[IC] Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

[Sigil]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: The rain lightened but remains steady. The wind has picked up, pushing wet air into damp clothes, but otherwise the overall ambient temperature hasn't changed much. Cool but not overly cold, colored sharply with the breeze. The weather is incrementally more comfortable than an hour ago though you would be hard-pressed to believe it, conditions being what they are.

Time: Mid-afternoon, as the only time that has passed was the amount needed to drive off Cavendish and his pals.

Ambience: Rainfall, once faded into the background of perception in favor of the more urgent noises battle, came back to the ears with encompassing distinctness. Yet still, over this sound the tinier movements of shutters cracking open nearby could be detected. The clash of magic and steel now over, the braver of the commonfolk risked a glance outside to see the particulars of the commotion. One couldn't get into a pitched skirmish in the Township's main streets without attracting attention. A big question might be - were these worried citizens of the realm, or were these others part of the potential moonrise threat? A not-too-distant peal fo thunder rolled across the sky as an ominous trumpet to the darker of those possibilities. Off in the distance, a hissing sort of laughter could be heard to the south, seeming to move away from the scene.

*****

Outside Silversmith

The moments following and accompanying cooling of blood allowed those present greater awareness of injuries suffered; spots and rivulets of spilled crimson were swiftly carried away from those venting it, finding its way down the street and into the storm drains nearby. It might even be pretty in its own right were it not the arterial paints of the fellowship of adventurers. Mostly. There was yet one Guard remaining, crumpled in a heap with his arms at an odd angle. Body broken in a few places, he too added his redness to the passing rainwater, face partially submerged in the clear, cold stream that was once only a cobblestone street, in a way that was not healthy. His spear lay beside him - a reliable if not quite decorative piece - as a sign of involuntary submission.

The door to the Silversmith's shop cracked open just a little, though the view from the inside was mostly of Marita's back. The door was allowed to swing open a little more freely, as if a staying hand was removed from it for easier access. "Come in, come in," half-whispered Jacques, "Safer in here, for now." A little paranoia tinged his voice as it had at their first meeting, though his words carried a greater implication of trust for the party.

Jacques Mallard, Silversmith

[Shoe Thief]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kathryn Pyke Human, Battle Master, Level 03 HP: 25 / 31 Armor Class: 19 Conditions: N/A Location: K4 --> J1 --> L17 Action: Rope Bonus Action: Medicine Check x2 Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

So it was done. At least at a glance. Those who could flee were gone, and those who came here to cause harm had been chased off like the rapid street dogs they were. With their objective of getting to the silver smith ruined in the process. Though it wasn't a cake walk. Nearly everyone in the party had taken a beating of some kind. But nothing life threatening it seemed, and nothing that couldn't be patched up. She had taken a beating herself, to the point where she wasn't sure how much more she could take. But she had been patched up. Though still in pain it wasn't enough she outwardly showed it. Blackberry at a glance looked worse off but livable. Infact, looking around it seemed everyone else was doing rather well shy of herself and blackberry. Kathryn spoke up to him as he walked up to her. "You did fine. You held your ground and chased them off. Good job." She gave it simply. An over complicated hero speech could be just as harmful as ripping someone a new one for failing if they felt the victory wasn't earned. Though the battle could have been better, they could have taken Cavendish out of the picture, they could have taken them all out of the picture, but they kept Mallard safe. And Cavendish gave the courtesy to the party to confirm he was not only an openly hostile foe, but directly connected to their problems. She wondered just how high up he was in things. Was he causing this? Or just another pawn in this massive game of chess. But they were beginning to put things together, she just hoped that things didn't get too out of hand before they could fix it.

There was a call from Victoria to go inside. With the rain coming down like it was, she was tempted to go in after her, but then she noticed something. The guard Kosara had blasted (Many times) didn't get away. He was laying on the ground, a mangled mess and likely dead. Likely. She began walking over to him without saying a word. There was a ton running through her mind in this moment. If he was dead, how would they explain it to the townsfolk? The Sheriff? Sure, they know the truth of it. But in the end, the truth only mattered when those listening wanted it too. A story she was far too familiar with. But if he was alive, he may have answers for them. He may be able to explain what was going on, he may be able to share with them how to stop everything going on. Or he may be a stubborn prick who will scream and spout at them when he comes too. But she had to know. If he was alive they couldn't leave him there. He may come back to attack them later. But the fighting was over, it felt wrong to leave him there. She bent down beside him, her knees barely a foot from his face. Leaning on the hammer, and bringing the shield to her back she looked down on him. She was no medical expert, but she had seen enough death to recognize it.

He was dead. She felt rather indifferent about it. He was a corrupt official using his power to torment his own people. But this wasn't something she felt worth celebrating over. They had won, but gained little from this battle. She thought back on Robert and her comment on curing the afflicted came to mind. She wondered if this guard was even in control of his actions or if he was a brain washed tool for Cavendish to use. "Damn." Kathryn sighed softly. Though there were moral implications, there were practical problems as well. If he lived he could have answered so many of their questions if they could get him to cooperate. And now they had a body on their hands. One that could be left here. She noticed his eye sticking above the puddle and decided, foe or not the dead deserved some peace and rest. She bent over to close it and found herself slipping. Only briefly, and barely noticeable to anyone who may have been looking at her, but she jerked none the less partially pushing his face into the puddle. had she not caught herself she may have crushed his head, but thankfully she did little more then shift it. It was what happened afterwards that nearly caused her to lose her balance. He gagged. "Oh fuck he's alive!" Kathryn stood up surprised and looked nearly ready to bring the hammer down on him. But he was still out cold.

Realizing her mistake and the danger their would be prisoner was in she set down the hammer and pulled the broken man from the puddle so he could breath again. Thinking quick, she grabbed the rope from her bag and began tying the guard up. Though she didn't want to cause more harm to his clearly shattered arm, she had little choice. He was likely to lash out and fight back once he was awake and mobile again. She tied his arms behind his back, and to his torso. She then used an extension of the rope to tie his feet together so if he did somehow standup again, he wouldn't be able to move faster then a shuffle. Using the remaining slack from the rope and one of her torches, Kathryn braced the man's arm as best as she could. But he seemed stable. Rough shape sure, but stable. Maybe they'd be able to begin to figure out what was going on in Avonshire. With the call to go inside, Kathryn wedged the hammer under her belt to it would stay tucked and secure. And would rest the shield on her back. Picking up the guard with both arms as effortlessly as one may pick up a hand bag she walked her way to the door of the Silver Smith. Mallard was already spooked, she had no intentions on bringing one of the men who meant him harm into his hideout. Though she was vaguely aware that if this guard woke up while she was carrying him things would get rough rather fast. "I am going to wait with our prisoner here. Make sure he doesn't run off." Kathryn said as she set him up against the wall on the outside of Mallards.

