eaten a fresh kill.
Goats Is Good Eatin'
3,225 XP
They begin to slaughter the entire herd. There is some resistance from the herd but they mostly try to flee. Oor takes great pride in bring down a couple of fleeing goats with his long bow. After the effortless slaughter they begin to skin and prepare the animals.
Until, they hear wailing and angry yelling from across the bridge. An old mountain hermit yells at them for killing his herd of goats. They were his. After some time talking to him he calms down and introduces himself as Zang Fu. They are on his mountain, Janfeng Mountain. He looks warily around him and says that they must get into shelter before nightfall. It's not safe.
He even goes so far as to invite the adventurers into his cave for shelter. Perhaps they could even eat the groups small friends, the giant mushroom. Azalea threatens his life and he speaks no more about Stool. They move a bit further down the mountain and find a small stream and a cave which Zang closes with a stout wooden door. Inside they eat and prepare Leomund's Tiny Hut, they don't completely trust Zang. They have slaughtered most of his herd after all.
They question him as to their whereabouts. He tells them that they are in the Wend Empire. The emperor, Chi Deng Wend is the conqueror of all the known lands. His palace is on the other side of the Janfeng Forest. The forest is not safe to stay in overnight. But it takes days to cross. So he stays here, on his mountain with his goats.
It is soon clear that Zang is a little too close to his goats and he definitely smells like it. He makes awkward advances to both Yeava and Azalea but they want nothing to do with him. Soon everyone settles in for the night.In the morning the group awakens to hear Zang closing the large wooden door to the cave, with him outside. He has put many giant mountain goats inside the cave with the adventurers and they hear his voice from the other side of the door. "Go ahead and eat them my lovelies. They're good eating!"
The mountain goats soon attack the group, looking at them as their morning meal. But the group quickly makes another slaughter of them and soon kill the hermit as well.
They move through the cave looking for anything of worth. They find very little. A few coins whose shape and stampings are unfamiliar. Rotten and musty clothes an old oil lamp and a few books. The books are in a script which is again unfamiliar but the illustrations leads them to believe they were of the erotic nature.
They have definitely embrace the Murder Hobo philosophy.
