Eberron Campaign - Tracking Tanter
Chapter 4
The lightning rail raced in the dead of night down the track away from Sharn towards Wroat. Between the late hour and the brutal ending to the thieves' guild encounter, we sat in broody silence in our sleeping car. In the morning everyone seemed hesitant to go forth and socialize, maybe nervous of any police presence on the train or in town. Eventually Belanor had had enough of the reclusiveness -- they had found an ancient Xen'drikian relic and vanguished a horde of miscreants, others must know of their glory! After a tuna fish sandwich for lunch, he ventured out of our sleeping car and headed to the entertainment car.
Despite the early hour there were already a bunch of people drinking and gambling. To a rough count, there were six humans, one gnomish card dealer, three elves, and three halflings in the parlor, and Belanor sidled over to the blackjack table and took a seat. Ordering a round of drinks, he introduced himself to a human with a short stack next to him: Don ir'Fantos. Turns out that Don and Belanor shared a goal of getting the Orbs of Dragonkind. Don wanted nothing more than to go to the newly-build gnomish slots over in Zilargo and get a triple orb roll on the slots. Then he'd be rolling in the coin. Unfortunately his father never understood his aspirations and he was now the black sheep of the family. At least he still had good connections with the Boromar Clan of the thieves guild back in Sharn -- who he assured Belanor would not have been the ones who roughed up our shop.
The lightning rail pulled into Wroat, the capital city of Breland. Toff adventured out looking for a magical bag of holding for sale to hold her countless pastries, but didn't have any luck tracking down a vendor before the next train pulled out. Nothing much happened in Wroat and we hopped back aboard the lightning rail headed towards Starilaskur. However, on this night we were abruptly woken up by someone rapping on our cabin door, saying they were the constable and had to bring us in. Toff used her tremorsense to try and detect any insignia on their uniforms and noticed an odd hand symbol. Belanor blearily climbed out of bed and decided that it was probably wiser to just discuss the, err, violence of their Sharn departure with the authorities. Continuing to evade the police wouldn't go well, and his sleepy brain didn't recognize the hand symbol Toff sort of described. He strode to the cabin door and slid it open, saying "Look, we can explain about the thieve's guild, that constable never came by the shop when he said he wou--"
All of a sudden the constables outside the cabin grabbed Belanor and started pulling him down the hallway and more armed men started pushed into the doorway to detain Bulwark, Toff, and Val'dax. But the foolish "constables" hadn't realized that Val'dax and Bulwark didn't really have full nights' worth of sleep; both had been quietly mediating and were essentially fully armed. But Belanor sure looked ridiculous in satin pajamas getting hauled off in a headlock. As the men jostled through the doorway the claw symbol was revealed more fully on their uniforms -- it was the sigil of the Emerald Claw, the militant and borderline terrorist organization based out of Karrnath.
Realizing that they were imposters and not legitimate constables, our intrepid heroes decided to resist arrest already. Val'dax sprang to his feet and grabbed his weaponry and Toff began channeling her Ki into stone pain, unleashing an assault upon the men rushing into the cabin. Thankfully Belanor's mouth was not covered and he recited the necessary arcana to cast Crown of Madness on one of them, turning the imposter into a raving slashing lunatic who turned on his friends. Meanwhile, Bulwark stealthily lurked around a corner and body checked one man (named Wilhelm on his conveniently readable nametag) right out the glass window of the sleepcar. He let out a scream as he tumbled along the ground and the lightning rail whizzed away. After a few rounds of combat, all the imposters were felled or battered into submission.
Before we just left unexplained bodies in our wake wherever we went, we summoned the ship's captain and (actual this time) constable to explain the night's events. Constable Olan of Wroat was stunned that there had been Emerald Claw members on the train, and none of us could imagine a reason why Belanor's Exemplary Group of Legend Seekers were of interest to them. We pulled the surviving and conscious terrorists into our cabin for interrogation. Olan wasn't able to convince them to open up and talk, but when Belanor suggested that it might be in their best interest to just explain their actions, one of them exploded "WE WILL GET THE ORBS OF DRAGONKIND, AND THEN ERRANDIS VOL WILL RISE AGAIN! YOU CANNOT STOP US!" After that, we couldn't get more information out of the fanatics and backed out of the room. Olan said that he'd deal with the bodies and rewarded us for our heroism by deputizing Val'dax and Bulwark.
