Session 6
Garlant's Struggle
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With preparations made to flood D'lema with weretigers, the group decided to run their plan by Garlant. They took one of the prisoners along with them, a tiefling by the name of Thaxal, because they saw in him a potential surpassing the others. The other prisoners were left with Robert, whom the group started to call Rob in an attempt to minimize confusion.
One peculiar detail Rolen spots soon after meeting Thaxal was his true species: he was a galacks in disguise. Not wanting to alarm the group, and since he liked Thaxal by this point quite a lot, he decided not to tell the rest of the group.
On their way to Odem by blimp the group took this time to explain the whole situation to Thaxal. After a few hours and several rounds of hard liquor, Thaxal was up date on the party's knowledge. He was in truth a member of Capital Punishment.
At Odem Garlant was surprisingly willing to go along with the parties plan. "I've known the guy for probably thousands of years, but whatever, okay." Garlant said with a dismissal gesture of his hand. In hindsight, the group considered, maybe asking to assassinate a colleague of an all-powerful tyrant wasn't the best idea. No harm, no foul, though.
Back at the warehouse in D'lema, it was clear that Rob and the prisoners were beginning to bond. They laughed amongst each other and shared inside-jokes, "you'd have to have been there."
Rob informed the group that he only had enough juice to make two or three of the prisoners into weretigers. He was missing strands of tiger hair. Tiger hair, along with the rest of the tiger, would be found near the north edge of Burhed forest, Rob informed them. Wasting no time, the group go back to the blimp and fly off to Burhed.
After hiking on an obscured trail at the north end of Burhed, Rolen began to feel as if he was being watched. Not a second later, a tiger pounced on top of him. Closely following that tiger were two more, these ones beginning to close in on the rest of the group. Thaxal, new to fighting, missed a few eldritch blasts toward the beginning of the fight. By the end, however, he had managed to get the hang of it. It was by his magic the final tiger was slain.
Putting all three of the tigers in a barrel to be carried back to the blimp, the group started to retrace their steps out of Burhed. About a quarter of a mile from the exit, they came across a elf who looked as if he was hunting. Almost immediately, the elf noticed the barrel full of tiger corpses. He seemed to take great offense to this, calling the group in an angry tone, "tiger killers."
Rolen, in his sparse knowledge of Burhed culture, did seem to remember killing tigers as being highly blasphemous to the Burhed religion. Seeing an opportunity to convert others, Roberto took this opportunity to explain that there was, in fact, no god.
The elf nodded eagerly once Roberto was finished. He chuckled and turned around to what the group thought was empty forest. "Guys, it's okay. There is no god!"
Eighteen arrows emerged from the forest, all of them sinking into the elf's flesh. Nonetheless, Roberto counted it as a successful conversion. Not wanting to fight a group of at least eighteen elves, Capital Punishment decide to make their great escape.
Besides a few arrows lodged in shoulders, the group manages to escape to the blimp relatively unharmed. It was like Robert said, "now the real fun begins." Except, this time, the group hoped, the real fun would actually begin.
At the warehouse this time, the prisoners and Rob were laughing loudly at each other's jokes, and sharing a lit pipe between themselves. Still, Rob hardly hesitated turning the men into tigers. In fact, it was as if they wanted to be tigers. Naturally, they'd keep Thaxal as he was, though Thoradin was quick to remind him he was still a slave.
The group and Rob stuffed the prisoners into the crate they had brought them to D'lema with, and allowed the transformation to begin. Roberto had picked up a hearty amount of garlic salt back at the Salt and Spices Shop. All of the finer details in place, Capital Punishment was ready to execute their plan.
Their plan was this: the entire city of D'lema that night was obligated to go to one of Nos Falardu's solo plays. Absence was punishable by death. The group would blow the top off the theater with a well-placed lightning bolt, rain garlic salt onto the audience, and drop the crate into the middle of the building.
Luckily, the mission essentially went as planned. Where normally hundreds of vampires would have presented a problem to the group, the tigers, the garlic salt, and the lightning bolts came together to create an effective dampener on the vampires' prowess. The mission was hardly an attack, it was a slaughter.
Before long, the group was able to finish off the vampires of D'lema, including Nos himself. As the group had previously decided, Rob would be the new ruler of D'lema. Unfortunately, Rob's brother, Gordon, was found among the piles and piles of corpses. Rob seemed saddened by the news. Uncomfortable with consoling a grieving man, the group hastily gave Rob a Garlant Junior Ranger Badge and left D'lema by blimp.
Back at Odem, Garlant was impressed with the group's success. He awarded them all a total of five Good Boy Garlant Points, or GBGP. A GBGP was worth roughly two-hundred gold pieces. Spending more than his fair share of points, Roberto purchased ten razor-edged fidget spinners.
Wanting to go on another mission, Garlant listed off the things he wanted to get done around Arengard, but weren't important enough for him to do himself. Among the items, Rolen was most interested in the prospect of conquering Burhed Forest to be under Garlant's reign. Garlant said he had been meaning to do it, but kept getting distracted with torturing people.
