TOPIC: R5 2026 : Quietdale - Blades of the Moon

SESSION ONE: YOU’LL DO NICELY

Our story does not begin in a tavern.
There is no roaring fire. No mysterious stranger brooding in the corner. No conveniently abandoned noticeboard promising twenty gold pieces to clear rats from somebody’s cellar.
It begins underground.
It begins in the dark.
And none of them know why they are there.
Six people wake alone in six stone cells.
Their equipment hangs nearby, nicely laid out and ready for them. Nobody remembers being brought here. Nobody knows where here is. There are no guards. No voices. No explanation.
Just cold stone.
Iron.
And the deeply unpleasant knowledge that somebody went to considerable effort to put them there.
That is fucking scary.

The six prisoners are:
Eldric, played by Ellie, an archer whose instinct for compassion will prove considerably more reliable than his ability to avoid shooting his companions.
Amadeus Strongbrew, played by Mike, a dwarf blessed with extraordinary strength, absolute confidence, and the firm belief that most obstacles can be resolved by hitting them with sufficient enthusiasm.
Metro Gnome, played by Laura, a deft-handed rogue with an eye for mechanisms, secrets, and apparently proving herself superior to every other rogue unfortunate enough to enter the same postcode.
Zarxius, played by Morgan, a sorcerer quickly discovering that magic solves an impressive number of problems, provided nobody becomes too precious about collateral damage.
Dun, played by Ted, a dwarven priest of war with a tactical mind, an uncanny understanding of stonework, and an increasingly straightforward interpretation of the word enemy.
And Galek, played by Dan, a hulking warrior with a recurring habit of placing himself directly between danger and everybody else, whether the danger has asked him to or not.
They do not wait long for answers.

Mostly because Amadeus tears his way out.
Gripping the bars of his cell, he pulls until iron bends beneath his hands.
The first prisoner steps free.
Metro follows shortly afterwards, albeit through the considerably more civilised method of picking the lock.
Zarxius examines his own cell.
There is a lock.
He has fire.
After several repeated blasts of magical flame, there is substantially less lock.
Problem solved.

Galek, Eldric and Dun have less success.
Strength fails. Lockpicks refuse to cooperate. Various increasingly optimistic attempts accomplish very little.
Eventually, Dun does something revolutionary.
He asks for help.
Metro obliges.
Eventually.
Trying to manipulate the locks from the opposite side proves less intuitive than expected, and her first attempt succeeds only in locking the prisoners in more securely.
An impressive achievement.
Undeterred, she corrects her mistake and frees Dun and Eldric.
Galek receives somewhat less delicate assistance.
Amadeus approaches the bars.
“Stand back, fellows!”
He grips them.
A moment later, Galek is free.
Together at last, the six retrieve their equipment and enter the chamber beyond.

Above the cells is a designation.
COHORT VI
Nobody knows what it means.
An army?
A unit?
Some organisation?

Whatever the answer, there is something uncomfortable about that number.
Numbers imply classification.
And classification implies there were others.
Metro unlocks the metal door ahead.

The next chamber contains goblins.
Six of them.
Seven, if you count the corpse lying against the far wall.
But these aren't snarling raiders waiting eagerly for blood.
They are terrified.
Thin.
Starving.
Their weapons are scraps of timber and chunks of stone scavenged from the dungeon itself. Their bodies are wasted. Their movements weak.
Whatever nightmare the six prisoners have stumbled into, these creatures appear to have been trapped inside it for considerably longer.
Nobody attacks.

Eldric reaches into his pack.
He removes a ration and scatters food towards the goblins.
They recoil.
To Eldric, it is kindness.
To starving creatures imprisoned by people they do not understand, it might just as easily be poison.
Galek tries another approach.
He moves forward carefully, hands raised, attempting to show that he means no harm.
The goblins don't believe him.
Maybe they don't understand.
Maybe they are simply too frightened to take the chance.
Cornered, starving and faced with six heavily armed strangers, they attack.

Metro moves first.
She rushes towards the nearest goblin and swings her shortsword, deliberately turning the blade at the last moment and striking with the flat.
The blow lands hard.
Not enough to kill.
Enough to terrify.
The wounded goblin immediately breaks away and retreats into the corner.
Two more attack Galek.
Neither lands a meaningful blow.
Eldric raises his bow.
Draws.
Fires.
And shoots Metro in the back.
Not quite the heroic intervention he had presumably envisioned.

Amadeus storms forward next, wielding what can only generously be described as a weapon.
Two battered beer tankards.
Connected by a chain.
Nunchucks.
Because apparently civilisation peaked and nobody told us.
He swings.

The first goblin is knocked unconscious so violently that its body flies backwards into the creature behind it.

Zarxius takes a different approach.
Acid.
The spell strikes.
There is no dramatic sword wound.
No clean fall.
The goblin simply dissolves.
Flesh melts.
Bone follows.
And Zarxius stares at the remains, surprised not so much that the creature is dead...

...but by just how powerful he apparently is.

Amadeus soon discovers a similar problem.
He grabs one badly wounded goblin, attempting to restrain it.
The creature is barely standing.
Starved.
Fragile.
Almost dead already.
Amadeus squeezes.
There is a crack.
The goblin goes limp.
He hadn't meant to kill it.
He simply hadn't understood how easy killing it would be.
Mercy, it turns out, requires knowing your own strength.

Dun has no such problem deciding what constitutes an appropriate target.
He surveys the fight.
Identifies the weakest opponent.
And calls upon the tolling of death.

Eldric, who only moments earlier had tried feeding these creatures, now puts an arrow into the kidney of an injured goblin.
Something changes once a frightened creature becomes an enemy.
One survivor finally breaks.
It drops its makeshift weapon.
Turns its back.
Runs.
It reaches the opposite door and begins clawing desperately at the stone.
It wants out.
Nothing more.
Galek catches it with a shield bash, but fails to bring it down.

Metro watches.
As far as she is concerned, the fight is effectively over.
She turns away.

Dun disagrees.
His handaxe leaves his grip.
The goblin dies against the door it had been trying to escape through.

Metro walks towards the corpse already lying in the far corner.
It has been dead for some time.
There are bite marks across the flesh.
Not wounds from whatever killed it.
Marks left afterwards.
The goblins had been trapped here long enough...
starving long enough...
that eventually they had begun eating their dead.

Metro searches the corpse.
She finds a note.
The handwriting is crude, but unmistakably readable.
Scry Smart! Scry help friends!
Below it, written later in a much shakier hand:
Scry Hungry. Scry Scared.
The dead goblin had a name.
Scry could write.
Scry had been trying to help the others survive.

Eldric searches the remaining bodies and earns himself the princely sum of two copper pieces.
Adventure.
Riches.
Early retirement is surely imminent.
Eventually, the door opens.
And they leave.

Several goblins remain unconscious behind them.
None of the six stop to consider what will happen to them.
Not until the next corridor.
The passage is long.
Narrow.
Five feet wide.
Galek takes point.
He makes it approximately two steps.
Something moves.
A block of wood swings from the wall and catches him squarely in the face.
Three points of damage.
A cheap lesson.
The corridor is trapped.

Behind him, Eldric turns towards the previous room, joking about finding something that could perhaps be attached to a stick and used as a makeshift mine detector.
A goblin, perhaps.
Instead, he spots movement.
Something pale and many-legged has crawled into the chamber behind them.
A carrion crawler.
It lowers itself over one of the unconscious goblins.

