The dwarf tromped up the ladder and glanced down at the sleeping woman at his feet. He shook his head in annoyance. It had been a bad day. He'd lost his two best friends thus far, and they'd made a deal with a demon to survive. Kord would not be pleased, to say the least. He took a deep breath, shutting out the sounds of the stars in his head. He'd come to know the difference between them and the voice of his god, and he worried he didn't hear the latter so much in these fell days.

"Bad few days" he grunted, and then headed off towards the path that lead to the tavern. "Bad few days ahead, I'll warrant."

Motsognir merrily skipped his way back to the tavern. He was alive, and he had just won himself some land. Pretty soon, he could be drunk! Things were looking up!

I followed the others and headed to the pub. It was definitely time for a drink...

The Horde gradually wends its way back to the Feral Dog, burning away a week or so in the prolonged consumption of most of the pub's stores of ale, wine and spirits. The Skaug 1384 is especially heady. It takes a few days for Ewan to ride Hargast's only mule to the refugee camp and back with the good news, and he spends the remainder of the time dragging the ex-zombies back to their graves. When not in one of his darker moods, Gabriel occasionally sees fit to assist him.

Eventually, the aftermath of the zombie uprising is (mostly) tidied away, just in time for the rest of Hargast's population to finally return to their homes. Even at this late date, the tavern's proprietor still hasn't returned from his trip to Freeport to seek help. Either he found something more interesting in the port city, or something interesting found him. Regardless, it doesn't take long for the city fathers to declare him dead —

— and anyone who should see this man should recognize him only as dead and should he walk he shall be recognized only as an abomination on the earth, and should be slain as all the walking dead must be, and furthermore —

— and to grant the majority of his property to young Ewan, as specified in his last will and testament. Soon enough the Horde is in possession of the promised two acres of land, although exactly whose pack the deed resides in tends to vary from day to day. At any rate it's a decent chunk of dirt, hardly enough to make a business out of but enough space to raise cabbage and a goat or two.

Argumentus, bone-weary of fighting things with the wherewithal to fight back, decides he may as well lay down his pick here as well as any other place. He's a good fit with the mostly dimwitted folk of Hargast, and after a few frustrating lessons in trial and error his little vegetable patch brings him enough coin to live on and buys the occasional tickets to see a fight in the Freeport Arena. Maybe someday he'll have to raise his shield again, in defense of his adopted home, but he doesn't think it'll be any time soon.

As for the rest of the Horde, wanderlust, curiosity and greed still far outweigh their collective desire to not get killed by some slimy thing in a dank pit. Hargast's a fine little village as they go, and it's a worthwhile place to remember if they ever need a hiding place well out of the public eye. But for now, adventure calls. Adventure and loot. Adventure, loot, and the crushing of iniquities. Adventure, loot, iniquity-crushing, research into—

Still mostly potted, the four of them meander back to their quarters at the Diving Fin. By some miracle, the platemail Gabriel left lying in his room remains unplundered. After a few days spent letting the last few scratches knit up (and waiting for the last few hangovers to pass), the Horde are ready to find more work. Well, as ready as they ever are, I suppose. It's not saying much. The main thing is they try real hard.

They're on their way out the door to spend some of their ill-gotten gains and find themselves a new a contract, when the front desk clerk hails them from across the room.

"You there! Delic Ulthar Marrada Addrackana Sa-tine Swagger demands your obedience!"

An athletic man in his mid-30s regards the group cynically, idly polishing a smudge off of his custom-fitted armor.

"Peasants!" he barks. "Be thankful, for Delic Swagger is here to see that all your undertakings come aright."

Well, he hasn't actively tried to kill them, so as traveling companions go they can do a lot worse.

"Lead on, peasants! Lead on — to adventure."

And moreover, should something terrible happen to him his family would likely pay top coin to see his body returned home. Nobles were silly like that.

At any rate, like any day in Freeport the shops are open and there's always dirty work to be had. Swagger follows the Horde wherever they go, occasionally pausing to pose heroically in front of a random lass or gesture threateningly at a passing minotaur or gnoll.

Otto's Blades & Baldrics
The Portable Hole
Vinely's Ecumenical
Herbert's Miscellany
Notice Board


So, as ever, buy and sell whatever you need to and then see what missions seem interesting to you. To avoid the clusterfuck of everyone voting for a different adventure, we'll be selecting the next adventure on a (sigh) points system. Each of the 5 of you has 5 points to distribute among the 15 adventures. If only one of the adventures seems interesting, put all 5 on it; if 5 of them seem fun, split the points evenly among them, and so on. After each of you has spent all their points, the adventure with the most points will be the one we go with.

"Ahahaha, Gentlemen!" says the newcomer, "Let us make haste to friendship! Or the very least, the wiles and charms of my blinding smile! Oh ho ho! Who wants a song?"

Motsognir slipped away quickly from the new human. It seemed to him that the last human they'd met and this new fellow would probably start... being best acquaintances, and ol' Soggy wanted to avoid that while he still could. The short time he'd spent in prisons was enough for him. Thank the lords I have my Lady he thought wistfully, wandering down to the shops.

Sell Ancient Helm (+50GP)
Sell Muleback Harness (+104GP)
Sell old Battle-Axe (+3GP)
Sell old Light Shield (+1GP)

purchase 10 potions of healing

I spent the rest period trying to figure out how the enchantment transference ritual I had a book on worked and wracking my brain for a way to disable explosion runes.

