#campaign tag: cuddling with carta

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-up #14.7

Things are coming to a close today, and what a show it was! Get ready for it folks, we have drama, action, adventure!! Romance?! Stakes have never been higher! 

We start where we left off last time, that is the carta’s jail cell. We’ve some time to spend while we’re there, so Cahair gets back to talking with the miners.

There appears to be some Legion of the Dead members in the cells as well, presumably ones that have never been with the carta.

Boshara continues to be impatient and gets no food for her trouble-making. Alf shares some of his so she won’t have to go completely without.

Our heroes are locked up for two days, and on the morning of the second day, Cahair realizes that he can’t see out of his left eye.

Boshara checks it over again, and realizes that it is blighted. 

Both Cahair and Elspet aren’t doing super-well, they’re shivering and sleeping poorly. The jail isn’t helping.

Luckily, it seems that Hedda has woken up and Bobin Bood comes to pick us up to go meet her.

She still doesn’t look well, nothing’s going to bring back the eye that she gauged out, but she seems less completely bonkers, so it seems like a good time to make some deals.

Hedda isn’t as giving as we might have hoped. She is willing to take us and our ship as part of her lyrium operation. This would mean that some of her men would come to the ship, but we’d get all the lyrium we’d need with no cost.

She does want us to prove to her our loyalty somehow. One of her offers is for us to deal with Lord Mandulfr, which we aren’t willing to work with at all. In fact, we’d very much like for her to leave Randy alone.

She speaks of Randy as a greedy asshole and heavily implies he was the one who arranged his own father’s murder, but that’s not a situation we want to poke at with Hedda present.

That leaves us with two tasks: Assasinate Saelac and assassinate King Aeducan, and we’re like, sure thing, we can work with that.

Before we get our heroes back to Orzammar, we’ll take a short look at what Humbert has been up to, while we have been away.

Merle, which we had put up to relaying our intents to Humbert, has gotten the nerves over the bomb-threat, so that’s pretty much all the thing Humbert gathers from him.

He goes to the Dusttown and picks up Trin, who he arranges to stay at Randy’s house.

Now it’s time to get worried about the others, as the Provings are long over, and there are no sign of them. So Humbert starts arranging a search-party. 

He goes for Saelac personally for help, and somehow, proving once again that his reputation as a convincing fellow is well-earned, he convinces Saelac to help.

The search party searches over the city first and then turns to Deep Roads.

And in the Deep Roads is where Humbert & co find the others. Boshara rushes to hug him and then hug Saelac. (Humbert also gives hugs to everyone else, though Cahair declines on the basis of being Blighted)

Boshara starts rambling about how we had noticed that Cahair and Elspet were Blighted and we went to the Deep Roads to find some Wardens. Having found none, and gotten in quite a bit of trouble, we decided to return.

This story is bought by Saelac who arranges a fine dinner in celebration of having bravely rescued Boshara, which he totally did. Yep. 

Before we can get to any assassinating, Boshara wants to try heal Cahair and Elspet, as their conditions are surely not getting any better.

Boshara asks Saelac for some quarters to do the procedures in, and is granted some rooms in the Warriors’ Quarters.

Boshara goes to talk with Randy about the situation. Randy offers himself and several people from his house as blood-letters. 

There’s something off with Randy, but Boshara is too concerned with the fact that both Cahair’s and Elspet’s life hang on her shoulders to really pay much attention to this.

All the people have gathered, Randy and dwarves from his house will give blood, as will Alf, Boshara, Humbert, Merle, Breck and Kaino. This should be enough.

Cahair will be operated on first, as his condition seems much worse, possibly because Elspet has not done the elven healing spell on him that she did to herself. Also this leaves Elspet the chance to watch over the procedure and assist if needed.

Before starting the operation, Cahair makes Alf promise to take care of Richard, in case Cahair doesn’t make it, and tell Richard that Cahair is sorry he couldn’t make it to say goodbyes.

Then it’s under the metaphorical knife for Cahair. The operation goes well, possibly because Boshara has done this before, and possibly because the Blight is not yet as bad as it was with Hedda and Harrowmont.

The Blight clings to the eye however, so Elspet has no choice but to remove it.

Boshara decides to leave Elspet’s operation for the next day, as she is tired. Before the end of the day, she visits Kivi-Jaakko and asks if he could make a glass eye for her. Inside the eye Boshara copies some of the elven symbols that decorate Cahair’s face.

Then it’s next day and Elspet’s turn. Kaino will watch over her operation as the healer, though being primarily a primal mage, his healing skills are limited.

Luckily Elspet’s operation goes just as well, leaving only a nasty scar above her left breast where the Blight was the worst.

Both sleep for few days and wake up in good health. 

Boshara presents Cahair with the glass eye she ordered, which he is very glad to receive.

Both of our Blighted friends are now saved, at least temporarily. It’s time to get to assassinating.

Boshara has been working double duty, healing and flirting up a storm with Saelac. It’s still Boshara flirting, so it’s not the best flirting, but Saelac seems charmed none-the-less.

He also seems to be interested in Elspet as well, so maybe he’s just slimy.

Boshara manages to convince Saelac to take her out on a date to the Provings Ring, with only two dwarves as guards, and even those are left outside.

They are having a lovely dinner date, when Saelac presents Boshara with a ring.

Boshara agrees to this sudden proposal, and they are just exchanging a deep loving(?) kiss, when an arrow pierces the air and hits Saelac in the head, killing him instantly.

The next arrow hits Boshara in the shoulder. 

Boshara cuts Saelac’s tongue off, leaves it on his chest, sprays blood everywhere, hurts herself a bit more, and lays down next to him, just when the guards come in to check.

In the audience’s stands Alf gets up and starts to sneak out of the building, after a job well done. One of the guards catches a sight of him, but can’t really tell who the sneaking figure is.

So Saelac is dead. Boshara plays the part of grieving bride-to-be, though she makes sure to let everyone know, she wants no claim to Saelac’s political power.

Orzammar is quite in turmoil, as there is no one to obviously name as a successor. 

Randy seems troubled during this time as well, as two of his friends, Anselmi and Berengrad seem to follow him everywhere. There’s really no time to talk with him about this, as there is an investigation on Saelac’s killing.

Carta is named to be the guilty party.

After few weeks, as the dust has somehow settled in Orzammar, our heroes head off, past the templars at the front gate.

At the front gate is also Dominique and the Tevinter mage that got Blighted in a previous adventure. They are Wardens now, so Dominique has come to say her goodbyes and resign from the ship.

They also tell that the glass statue of the little girl has been left at Anderfels; the Wardens wish to study it.

We pick up some carta members and some lyrium on our way, but there’s still a second assassination to do. Alf, Boshara, Cahair and Elspet convince Humbert and Randy to go the ship, while they themselves will go to Denerim, where they heard from Hedda the King was.

They get to Denerim with some speedy horses and use all kinds of old friends to help locate the King. Once they have done so, it’s time for Elspet to get her assassin’s creed on.

