Back to Eugor

The morning after the ghoul score, Esme woke them all up with a note. It was from Lieutenant Chung: "GET HERE NOW!"

Lieutenant Anton Chung

So, most of the Budgie Smugglers headed to the Knives base: Tylin [Ian], Huilam [Jamie], Lammy [Kevin], Moonlight [Chris], Dee Dee [Steven]; but not Burrito [Darryl] and not the marmaladers: Argile [Richard], Ronnie [Deacon]; nor the two out in Scabport Prison: Sorrow [Jeff] and El Cid [Shane].

They had a new chap join the group, a cutter called Grey Wacke [Jeff's character while Sorrow languished on Prison Island].

They were shown into Lieutenant Chung's office. He was there in the conversation pit with two no-neck bully-boys. He did not look very pleased.

"Why did you lot start a damn war!" he shouted.

"but.. uh...war?" someone stammered.

"Between the REAL and the Graveyard! The bosses upstairs are furious. You specifically told me you weren't going to work for the temples. So, it wasn't even on my radar..."

"But we don't need to get your permission..." said Huilam indignantly.

Chung clicked his fingers, and pointed randomly at one of the group.

"That one."

The two bully-boys lurched forward and grabbed Moonlight. They pulled the druid to his knees, and started to lay into him with a brutal stream of savage full-force punches. They wore brass knuckle-dusters, so did their grim work with ruthless efficiency.

The rest of the group looked on in horror.

Chung watched coldly as Moonlight took his beating. After what seemed like ages, he gestured to the two and they stepped back, leaving the unconscious and battered Moonlight lying in a pool of blood.

Chung then calmed himself, his anger leaving him, and he continued as if he was observing the time of day.

"Because of this fiasco," he said. "All guard leave has been cancelled, and we have doubled all patrols in Skull. I am shielding you lot from the wrath of the big cheeses. Because you're useful to me, and you might make progress with the Stringfellow job. That's still in progress?"

"Oui, Monsieur" said Huilam.

Moonlight groaned and coughed up some blood.

"Now go," said Chung.

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Back at base, Moonlight came around enough that he could cast a Cure on himself. It didn't fix all the damage, but it was enough.

Esme returned with some jobs (the Luscious Pixie notice board): Meetings in the Drunken Imbecile in the Slavers District. And, in meetings in the Dock District, in The Four Ships Inn and The Gibbet and Grape.

At The Drunken Imbecile, they met half-elf Agnes Thames and two thugs. She represented Simon's Slaves (one of the major slave houses in Scabport). She wanted the party to track down and capture some runaways: two male slaves, one woman and a girl, all human. She would pay 2 COIN each (alive).

"Why don't you have your own slave hunters?" came the obvious question.

"We do,"she replied, "but we often sub-contract run-away retrieval to Scabport hunters, such as you lot."

Then came the scathing, and the mocking:

"You're not morally opposed to this?" she sneered. "Goody-two-shoes? Wusses? Big-girls' blouses?"

This brought up a lot of self-reflection and soul-searching in the group about the institution of slavery. Slavery was legal all over the Wild Coast. Scabport followed the medieval model of slavery where anyone could be captured and enslaved. Such a person was legally enslaved, and, from then on, had no rights and was treated as a possession. Manumission was also possible, and that would restored the slave to citizen status.

Unlike a lot of places, Scabport had a centralized slave register maintained by the Scabport council. Scabport slaves were identifiable by a brand on the left buttock, which was a unique serial number of "S-" plus four characters*.

The group said they would ponder this job, and they left the tavern with the mocking sounds of the voices of Agnes's guards ringing in their ears [Homer Simpson's mocking lady voice].

* = Four alpha-numeric letters; 10 digits plus 26 letters minus B I O S Z, so 31^4 is just under a million, and they recycle dead ones when they can.
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At the Four Ships Inn, they met Simon Palma of the Lampblacks (a thiefy organization). He wanted the party to reconnoitre Fort Eugor. He had heard things about the place, and he heard rumours that the TGP (Thieves Guild Police) and the Knives had fought there.

He wanted to find out three things: A map, guard positions and who last owned it. And would pay 4 COIN.

The group had almost all this info already from their previous exploits there, so it would be an easy job. They agreed to take it on. Tonight.

