Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

As we play, occasionally we'll close a thread and open a new one to keep the size of threads (and relative complexity) down to a dull roar. Here's where we store the closed posts from the history of Errant Road.
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Graybeard
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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The group headed for the waterfront, Layla checking behind them now and then to see if the faint magical trail was still there. Yes, they were still being tracked. How long would it take before whatever spell or magical gadget they'd used on Eve would wear off? Luminosita alone could tell, and that only if he really existed, which Layla was pretty sure was not the case.

The first bar they entered may not have been the seediest on the waterfront, but it would do until a seedier one came along. The sign out front proclaimed it the "Golden Anchor," but the gilded paint had largely peeled off the prop hanging above the door. "Quick check first," Layla said. "It's okay if the clientele are Seeadler --" she dropped her voice while naming the guild -- "but if the barkeep has webbed fingers, we go somewhere else. We definitely do not want to drag them into this yet." A glance through the front door suggested a normal human clientele, though, so they entered.

It wasn't much of a bar, with room for maybe twenty people at the most, and no more than half a dozen other "customers" already inside. The fully human bartender (no webbing, Layla was glad to see) grunted as they came in and drew suspicious-looking tankards of beer without waiting for an order. The other customers barely gave them a glance. Layla could see that a pair did have the webbed digits of the Seeadler; they seemed to be keeping to themselves. The other four looked like the standard dock riffraff, probably day laborers spending the day's earnings on a liquid dinner. One turned and glared at them out of his one surviving eye, the other being covered by a patch, then wordlessly turned back to the rotgut on the bar in front of him.

"Well, now what?" she asked as soon as they were settled and the poisonous-looking ale was in front of them.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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"We wait." Leo sighed, swirling the off-colour beer in his glass with a doubtful expression. Eve, mercifully, had quietened down since her outburst on the wagon, although there were signs of bad temper in her eyes.

Jade wasn't paying attention to either of them, or Bert, who kept stealing glances towards the door as if expecting a full squad of battle-mages to come bursting through the door at any given moment. She was looking at the man with the eye-patch at the bar, remembering the brawl she'd had with one of Gault's lackey's a short while ago. It wasn't the same man, but the presence of a thug who looked like the man she'd blinded smacked of a bad omen.

"Why do I get the feeling something bad is about to happen?" She murmured, and sipped the drink in front of her with a grimace of distaste.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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As if on cue, the one-eyed man staggered to his feet and headed for Eve. [OOC: I asked my wife for a random number to pick which of the three women he'd make an ass of himself with, and Eve "won." /OOC:] "Hey, babe," he grunted, his voice sounding like that of a rutting elk -- a very drunk rutting elk. "Whyn'cha ditch the wimp there and come suck a real man's..." The sentence trailed off in a thunderous belch, but his meaning was clear enough.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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Eve looked at the drunk with an expression of fury. She stood up slowly, tugging at the man's clothes which a spare belt and a couple of needles had only partiality reined in, and deposited herself neatly into the surprised blacksmith's lap. She held her glare at the man, and ran a hand through Jade's red hair with a kind of off-hand affection that suggested the two were more than just friends.

"Wha-" Jade began.

"I'm a lesbian." Eve snarled, her tomboyish looks and manly dress adding weight to her argument. "So fuck off."

Bert coughed and sprayed a mouthful of his drink explosively across the table.

OOC She's not, btw, all evidence to the contrary. :)/OOC
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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"A lez-- lez--" The large, one-eyed man couldn't get his drunken mouth around the word.

"It means she screws other women, Jake," one of the other men called, his companions dissolving in laughter.

"Oh." Jake staggered back to the bar ...

... Just as a woman (at least it was probably a woman, the shape was female even if she was about six and a half feet tall, three feet wide, and possessed of more tattoos and scars than a typical army regiment) emerged through the back door.

"Now we're talkin'," she said in a voice that would break glass, as she lurched toward Eve.

"Are you sure this was a good idea?" Joe whispered to Layla as this alarming apparition approached.

"Uh, no ..."

[OOC: When thinking about the woman heading for the table, I'm unable to get the German assassin in "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" out of my mind.]
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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Eve sighed extravagantly and stood up from her 'seat'. At that moment, Leo was the only one who saw the look in the young woman's eyes; a mix frustration dancing hand in hand with repressed joy which told him everything he needed to know. His fists clenched under the table.