Eventually the train arrived in Starilaskur. Belanor stayed on the train while Bulwark decided to walk to the post office and check for mail and Toff hunted for more pastries or pastry bags. After a few hours, Bulwark came back to the party as excited as a stoic indomitable warforged can be with a message from Jorlanna d'Cannith. She'd responded to his plea for guidance that he'd sent back in Sharn and now urged us to come to Fairhaven in Aundair. After much deliberation between continuing on to Trollenport hunting for Tanter or instead heading fully north to Fairhaven to discuss things with Jorlanna, we decided that if we caught an airship out of Fairhaven then there would be no noticeable delay to our arrival in Trollenport and Morgrave would be none the wiser. With that, we hopped back on the lightning rail -- this time headed in the reverse direction -- headed towards Fairhaven and hopefully some answers.
Arriving in Fairhaven and the front entrance of the d'Cannith estate, the attendant skeptically listened to our story that Jorlanna wanted to personally see us. He humored us and gave her a rang on the magical sending voice tube which oddly resembled a telephone and then incredulously opened the gate. We were expected. When we found Jorlanna she warmly embraced Bulwark and was thankful that we arrived so quickly and safely. We told her about our run in with the Emerald Claw on the lightning rail -- she was shocked, and couldn't figure out what the Karrnath group could possibly want with us. They usually just fought behind the scenes to improve Karrnath's position in the post-Last War world. On the subject of the Errandis Vol outburst, Jorlanna explained that House Vol had once had the Dragonmark of Death but had since been eradicated from the world many years ago. There isn't really an Errandis Vol to resurrect, and even if there was she wasn't aware of any way the Orbs of Dragonkind could aid the Emerald Claw in that. Furthermore, what in the world does the Emerald Claw want with House Vol?
When we explained that we possibly had a lead on where the Orbs of Dragonkind might be hidden within Bulwark's docent, she offered to try her hand at diagnostics and repair. While she was able to teach us more information about the extent of Chip's magical capabilities, she was not able to restore any of the broken sections of his memory and recommended that we attempt to schedule a meet with Tanter, certainly convenient since we already had an arrangement through Morgrave University for that. Jorlanna really didn't have much more information on hand for us, but promised to do some further investigation after we left. She'd keep in touch.
From Jorlanna's estate, we purchased tickets for airship travel down to Trollenport to finally connect with Tanter. Before leaving, Toff also found her magical bag of pastry holding and excitedly purchased it. It could hold about 250 lbs worth of pastries (or other things) and kept them in a perpetual state of freshness. How delicious! On the way, we met some gnomes on the airship who were just chatting amongst themselves on their way back from an artificiers' convention. Belanor proudly boasted that we were on our way to personally discuss things with the leading artificier in Khorvair, Tanter. The gnomes were awestruck. Belanor elaborated, explaining that Bulwark was our gifted warforged companion who -- after many years of training -- had been taught how to taste. The gnomes went nuts, and nearly forcefed Bulwark food for the remainder of the trip.
Tragically, once we arrived in Trollenport and made our way to Tanter's workshop we learned from his assistant that he'd left the city on a business trip the previous week. He'd been headed to Corrinsburg to do some research for their university and wasn't expected back for another week at least. This gnome was proving to be as hard to find as his height would suggest. We exasperatedly booked a boat that would whisk us off to Corrinsburg and finally meet the damned artificier. After an uneventful sail we pulled into Corrinsburg and hiked immediately to the university. In a cruel twist of fate, the librarian told us that Tanter had never even arrived, he was a week overdue and his stack of research materials had been left unstudied. Belanor suavely convinced the librarian to let him look through Tanter's research materials and learned that the gnome would have been studying Xen'drikian relics and the Xoriat plane. The book by Peter Seamuson was particularly useful and Belanor came away feeling smarter. Now what to do about that missing gnome...
The road from Trollenport to Corrinsburg would take many weeks of hiking, so hopefully whatever befell Tanter happened close to this side of the journey. We set off at a brisk pace down the town road with Val'dax using his tracking skills to keep an eye out for any sign of the missing gnome. A day of unremarkable walking closed with us building a Leomund's Tiny Hut for the night's refuge to continue the next day. After a few hours though, Val'dax had finished meditating and noticed shadowy figures on the road that were slowly flanking around our tent. He carefully woke everyone up and between his drow vision and Toff's tremorsense we learned that there were three armored humans taking up positions in the woods, possibly waiting to ambush us in the morning.
Time to reverse their trap. Val'dax and Belanor quietly donned their gear and slinked out through the hut wall intending to stealth up to the ambushers. In the darkness of the woods at night it wasn't too difficult to stay concealed and they made steady progress towards the armored men. Meanwhile, Toff decided that she didn't want to just wait so far away from the action if Belanor and Val'dax ran into trouble. She began to use her earthbending skills to move the earth beneath the tent and form a makeshift tunnel. She lowered herself and Bulwark about ten feet and then started tunneling steadily towards the men.
