Vapourware [Play-by-post] Lamentations in Averoigne

[L'ennui]

Does the crown seem like it would be a valuable object, or is it mostly weird antlers?

 

[SoupNazi]

Finn actually smiles contently. "No, nothing's wrong... it's just... very warm. It's the most comfortable I've felt since we entered this forsaken place."

 

[AdamReith]

Content that the silk garment does not pose any immediate threat, Grima suggests to the group that perhaps they should return topside.

Plenty of prizes had been found to satiate the groups interminable greed, at least for the time being.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Finn actually smiles contently. "No, nothing's wrong... it's just... very warm. It's the most comfortable I've felt since we entered this forsaken place."

Requin uses the shillelagh to remove the cloak off Finn, just in case.

 

[SoupNazi]

Finn flips Requin off and takes the cloak back. "It's fine. It's literally just making me warm, putain."

 

[L'ennui]

"You never know around here, it could just as well turn you into an oversized toad."

Guillemin attempts to lift the crown from the dead man's head.

 

[AdamReith]

"Imbéciles, save it for the tavern."

Grima tries to snatch the silk garment from Finn so it doesn't get fouled any further.

 

[SoupNazi]

Finn will literally fight Grima for it.

 

[AdamReith]

"You'll have to catch me first!"

Spoiler

Grima snatches the silk garment and runs out of the dungeon.

 

[SoupNazi]

Finn lets the child be a child and run.

"Everyone ready to move out?"

 

[nikolokolus]

Are you exploring further, or withdrawing to the surface?

 

[Grimgravy]

Spoiler

We're heading back to town.

 

[AdamReith]

Spoiler

For me this a good time to return to Les Hiboux.

 

[nikolokolus]

Tempting as the stone door and its lever might be, the troupe withdraws and carefully retraces their steps back to the partially collapsed processional chamber and the secret ladder to the barrow above. Nothing impedes your progress and you are back out into the uncomfortably hot, humid and fetid air of the plateau. Marcus bids you farewell and retreats inside the barrow entrance.

The air is still quite clear (relatively speaking) and the path is starting to become quite well trod back to town. After trudging through the muck and the mire for about 5 hours, you see Les Hiboux's brick ovens sending little curls of smoke skyward and stumble into the village about a half-an-hour before sunset. The village seems oddly peaceful and oblivious, though some of the retiring brick haulers look up and nod a wordless greeting -- your comings and goings becoming something less unusual than it was a month ago.

Jakob is still working, when you push his shop door open and the little door bell jangles and announces your arrival. You take out your prizes for him to survey. The white gold necklace he hefts and then bites into it. "Pretty, but mostly silver. I could give you 150 deniers for it." His eyes seem to go especially wide at the sight of the golden torc, with its stylized owl heads on the ends. "My goodness!" he exclaims. He takes hold of it and bustles to his back room. A few minutes later he returns and his hands are shaking ever so slightly, "This will take some time to find a buyer . . . but if you cannot wait, I will offer you no less than 7,000 deniers here and now! Perhaps you would get a better price if you spent a great deal of time asking around Vyones, but I doubt it. Do we have a deal?"

End of the Fourth Expedition

We can handle any downtime activities, carousing etc. in the group chat message. You'll have to decide how you want to handle the special items you recovered as possible replacement shares for the money the torc might fetch.

 

[Grimgravy]

Ganelon offers to try to heal Marcus before we leave him. "Normally such such a prayer would be for the living, and you may have the means to heal yourself, but I did want to offer. God offers redemption to all who seek it truthfully. And I believe you do."

 

[nikolokolus]

Ganelon prays and lays hands on Marcus who sits stock still during the ordeal. When Ganelon finishes his prayer . . . nothing appears to happen. Marcus is no better (and no worse) from what you can tell of his condition. The notch in his collar bone is still there and the rent in his leathery flesh in his neck is still torn. Marcus offers a brief word of thanks, "It is as I suspected Christian, My curse is handed down by Mithras himself. I suspect I will have but one opportunity in this dead vessel to redeem myself. Cruel perhaps, but better than I deserve . . ."

 

[nikolokolus]

Interlude . . .

The company sleeps soundly in their beds at the Cock & Strumpet and the next morning starts the long, thirty miles walk to Vyones to replace destroyed armor, gather supplies, and pursue various entertainments and personal goals (stopping the first night at the Inn of Bonne Jouissance to rest and eat). Their two days and two nights in Vyones are anything but restful and relaxing.

The first night, Grima spends hundreds of deniers on casks of wine, buying rounds for the house much to the delight of the dozens and dozens of patrons that seem to materialize out of nowhere as the night wears on.