Dan stares at the model.
Morgan doesn't.
“It's a carrion crawler. You don't want to fight it.”

Suddenly the traps ahead become slightly less important.
Galek moves cautiously.
One tile at a time.
Behind him, the crawler finishes feeding.
Another unconscious goblin disappears.

Dun looks back.
“Right. We need to move. Now.”
Galek moves faster.

Apparently deciding the lesson delivered directly to his face was more of a suggestion.
His boot catches a tripwire.
A concealed crossbow fires.
The bolt buries itself in his arm.
They continue.

The next chamber looks simpler.
A portcullis blocks the far side.
Beside the entrance is a ratchet.
And written plainly where nobody can miss it:
SOMEONE HAS TO STAY BEHIND
Nobody volunteers.
Nobody discusses volunteers.
Nobody even seriously entertains the possibility.
Metro tests the ratchet.
Turn it, and the portcullis rises.

Release it...
...and the gate crashes straight back down.

So Galek and Amadeus decide they will simply hold it open.
They move beneath the gate.
Grip the metal.
Push.
And something pushes back.
Not merely weight.
Force.
Whatever mechanism controls the portcullis actively resists them.
Galek strains.
Amadeus plants his feet.
The gate presses down.
And Amadeus refuses to move.
For several seconds, raw strength beats the mechanism.
But even he cannot hold it forever.
Zarxius considers the problem.
Once again there is metal.

Once again Zarxius has acid.
Some people learn from experience.
Zarxius believes experience should mind its own fucking business.
He casts.
The acid bites into the portcullis.
It works.
Unfortunately, it also eats through chains connecting the gate to the ratchet.
The entire room shudders.
Stone moves somewhere overhead.
Zarxius responds with an eye-roll.
Apparently the collapsing architecture is being inconvenient.

Metro begins searching desperately for something to jam into the mechanism.
She finds a piece of wood.
For one glorious moment, it appears useful.
Then it snaps.

Dun turns his attention towards the stonework.
The others watch as he inspects the masonry with such enthusiasm that the process rapidly becomes known as:
“Licking the wall.”
But it works.
He identifies a fractured block of stone.

Strong enough.
Heavy enough.
They wedge it into the mechanism.
The ratchet holds.
Everyone runs.

Behind them, Zarxius' acid finishes eating through the machinery.
The ceiling comes down.
Huge slabs of stone smash into the room with enough force to kill anyone still inside.
The route behind them disappears beneath tonnes of rubble.
There will be no going back.
Only forward.

Eventually they enter another empty chamber.
Above the opposite wall is a new designation.
COHORT VII
Nothing happens.
For the first time since waking, they have time.

They rest.
Bind wounds.
Catch their breath.
And prepare.
Because after everything they've seen, none of them believe that sign is merely decorative.

Galek positions himself directly in front of where he expects the next doorway to appear.
Because apparently being hit in the face by one dungeon wasn't enough for the evening.
Dun positions himself beside the expected entrance, preparing to turn it into a fatal funnel.

Eldric moves to the back of the room, giving himself space to use his bow.
Amadeus and Zarxius spread themselves across the centre.
They are ready.
They have predicted the battlefield.
Unfortunately, the battlefield has not read their strategy.

There is no door.
The entire wall moves.
Stone grinds against stone.
The partition retracts.
The chamber suddenly doubles in size.
And six more people are standing on the other side.

Another party.
Another cohort.
The sellsword amongst them counts the newcomers.
Six.
The cutpurse protests.
Confusion spreads.
Fear.
Anger.
Then somebody says what everyone in the room is thinking.

“I'm not dying in this fucking hole.”

Weapons come free.

Metro moves first.
She disappears into the shifting bodies.
Then reappears beside the opposing rogue.
His name is Pip.
Her shortsword drives into his stomach.
Deep.
She twists the blade.
Blood sprays across her hands.
Across her clothes.
Across the floor.
A voice screams.

“NO, PIP!”

An arrow flies towards Metro.
Another fighter charges Galek.

The rest hesitate.
Because whatever they expected when that wall opened...
...it apparently wasn't this.

Dun does not hesitate.
He moves towards the opposing dwarf and drives his mace into the sellsword's face.
A second blow nearly follows, stopped only by the dwarf desperately intercepting it.
Amadeus raises his hands.
He tries diplomacy.
The universe responds with a natural one.

Negotiations have apparently concluded.
So Amadeus switches to his other diplomatic technique.
He approaches the dwarf.
“Your block was good...”
He draws back his fist.
“...but block THIS!”

One uppercut.
The dwarf hits the floor.
Non-lethally.
Technically.

Galek chooses differently.
The sellsword falls.
He doesn't get back up.

Eldric tries to persuade the others to stop fighting.
It fails.
His bow comes up.
The arrow strikes the hedge mage in the kidney.

Cohort VII begins retreating.
Whatever determination they entered with is already breaking.
Pip has lost the will to fight.
Their cleric tries desperately to heal him.
The mage steps backwards.
Metro watches the other rogue.

Bloodied.
Terrified.
Barely standing.

And decides that now is the ideal time to establish professional dominance.

She walks up to Pip.
And pickpockets him.
In plain sight.
A pouch.
Inside it:
Ball bearings.
Caltrops.

Victory, presumably.

The fight continues.
But increasingly it becomes difficult to call it a fight.
Cohort VII retreats into the corner.
Cohort VI repeatedly demands that they stop.

Offers are made.
Threats are made.
Attempts at persuasion come again and again.
But every demand to surrender arrives alongside another mace.
Another arrow.
Another blade.
Eventually, the words mean nothing.
The hedge mage dies against the wall, an arrow driving through them and pinning the body in place.
The cleric falls.
One by one...
Cohort VII disappears.
Until only Pip remains.

Everyone else he entered the room with is dead.
He is bleeding.
Exhausted.
Alone.
He looks at the six people surrounding him.
He knows what comes next.
And he decides they will not have it.

Pip raises his knife to his own throat.

There are seconds to react.
“I shoot his hand!” Eldric shouts.
“I grab him!” Amadeus yells.

Eldric fires first.
The shot is perfect.
The arrow destroys Pip's hand before the blade reaches his throat.
But Pip was already barely alive.
He collapses.
The room goes quiet.

Six bodies lie on the floor.

Zarxius laughs.
Dun immediately begins searching the corpses.
Their bodies are still warm.

Ted. Mate.

Amongst their belongings is Pip's knife.
A striking dagger with a ruby inlaid into its handle.
And then they find the note.
Its instructions are simple.

Six individuals await beyond the final gate.
Kill them and you will be released.
All six must die.

Cohort VII knew what was waiting for them.
Cohort VI had received no such message.
And yet six bodies still lie on the floor.

The final doors open.
Beyond them...
stairs.
There is nowhere else to go.

Six strangers woke inside six cages.
They didn't know where they were.
They didn't know why they had been imprisoned.
They didn't know who had built this place.
They tried kindness.
They killed.
They showed mercy.
They killed.
They protected one another.
They refused to leave anybody behind.
They survived traps.
They survived monsters.
They survived another group of people who were every bit as frightened as they were.
And eventually they reach the stairs.

Then a voice speaks from somewhere beyond the darkness.

Calm.

Satisfied.

Certain.

“Yes.”

A pause.

“You'll do nicely.”

And everything goes dark.

End of Session One.