Having skirted around their line of vision, Val'dax was finally in a position to strike. He lunged forward with his sword and landed a solid hit on the rightmost foe. Meanwhile, Toff's tunnel had come close enough that she opened the earth above her and climbed out, then opened a hole beneath the two remaining men. They dropped into small pits about eight feet deep and fell prone. Bulwark charged out of the tunnel and up to the leftmost pit with the man at the bottom, leaped from the edge and elbow dropped onto the poor prone guy below. Leveraging hundreds of pounds of falling warforged weight, Bulwark dealt a more crushing blow than he'd ever done before.
By this point, Val'dax succeeded in cutting down the first ambusher and turned his attention to the middle man. Toff used most of her remaining earthbending energy to encase him in earth up to his neck so that he was helpless and likely more open to interrogation. Belanor mocked him for looking like a ninny. Val'dax wasn't interested in questioning though. He strode up to the encased middle man and lopped his head off with a golf swing of his sword. Toff was horrified.
Meanwhile the wrestling match continued. The last remaining ambusher had struggled to his feet out from under Bulwark's bulk. The party moved over to the edge of the pit to spectate and Belanor prestidigitated the sound of roaring wrestling applause to fit the mood. After a few more takedowns, Toff lifted Bulwark up on a pillar of earth for the final elbow drop to finish off the battered man. He wasn't about to have the crushing impact happen again, so the man frantically chopped at the earthen pillar which gave way and dropped Bulwark harmlessly to the side of the pit. With one last mighty leap, Bulwark launched himself off the edge and smashed into the cowering man one more time. The crowd went wild over the most illegal move in the history of forest pit fight wrestling.
The ambushers were all vanquished.
Despite the early hour there were already a bunch of people drinking and gambling. To a rough count, there were six humans, one gnomish card dealer, three elves, and three halflings in the parlor, and Belanor sidled over to the blackjack table and took a seat. Ordering a round of drinks, he introduced himself to a human with a short stack next to him: Don ir'Fantos. Turns out that Don and Belanor shared a goal of getting the Orbs of Dragonkind. Don wanted nothing more than to go to the newly-build gnomish slots over in Zilargo and get a triple orb roll on the slots. Then he'd be rolling in the coin. Unfortunately his father never understood his aspirations and he was now the black sheep of the family. At least he still had good connections with the Boromar Clan of the thieves guild back in Sharn -- who he assured Belanor would not have been the ones who roughed up our shop.
The lightning rail pulled into Wroat, the capital city of Breland. Toff adventured out looking for a magical bag of holding for sale to hold her countless pastries, but didn't have any luck tracking down a vendor before the next train pulled out. Nothing much happened in Wroat and we hopped back aboard the lightning rail headed towards Starilaskur. However, on this night we were abruptly woken up by someone rapping on our cabin door, saying they were the constable and had to bring us in. Toff used her tremorsense to try and detect any insignia on their uniforms and noticed an odd hand symbol. Belanor blearily climbed out of bed and decided that it was probably wiser to just discuss the, err, violence of their Sharn departure with the authorities. Continuing to evade the police wouldn't go well, and his sleepy brain didn't recognize the hand symbol Toff sort of described. He strode to the cabin door and slid it open, saying "Look, we can explain about the thieve's guild, that constable never came by the shop when he said he wou--"
All of a sudden the constables outside the cabin grabbed Belanor and started pulling him down the hallway and more armed men started pushed into the doorway to detain Bulwark, Toff, and Val'dax. But the foolish "constables" hadn't realized that Val'dax and Bulwark didn't really have full nights' worth of sleep; both had been quietly mediating and were essentially fully armed. But Belanor sure looked ridiculous in satin pajamas getting hauled off in a headlock. As the men jostled through the doorway the claw symbol was revealed more fully on their uniforms -- it was the sigil of the Emerald Claw, the militant and borderline terrorist organization based out of Karrnath.
Realizing that they were imposters and not legitimate constables, our intrepid heroes decided to resist arrest already. Val'dax sprang to his feet and grabbed his weaponry and Toff began channeling her Ki into stone pain, unleashing an assault upon the men rushing into the cabin. Thankfully Belanor's mouth was not covered and he recited the necessary arcana to cast Crown of Madness on one of them, turning the imposter into a raving slashing lunatic who turned on his friends. Meanwhile, Bulwark stealthily lurked around a corner and body checked one man (named Wilhelm on his conveniently readable nametag) right out the glass window of the sleepcar. He let out a scream as he tumbled along the ground and the lightning rail whizzed away. After a few rounds of combat, all the imposters were felled or battered into submission.
