Chapter 26 - Party Crashing

Day 54

As the party proceeded westward along the suspended roadway, it slowly descended and by mid-day it was at ground level, the wood giving way to paving stones. The giant trees now fell behind them, giving way to trees of a stature that the party was accustomed to. To their right could be seen the lakeshore, while the swamp was now some distance to their left, their presence obvious only due to the mist that seemed to be perpetually suspended in the air above.

The party now found themselves considering their options. Should they give up on their current journey and travel to Aldur's homeland in search of rest and new clues, or attempt once more to enter the elven city. After considerable debate, Trykaar convinced his comrades that they should continue westward along the lakeshore until they found a village where they could obtain a boat. They could then, he argued, attempt to approach the city via the lake.

In the late afternoon, as the road passed through the latest of many wooded areas, Neela spotted movement in some bushes alongside the path ahead of them. Alerted, the party were approaching cautiously when a pair of figures in plate armour stumbled out onto the path. Hailing these armoured figures, the party was met with a response in elvish that loosely translated as, "Thisha tollroad gotta pay. Platinum?" The second figure hiccuped and added, "Yeah platimun. Platinum." Agreed on a price they tottered in place, heavy swords scraping the ground by their sides.

As the party contemplated these two figures with some curiosity, a third, more lithesome and definitely female figure emerged from the bushes, scolding the two who had proceeded her. Making appologies for her brothers' boorish behaviour, she introduced herself as Ingwe Tarminastir and invited the party to accompany her back to her village.

As they proceeded along the path to the village, Ingwe questioned Neela as to whether she might be one of those orken women who have reputations for both fierce fighting and territoriality. Answered in the affirmative, she then requests her aid in returning a comely young human male named Elek who was enchanted away by her cousin, Olwe. Apparently he had been claimed by Ingwe upon his arrival in town the week before, who was perturbed that he would be stolen so flagrantly by Olwe. The party was not particularly interested in becoming involved in the young elf's affairs, but after affirming that the elf would help them to re-enter the city in return, the party decided to offer their assistance.

Arriving at the elf's town, the party found it to be a bizarre community. Buildings of infinite variety in design and quality were scattered about as if some giant had digested towns from around the world, then vomited them up here along the lakeshore. Scattered amongst the buildings were elves, gnomes, and various fey creatures in various states of inebriation. A centaur had passed out in the middle of the pathway. A plume of thick, oily smoke rose into the air from the direction of the harbour, where a strange sail-less boat was moored. Ingwe wasted no time in leading them across town, through a market area, to a street where a spectacular party was in progress, spilling out from a large circular building to cover the surrounding grassy yard for a hundred feet in every direction. A group of musicians were seated on a makeshift stage, playing a variety of string and wind instruments. This was Olwe's house and somewhere in the midst of the party was the human named Elek.

Ingwe had previously remarked on the party's state of cleanliness. Their clothes were caked with mud from weeks of travelling and they carried a slight stench from their journey through the swamp. Resolving to make them presentable, Ingwe took them back to her house and had them bathe and make themselves more presentable before returning. Thus is was already well into the evening when they found themselves back at the party, having promsied to extract Elek and return with him to a spot where Ingwe would wait out of eyesight of the partygoers.

On arriving at the party, the group split up in search of Olwe. Leandrie soon found an elf who, seeing his human face, happily volunteered that he had seen her entering the house hot long before. Leandrie then set off to gather his companions, but was interrupted by a lean, tough-looking gnome who seemed to bump into him purposefully. The gnome struck up a conversation, remarking that he'd heard that Leandrie and his companions had come from the direction of Tarminastir city, and wondering what had brought them there. Leandrie replied that he and his companions had gone there seeking healing. The gnome then mentioned that he had spoken with one of the gnomes who accompanied them across the swamp, and asked why they chose that route and not the safer route of traveling by land. When Leandrie replied that it was quicker to travel through the swamp, the gnome seemed to lose interest and drifted away.

When the adventurers had once again gathered in one place, it was decided that Leandrie, Neela, and Aldur would enter the house in search of the human boy while Trykaar and Jrak hung around outside keeping watch. There was only one entrance to the two-story house, though there were also a number of stained glass windows. Once inside, they found that the front half of the house was a single giant room full of partying elves, gnomes, and assorted fey creatures. The back half of the house was closed off, with four doors on the the first floor and another two doors on the second floor, accessed by a stairway and balcony overlooking the main room. Neela wasted no time in marching up the stairs to the balcony and, in full view of a room full of more than a hundred partygoers, kicking down a door.