[Arty Fox]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Baronfjørd "Blackberry" Chedgusah Dragon Born, Monk (Astral self), Level 03 HP: 14 / 24 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: L5 -> K15 Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A Ki: 1/3

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BlackBerry’s frown deepened after still hearing some laughter peeling away from the unseen streets away from them. The whole group had taken a beaten both to themselves and, possibly more importantly, their pride. He managed a stronger smile at Lady Kathryn’s kind words, they weren’t much against the knot of annoyance at his own performance but it was still kind in its own way, and he appreciated it.

BlackBerry glanced over the others as he walked closer giving each a quick visual check for any substantial injuries, but thankfully couldn’t see any other than the small gash or mark where a bruise would probably arise later.

“If I may take you up on that kind offer once we’re all inside, please?” He replied to Kosaras offer of healing. Again, he felt somewhat cheeky having not been able to do much during the fight itself. “Despite how many times this happens I am not a fan of being a pin-cushion.”

He had heard Kosara’s offer but the desire to be inside somewhere dry, and at least somewhat safer than the expose street they had just been attacked in was stronger than the pain of his wounds. The Silversmiths offer of somewhere dry to hide was simply too inviting to turn down.

Lady Kathryn's cry caught his attention, his gaze snapping over to her as he dropped back into a fighting stance before he heard what had made her cry; the fallen guard was alive! BlackBerry relaxed again, relieved to see that they weren't being attacked again so soon.

“What luck!” He cried with a barking laugh, and then a quiet gasp of pain. “One of the ruffians has survived then.”

He tried to offer at least a hand to Kathryn but from the looks of things she had everything under control tying up the ruffian, and even looking to brace his injured arm.

A wise choice. BlackBerry mentally complimented her with a slight nod.

“Best tie those ropes as tight as you can. The ruffian may try the same trick as the young lad earlier and change his shape to slip away.” He explained, going to kneel down before a warning twinge from the arrow stopped him. “I could think of a few ways to get information from him, once awake.”

Shame quickly wiped away the vengeful smile from his face, his heart was still racing from the skirmish, and he hastily added, “Not that we should cause the poor fellow any more injury or distress, of course.”

“Are you sure you will be quite alright if we leave you out here?” BlackBerry asked, looking to the others quickly.“Would it not be wiser to bring him inside where more of us can keep an eye on him? And, I feel keeping the fellow out in the rain will do him more harm than good.”

[Sigil]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Exterior Silversmith's Shop -> Interior Silversmith's Shop Action: N/A Bonus Action: Morty Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The battle came to what seemed was the end, or at least quiet enough as to constitute a lull. So it seemed like an excellent time to get out of the open while a chance presented itself. The bow of her violin pulled five more notes from the air which melodically sounded a variation of a recognizable instrumental outro. She gave one more twirl which, while showy in its own well also served to give a quick glance at the whole of her surrounding environment. Victoria did have a tendency to incorporate dance into the more martial portions of her career as an adventuring Bard and this time had proven to be no exception. Perhaps this would make for an awkward campfire conversation later. She would have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

With the music done and the antagonists down or driven off, Victoria couldn't help but smile a little. Success was good, and she couldn't help but notice that, unlike the last fight she had gotten into, she hadn't received so much as a scratch. Some of the others couldn't make that assertion. So it was taken as a sort of secondary victory. Be it that she was arguably the most flamboyant, center-of-attention member of her new group, her spellwork was subtler than most and benefits she could give to others fairly abstract, which probably prevented her from being the target of archers. That, and keeping away from melee didn't hurt matters any. In any case, her sword was elsewhere, which limited her close fighting options further.

The Bard looked up to the illusion of a wall covering the sniper's window, above, and gave it a dismissive wave. It faded translucent, then transparent, then blinked out of existence. Minor illusions of this sort were always ever a delaying tactic in combat anyway and keeping it up now served no purpose.

Victoria saw the downed Guard getting assistance from Kathryn. She shook her head slightly and looked away, lest anyone ask her to help with him. There was sure to be a very good, logical reason why he was being tied up and his injuries assessed, but she wanted no part of it, nor did she have any mind to waste her arcane resources on the poor, potentially dead bastard. Were it solely up to her, she might have left him where he lay. This would be another discussion to have, sooner rather than later by the look of things. She cast a look in Morty's direction and issued a mental command, prompting the smoky creature to attend at her heels. Both she and Morty made their way carefully up the steps to Jacques's shop, maneuvering past Marita with a cheerful, "Why thank you, Lady Acolyte," as she passed into the building with Morty to reclaim a piece of dryness from the warmer room within. Victoria reminded herself to give congratulations where it was due among the party. This fight turned out much better than she expected at its outset. Drunken and sleep-deprived Goblins were usually not a respectable test of a full group's combat prowess. Or so the stories might say.

[rivaan]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kosara Tiefling, Warlock (Celestial), Level 03 HP: 21/ 21 Armor Class: 12(15 Mage Armor) Conditions: N/A Location: Silversmith's, exterior - > Silversmith's, interior Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victory was indeed rightly declared as no other enemies showed themselves and the ones present had scurried off like the rats they were! Kosara blinked, wondering if they ran off because rats or because there were even more evil schemes at play. Evil constable dude seemed pretty certain this was not over and since he escaped it was probably the truth. In fact she was just about pondering the benefits of using a intensive application of fire to burn the municipal building, her grandpa would understand since it would be for a good cause. Though if there were innocents there, it wasn’t going to be a good solution. She was pulled from her mental wanderings when Kathryn exclaimed one of them was alive. That caught the tiefling woman by completely and utter surprise, given who it was.” How though?” She asked honestly confused.

“Ehh… I think I agree with Berry on this, we should get him out of view… And BREAK HIS LEG. I promised I will break his leg after all.” She grumbled. This guy had made her very very angry. He and that crossbow ratman that took shots at her from the building. He had likely already escaped, but yeah. Grumpy Kosara wanted bodily harm. He was defeated so she wouldn’t kill him outright, at least not on purpose. It was one thing to kill an enemy in battle another to execute him. Though she still marveled at his luck at surviving everything. ANYWAYS, back to wanting blood. She promised him broken legs damn it and she was going to get one of his legs broken. It would also stop him from running or being much of a danger.