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At The Gibbet and Grape they met Marita Crain (& body guard) of the TGP wanted to find out about Michael Stringfellow and wanted him alive. 8 COIN.

The group withdrew a bit to talk this issue over among themselves. They had decided to "be professional" and to "stay out of politics".

Anton Chung wanted Michael Stringfellow dead, so they could not then keep him alive and deliver him to Marita, even though some heads were sorely tempted. Cooler heads prevailed. So, they had no option but to turn her job down.

On the way back from this meeting, Tylin and  Grey Wacke hung back. Sure enough, they were being followed. They intercepted a thiefy-looking woman. They sent her packing.


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Lady Falshot

That night, they all headed to the Falshot's place (Lady Falshot was the woman that Huilam befriended last time they did Eugor jobs.) She lived in  a mansion at the base of Eugor hill, and it was an excellent place from where to launch forays up to the fort.

Tylin and Huilam, both having infravision, went up to Eugor hill that night. As they walked up the road, they could see over in the direction of Scabport Graveyard, a few stades away, there was all manner of flashes and flares going off. They assumed that the REAL forces must be fighting in the graveyard. Taking on the Wraith King, perhaps?

Up at the fort, Tylin thought he saw a figure in the main gate's archway. But there was no heat. Could it be undead up here?

They carefully circled the old fort, and caught a glimpse of something else moving; another figure. Again, no heat.

So, they returned to the Falshot's and drew up a map of the outside of the ruins. They already had a detailed inside map of this place, when they had done previous jobs here.

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The next morning, they reported to Simon Palma. He was happy with the Fort Eugor information,  and paid the agreed 4 COIN.

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TP glass

Later that day, Lammy got a message from the Wizards' Guild (via Esme, through the 1G conch hanging in the Luscious Pixie) stating that the Teleport glass was now ready. So Lammy, Grey Wacke and Tylin took the party's wagon a la Carte, loaded with the six crates of silver (6 COIN), to the WG loading bay, and paid the remaining money owed to the Guild. Sly Dunbar presented Lammy with the newly-made magic TP glass, in a velour-lined box, and some instructions:

• Hold each end of the TP glass, in each hand, and break the central join. It will then teleport the breaker to the target location: room 5 of the Adventuress and Bugbear inn. 
• It will TP reasonable amount of his gear too. There will be no remnants of glass left at the scene.
• It requires skin to glass contact on both ends by the same person. If one end is not in skin contact with the same person, then malfunction. 
• If another person is in (skin) contact with the breaker or the glass, then malfunction. 
• If the glass of the two ends is broken before the central join, then malfunction. So dropping it, or squeezing too hard, or smashing it against something or the skin of the target, or biting it will fail, unless you can ensure that the central join breaks first, and there is skin contact on both ends.
• Malfunctions are fickle and dangerous, and result in wild magic effects ranging from explosions, to sandstorms, to pieces of the breaker's body being teleported to random locations in the Known World. 
• If you want the target location to be changed, you can take the TP glass to the Wizards' Guild and they can re-target it. The cost to do this is 1 COIN the first time, and it doubles each change after that.

Theoretically, you could hold each end of the TP glass with tongs and press the two halves, sideways, on to the target's skin, then then break the middle join. This would certainly TP the target, but this would require much care, because those tongs would be considered to be "part of the target's equipment" and so would be teleported with him. When the tongs vanish, the air rushes in to the spot with a lot of force (the familiar TP "bang!"*), so you'd need to be careful not to lose fingers or a hand.

* = The Sigmoid Brothers (named after their controversial diverticulitis experiments with the sigmoid colon) studied this effect with their slow-motion drawing technique, where they could render twenty thousand frames-per-second drawn onto multiple chalk boards. They captured good views of in-rushing air into the vanish-void (where the teleported object was) where the wave front collides with itself and bounces back. It is this so-called "sigmoid effect" that actually causes the detonation.

The Sigmoid Brothers were also the ones who confirmed that a teleport is not actually instantaneous, but travels at the speed-of-magic, which is a finite speed, exactly twenty great-circles per second. There is a small period of time where the teleported object does not actually exist in the world.

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At the prison, El Cid and Sorrow kept their noses clean. El Cid was largely ignored by Second Lieutenant Sharples. Sorrow actively tried to avoid her, and he practiced climbing around the walls.