Incredible! Such unyielding literary perfection! This elegant prose, forged by the fires of unbridled creativity!

SESSION TWO: PROVE YOUR WORTH

“Yes. You’ll do nicely.”

The words linger in the darkness for just a moment longer before the black gives way to light. Not torchlight. Not the dim glow of some forgotten underground chamber. Morning light, warm and painfully bright, spilling through familiar bedroom windows. The smell of bacon and eggs drifts beneath the doors. Six people wake with the same thought hanging behind their eyes.
...That dream again.
Whatever horror had filled their sleep, morning has arrived regardless. Galek’s hand moves almost automatically towards the sword he keeps close, reaching for it with the ease of someone who has repeated the same motion every morning for years. Strongbrew’s routine is less subtle. His bedroom has gradually become less a place for sleeping and more a private gymnasium, his bed increasingly outnumbered by weights, benches and whatever else a dwarf requires to maintain a physique apparently polished for ceremonial display.

Squats. Chin-ups. Stretching. Body lotion. Somewhere downstairs, somebody laughs loudly enough to shake dust from the rafters. Then Bram’s voice comes roaring up the stairs.
“Wake the fuck up, sleeping beauties! There’s twelve rashers left and you’s have first pick!”
Any lingering concern about shared nightmares immediately loses ground to the considerably more immediate issue of bacon. By the time they reach the bottom of the stairs, the Moon Blades Guild is already in full swing. Adventurers crowd the long tables, eating, arguing, swapping stories and shouting across one another. Weapons lean against benches. Packs sit half-filled beneath chairs. Somewhere in the room, somebody has already decided that breakfast requires music, while several people nearby clearly disagree.

Bram stands at the foot of the stairs and begins a slow, sarcastic clap.
“’Bout time you’s came down. Folks are itching to get started.”
Nearby, Edwin the guild treasurer and quartermaster is counting coins into a chest. Dun approaches. The lid promptly closes and the lock clicks into place.
“Dun.”
“Now remember the last time, you’d miscounted that chest and said there were twenty gold more than there actually was.”
“My count is always correct, Ted- Dun.”
Breakfast is claimed. Plates hit the table. Conversation resumes. Metro barely has time to settle before Raff makes his move. Laura catches him this time. His hand snakes towards her plate and she spots it immediately.

“You’re getting quicker~”
He steals the rasher anyway, stuffs it into his mouth and walks away grinning while several nearby guild members groan about the same routine - "Every bloody morning with these two". Metro watches him go. A Mage Hand appears behind him. Invisible fingers reach down and neatly tie Raff’s bootlaces together. He takes three more steps and hits the floor. The surrounding tables erupt in laughter. Justice is brief, childish and extremely satisfying. At another table, a guild member spends several increasingly desperate seconds fighting with a jar before accepting defeat. Without explanation, he simply holds it towards Strongbrew.
“Strongbrew.”
Strongbrew takes it, twists the lid and opens it effortlessly.

“There’s the walking bicep!” The bard’s announcement receives a few cheers. Another ordinary morning at the Moon Blades. Eventually Bram manages to drag everyone’s attention towards the job board. Four notices are pinned there, and the mood in the room changes instantly. Conversations quieten. Several adventurers start watching. Representatives from different groups shift closer, all of them clearly waiting for the same thing. Bram points towards the six. “You lot get first pick.” The question comes immediately. Why them? Last time, Bram explains, they had last pick and ended up dealing with goblins trying to raid a local farmer’s turnip patch. Goblins apparently consider turnips something close to catnip. It had not been glamorous, dangerous or particularly well paid.

Today, they get first choice. They begin reading. Advice immediately starts arriving from every direction.
“You don’t wanna go for that Greywatch job, place is a shithole.”
“Monster clearing sounds like something Galek would do.”
“Galek! Pick that one!”
Morgan suggests the obvious adventuring solution. Why not simply take all four jobs? Bram looks at him.
“The last lot who got greedy with the board got tied up outside the guild hall for the day.”
“In the rain.”
The proposal is withdrawn. Eventually they choose the Greywatch job. Retrieve a sword from an abandoned keep. Strongbrew takes the notice from the board. The room explodes. People surge forward. Representatives from the other groups scramble for the remaining jobs. Someone cheers. Somebody else swears. Within seconds the board is empty and the hall fills with the sound of straps being tightened, weapons being lifted and people calling out farewells as they head for the door.

“See you tonight!” Some of them will. The escort group, Bram explains, will probably be gone for a couple of days. With breakfast finished, the six prepare for the journey. Eldric and Dun immediately gather around Edwin with the traditional adventurer question of what can be obtained for free. Somewhere in the discussion, Eldric proposes Molotov cocktails. Edwin eventually provides half a flask of oil. “You get a share, nothing more.” Backpacks are already part of their usual gear, but Dun decides his requires additional preparation. He fills one with dirt, reasoning that it could be thrown, used to mark surfaces, reveal invisible things or fulfil whatever other strange purpose presents itself later. He also takes a long stick for traps, bodies, doors and anything else that would ideally be investigated from several feet away.

It sounds ridiculous. It will shortly prove alarmingly sensible. Before leaving, Galek approaches Bram about the dream. The cells. The dungeon. The other adventurers. The voice. He gets perhaps twenty seconds into the explanation before Bram rolls his eyes. “Not this shit again.” They have spoken about the dreams before. More than once. Bram has long since dismissed them as some form of shared trauma. Adventuring groups see enough strange things together that their minds occasionally respond in equally strange ways. Raff’s group once encountered a warg that someone had magically disguised as a beholder and apparently spent months dealing with nightmares afterwards. The explanation is delivered with the tired patience of someone who has already had this conversation several times.

The matter is dropped. For now. Before they leave, Bram gives them the details of the Greywatch job. The keep is around four hours away through the forest. It has been abandoned for years, and part of the interior has collapsed. A buyer believes an old greatsword may still be somewhere inside, bearing the Greywatch crest and once belonging to the commander of the order. Galek knows the stories. The Greywatch were once famous. Enforcers in service to the King, respected throughout the land for their battlefield discipline and tactics. Some modern soldiers still learn manoeuvres built upon techniques the Greywatch developed. "Hold the Line, Because discipline demands obedience" . Their ending is less clear.

At some point they lost the King’s favour. Their support disappeared. Their resources were cut. The order fragmented, members taking mercenary work simply to survive. Eventually they were forbidden from using the Greywatch name at all. History remembers the fall. It is considerably less certain about what caused it. Bram gives them the description again. Greatsword. Greywatch crest. Former commander. Bring it back. Then he waves them away.
“Now bugger off and let me finish my breakfast.”
He looks down at his plate.
“Where the fuck’s my bacon gone?”
Several heads immediately turn towards Raff. Metro decides his earlier humiliation was clearly insufficient. She prepares a small sign reading I’M STUPID and moves to attach it to his back.

This time Raff notices. “Two can play at that game.” Somebody kicks Metro. She turns around, confused. Then someone points to her back. A sign has already been attached there. KICK ME. Raff walks away laughing. The six finally leave Quietdale behind and head into the forest.

Around ninety minutes later, voices drift through the trees ahead. Metro and Eldric move forward to investigate. They find two young students in a clearing, apparently from a magical academy in the city of Ranoir. The pair are engaged in the sort of scholarly debate upon which great institutions are built. Which of them can cast the biggest fireball. Metro is spotted. She improvises.

