Take me to your leader

Adventuring is terrifying, but there's an underlying current of excitement that makes it all worthwhile. That excitement is taken away when other people's lives are at risk, especially children.

When the door to the cellar opened it jolted me awake. There was no grogginess at all (several months training in the Verbobonc militia will do that to you). I grabbed my weapon and jumped behind a pillar. Everyone else had already done the same.

Fortunately, it was just Ostler--along with the Mayor and the captain of the guard.

We talked for a while, but the gist of it is this: A few days ago--just about a day after we left Verbobonc--the children of Hommlet had been disappearing. They had been seen walking out of town with their parents, but parents said they had done no such thing.

"More dopplegangers," Saul commented.

The mayor agreed. It was at this point soldiers appeared. They wore emblems of no country they knew. They announced that Hommlet's children were in their custody. They are well and will stay that way only so long as the people of Hommlet keep their mouths shut. Everyone in town has been accounted for and visitors are heavily scrutinized. If someone were to up and leave town or if someone were to try and send a warning, then the children would be killed.

There was a moment of silence after that revelation. To use an Earth aphorism, this sucked hard.

No one knows where the children are located, and no one wants to risk sending a message without rescuing them first. Who knows how many other dopplegangers are in town? There's no way to know who is a spy and who is not. Recently, the captain of the guard noticed a group of invading soldiers (dressed as Burnes' Badgers) taking the road to Nulb, a settlement about a day away. It's the only lead they have.

"That's it then," Anna said. "We head to Nulb and start cracking skulls."

"Any idea who to start with?" I asked.

"Well," the Mayor said. "There is a blacksmith in town by the name of Otis. No, don't go cracking his skull. From time to time he does some...well, shall we call it intelligence gathering?"

"A spy, huh?" Saul said.

"If anyone knows what's going on in Nulb it's Otis," the guard captain said. "If he doesn't know...."

"We'll find him," Marc said. "We'll get to the bottom of this."

"And we'll bring back the children," Audry said. "Whatever it takes."

"I know you will," Ostler said. The two stared at each for a moment, sharing a private thought.

"Any idea how we can get out of town?" I asked.

"There's a barge ready to leave," the guard captain said. "I can sneak you on board, but we need to move quickly."

That's where we are now...on the barge. Under a blanket. It's already rained on us once. We should be in Nulb sometime tomorrow.

In the meantime, therapy:

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At first they wanted 200 gold in exchange "for our lives." We all drew our weapons and it dropped to 100 gold. I pointed to the ogre corpse on the floor as a reminder, and it dropped to 50 gold. Finally, one of them got angry and charged us. Anna planted an arrow in his gourd. They decided that they'd let us off the hook for free this time, and throw in information on the rest of this dungeon...including the whereabouts of their leader, Lareth...for free.

If only Congress negotiated like this back home. Things'd get done a lot quicker.

They quickly told us about bugbears that way (pointing vaguely while Marc hastily drew a map on parchment), giant water bug that way, and then that way and to the left and left again to get to Lareth. He had "two more than I have fingers," one of them said, "plus the lieutenant."

"Fourteen including Lareth," Saul said. "Lovely."

They charged upstairs as soon as Audry gave them the nod. They smelled like unwashed dogs. Figures.

"So," Anna said, "do we take the leaders and all their gold, or do we deal with the bugbears first so they don't flank us?"

"You sound like Monty Haul," I said.

"Who?" she asked.

"Never mind," I said. "So, uh, what do we do?"

"You can give up," a voice said.

Strangely, the voice sounded just like with one of the gnolls. Only deeper. A lot deeper. The laughter was pretty similar as well.

Marc held up the magic-light-pebble-thingy. Not fifteen feet away stood giant, hairy, fanged...things. I could see their breath in the damp air, and they looked like they were smiling.

"You make a lot of noise," one of them said. It's common was actually pretty good.

"Are those bugbears?" I asked.

Saul nodded absently. "You know, maybe one day we can do this without getting ambushed."