After a couple of days, I decided some shopping would help me think better. I stepped out of my room to find the pretty dwarf seemed to have the same idea, and the rest of the party were not far behind. I'll admit I was a little upset when the big guy had decided not to come back to the city with us and I was rather worried that he might drop down dead without my presence there to keep him animated. Still, we needed someone to look after the field for us and the recent outbreak of zombies showed that there were clearly some sort of dark arts at work in the village so hopefully, he would stay undead.

The newcomer to our group seemed nice enough although he was a little flamboyant for my tastes. I had always hated those chaps in the scene who felt the need to let the whole world know of their bedroom preferences just by their mannerisms, I always thought of myself as a man's man. Or perhaps that should now be a dwarf's elf...

As we left the inn, we were accosted by a young nobleman. I disliked him immediately. Throughout my childhood I had been shunned by the other noble children on account of my mother's low-born background. The forest land she owned had been won by her father in a card game, rather than acquired through centuries of repression of the lower classes and our lack of landed gentry in half of our family tree had made the other kids look down their noses at me and call me Peasant Bob, no matter how many serfs I kicked or maidservants I pushed down the stairs.

The man started talking, the same garbled dialect that seemed so popular round here. Not understanding a word of what he was saying, I followed the dwarf to the shops.

I traded in my magic goggles and the charm I had looted off the sacrificial victim and bought a couple of healing potions and a book on pyrotechnics, which seemed like my kind of thing.

Sell Goggles and Charm for 208gp, buy 2 healing potions, pyrotechnic book, twenty days trail rations and enough reagents to use all my rituals once.

Try to learn enchantment transference (I forget what level it is) and try to work out how to diffuse the runes, possibly ask the dude in the magic shop or for RP purposes, his assistant who's undead or a demon so Bob can understand him.

Additional Spam:
Job-wise, I quite fanced a boat trip but then I also considered our party's unique skills of diplomacy could be helpful with the ransom situation. I had also always wanted to be a secret agent, I found it tough to decide...

Protect the boat - 2
Ransom situation - 1
Extract secret agent - 2

Motsognir liked the idea of getting back on a boat.

all five points to boat protecting
buy 40 days trail rations, i guess
do you even need rations on a boat?

Body retrieval - 4 points
Protect the boat - 1 point

The dwarf was still in ill spirits. Surrounding himself with death was proving a less than enjoyable experience, and as such his skull adornments eventually found their way to random garbage collectors around the city. No more Murray, no more Arthur. He moped for a good week before he began to slowly return to telling the odd joke. Luckily the newcomer was loud and obnoxious and actively covered his own poor spirits. Eventually wandering down to the town, the dwarf spent his money on a pair of healing potions. He'd taken little of value away from their last skirmish, aside from the lingering feelings of regret. He also threw a scroll at the wizard the next time they saw one another.

Buy two healing potions. Give Bob the alchemical fire recipe.

Sauntering around the bar (and either noticing and ignoring or being completely oblivious to people ignoring him), Delic stands in front of the Notice Board, hands on his hips.

"Oh oh oh! Rosy Dawn! A good fortune, if I had ever seen one in my days. I wooed a woman by the name of Rosy once! A beautiful lass she was with long, curly red hair and a smile that the sun would envy and an Adam's Apple that would bob up and down as she cooed gently in my ear! Oh ho! I shall throw my weight behind that boat, as I threw it behind that fair maiden! Tally ho, my allies!"

A voyage aboard the Rosy Dawn was by far the most popular option among the Horde; fresh sea air and a change of scenery seemed very attractive after their days beneath the village. Hoping for the best but anticipating the worst (for why should the ship need guards if they didn't expect trouble), the party loads up on food and medicines.

Bob spends the downtime before the ship sets sail studying the rituals he'd purchased and stumbled upon over the course of his recent excursions. The ritual of enchantment transference, utterly incomprehensible when last he attempted to master it, now seems almost obvious. Still, there was the matter of the trapped grimoire he'd discovered in the aftermath of the fight with Von Versteckt, and Bob sought out the advice of a professional in the hopes of obtaining the necromantic mysteries which must surely lie within the tome.

While the tiefling proprietor of the Portable Hole rambled on in the same incoherent babble as everyone else in this ridiculous region, Bob is eventually able to make his problem known with a combination of extravagant gesticulations, pointing at the book, then his eyes, and using his ghost sound cantrip to mimic a small explosion. The merchant is quite unwilling to chance the book herself, she pantomimes what Bob believes to be a fairly straightforward solution; all one has to do is modify the runes into some other functionality before triggering them. This is easier said than done, of course, when one can't even look at the thing to determine which runic alphabet it might be using. Carrying the book out into an empty alleyway, Bob flips it open, quickly averts his eyes, and scribbles all over the pages with his Eternal Chalk. Tossing the book to the ground, he backs away by several yards before glancing at his handiwork.

While Bob has, indeed, successfully modified the runes, the change is not precisely to his benefit. The moment he gazes upon the book, it quickly melts into a grayish sludge and trickles into a gutter. Easy come, easy go.

I'll start a thread for the boat adventure later today or tomorrow; have to get my maps together