She explains that she can cast a considerably bigger fireball than either of them. More importantly, she is currently selling permits allowing people to legally cast fireballs within the forest. To demonstrate, she creates an illusion of a magnificent flaming sphere. One student looks impressed. The other stares at him.
“You idiot! That’s not a fireball, that’s just an illusion!”
Metro considers this.
“Okay, I’ll cast another one.”
“But this time, it’s real-”
Zarxius raises his hand. Three scorching rays streak across the clearing. The first kills one student. The second kills the other. Morgan looks towards the third ray.
“I’ll hit one of the bodies with the third.”
Silence settles over the clearing.

Strongbrew stares at the two corpses. Then at Zarxius. He sighs.
“I’ll dig a hole, then.”
He starts digging.
“Please use your words next time, Zarxius.”
“And not the ones that end up with people getting killed!”
Two academy students are now dead in a forest clearing for reasons that have become increasingly difficult to explain. Naturally, the next stage is looting. Eldric and Dun descend on the bodies with the solemn dignity of vultures who have recently discovered inventory management. Eldric finds a tin of mouldy cheese. Dun acquires a velvet pouch containing three teeth and a note reading: BIG FIREBALL COMPONENTS. They are not big fireball components. The question then becomes what to do with the bodies.

Hide them. Bury them. Remove evidence. At one point, mutilating the corpses enough to make identification difficult enters the discussion (Ellie. WTF?). The journey from reputable adventurers to amateur forensic countermeasures has taken less than two hours. Metro looks around for witnesses. There are none. Except for a squirrel watching her from a nearby branch. Suspiciously. Metro watches the squirrel. The squirrel watches Metro. Neither trusts the other. Eventually the students are buried. Eldric and Metro work together to cover the tracks and disguise the disturbed ground, a ranger and a forest gnome combining their talents for something neither of them probably imagined would be necessary when they woke up that morning.

Dun begins constructing the explanation. Clearly these students were practising dark magic. Why else would they have travelled so far from the academy? Perhaps the world was safer now. Laura eventually asks the question that should probably have arrived considerably earlier. “Did we just kill two kids?” Nobody answers. Moving on.

Greywatch Keep eventually appears through the trees. Time has savaged it. Stone walls lean beneath decades of weather. Wooden doors rot within their frames. Sections of the old fortress have collapsed completely, leaving much of the structure exposed to rain, vines and the steady work of neglect. The courtyard is silent. Three doors remain accessible. They choose the one on the left.

Strongbrew opens it. The smell arrives first. Rot. Waste. Decay. The kind of smell that feels less like something entering the nose and more like something physically attacking the soul. Strongbrew somehow barely reacts. Inside is what remains of the keep’s latrine. There is also a corpse. Its head is positioned somewhere that nobody should ever want their head positioned. The body has been there for a very long time. Eldric and Metro immediately retrieve the sticks. The corpse will be investigated. From a safe distance. They carefully begin prodding it with the sort of improvised archaeological technique normally associated with children poking something dead beside a pond. Both roll natural ones.

The resulting movement releases smells and fluids nobody was prepared to experience. Metro retches. Eldric retches. Both stagger backwards nauseous and suddenly far less enthusiastic about archaeology. They manage to retrieve a scrap of paper from the body, but whatever had once been written there has long since lost its battle against moisture, decay and several seconds of aggressive stick-based investigation. Even Mending cannot save it. The door opposite leads into what used to be the keep’s mess hall. Galek opens it. Another smell. Another corpse. Three, in fact. Two remain seated in chairs. A third lies forward across the table. There are no plates. No obvious weapons. No sign of battle.

Dun examines them. Poison. Whatever killed these people, it was not a fight. Metro uses Mending on some of the ruined clothing and restores enough of it to reveal dark green cloaks and iron insignia. Greywatch. The dead people sitting around this table belonged to the order. Dun searches the room. His attention eventually settles on a brick in the far wall. It looks different. Potentially important. He approaches it. And licks it. There is nothing unusual about the brick. The investigation continues. The final courtyard door leads deeper into the keep. Beyond it lies a broad hall, once perhaps used for planning, meetings or strategy. Smaller rooms line the sides, probably old sleeping quarters, while a huge section of the upper floor has collapsed into the chamber and buried much of it beneath rubble.

More bodies lie inside the surrounding rooms. More Greywatch. More decay. Galek squeezes through a gap in the rubble and checks the chambers beyond. Nothing catches his attention. Strongbrew follows. Then stops. At the far end of the ruined hall sits a stone throne. A dead figure occupies it. Rusted armour covers the corpse. Across its lap rests a greatsword. Even from across the room, the Greywatch crest is unmistakable. They have found what they came for. Vines have worked their way through parts of the old fortress. Eldric briefly suspects they may have some connection to an evil druid the group remembers dealing with in the past. Dun tests them with fire.

They are vines. Normal vines. Not every mystery survives investigation. Zarxius burns through them anyway. Before anyone touches the sword, Dun decides to check for magic. He begins casting Detect Magic as a ritual. Ten minutes. No spell slot wasted. He settles down in front of the throne and begins concentrating while the others use the time to clear rubble from the surrounding hall. Broken furniture is shifted. Loose stone is dragged aside. Sections of the room hidden for years slowly become accessible again. Dun continues casting. At first, he senses nothing. Then everything changes. Necrotic energy floods the room. Every corpse they passed through the keep is suddenly standing.

Not shambling. Not attacking. Standing. At attention. Greywatch soldiers line the chamber in silent formation. The dead commander has moved upon the throne. He raises the greatsword and holds it towards Dun as though offering it. A voice speaks inside Dun’s head.
“Do you believe yourself worthy?”
Dun immediately backs away. The doorway behind him is gone. Stone fills the wall. The Greywatch remain motionless. Watching.
“Oh?”
“Are you not worthy?”
Dun looks around.
“No, no. I’m humble.”
“Totally humble.”
“Totally doing nothing bad here.”
Strongbrew watches this exchange and reaches an obvious conclusion. If worthiness is being tested, he is uniquely qualified. He steps forward. The Greywatch turn towards him.

The commander follows.
“Are you worthy?”
“Yes!”
A pause.
“...Why?”
Strongbrew’s confidence vanishes. That was not the expected follow-up. He thinks. Then gestures towards the most obvious proof available.
“Because of THESE glistening muscles!”
He flexes. The ancient Greywatch commander stares at him. Slowly, painfully, the dead warrior closes his eyes. Strongbrew receives the distinct impression that he is being judged. Harshly. Eventually the feeling becomes something closer to: Just take the bloody sword. So he does. The throne disappears. The commander is suddenly standing before him, now holding a spectral greatsword of his own. The voice returns.
“Now prove your worthiness.”
Combat begins. The commander strikes first and immediately takes a considerable chunk out of Strongbrew.

Galek answers with his echo, attacking through it and landing a blow. Two damage. Barely anything. But enough to prove one important fact. The dead can be hurt. The lesser Greywatch move next. One destroys Galek’s echo while the others close on the party and begin attacking. Dun raises his holy symbol. Divine power rolls through the chamber. Turn Undead. The lesser Greywatch recoil. Ancient soldiers suddenly break formation and flee from the cleric. Eldric charges in with a blade in each hand and begins cutting through the retreating undead. Metro reaches into her Bag of Tricks. Her hand emerges holding a small furry object. She throws it. A jackal appears in the middle of an ancient ruined fortress, surrounded by undead warriors, adventurers, magical echoes and a heavily oiled dwarf duelling a spectral commander.

