Is it rude to laugh?

I’m surprised by how much help these upworlders need.

After I travelled with Son of Clouds and the rest of the Llyrians to Ghostwood it was like a circus. The tower where we were staying were full of groups that seemed to all have their own purposes.

At one stage someone called Malakar came over and started asking me questions. That always makes me nervous. He seems to be a cleric of Albrecht, the human god of Justice. Like that makes me feel better!

When he went back to his companions I went too. I listened in and they weren’t saying anything I needed to be too concerned about so I returned to Son of Clouds and then we all turned in to bed.

I don’t think we’d been asleep that long when a commotion erupted and I soon gathered that the negotiating parties had been slain. Rather than looking at the group of elves heading for the grove, or the squad of soldiers heading for the inner keep I looked for someone heading the other way, but I couldn’t see anyone so I headed for the inner keep instead.

I saw Malakar and one of the other Albrecht worshippers talking with the guards at the keep who then gave them entrance. I slipped in behind them—they seemed to know what they were doing.

What a mess. Apparently the human and elf negotiators had all been slain, and while Malakar spoke with the keep commander to understand what had happened a group of assassins attacked.

The assassins hadn’t seen me hiding in the corner so I was able to attack one of them from concealment. We had also been joined by a wizard from someplace called the Spire that “everyone” has heard of.

It was a nasty battle, though I came through untouched. In searching the assassins we came across a note and our high and mighty wizard pondered over it for a while before declaring it indecipherable. I pointed out that it was a cipher of some sort and we’d need something else before we could read it. I tried not to laugh as he sputtered that he had thought as much, blah, blah, blah.

The rest of the night wasn’t much better. The temple of Albrecht was destroyed, and apparently this was the night when they were inducting their new paladins. Oops.

Most of the envoys of the Free Kingdoms were killed, though we were able to save Son of Clouds from dying.

At one stage we were attacked by another assassin, this one an elf, who knocked the crap out of Malakar and his buddy, who was called Ili and seemed to be either a paladin or a monk. For some reason he didn’t seem interested in killing them, just knocking them out. He seemed more interested in telling us that the peace talks would never succeed. I ran for help since this guy was seriously out of my league but by the time I got back he was gone.

The wizard guy, Obegard, managed to get Malakar back on his feet, and he got Ili back on hers. We then tried to zero in on these weird weapons the assassins were carrying—they were double-ended curved blades like I’d never seen before.

We gathered up all the ones we knew about and I stowed them in my bag of holding so Obegard could cast a spell to search for more. he sensed one heading towards the stables and we followed it. He sensed it moving into the stables, and then it started moving off towards the outer wall.

We searched the stall where the path had changed direction and found a carefully hidden trap door. It didn’t seem wise to follow so instead we dragged some bags of feed over the hatch to seal it and called in some guards to watch it.

We went back to word up the keep commander, and then on our way out again we noticed the guards in front of the cells were down. Oh come on! We called in the commander and went to check on their one prisoner—some elf spy that had been brought in to use as a bargaining chip.

As we moved in Malakar warned us that the area was swarming with hidden assailants. We started to withdraw to a more defensible position but there were already assassins behind us and they sprang to attack. Again we managed to take them out, but not before they had someone escaped with the prisoner.

We managed to stabilise one of the assassins for later questioning, and when we searched them we found the key for the encrypted note. Once again Obegard failed to puzzle it out and I had to explain to him how to read it.

So where are we? A well-coordinated attack on the keep which seemed aimed at driving everyone away, and freeing the elven spy. I suspect our new captive will be a pawn with no useful information. The peace talks have been ruined, probably irreparably.

On the plus side, Son of Clouds will live. I like Son of Clouds. I managed to avoid getting hurt, which I also like. I probably like that more than I like Son of Clouds. Sorry Son of Clouds!