Renegades and Redemption

Day after day the Preserver bent over the books he’d retrieved from Urik, cataloging the nature and extent of damage and the time required for each repair. Absorbed in private thoughts the Avangion hovered tirelessly nearby, providing light more steady than any lantern’s, speaking only to remind the Preserver to eat and to sleep. The work went slowly, for the Preserver was often distracted by a phrase here or a paragraph there, until a tome of ancient history diverted him so completely that he gave up the reconstruction effort and retreated with the volume to a more comfortable chair. 
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It was twlight in the desert and the bloated red sun sagged low in the sky when a massive, hooded and heavily laden figure appeared at the top of a rocky outcropping. His cloak was dusty and worn, his thick boots showed signs of much patching. Someone watching would have thought him a fool as he crested the rise and stepped carelessly onto the scree below. Someone who thought carelessness its own reward would have laughed as the rocks gave way beneath him: a shout, a flail of his arms, and the man vanished in the avalanche. Someone who approached thinking to pick through the rubble in search of the dead man’s lost spoils would think again as the slope’s inherent instability became plain to even casual inspection. Perhaps he would uncap his waterskin and take a sip against the dryness of the settling dust. Then he would shake his head at the never-ending folly of men and look for a different victim to relieve of his water, his valuables, perhaps his life if the desert hadn’t done it for him.
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“Tonight is a story about dorves,” says Opa Skarp. The day was unseasonably cool – the temperature barely broke 100 degrees at its peak – so energy is high despite a long day of tending to the crops. And the kretis, more sluggish in the cool, were easier to manage, too.

When Skarp is feeling strong by day’s end, he tends to imbibe a little more than usual. And when he’s just a drunk enough – but not so drunk as to slur or forget himself – well, that’s when you hear the good stories, the true stories. Not the fairy tales like usual. But dorves are just more fairly tales. It’s hard to not be disappointed.
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Wars are won but struggles, as ever, continue.

Sir Geoffrey strode down a dim, cold hallway of Greyhawk’s temple of Wee Jas, a black-robed, hooded attendant trailing in his wake. He paused before the third door from the end, on the left. “I’m still not convinced this is the right way to go about it,” he said.

“I want to know her mood,” the figure within the robes replied, “before I decide.”

Geoffrey cast the attendant a reproachful glance, then opened the door. It was a small, spare interview room, furnished with a table and two chairs. Light shone upward on the ceiling from two copper sconces on opposing walls, but the rest of the room was quite dim; when the robed figure took up a silent vigil just inside the door he was little more than a shadow among shadows. Brin, dressed in the robes of a senior Jasian priestess, half-rose from her chair when they entered, but Geoffrey waved her back into her seat. “No reason,” he said, “until we’ve settled the question of allegiance.” As he removed his cloak he reached into an inner pouch, withdrew a folded piece of cloth and tossed it on the table between them.
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Well, here’s the new home-to-be of the Renegades and Redemption site. As befits campaigns that have been running off and on for a venerable seven years now, it’s hopefully a little less scruffy than the old one.

Material will be trickling in from the old site as I have time; it’s still, for the time being, available in archive form.

As before, For Pawns Only is for the folks in our local campaign, and is password protected. If you go to the old site you’ll find that’s still password protected too, but in the ‘nobody-including-me-can-get-to-the-content’ broken sort of way, so it’s not very useful.

Captain Serranis tries to come to grips with the horrors visited upon Drellin’s Ferry.

It was after ten o’clock, and on a usual day Drellin’s Ferry would be quieting for the night. But it was not a usual day, and the night was not quiet. Under the direction of the militia the citizens of Drellin’s Ferry were packing and assembling for evacuation, preparing to flee toward Brindol with a goblin army at their heels and an uncertain future as refugees ahead of them. Some comforted themselves with thoughts of the day they would be able to return to their homes and abandoned possessions. Others took a more bitter comfort in cursing fate or, for those who needed a more tangible target, the five knights of Dunthrane who had ridden in on the wings of ill fortune and through force of arms and guile had imposed this decision on an unwilling populace. The number of naysayers had grown considerably fewer after Vayel and Brin killed a roving three-headed chimaera sowing terror on the street that afternoon, but was swelling again somewhat after Tenser’s precipitate appearance and the total destruction of the inn and concomitant loss of a dozen townspeople later in the day.
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The hunt for a gem thief widens into war.

It had been a long day, and when they stopped for the night Brin lost no time finding a surface to lean against and drifting into meditation, lulled by the familiar sounds of Vayel cleaning and sharpening her weapons while Corwin and Dryden pored over maps, and the novel sound of Keraptis muttering over his spellbook. Willie curled up on her lap but after a few minutes his mind retreated into a more remote and finally unreachable space. This was not particularly unusual and she thought nothing of it until he returned, mentally tugging at her. With a grumble of fatigue she followed where he led, until with an abrupt transition she found herself walking in tall grass by a wide, swiftly flowing stream, overhanging willows shading her from a bright sun. A man nearly seven feet tall with tigerish features and bright blue eyes approached from the opposite bank. Seeing her he stepped onto the water, which stilled to glass and bore his weight easily where he crossed. For just a moment she thought she saw the faint image of a second Willie in front of him, but couldn’t convince herself it wasn’t a trick of the light.
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The potential for an alliance between Iuz and the Scarlet Brotherhood creates new possibilities for unpleasantness.  

Sir Geoffrey’s personal assistant and the captain of the Montinelle militia frowned nearly identical nervous frowns as the young woman rode away from the gate toward the manor. Mid-afternoon she’d appeared in front of the town as if she’d walked in on a cloud, wearing that mithril armor that was probably worth more than the market square, with that tame weasel on her shoulder who stared at them with an unpleasant steadiness that on a human face the assistant would have called disdain. The black and silver cloak was new and nearly as expensive-looking as the armor. She’d said that Sir Geoffrey was expecting her, as if his personal aide wouldn’t already know, and before he could even offer her a horse demanded one for the longish trek back to the manor. When the captain asked her to return it to the barracks stable when she left, she laughed.
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The party refines it sense of purpose. Hanen finds himself in unexpected company.

Hanen was overcome by a wave of dizziness, and when he came to himself again he looked around in confusion. The last thing he remembered was Lars running out of Klavicus’ room and Lyssa looking at him with concern. It was with some astonishment, then, that he suddenly found himself apparently no longer at the Grey Kingfisher Inn at all. More disconcertingly, he had no idea who he thought this Lars and Lyssa were, or had ever been, and he was none too sure about the existence of the Grey Kingfisher. It was if there had been some seismic shift in his memory or, more ominously, in the world itself.
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Another group of slavers dispatched, the party finds themselves in possession of an empty keep. (af)

You did an excellent job infiltrating and destroying the denizens Slaver Fortress.  After the battle, you manage with little trouble to clean up the remaining defenders of the castle.  The wolf Fenris - who seems to smile at you with a disconcerting lupine satisfaction while feasting on the entrails of the mad cleric Keltar - manages to chase the scent of the fleeing Drow to a well-concealed trapdoor in back of the cleric’s personal chambers on the first floor of the temple.  “That is not my place to venture” he says.  “The stink of the dark ones is strong down there.  I prefer to hunt among the trees and the forests of Oerth, not in the confined passages of the Underdark.  Perhaps you should teach them a lesson in keeping their heads underground…” 
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