On our way to Denerim, Elspet had practiced a new form, so those are the skills she’d use. 

First as a bird, she sneaks in and locates King Aeducan and his wife. 

Then she transforms into a poisonous snake and bites the King. 

The King is dead. Long live the King.

We get back on the ship, only to find out that an Antivan-looking dwarf by the name of Carla has joined the crew, a friend of Randy it’s claimed, and she does seem awful fond of not leaving Randy alone for a moment.

We might be in some deep trouble further down the line, be it with the carta, with the Crows or with Orzammar, but we have our lyrium, and that’s all that matters. And all it took was two political assassinations. Worth it?

And that’s all folks! What a crazy morally ambiguous time we had deep down in the dark down deep down. This just goes to show that our party isn’t made for politics. 

I’ll be taking the rears next with probably two campaigns if not back-to-back only mini-sessions in between. I am very excited for the both of them, and maybe for the next one, we’ll manage to keep the body count slightly lower, perhaps.

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-up #14.5

We are back from our winter break after 1,5 months. All except one. RIP Humbert. (he’s not really dead, the player is just gone for the moment) This session our group takes on the Provings’ Super-Fun Round. Let’s get this show on the road!

Our heroes are meeting at the Provings’ locker room in the morning.

Some guard comes to pick up Alf and Cahair from the tavern. Humbert’s too beat up to attend, so will stay behind with Kaino who is so bored at this point even Humbert’s company will be an improvement.

Boshara and Elspet will be coming with their own committee. Boshara takes so long to eat breakfast that they’ll be a few moments late.

There’s a squadron of six soldiers to take Boshara and bird!Elspet to the locker room. The soldiers are very happy to go, because that means they get to see the Provings.

Just to be nice, Boshara says she thinks it might be dangerous so four more soldiers are added to the group.

At the locker room, our heroes split up into two teams (Boshara &Cahair, Alf & Elspet), pick sides (B&C are heels, A&E babyfaces), talk strategy (like who would look good as winner, though in the end, it’s left up in the air) and practice the fight.

There’s a few hours before the fight starts so everyone takes a nap: Alf and Elspet in the locker room and Boshara and Cahair in a star’s dressing room Boshara got for herself.

There’s kid’s match first thing in the Provings. And after that, it’s showtime for our boys and girls.

Alf and Elspet make a nice entrance, waving at the audience. Alf already has some female fans who blow him kisses.

Boshara enters with a fake fire-breathing (actually just a flame blast), and Cahair follows completely stone-faced, not taking any contact with the audience.

The match begins! Cahair looks at Boshara, who points at Elspet. Immediately Cahair is upon Elspet, grabbing her by the throat and knocking her down.

Alf tackles Cahair and they roll around a bit, Cahair ending up on top.

Boshara goes to kick Elspet. She also grabs her and slams her in one of the pillars.

Elspet is doing relatively badly already, so she quietly heals for the turn, though there is a strange grumbling beneath the ground as she casts.

Cahair is about to go back for Elspet, when Boshara tells him to “stop” and focus on Alf, so Cahair, still on top of Alf, punches him in the face several times.

It seems Cahair’s and Boshara’s cool cruelty is making the crowd pop.

Alf headbutts Cahair and gets him off himself and is back to his feet.

Boshara attacks Alf from behind, grabbing his jaw and punching him in the gut and throwing him back at Cahair.

Elspet sneaks up on Boshara and slaps her across the face.

Cahair tries to lunge for Alf, who dodges, gets up and does a very taunting retreat, much to the crowd’s approval.

Boshara returns the favor for Elspet with a slap of her own, and then another.

Elspet uses a quiet mind blast, knocking both Boshara and Cahair down. She also knocks herself out this way.

Cahair gets up, and completely calm, menacing and stonefaced follows Alf.

Boshara goes to check up on Elspet, masking it as a mocking laugh she does at her unconscious body. Nothing outwardly seems to be wrong.

Alf rushes Cahair, but Cahair dodges, takes a few steps back and dropkicks Alf in the face.

Alf decides to go after Boshara instead, hitting her so hard that Boshara gets a nosebleed.

Boshara starts yelling insults at Cahair about how he dared let Alf touch her, and how she would curse him forever is he didn’t kill Alf.

Cahair walks up to the pair, looks at Alf and then lunges at Boshara, looking like he has completely lost it, yelling and ripping at her throat.

This is quite a shocking twist, and some kids in the audience start crying.

Alf hits Cahair on the back of his head, and he falls down unconscious. After that he offers his hand to Boshara who takes it and shakes it, giving the win to Alf.

The crowd erupts in applause.

Jon Cenas comes down and presents Alf with his Super-Fun Tournament Winner’s Belt.

Elspet is waking up, very disoriented and sits up on the sand. 

Some guys with stretches come to get Cahair, who doesn’t want to break kayfabe.

As Alf and Boshara are leaving the arena, they notice there’s cracks in the pillars and the ground in the arena.

Back at the locker room, all four stuff into Boshara’s four star changing room, and Boshara is immediately upon Elspet, asking if she is okay.

Elspet is somewhat disoriented and feeling faint, but regains her senses quickly.

Elspet and Cahair decide that they will go back to the tavern and from there maybe check up on Trin’s mom at the brick.

Boshara and Alf stay behind. Boshara takes a shower and is relieved to find no Blight.

She had suspected the worst because she was feeling a headache when using magic, similar to Elspet. Since it’s not Blight, Boshara surmises there might be some raw lyrium under the Provings arena.

Seeing that raw lyrium is extremely volatile, it’s like the dwarves are sitting on a bomb.

Boshara orders some of her soldiers to check on if there’s any suspect looking folk among the crowd. She will take the maps Cahair and Alf gave them and rush to the archives to check on them.

Alf stays behind, as he is the Master. He gets a pass to get to the VIP booths and meets up with Saelac and Cenas. 

Alf would like to talk with Cenas alone, but Cenas forces him to watch the first round of the fights.

Much of it is pretty average, but there’s one fighter, very efficient, who after the match is over, takes his opponents unconscious body and cuts out his tongue, staring at Saelac as he does.

Saelac seems rather nervous by the display, Cenas murmurs about dishonorable fighters and Alf learns the fighter’s name is Grimas.

Finally Alf gets Cenas alone and mentions about the cracks and the possibility of raw lyrium below the arena and about how at loss our heroes are in terms of what to do about it.

Luckily Alf is persuasive enough that Cenas believes him and says he’ll see who he can get to check on the situation.

Boshara goes to the archive, gets Orzammar maps and starts cross-referencing. As suspected, one of the big carta-dug caverns is right below the Provings arena. Another one is under Harrowmont’s house and in fact several other noble houses have caverns under them.

This is serious. So Boshara steals one of the Shaperate maps before rushing off again.

Outside she asks her troops what they think of Saelac and whether she should mention about this to him, and they seem to think that’s a good idea, so that’s what Boshara is going to do.

But not until next time! Things are sure getting tense. Will our heroes survive? Will Orzammar survive? Tune in next time, and we’ll see, hopefully.