The jackal looks understandably confused. Metro uses the distraction to move in and strike. Another Greywatch falls. Strongbrew rages and throws himself fully into the duel with the commander, the Greywatch greatsword now in his own hands. Around them, the lesser undead begin falling. Zarxius raises one hand. Magic Missile streaks across the chamber. Several more Greywatch soldiers collapse. Eventually only the commander remains. Strongbrew grips the greatsword. Swings. And cuts him down. The voice returns one final time.
“You may have bested me, but you are not-”
Silence. Apparently dramatic speeches are no more resistant to death than anyone else. The chamber becomes still. No more undead. No more voices.

Only the ruined keep, the sword and the remains of the Greywatch. The party searches the newly accessible areas, uncovering old possessions and forgotten treasures. Each of them finds something useful before they finally make their way back towards Quietdale. The return journey is peaceful. Nobody murders any more students. Progress. By the time they reach the Moon Blades Guild, several of the other groups are already returning. Bram looks over his shoulder as they enter.
“Aah, you’re back.”
“…And?”
They hand him the greatsword. Bram inspects the Greywatch crest, turns the weapon over in his hands and checks the blade. Satisfied, he tosses it towards the man behind the bar.

The agreed payment follows. Two hundred and fifty gold. The escort group still has not returned, but nobody expects them until the following day at the earliest. For everyone else, the day’s work is finished. Which means tradition. Bram looks towards the bar. The kegs are opened. Or at least, that is the idea. The barman checks the first. Empty. The second. Empty. The third. Empty. Bram slowly turns towards Strongbrew.
“Strongbrew?”
Strongbrew sighs.
“I’ll brew some more.”
“I’m not asking that.”
“Where’s the fucking beer?”
A cough comes from the corner. Orlan, the bookish half-orc, slowly raises one hand.
“It was me, boss.”
“Bad week, I take it?”
“Terrible.”

The matter is accepted with surprising sympathy. Then Raff speaks.
“Hey, I have an idea.”
“The bar’s open.”
“No it isn’t. It’s half eleven.”
“Me and Metro think otherwise.”
“Eh, Metro?”
Bram closes his eyes.
“Urgh. Alright.”
“But we leave money for what we take behind the counter.”
“Orlan? First round’s coming out of your wages.”
“…Fair.”
The Moon Blades leave the guild hall and head towards the town bar. It is closed. This proves to be only a minor inconvenience. They break in. Money is left behind the counter for everything they take. Apparently burglary becomes considerably more respectable when accompanied by accurate bookkeeping. On the way, Eldric nudges Strongbrew and suggests they should probably check on Orlan. Whatever drove him to drink the Guild dry must have been fairly serious.

Strongbrew immediately sees through the sudden concern. “She’s fishing for a plot hook!” They ask anyway. Orlan eventually comes clean. There is a halfling woman in town. He likes her. Quite a lot. He has recently discovered that she is already married. Metro immediately knows which woman he means. This information does not improve Orlan’s week. The drinks begin to flow. Music starts. The Guild settles into the comfortable rhythm of people who survived another day and now intend to make that everyone else’s problem. Stories are exchanged. Laughter fills the room. Zarxius avoids the alcohol and sticks to softer drinks. For a while, everything is normal. Then the room goes completely silent.

Someone is standing in the doorway. Lord R?g!n?ld Quietdale.. He looks across the bar. At Bram. At the adventurers. At the drinks. At the building they have very clearly entered without permission. His expression is stern.
“I was told someone had broken into the town bar again.”
Nobody speaks. Bram eventually tries.
“Aah, well, we’re paying for it and-”
“Urgh.”
“Pour me one, then.”
The room exhales. Music starts again. Conversation slowly returns. Raff pours a drink. Lord Quietdale walks towards the bar. Strongbrew is standing in front of it. He stops behind him.
“Strongbrew.”
“Aah! H-Hello, my lord!”
“It’s not a greeting.”
“You’re in the way.”
Strongbrew moves. He reaches past him, takes the pint Raff has poured and heads towards the corner of the room.

Bram follows. The two begin quietly talking business while the Guild continues drinking around them. The day began with a nightmare nobody could explain. It continued with bacon theft, a job board, two academy students who absolutely did not need to die, an ancient keep full of poisoned soldiers, an undead commander demanding proof of worthiness, a dwarf presenting his muscles as evidence, and an illegal drinking session attended by the local lord himself. Another perfectly ordinary day with the Moon Blades.

End of Session Two.

SESSION THREE: NO GAMES TONIGHT

Morning arrives at the Moon Blades Guild in much the same way it always does. Familiar beds. Familiar rooms. Familiar voices somewhere downstairs. Whatever unease might still linger from the previous days, the six are quicker to get moving this time. By the time they reach the Guild Hall, Bram is already engaged in an argument with two delivery boys who have made the unfortunate mistake of arriving while he is awake. Crates are stacked near the entrance, several apparently heavier than the lads were expecting. Bram spots Strongbrew immediately.
“Strongbrew. Give ’em a hand with the heavy stuff.”
Strongbrew does exactly that, because his official role within the Moon Blades increasingly appears to be somewhere between barbarian, adventurer and communal forklift.

Nearby, Raff is already making himself useful in a considerably less productive fashion. Metro notices something that catches her attention and Raff barely looks up before dismissing it. “That sign on your back? That sign’s always been there.” Metro seems fairly certain that it has not. Raff seems equally certain that this does not matter. Bram, meanwhile, has some advice for Zarxius. “No killing anyone this time.” Zarxius takes this personally. Very personally. What follows is less a commitment to restraint and more an act of spiteful pacifism, with Zarxius apparently deciding that if Bram does not want anyone murdered then absolutely nobody will be murdered by him.

The comment does, however, bring the previous incident back into focus. Metro and Zarxius begin discussing the uncomfortable possibility that they are being followed or watched. Zarxius points out that anyone sufficiently capable would not actually need to physically follow them at all. Scrying exists, after all. Metro considers this possibility and responds in the traditional manner of anyone deeply concerned that their companions might be hiding something from them: she breaks into Raff’s bedroom.

The room itself is almost immediately suspicious for entirely unexpected reasons. It is clean. Immaculate, even. Everything is folded. Everything is organised. Nothing appears misplaced. It bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to the Raff who occupies it. Metro searches carefully and eventually opens his footlocker. Inside is a scroll. She unrolls it.

“Metro is a loser.”



Nothing else. No secret correspondence. No suspicious orders. No evidence of a conspiracy. Just Raff finding a way to insult Metro from inside a locked chest in his own bedroom. Somewhere else in the Guild Hall, Strongbrew has been given raw eggs and weak beer for breakfast. He asks no questions. He consumes both. There are people who approach life with caution. There are people who approach it with curiosity. Then there is Amadeus Strongbrew, who apparently assumes that if something has reached his plate then whatever happens next is between it and his digestive system.

Eventually Bram manages to gather everyone around the job board. This time there is no question of first pick. The party already understands that the privilege rotates between the Guild groups, and Bram is only too happy to explain who the lucky bastards with first choice are: after escorting a soap merchant between neighbouring towns. For three days. In the rain. The party suddenly feels considerably better about not choosing that job.

