SDMB RPG: The Rule of Three - Game Thread

The Game Room
161

After retrieving and cleaning his shot arrows, Baldur has been off a bit to the side playing with Týr. Although not particularly interested, he has been half-listening to the conversations going on around him due simply to the fact that his ears aren’t full of cotton. At the mention of a fae bracer, his eyes light up and he jumps up like a bolt from Thor’s hammer. He slowly walks over to the main party. After the recent awkward lull in the conversation, he begins to sing in a piercing, melancholy tone.

‘Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.’

The sound rings out deep in the stillness of the night. After a short silence that seems triple its actual duration, Baldur sits down on a log and sobs quietly.

162

Naimar collects the weapons and anything useful on the bodies and sorts them out.

163

His sobbing grows fainter and fainter, as he seems to slowly sink into the log. Just when it seems it might be prudent for somebody else to speak, he jolts up again and cries out angrily: ‘The fae are what did this to my brother! He went out into the woods one day and he came back like this!’ The bitterness melts off his downward trailing voice as he reaches into his pocket and thrusts Týr up high into the air.

‘And all because he dared to sit in a ring of toadstools. He was simply tired after a long day of hunting; he meant no harm. But did they show any mercy? NO!’

After a wild pause, the fire in his eyes dims. ‘Oh brother, I am terribly sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. We’ll get your body back. Please don’t look at me that way.’

164

(unobtrusively)

165

Baldur listens to a voice nobody else can hear for a few seconds. ‘Brother, hold that thought! I know! If it was fae who did this to you, then maybe a fae bracer can undo this wicked curse! Yes it’s perfect.’

‘What? No. You have to agree it’s perfect. We can return Mildred, get in good graces with the Ironhall court, and that will lead us to the bracer. Here, tell me what you think of her.’ As he says this, he bursts suddenly over to Mildred and gently tosses Týr onto her. He scampers frantically over her and then leaps back onto Baldur’s shoulder.

After listening for a few seconds, he replies, ‘It won’t work?’ ‘Why not?’ ‘You say she won’t co-operate, and that bringing her back will likely result in our family name being dragged even further in the mud. No, brother, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s foolproof.’ This rapid exchange is followed by a few brief moments of silence.

‘…madness? I will tell you what is madness, brother! Madness is expecting you to live the rest of your life as a squirrel!’ Baldur fumes. ‘Well then, what would you have us do with this bitch, leave her to the mistwolves?’ ‘What do you mean, that’s exactly what you would do?’
‘Then we’re right back where we started!’

After a few more rapid exchanges that quickly become incomprehensible, Baldur can be heard half-saying half-muttering, ‘Yes, you are the older brother. Yes, you know what is best. Yes, I’ll do what you say…’

166

After collecting the weapons Naimar went to round up all of the enemy’s horses.

167

The reason I asked, my Lady, is I wanted to make sure whether or not your husband indeed knows you left willingly, since the story he’s been telling everyone is that you were kidnapped. This is what I mean about us not really being able to help you if you don’t tell us everything. The fact that you ran away and he knows it makes things more difficult, but it’s more of just another bump in the road.

Henry walks over to his dagger and picks it up. He looks at the dagger and begins cleaning the dirt off of it much more thoroughly than would really be needed. His countenance shows bemusement, but betrays no emotion. Then seeming to come to a decision, he addresses his brother and cousin:

Baldur, Cyrus, come walk with me. I have much to discuss with you both and Tyr. Cutter, watch our guest. Make sure no harm comes to her as long as she is under our protection. Choke, bring me the gear from the Lady’s horse. The rest of you take inventory of the rest of the supplies the Lady’s companions had. Quickly now, events are in motion that we have to head off, or things could get ugly real quick.

By the way, my Lady, I never would have sicked the peasants on you. I might be a manipulative and somewhat sadistic man, but I’m not really evil. Not if the people I have to deal with are reasonable. Maybe next time you should leave out the insults when addressing those who hold your well-being in their hands. You’ll find they tend to be more accomodating to your wishes.

Choke, after bringing me the lady’s gear, will you kindly give her some food and water and make her comforatable. She’s no doubt had a harrowing day.

Henry strolls off out of earshot of the rest of the party, when Baldur and Cyrus join him he says:

I have a plan. It’s a bit dangerous, but at this point anything we do is going to involve risk. I doubt at this point we can get in the Lady’s good graces, but her sister might be more reasonable, certainly can’t be less. Besides, we have the Lady as our trump card against her sister if it comes to it. Hopefully it won’t. Now, here’s what I propose we do…

What is the Lady currently wearing?

168

“My Lord, you are intriguing. I eagerly await to hear your plan and I agree that risk surrounds us no matter what we do. Then again, it already has surrounded us.”

169

Right now, I think you should tend to our prisoners’ wounds. After I discuss things with Baldur and Cyrus I will fill everyone in on the plan.

170

If the prisoner’s wounds need further tending, I will do so now

171

Baldur manages to salvage the arrow that struck the late Sir Howard, but the arrow that missed is somewhere off in the dark. It would take likely a great deal of time of wandering about with a torch to find it.

After this happens there’s a long pause… before which Mildred bursts into screams, scooting frantically away from the lunatic.