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-up #14.4

This time as well, we spent most of the session apart, jumping between three groups. So when that split up happens, I’ll relay them one by one instead of jumping all over the place. Everyone got that? Good.

Since Alf’s player missed last time, we’ll first look what he was doing during the day. Alf takes Pitkä-Breck and the two of them went to Dust Town to see what they could hear of carta.

They find a duster by the name of James, who after Alf graciously gives him some silvers and a promise of food, brings them to the house of one Pertti.

Pertti used to be a lyrium smuggler, but that vein has dried up. He tells that not many of the big name carta people remain in the city, and certainly not in Dust Town.

Pertti has found some new job, doing some digging for the carta during the night.

It also seems that Pertti is expecting King Aeducan to be overthrown and someone, who is hopefully better for the dusters, to take his place.

On their way out of Dust Town Alf and Breck get mugged. Dust Town is clearly not a good place to stay for long.

Humbert goes to pick up his lyrium that he ordered from the miner, it makes him feel quite a lot better.

When he is on his way to our meeting place, some guards stop him. They take him in, rid him of all of his gear and take him to the Diamond Quarter, while telling nothing of where he is being taken.

It turns out Randy asked for him. Randy asks Humbert of the situation and then tells him that he has been thinking about telling the truth. This would certainly alter the situation, though Humbert argues that a lot of different folk are dependent on Randy, so perhaps it’s not the right time for that yet.

Humbert asks Randy to hold on and wait a bit before doing anything drastic.

Our heroes meet up to talk about the blood ritual Boshara will be attempting on Harrowmont later this evening.

Boshara has not managed to get Humbert access to Harrowmont’s house, she’ll have to use dwarven blood from Harrowmont’s house in the transfer.

Humbert of course thinks that this means the blood ritual should be called off.

Boshara disagrees and it leads to another argument, which Cahair breaks up by telling Humbert off for showing no concern for Elspet’s peril.

Humbert apologizes to Elspet. 

So the blood ritual will be held. At this point our group breaks into three. I will now go through them one by one

Boshara and Elspet go to meet Randy before the ritual. 

Elspet checks on Randy to see if he has contacted the Blight, but he looks to be safe.

Randy asks to come with the two, as his presence might deter from people putting blame on Boshara if things go wrong, which was what Humbert was concerned about.

The three of them go to Harrowmont’s house. Boshara has been allowed to bring Elspet with as she had told she could smuggle her in, no problem.

There’s six dwarves from who Elspet and Boshara drain some blood. They then ask for them to leave. Only Elspet, Boshara, Randy and Dr Cox are present in the actual procedure.

Boshara’s attempt is to force the bad blood out of Harrowmont and pump the good blood in, and Elspet will keep Harrowmont alive with her powers while Boshara does it.

In theory it should work.

In reality, it unfortunately does not. Boshara spends almost all of her blood, but she can’t manage to get the blood transferred and despite their best efforts, Harrowmont passes away.

Boshara is devastated by this failure, which she shows by being pissed off. Randy tries to console her by telling her that Harrowmont was kind of a dick to begin with.

Boshara delivers the bad news to Harrowmont’s family and after that, they retreat back to house Mandulfr, where Boshara proceeds to scrub herself clean, just to make sure she avoids the Blight. 

Meanwhile Humbert joins Kivi-Jaakko’s street patrol. This night’s mission is to go into Dust Town and bring in a woman named Ranna for being associated with carta.

Kivi-Jaakko and his fellow patrollers seem to be really proud of being part of this effort. They’ve been armed with old warrior caste armors.

They pretty quickly find the right house. One of the patrollers does the honors of breaking down the door, and Humbert gets to do the arresting.

Ranna begs to be spared, but Humbert locks her up.

Humbert and Kivi-Jaakko look through the house, and Humbert finds Trin, the little dwarven boy, crying silently under the bed.

Humbert manages to trick Kivi-Jaakko to go out as well, and he gets Trin and has a talk with him.

He asks where Trin’s grandfather is, but Trin says he has no grandfather. In general he seems to be mostly worried about his mother.

Humbert orders him to stay put and he will be back, so they can talk about getting Trin’s mother back and maybe some information for Humbert.

(All this he says rather more unsympathetically than I recount here, apparently he’s hell-bent on appearing more scary than the carta).

Humbert leaves with the patrol, but at the entrance of Dust Town he claims to have dropped his coin purse and despite Kivi-Jaakko’s warnings, insist on going back to get it.

Of course he gets jumped immediately by two dwarves. Humbert shouts for help, but he gets beat up quite badly before the help arrives in the form of another patrol, led by a man named Kilpi-Kimmo.

Kimmo takes Humbert back to Dust Town entrance, where Kivi-Jaakko is waiting, as he was too worried to leave.

Humbert returns to tavern to sleep his wounds off.

Alf and Cahair have decided to take a small evening walk in the Deep Roads.

Unfortunately there’s guards at the door. Fortunately we have Merle and Pitkä-Breck who arrange a distraction by a public argument, and get thrown into jail for their trouble.

While the guards are attempting to capture these two, Alf and Cahair sneak in.

With the help of the maps Cahair stole, they find their way around pretty easily. There’s some guards, but not many.

After some snooping around, they find one of the so called “closed” lyrium veins. There’s a hole in the barrier that has been put in the tunnel leading to it, so through it they go!

They find a broken up elevator, but the shaft has ladders which take them down to a deeper level.

After some wandering the path splits, so so do our heroes as well.

Alf’s path leads to a lyrium vein which is guarded by several carta members. Alf pockets a piece of raw lyrium, even if even touching it burns him.

Cahair path leads to another elevator room. There’s also two carta members on guard.

Cahair tries to stun them, but as that doesn’t work, he slices the other one’s throat with the carta dagger, and after some fighting with the other one, subdues him.

The carta member introduces himself as Savil. 

From him Cahair gathers that General Saelak is not in any way in cahoots with the carta (in fact Savil asks if Cahair is working for the general).

Also Cahair’s dagger has been sorely missed, and there’s some folks who’d like to talk with Cahair about it, but Cahair declines the invitation.

Savil claims not to know where the tunnels the carta are digging are going, so Cahair instructs him to take him to it.

Alf finds the pair at this point too.

Together the three of them take off. Unfortunately they run into some more carta people, and Alf is forced to shoot the escaping Savil.

From these carta people, they gain a map of the tunnels that are being dug. 

This is enough for one night. They kill the carta people. Alf wants to cut off their tongues, Cahair doesn’t want to do that. They scuffle about that a bit, but in the end Alf wins and does as he pleases.

The two of them get back to Orzammar early in the morning. Somehow they manage to sneak past the guards at the entrance, though they are surely spotted leaving the miner’s quarters.

All of our hereos are back together for breakfast before the Provings. 

Cahair hands the map they found over to Boshara. Since she can get to the Shaperate, she can cross-reference this map with the other map to see where the carta is digging.