The remaining jobs are inspected, discussed and discarded until one catches their attention. A mining operation has been attacked. Several miners are dead, others missing, and Hett, one of the surveyors, is believed to still be trapped somewhere underground. The survivors describe unknown bandits appearing suddenly inside the mine, attacking without warning and vanishing back into the tunnels. The party asks whether one of the surviving miners can provide more information. Unfortunately, he cannot. He never saw enough to identify what attacked them. He cannot even say what species they were. Only that they seemed to come out of nowhere.

The decision is made. They are going into the mine.

At the entrance they find the first obvious evidence of what happened. A miner lies dead outside with an arrow lodged in his back. Whatever attacked the mining crew probably was not human. Kobolds, goblins and hobgoblins are all suggested. Minecart tracks disappear into the darkness ahead, and two carts sit nearby. Zarxius leans towards the mine and shouts down it. Whatever tiny possibility existed that the group might enter without announcing themselves disappears into the tunnels along with the echo of his voice.

Metro takes point and begins checking for traps as they descend. Unfortunately, caution does not guarantee success. A tripwire catches beneath her foot. Something clicks. One of the minecarts begins to roll. Galek watches it start moving, looks at the tunnel, looks at the cart, and with the kind of instinctive decision-making normally reserved for people who have already accepted that consequences are tomorrow’s problem, jumps inside.

The cart gathers speed. The others watch as Galek rattles deeper into the mine and disappears around the bend. Ahead, the tracks divide. Unfortunately, the switching mechanism has been left pointing towards the less desirable route. The one ending at a vertical shaft. Galek sees it too late, fails to jump clear, and disappears over the edge along with the cart.

There is a brief pause as the remaining party members process what has just happened. Strongbrew and Dun then turn their attention towards the second minecart. This is the point at which an ordinary adventuring party might decide that minecarts are clearly dangerous and should therefore be avoided. Strongbrew and Dun instead look at the corpse outside. Then at the cart. Then at the track. A plan forms.

The dead miner is placed at the front of the cart as an improvised shield.

Strongbrew and Dun climb in behind him.

And off they go.

Somehow, against every reasonable expectation, the idea mostly works. Both dwarves manage to avoid joining Galek at the bottom of the shaft. The minecart does not. Neither does the corpse.

Further inside, the atmosphere changes. Sling bullets begin striking from unseen positions. Stones whistle from side passages, gaps in the walls and darkness ahead. Metro takes the first hit. Every time the party identifies where the attack came from, the attacker is already gone. Eventually they glimpse the culprits: kobolds. Not a group interested in standing toe-to-toe with six armed adventurers. They know the mine. They know the tunnels. They have prepared traps, hiding places and escape routes, using the darkness and narrow passages to strike, retreat and slowly wear the intruders down.

Eventually the party reaches a large shaft. At the bottom sits Galek beside the wreckage of the first minecart. Zarxius looks over the edge.
“You can’t park there, mate.”
Dun lowers a rope, Galek grabs hold and climbs back up with considerably less difficulty than he experienced getting down there in the first place. Reunited, the party continues deeper.

They reach the main cavern. Hett is there. Alive. For now. He is being held by a larger group of kobolds, apparently under the command of their leader, Ssesk. The bodies of miners around the chamber make the intentions of their captors fairly clear. Whatever happened here was not an accident. The miners were attacked deliberately, and Hett appears to have been kept alive for reasons nobody is particularly keen to explore.

Metro moves first. Her blade catches one of the kobolds in the corner and Dun follows immediately, striking the same target and bringing it down. From there the cavern descends rapidly into violence. One kobold moves towards the terrified Hett, and Metro intercepts it before it can reach him. Ssesk watches the fight collapsing around him and makes the entirely sensible decision that leadership is significantly easier when performed from somewhere else. He turns and scrambles into a narrow escape tunnel leading away from the chamber.

Galek hurls his javelin after him. Lightning erupts through the passage. Ssesk twists aside at the last possible moment, the blast catching rather than striking him cleanly. Badly wounded, but alive, the kobold leader continues crawling.

Elsewhere in the mine, Zarxius finds something more concerning than the fighting. Several supports have become unstable. Rather than joining the bloodshed, he begins repairing what he can, using Mending to secure damaged sections and prevent the mine becoming considerably more dangerous than it already is. During the work he discovers another small group of kobolds. This should result in another fight. It does not. Zarxius charms two of them, convinces those two to restrain the third, and ends the second skirmish without a single death. Bram’s request is apparently being followed with such aggressive commitment that even kobolds are now receiving diplomatic immunity.

Back in the main chamber, Strongbrew stares at the small hole through which Ssesk escaped. The tunnel is narrow. Strongbrew is not. Fortunately, Amadeus Strongbrew is approximately fifty percent moisturiser. He throws himself into the opening and slides.

Somewhere ahead, Ssesk looks backwards.

An enormous, heavily muscled dwarf is hurtling towards him through a passage that should not physically accommodate one.

Ssesk screams.

Strongbrew continues sliding towards him like a very angry luge.

Metro follows shortly afterwards, joining the pursuit. The wounded kobold leader is close to being caught, but another kobold trapper remains behind to cover his escape. The delay is enough. Ssesk gets out. Badly injured, but alive.

The party eventually returns to Hett and gathers the three kobolds Zarxius has managed to subdue. Hett sees them and panics. Whatever explanation the group might have offered is lost beneath his immediate certainty that the kobolds are going to kill him. He bolts down one of the passages the party had already cleared earlier. Unfortunately, while everyone was occupied elsewhere, the kobolds had been busy. A tripwire has been reset.

Hett catches it.

He stumbles towards the shaft. Galek lunges after him and reaches out, but misses.

Hett disappears over the edge.

The party climbs down to check. There is no ambiguity. The surveyor is dead. Very dead. Strongbrew surveys the body, then Metro, then the nearby minecart. A suggestion is made. Metro could disguise herself as Hett. Hett’s actual corpse could be placed in front of a mining cart. An accident could be staged. There is something strangely reassuring about a party being capable of transitioning from heroic rescue mission to insurance fraud with virtually no intermediate steps.

Eventually they leave the mine and begin the journey back towards Quietdale. For a while the road is quiet. Then shouting carries through the trees ahead. An overturned cart lies across the road, still attached to a struggling horse. Smoke rises from a fallen lantern. One guard is pinned beneath the vehicle while another stands nearby with his crossbow levelled at two prisoners chained together.

The standing guard spots the party and calls for help. Strongbrew steps forward. “We only work for coin, sir!” The guard agrees, apparently accepting that rescue work becomes significantly more efficient once contractual arrangements are settled. He explains that they were transporting two prisoners to Outreach, a murderer and a thief, when the cart overturned. His colleague is trapped beneath it, and he needs help getting everyone moving again.

The Moon Blades agree to assist. Then the charmed kobolds emerge from behind them.

The guard sees them.

His crossbow rises.

The conversation deteriorates almost instantly.

The guard is not particularly interested in explanations about friendly kobolds. The party is not particularly interested in allowing him to shoot them. Voices rise. Arguments overlap. Eventually Galek walks forward, grabs the guard’s crossbow and simply snaps it in half with his bare hands.

For one brief, magnificent moment, everyone stops.

The prisoners do not.

They run.

Galek watches them go. He sighs, turns and gives chase. Shortly afterwards he returns with both prisoners recaptured, because apparently escaping from the law is difficult when one of the people pursuing you can destroy military equipment with his hands.