With that she decided to follow the silversmith’s invitation and quickly moved the door and made her way inside past Marita and into the warmth and out of the rain and cold outside, joining the purple dressed bard and the mighty pig.” Thank you, Mr. Smith.” Kosara told the man, he did invite them inside after all, especially given their last encounter previously. For now she wanted to dry a bit by the fire too.” I’m sorry, Victoria. The coat got damaged.” She eventually apologized as she studied the gift’s damage now that she was out of the rain. It had gotten a few good cut and tears because of the crossbow bolts and that guy’s spear. One more reason to break his leg… or maybe an arm. Leg was better, it would hinder escape. She scattered the bloodlust thoughts aside for the time being though.

[Dragoknighte]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Marita Bärbel Human, Cleric, Level 3 HP: 18/18 Armor Class: 18 Conditions: N/A Location: Silversmith Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Well it appeared that with the battle over, the group needed to regroup and reorient on what to do from here. The cleric would do what she could to keep everyone on task and focused.

"Kosara, we are not going to break his leg. The most we could hope to get from him is information on what the Enemy is up to. Any further harm dealt to him away from that end is needless cruelty and bullying." True, he and the other guards seemed perfectly content to dole out bloodshed on the rest of the party, but he was also under the orders of Cavendish and probably suffering the effects of lycanthropy. A charitable reading of the situation was that he was not entirely at fault for the actions he was apart of. The more Pholtian reading of the situation was that getting beaten to within an inch of his life was due punishment for his recent crime thus no more was needed at the moment.

"Kathryn, although it would be helpful to have someone on the outside to look out for any goings on, I think it's be better if you and our captive were brought in as well if Mallard is ok with it. We've caused enough of a ruckus as it is, so the two of you in plain sight seems like it'd be a lightning rod for further trouble." If Kathryn decided to insist on staying outside, she wouldn't press on it further. They had other things to do and precious little time before nightfall to waste on arguing. When Kathryn made her decision, Marita would close the door behind her and actually bar it this time before quickly straightening out her clothes to look more presentable, to poor effect.

"Are you alright," she asked Mallard. Of course he hadn't taken any direct attacks to her knowledge, but this skirmish in his lobby and front yard certainly could not have helped his mental state. "Unfortunately I think you might need to relocate in the near future. If Cavendish is the type of man I think he is, he's likely to make another attempt in the near future with greater forces at his command. At least I hope that's the worst he has planned for now."

[Sigil]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: Still raining lightly, still cool of temperature. The wind is thankfully low, though the occasional mild gust makes things interesting.

Time: Mid to late afternoon.

Ambience: The cessation of hostilities in what had been a pitched battle just a minute prior and the tense but subtle movement of shutters among the braver or more curious of townsfolk come to an end, bringing about something akin to stillness. Silence was not accurate as the white noise of rain was constant, yet this atmospheric sizzling sound blotted out anything too far away from the party. Everything stood localized to the former battleground and the silversmith's shop. They were most definitely not in the Township by themselves, even if the immediate surroundings hinted at this.

*****

The downed Guard offered nothing in the way of resistance. His state of general unconsciousness made this an easy, if involuntary lack of action on his part, though if he were awake he might have voiced some objections at how his damaged arm was being treated. In the end, he became like so much (mostly) human luggage, bound by rope and being carried away from wisps of his own blood upon the ground and his dropped spear. Or to put it simply, the half-dead guy came along quietly.

Inside of the shop, the silversmith looked to Kosara oddly, correcting her reference to his surname with a simple, "Mallard," before turning to Marita. Or trying to. His eyes and attention were arrested by the damp, skinny pig wrapped in burlap following the auburn haired musician. He appeared to shake it off and responded to the Cleric with, "Yes, yes... I fully intend to relocate. I have to wait a little longer, first." He nodded almost feverishly, as if in vigorous agreement with himself. "I have to give my family time to get further away from this place. After the full moon of Harvestide has gone, I shall go to them. I am buying them time, in case anyone goes sniffing around for them or I am taken by the rats."

A heavy sigh and Jacques declared, as a break from his ongoing train of thought, "If you bring that poor bastard in here, he enters with his eyes closed and he leaves that way, too. I don't care what state he is in, otherwise." A lamp was acquired and lit, providing much better illumination in the small storefront.

Getting back to it, "Do you mind if I work while we talk?" he asked, but immediately responded without waiting for permission, "Good. Lots to do, lots to do. Who else needs a silvered item?" His eyes shifted to whomever else was within his direct vicinity, then took up the slim sword left by Victoria. "Elegant looking for a common blade. I'll fix it up well - and anyone else with you. You paid good gold, and I think I owe you my life, too." Jacques gave a wry smile and picked up a couple of his tools, including the strange stylus-like object he used to fluidly score the metal from the manacles earlier, and said, "I'm not entirely helpless. But I cannot hold out forever; this is true. Enjoy the safety of my walls for as long as you need, but you really should get that package to Bob before nightfall. He'll need it. This aside, how else might I be of help? Ah, and take a look around the shop, if you like."

The careful hands of the silversmith locked the cut & thrust sword into place with a vice and began to score fine, artistic patterns into the blade. The pot sitting over the flameless heat of his small forge rippled momentarily across the surface of the molten metal within.

[Arty Fox]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Baronfjørd "Blackberry" Chedgusah Dragon Born, Monk (Astral self), Level 03 HP: 14 / 24 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Silversmith Action:AN/A Bonus Action: Dismiss Arms Reaction: N/A Ki: 1/3

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BlackBerry dismissed his fiery limbs as he passed over the threshold into the Silversmith shop. He rolled his shoulders as he did so, trying to work out the tension that was always left behind after summoning the limbs.

He took an extra moment to grimace slightly at Kosaras suggested methid to persuade their captive…or at least he hoped that was what it was and not just for revenge.

In response to Mr.Mallards comment about the guard he replied,"May I also suggest we blindfold him in the case that he does wake up?"

Upon entering, his eyes danced around the place, taking in the boarded windows and the few silver wares displayed nearby, along with the evidence of someone having lived within one room for sometime. He moved further towards the other end of the shop to make room for the others and their captive guard, stepping as gingerly as he could to prevent leaving a bloody puddle anywhere.

Making a mess of their hosts shop would NOT be a good move.

He was already looking over the other wears the Silversmith had on the counter; daggers, a spear, and a crossbow as well! All well made and in much better shape than his own weapon. He took note of the pot forge burning happily away as Mr. Mallard worked his craft. It burned with a low hiss, the noise he had heard earlier from outside; another mystery solved.