Humbert tells of his encounter with Trin. Since Merle and Breck are still in the brick, Humbert could use them as an excuse to get to talk to Ranna, after the Provings of course.

Boshara tells that the operation on Harrowmont was a failure. She is still sure she could do it successfully. She would just need some people to practice on, before trying this on Elspet.

That’s all for today’s session! Next up is the Provings! How will our heroes fare? This will be found out next year, as our winter break is starting.

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-Up #14.1

Oh man, it’s the 14th adventure already? Time sure flies. This time we don’t quite yet make it to Orzammar for reasons that will become apparent soon. 

Our adventuring group has made it back to Redcliffe, where our bronto, dwarf friends and cart are waiting for us. We spend the night and are to leave in the morning.

Morning finds Boshara, cranky and drunk off her ass, at the bar. She has apparently been drinking the whole night. When Humbert tries to get her up and off to her room, she starts shouting.

She reveals that Randy, drunk as well, told her that Humbert is her father and how he had molested her mother and...

Humbert wakes up in cold sweat from this nightmare.

The morning in Redcliffe brings up no drunken trouble, and there’s even some time to do shopping before we go.

Boshara, with Alf’s knowledge of the criminal underground, finds a magic shop, where she purchases a new wand and also a magical necklace for Elspet. Alf steals a golden ring.

Cahair and Elspet go to a woodcarver’s so Cahair can buy a new staff (bc his old one got destroyed in Tevinter). Cahair also buys a small carved box for Richard, tho now he has to figure out what to put in there.

Our heroes head off, and for the most part the traveling is uneventful, although there seems to be a lot of templars on the road, which is rather spooky.

But it all goes well, our heroes are nearing the gates of Orzammar, when we ran into a turned-over cart on the road.

Cahair goes to investigate and finds a small dwarven child hiding under there. The dwarven child is rather scared (Boshara, who isn’t good with children, doesn’t help), but Cahair manages to persuade him to come out. His name is Trin, he was playing outside when he ran into some wolves and had to hide.

We agree to take him to his grandpa’s place near, but not before Humbert throws him up and down a bit, bc that’s what the kids these days are into.

We make it to Trin’s grandpa’s Ortag Punchfist’s house. Ortag is very delighted to have his grandson back.

We introduce ourselves. Well, Humbert does most of the introducing at first, but when he tries to introduce Cahair as “just Cahair”, Cahair quickly corrects him with the clan name attached.

Ortag offers us some food, which we happily take.

While we’re eating we talk to Ortag about Orzammar. Apparently he left, so that Trin would have a better life, because Trin’s mother was of lower caste.

When he hears about Randy, he is quick to start telling stories how he knew Mandulfr when they were kids, and apparently bullied him.

After food, Ortag says he’ll go get something relating to Mandulfr from the room downstairs to show us.

While waiting, our heroes suddenly start feeling rather ill, as if the food they’ve eaten had been bad in some way, and just as sudden four dwarven figures spring out of the cupboards and attack!

They immediately rush Randy, pushing him to the ground and stabbing him multiple times.

There’s also someone shooting arrows into the house and one hits Elspet.

Cahair backstabs one of the roguish ones close to him, and Humbert finishes him as well as wounding two others with a cleave.

Elspet knocks the attackers down with her magic, and Boshara tries to incapacitate them with hers.

Alf goes out to shoot at the shooters. One of them shoots a fire arrow into the room and it catches on fire.

One of the rogues manages to bring Elspet down with an attack, so as revenge Cahair brutally murders the offender (as in jamming his sword through the dwarf twice, hitting the spine and disemboweling them), before helping Elspet to her feet.

The two still remaining attackers grab onto Randy and throw him down the stairs. Elspet uses a healing spell to stabilize Randy, while Humbert contains the attackers into a magic circle, before going to see Randy. Boshara attacks the two, knocking them down once more, before following Randy and Humbert down the stairs.

The house is filling with smoke, and Elspet passes out again. Cahair revives her again and then helps her out through a window. Seeing that Cahair has one hand still wrapped up after the ice dragon incident, it’s a rather clumsy show, but they make it.

Boshara and Humbert are trapped by the smoke in the room downstairs. With them is unconscious Randy as well as one of the warriors, also fainted. Ortag is nowhere in sight.

Boshara finds a trap door leading to a tunnel under the carpet, and they use it to get out. It leads them to a forest area some way off the burning building. The warrior hadn’t made it, but Randy is alive.

Boshara looks over the warrior’s corpse and finds a strange ring with initials and an inscription in dwarvish. She also picks up some gold and powdered lyrium, but doesn’t mention these to Humbert.

They take Randy and start heading back to the cloud of smoke in the horizon.

Meanwhile, Cahair and Elspet are checking on Elspet’s wounds. There is some kind of poison in the arrow that hit Elspet, and it’s quite a gnarly sight. Elspet doesn’t recognize the poison, but feels a bit better after Cahair cleans it up.

Alf joins them. He had chased the woodland attackers away, and also smartly avoided all smoke damage.

Soon Humbert and Boshara arrive too.

Our heroes check the other corpses and find more weird rings, and also Cahair picks up an interesting looking dagger. 

Alf recognizes the rings as carta rings.

Humbert brings Cahair back to the trap door’s other side to see if he can follow the tracks but it looks like Ortag has been too clever in hiding them.

So, what’s up? 

Humbert is sure this is an unfortunate coincidence, because no one should have known that we were arriving to Orzammar on this route. 

Boshara is convinced that this is an assassination plan and that Randy’s wife must be behind it, as she would inherit (we presume).

Cahair’s just confused to learn that Randy has a wife. No one had told him, cos when the others found that out he was tracking the Tevinter woods.

We can’t be staying there, so we continue on our way, trying to keep our eyes out for Trin or anything else suspicious but see neither.

We make it to Orzammar gates which is flooding with people, dwarves and templars. We park our cart at the entrance and Humbert, Boshara and Pitkä-Breck go talk to the guard.

The guard is rather unsympathetic until she learns that we have injured Randy on board, after which she immediately starts arranging for him to be brought in. Our little group is not involved in these plans.

Boshara flashes her certificate stating she belongs in house Mandulfr and the guard finally agrees to let her in, but only her. The rest will have to wait outside.

Humbert asks the guard to deliver a letter to Marjaleena, Randy’s wife about our situation.

No one is allowed in without a permission from a dwarven general by the name of Worav Saelac. King Aeducan has apparently given him the command of Orzammar while the carta is being dealt with.

And so Boshara has been let into the isolated dwarven city. Here’s hoping the rest of us make it in there at some point as well.

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-Up #14.3

This time in Orzammar, the gang splits up, Scoob.

We start with where we left off, after lunch, splitting the party. We are hoping to get Elspet to go with Boshara, but that requires some doing.

Boshara asks to go to bathroom with Elspet, and there Elspet turns into a bird and hides in Boshara’s sleeve.

Outside Humbert is talking with Bert and finds out about this old friend of Randy’s, Anselmi, who came with Randy to Orzammar and has now been made deshyr of House Mandulfr.