The argument resumes, now expanded to include two prisoners, several guards, three charmed kobolds, a broken crossbow and an overturned cart. Eventually everyone achieves the rarest possible outcome in an adventuring dispute: compromise. They will all return to Quietdale. The guards can obtain another cart there and arrange a proper escort to Outreach. Nobody seems particularly happy with the solution, which is generally how one can tell that a compromise has worked.

By the time the Moon Blades reach the Guild Hall, however, the atmosphere inside is noticeably different. One of the other parties has already returned. Not all of them. Cass is dead.

The group that had taken the merchant escort was attacked by bandits on the road. Cass stayed behind to cover the others and the merchant while they escaped. Around the Guild Hall the story is already beginning to turn into the sort of thing people say when they are trying to make death hurt less. He saved them. He protected the merchant. He died for his companions. He died for the Guild.

Veller, the party’s leader, listens to it.

Then shakes his head.

“He didn’t die for the Guild. He died because someone put a bolt through him.”

There is not much anyone can add to that.

The party gives Bram their own report. Hett is dead. Ssesk escaped. The kobold attackers have been broken and driven out, but the person they were actually sent to rescue did not make it back. Bram is disappointed, but not angry. After hearing how Hett died he accepts that the party could hardly have prevented it. The payment can be sorted afterwards. Right now, there are other things to deal with.

Raff finds Metro. Normally there would be something waiting between them. A comment. A stolen piece of food. A sign pinned to somebody’s back. Another round in whatever quiet war the two rogues seem determined to conduct against one another until one of them dies of old age or embarrassment.

Not tonight.

Raff looks at her and shakes his head.

“No games tonight.”

Then he walks over to the tables. Cass had a place where he usually sat. Raff takes Cass’s cards and quietly moves them onto that spot.

A collection begins for Cass’s family. The Moon Blades contribute some of their own earnings, joining the rest of the Guild in putting together whatever they can. Later, Lord R - - - - Quietdale arrives. There is no grand entrance this time. No joke at Strongbrew’s expense. No drink. He simply approaches the collection, adds some of his own coin and leaves again shortly afterwards. No speech. No ceremony. Just money left behind for the people who will need it.

There is one more thing waiting in Quietdale.

Posters.

Missing students from Ranoir.

Two young people who disappeared while travelling outside the city. Two faces the party recognises immediately. The same students who had been arguing about fireballs in the forest. The same students Zarxius killed. Whatever justification had been easy to construct beside two freshly buried bodies suddenly looks different when those bodies have names, faces and people waiting for them to come home.

Strongbrew notices the posters.

He quietly takes them down.

Nobody stops him.

As evening settles over the Guild Hall, there is none of the usual noise. No music. No cards. No stolen bacon or ridiculous challenges. Nobody is trying to convince Strongbrew to lift something unnecessarily heavy. Nobody is trying to sneak a sign onto Metro’s back.

By the fireplace, candles are placed for Cass.



The Moon Blades gather with the others as the first wick is lit. Then another. Then another. Small flames slowly fill the space where the usual laughter should have been, reflected in half-finished drinks and empty chairs.

For once, nobody has anything clever to say.

End of Session Three.

Definitely worth the wait!

SESSION FOUR: GLISTENING DAN'S MERCHANT COMPANY

Morning at the Moon Blades Guild began as most mornings did: with bacon, paperwork and somebody somewhere having broken something expensive. Bram occupied one end of the long table with Edwin and Lord Reg!nald Quietdale, surrounded by reports, invoices, half-eaten breakfast and the accumulated administrative consequences of employing adventurers for a living. Raff had drawn breakfast duty, which meant Metro received both a plate of food and an accusation.

“Morning, Metro. Enjoy looking through my socks again?”

Metro answered him with a scowl. Raff considered this, added another helping of bacon to her plate and moved on. Apparently this constituted mutual respect.

Elsewhere, Zarxius continued his latest humanitarian project: teaching the three kobolds he'd brought back from the Bracken Mine how to perform household chores. The lesson did not go particularly well. A frying pan became involved somewhere along the way, and by the time breakfast was over somebody had concluded that Galek was no longer occupying the bottom position in the Guild's culinary rankings.

Edwin eventually called Strongbrew over and counted the previous day's payment onto the table. Four hundred and twenty-five gold pieces in total, including the bonus for preventing the mine from collapsing. When he asked how much of it the group wanted to contribute to Cass's family fund, the six adventurers immediately transformed into a committee of accountants and began arguing with numbers. Edwin eventually told them the fund would remain open until the evening and they could decide then.

He followed the payment with six healing potions supplied by the mining company as compensation for the dangers of the work. Bram regarded them for a moment.

“Probably cheaper than making the fucking mine safe.”

At the other end of the table, Reginald summoned Galek. He had an invoice. More specifically, he had an invoice for one Crown transport crossbow which Galek had recently converted into two substantially less useful pieces of Crown transport crossbow.

Galek explained what had happened. Reginald listened, considered the reasoning and nodded.

“Understandable. Next time, take the bolt out of the crossbow instead of breaking the whole thing.”


Four ordinary jobs were already hanging on the board while everyone ate. Sinkholes at Applewood Orchard. A stolen Crown survey chest. Trouble at the old pump house. Armed occupants at Warden's Rest. The routine was becoming familiar now: breakfast, jobs, arguments, go somewhere dangerous, come back alive and ideally produce fewer invoices than the previous day.

Bram, however, had a fifth notice.

Unlike the neatly printed Guild contracts, this one had been filled out by hand. Several sections had been aggressively crossed through and replaced in different handwriting. “BRING THEM BACK IN PIECES” had somehow become “capture where practicable”. “Proof means heads” had been amended into something Edwin was considerably more prepared to put through the accounts.

The people responsible for the North Road ambush were still operating around Split Oak and the old toll route. The people responsible for killing Cass.

The paper went around the table. The choice was immediate.

When the Guild surged towards the job board, Metro represented the group. She somehow managed to disappear into the movement despite several other adventurers launching themselves forward with considerably less subtlety. Two rival Blades made heroic charges of their own, but when the dust settled, the North Road contract belonged to them.

Now they needed a plan.

Walking back onto the road and shouting “bandits?” seemed unlikely to produce useful results, so the group decided to recreate the sort of opportunity an ambush crew might actually want. There was still a repaired wagon available in Quietdale. Raff found them a chest, which Metro immediately checked for traps because Raff had handed it to her. It wasn't trapped. Probably.

Copper coins were thrown inside to give it the reassuring clatter of enormous wealth. Zarxius prepared drinks for the journey. A mule named Muffin was acquired.

And then Amadeus Strongbrew became a businessman.

GLISTENING DAN'S MERCHANT COMPANY opened for business.

The actual Dan watched this unfold with the expression of a man discovering that his own name had somehow become very moisturised and very shiny. Strongbrew, meanwhile, was fully committed to the role and at one point suggested concealing himself inside the treasure chest so he could spring out when the bandits approached.

“Help me, step-bandit! I'm stuck!”

The suggestion was not adopted.

Some ideas are simply too powerful for responsible use.

The wagon eventually reached the place where Cass's party had been attacked. Eldric and Metro immediately went to work. Rain had softened the ground, but it had not erased everything. One set of bootprints led east, the stride clearly belonging to somebody with a limp. Another trail continued north: relatively fresh wagon tracks, with one damaged wheel leaving an uneven pattern in the earth.