Before we just left unexplained bodies in our wake wherever we went, we summoned the ship's captain and (actual this time) constable to explain the night's events. Constable Olan of Wroat was stunned that there had been Emerald Claw members on the train, and none of us could imagine a reason why Belanor's Exemplary Group of Legend Seekers were of interest to them. We pulled the surviving and conscious terrorists into our cabin for interrogation. Olan wasn't able to convince them to open up and talk, but when Belanor suggested that it might be in their best interest to just explain their actions, one of them exploded "WE WILL GET THE ORBS OF DRAGONKIND, AND THEN ERRANDIS VOL WILL RISE AGAIN! YOU CANNOT STOP US!" After that, we couldn't get more information out of the fanatics and backed out of the room. Olan said that he'd deal with the bodies and rewarded us for our heroism by deputizing Val'dax and Bulwark.
Eventually the train arrived in Starilaskur. Belanor stayed on the train while Bulwark decided to walk to the post office and check for mail and Toff hunted for more pastries or pastry bags. After a few hours, Bulwark came back to the party as excited as a stoic indomitable warforged can be with a message from Jorlanna d'Cannith. She'd responded to his plea for guidance that he'd sent back in Sharn and now urged us to come to Fairhaven in Aundair. After much deliberation between continuing on to Trollenport hunting for Tanter or instead heading fully north to Fairhaven to discuss things with Jorlanna, we decided that if we caught an airship out of Fairhaven then there would be no noticeable delay to our arrival in Trollenport and Morgrave would be none the wiser. With that, we hopped back on the lightning rail -- this time headed in the reverse direction -- headed towards Fairhaven and hopefully some answers.
Arriving in Fairhaven and the front entrance of the d'Cannith estate, the attendant skeptically listened to our story that Jorlanna wanted to personally see us. He humored us and gave her a rang on the magical sending voice tube which oddly resembled a telephone and then incredulously opened the gate. We were expected. When we found Jorlanna she warmly embraced Bulwark and was thankful that we arrived so quickly and safely. We told her about our run in with the Emerald Claw on the lightning rail -- she was shocked, and couldn't figure out what the Karrnath group could possibly want with us. They usually just fought behind the scenes to improve Karrnath's position in the post-Last War world. On the subject of the Errandis Vol outburst, Jorlanna explained that House Vol had once had the Dragonmark of Death but had since been eradicated from the world many years ago. There isn't really an Errandis Vol to resurrect, and even if there was she wasn't aware of any way the Orbs of Dragonkind could aid the Emerald Claw in that. Furthermore, what in the world does the Emerald Claw want with House Vol?
When we explained that we possibly had a lead on where the Orbs of Dragonkind might be hidden within Bulwark's docent, she offered to try her hand at diagnostics and repair. While she was able to teach us more information about the extent of Chip's magical capabilities, she was not able to restore any of the broken sections of his memory and recommended that we attempt to schedule a meet with Tanter, certainly convenient since we already had an arrangement through Morgrave University for that. Jorlanna really didn't have much more information on hand for us, but promised to do some further investigation after we left. She'd keep in touch.
From Jorlanna's estate, we purchased tickets for airship travel down to Trollenport to finally connect with Tanter. Before leaving, Toff also found her magical bag of pastry holding and excitedly purchased it. It could hold about 250 lbs worth of pastries (or other things) and kept them in a perpetual state of freshness. How delicious! On the way, we met some gnomes on the airship who were just chatting amongst themselves on their way back from an artificiers' convention. Belanor proudly boasted that we were on our way to personally discuss things with the leading artificier in Khorvair, Tanter. The gnomes were awestruck. Belanor elaborated, explaining that Bulwark was our gifted warforged companion who -- after many years of training -- had been taught how to taste. The gnomes went nuts, and nearly forcefed Bulwark food for the remainder of the trip.
Tragically, once we arrived in Trollenport and made our way to Tanter's workshop we learned from his assistant that he'd left the city on a business trip the previous week. He'd been headed to Corrinsburg to do some research for their university and wasn't expected back for another week at least. This gnome was proving to be as hard to find as his height would suggest. We exasperatedly booked a boat that would whisk us off to Corrinsburg and finally meet the damned artificier. After an uneventful sail we pulled into Corrinsburg and hiked immediately to the university. In a cruel twist of fate, the librarian told us that Tanter had never even arrived, he was a week overdue and his stack of research materials had been left unstudied. Belanor suavely convinced the librarian to let him look through Tanter's research materials and learned that the gnome would have been studying Xen'drikian relics and the Xoriat plane. The book by Peter Seamuson was particularly useful and Belanor came away feeling smarter. Now what to do about that missing gnome...