Neither Humbert nor Cahair have heard of Anselmi, so Humbert asks for Boshara to maybe go meet him.

When she is saying goodbye, Cahair slips the bird from Boshara’s sleeve and then asks whether she would like her dear pet bird Mustikka with her?

Boshara takes bird!Elspet and off they go, back to the Diamond Quarter.

Humbert and Cahair head off with Carras, who is taking some papers from Saelac to a merchant named master Gorin and while she’s at it, might ask us some questions about the carta attack upon us.

Cahair and Humbert answer very dutifully, though leaving some details out, so as not to raise suspicion on anyone being a mage.

The knowledge of the face tattoos on the carta members seems to worry Carras.

She tells us that it’s ok for us to have weapons out in Orzammar and that we should stay out of trouble.

Humbert asks how Carras would keep us up to date on the investigation, and Carras says that’s up to Saelac, which makes it kinda sound we won’t be getting any information.

We get to Master Gorin’s Stone Emporium. Carras leaves the papers with the old man keeping the shop and leaves. Humbert and Cahair stay behind to chat.

Master Gorin, or Kivi-Jaakko, is a rather pleasant old man. We chat a bit about the prospect of us getting some jewels from him for our jewelcrafting business.

There’s also Stones of Farspeech on sale, but we can’t afford them atm.

Cahair buys some stone-lollipops. Made of stone.

The talk turns to the nightly patrols general Sealac has been organizing, apparently Kivi-Jaakko is part of one, and the papers he just received were his orders for the night.

Cahair and Humbert decide to join up. It might be fun and/or useful.

Boshara makes her way back to house Mandulfr with Elspet perched on her shoulder.

They go to her room first, where Boshara tells Elspet that she’ll get her into Randy’s room so she can check on him and possibly, if a chance arises, she might even be able to heal him.

They find Marjaleena in Randy’s room, but she was just leaving and lets Boshara in, no problem.

Elspet perches on top of Randy and checks on him. It appears that he is in the exact same condition as before.

Boshara asks the house doctor, Doctor House Ferol, if she could have a moment alone with Randy “since they’re clearly not doing much”.

The doc obliges, but is rather offended by Boshara’s wording.

Elspet turns herself into a human and heals Randy. While she does so, she feels a strange sting of pain in her head.

Randy wakes up! Hurrah!

Boshara catches him up on what has happened, and then asks whether Marjaleena can be trusted.

Randy says yes, and Boshara berates him on his quick choice of marriage candidate. Randy tries to explain that that’s how things are done in Orzammar and that Marjaleena has really nothing to gain from Randy’s death, but Boshara isn’t buying it, so Randy reveals that not only is he gay, but so is Marjaleena. That’s a good enough basis for trust. Boshara doesn’t agree.

The original plan was for Randy to pretend to be asleep and wake up later, but unfortunately his caretakers come in. Elspet has just enough time to transform into a bird.

House asks to talk with Boshara. They noticed that clearly Randy has been healed by magical means.

Boshara tries to deny it, but in the end concedes that she does have magical healing abilities.

To her surprise, the doctor asks if she could be so kind as to check on Harrowmont. 

Boshara agrees. 

After their meeting with the stone-seller, Cahair and Humbert head to check up on the miners. They find a small miner pub and join up on a table.

They get to talking with a woman named Barra Hatan, a lyrium miner.

It seems that there isn’t much lyrium mining happening at the moment. About two months ago one of the largest lyrium veins was struck by darkspawn. Another large one followed two weeks later.

The situation appears so bad that even the Legion of the Dead aren’t able to handle it.

Which is why the Deep Roads are basically guaranteed off. General Saelac is more interested in making the situation safe in Orzammar first and then dealing with the other stuff.

Some Grey Wardens have been called upon, but they’ve not yet came by.

Barra herself has been taking time off, but there’s some folks who still do some smaller mining operations.

Our heroes try to ask if there’s any chance they could get some lyrium samples, but that is under King’s, so now Saelac’s control.

One of the miners leave, and Humbert says he’s going to go talk to him a bit, leaving Cahair to chat with Barra about tomorrow’s Provings.

Humbert catches up to the man, Gerryn Vorran, and asks whether he could get some lyrium for him.

Gerryn says he can’t do that, because lyrium is not what he’s going to go mine.

Humbert pushes Gerryn on what on Earth is he mining then, and he admits to mining what sounds like a tunnel, near Orzammar. He begs for Humbert to leave him be, he’s only trying to provide for his family. He is clearly terrified, and as there’s nothing to gain from him, Humbert obliges.

Humbert returns and is pointed to another dwarf’s direction, by the name of Kelavia, who does agree to get him some lyrium.

Cahair and Humbert leave the miners’ pub. 

It’s clear to them that the reason the Legion of the Dead is not effectively dealing with the darkspawn is the fact that at least some of the members are escaping to the surface to do carta stuff.

This tunnel project sounds highly suspicious as well. Cahair suggests he might be able to sneak in to check it out if they only could get their hands on some maps.

Humbert agrees, though he hopes Cahair wouldn’t do the same risky running-off-alone thing he did in Tevinter.

Cahair asks does Humbert mean that one time he jumped from the ship or the whole jungle stint?

Humbert says both. Cahair says he only regrets the jumping from the ship bc there was a bit where Richard was unsure if he was alive or dead and he wouldn’t want to do that to him.

Humbert thinks it does good for relationships. Cahair vehemently disagrees, asking if this is a Humbert-thing or a human-thing.

Humbert asks if Cahair doesn’t think that’s a bit racist. Cahair asks on what stereotype on humans Humbert thinks he’s basing his statement on.

There’s some talk on how much Cahair and Alf talk shit about humans among themselves, tho Cahair claims it’s not that often and it’s only eyerolling.

All in all, it’s one of the most amicable conversations these two have had in a long while.

Boshara and Elspet go spend some time in the Shaperate, while they wait for their access to Lord Harrowmont’s estate.

In there, they meet Candulfr, or Candy, Randy’s cousin and a shaper, who’ll be helping them with their questions.

Boshara first learns of the Legion of the Dead and their purpose, as well as the carta members sentenced to it.

Two of the carta members we killed were Legion of the Dead. Piorell Turow was the warrior Humbert dragged around and Zerlinda Harrow was the rogue Cahair got the dagger off of. 

Zerlinda was one of the four carta lieutenants who gave themselves up after the leader’s Hedda Carol’s capture and sentencing.

She then learns of King Aeducan and Saelac’s regency. Aeducan appears to be very well liked, and Saelac was appointed legally in front of the senate.

She tries to look for any info on Anselmi’s origins, but those are sparse. She does learn he came with another surface dwarf by the name of Berengrad.

She tries to locate Ortag Punchfist, but no one of such name has existed. She then looks into Mandulfr’s school mates as Ortag claimed to be one.

Only one of them became a surfacer, Lenus Orro, a miner, but he has no relatives in Orzammar, so it seems like that particular vein of investigation is running dry.

