Aspirants of the Diamond Throne

The Mokers went up through the wine cellar, arriving on the ground floor of the bricked up house. Ke-tant decided to try the rope leading to the hole in the roof. After climbing up it a few feet his hands slipped and he fell heavily in his metal armour, crashing to the floor below. The party heard the guards at the door, attempting to open the lock. Ke-tant picked himself up and prepared to face them down. Mezezar, meanwhile, started his own scramble up the rope. The door opened and Ke-tant demanded that the guards let them leave, but they demurred. Ke-tant took a swing at the nearest one. The spellcasters all realised that they did not have any useful magics and either decided to flee or engage with weapons. Obur stood shoulder to shoulder with his giant companion, but they were outmatched.

Mezezar had slipped off the roof and had hidden in an alley to don the Face of Man that had shielded Milos’ identity. He heard the whistles of the watch from various directions, but he managed to find a path through them and headed for the merchant’s district. Mera also scaled the rope when she realised that she could not assist the others. Ke-tant was labouring fiercely at the door, but it was no use, just as he felled one of the guards he himself dropped bleeding to the floor. Obur realised that the game was up as another scratch would have left him in the same situation. He and Ke-Tant were taken into custody. Mera, meanwhile, had also heard the watch being summoned. She checked her garb and made herself look as nondescript as possible. Unfortunately she came across a patrol who brought her in for questioning to the local watch post. The guard who remained standing was able to identify her as one of the group when he returned to the watch post with his backup and a handcart carrying Obur and Ke-tant. The others who had been rounded up were let go.

The three Mokers were united in a single cell and questioned about what they were doing. Their excuse that they did not think that watchmen with a “V” symbol were not legitimate did not seem to cut any ice. The guard who questioned them had to return a couple of times before the Mokers would even discuss their situation. This seemed to frustrate him. The party was given no food or other assistance while they waited. After some time they were visited by Councillor Verlaine. He swept in to the watch post and conferred with the staff there before confronting the Mokers. Although he thanked them for their previous work against the cult, he emphasised that the rule of law must still apply and that their recent actions were unacceptable. He said that he wanted them gone from the city by morning. Obur managed to explain what they had found in the cult temple and what they understood of the risks they exposed, but Verlaine lost patience with their explanations and left them to ponder their fate.

It wasn’t long before a group of his men came in and dragged out the three Mokers forcing them to walk with them in the direction of the docks. The guards obviously had other plans too, for when they came to a secluded alley along their route, they halted and pummelled first Ke-Tant and then Obur into unconsciousness, making it clear to them that Verlaine’s guards were not happy with those who presumed to attack one of their own. Since the guards were all intent on this activity, Mera managed to slip away from her captor and ran pell-mell down the street, looking for somewhere to hide. The guard captain managed to wound her with a crossbow bolt, but she managed to hide on the landing of a warehouse and her pursuers could not find her.

Mezezar, meanwhile, had found refuge in the merchant district, in a comfortable inn called the Green Grain. He ordered food in his rooms, ate quietly and shoved a chair against the door as he took what rest he could while worrying over his companions.

Mezezar awoke in his room in the Green Grain, more rested than he had thought he would be. After preparing his spells for the day, he set off in search of his companions. He went in search of the nearest watch post to the bricked up house and when he found that it was on the border of Scurvytown, he thought that he better not go there alone. After coming across a loresong faen selling food from a stall on the street, he made contact with a litorian mercenary who agreed to act as his guard. With this insurance, Mezezar made his way to the watchpost and asked about the other Mokers. The watchman on duty looked through his ledger and informed the mojh that his companions had been released by Councillor Verlaine. Somewhat confused by this, though grateful, Mezezar wrote a note of thanks to Verlaine and delivered it to the Council offices in the old city. He then went back to the Scholar’s Quill to await his friends, or any other developments.

Mera had found refuge in the warehouse where she had eluded her guards. After a rough night spend curled up in amongst the crates and barrels, she stole a long cloak that hung from a row of hooks by the door and crept out into the city again. She made her way back towards the temple and Egil’s house to see if she could see any of her companions arriving there, or in the hope that Egil might emerge so that she could talk to him without being seen. After a couple of hours there, she thought that the Scholar’s Quill might suit her purposes better, so she found herself a suitable vantage point and waited.

Obur and Ke-Tant awoke in the bilges of a ship. They were aching from their beating and uncomfortable in the slight swell. What remained of their last meal, ended up colouring the bilge water that lapped around. Once they had steadied themselves, Obur used whatever channelling of the green that he could to ease their wounds. Then they turned to face the exit. A couple of steps up took them to a wooden door which was unlocked. When the opened it, a sibeccai guard looked down on them cordially enough and called up to his shipmates to inform the captain that they were awake. In a few moments Scarbelly, the captain they had questioned about Lucius, appeared in the doorway.

