Arcade’s Journal - Citadel of War, Part 2 ...luckily we remembered to feed the two war-bulls belonging to the Citadel party. Early the next morning Glimmer spotted a gigantic bird in the distance, winging its way towards us. We could not see it well enough to tell whether it was friend or foe, so the party armed for battle. I was not yet fully healed, so I was moved down to the farmhouse’s storm cellar. The bird flew closer, and was revealed to be a giant eagle. It seemed to be looking for the farmhouse. As it landed in the courtyard it transformed into Ortigal, my grandfather. I came back upstairs, and Ortigal quickly explained that Tao had passed by our house and had sent him our way. I was tremendously impressed with the eagle trick, and told him so. I mentioned that the ability to travel at great speed would be a tremendous asset, and TMOSAT piped up. "I can do that," it said. I asked what it meant. In a matter of moments it had Teleported the three of us onto a table at the Flaming Manticore, and back again. Another new ability revealed. The staff apparently felt guilty about the "body-snatching" incident, and was trying to make up for it by leaking some information. Ortigal demanded, and received, an explanation of the current situation. He then wanted to know why we hadn’t told him before about Teleportation Chamber and the Citadel of War. I reminded him that we had already mentioned the threat to him, and that it was responsible for him acquiring a magical mortar and pestle that could grind diamonds! He was a bit chagrined at that, but worked it off by yelling at Velendo about his poor care of me. He then transformed back into an eagle, and set off to mobilize the militia of Rampart for war. The clerics restored me to health, and we prepared to leave. Just then, we heard the sound of some new arrivals. It was an old man and his wife, the owners of the farm, returning from a trip visiting relatives. They were shocked and frightened to find us there, and they took some calming down. Tom-Tom dosed the man with some Badgerbite, and the man nearly asphyxiated. It took clerical intervention to save him. It turned out that the old man was strongly allergic to strong drink. I was quite sympathetic, as I have a similar allergy to pepper. Luckily, Tom-Tom cooks everything with cinnamon (although he frequently uses way too much cinnamon). Cadrienne spoke in the language of animals to the war-bulls, and they agreed to carry Grundo’s body back to Rampart. After establishing that the elderly couple was going to be okay, we headed for home.... ...arrived in Rampart. Preparations for war are proceeding apace. The city council questioned us closely about the situation, and thoroughly interrogated Velendo about the Citadel of War. The Defenders asked to join the assault forces, but were assigned to maintain security and defend the city. A little later the King of Gaunt’s retinue passed by. The staff had often mentioned a desire to meet with a king, and I whispered to the staff that it might yet get to do so. It asked in which direction the King could be found, and it Teleported off after him. I heard later that it was seen in the King’s hand during the battle, but when it returned it would not speak of what had passed between them. We took Grundo’s body to the temple of Galanna, to be Resurrected if his spirit desires it. There will be some delay, as the high priest will not be available for a few days. We also had Nolin’s fixation with order Dispelled.... ...forces of Gaunt have returned victorious after several days of mighty battle with the invading army of the Citadel of War. We did have some casualties. Alix’s brother, who Alix has always despised, was commanding a group of soldiers and managed to get his head cut off in a supremely inept act of generalship. Ortigal had suffered a broken arm, and I offered to help him out for a few days. He had agreed to Identify the items that we had recovered, but instead he decided to teach me the spell! Some of the items we found were sacred to Quoris, God of War, and Deifos, God of Law.... ...invited to Lord and Lady Thurrian’s for a celebratory victory banquet. We all set about preparing, wanting to look our best. Tom-Tom was, as usual, the gaudiest. He wore purple-striped pants with an iridescent, green, lizard-skin cape. I wore the handsome blue conjuring robes (acquired from Elzid). Glimmer was in his usual gorgeous clerical robes, adrip with jewels. Alix wore silver and black, while Nolin wore gold and white. Nolin had taken Cadrienne shopping, and she looked stunning in the dress they picked out. I got into a major argument with Cadrienne, as it appeared that she and Nolin were becoming "an item". I heavily disapproved. While I trust Nolin implicitly in most things, women are not among them. He is even thought to have gotten a woman pregnant before leaving his hometown. Cadrienne stormed off in a huff to ask Nolin about it, but we had to leave for the party and the question had to wait. We arrived in a carriage, and made quite the grand entrance. Nolin nearly caused an embarrassing scene by having himself introduced as "Nolin Maradine." We were seated with Lord Emill Hargrove, Duke of Nabarr (a western province), and his lady. Also Sir Migourn Neverfell the cavalier. I was genteelly cautioned by the Thurrians to keep my fellows on good behavior. For a short while things continued in a civilized fashion. Then the recently Resurrected Grundo arrived, riding one of the war-bulls. He actually had to be subdued, and then sent home to the Manticore by the local mages and clerics. I asked the staff to send the war-bull after him, which turned out to be a mistake. TMOSAT miscalculated, and the bull ended up falling two stories into the Manticore. Later we discovered that it made great steaks. The party was fabulous! We had a brief interlude of intrigue, however. Nolin realized that Lord Emill was in disguise, and we spent some time shadowing him around the mansion. (We suspected that he might be "Deepleaf" crashing the party.) Tom-Tom, Nolin and I finally cornered him near the latrines. He admitted to us that he was a member of the King’s private guard, and that he was supposed to be keeping an eye on us. Shortly before we left, I found out from one of the palace ministers that the King’s private guards are never supposed to reveal their identities. So, as we were leaving, I reported Lord Emill to one of the guard for being so incompetent! It was indeed a fine evening.... ...we leave tomorrow for Kindric. Lord Tarim-Loial awaits us. We have decided to stop by Crellar’s Inn on the way.... |