Then she asks about herself. There’s a mention of her appointment, but no mention of the fact that she is human. Still pretty cool though.

Cahair and Humbert are on a mission to find some maps for Cahair. 

Cahair says it’s probably better if they just nicked some, so as not to raise questions. He’s relatively confident he can do it, even though he’s no Alf.

Humbert tries his best not to make a comment about sneaky elves.

They go to the pub’s cloakroom and while Humbert distracts the attendant by claiming on not remembering where he put his cloakroom ticket and then asking the attendant to teach him numbers in dwarfish, Cahair sneaks past and gets some maps from a backbag.

After this educational Shaperate visit, Boshara is let into Harrowmont’s estate. The presiding doctor by the name of Cox .lets her into Harrowmont’s room.

Harrowmont is looking really badly off. He is conscious but delirious and it’s clear that the sickness he has gotten from the attack was in fact none other than Blight.

Cox explains that they had called for some Wardens from Orlais, but there seems to be some kind of delay with this.

After Cox leaves her to do her magic, Boshara tells Elspet to transform back so she can start working on him, but when Elspet transforms she starts weeping.

Boshara asks what’s up and Elspet says she has realized what the poison in the arrow was. She too has the taint.

Elspet remembers some elven magic she saw the Keeper of the clan of elves she traveled with using, and tries it on Harrowmont. It seems to stabilize him, but it only slows the process down.

She doesn’t do it to herself yet, as Boshara suggests it would be better done in place where they’re sure not to get interrupted.

Boshara starts to wonder if she could be of help. She has some incline that blood magic might be of use. She had discussed such possibilities with Konstantine, though never relating to taint but rather heart diseases and never in practice. She thinks if she could switch the tainted blood with fresh one, it just might work.

She decides to asks whether Dr. Cox would approve of this.

Dr. Cox is very appreciative of her work, and says they’ll talk to Lady Harrowmont to hear her opinion.

But they agree regardless that Boshara will return to the Harrowmont estate in the middle of the night if an attempt is to be had.

Our heroes all meet up for some dinner, and Elspet asks Boshara to tell about Elspet’s predicament.

Cahair is mightily upset.

Humbert seems more worried that there are people out there who now know Boshara is a mage.

Cahair asks if this could maybe wait, since there’s some more important stuff on the table right now, namely the fact that Elspet has the taint.

Boshara also mentions her blood magic idea. Cahair is all on board, going so far to offer his own blood, though Boshara was maybe looking more for Humbert on that front.

Humbert is not the most happy camper, but if Boshara can arrange our other heroes to Harrowmont estate he would like to attend.

There’s also the fact that Jasinto, Jasinta, Dominique, Reta and one of the Tevinter mages went to look for Wardens back in Bloomingtide and had agreed to meet our heroes at Orzammar. So if things get really bad, there’s at least those contacts.

There’s some talk about other things we’ve find out and what to do next.

Boshara suggests that Humbert goes to tell templars about the fact that there’s another way into Orzammar/Deep Roads, which should clear some of the Darkspawn.

Cahair wonders about the other Legion of the Dead members, since so far we operate as if all of them went with carta. Boshara thinks it’s quite possible, as it’s surely better than dying fighting darkspawn.

In the end we decide to stick with the established plans: Humbert going to street patrol, Cahair sneaking to Deep Roads to look for tunnels and Alf sneaking into Dust Town. But first. A blood ritual.

That’s all folks! Let’s see if on top of the cure for tranquility, we might be able to find a cure for the Blight as well. It would sure come in handy, since things are looking mighty scary.

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-up #14.2

Guess who got two thumbs (still, tho the fate of some of Cahair’s fingers is still up in the air) and got into Orzammar? This guy! But before that...

We pick up with Boshara who is being brought into Orzammar under heavy guard. She is taken to the warrior’s district first and stuffed into a waiting room.

There’s some shouting that follows Boshara’s arrival, but not directed at her. The shouter turns out to be general Saelac, who acts rather graciously towards her.

Boshara asks of Randy’s condition and is told that he is being attended to in the Mandulfr household, which is where Boshara is taken as well.

Boshara is greeted by Marjaleena Cenas there, who as we remember, Boshara suspects on having something to do with the attack on Randy. 

Marjaleena gives Boshara her own personal servant by the name of Bert Ferol, who attends to her every need, including finding her a bigger bedroom, once she realizes she doesn’t quite fit in the regular dwarven-sized bed.

Meanwhile outside, Humbert has a long talk with the door guard regarding the whole Orzammar situation. He learns that there are some people permitted in, namely some Fereldan chantry folk, who are bringing in food aid.

The carta situation inside Orzammar seems to be rather quiet, but the roads outside are getting downright rowdy. This is no concern of General Saelac. 

While the others are going to bed Alf and Cahair decide to go look around. They dare not sneak into the templars’ tents, but they find a group of dwarves drinking and join in.

One of them, by the name of Merrik, takes an immediate liking to Cahair(’s humor), which is certainly a new experience.

They talk a bit about how the dwarves have been waiting here for a while and about the templars, who also have been here a while.

One of the templars drops by to tell the peeps to quiet down and Alf can’t resist making a bit of fun of the templar’s heavy accent. But the situation doesn’t luckily escalate.

While drinking, Cahair and Alf take notice of one dwarf who seems to be a rather poor in trying to lie about what he does for a living.

So Cahair, rather publicly, takes the dagger he retrieved from one of the carta member’s bodies and asks Merrik about it.

The weird dwarf starts certainly paying attention now.

Merrik tries to make Cahair part with the dagger, but Cahair isn’t having any of it and refuses to part with it.

An off-the-cuff mention of Richard (or rather that Cahair’s partner is a man as well) sours Merrik’s attitude towards Cahair rather quickly.

Alf steps in then, and offers Merrik gold for information, which he agrees to.

Merrik tells that the carta had been running some scams involving old turned over carts (such as one we found Trin under last time) and that the dagger has belonged to someone pretty high-ranking in the carta. Of the initials ZH on the handle, Merrik can’t say.

While Alf is discussing with Merrik, the strange dwarf approaches Cahair. He’s clearly quite young, looks to be about 14, though claims to be much older. He tries to get Cahair to give him the dagger to have a look over, but Cahair isn’t having any of that and asks him to come ask about it tomorrow.

After that is done the elves retreat into the cart for the night.

In the morning our fellows still stuck outside wake up to the voices starting to come from outside. They see that the templars seem to be queueing up for one of the tents, we suspect in line for their lyrium intakes.

There’s also the chantry sisters that are let in through the doors.

There doesn’t seem to be much to do, in terms of helping ourselves to get in. We just have to wait for Boshara.

Cahair and Alf notice Merrik and the strange dwarf passed out near their tents and go rife through their pockets. 

Cahair finds some papers that seem to indicate that the strange dwarf is part of a lyrium smuggling ring.

 Alf notices that the money he gave Merrik seems to have disappeared from his purse (and the little that remains, Alf takes for himself).

