Katelina’s Journal – The Package, Part One
[u][b]Middle Winter, Zarantyr, 2nd Week, Third Day (Zol)[/b][/u]
As Katelina lay in the great bed wrapped in the luxurious fur blankets, she looked around at the golden goblet filled with a fine wine that she can still taste the faint tracings of on her tongue. Kate rolls over to pick up the goblet, a cat screeches in the distance, the fire crackles and she grabs the goblet it is cool in her hand.
“Wait a second!” she mumbles.
She wakes up with a start, rubbing her eyes, looking about the sparce inn room that Pen has been kind enough to let her stay in but something isn’t right. As she looks around to figure out what this feeling is a shadow detaches itself from the wall.
“I have a job for you” a familiar voice says.
“And you couldn’t tell me in the morning Grunner?”
“There is a woman, she has just arrived in the city. She has a box, I want you to follow her and find out what you can and if what ever is in the box is valuable or if it leads to something worth while”
With this he throws a piece of paper in her lap, she looks down and picks it up.
“Is there anything el….”
She notices he is no longer in the room. It bothers her he is never usually this enigmatic and stealthy but a job is a job, and she looks at the paper.
Still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, Katelina drags her petite body from the bed and dresses for her morning adventure in the city of towers, Sharn.
Arming herself, and securing the light chain shirt that jingles softly as she moves, she heads down to the southern gates in the Dura District – a district made up of tightly packed together towers and scrap heaps, but never the less, its “home”.
She stands out like a sore thumb down here, with all that fancy clothing. A human woman, an aristocrat dressed to impress would have looked better at House Oriens Annual Ball, but not here. She was looking for trouble, and it was hot on her heals.
As she flitted into an alleyway, I heard her scream and gave chace, but still kept to the shadows as best as possible, trying to show off the “innocent bystander” look.
She was been attacked by a well armed man and some kind of sorcerer. Two warforged and a halfling cleric as well as another human just happened to be in the area to defend her. I tried to assist, my dart missing some hideous pervasion of what was a goblin. The sorcerer, heavily injured by the huge warforged that was called “RAM”, grabbed her partner and teleported away to safely, leaving us to fight the two mouthed, four armed goblins.
At this stage, I heard the civilians call out for the city watch – they should have taken hours to respond, but damn it, as some spell grabbed my mind and held me still, the others defeating the last of the goblinoid wretches, they appeared and charges us with “murder!” – I broke free of the spell and tried to run, not prison… not again.. Noooooo….
They caught me with a quick throw of a set of bolas and gagged me, dragging us off to jail…
My mind screamed for release, my body would not cooperate, paralized with fear, I let them strip me of my weapons and throw me in a cell with my new found “friends”.
Ram – the “fighter” warforged, and a bit dim witted – although, occasionaly, he came up with some good sparks of thought.
Bender – his diminutive friend, also a warforged, but capable of ensnaring and burning another’s mind – a psion, or some form of onw
Antol – their halfing “carer” – a healer cleric.
Torqemada – a human… inquisitor I believe or some justice bringer, but not the paladin types -they give me the bumps…
We were freed of our sentence by the woman, and summoned to her house in Skywatch – I would so love to find away into one of the houses and rid them of some prisely treasures, but that dream will have to wait.
Her name was Eladrin, a noble in the house of Cannith. Her and an aquantance, an artificer were seeking the secrets of an artifact. She had a box, and wanted us to take it to him – Geldrom – 3 hours out of town – the offer, 1000gp Each!
I nearly coughed…
Well we took the job and headed out there, only to find that he was been besieged by Suagin. Evil sea creatures. In exchange for opening the box, we helped to rid him of the menace.
The damn creatures nearly killed me, and I felt darkness threatened to take me, only to be brought back to the light by Antols magic.
We succeeded and opened the box, a map and shaped rods (triangle, square, hexagon) taking us back to Sharn and to Dura, and the Rats Market – where we found a goblin named Scarran who took us there for the pricely sum of 10 gold. Ram paid up.
We found the hall of valves and were attacked again by the two mouthed goblins and some tentacled undead humanoid beast. Again, I felt the touch and grasp of death, again to be saved by Antols magic….
We found the door covered by the symbol of house Cannith and (a spark of intelligence from Ram) used the Box to opend the trapped door. It opened up onto a long corridor and after defeating some nasty, large, beatles, we entered what was once part of Sharn itself.
A great expanse of a room full of ruined buildings and brooding shadows… Some large rats with spikes and claws attacked us and were were able to defeat them, my deft hand strike one on its head sending into and unconscious sprawl on the ground. I had to go back and finish it off….
We found an ancient ruined temple, a font that was still active and contained healing magical liquid. Again we explored and found another building, this one in tact but the door sealed shut and barred from the inside. We scaled the wall and dropped down through a whole to be accosted by two warforged dogs, known as iron defenders. defeating them revealed two more rods, and finding a ruined dog under rubble gave us a third. 6 in total, 2 of each shape, opened the vault door inside this building what must have been a forge of some kind.
We rested here before opening the door. The small room contained a single pedestal and a adamantium plate called a skeamer – a 7 part metal disc that was party of a large magical item.
In here we also found another map, that contained 3 different areas but definitely not of Sharn. Somewhere else, and I feel somewhere far.
Other treasures included a potion of mage armour, 4 gold ingots at around 50g each, 2 sacks of coins, 100 sp, 100 gp, old though, perhaps even before the Last War.
a suit of scale mail armor, 2 small sized shields, a long sword and mace and some other weapons, master work, taken by the others. I at least got a good healing potion and a finely crafted rapier, also master work.
As we opened the door to leave, a dagger caught me right in the chest, missing the edge of my chain shirt and my heart… but everything went dark once again…