And Teeming With Horses Shall It Ever Be
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Some really loud banging at the front door interrupted my sleep. Vrad put a pillow over his head but I was out of bed in an instant and pulled my clothes on in a flash. Peaking out of the window, I noticed two of the people at the door were manifests, and they had a bunch of other horsemen with them; they were obviously [Thalian] military.
I headed out into the hallway, and saw Ronn, who told us to get into the cellar, which the four of us did immediately. Grey set to work making us an escape bubble through the ground while Trent masked our magicing.
After we surfaced, we took stock of the situation, briefly discussed our options, and then made a decision about our actions [after we heard screaming coming from the house]. It really kind of irked me a lot that they cared so much about capturing a bunch of manifests to press into the army (hey, they didn't really know if we were spies or not, given they ridiculous way they treat manifests in that city).
So anyway, we decided to “take care” of this group. I set about commanding the horses to attack their riders. They did so without much convincing. From then, I targeted either of the two manifests in range with Mind Blasts. The leader of the group, a chick, sent flaming balls of fire in every direction. Nice trick.
Grey was teeking a bunch of stuff, overturning carts and whacking people with rain barrels and such, taking care of quite a few people. The horses stampeded another few, and I think Boyce was sneaking around slitting peoples' throats. Trent got several from range with his arrows too.
We eventually took care of them all, even after the leader chick lit the house on fire with the family still in it. Grey quelled the house fire, we cleaned up the mess, and after interrogating a few prisoners and speaking with Ronn and his family, it was decided that Boyce would send them back to the Barony of Runearch.
We collected up all the horses, spent a few days selling them off nearby in order to ensure we had sufficient funds to hitch an airship ride to Seldermoor, in the Duchy of Pal'parntha, at the battle of three fronts, the last unaligned Duchy in the battle for the throne of Upper Thalia.
And so, we gated back to Dimmersdel. We set about locating a vaguely Larkis-like criminal element in Dimmersdel that had the contacts we needed to get us passage on an airship.
After executing an idiotic act in a seedy bar in the bad area of Dimmersdel, we managed to establish contact with one idiot by the name of Peter the Shiv. He thought he knew someone who could get us airship transportation. And so we paid him to take us to his contact.
His contact was a fat guy by the name of Mr Babbage. We negotiated our fare, and agreed to me his goon at the docks two days hence.
We were led by Babbage's goon to a riverboat, onto which we boarded. They set sail down the river, and then at nightfall we took to the air under the cover of darkness. Grey added a good tailwind to our trip to shave off a day or two.
During the ride, after a few days, Grey brought up on the down-low that we might consider… “acquiring” this airship from these 4 goons in the employ of Mr Babbage. And by acquire, he meant “take by force”.
After listening to Grey's reasoning, I can't say I disagreed. Trent seemed ambivalent, and for some reason, it was Boyce who actively opposed the idea. Weird. Boyce seemed to favor screwing over the “innocent” all the time, but was against screwing over very obvious criminals?
I ended up thinking more about that revelation than I did about Grey's proposal to “take” the airship.