The view northwest from Ibara’s Bailey

Hugo Tuya’s guards are in Ibara on the evening of the 7th of the Storm. They have just stolen a grieving widow’s treasure, and have received an invitation to meet the “elven delegation”. The roster for this session:

  • Bao Tap, human stormcaller
  • Calim “Ambros” Nefari, human rimewarden
  • Itzel, elven astrologer
  • Kyansei of the Eilika Tribe, wildling barbarian

Yoog is still recovering from the poison she took when the guards found the map to the grieving widow’s treasure (which they have stolen), and Quangbae has opted to stay in their hotel to look after her.

The elven delegation

After their meeting with Mrs Verbere (at which they stole her treasure) the guards received an invitation to visit the elven delegation, a pair of elves who had visited Ibara from the nearby great forest for the annual meeting to renew the trade ties between the forest elves and the town. These elves had heard of the group and knew of Itzel, and presumably wanted to meet her. Itzel, fresh from robbing a grieving widow, felt it would be wrong to decline an invitation from two senior members of her community, and she and the rest of the group walked down the street from their hotel to the Wittan House, where the elves were staying.

This house was unlike many other houses in Ibara, being a three-story wooden structure built entirely above ground. It abutted the western palisade of the Bailey, and from its western and northern rooms guests could look out over the landscape around Ibara. The guards were led to a large, comfortable public room on the third floor of the building, where they found the two elves standing near an open balcony looking out at the sunset. The two elves were:

  • Eveltzel, male, tall (for an elf), with silver hair, blue eyes, very pale skin and wearing simple robes
  • Halildaliel, female, shorter than Eveltzel but still tall (for an elf), muscly with copper hair, green eyes and faintly golden skin, wearing a spidersilk jerkin and carrying a slender steel sword

After some small talk the elves explained why they had called Itzel. Before their departure for Ibara a dreamspeaker in their home had learnt of the death a year ago of an elf somewhere north of Ibara. They wanted the group to travel north to find the body of the elf and return the body and belongings to them so that they could be properly honoured and laid to rest in the forest. In return for the work they would give the guards a few steel arrows, a spidersilk underslunky, and a potion of healing. The mission would likely require two days and one night.

Of course the PCs agreed. Their only concern was how to convince Tuya to give them another two days to pursue their side mission. They gave no thought as to how to explain to their own consciences the hypocrisy of taking this job when they had used the problem of double contracting as an excuse to rob a grieving widow of her worldly wealth.

They returned untroubled to their hotel.

The reanimate

The next morning they found themselves beset by good luck. At breakfast Hugo Tuya informed them that the Bailiff was paying them a bounty for breaking the bandit group east of Ibara, but it would take two days for the Wittan to release the money. In the meantime he gave them two days to relax and do as they wished (“On my coin of course!”) They thanked him profusely and set off for the forests north of Ibara.

It took them a day to find the location of the body, and just before they did they were attacked by a bear that nearly killed Kyansei. They took this bear’s cub as their own, to raise as a future animal companion, and almost immediately after the battle discovered a small camp in the woods, at the entrance to which lay a skeleton impaled on a stake. Perhaps the bear had been searching this camp? The body looked as if it might be the elf they were searching for, though it was hard to tell from the mouldering rags left stuck to the bleached bones. In the camp they found a small tent with two bedrolls inside, and various detritus scattered around the camp itself. While searching for more evidence Itzel disturbed a corpse, which emerged from the shadows of the trees to attack her. She fled back to the camp and the whole group gathered around her to fight it. This shambling, stinking ruin of a body was a reanimate, the weakest form of undead, shambling forward through the camp trying to kill them with nothing more than its twisted, filthy hands. They destroyed it quickly and, searching its body, confirmed it was a human woman wearing a rotting nightgown. Had this been the other member of the camp? They found an amulet around the reanimate’s neck, which they kept. They guessed that the elf had come here to meet this woman, they had been ambushed by deepfolk, the elf had been impaled on the stake and left to die and the human woman had been reanimated and left as a trap for anyone who came to the camp. Typical deepfolk trouble.

The amulet

They gave the woman the rites of salt, gathered up the body and belongings of the elf, and returned to Ibara with them. They kept the amulet for themselves, thinking that they might be able to use it to find the identity of this woman at towns they traveled to. It depicted a huge wave swallowing the sun, and had been carved quite carefully out of what the guards guessed was obsidian or some other volcanic rock, though of course none of them were experts on such matters. At Ibara they handed the remains over to the elves and returned to their hotel for a much-needed rest

Mrs Verbere’s revenge

Unfortunately as soon as they arrived they were called to a meeting by Hugo Tuya, who was waiting for them with Mrs Verbere, the grieving widow they had robbed. Hugo Tuya bought them drinks and settled down for a meeting, speaking in his expansive good employer tone. He commended them on their loyalty in refusing to take a second contract but assured them he was happy for them to do so in this case. While they were away on their private work Mrs Verbere had come to Tuya and explained the second contract issue, and he had agreed with her that she should have the service of his guards for such an important personal mission. They had gone together to the bailiff and interrogated the remaining surviving bandit, from whom they had learnt that the bandits had never opened Verbere’s box, though they had killed him and taken his gear. Thus, the treasure spoken of in the letters Verbere had received must still be there. Hugo Tuya had negotiated with the bailiff and they had come to a fine agreement over the iron spoken of in the letter, and come up with a plan. Instead of giving the surviving bandit the salt death, the bailiff would brand him and release him. The PCs would then follow him and see if he went to some secret cache to find the iron. If he did, they were to kill him and return the iron. If not, they were to let him go and head to the location of the iron, where they would dig it up and return it to the town. Tuya would then sell it to the bailiff, giving 50% of the proceeds to Mrs Verbere and 20% to his guards. A fine payment for an easy job, did they not agree!?

They did not agree, and though morally outraged at this theft of their rightful possessions, could not actually tell Tuya that they already had the iron. Instead they tried negotiating with him to change the terms of sale of the iron, and were finally able to convince him that they deserved 30%, not him. Finally Tuya agreed, commended them on their good morals, and recommended they set off after the bandit first thing in the morning.

Could Hugo Tuya’s guards find a way to defraud the grieving widow of her rightful belongings a second time, or would they have to finally give her that which belonged to her, and which they had already stolen from her once?