"These are some fine pieces of work, Mr. Mallard." His eyes settled upon one of the daggers for a moment. "I might look to buy one a bit later if you are still around later."

Blackberrys eyes had gone wide with surprise at Mr.Mallards offer. A silvered item was certainly a handsome reward, in BlackBerrys mind at least. But did they really have such time to waste on a frivolous reward? His look became somewhat grim as Marita predicted another attack.

"While the offer is appreciated, I'm not entirely sure if it would really be of much use right now, would it?." He turned his gaze towards the working man, and then to the rest of the party as he explained. "I landed a blow with my sword earlier, one that would have any other foe with a mortal wound. Yet, when I withdrew from the man there was not a trace of blood or even a wound to speak of."

"Kosara. Could I ask about that offer you made earlier. Please?"

He motioned with his eyes to her, to the arrow still lodged in his stomach. At her word he would try his best to pull it out and let her magic do the rest. Hopefully with very little pain and blood.

[Shoe Thief]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kathryn Pyke Human, Battle Master, Level 03 HP: 25 / 31 Armor Class: 19 Conditions: N/A Location: L17 (Outside) --> Inside Silver Smith by western window Action: Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kathryn wasn't used to this. She has a prisoner, a fellow living being that was now in her care that if let loose, would most likely try to kill her and those around her. She also didn't believe that she had the legal authority to hold him. She would have to ask the Sheriff for a pardon later. And a pardon for the punishment she gave to Cavendish. Though an argument could be made for self defense, he was still a town official. And beating the shit out of a town official never looked good. With blackberry's comment about tightening the ropes, Kathryn hesitated worried she'd cause further injury. But hearing about the incident earlier, she tightened anyways. He was still a threat, one she couldn't risk getting free. "Good idea. Thank you." She said softly as finished up. He shouldn't be able to break easily, but that didn't mean he couldn't cause harm should he choose too. She listened closely to Kosara and Blackberry as they talked about what they would do to the man. Blackberry clarified, but Kathryn wanted to set a president. Marita thankfully beat her to the punch. "Though information may be helpful, we are not here to torture. He's still a living breathing person, and has already been defeated and made passive. Anything else would just be immoral. To add onto things, he's still a town guard. Even if he is corrupt and cruel to an extensive degree there are standards we should keep." She found that harder and harder to follow. But that wouldn't stop her from trying.

Though Kathryn had offered to stay outside both due to her own short history with Mallard, and also maintaining the care of a prisoner who moments ago was about to take Mallard in for a likely less than ethical questioning session, the general thought was it was best for her to step inside. "Let me finish with him real fast, then I'll be in. I won't be long." She searched the guard over looking for something to act as a blindfold. Kathryn had a few bits of clothing items on her, but nothing particularly strong she wasn't actively using, and nothing designed for this purpose. She decided to look into solving this later on. She decided the guard would have to pay for his own blindfold. Taking her hand axe she cut off the sleeve to his undershirt, attempting to take it off without removing the bonds. Easy enough if there were no plans to ever reattach it. Taking it she wrapped it around his eyes twice over making sure to cover every edge to his sockets to keep his peeping to a minimum. "Okay, I think we're good." Kathryn put her gear away and picked up the guard as if he weighed as much as a small child or a sack of goods from the local market before carrying him inside, and placing him in a seating position against the wall.

Kathryn listened as best as she could to Mallard without drawing any attention away from her prisoner. As things went on she would make sure to check him periodically for any sign of movement or being awake. Apart of her wanted to talk to him and ask questions so she could understand more of what was going on. But she had few hopes of that. Most likely, he would hurl insults, maybe try to provoke them, or butter up to them looking for a chance to escape. She hoped for better though. Maybe he would side with them? Or tell them how to end all of this with as few bodies as possible? But she knew that wasn't likely.

Kathryn watched as Mallard worked. He had offered his services which would be a great help, but it appeared she had found a rather effective way to deal with the local wererats. Her hand slid over the head of the hammer, much like Cavendish did the many times he felt like emphasizing its power. It felt so light, so easy to use. And so effective for any problem that decided to escalate things with her. She briefly wondered if Cavendish was currently feeling the way that he had made herself feel when he passively threatened her? Was he anxious? Was he concerned of what would happen should she be allowed to have her way with him? A part of her hoped so, another part of her wondered if this sort of thinking is what led to people ending up in his position. Drunk with power. Taking a breath, she decided she was okay for now. She had the means to defend herself, and the rest of her team needed to make sure they were prepared for anything that may come up. Though she would still ponder the shop, see what was around and see if anything caught her eye. While keeping one eye on their new friend.

[Sigil]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Interior Silversmith's Shop Action: Skill Check - Arcana, Casting Prestidigitation Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The sudden change to the much warmer temperature inside of Jacques's shop reminded Victoria that she was rather chilly. Her cloak had been thrown back off of her arms as she danced and played her violin in the just-over conflict, and while not soaked to the bone as she was earlier that day (comparatively), there was more discomfort due to wind and weather that she would rather have done without. While the others saw to their affairs, Victoria shed her cloak and unbuttoned her slim jacket to accommodate the warmer air's movement to her core. To this, she added a little twinkle of magic; opening herself up to threads of arcane energy just enough to warm and dry the worst of her clothing.

Finally a little more comfortable, Victoria responded to Kosara with nonchalant words, "Why, it's your coat, silly. No need to apologize to me. Such things can be repaired with little coin when time permits, anyway." A coy look crossed her features for a moment as she finished with, "I confess; it pleases me that you like it enough to say something." Tiny, melodic giggles followed, and then the Bard got to scanning the room again. Since she was here the last time, the illumination had increased enough to reveal a little more in the way of detail, and she wished to learn what could be learned about what looked like magical trappings toward the rear of the room. Much to her disappointment, she could puzzle out nothing more than she did last time. What she did know gave her a quick impulse to pocket what she could and figure it out when she had some privacy - a feeling she quickly quashed as being counterproductive to their present plight.

Instead, she turned and gave a smile to the silversmith as he plied his trade, this time putting his considerable skill to her preferred personal armament. The pattern he was marking out with his enchanted doodad was captivating, to the point that she barely noticed the arrival of their tallest party member, even though she was hauling in an unconscious person and sporting the Constable's hammer. Once everyone was in and the door was barred, Victoria waited for a moment to address Kathryn. "That's quite the souvenir you picked up," she spoke with mild amusement. She gestured in Kat's general direction, giving equal possibility to the weapon or the prisoner being the subject of her declaration. She clarified, "That hammer, I mean. I suspect there is more to it than excellent craftsmanship. Might I give it a closer look?" Mention of the word closer had her lean in and take a slightly conspiratorial tone, implying a greater depth of meaning. Victoria wiggled her fingers in the air with the clear implication of magic, then smiled at her more physically suited associate.

