Games We Play

(The following journal is from the viewpoint of Foley, a halfling thief, some years later.)

The first thing we found out about Caladeer was there were no wizards on the streets and no supply shops. Even though magic’s for those weak-kneed wizards who use it, it’s never bad to get an idea on the lay of the land. These wizards and their apprentices all worked for the High King up in the fortress. The others, mostly Nosmo and Dane, went out one evening being obvious about their magical interests trying to, I don’t know, stir up trouble. But Caladeer was a wholesome town with hardly a cheap tavern with dwarfs falling off their stools at all hours of the day. They didn’t bait anyone.

They call this kind of thing “trolling” after some kind of old fishing custom. They used to take a troll, you see, and give it a few cuts and dump it in the water waiting for the big fish to come by and take a nibble, then they’d try to catch the fish. Because it was a troll, it was like getting free bait until the thing escaped and killed everyone. I’m sure not many people used trolls but the saying must have stuck.

There was an independant businessman’s council, though. It was —

It’s a Thieves’ Guild, girl. Now shush.

It was not too difficult to find. First we hunted down a historian to better price some of the more artistic items brought with us from the island, the one we crashed on just a few days earlier. Sully was giving me a hard time about it, but that’s the way of orcs, always thinking that a thing is a thing. But when a thing has history, you can sell the history along with the thing. It’s like being a bard, eh? Business is like that.

The were eventually pointed to a man named Fflewdder, a tall hawk-nosed man who we were told did some bardic work but I couldn’t stand listening to him for more than a few minutes. It was our pleasure to feed him beer while he looked over one of the spoons. I’d like to have played poker with the guy, though, because he got immediately excited, going on about how it was from the Fortress of Viledel, the Pirate Prince who later tried to go legit some ninety years ago.

So we disturbed the grave of an infamous local legend and stole his son’s boat, but we weren’t going to tell anyone, certainly not this guy. He already knew, before we even met, that we were newcomers to the island. He didn’t think anyone in Caladeer would be interested in the historical value, but he would let us know if someone did.

By the time I made it to the businessman council’s headquarters, thanks to a helpful beggar, we were being called “the castaways”. Dane had some trouble accepting this and, for some elf-brained reason, was trying to come up with a name like we were some kind of touring circus. We were about one dancing bear short of it, though, so I can’t say I was surprised.

By the next day, even the messenger who came to fetch us was calling us “the castaways”. Even a law-abiding city benefits from a criminal element, remember that.

We were asked to come down to the docks and talk with the dock master who had a job for us, such as it was. The next boat for Baldur’s Gate wasn’t leaving for another five days so what were we going to do? So for the not-too-paltry fee of ten gold, half now half when we returned, we agreed to take three bolts of silk up to a nearby castle owned by a Duke Blackthorne. The dock master was even kind enough to provide horses, and a pony for myself.

We packed up and set out immediately. Dane was quite bold about his knowledge of horses, but Sully only grudgingly admitted to knowing a thing or two. I think he was a stable boy, though I don’t know how they kept him from frightening the horses. The rest of us knew just enough to hold on to the reins.

The ride was pretty boring until we were just going around the mountain. I’m sure the thing was called “Blackthorne Mountain” or something equally unimaginative. Sully’s horse tripped on a vine and he fell right off, whatever swearing on the way down cut off by the sudden stop at the end.

Something unseen chuckled from nowhere and told us that we were being robbed, whether we wanted to be or not. I don’t know if it was the idea of losing money or hitting his head on the ground, but Sully didn’t like this idea. He closed his eyes and waited as the rest of us threw things at the empty air, not entirely sure anything was there at all. But Sully closed his eyes — this is how insane half-orcs can be — and took a swing so hard I was sure the sword would fly out of his hands. Instead there appeared a half-orc (how many of these damn things are there and how do we stop it?) with all his insides becoming his outsides. From invisible to dead in one swipe, and Sully just grinned.

He did some talking to his sword, who he named “Susan”, but wouldn’t explain that.

The unknown half-orc had friends, though, and a rain of crossbow bolts shot out from the nearby underbrush. A few hit Sully and took him down, but the Priest of Kellemvor, Rokellen, decided it wasn’t his time yet and helped him with bandages and words of healing.

It was the magics of Nosmo, who magically shot, and Dane, who enchanted the crossbowmen to sleep, that saved us from another volley. I and then Sully went out to take care of the slumbering bowmen, goblins all. I was almost there when the saplings behind the shrubs started to shake, then parted to a large, green thing with long teeth and longer claws. It doesn’t take a bard to know a troll when you see one, even if you’ve never seen one.

There’s pretty much one thing you can do when you see a troll: Run. Until you know you can take it, you can’t. They’re big, strong, fast and angry, and this one probably was upset we just took out his leader and bow support. And I was the closest.

I did get some new scars cross my chest, though. Look, you can see this one cut made it to my ear. Eventually Sully limped close enough to be the new target. Him and again Nosmo’s gleeful destruction eventually took the thing down, but Sully fell down from the blows, again. Nothing is better than the feeling of healing when you get in a scrap, but avoiding a scrap is better still.

We killed sleeping goblins and burnt the troll for some reason and talked for a moment about going up the trail the large creature made through the woods. Fortunately better heads prevailed (that is, mine) and we continued on our journey to the castle. We almost weren’t let in because of our state, but having the silk they wanted made us guests of honor. Estate rooms and comfortable beds and food was made available to those of us who were still in pain.

The morning we all felt much better and collected our steeds and went out back to Caladeer. At the site of our fight, all the goblin corpses were gone but the half-orc remained. Not far into the woods was obviously an encampment one day and a clearing the next. I guess the goblins were being browbeaten into servitude by the half-orc and were glad to see him die. Then again, so was I.

We didn’t even bother to explain to the dock master what happened. We just returned the horses, got our pay and got some rooms for the night.