Enris and Thuron trained for a week with the Jagged Blade thieves guild in Haeleth. Upon finishing their training, they were shown several secret entrances and exits to the guild tunnels under the city, and they got to meet most of the main guild members, including another Brotherhood of the Nine Field Agent, a man named “Andiron” (or “Andy”, as Enris and Thuron began calling him).
Also while at the guild, they were informed that while the heat had in fact died down quite a bit, they were still wanted men and that many members of the Haeleth City Guard were on Maeran Dun‘s payroll and were corrupt, and on the lookout for them.
They decided that since they had just spent a week’s time laying low, they should send a message to Nendorin (the steward of Castle Torryn and right-hand-man of Duke Sorsho) informing him that they were ready to start “phase 2″ of their mission, and that they needed their horses back (which they had left at the castle).
Andiron Leads The Way
They weren’t sure how to get a message to him without it being intercepted, and they weren’t sure how to get out of town without being caught, so they decided to look up Andiron and see if he had any suggestions or could help in any way.
They were told that “Andy” usually hung around at a Haeleth tavern called “The Singing Frog Sanctuary”, and were shown how to get there by one of the guild’s messengers. They went into the tavern, checked their weapons at the door, and Thuron ordered Andy and the three other men he was with a round of drinks. Enris and Thuron joined them, engaged in some small talk, and eventually, when the other three men left, they were able to ask Andy for some help (after confirming that he was, in fact, a Field Agent of the Brotherhood of the Nine).
Andy told them that he wasn’t aware of what their mission was, or why they were even sent for, since there were plenty of other Brotherhood Field Agents around that could have been utilized, but he was more than willing to help in any way he could, as he was a Field Agent himself. His primary mission was to report on the activities of the Jagged Blade thieves guild here in Haeleth, and ensure that they were staying in line.
Thuron wrote a quick note for Nendorin, and gave it to Andy, and they also asked him if he could show them how to get out of the city unseen.
Andy said that he’d deliver the note personally, and he’d show them out of the city while he was at it. They finished their drinks and followed Andy across town to the locked, walled garden of an old temple that wasn’t used anymore. It was “off limits” to trespassers, for even though it was no longer used for anything, the city leadership still considered it “holy ground”, and didn’t want anyone messing around in there.
Andy knew a way into the garden, and from there, behind the temple garden walls, they had a nice, hidden spot to engage in climbing over the city wall itself, which was adjacent to the temple. They made it over the city wall without much difficulty (even though it’s heavily patrolled by the City Guard) and split up… Andy went east at a fast pace, heading for Castle Torryn to deliver their message, and Enris and Thuron went north to wait at the crossroads (which they indicated they would in their note).
They waited until morning there, hidden in a copse of trees, and Andy came riding up (on a horse he “acquired” shortly after he left their company the previous night), with their horses in tow and with a message for them from Nendorin.
The message said simply:
Go ahead with the mission.
They asked Andy if he would accompany them, since they were about to embark on a crime spree (hijacking smuggled shipments of elven wine) and needed some manpower, and Andy said he’d help, plus he knew that in the nearby city of Mirka he could help them hire some mercenaries as well, if they needed them.
The Fight On The Road
They all headed north then, and stopped around noon for a break and some food.
Then the three members of the City Guard from Haeleth who were patrolling this stretch of road on horseback caught up with them.
They were asked their names, and their business, and decided to try his hand at making something up on the spot.
The guard didn’t believe him for a minute, and, since he was suspicious of these guys to begin with, he decided to take them into custody, just to be safe.
The guard drew his sword and said “Two of you match the description of someone we are looking for, but I would like all three of you to drop your weapons and accompany us back to Haeleth so we can sort this out.”
A standoff ensued, the other guards drew their weapons, and a fight broke out (of course). Andy rushed forward and showed the others that he was ambidextrous, drawing both a shortsword and a longsword and attacking the leader with blinding speed. Enris and Thuron followed his lead.
Enris started shooting arrows at the guard on the right, while Thuron pulled out his trusty rope and lassoed the guard on the left. A quick tug and the lassoed guard was pulled off his horse and stunned, lying in the road. Both of Enris’ arrows hit home but did only mediocre damage, and one of Andy’s sword attacks struck, and the fight continued.
At that point, Thuron decided to utilize one his new sub-skills (which is a spinoff of his Grand Master level rope use skill), which he called Quickbind. It entails being able to hog-tie someone after you’ve successfully lassoed and yanked them down to the ground. The opponent gets an “open doors” check (based off of their strength score) to avoid it while this is going on, and the character still has to successfully roll the skill check for it, but the result, if successful, is that the opponent is tied up and is staying that way until he is untied by someone.
Thuron rolled so well on his check for Quickbind (he got a 01!!) that I ruled he pulled it off in only a couple of seconds and had time to turn around and orient on a new target in the remainder of the round so that he could attack with his daggers first thing next round.
Which he did. The combination of his daggers and Enris shooting arrows at the guard on the right brought that man down, and Andy finished up with the leader.
They dragged the bodies (including the still-alive guard Thuron had hog-tied) off into the trees, and that was when Enris discovered another skill he hadn’t known he’d had. They decided to interrogate the guard to find out how much they knew and how they were found so quickly, and decided in frustration that Enris was going to start beating the tied up guard.
Unbeknownst to him, Enris had the “art of beating” skill, with a rating of a whopping 89%… needless to say, he got all the info out of the poor guard that they’d wanted (and found out that the guards only ran across them by sheer luck… they in fact had no idea who they were), and Thuron ended the guard’s life with a swipe of his dagger.
They covered the bodies of the guards in the copse of trees so as to make them difficult to find, and rode north to the city of Mirka with the guards’ horses in tow. When they got to town, they found someone willing to buy their surplus horses (and got way more for them than they should have, thanks to Thuron’s “haggle” skill), and found a place to hole up for the night.
Plotting And Planning
Their plans involved spending a couple of days trying to hire some mercenaries to help them with the robberies. They’d been told that garden variety footsoldiers only cost between 3 and 6 gold pieces a month to payroll, and that Mirka typically was a good place to find plenty of men for hire. What they didn’t know, however, was that since they were looking to hire men specifically to help them commit crimes against the most powerful man in this province (the merchant Maeran Dun), they are going to run into a lot of difficulty when it came to hiring people willing to work to that end.
Hiring people to commit crimes that will likely get them killed or executed never comes cheaply….
A map of Torryn province