[rivaan]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kosara Tiefling, Warlock (Celestial), Level 03 HP: 21/ 21 Armor Class: 12(15 Mage Armor) Conditions: N/A Location: Silversmith's, interior Action: Cure Wounds 2nd level on Berry( 8hp healed) Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“But…. I promised!” Kosara replied to Marita with her most innocent and pleading expression and voice.” Besides he is a bad guy! Stabbed me even! With a sharp spear! A few inches to the side and I would have been hurt gravely! Breaking his leg should be the least we do!” She added quickly in very self certain voice.” I mean we lack sands to bury him to the neck… and that’s the next best alternative! Evil shouldn’t be allowed TOO much clemency!” The tiefling stated, pouting like a child.

“It is a gift from a very important friend! Of course I treasure it!” She replied to V with a huge bright smile as she ran her fingers across the coat. It was her first coat too! Down south you didn’t need coats so she had never even seen one before she made it north. Even then she had kept to her cloak which was gradually getting not enough to keep her warm with the winter closing in.

Seeing that the cleric was firm in her non leg shattering ways, Kosara just turned back to the fire and pouted hard instead. Mr Silversmith correcting her on her way of addressing him, caused her to briefly stop pouting and look at him.” You are a smith though? A Mister Smith… wait intonation!” She suddenly stated with a look of pure realization why he had corrected her. She had said his job as if it was his name.” You are a mr smith! A silversmith is still a smith, are they not?” She blinked at him, before turning back to the fire.” I don’t really need a silvered item. I got the magical golden sword that grandpa gave me that I can summon when I need it.” The dancer quipped from her position by the fire. It was very nice and warm, especially after fighting and spending so much time in the cold rain outside. She even took off the coat, placing it in front of the fire by her side. She hoped that it would dry faster that way, also that she herself will dry faster without the coat.

“Ohh… right away, Berry!” Kosara hopped up from her crouching position by the fire and darted over to the monk. It took exactly no time for the tiefling’s hands to dart to the wound where there was still an arrow lodged it seemed. She blinked and touched carefully around before nodding.” I will heal you about… now!” She stated and channeled the magical energies, uttering the chant that her grandpa taught her, watching it’s effect on the wound and briefly wondering if it was possible to heal something around an object and thus keep the object hidden within your very body, it was a fair ponder to have seeing she was looking at an arrow in a wound!

[Sigil]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: Still raining. You can almost sense it slacking up a bit.

Time: Mid to late afternoon.

Ambience: The interior of Jacques Mallard's shop was quite comfortable in comparison to the outdoors. The heat coming off of the pot forge was considerable, even to the point that one close to it may prefer to open a window, though the boards covering said windows made that an impossibility. The quieter patter of raindrops continued to sound across the roof and on the street outside. One keeping to the windows might hear the beginnings of citizenry venturing back into the open spaces, now that the fight is done and blood rinsed away (for the most part) by the weather.

*****

Jacques still worked handily on the long blade in front of him, inscribing flowing designs on the tough, flexible metal with his unique tool set. His hands never stopped moving, but his eyes did dart up to Baronfjord briefly when he spoke of the quality of the weapons on his counter. "Didn't make them," he said quietly, attention on his labors. "Just silvered them. Most of that's for me, when I let out of here. Anyway, suit yourself if you choose to decline. Already paid for by your elf friend, there."

To Kosara, he agreed with a hint of tedium, "I am a smith by trade, yes. My name is Mallard." The comment made that she had a better weapon than the one offered was responded to with a quiet shrug, his eyes still keeping to his work, "Suit yourself." If she didn't want it, he wasn't going to force it on her.

The busy silversmith did take note of a couple of things with approval - the insistence from Kathryn that they not resort to torture, even if he might have some subjective feelings about it in this instance, and the earlier mention from Marita that they not break his leg like another had clamored about. Likewise he was happy to see that his stout door was barred once more. The feeling of personal security allowed him to focus on his work.

With many artistic grooves cut into the metal, as if by a tiny sun on the end of a writing implement, Jacques turned to the spools of fine, braided silver wire and began to unwind it, measuring as he went along. "On a weapon of this length, this part must be done carefully. And I will have to rebalance your pommel, probably your guard. Might take a little longer. Others want something done, need to know. Doors lock at dusk. Let me know how else I can help." A brief pause, even in his work, and Mr. Mallard asked, "What are your plans with that one?" pointing to the tied and blindfolded guard in his shop.

[Shoe Thief]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kathryn Pyke Human, Battle Master, Level 03 HP: 25 / 31 Armor Class: 19 Conditions: N/A Location: Inside Silver Smith Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

As Blackberry explained about his situation with the guard, the one who he struck with the sword. All Kathryn could think about was Lizbeth and Cecily L'Rose. She had seen them this morning, but by then Kathryn was still distracted on her own petty issues. She had no idea how much was really going on. She thought of the axe she had given Cecily, and how it likely would do nothing more than piss off someone if they were to go after her or Lizbeth. "Mallard, first I would like to apologize for how things went earlier. You have been really helpful since. And knowing what we know now, I can see why you were so cautious. I know you offered, but I hate to ask with how things went before. But we have people who we are keeping tabs on to keep them safe. But there's not enough of us to actively watch them, and try to deal with everything going on. Could we borrow a few weapons that we can return once this is over for our friends so they can protect themselves?" The axe she gave Cecily was the better of her two axes, relatively new as well. She looked at the one she had one her person now. The handle was beginning to rot, though still structurally sound. But it wasn't any sort of battle axe or tomahawk. It was more of a convenient wood cutting axe, looking more worse for wear every time she used it for its non intended purpose of battle. Like much of her kit, it was in need of replacement. "An axe or short sword for the L'Rose's. Hearing what Blackberry has to say about his incident, I don't think the protection I left them will be enough." She wasn't sure it would be enough before either. But she figured a fighting chance if they couldn't be present would be best. Apart of her wanted to update her own kit as well. Shy of Cavendish's hammer, most of her stuff was out of date and beaten to pieces. But she was already asking for extra weapons for the L'Rose's and others who may need it. Unlike her family for the past several generations, she didn't own a keep to let those she wanted to protect hide in. Or an army to use to fend off the threat. She did have a small band of determined adventurers ready to do what they could to save the day. That had to be a step in the right direction.