Conversation stopped, everyone looked up, and a pair of pissed-off pixies took wing, one of them casting a spell that enchanted the boorish half-orc, overwhelming her senses with an irresistable urge to dance. As much as she tried to fight it, she found her limbs moving against her will and she began capering too and fro on the balcony to the accompaniment of much fey laughter, her heavy steps keeping time with the faint music wafting in from outside. Fearing that further actions by his companion might incite the crowd to a more violent response, Leandrie hurried up the stairs to the balcony and attempted to calm the partygoers with calming words. He was successfuly in doing so, but as soon as the enchantment wore off Neela resumedprovoking the pixies, canceling out any beneficial effect that Leandrie's word were having. At Leandrie's urging, Neela began to slowly make her way back to the entrance, the partygoers clearing a narrow passage for her to stalk through.

Meanwhile, Aldur has taken advantage of the Neela's unplanned distraction, to cinch his belt of invisibility, an act that went unnoticed by the drunks around him who were staring an the half-orc's antics. Making his way cautiously across the room, he decided to check out the main floor doorways. The first opened to reveal a storage room filled with kegs, foodstuff, and cleaning supplies. The next door proved more rewarding, revealing a bedchamber currently occupied by a female elf and her human lover in coitus.

After taking a moment to leer through at the couple through the diaphonous curtains surrounding the bed, Aldur decided to interruptus the coitus by using a candle to set fire to the curtain and then turned to block the doorway, casting an enchantment that gave his arms additional strength. He hoped that by doing so, he would force the man and elfess to leave via the window. The panicking lovers quickly noticed the flames and rolled out of bed, the elfess starting to get dressed while yelling at the human to run for help.

By this time, Trykaar had also decided to leave Leandrie and Neela to their own devices. Having noticed the door to the bedchamber opening and closing, he went to investigate and was outside Aldur's room, ready to enter. The large Jrak, wary of forcing his bulk through the crowded room, remained outside.

Then all hell breaks loose. With tensions again escalating as a result of Neela's spectacular failure to intimidate the room, Leandrie decides to call upon his god to deliver a shower of lawfully-aligned rain into the midsty of the large crowd of 1st level elven adolescents and their fey friends, causing 2d6 damage to each chaotically aligned creature (about half the crowd). As he does so, he fails a spot check to notice the centaur who is standing in the doorway behind him. In the ensuing carnage, as about 40+ elves are killed, Leandrie is hit by a number of magic missiles from surviving elves before the centaur grapples him and drags him out into the yard full of alarmed elves. Jrak, realizing that he wants to be on the winning side of the confrontation, grapples and pins Neela to the ground. As the elves swarm around, the duo are put under arrest.

Meanwhile, Trykaar decides to smash open the door, revealing a shocked- looking young human in his breeches who had unsuccessfully been trying to open the door from his side while yelling "Fire!" (shouts that went unheard in the main room full of screaming, dying elves). The young boy takes one look at the room outside and heads for the window on the other side of the room, where his elven companion has just managed to get dressed. They open the window and the elvess crawls out. Before the human can join her, Aldur grabs him and chokes him out (while normally not particularly strong, he had cast a spell that gave him +6 strength). Seeing the floating, choking boy, Trykaar figures out the situation and heads over to the window, distracting the elfess while Aldur carries the boy out through the main room full of dead and panicked elves. Aldur, a paragon of elfiness, is understandably upset by the slaughter. Emerging to see his allies subdued, he decides to fade into the crowd and deliver the boy to the elf that send them on the mission.

Neela and Leandrie are tightly bound (though Neela immediately loosens her bindings with a successful escape artist check) and dragged off to the magistrate's office where they're thrown into individual cells. As Trykaar follows, he is approached by a gnome who seems very curious about their recent activities. When Trykaar tells of the party's attempt to penetrate the elven city and find out what is behind the glowing tree, the gnome takes him into his confidence and offers to help Trykaar escape town via boat in return for Trykaar's assistance in sneaking into the city. Trykaar agrees and the gnomes help him round up Aldur and Jrak. The gnomes also offer to create a diversion to help Neela and Leandrie escape, but will not actively help other than first delivering a note to Neela, and insist on an immediate escape via boat.

So a short while later, smoke pots come crashing through the windows of the magistrate's office, filling the interior with thick smoke that blocks vision and threatens to suffocate those trapped within it. Neela uses the distraction to pick up a bench and bash open the door of her cell. Running across the room in the hopes of retrieving her belongings, she runs straight into a centaur. Unsuccessfully trying to tumble past, she realizes that perhaps taking on the two centaurs and multiple elves who were in the room is not particularly wise, and runs back to help Leandrie. Meanwhile, Leandrie has failed his fortitude saves to resist the effects of the smoke, and has passed out unconscious. The smoke now starting to thin, Neela decides to save her own skin and jumps out the window, where she is flagged down by a gnome and spirited away to the awaiting boat.

So the curtains close as the surviving four party members sail off into the sunset on a strange dwarven boat, leaving Leandrie to face elven justice in the morning. On a positive note, Jrak did manage to barter his subdual of Neela for the assistance of the elves in returning his and Trykaar's memories, which had been enchanted away by pixies a week before.

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