We also send Merle, our Orlesian dwarf, to make friends with the templars, and he comes back with news. The very angry templar we saw shouting is a Knight-Lietuetant by the name of Jackquemin Gaillard. And apparently there’s a Knight-Captain that’s on their way from Orlais. 

It sounds like the templars are preparing to basically storm Orzammar, which sounds... really bad.

Boshara spends the start of her morning getting prettied up. Marjaleena had ordered some new clothes, more in line with dwarven fashion, to be made for her. She is also made-up in dwarven fashion.

After that, Boshara goes to find the room where Randy is kept. It seems no one, including Marjaleena is let in, but Boshara manages to talk her way in.

Randy is being attended to by several dwarven medics and servants, but is still very much unconscious

Boshara goes to find Marjaleena to see if she can help with getting her other friends in.

Marjaleena seems pleasant enough, but also she doesn’t say much that doesn’t make Boshara suspicious. For example, Boshara gets a sense that she is lying when she talks about the “love at first sight” she felt for Randy.

From Marjaleena Boshara learns that king Aeducan sent the carta leaders to become part of the Legion of the Dead and for a while all was peaceful, but now the carta is back in full swing.

About Boshara’s request, Marjaleena suggests they go talk to her father. As the only alive paragon, Jon Cenas’ word has quite a sway.

Boshara asks why Jon was made paragon, and Marjaleena explains that he was a rather famous paragon champion, did a lot to advance the sport and kid’s education and also he designed some pretty sick grappling hooks.

So that’s where they go. They find Jon in his house in his personal gym. He seems like a very nice older man.

They talk a bit about the Provings that Jon Cenas is preparing for. He’ll be facing General Saelac in a friendly match.

Speaking of Provings, wouldn’t that just be the greatest way to get our heroes still outside Orzammar in? Boshara and Jon Cenas sure think so.

They would need to ask General Saelac’s opinion, so Jon sends for him.

While they wait, Boshara asks for Jon for his autograph which he gives.

General Saelac comes by and Boshara starts pitching our friends to him.

It starts relatively sane, seeing that Humbert has an actual soldier’s training of sorts. Though Boshara uses descriptive words such as iron-muscled, which Humbert would probably not use for himself.

Then Boshara introduces Cahair as a “sly fox” and goes almost a bit overboard with the “wild elf” angle, but reigns it in at last second.

Elspet is introduced as Pamela Paine, the mystic woman and a martial art expert who can knock people off their feet by her expertise in aura destruction.

And Alf is the Shadow Warrior In-Sein (get it?), who lives and strikes from the shadows.

General Saelac is impressed by this and says he’ll send people to pick them up. Boshara can go to the warrior’s quarters where they’ll meet.

While they head there Boshara asks about King Aeducan and the lyrium situation, both which the general assures to be fine. 

He gently requests that Boshara would lay off on topics relating to politics, which Boshara agrees to.

So, our heroes’ boring morning of templar-watching is interrupted by dwarves coming to get them. 

When they enter Orzammar, they can hear Knight-Captain Gailard starting another shouting match with the door guards.

They are taken in the Commons and then left to their own devices. They stay and listen to a town crier for a while. It seems that General Saelac is rather well-liked by the folk of Orzammar. Or at least he has a good propaganda machine.

We drop our bronto and cart at Tapser’s Tavern to a rather unpleasant stablehand.

Before heading to the warrior’s quarters, we notice the Fereldan Chantry sisters giving out food, and Elspet decides to go talk to one of them to let them know about the Orlesian templars’ plan of entering Orzammar by force.

She also scores a date with the sister, who is named Jennifer.

Our heroes meet up with Boshara who arranges a luncheon with Saelac. Elspet goes to a date of her own and doesn’t join this event.

Boshara introduces our confused heroes with the same grandiose, if not more, and they have to act like they know what’s going on.

Once our heroes’ role in the Provings (they would be an entertainment match before the actual competition, and wouldn’t be using weapons) is explained, it doesn’t sound quite as bad.

Humbert and Cahair ask about the carta situation and whether they need to worry about carta’s revenge. Saelac assures that there will be no need to worry, but assigns a soldier named Carras to investigate the matter further.

Humbert also tries to push on the Aeducan issue, since Randy was supposed to bring the fertility rune to him, but Saelac uses the promise Boshara made to him to change the subject.

Elspet and Jennifer have a pleasant little date. Jennifer is a bit worried about the information Elspet gave and says that she’ll pass the information on. 

After lunch, Boshara and Cahair share all their information in elvish, as they can be pretty certain no one else there speaks it. Meanwhile Humbert talks with Boshara’s two personal body guards Olira Ulmot and Corav Turmot, but I didn’t hear any of that conversation, so I’ll just report on Boshara and Cahair.

They discuss how much Marjaleena might be involved in this whole thing, is it possible that the carta leaders from the Legion of the Dead escaped to surface and if there’s a way for Boshara to find out more (for example we saw some of the carta members we killed having quite unusual tattoos), is king Aeducan dead or just kept captive, and how much Saelac is at fault.

Boshara isn’t free to walk around, but she has access to the Diamond Quarter, so she’ll continue her investigation there, focusing on the carta leaders turned legionnaires and Aeducan. Regarding our ship’s lyrium troubles, she could also ask Marjaleena to help with that, and maybe at the same time, find out more about her.

The others can’t go to the Diamond Quarter, but they can move around more freely, so it is decided they’ll focus on the carta: Alf could try to sneak in to the Dust Down to find some carta members, while Humbert could join the night patrol looking for carta activities. Cahair could go check the miner’s quarters since we aren’t quite certain what the lyrium situation of Orzammar exactly is.

Elspet could use her bird form to help with Boshara and maybe Boshara could even sneak her in to check on Randy.

But those plans we shall be putting into action NEXT TIME! Dundunduu.

[nemossubmarine]

DA RP Write-Up #14.6

This time it’s time to stop an explosion, and also realize very acutely that we are so in over our heads. Oh dear.

We pick up at the Provings arena’s restroom, where Alf and Jon Cenas are finishing their business. Cenas asks if Alf is coming back to see the matches but Alf figures he best go find the others.

As he is trying to leave, Alf is stopped for a moment to let Saelac pass with his troops. It seems the tongue-cutting Provings’ fighter unnerved him quite a bit.

Cahair and Elspet go pick up our missing crew members. At the jail cell, Elspet flirts with the lady in charge of the release, but these two still have to part with all their gold just to get Merle’s and Breck’s bails covered.

There will be a court date later these two will have to attend.

Elspet tries to get Ranna, Trin’s mother released as well, even telling it was ordered by Saelac, but to no avail.

Cahair talks with Merle, asking him about the jail. There seemed to be a lot of carta people there, but Merle had no contact with them.

Cahair also tells him there might be an explosion coming, so he and Breck should go back to the tavern and stay low, and tell Humbert they are going to try to stop this.

Boshara is making her way back to the Provings Arena as she too notices Saelac and his squad leave. This to her reads as either a very suspicious or a very cowardly move. Either way, she doesn’t stop to talk with him as she had originally planned.