Requin the marshdweller, makes quite the spectacle of himself, getting roaring drunk and serenading the town with his awful renditions of various folk songs and performing some of most clod-footed dancing anyone has ever seen in Vyones. As people point and mock, his companion Guillemin takes exception to their japes and jeers and proceeds to break about a half a dozen chairs, and three leaded glass windows. The proprietor forces him to pay up no less than 80 deniers to cover the damages or he threatens to call the guards.

Meanwhile, Daphne makes the acquaintance of a charming young man and they spend a wild night together. The next morning she awakes to find that aside from a small portion of money she had secreted away, she's been robbed to the tune of nearly 1,000 deniers! There is a small note left behind, saying that her debt to the Thieves Guild is now considered paid in full.

The last night in Vyones proves to be even more fraught with peril. Finn, in a bout of drunkeness, decides to get into a philosophical debate about the merits of Christianity compared to the benefits of the Mithrasian Mysteries. The heresy proves to be too much for this Catalonian knight bearing, a cross of black to bear, and he challenges the young man to a duel at dawn. That evening, sensing that his companion might be in over his head, Grima rents a room at the high-end inn the knight is residing at and casts a ward of Wizard Lock on his door, preventing him from attending the duel to his great shame. When the knight Armand doesn't show, Finn seeks him out in his apartments and asks him if he wishes to carry through with it. Mollified and humbled, the knight begs apology for speaking out in drunkeness and acknowledges that Finn is no coward, and the two men agree to part ways, satisfied that honor is satisfied.

Nursing hangovers and considerably lighter in their coin purses, the five companions walk back to Les Hiboux where they reconnect with Ganelon six days later. The village is much the same as they left it, except that the strange, slightly hostile group Albanians have returned and are lounging in the common room of the Cock & Strumpet. The young lad who was badly injured still seems to be limping badly and there are bandages still visbible on his hands and face (though just glimpsed underneath the deep cowl of his cloak that he keeps perpetually pulled up over his head). Some of the Albanians nod slightly as you pass by, but offer no overly-friendly welcome home. You crash heavily on your beds knowing that the dawn will bring with it more toils and terrors that await you in the tombs at the heart of the swamp.

The Fifth Expedition to the Barrow Tombs Begins . . .

 

[SoupNazi]

Finn is bright and early at the group's gathering place; practicing sword forms well before dawn; using the bastard sword two-handed, one-handed with a shield, as well as experimenting with the bastard sword in his right, and the whip in his off hand. Training while waiting for his compatriots to arrive. The mule is idly standing nearby, eating carrots from a sack left on the ground.

 

[AdamReith]

The Magpie flips down from a nearby rooftop unseen and unheard.

He enjoys a morning apple as he waits for his cohorts to assemble.

 

[L'ennui]

Guillemin exits the inn in a half-awake daze, but his usual morning stretches manage to wake him up. He soon feels ready to take on another day's work, even though he knows it could cost him his life.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Requin gives a few test swings on his new weapon, eager to test it out on someone or something.

 

[Grimgravy]

"Once more into the dark, my friends?"

 

[Snorkack]

"Back to the vast underground crypt, I reckon? Sure, lead the way, holy man!"

 

[L'ennui]

"Aye, best get moving."

 

[nikolokolus]

In the days before they left for Vyones, a few of the troupe set out into the swamp to find the hag Mere Antoinette, the so-called Mother of Toads.

Jacques guides you to a wooden plank road that connects various hammocks and terminates at a small hut on stilts about a half mile into the swamp. There are disturbingly large ripples in the water surrounding her hut, but you arrive safely and climb the rickety stairs up to her porch that stands a full 10' off of the ground. A rap on the door, the sound of shuffling feet, and a face peeking through a narrow crack in the door looking at you all suspiciously.

You make your salutations and opens the door wide enough for you all to see a strikingly handsome woman of middle years, with fine, high cheek bones, raven black hair, shot through with a few strands of grey. "Ah, let me guess. Have you come to gawk or do wish some love potion? Or perhaps you seek a hex for your neighbor's milk cow?" She snickers and laughs, "Well, out with it, I haven't got all day you know."

You explain your needs and recent ordeals and she is quite taken aback at the prospect of real magic and whatever might be animating the dead. Her terms to identify your objects are quite simple. If you can return with canoptic jars or can secure the spices, unguents or other funerary apparatus used to prepare bodies in the barrows, or can bring her the head of a mummy, she will identify any object you wish her to evaluate on a one for one basis. She will also identify an item in exchange for any unidentified magical object that she deems interesting to her. The dagger, sword, cudgel, wand and raiment are all of interest.