Scarbelly, it transpired, had been hired to dump the two in some southern port, but when he had noticed who it was had fallen into his hands, he felt somewhat more kindly disposed to them. He was offering a choice to them, where they would have to provide a service to him and he would locate their companions and set them all down near Khorl to go their own way once the task was complete. When he mentioned that he also had their gear, which he would return the deal was sealed. Yoval, the captain’s first mate, set off into Khorl in a rowboat accompanied by four of the crew. They headed for the Scholar’s Quill and asked for Mezezar. Mera had noticed them going in and realised that they were from Scarbelly’s crew, having contemplated splitting the skull of one of them with her crossbow a few days earlier. She waited outside. Mezezar came down from his rooms and talked to the abrasive Yoval. He was persuaded to go with them to the Bloody Vengeance when he could see no reasonable alternative.

On their way through the city to the docks, Yoval and his men spotted someone shadowing them. When Yoval asked Mezezar what was going on he claimed ignorance, so Yoval and two guards continued on while two others went off to ostensibly obtain some supplies. Mera decided to follow the main group and was surprised and overwhelmed by the two sibeccai five minutes later. She was unarmed, injured and unprepared, so she submitted to their directions and joined Mezezar in the boat. Soon the four Mokers were all united and they heard from Scarbelly about the mysterious haunted ship that his crew were too superstitious to board. He had obtained information about a chest that had been on that ship when it sailed originally for the south, but it had not arrived. Now it had returned to the waters near Khorl, drifting slowly, with strange lights coming from below decks. The Mokers were to bring the chest back to Scarbelly, he felt sure that they would not be able to open it. All other items that they found on the ship they could keep. The Mokers agreed.

Two days of sailing later, the Bloody Vengeance arrived near the mysterious vessel. The Mokers got in to a rowboat which was crewed by four of the sibeccai. Scarbelly lowered down a number of potions and supplies to them, telling them to return what they did not use. Soon the Mokers stood on the main deck of the ship. The craft had seen better times, its main mast was gone, only a few feet of a jagged stump remaining near the large metal grille that covered the cargo hold. The decking itself was damp and slippery and seemed to be rotting in places. The party had to walk upward to reach the door under the forecastle as the deck sloped away behind them and to port. The door to the cabin was warped with sea and wind and took Obur’s efforts, after the others had failed, to haul it open. The whole room was covered in cobwebs, but they could just make out a desk near the back of the room and a set of stairs leading down to one side.

The Mokers paused and lit a torch to try and clear the room of the webs, but when they set the flame to them, only those in the path of the flame shrivelled, the entire web did not catch. They were not surprised though, that their efforts disturbed a large spider which dropped to the floor near them and attacked. It did not last long. The painstaking clearing of the webs continued so that they made a free path to the desk and to the stairs, but they heard a muted scuttling and scrabbling which made them withdraw to the open deck as a swarm of smaller spiders boiled up from cracks in the decking and attempted to crawl all over the party. In response the Mokers followed the withdraw and burn policy, charring areas of deck where they had recently stood and taking a large proportion of the arachnids with them. When several oil flasks were spent, the Mokers had dispatched enough of the small creatures for the remainder to be no threat.

The party re-entered the cabin and searched the desk, finding a sea-chart of the eastern sea and the location of the southern cities. They took this with them. Next the group headed for the stairs. At their foot they came across an opening which was covered in fine webs. They burned through this, but attracted the attention of two more large spiders. These they dealt with, but Ke-Tant was bitten by one and its poison weakened him.

Pressing on through the companionway, the Mokers opened doors into a number of unoccupied cabins. They passed a raised platform that was covered in webbing that presumably lead to the deck below, but they left it unmolested. Their mere presence stirred up another swarm of spiders, so they beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs and laid another oily fire trap for the unthinking arachnids. When this swarm was dealt with, they returned below and found their way to the front of the ship. This large cabin contained two oddly shaped cocoons of webbing suspended from the ceiling. When the party approached the cocoons began to twitch and spin on their cords. Taking no chances, the Mokers smashed them with their weapons before anything could emerge. When they were done, two creatures fell out dead on the floor of the cabin. They had once been sibeccai and seemed to wear the uniform of Scarbelly痴 crew, but they had been overcome by spider-life and now in place of eyes had thousands of tiny arachnids crawling around. The party was glad that they had dealt harshly with them. They found no chests or other things of value here, so they proceeded towards the stern.

In another cabin that spanned the width of the ship, they found two more cocoons. The floor below these was decorated with a circular pattern or glyph drawn in blood and the room itself was cleaner than the others that they had encountered. At the foot of the starboard wall sat a wooden chest. The Mokers did not hesitate to destroy the contents of these cocoons, though they took rather longer over the chest. Mera cast a spell to detect the magical aura痴 coming from it and indeed she discovered that there were four separate faint auras, though she could not distinguish them. They pondered whether it was safe to open the chest.