Our four heroes meet in the bridge going to the Arena to discuss the situation. It doesn’t seem that Saelac is going to do anything, except flee.

Cahair checks on the maps Boshara has, and notices that when he and Alf were wandering around in the Deep Roads, they actually came pretty close to the cavern under the Arena.

Our heroes decide that they better get going there themselves.

There’s one problem though, Randy is at the arena with Marjaleena, and they would need to let him know to get out of there.

Luckily Jon Cenas is being dragged away from the arena just then by his overprotective, and by asking him to make sure Randy gets out, we also accidentally give Cenas a chance to escape his bodyguards. We just have to hope the message reaches Randy and Cenas doesn’t forget everything because of the Provings.

That settled our heroes make their way to the entrance to the Deep Roads, where Boshara attempts to use her noble influence to get through the guards, but it doesn’t work very well.

One of Boshara’s guards talks to the guards then and gets everyone through.

Our heroes start making their way towards the closed-off tunnel from which Cahair and Alf made their way through to get to the lower levels.

Unfortunately they start hearing some rumblings behind them, sounding quite a bit like some darkspawn. 

Our heroes take off running, but Cahair, still winded by the battle at the arena, falls behind and is jumped by a darkspawn.

He manages to kick it off him and Alf shoots it with arrows.

While this happens Boshara’s guards have helped up through the small hole in the blockage. They help Alf and Cahair through as well, while Elspet flies through as a bird.

After leaving the darkspawn behind, our heroes descend into the lower levels. 

They can see there has been someone moving around there quite recently.

Cahair, Alf and Boshara put their smart heads together to navigate the tunnels. 

When they get to be around to the place where Alf and Cahair had turned back last night, they hear someone running towards them.

It’s a carta dwarf, who upon seeing our heroes, turns and runs. Alf shoots him down.

Unfortunately someone saw this as they can hear another person running around.

They run after this person and Cahair catches up with the dwarf, stuns him and drags him back for some interrogation. 

While he is still stunned, Alf looks through the dwarf’s pockets, and picks up some money, a dagger, a carta ring and a sling. The ring and the dagger he is forced to return but the rest he keeps.

Boshara tries to interrogate first, but she really isn’t intimidating enough (that’s what you get with no strength-based heroes in our party atm).

Then Alf has a go, making some tongue-related threats, which seem to work a lot better.

The dwarf, named Bobin Bood is now willing to talk, though Cahair still has his dagger on his throat and Bobin very much would like that he didn’t.

Bodin tells that there was some minor unexpected explosions beneath the Arena, which were probably caused by Elspet’s and Boshara’s magic use during our Provings Fun Round Deathmatch.

He was just about to go tell Hedda Carol, the carta’s leader that Saelac is no longer in the building, and ask about blowing it up anyway.

Bobin also mentions that the carta hold a grudge against the house Mandulfr as it was not them who killed the paragon.

Boshara asks if us helping them find out who did it really and clearing carta’s name would help any, but Bobin says they’re in too deep now.

Cahair asks about King Aeducan, and whether he is blighted, but Bobin says he is merely a coward. It’s him and Saelac the carta are most interested in getting rid off.

Things get interesting as Boshara demands to know why the carta is so keen on killing everyone and Bobin talks about how little choice the dusters have on what they are to become and how they just want a little freedom.

Boshara is actually starting to get convinced, and while all the others are certainly feeling some sympathy for the carta people, they are not about to let them bomb Orzammar.

Cahair compares the casteless dwarves’ situation to that of the elves noting that violence has not solved anything for the elves, and you know who was that kind of dude who always went for violence? Harralan, that’s who, and look how he turned out.

Elspet is the voice of reason telling that Boshara can’t be seriously considering letting them kill that many innocents.

Something has to be done, so our heroes ask for Bobin to take them to Hedda. Bobin is a bit hesitant at first, but agrees finally and leaves to get some of his friends.

While he’s gone, our heroes talk plan. First things first, we tell Boshara’s guards to go. They seem pretty cool with out plans and not at all fans of Saelac so they probably won’t cause too much trouble on that front.

We wonder if we could use the impending templar attack as our advantage. It would be chaos if nothing else.

There’s also talk about if our heroes help with killing Saelac, maybe the bigger blood shed could be avoided.

Boshara volunteers, but Cahair says he should probably do it, since he kinda has some Crow skills, having been trained by Arkaitz in their ways.

This is new information to Elspet and Boshara (but not Alf, see campaign #10), who are upset about this reveal.

Cahair says he didn’t want to share this information, because he doesn’t enjoy the fact that he is getting very efficient at killing, but he felt that the lessons were needed to help the rest keep their hands less bloody.

In the end Boshara suggests that she and Cahair should kill Saelac together. Which is not perhaps what Cahair most wanted to hear.

Bobin comes back and our heroes let themselves be handcuffed.

They are led to the carta hideout and finally to meet Hedda, who is very clearly blighted.

Boshara tries to talk to her about maybe the possibility of less blood-shed, but she’s not having any of it. She seems a bit... unhinged to say the least.

After hearing the Arena has not yet been blown up, she cuts off three of Bobin’s fingers.

She tells that her sickness revealed to her that all the dwarves are guilty and all she wants is death and destruction.

The talk is not going very well. Elspet then offers to cure Hedda, as she perhaps would be less crazy after that. After a bit of convincing she agrees to it.

Boshara and Elspet are let out of their cuffs. To everyone’s surprise Hedda orders Cahair to be freed too, as she feels that he, as well as Elspet, are friends of her.

Poor Alf remains cuffed.

There’s really no time to figure out why Hedda singled out Cahair, as Boshara and Elspet need to prepare for the operation which they told Hedda was like, totally safe. No biggie.

They put Hedda to sleep by magic, Elspet heals her with her elven ways and they they get some blood from non-tainted carta members and get on with their blood transferal.

This time it seems to have worked. At least all the bad blood is out of Hedda. 

As Hedda is still out, the carta members tell our heroes that they are going to lock them up for everyone’s safety.

Boshara is having none of it, she just saved their leader after all!!

She even tries to headbutt one of the carta people, but misses.

Our heroes end up in the cells. Boshara continues to rant and rave. Cahair takes up talking with a dwarf next cell over, named Gwynna, a miner who has been forced to mine lyrium for the carta. 

Cahair tells a bit about what he and the others are doing here, when Boshara grabs him, telling that it’s not necessary to make friends in every damn place.

She wants to check on and have Elspet check on Cahair’s left eye, which he has been scratching quite a bit since they got here.

Cahair admits it has been acting a bit funky today. 

Our mages check it, it’s dark red and bloodied, seems to be infected, but it’s hard to say what it might be. Cahair best not touch it anymore tho.

And it is in that cell, that we leave our heroes. Maybe next time we’ll see how pooped Orzammar is after we try to fix an age long political issues, like the good meddlers that we are. Humbert would be proud. Humbert is probably absolutely livid that we fucked off to the Deep Roads to disarm a lyrium bomb and didn’t even ask him to come!