We Have an Airship... Now What Do We Do Wif It?
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After flying on the airship for a few days, we discussed our intentions for when we arrived to Seldermoor. Thinking about it, we really couldn't come up with a very good way in which we could be effective in all of this mess. Our best plan was to offer Duchess Parnth the chance to assist us in incriminating Talpin while pretending to be allied with Duchess Veris in exchange for Alestia helping her to rise to power when we finally take out Veris, which would presumably leave Upper Thalia yet again rulerless.
After devising the best plan we could think of (that), we sent off another communique to Philip Madrigal and awaited a reply. We were hoping he could advise us as to an acceptable course of action, as we couldn't really think of anything other than that.
Meanwhile, we concocted our plan to take the airship. I insisted quite vehemently that we NOT kill these guys… despite Boyce wanting to so bad, now that he'd finally grudgingly agreed to steal it from them. So Trent and Grey spent several days watching how the ship functioned and then we picked an evening in which we were fairly close to our destination, and got all 4 of the crew members wasted. They all passed out due to our extra-potent booze and I kept them asleep while Trent landed the airship near an abandoned house.
We transported the four to the ground in various locations relatively nearby, wrecked the abandoned house to look like the airship had crashed and splintered, and then we faked a blast/crash hole/scorch mark and took various personal effects and some of the cargo and strewed it all around in a big, wrecked mess. Boyce beat them up a little bit as well, cause if you fall from the sky in an airship… you won't very well escape unscathed. The point of all this was to make them think the airship had been attacked and that we hadn't just stolen it, so they wouldn't blame us. Heh. I think we did a pretty good job.
After this, we flew toward Seldermoor. But before we arrived, we received a response from Philip Madrigal, saying that they couldn't sanction such a deal with Duchess Parnth, and if we thought we couldn't be effective in the area where we were flying, then maybe we should head to Duchess Veris's capital instead. We decided that this was a decent plan, as incriminating Talpin was our goal, not changing the tides of this war, at least directly.
And so, we skipped over Seldermoor and headed on to Tusbel, Duchess Veris's capital city.
We arrived and parked the car outside the city, in a bubble in the river. Then we purchased some horses on the outskirts and entered the city by telling the guards we were here to buy stuff. They waved us in, and we somehow managed to pass the gargoyle guards without incident.
We headed to a tavern and Boyce generated Sympathy with some closet door while we pried the locals for info on the war. I started a discussion with a couple of wounded vets, and they were pretty forthcoming with the things they knew after they had some booze in them.
The next day we spent doing some intel collection on our target, the keep in the center of the city. And then the next day, we head in.
I tinted all our hairs red (except Grey's), and we modified our clothes to look like the guards wandering about the keep. Then we scaled the wall and hurried into the courtyard. Inside, we took assessment and headed to the library on the main floor. They sent us up to the 2nd floor library where we'd need official papers. I cast a spell so that the guards would think they would see what they were looking for in the official papers, and we walked right in. Oh, I guess there were some spirit sentinel statues guarding the contents within the libraries, so we'd have to take that into account when leaving with our loot.
We were told by the guards that the priestess chick hanging out with Duchess Veris was on this level, so we tread with caution. We headed to talk to the main librarian, and he pointed us to the room we needed to look around in for the books we were looking for. The big scary dude who invaded our camp after rescuing those chyx many a moon ago was in the hallway as we were heading to the other room, but I just acted like I was supposed to be there, but Boyce hid from him. What a chicken.
We headed into the room and began our search. It took Boyce 3 hours to find the books we were looking for, but finally, we could get the hex0r out of here. The first thing we did was send our last communique to Philip Madrigal telling him the names of the two other electors involved in this, Aladra and Mangwar, and that we were bringing the evidence and would hurry back with it as quickly as possible. And from there, Boyce destroyed the sympathy the books had to the library, while Trent suppressed the magical alarm seal attached to the books so that we could get by the spirit sentinels easily.
And so we headed down stairs, walked past the spirit sentinels with no problem, and passed the priestess chick who was talking to 3 Demons: (1) the big scary guy from those two earlier times, (2) some chick and, (3) some shadowy person of unknown gender. We walked by them without raising any concerns, and headed back to the tower where we scaled the wall, headed back over, and then gated out of the city from our Inn here, back to Liri's bedroom. Immediately after returning, Boyce destroyed sympathy with Liri's doorway while Trent cleaned up the magical residue.
We went to talk to Philip Madrigal the next day, and he told us that he wanted us to take Talpin down ourselves while they dedicated the rest of the constabulary to taking the other two down. We agreed and went home to prep for our encounter. I gave everyone a mind shield since the chyx that hang out with Talpin have mind control powers, and Trent cast some spell on our weapons that allows us to attack dematerialized spirits. And then we headed out to Talpin's house at the appropriate time.
We approached the house, and Trent attempted to command the two demons guarding the front. He could only command one, and he told it to open the gate for us. We ran in and attacked the nearest demon, got rid of him, but 3 more came up. Trent commanded the same one form earlier again, and had his tree grapple the one I was fighting. Boyce finished one off I think, and the front door opened. I can only assume the two demon chyx were there, because someone started casting mind-control spells. The first one on Trent failed, but the second one succeeded. So, I had to step out of the fight to cast a dispell on it. It took a little bit, but succeeded. But, by then, Boyce was under their control, so I started on a second dispell.
Fortunately that one succeeded as well, releasing Boyce from their hold. Apparently Talpin was trying to run for it, so I ran around back while everyone else ran through the house. Not sure what happened, but I intercepted Talpin and tackled him to the ground. I restrained him and Trent and Grey attempted to dispell the remote emmolation spell that had been cast on him, very similar to that Braith guy from Endelbar.
We then called in the constabulary and they hauled Talpin off to the clink, while we went home to assess damage and pat each other on the back for a jorb well done.