Kira's Journals

Journal,

I feel lucky to still have my head right now, and I'll tell you why. Just to warn you, its not a pretty story.

After helping Korvud and Deelia out of their little jam, we spent about a week in Urupa to see the sights and get a little well-earned down time. During that week, I gave the set of armor, crown, and sword that we found in the kaer to a scholar so he could do research on them and we could find out just how valuable they really were. When the week was up, and I went back to check up on how far the scholar had gotten with the items, we found him arguing with a man.

This man wanted to buy our sapphire set for himself, and the scholar was trying to tell him that the set did not belong to him. Once we told this eager man that the set belonged to us, he insisted on buying it right then and there. I asked why he wanted the set so badly, and he said he wanted them for his personal collection. What kind of collection that was, I neglected to ask. He offered us 3,000 silver for the entire set, and at that point, Malorrin stepped in with a bit of savvy haggling. He demanded 5,000 silver pieces from the man, of course expecting him to barter to somewhere between those two amounts. To our great surprise, one which nearly knocked me clean off Thrak's shoulder, the man immediately said yes to 5,000. He gave us the 3,000 he had on him and told us to meet him later that day to get the other 2,000. We agreed and left the somewhat stunned scholar to his studies. And later that evening, we met the collector at his home for the rest of our payment. We gave him the set and he gave us the rest of the gold, and everything went off without a hitch.

We returned to our room at the inn after a bit of shopping, and got a good night's sleep with our new full pockets, but woke the next morning to some disturbing news. Word caught our ears of a slaughter during the night. We asked around and investigated only to find, to our horror (no pun intended), that the collector had brutally murdered his wife while the rest of the city slept.

We went to the crime scene and two things told me immediately that this was not going to be a good day. First, the set that we had sold to him less than a day ago was nowhere to be found. Second, there was a message written in blood on the floor that we all recognized instantly:

"By my own hand..."

That was all it said, but that was enough. We knew we had to find him quickly, so we went outside and asked our new friend, Charye, to use her direction arrow to find our which way the man went. She did and it pointed us in the general direction of the Ironclaw district, also known as the slums. So we walked in that direction for a bit, until we got to the edge of the slums. There, Charye performed another direction arrow, just to make sure we hadn't lost the trail, and following the arrows prompt, headed into the slums.

We hadn't gotten that far when we came upon the bodies of what appeared to have been orks. They were hardly recognizable after the dispute they had with who we assumed was our collector friend. Charye tried another direction arrow at that point, but it just fizzled and we were left with no where to go but the direction we were already headed. Fortunately, it seemed our friend wasn't moving around very much, because we met a pair of orks coming out of a tavern who said they saw a strange man dressed in armor and wearing a crown enter that same tavern, I've forgotten the name of the place, just a short time before.

We rushed in as quickly as possible without upsetting the people inside and asked the bartender where the man in armor went. He was reluctant to say anything until Gir tossed him a gold coin. He said the man rented a room upstairs not too long ago. We all headed up, Thrak in front, me on his shoulder, and the rest following in single file. We got to the door the barkeeper told us he was in and found it locked, not surprisingly. Thrak tried to kick the door in, and failed, but he succeeded in lightening the mood a bit by squarely kicking the door frame.

It looked like it hurt, so I gave him a moment to recover by trying the lock. It almost seemed like it wanted to open for me because I barely had to touch it to get it to open. Once the lock clicked, we readied ourselves for battle.

Upon opening the door, we found the merchant staring blankly our the window with his back to us, and the sun gleaming off the crown gave me an idea. I thought that maybe if I could take the crown off his head, it might break whatever spell was on him and we wouldn't have to resort to killing a somewhat innocent man. I zoomed into the room as he was turning around. The look that met my eyes when he turned wasn't one of rage or murder, but just a haunted look, as if he wasn't sure where he was or even if he was in his own body.