Kathryn turned to see Victoria chatting to her about the hammer. "It's such a strange thing. It's surprisingly light. Though feels like it strikes with the force of lead weight. It's just so... Strange really." Kathryn said. At it's mention she had pulled it up, holding it just under the head to she could look at it closely. At first she figured she had just been giving Cavendish such a beating that she would kill him if she kept it up. Hearing what Blackberry said about the short sword though? Maybe Wererats were weak to Blunt force? Or if bones broke they didn't heal as fast? Then she wondered if this was tied back to that area of the world she lacked knowledge in. Magic. "At least Cavendish wont be able to use it to threaten or scare anyone anymore." She figured if he was ever at any real risk of recovering it she could try to break it. Though if it was magic could she? There was no denying she was a strong woman, and snapping the shafts of the weapons of men was something she could do in many cases. She wasn't sure, but if it came to that she supposed she would figure it out then. Then, Victoria wanted to see it. There was visible hesitation on Kathryn's face. "Is... Is that something you can do?" She wasn't sure how the undead, music, and magical warhammers all related to one another. But there might have been something she was missing. And plus, it wasn't that she didn't trust Victoria. But between the night shifts, trying to take the coin from the table without anyone noticing, and a few other small bits here and there. Kathryn had put together that Victoria was a bit... Self motivated to put it nicely. "I guess you can take a look yeah. You'd probably be able to figure out more than myself honestly." Kathryn said in a bit of a joking tone before holding out the hammer head for Victoria to inspect. Though her own grip was still held tight on the shaft. Apart of her hesitant to let it go.

Kathryn did debate asking Kosara for some healing as well. Though she was a lot better than she could be, she had still taken a beating. And a few spears. But she wasn't sure how much Kosara's magic could go before she was tapped out. She could hold off for now. She figured with a good rest she should be able to bounce back well enough. Mallard brought up the prisoner again. Kathryn was way out of her league in this case though. "I don't think I thought that far ahead. I've never been responsible for a prisoner before... When it came to job prisoners were returned to those who gave the jobs, or chased off. And when Ser Lucas and I ran into trouble..." She thought of how she was able to finally get the armor that could fit her. Belonging to a man that Ser Lucas had dealt with by caving his skull in with a mace. Sure, the man had been sent to kill them, but Ser Lucas had been rather thorough in making sure that anytime someone had found them they weren't able to report back to those who had taken her home from her. "I guess we'll see if we can get him to talk? Share the beans on what's going on. Or at the very least, keep him out of trouble until we can figure out who in the legal system we can trust. Maybe he could tell use how to fix this mess before it gets out of hand?" It was clear this was way outside of Kathryn's realm of experience. She was good at avoiding conflict, or at least good enough. And she was good at resolving it quickly. After the battle? She had little experience.

She took a brief glance out the window. Though she wasn't sure on the exact time, they were on a time crunch. "I think we'd be needing to head back to the public house soon. If Cavendish gets a chance to regroup, he may try to stop us returning." She wondered if he was the one to put the Geas on Robert. But thinking of how the L'Rose's were also in danger with how quickly things were escalating, reminded her of Mallard. "Mallard." Kathryn spoke before turning to see the silver smith again. "They came for you. And we were here to stop them this time. But once we leave, I don't know if we'll be in their path again. If you want, we'll take you back to the public house with us. Or to our camp. I can't promise it'll be more fortified, but we'll be closer by to react should he make another move against you." She wondered what the Constable's plan was for getting in originally. Was it to beat on the door until it caved? Honestly, after feeling the hammer she might have if she were in his shoes. Plus, Mallard wouldn't be able to do a lot about it if he did return. Sure, he could hold up a couple hours. But if the constable was determined enough he would get in eventually without someone forcing him off. "I think we should also extend this offer to Cecile and Lizbeth. Now that we are essentially in open war with the constable, I doubt he will take the moral high ground and leave those who have helped us alone." She wasn't the biggest fan of the idea of babysitting those closest to them in town. But Cavendish had more bodies then the party did. At the very least if they could keep those who had helped them somewhere safe, they could improve their chances if the party found a lead they could use.

[Sigil]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Interior Silversmith's Shop Action: Ritual Casting Identify Bonus Action: Morty Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Only half," Victoria said absently to Jacques, following his reference to her as an Elf. She was pretty enough, had some features that marked her as separate from Humans at large, and many in these rural towns hadn't ever seen a full-blooded Elf before. Many others merely lumped anyone with a trace of sylvan background under the banner of "Elf", and was done with it. Regardless of reason, Victoria kept her dignity about her and gave a smile to the man, along with a generous benefit of the doubt.

Mentally moving on, it was good news to Victoria that her sword would be done as quickly as it would. This man had picked up some amazing and innovative shortcuts that, despite her lack of knowledge of the jewelrymakers' art, she felt compelled to pen in her journals what these steps looked like, hopefully to figure this out later with someone more knowledgeable in this area than herself. She was ever in search of new lore, and this qualified. Unfortunately, there were other matters more pressing to the issue of their purpose in this town which took her attention. One of them was Kathryn's newly acquired warhammer. She had suspicions. Lacking one of the basics of Wizardly magic, she could not simply release a novice detection in the air. Acquisition of bardic magic never reliably worked that way for Victoria.

There was an element of hesitation on Kathryn's part to turn over the hammer. Victoria raised a quizzical eyebrow at this, hoping that it wasn't a warning sign of a possible complication that she hadn't the resources to handle. She took up her still-damp cloak from its resting spot and held it out in front of her for her very tall associate to deposit the weapon upon, and gave a quiet giggle. Immediately giving an element of contradiction, Victoria's voice took on a more assertive note, "It will be back in your hands in a few minutes, but if you are physically unable to part with it for that long, we have a much bigger problem than trust issues." She tilted her head to the side slightly, unsure if this was going to be an occasion to start running but preparing for it. She even went so far as to give a mental command to her walking barbecue, Morty, just in case she needed a tripping stone to assist in her escape. All the same, her expression remained constant, even matronly, as she waited.

There was enough relief in Victoria's mind to bring on a sigh (though she kept it in) when Kathryn turned the warhammer over. So she could hand it over voluntarily. This was a positive. "Thank you very much, Kat." She returned to her usual cheery, bubbly self, and lay the bundle, hammer and all, on a clear spot on the counter beside them. Victoria walked around to the opposite side so that she could face outward and toward the rest of the party, and began.