Chapter 5
Trudging back to the main part of Corrinsburg we swung by the messaging station to idly check for new mail. Sure enough, there was a message from Jorlanna.
Thank you for your visit. Merrix and I had a lovely chat. He regrets his barbaric actions. I told him that you are all good friends of mine, and any slight against you is a slight against me. I have drawn up contracts for you all to work directly for me. A 25 gold/day retainer while on the job. Send acceptance and bank information. I will also provide a stipend for your shop. I hope for great things for us all.
Regards, JorlannaThere was much discussion about what her emphasis meant and if she was trying to hint at a deeper meaning, as well as whether the blind Toff even understood the concept of underlining words in messages. After thinking about it, Belanor realized that sending messages across untold distances really didn't seem that difficult. Why hadn't he thought to do this earlier? He hummed a little ditty and then concentrated on telepathy with Jorlanna, letting her know that they'd received her message and were interested in her offer, but first they had to finish the Morgrave's quest. Jorlanna -- surprised at this mental intrusion -- replied after a few seconds that that was understandable and that convincing Tanter to repair Chip should still be the priority. Belanor then used his new trick to beam some words back to Uleena of Morgrave University in Sharn, letting her know that Tanter must have been waylaid on the trip from Trollenport to Corrinsburg and that we were headed out to look for him now.
The road from Trollenport to Corrinsburg would take many weeks of hiking, so hopefully whatever befell Tanter happened close to this side of the journey. We set off at a brisk pace down the town road with Val'dax using his tracking skills to keep an eye out for any sign of the missing gnome. A day of unremarkable walking closed with us building a Leomund's Tiny Hut for the night's refuge to continue the next day. After a few hours though, Val'dax had finished meditating and noticed shadowy figures on the road that were slowly flanking around our tent. He carefully woke everyone up and between his drow vision and Toff's tremorsense we learned that there were three armored humans taking up positions in the woods, possibly waiting to ambush us in the morning.
Time to reverse their trap. Val'dax and Belanor quietly donned their gear and slinked out through the hut wall intending to stealth up to the ambushers. In the darkness of the woods at night it wasn't too difficult to stay concealed and they made steady progress towards the armored men. Meanwhile, Toff decided that she didn't want to just wait so far away from the action if Belanor and Val'dax ran into trouble. She began to use her earthbending skills to move the earth beneath the tent and form a makeshift tunnel. She lowered herself and Bulwark about ten feet and then started tunneling steadily towards the men.
Having skirted around their line of vision, Val'dax was finally in a position to strike. He lunged forward with his sword and landed a solid hit on the rightmost foe. Meanwhile, Toff's tunnel had come close enough that she opened the earth above her and climbed out, then opened a hole beneath the two remaining men. They dropped into small pits about eight feet deep and fell prone. Bulwark charged out of the tunnel and up to the leftmost pit with the man at the bottom, leaped from the edge and elbow dropped onto the poor prone guy below. Leveraging hundreds of pounds of falling warforged weight, Bulwark dealt a more crushing blow than he'd ever done before.
By this point, Val'dax succeeded in cutting down the first ambusher and turned his attention to the middle man. Toff used most of her remaining earthbending energy to encase him in earth up to his neck so that he was helpless and likely more open to interrogation. Belanor mocked him for looking like a ninny. Val'dax wasn't interested in questioning though. He strode up to the encased middle man and lopped his head off with a golf swing of his sword. Toff was horrified.
Meanwhile the wrestling match continued. The last remaining ambusher had struggled to his feet out from under Bulwark's bulk. The party moved over to the edge of the pit to spectate and Belanor prestidigitated the sound of roaring wrestling applause to fit the mood. After a few more takedowns, Toff lifted Bulwark up on a pillar of earth for the final elbow drop to finish off the battered man. He wasn't about to have the crushing impact happen again, so the man frantically chopped at the earthen pillar which gave way and dropped Bulwark harmlessly to the side of the pit. With one last mighty leap, Bulwark launched himself off the edge and smashed into the cowering man one more time. The crowd went wild over the most illegal move in the history of forest pit fight wrestling.
The ambushers were all vanquished.
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