On board the blimp, the crew decided to enjoy a pleasant sandwich lunch together. A few bites into the sandwich however, a few members of the group started to notice a strange taste. Almost like… piss. Immediately the group began to accuse Rolen, the infamous resident pisser. The Masked Assassin stepped out of the shadows, laughing to himself. Thoradin notices the laugh is just like Rolen's.
The assassin took off his mask, and his face was identical to Rolen's. "That's right," the assassin responded to the group's shocked faces, "I was the first Rolen to work for Garlant." He half-chuckled, half-sobbed to himself. "I guess he turned me in for the new model."
The gang was unsure of Rolen Beta's intentions. If he had wanted to attack them, he would have taken them by surprise. The group's pondering was interrupted by the rambling of Rolen Beta. "Alright, alright. You can have this shitty dimension. Stay out of Phatax Alpha." He made a motion as if to leave, but Rolen -Rolen Alpha- stopped him.
"How do you turn people to stone?" Rolen asked. His Phatax Beta counterpart whispered the answer into his ear. At that, he slashed a portal from thin-air with his sword, and left to Phatax Alpha.
"We're like a mile above the ground," Roberto said concernedly, "is he gonna be okay?"
That night, Roberto had trouble sleeping. He couldn't stop himself from wondering: was his doppelganger happy?
Not long after, the group hovered above the center of Burhed Forest. The group, sans Thaxal, felt as if they had already been there,and in a way they had. On Phatax Alpha the group had asked Refel Un, the leader of the Burhed elves, to give them the Horn of Agaleth.
Descending on the rope ladder, the Refel Un of Phatax Beta came out of his abode to greet the group. "And what can we do for you?" Refel Un said to them in a tone of mock courtesy. He was definitely mad about something.
"We come from Garlant. He offers to annex your forest, bringing prosperity to your people in return."
At this offer Refel Un seemed disgusted. "And give my forest to a bunch of tiger-killers? Garlant himself could not convince me to do that."
Annoyed by the elves tone, the group decided to call Garlant from their Ranger Badges, which had the capacity for long-distance communication.
Without prelude, the badge buzzed, "listen up chuckle fuck. I'm gonna kill every damn tiger in this forest if you don't hand it over."
Refel Un's expression of disgust was replaced with one of horror. The leader of the Burhed elves seemed much more keen to negotiate after that. Before long an agreement was in place. The elves would relinquish control of their forest so long as they retained some level of autonomy and isolationism. In addition, the elves asked for a jumbo flat-screen crystal ball to place in the center of the village. The elves were great fans of the popular sport grinksball, and wanted a way to watch the playoffs, which were quickly approaching.
Once the crystal ball was delivered, Refel Un took Roberto aside with an embarrassed expression on his face. "Does this crystal ball get the uh… the naked people channel?" Roberto, not wanting Refel Un to watch pornography in the center of town for all to see, gifted the elf with his very own personal-size crystal ball. He gave Un a Garlant Junior Ranger Badge as well, imploring him to talk to him personally on line 305 if he needed anything.
With that business squared away, the gang returned to Odem on their blimp. Garlant gave them a few more GBGP for a job well done, and the group asked for another mission. Arbies, the beef import capital of Arengard, has been seeing some beef constantly going missing. Thus far the local constabularies had been unable to apprehend the beef thief. The gang bid Garlant farewell, and made their way to Arbies.
Once there, they met with a man on the dock named Rex Chillerson, who was happy to fill them in on the goings on. "We drop the meat off, and an hour later when it's to be picked up, it's gone!"
"Well, have you tried staying with the meat to see what happens?" Thoradin asked, incredulously.
To this idea Rex seemed impressed. "Huh, I guess not." He scratched his head, deep in thought. "Well the next shipment is going to be tonight, so maybe you could do that."
The group all agreed to this proposal. In the meantime, they decided to look around Arbies for clues.
Arbies, the group knew, being the largest port city of Arengard, was home to the greatest variety of emissaries for other countries. There was an emissary for the gargantuan desert country Dhesi Sett. One for the icy home of the dragonborn, Rhegys Atale. One for Pek Sett, Newland, and the Island Alliance. There was even a small emissary for the largely uninhabitable south pole, Fenoch's End. That one seemed to be manned exclusively by scientist types.
The one emissary that most caught their eye, however, was a shabby-looking shack. Above the door, written in what looked like crayon was clumsily scribed, "gote plase." The group had heard of a goat civilization way back at the start of their adventure, but not much about it since.
Inside, a goat with a thick pair of glasses sat at a desk, looking over a few papers. When they walked in, the goat looked up and greeted them in goatish. Luckily, Thoradin spoke the language and was able to converse.
"Welcome to the embassy of the Sovereign Democracy of Goatish Independence. How can I assist you?"
Thoradin cleared his throat, it had been awhile since he had spoken goatish. "We're just looking around. Would you know anything about missing beef?"
It (she?) didn't. With the city inspected, the group had decided to go out for dinner. Roberto and Rolen went to a fantastic restaurant by the name of Bastinimo's, where they enjoyed a romantic candle-lit spaghetti dinner. Thoradin and Thaxal went to the Cattle's Herd, a country barbeque place. In the corner of the restaurant a jazz band called Men of the West played quietly. After dinner, it was about time to return to the docks. They had some meat to watch.