AnnotationsAha! But someone else's secret identity was revealed at that party as well! Ah yes. I knew using "Maradine" was a mistake. And now that Nolin knows what it means to be a Maradine, he marvels at his own stupidity (Nol has lots of ranks in "Marvel at own stupidity") At some point during the party, Nolin was taken aside by a minor noble, whose name I don't remember. In a small anteroom, he revealed that we were right to suspect that "Filane Deepleaf" was at the party, because he was Filane. Before Nolin could frog march him back out to the assembled Nobs and have him arrested, he revealed that he was also Nolin's half-brother. Turns out dear old dad wasn't very good at keeping it in his pants, and there were quite a few of us bastards kicking around. Filane was willing to admit that his real name was Eritain Quicklimb, but wouldn't reveal much more about himself. He is older than Nolin by some 10 years, and has obviously been living by his wits, charm and skillls. Seems to be a family trait. Eritain's lifestyle has run more to con jobs and grifts, but the similarities between them was obvious. Nolin didn't tell the rest of the Defenders until the next morning, by which time Eritain was well out of town. He owed his blood that much. ----------------- So was Nolin really putting the moves on Cadrienne at this point, or was the makeover aimed at Arcade the Insensible? The Cadrienne/Nolin thing was genuine enough in its way. They were and are good friends. She was a tender, sweet young thing, and Nolin has always had a weakness for those. Also, she was in quite a bit of distress over the Arcade thing, and Nolin's was the shoulder she cried on, and we all know where that leads. As a fling it was remarkably tame, and fizzeled quickly. It did show Arcade that Cadrienne was worthy of attention, and he was quite jealous. But, goober that he is, he did nothing about it. Arcade may be a genius, but he can also be an incredible bonehead. -------------------------------- Anyway, five things: 1. Cadrienne loved to cast "speak with animals" and Piratecat hated roleplaying them. He did everything possible to keep from encouraging me to try to speak with stupid things. The War Bulls were about the last time I tried it. As I recall, they had strikingly one track minds: "Wanna rut." Since I am, of course, completely incorrigible, this only served to encourage me to go to great efforts to speak with more intelligent things, like monsters, villians . . . Piratecat might have had an easier life if he'd been more interested in roleplaying sheep and cows, eh? 2. The dress was magnificent. The really beautiful thing about it was that I drew a lovely picture of Cadrienne staring in awe at herself in a mirror, as if to say "Is that me?" and filed it away and more or less forgot about it. Years later, when Tao had a similar need for a dress and Cadrienne loaned it to her, Tao got the exact same look on her face when she tried it on. Us tough chicks who spend a lot of time covered in the blood of our enemies don't get a lot of opportunities to do the Cinderella routine. It was nice. 3. Cadrienne was using Nolin to get up Arcade's nose. Make no mistake about it. She wanted Arcade to be jealous, and that's a fact. Oddly enough, she knew Nolin was a safe date at this point, despite all the warnings to the contrary. Nolin knew she was still carrying a torch for Arcade, and while he may not have minded deliberately provoking Arcade, he certainly wasn't going to try to put the moves on somebody that he knew wasn't genuinely attracted to him. Nolin did have some scruples. Even if they did revolve around his vanity more than his good manners. And Cadrienne was always pretty good at intuiting what makes people tick. Except Arcade, of course. 4. I'm pretty sure the flirtation with Nolin did have some effect. I think it was at this point that the Big Blow Up occurred, which resulted in Nolin giving Arcade a major clue about Cadrienne, which resulted in Arcade at last proposing to Cadrienne. Yes, indeed, he really did. If it wasn't here, it was right around here, and of course, there's no mention of it in his journal whatsoever. He managed to phrase the proposal so badly, she had to refuse him. I can't remember how he put it, but the general jist was that he felt honor bound to propose to her since he had allowed her feelings to arrive at this state, and that he really could use someone to stay home and wash the labware for him. Things cooled off considerably between them at this point, as you can imagine. And I began looking around for something else interesting for Cadrienne to be ambitious about. Woe. Much grief and woe before she finally got there. Hang in there kids, we'll get to it. 5. It was probably the distant memory of how Arcade had finally gotten Cadrienne off his back that prompted me to think that Dylrath ought to propose to Tao (much, much later, and I relaly do hope we get as far as that story someday). Dylrath, of course, hadn't entered the party yet so there's no way he could have known about all this backstory and it was his own decision. No one advised him to do it. But Arcade was amazingly unsupportive when Tao accepted, and spent quite a while berating Dyrlath for trying this foolish stunt, which is kind of ironic, don'tcha think? Sadly, Dylrath was apparently unconvincing when he tried to make Tao think he was only proposing out of a sense of duty to her honor . . . or perhaps that didn't matter to her? |