While they investigated, another wagon approached along the road. Its driver was a charcoal merchant who slowed upon discovering what appeared to be a travelling commercial enterprise operating from the site of a fatal ambush.

He looked at the wagon. He looked at Strongbrew.

“So... what does Glistening Dan sell?”

Strongbrew drew himself up proudly.

“These glistening pectorals!”

There was a moment of silence.

The merchant sold them some coal.

As he drove away, the party heard him muttering something about “fucking weirdos.”

The coal went into the treasure chest.

Eldric and Metro followed the eastern trail and eventually discovered a stone marker carrying a thieves' sign, identifying the area as a suitable point from which passing merchants could be ambushed. Beyond it, the tracks continued towards an abandoned quarry and the ruins of an old tollhouse.

They returned to the others and, for once, an actual plan emerged.

Eldric and Metro would approach from behind and scout the buildings. Galek, Strongbrew, Dun and Zarxius would arrive openly aboard the wagon as Glistening Dan's travelling commercial catastrophe. If the gang took the bait, the scouts would already be behind them.

It was an excellent plan.

Then Eldric and Metro tried sneaking.

At the road, a bandit and his mastiff stepped in front of the merchant wagon and informed Glistening Dan that there was nothing for him here. Dun climbed out, looked up at the quarry walls and became immediately fascinated with what he enthusiastically described as a “stone monolith”.

Behind the tollhouse, somebody had already heard the scouts.

A woman emerged.

“It's a fucking ambush, you idiot! To arms!”

So much for subtlety.

The woman was Mara Vane. Somewhere higher in the quarry, hidden among the stone, was Oren Pike.

Oren fired first.

The heavy crossbow bolt slammed into Galek with brutal force and pinned him against the wagon. Mara shouted orders and the quarry came alive as the bandits moved into position.

Metro responded by reaching into her Bag of Tricks and producing a tiger.

The animal appeared behind Mara, a nearby bandit and the mastiff with roughly as much understanding of the developing situation as anybody else. All three suddenly found something more immediate to worry about.

Metro climbed onto the ruined tollhouse and found an angle over Mara. Her shot punched through the bandit leader's shoulder, wrenching one of her rapiers from her hand and leaving the arm hanging uselessly. Eldric finished the job shortly afterwards.

Mara Vane went down.

Strongbrew, meanwhile, remembered that Glistening Dan's enormous treasure chest was full of coal.

So he set it on fire.

The smoking chest was thrown across the quarry entrance, sending thick smoke into the approach and cutting off the firing lanes of the crossbowmen deeper inside. For a man whose normal tactical doctrine begins with muscles, this was disturbingly clever.

Zarxius locked onto Oren with Mind Spike, ensuring the sniper couldn't simply disappear into the workings.

Then he declared war on structural engineering.

Thunderous magic exploded inside the tunnels. Stone shifted overhead. Strongbrew followed this with an earth-shattering strike of his own while surrounded by the remaining bandits.

The quarry objected.

Rockfalls tore through the workings. Bandits were struck. Eldric was caught in one collapse and immediately ran for daylight. Strongbrew was not so fortunate.

The entrance came crashing down behind him.

When the dust settled, Strongbrew was trapped underground.

With Oren.

The cave was completely dark.

Strongbrew could see in the dark.

Oren could not.

What followed was later described as something resembling a heavily muscled Sonic the Hedgehog travelling through a cave. When it was over, Oren Pike was unconscious.

Not dead.

Strongbrew found an old escape passage, threw Cass's killer over his shoulder and started looking for another way out.

Along the tunnel he noticed something unusual in the stone: a small patch of warm, clay-like material embedded in the wall.

In the comfort no-one else was looking, he licked it.

Some instincts cannot be trained out of a dwarf.

The material tasted like material.

Strongbrew continued walking.

Back outside, the surviving mastiff refused to leave the body of its handler. It snapped desperately at a Mage Hand whenever Metro tried approaching the corpse, and when magic finally allowed the group to understand the animal, its entire world had reduced to a single demand.

“Stay away from dad!”

Galek's plans to acquire a dog became considerably more complicated.

Strongbrew eventually emerged through the hidden passage carrying Oren alive. With the fighting over, the quarry was searched properly. Dun collected a sample of the strange warm clay from the tunnel. Eldric found a bent card case bearing Cass's name. Oren's heavy crossbow was recovered alongside several damaged light crossbows, which the party repaired, and a map of the road clearly showed the original ambush point circled.

Metro found a Potion of Climbing.

Zarxius found a fine hat labelled “Mara.”

He kept it.

Strongbrew found a black-fletched crossbow bolt.

The bolt whispered a name.

“Cass.”

Strongbrew made the entirely sensible decision to give the suspicious murder-bolt to Dun.

Dun spent ten minutes ritually identifying it.

This turned out to be exactly long enough for the suspicious murder-bolt to decide that Dun was its new best friend.

The cleric was now cursed.


Back in Quietdale, the party delivered Oren Pike alive.

Bram smiled.

Actually smiled.

Mara's body was identified as that of the wanted gang leader, while Oren's heavy crossbow, Cass's card case and the recovered map provided more than enough evidence to establish exactly who the Guild had brought home. Two Crown guards took charge of the prisoner and the evidence.

For Bram, that was enough.

Cass's killers had been found.

The evening slowly returned to normal Guild chaos. Zarxius distributed some of the recovered coal amongst his adopted kobolds and bestowed Mara's excellent hat upon one of them, despite Metro having shown a suspicious amount of interest in owning it herself.

Then Zarxius's magic surged.

For a short while, everybody nearby became alarmingly vulnerable to anything sharp.

Bram immediately recognised the problem.

“Nobody fucking poke anybody.”

The kobolds had apparently missed this instruction.

Two of them decided that fighting over a kitchen knife would be an excellent way to impress their new master.

One perfectly ordinary stab later, Bob the kobold was dead.

There were now two kobolds.

Eventually the question of Cass's family fund returned.

Sixty gold came from the party's shared money. Strongbrew quietly added another sixty from his own pocket.

He didn't make a speech.

He didn't need to.

Pints simply began appearing around him as other members of the Guild passed his table.

Dun, meanwhile, had more immediate spiritual concerns. He went to Quietdale's church, placed himself before the gods and attempted to pray his new curse away.

The gods remained unconvinced.

Back at the Guild Hall, Edwin was still working through the day's accounts while Reginald finished the last of the paperwork beside him, signing one final line in the master register.

The door opened.

Lady Quietdale entered.

“Reginald?”

He looked up.

“Oh. That tone means I've forgotten something.”

“Yes, dear. Dinner.”

She held out one of his gloves.

Reginald took it, finished what he was writing and returned Edwin's pen. Lady Quietdale straightened his collar while she waited.

As they turned to leave, Bram shouted something after her.

For a moment she didn't react.

The small silver brooch at her throat turned towards Bram.

Then Lady Quietdale spoke up, her back still turned.

“I heard you, Bram. The answer is still no.”

“Worth asking.”

And with that, the Quietdales headed home while the Guild continued drinking, arguing and attempting to prevent the remaining kobolds from acquiring more cutlery.

Before the night was finished, there was one final matter.

The group had grown considerably stronger.

Before next session: advance to Level 5.

Ted stared at his newly available magic.

“I CAN CAST REMOVE CURSE NOW!”

Apparently the gods were no longer required.