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[subplotkudzu]

Here’s the breakdown of last session:

The quartet learned that they are no longer quite the talk of the town, as another group of young adventurers has seized the broadsheets via their clearing out of the Seawall lighthouse. The actual people in charge of the building had been slain by a mad crone and her ogre henchmen - hidden by the crone's magical abilities - and were shutting off the light and lighting fires elsewhere to run selected ships to their doom. The woman fell "to her death" off the tower and into the sea, but the ogres were dispatched, the lighthouse reclaimed and the shipping lanes made safe. These adventurers are not quite so dashing as our heroes, as they are mostly halflings and gnomes in the employ of insurance companies, but one can't have everything. Besides, our heroes have their own vessel on the seas, so protecting shipping lanes is good!

 

Deitrick assisted in the escort of his cousin, Cynthia von Earnst to the house of Lord Randall Ambleer  to begin their courtship prior to marriage. (Things appear as promising as they can for an young girl marrying a 50 year old with potentially terminal abdominal cancer.) There Deitcick was given the news that he has been officially rewarded Vulture Point as his place of fortification as per his duties as a Paladin, making him Ambleer's neighbor.

 

Ambleer has been overseeing the quartet of hidalgos (Grigory Canas (a fighting man), Dierdre Autain (a swordswoman), Carmel de la Agula (a noblewoman of roguish means) and Gadriel Bernadaux (an elvish wizardess)) who served alongside our heroes in the Battle for Vulture Point. His assessment of their work is tempered by his concerns about their base nature - the four are more in it for the money than the nobility of the cause - and Grigory's temper, which he finds distasteful. Still, of their actual work he has no complaints. Deitrick sighs, well aware of the amount of work it will take to clean up the garrison at Vulture Point and make it a true fortification, but it is his service to his emperor (who, for those of you just joining us, ascended to divinity a century ago, leaving behind a republic).

 

Ambleer also voices his concerns that there are likely still chaos agents in the city - he has analyzed some of the paperwork recovered from the chaos beasts during the war and found notes about recent events, but the army was marching from another direction (and a parallel dimension at that!), so someone must have been feeding it to them. In these scraps are notes indicating that these agents might be holed up in the Obelisk of the Winds, an inaccessible wizards tower in Ferrantino quarter. Deitrick returns to the city with this information, along the way being forced to defend himself from a juvenile arrowhawk - evidence that the chaos infestation has not been fully cleared from the area.

 

Hiram has been gadding about both on stage and in real life, using his newfound wealth and fame to forward his career, his claims against his uncle and his romantic interests - being young and beautiful has its advantages! He hires the law firm of Eisenwald, Eisenwald and Durr  and Rudolph Eisenwald - the same halfling lawyers who represent Deitrick - to pursue legal action against his uncle, pouring some of his funds into that. He also pours some of his funds into women, and is accosted on the street by a quartet of brigands hired by one of his former paramours to strip beat and humiliate him. He turns the tables on the four - mortally wounding one, driving two off and charming the third - with the aid of two war dogs summoned from his Doublet of Useful Items. Alas, the dogs don't go back to being patches, so Hiram now has a pet in the surviving dog.

 

Hiram's time on the stage as the dashing lieutenant in the summer run of "Passion's Iron Heart" at Konrad Von Torm's Legerdemain theater, and has managed to engineering his relationship with Ticity Von Torm, his boss's daughter, into being a consoling best friend rather than a love interest. (He has also prevented Ticity from learning about his dalliances with Elouise, the hall's elven flautist, which helps.) The Legerdemain is closed for a short while to make the preparations for Hiram's own play, "Battle for Vulture Point", detailing the events of last winter into spring, and he has completed all the work he can on his satirical masterpiece that will humiliate Raul de la Bellasteros, his sworn enemy.

 

Raul, who since he currently has the last cut is ignoring the young thespian, is a fierce swordsman with a foul temper, and Hiram knows he must be prepared for their duel - to this end he has hired a Scournbul fencing master named John Salt (a former islander, with faint scars on his cheeks, and a former galley slave for piracy, with manacle scars on his hands from being chained to the oars) who beings "teaching him to the test" - Salty John will investigate Raul's style while also teaching Hiram how not to just fence but to kill (and fight dirty). Hiram, well familiar with the nature of the theater and the grudge, is preparing for the fifth act while his foe is still in the second.

 

Cybele has been spending her time split between her suitors - Florian de la Bellasteros and Martin d'Ferrantino - and assisting the wizards counsel in their search of a cure to lady le Norte's madness (and by extension, everyone else driven mad in the war). During some of her time with Florian she sees that Jenna de la Bellasteros, the younger sister of Florian and Raul, is acting all flightly and in love but she thinks nothing much of it. The girl is only 15 after all, and will not even be eligible for suitors for another month and her 16th birthday.