I realized only too late that he was turning around to answer Thrak's battle cry. I only had one shot to take the crown, and I missed, but only by a little. Almost before I could pull my empty hand away from his head, that haunted look evaporated into a fierce rage, and I knew there was no going quietly for him. He took a swing at me, and missed thankfully (though it was close enough to ruffle my wings!). The rest of the team began the assault, but I guess everyone's aim was a little rusty from the week of rest that we had, and everyone's shots and swings were going wide. After a few seconds though, he must have realized how out numbered he was because he did a flip-turn-twist-dive maneuver straight out the second story window and onto the ground outside.

To everyone's surprise, he didn't run for the streets and alleyways like we anticipated. Instead, he ran straight back into the tavern. Maybe he knew we would find him, so he wanted to take as many innocent lives with him as possible. We almost instantly heard screams coming from downstairs and knew we had to hurry. Gir and I headed out the window on the collectors horror-stricken heels with Thrak close behind while Charye and Malorrin headed back out the room and down the stairs to meet him head on.

I didn't go through the door to the tavern though. I flew though a window off to the side and ducked under a table. I wanted another shot at that crown and I knew I had a better chance of grabbing it if he couldn't see me coming. I swooped in and out of chairs and table legs while the fight raged on around the room. A couple of times, I was almost trampled or kicked by citizens fleeing for their lives. Who could blame them though?

Anyway, I came up behind him while the rest of the team had him busy and this time, I hit my target. I snatched the crown off his head and heaved it into a corner of the room. However, my idea was wrong. Without his crown, we was just as vicious and mad as he was with it on. "Oh well" I thought and just went in with my sword swinging. I made a couple of attempt to relieve him of his sword, and so did Gir, but we had no luck. It's a shame that Thrak had to kill him. Well never know now if we had a chance to save him or not.

Gir and I took off the armor and took away his sword. I got the crown back from the corner of the room, and we piled them all together where we could keep an eye on them. Malorrin tended to the wounded around the tavern. Fortunately, it looked like he didn't get to do much damage before we caught up with him. Everyone in the tavern had only minor injuries, and I made sure the barkeeper got some compensation for the damage we did.

It wasn't long before the guards showed up. Its not that I didn't expect them to show up, I just thought they might be a bit more grateful to us for saving the whole tavern and probably all of the slums. However, they felt is was necessary to take our weapons and escort us to some justice hearing. We were held in a room while a bunch of hoity-toity important people decided what to do with us.

After a while, we were led to a large chamber where they set us in front of the council. The hoity-toity people thanked us rather insincerely for saving the town, but said we had to pay for the damage we did and for the citizen we killed. I was all set to pay the fine because I don't like to mess with the law and officials.

Then Malorrin had to open his big mouth. I began to think he was trying to get us all killed as he argued with the council about the fine. He didn't think we should be fined for saving the town and minimizing the damage to the tavern. I was trying to get him to stop talking before we got in more trouble than we were already in, but nobody was listening. After a few minutes of heated debate between the two sides, we were led back to our little room while an unbiased judge was brought in. He was actually a Questor of Mynbruje, and it was only about an hour before we met with him. He decided, after hearing a full account of what happened and after hearing both arguments that we should indeed be rewarded for saving the town, and that the reward would be taken off the fine that we still had to pay, so it only came to 500 silver, which was totally fine with me.

The council also ruled that the set be destroyed, and I insisted that we be present just in case. All of the metal was melted down and the jewels were smashed, and thankfully, it all went over without incident.

We were also instructed to leave the city by morning and not come back for a while, so we returned to our inn to rest before we set out again. While we were enjoying a drink, we were joined by a woman who claimed to someone on the city council. She was an older woman who looked like she had seen her fair share of years, and probably had the wisdom to show for it. I don't remember her name, but she had heard of our incident that morning. She wanted to ask a favor of us before we left the city. She was concerned about factions that had risen up recently of people, just regular citizens, who were angry at adepts, all adepts. I guess they believed for some reason that we cause unnecessary damage and havoc, though I cant imagine why. Anyway, she asked us to keep an eye out for such factions while we traveled and send word back to her if we found out anything. We agreed, obviously, because it was certainly in our own best interests to do it, and she was very persuasive.

So, that is our next task I guess. It seems like its always one thing after another for us. I think it might be nice to just settle down for a while... then again, maybe not. That would be way too boring. I would miss the open road, the adventure, and all the nice people we've met.

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