The long, slender cloth bag attached to her belt was opened, to reveal what appeared at first glance to be a modified femur or other, similar bone, It was polished and lovingly scrimshawed with patterned, blackened furrows, and had holes drilled along its length in regular intervals. Close inspection would reveal that it was carved into a fine musical instrument very similar to a flute. She placed it alongside the hammer in front of her. Next came out a black square of cloth, which bore a white circle bisected twice by an "X" to form four more-or-less equal sections; what the cloth bore was a series of small bones of not immediate source, including a digit that was blackened as if by fire on one side. She took these up, shook them vigorously, and dropped them upon the black square.

Smiling, Victoria ran a finger along the embellishments on the weapon in front of her and placed a hand upon the haft, straightening it to perpendicular in front of her. One hand remained on the item at all times as sweet but ever-so-quiet vocalizations issued from her, demonstrating a talent for the act that transcended her younger age and seemed almost enhanced by the magic which she began to gather around herself. She appeared perfectly content in this moment.

Being as this was an example of Bardic Ritual Magic specific to her College, it was going to take a little time.




_{(Kathryn's action bunnied with @Remipa Awesome's approval. Thank you, Rem!)}

[Sigil]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: The rain is light but steady now. No more punishing torrent of earthbound water, but a quieter blanket of cold autumnal precipitation.

Time: Afternoon. Quite possibly late afternoon. It's difficult to tell with this level of overcast to the sky.

Ambience: The silversmith's place is warm and dry. Perhaps just a touch too warm, thanks to the pot forge and the press of multiple bodies in a smallish storefront. The acrid smells of heat affecting metal are remarkably faint for such an enterprise, which is a blessing considering the relatively still air, ventilation being minimal as this is technically a jeweler's, not an ironworks. Outside, smaller sounds of people beginning to move about and make their various exclamations barely reached inside.

*****

Jacques kept working as Kathryn apologized and stated her case about getting a more practical weapon for the L'Roses to use to assist in their protection. "You want to keep them safe?" he stated quietly, the bulk of his concentration on the silver he was inlaying, "Get them out of this town and keep them under guard. I don't make weapons here. I'm inlaying existing ones with silver." her jerked a thumb to the daggers, spear, and crossbow now on the counter, adding, "Those simple one are the only ones I have done, and they're for my protection. Bring me something to work with and I'll work with it."

The more-or-less quiet of the room made sense to Jacques. This was the inevitable cooldown after a fight. Tensions were still high, there was promise of more danger in the air, but blood was losing heat and it showed. This was why the conversation between Kathryn and Victoria gave him a little pause. They were nonchalantly discussing certain unfortunate possibilities with picking up a strange item which hinted to have special properties. Moreso, that the other could determine something about it. This was a group heavy with magic, it seemed, which gave Jacques a spot of hope. For his own reasons, the silversmith hadn't demonstrated surprise nor made overt mention, as one of the usual townsfolk might. He did allow this to show on his features with a single occurrence of a tired smile.

The implementation of this ritual spellwork caught his attention and actually got him to pause for a few seconds as he witnessed the exchange and setup for said ritual. "That is a divination ritual?" he queried, then thought better of it and stuck to his own work. His miniature pinpoint of white, metal-liquifying light glowed to life once again, providing detail to the blade he was altering before inserting the fine links of silver chain and passing it through heat. This was going to make a fine item once it was done, and in not too much more time. Were it not for the specialized tools at his disposal, this process would take amazingly more time and effort.

Blindfold still on and ropes still around him, The Guard began to slowly stir from his imposed naptime.

[rivaan]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kosara Tiefling, Warlock (Celestial), Level 03 HP: 21/ 21 Armor Class: 12(15 Mage Armor) Conditions: N/A Location: Silversmith's, interior Action: N/a Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Alright Mr Mallard.” She eventually quipped back to the silversmith after having the realization of the fact that he was a smith not a Smith. Very different things those. A mr Smith and a mr smith were not the same things and only the vocal intonation differentiated those, something that she had trouble with in these foreign lands. Most things were understandable enough, but on occasion some things would slip. She did have huge pout at the fact she wasn’t allowed to break the rat’s leg still.” Yeah, getting back would probably be a good idea. We can rest there and then before figuring our next course of action.” She agreed with Kathryn on this one." As for the L'Roses, where could we send them in expedient manner? It's not exactly safe to travel the roads and nobody could ensure they wouldn't be chased after or that they wouldn't encounter tree goblins."

She paid a bit of attention to the work that V was performing and her rituals. Those were interesting in their execution in a way that probably only bardic ritualists of their purple clad fabulous entertainer’s group could. Kosara herself was more used to a bit more traditional rituals involving stuff like sacrifices, fires and other various things. There were those present here too, but the lack of desert related influences was quite distinctive. The possible mention of that hammer being something negative had her glare at the thing with as much kitten fury Kosara could muster, but in the end her attention was snapped away from the bard and to their stirring guest. She was eyeing his legs every now and then, contemplating the possibility of jumping over and stomp on one of those and if she would be intercepted. She really didn’t understand what the issue was. It was non lethal way of punishment that would ensure he couldn’t escape or be a danger to anybody anytime soon. Granted maybe he could heal faster? She wasn’t completely sure on that one and if wererats could heal faster, but still it would take him out of commission for a while.

“Hmmmph.” She grumbled and went over to where her coat was drying by the fire and just plopped back down next to the fire now that she had healed the fancy dragon berry pie monk. She decided to just take the time to stand by the warm fire and rest until they were ready to head back out again, but she did KEEP an eye on the rat. It would take a single well placed Celestial Blast to make a mess of him if he tried anything!

[Arty Fox]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Baronfjørd "Blackberry" Chedgusah Dragon Born, Monk (Astral self), Level 03 HP: 22 / 24 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Silversmith Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A Ki: 1/3

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BlackBerry gave a pained grunt when he pulled out the arrow but was relieved to feel the effects of Kosaras magic quickly take its place, and when he looked back down at the wound it had neatly sealed itself. It was still a bit tender, as he found when running a thumb over it, but a darn sight better than before.

"Thank you kindly." He nodded to Kosara to assure her that her work was done.

He didn't know what to do with the arrow so kept hold of it for now, keeping an eye out for somewhere appropriate to put it. In the meantime he stayed in his spot, content to let his gaze continue to wander around the shop. It was nice despite the mess, and it was thankfully a lot warmer and drier in here than outside.