 

Also in Cybele's romantic orbit is Fortune le Norte, the nephew of the illustrious elven leader of Orchid, and his aunt currently believes that Cybele is around all the time because she and Fortune are engaged to be engaged and keeps trying - in her more lucid moments - to push the two of them together. Fortunately for Cybele Fortune doesn't swing that way, and was instead asking her about Martin's brother Sebastian d'Ferrantino, the water priest whose reputation Cybele once saved, and who also shares a taste for "a sailor's love." On her return one night from fencing practice Cyble is forced to drive off a fiendish dire ape summoned by the insane noblewoman wizard, and Fortune agrees that something must be done soon.

 

Unfortunately the next day's wizard's counsel meeting between the tower wizards (who include Endoc Walsenski, a gnomish illusionist and diviner obsessed with signs and portents, Miriam Galeweather a human wizard obsessed with wind and air spells, Tully Grimm, an amiable halfling enchanter and Aslan Nightshade, who has forgotten to turn up, and occasionally the Loremistress Portia d'Ferrantino thought she is not here today) turns into an utter farce. The wizards are trying, but by bit, but are more consumed by their petty rivalries and concerns, and are only required by law to do so much. It's enough to make one want to run them through.

 

Melas has been ingratiating himself with a small circle of equally ambitious noblemen - many of whom are as drunk and venial as he pretends to be. From them he has learned quite a but about the de la Bellasteros family and their cousin Victor d'Berenger, who made an enemy of Melas the same night that Hiram and Raul set their course. Victor is cold blooded sort with an endless grudge list and a very fast sword arm, who gets into a lot of duels that leave a lot of people dead. There are even some rumors that he does some of these for money. Melas has been wise to avoid the man's path and blade to date, but he knows that their return engagement is inevitable.

 

Melas is asked by one of his drinking buddies, Olivar Sandoval, for a little assistance - he is supposed to pick up a package from Aslan Nightshade, but given the wizards bizarre reputation and Melas' friendship with him, might Melas pick it up for him. Tonight? Melas agrees and has an odd encounter with the wizard that involves chasing a blink dog, turning back time, listening Aslan pledge to teach Cybele how to play piano and too much sherry. He finally exits with a potion in a straw packed wooden box and heads home to where Olivar waits. Along the way he is accosted by three axe wielding toughs trying to drive him to an encounter with a sword wielding assassin, but Melas dispatches the lot of them (though not without considerable damage). He limps his way home and demands answers from Olivar.

 

Olivar, it seems, has been carrying on an affair for months with the young Jenna de la Bellasteros! But the girl is so foolish as to think it will actually end in marriage when she turns 16 next month. Marriage! More likely that she will talk about their illicit affair and Raul or Victor will drive a blade through Olivar's gut. No, thanks. Hence the potion from Aslan, which will eliminate her memory of him! Slip this to her and presto, problem solved! Melas shakes his head, points out that it is unethical, unlikely to work, someone already knows about the affair (hence the assassin trying to block the potion delivery, but Olivar has told only Nightshade and Tully Grimm and nether of them the whole story) and so on, and the only rightful course is to elope with the girl. Olivar wavers, but remains unconvinced of that course.

 

All of those personal things out of the way, there is shortly another meeting of the Wizards Counsel that ties things together - the presence of Lord Ambleer's papers and suspicions (delivered by Melas) have drawn the Loremistress into the meeting. Cybele and Fortune have also dragged Hiram in, hoping that Lady d'Norte's admiration for the boy might help keep her calm. Galeweather is fascinated by Ambleer's papers, enthralled that they contain the long lost secret for entry into the Pillar of the Winds, lost since the Chaos Invasion. The previous occupant was a friend of Lord Fireside, the great transmuter, who vanished before the invasion but who had mastered spells that could reshape reality on primal levels (like, say, Wish). If they could find Lord Fireside's resting place they would find his books, wich would contain the spell, which would heal the insane.

 

There is much bickering amongst the wizards counsel, as the entry to the tower requires that the wind be blowing on it from all four directions at once. Galeweather is forced to share her Gust of Wind spell with the other three (apparently Non-Loremaster Wizards are pretty damn possessive when it comes to magic), but our heroes volunteer to go into the tower once it is opened, and grab Melas for his assistance. Hiram grumbles about how he got dragged into this, but goes along….

 

Nearly to his death! Inside they face a pair of insectoid chaos beasts who have been recording all action in the city, a mass of ogre zombies and a wizard with his pet minotaur. They are ill prepared for this last encounter and suffer for it, with Hiram and Cybele being wounded unto the very door of death before Deitrick can restore them and Melas dispatch the bull-man. The quartet limped back out for assistance, with Melas carrying the head of the wizard they had faced to see if anyone recognized him.

 

That brings us to today