The mercenary strode up to the enormous woman with her drink still in hand, standing before her and draining the glass empty in one fluid, grimacing motion.

"Get ready." Leo muttered.

Eve looked over at the bartender.

"This stuff tastes like ditch water!"

And then, without bothering with further words, she brought the glass sweeping round and smashed it into the side of the huge woman's head.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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The glass shattered with a crash, leaving the enormous woman standing there, apparently unaffected. (Layla was impressed.) "Oh, tryin' to flirt, are we..." she cooed. "Good, good, foreplay is good ..."

The one-eyed man didn't take things quite so congenially, however. "Hey, bitch, whatcha tryin' to do to mah sister?" he growled as he reached for a sidearm, nor was he the only one at the bar reaching for a weapon.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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Jade and Leo didn't need to consult between themselves about what to do next. This was, unfortunately, far from the first time where Eve's temperament had gotten all of them into trouble. Even Bert wasn't so green that he failed to see the motivation to act quickly.

Leo was closest to the brother of the 'woman behemoth' who had now seized Eve by the collar and yanked the much smaller woman off her feet. While the mercenary struggled to gain leverage against the mountainous wench he pirouetted out of his seat, picking up the chair as he rolled, and brought it down smartly across the man's head before his pistol could clear leather.

This inevitably sent the man sprawling into a group of men who, in the law according to 'shit happens', all had drinks which dropped and spilled over the pants-leg of other surly looking gentlemen. As Jade hit one of the men reaching for a blade still at the bar with a low tackle and Bert ran to Eve's aid, Leo felt a hand fall on his shoulder.

He turned.

"You spilled my pint."

The complainer's right hook sent him reeling.

OOC Nothing like a bar-room brawl for pass-along story action./OOC
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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"Should we either get out of here, or intervene?" Joe quietly asked Layla as the bar fight got going. (Where had that one guy come up with the coonskin cap to whack Leo across the chops with?)

"Are you kidding?" Layla chuckled. "Most entertainment I've had in ages." She scooped up some peanuts from the dish on the table, debating whom to throw the shells at.

"Yeah, but we don't want our friends getting any more banged up than necessary," Joe persisted. (Wrong: that wasn't a coonskin cap, that was a live raccoon.)

"Oh, if you insist ..." Layla eyed the faked-up chandelier suspended from the high ceiling of the bar. Good; it was secured by a rope that ran back to the wall where she and Ace were blending into the woodwork. Better: it was producing its light by way of light globes, rather than candles, so it wouldn't set the place on fire if it just happened to come crashing to the ground. Best of all: it was located so directly above the combatants as to look like it had been created to add zest and excitement to a bar fight.

Where did she go? Joe wondered; he'd taken his eye off Layla for no more than five seconds to watch the merriment (and the swaying chandelier), and she'd just vanished. I know she's a full Wraith, but how do they do that? And then he realized that she was using another one of the Wraiths' tricks, and climbing the log walls as though there was an escalator attached to them.

There was a soft but sharp ting as Layla's knife bit into the rope.

Better yet, the chandelier started its descent just as the one-eyed man, who'd recovered remarkably quickly from being blindsided, leaped (Joe had to admit, the guy could get some serious hang time for someone his size) and grabbed on to the thing.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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[OOC: Having computer trouble, JR? To move things along slightly:]

Clearly, Layla thought, the big one-eyed man had seen one too many stage shows (or been involved in one too many bar fights), and absorbed a sense of drama for what one could do with a swinging chandelier. He'd been planning on making a spectacular return to the fracas from on high. Well, he was going to return, all right. He pulled back, started to swing, and jumped toward the melee ... just as the weakened rope gave way under Layla's knife.

"GAAAAAA" SPLAT! CRASH! TINKLE!

The light in the room went dim as most of the 20 or so light globes on the chandelier broke, not to mention the frame of the chandelier itself, and particularly not to mention those that it, and the big man, had landed on.

My work here is done, Layla thought with amused self-satisfaction. She jumped back down to where Joe was starting to convulse in laughter, landing with a Wraith's grace rather than the ... ungraceful ... way Jake had just piled into the crew at the bar. "That should hold them for a while," she said. "Let's gather up our people and get the hell out of here..."
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