In total:
3 iron short swords with appropriate wood and leather scabbards
1 wood and iron spear
1 wood club
1 steel longsword with appropriate leather and iron scabbard
50ft coil of rope
rations
6 horses (Light Dirts) [Impossible to tell training.]
6 saddles
3 copper pieces
1 copper crown
3 silver pieces
1 silver and brass handmirror
Wood and boar bristle hairbrush
1 silver and gemstone wedding ring

Note on coinage:

[spoiler]Bunic coins are about the size of watch batteries or grains of rice. There are copper pieces, silver pieces and gold pieces.

10 copper pieces = 1 silver piece
10 silver pieces = 1 gold piece
1 gold piece = 100 copper pieces

There are also “crowns”, which are equivalent to ten pieces of the same material. A crown is of the size of a typical modern day coin.

1 copper crown = 10 copper pieces or 1 silver piece
1 silver crown = 10 silver pieces or 1 gold piece
1 gold crown = 10 gold pieces or 1,000 copper pieces

Unskilled laborers can expect to make 4cp from a full day’s work. Gold isn’t particularly common, even among nobles (though there are some exceptions). Gold is typically kept in a house’s vault and used to measure their total wealth and only actually spent on large-scale purchases between houses.[/spoiler]

Mildred is wearing a floor-length blue silken dress with an attached black bodice and a white cotton underdress.

Sohanux wraps bandages around the prisoner’s midsection after applying a small amount of ointments to the wounds.

172

Cyrus follows Henry away from the group. As he passes by Hrothgar, he mentions out of earshot of the others, “Keep an eye on Cutter. He’s enjoying himself a bit too much at the lady’s expense. Don’t let it go too far.”

173

Baldur likewise follows Henry away from the group. “Oh young-brother, you always did make up such amazing stories!” He says wistfully.

174

Cutter manages to overcome his unease concerning Naimar’s witchery and, taking advantage of the lack of Faramond supervision, encourages the hedgemage to scare Mildred with fire again.

175

Nairmar smiles and walks up to Mildred laughing and cast spark again. Then walks away laughing uncontrollably.

176

Choke isn’t pleased.

Edit: And neither is Mildred, for that matter.

177

Speaking out of ear-shot to Baldur and Cyrus:

Here’s what I’m thinking. We fake the Lady’s death, blame it on Sir Howard, and make some bargain with Lady Shedlund. We can probably leave the dead peasants here, but we should bring Howard’s body with us and return it to Lady Shedlund, sans head, for proper burial. The head is the proof we bring to Ironhall as to Howard’s treachery. Now, as far faking Mildred’s death, that gets a bit tougher. We can burn the body of the female merc and try to pass it off as Mildred, but there’s a considerable size difference between the two. We’re going to need a lot of fire to even come close to fooling Ironhall. Of course, we can always play innocent as to not knowing what the Lady looked like, and indicate that Howard said it was her in final dying breaths, in which case should Ironhall buy it, he can’t rally hold us at fault. This will probably be the case regardless, because even if we do fool him originally, he’ll probably realize upon closer examination that that isn’t his wife. Hopefully, we’ll be gone by then, and we still can claim innocence of not knowing what his wife looks like. Plus, it’ll buy Mildred time to go someplace safe, since her sister is no doubt going to be visited by Ironhall regardless.

Of course, this all assumes Ironhall hasn’t already looked into the affairs of Mildred’s sister, something that we can’t assume, though, Mildred for some reason seems to think her sister’s place is safe.

The other option is we have to escort her someplace completely different. I don’t like the idea, but regardless, even though she doesn’t like us, I’m convinced she fears her husband more. He knows she’s betrayed him, and so I don’t see her ever betraying us while we know where she is or that she’s alive depending on how this all comes to pass. I don’t like her; and I certainly don’t trust her; but right now we’re her only chance. The trick is, we have to make sure the price of her betrayal of us is always more costly then going along with us.

Before we take any action though, there are three things I’ll need to know from her: first is how her husband found out of her betrayal; second is what he’ll do if he ever finds her; and third is why she thinks her sisters place is safe for her.

What do you two think? And, Baldur, what does Tyr think?

178

I’ve been given permission to answer for Mosier for the night. His character would likely have a few things to say:

1.) She likely thinks “her sister’s place is safe for her” because it’s, you know, a castle in the center of a city she controls.
2.) How would Howard’s head be proof of anything? Throw his head onto Ironhall’s table and it might as well be any random peasant’s head.

Other than those nitpicks he’s on board with the general idea of spiriting the Lady Ironhall to Shedlund and then telling her husband she was killed.

179

Hoopy, did Sohan hear any of your conversation/ideas?

180

*While the three Faramonds are off talking Cutter starts piling bodies. He doesn’t seem the least perturbed by his work; halfway through he starts with an old Bunic sailing song. His jolly voice carrying over the cold, blood and gore-stained earth is unsettling.

Choke takes the coins found on Sir Howard’s corpse and pours them into a leather pouch.*

“Little more than thieves,” Says the Lady Ironhall.

“Consider it a generous donation to house Faramond, m’lady.”

The animals pick among the rocks for grass in the dark.