Then one became two

Trav’s character met up with Chad’s character while still on that remote mountain road.

Chad’s character too, Trav discovered, had no memories, just a horse, some miscellaneous equipment and traveling gear, and was sharing the road with him. He discovered him after turning a corner and there was some other person up ahead of him who was apparently spying on someone himself.

Trav approached, and whispered “what are we looking at?”, startling the man in front of him.

They introduced each other, discovered that neither of them knew what their own names were, and noted immediately that they were both missing the same finger on their right hands.

They commenced spying on the same group of soldiers that had been hanging around before. They were resting by a small river ford.

The soldiers walked their horses across the ford, and continued down the trail, and the two amnesiac characters followed, only to lose them somehow as the mountain pass opened up.

Then they were fired on by a crossbowman (one of the five soldiers who had been left behind to ensure nobody was following them).

At that point, Chad’s character discovered that he was deadly accurate with a shortbow. Trav had already found out that he had some skill at acrobatics, and was also equally deadly with a thrown dagger.

They quickly dispatched the crossbowman before he could even get a second shot off, found his horse and took it with them. They left the mountains and went into open country, continuing down the same road. They still didn’t know where they were going, but that was the direction they had already been heading, and they were assuming those soldiers had gone that way as well, so that’s where they decided to go.

They wound up in a small castle whose steward — named Nendorin was apparently expecting them. They learned their names (Chad was Enris Del’Quaran and Trav was Thuron Zaral), and were given rooms so that they could rest up, as the “Lord of the Castle” would arrive the next day.

They rested, and were awakened in the morning by the sound of horns outside. They arose and had a brief conversation with the castle steward, who, upon discovering that they had lost their memories, advised them to keep that a secret and to “play along”, as the matter for which they had been sent here was of utmost importance.

The castle lord (a Midrythian Duke named Lord Verin Sorsho) informed them that the reason they were sent for was because “The Brotherhood of the Nine” was in danger of being discovered as having influence in this area, threatened by a powerful merchant prince who had always been trying to get Lord Sorsho under his control.

Lord Sorsho, a retired thieves’ guild master, had arisen to rulership over this entire remote Mydrithian province via his hereditary line. He, through the Brotherhood of the Nine, exercised a firm measure of control over all thieves’ guilds in this area, though this was not common knowledge. Most people saw him merely as a hereditary lord of a rather small, backwoods province of this empire.

The merchant prince in question, a wealthy, powerful, but very behind-the-scenes man named Maeran Dun, made his fortune by smuggling elven wine brought in overland from the west, on a long journey from Raedelthynys. While elven wine itself wasn’t illegal in Midrythia or Torryn province, one of the key elements of power the Emperor had was in controlling all trade into and out of his empire.

The more valuable the trade, the bigger the crime it was to do so without the empire’s knowledge.

Because this merchant prince was threatening to bring the whole thing down by his bringing attention to this small, remote province before the Brotherhood was ready to withstand that level of scrutiny, Lord Sorsho had sent word back to Brotherhood headquarters that he needed some field agents, preferably low-profile ones that wouldn’t be known or recognized. Hence the two characters now played by Chad and Trav.

Maeran Dun could not be eliminated outright, as he was far too important in this area and that would have dire consequences. Lord Sorsho informed them that instead, he planned on disrupting the merchant’s smuggling operations in the area and hitting him where it hurts, and hopefully spurring the powerful man into making a mistake.

To do that, they would need to break into his main offices, trash the place to make it look like a lowbrow burglary, and get his secret shipping schedules.

The two characters still didn’t know what happened to their memories, however. They played along, and were set up with a short list of contacts in the nearby large city of Haeleth (where the merchant had his offices) through whom they could get information and equipment and hirelings if they needed them.

They then went to Haeleth, hooked up with a couple of their contacts, and started surveillance on the merchant prince’s main warehouse (part of which contained his main offices).

They made note of the watch schedules, how much security there was, and paid for some other info on what kind of security was inside as well, and made their plans.

They waited until after midnight (after the first group of guards switched off to the second), then Enris sneaked around the block and waited in the shadows while Thuron used his rope use skill to send 60′ of rope and a grappling hook across the street (from the roof of their inn) to rig up a tightrope. He made it across the tightrope, and was poking around the roof, but then Enris impulsively decided to take out the outside sentry with a called-shot arrow, which missed, and all hell broke loose.

He missed on his second arrow as well, and was spotted by the sentry, who turned and charged him.

He hit him with one arrow, and Thuron dropped the guard with two fantastic shots with thrown daggers from the roof of the warehouse, forty feet above.

The exterior guards taken care of, Enris and Thuron were poised to break into the warehouse.

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