Chapter 26 - Party Crashing
Days 54-55
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.
With tensions again escalating as a result of Neela's spectacular failure to intimidate the room, the second pixie cast the same dancing enchantment on the orc, and that's when all hell broke loose. Leandrie chose that moment to call upon Isten to deliver a shower of lawfully-aligned rain into the midsty of the large crowd of elven adolescents and their fey friends, causing damage to each chaotically aligned creature. Half the crowd went down, screaming in agony as the rain ate like acid through their tender flesh. Those few who resisted the rain scrambled for safety, along with those were were unaffected but terrified by the carnage around them.
As Leandrie cast his spell, he fails to spot a centaur standing in the doorway behind him. In the ensuing carnage, as more than 40 young elves lay dying, Leandrie was hit by a number of magic missiles from surviving elves before the centaur grappled him and dragged him out into the yard full of alarmed elves. I final sleep spell from the fey put him to sleep and his struggles ceased as he went slack in the centaur's arms. Jrak, realizing that he wanted to be on the winning side of the confrontation, grappled with Neela and and pinned her to the ground. As the elves swarmed around, the duo are put under arrest and Jrak was hailed for his heroic action in subduing the half-orc.
While all this was going on, Trykaar decided to smash open the door to the bedchamber, revealing a shocked-looking young human in his breeches who had unsuccessfully been trying to open the door from his side (due to the presence of the invisible Aldur holding it shut) while yelling "Fire!" His shouts went unheard in the main room full of screaming, dying elves. The boy took one look at the room outside and turned to head 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 elfess crawled out. Before the human could join her, Aldur grabved him and chokes him out. While normally not particularly strong, he had cast a spell that leant his arms a rock-like strength. Seeing the floating, choking boy, Trykaar quickly assessed the situation and headed over to the window, distracting the now-panicking elfess while Aldur carried the boy out through the main room full of dead and suffering elves. Aldur, a paragon of his racce, was understandably upset by the slaughter. Emerging to see his allies subdued, he chose to fade into the crowd and deliver the boy to the elf that send them on the mission.
Neela and Leandrie were tightly bound, but Neela immediately used her deceptively nimble fingers to loosen her bindings. The two were then carried off to the magistrate's office near the center of town. Inside the one-room building, they were thrown into individual cells. Jrak had carried Neela to the office and was offered a reward for his deeds by the older elf on duty. The elf gave him directions to an elderly teacher who lived in the town who would be able to heal his memory.
As Trykaar followed the procession at a safe distance, he was approached by a gnome who seemed very curious about their recent activities. This was the same gnome that, unbeknownst to Trykaar, had approached Leandrie earlier. When Trykaar told him of the party's attempt to penetrate the elven city and find out the mystery behind the glowing tree, the gnome took him into his confidence and offered a deal where he would help Trykaar escape town via boat in return for Trykaar's assistance in sneaking into the city. Trykaar agreed and the gnomes aided him by rounding up Aldur and Jrak. The gnomes also offer to create a diversion to help Neela and Leandrie escape, but refused to risk revealing themselves by actively helping other than first delivering a note to Neela, and only on the condition that they make an immediate escape via boat. If the trio wished to attempt a frontal assault, the gnomes told them they would provide the distraction, but their boat would be leaving harbor as soon as an alarm was raised.
So a short while later, smoke pots come crashing through the windows of the magistrate's office, filling the interior with thick, cloying smoke that reduced vision to couple of feet and threatened to suffocate those trapped within it. Neela, alerted by an expletive-filled note from Aldur, used 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 nearly collided with 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 turned back to help Leandrie. Meanwhile, Leandrie had been overcome by the smoke, and passed out unconscious. The smoke now starting to thin and Neela decided to save her own skin by jumping out the window, where she was waved down by a gnome and spirited away to the awaiting boat.
The arrival of dawn found the party safely offshore in your boat and mourning the loss of their companion. A visibly upset Aldur was feeling strangely out of sorts, as if a part of himself were dying inside, and Neela found herself meditating on the unimportance of material possessions, having abandoned hers in the magistrate's office. Jrak and Trykaar were in somewhat more upbeat moods, Jrak having taken Trykaar along with him to the have their memories healed en route to the boat.
Looking around, they found themselves on a large, strange-looking boat. It had no sail or paddles, but instead appeared to be powered by a pair of big wheel-like contraptions, one hung off either side of the main deck. They turned in the water, pushing the boat ahead somehow. They expected that the wheels must be propelled by gnomes below deck. However, when the captain took them below deck they saw only a couple of gnomes, shoveling some sort of magic rock into a metal box filled with fire. Strange pipes and gauges were connected to the box, and big shafts extend through the hull to the wheels.
The deck, cabin, and hold were overflowing with barrels, boxes, and sacks of goods. Where goods aren't piled, a strange collection of races seemed to be hard at work. The captain was a dwarven merchant with a rakish air who nimbly jumps about the deck shouting orders. Most of the crew were a particularly gritty group of gnomes, though a handful of other races were represented. Most of the gnomes regarded Aldur with open hostility, while the captain regards all with suspicion. However, their newfound gnomish friends explained that the captain is indebted to the gnomes, as they are the only ones who can supply him with the magic rock his boat requires, so he can be trusted.
The gnomes further explain that the boat is headed to visit Tarminastir, which is their usual next stop as they make their way around the lake. They doubt that the elves will allow him to dock, as rumour has it they've not been allowing anyone to enter the city, either by land or water. But they expect the boat can get close enough, and the captain can make sufficient protestations, that they might buy some time to row to shore in a small boat under cover of night. Some of the crewmembers, who all seem to be affiliated with some sort of gnomish freedom fighter movement, have volunteered to accompany the party.
Once out on the lake, they also noticed that the glowing blue tree seemed even brighter than before. It now appeared to be throwing off waves of some sort of light or magical force into the air around it.
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