Mr.Malards explanation of the offer had left BlackBerry feeling pleasantly surprised, though he did wonder if the offer actually included him at this point having only met the group a few hours ago at most.

Best not for the moment He thought. Besides, there’s too much else to consider right now.

"May I ask, but did anyone else have much luck with their own battles at all?" He looked to the others in turn with an eyebrow raised.

He spun the arrow in his hand as he thought.

It would be useful to know if there was any way to fight back against the ruffians. His eyes slid down to the prone guard, tied and blindfolded on the floor, a clear sign that at least one other person had had better luck than him. Kosara, if he remembered correctly, looked to have caused some damage with her magic, but even his fiery limbs hadn’t appeared to do much other than leave them somewhat winded…some what had done the damage?

“It might be a tad ambitious to try and get everyone out of the town just yet.” He gave Lady Kathryn a sympathetic look, impressed by her concern for others but weary about the group's own situation. “Our best bet would be to tackle the issue head on. Once we find a way to hurt them, of course.”

“But then again…” The arrow paused in his hand, and then began to spin the other direction. “We do need to get the parcel back as well. Are the L’Rose’s somewhere along th-”

Movement from the otherside of the shop caught his attention, around the bulk of Marita and Lady Kathryn he spotted their guest starting to move where he had been dumped near the door (with as much care as the ruffian deserved).

“Ah, one moment everyone…” He spoke loudly to get everyone's attention. “It appears our Guest is beginning to waken. Let’s discuss our work later, shall we?.”

He stepped up to the counter, putting down the arrow and instead raising a finger up to his lips in Mr. Mallard's direction, hoping the man would get the message.

Stay quiet.

Odds were that the Guard could probably make an informed guess as to where he might be, but still it would be unwise to just give out that information freely

“Would this be a good place to start or should we find somewhere a bit more…appropriate?” He raised the question to the others.

[Shoe Thief]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kathryn Pyke Human, Battle Master, Level 03 HP: 25 / 31 Armor Class: 19 Conditions: N/A Location: Inside Silver Smith Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kathryn rolled her eyes a bit when Victoria seemed concerned she couldn't physically part with the hammer. She did offer it up, but apart of her wanted to jest with her a bit and resist giving her the hammer. That was until she took note of her stance, she was prepared to gain distance from herself if she had lost self control. The thought made her sad, but she supposed it wasn't out of the realm of possibilities with everything else going on. Apart of her worried what would happen if herself, or one of the others here had lost their own self will. What do you even do in that situation? She passed on the hammer with a bit of an awkward almost dumb grin on her face in her best attempt of innocence. "Here ya go." Kathryn spoke coolie as Victoria began her ritual. She did take note how Victoria seemed to not want to touch the hammer, and how she treated it like how others feared it. Kathryn wondered if maybe it was a mistake to grab the hammer so rashly as she did. Her main thought was to just get it away from Cavendish, which she thankfully did. But those concerns were there now. Maybe Victoria would figure out all of this soon enough? Kathryn's jaw about dropped when she saw the femur pulled out of Victoria's belt, and she began to play it like a flute. Kathryn personally had never witnessed ritual magic,and most of the magic she had witnessed had been closer to enchantments, runes, and lighter arcane stuff. Where she came from, you got more respect and social influence with physical might than abilities with the Arcane. But seeing this now, she was mesmerized. She had barely noticed the small bones as the ritual continued.

Mallard had pitched in from her comments before. Kathryn listened but she was disappointed. Kosara brought up one of the biggest concerns though. "There aren't enough of us to guard them, and fix things here." Technically, she was pretty sure their job was only to figure out what was going on and let the Sheriff know when they did. Solving was something only supposed to be done if they had a reasonable chance too. She wondered if the Sheriff had the manpower to do both? Was it worth sending for help? Apart of her wondered if they should have the Cecile ride back to the fort and get help? But what if things were rough there too? What if they had no one to send, and what if their guards were also turned by now? It was too risky. Could be more goblins, and Kathryn had no doubts that among those turned, at least one was a competent rider and could catch up. Even worse if that one had legal credibility like Cavendish. As for Mallard's comment on making weapons, and not having any he could loan out... "I have a couple then if you could please work on them. Just so they have something to protect themselves with. As well, I don't suppose you recognize who could have made the dagger? And where it came from?" Kathryn pulled out the near brand new knife she took from the goblin loot, and the wood cutting axe she had been using as a throwing axe, and set them on a shelf near Mallard. She had hoped for better, but if she knew this was an option, she would have grabbed some more of the short swords. But what Kathryn had to offer were far from ideal.

She briefly considered her family sword, getting it silvered would be helpful, and it would be another weapon should the warhammer not be usable. There were a list of complications. The sword was big, it was battered beaten and chipped, and by old clan laws only those within her family could work on the sword. "Can you show me how to do what you are doing? I am an experienced smith, but I've never worked with silver." Kathryn lifted her sword off her side keeping it sheathed. "And as my family's household weapon, only those from my family can work on the sword." She paused a moment realizing she had already pushed her relationship with Mallard today. "If that isn't something you are willing or able to do please know I won't take any offense. You're already doing us a huge favor as is." Then she heard the stirring. Kathryn turned to see the guard beginning to wake.

Kathryn took her sword, and set it up against the shelf where she put her hatchet and the Goblin Dagger, the sheath and flat tip resting comfortably against the floor. Kathryn steps were heavy in the quiet room, each steel clad boot hitting the floor with force and weight as the chainmail rattled. She made her way over to the guard, bound and restrained. She pulled her bag off herself and began rummaging through it. Out of it she pulled some of the bread and her water skin. Once she had them out she set her bag on the floor outside of the reach of the restrained guard. "You're in rough shape." She said as she kneeled by the blindfolded man. "Your arm is busted and the rest of you is in rough shape as well. If we can we'll get you looked at by a professional, but until them I would try to avoid putting any strain on your arm. Otherwise it may not heal right." Maybe it was the fact he was restrained, or the fact that she was considerably bigger than him, or the fact that he felt so small sitting in the corner like this, but Kathryn found herself unable to be mad at this man. Not in his state anyways. Maybe apart of it was how human he seemed. A large portion of her life she had spent either in human and Elvin keeps, and with human and human like sell swords. Without her home men like him were the closest to her people she still had a relationship with. Those who used their might to put food on their table, and were the shield to those around them. She had to remind herself that this man was not one of those men. t least anymore. "Are you hungry? Thirsty? I got bread and water if you need it." Kathryn spoke with a soft tone that seemed like it should come out of someone nowhere near as big as she was. And though this man was an enemy, she was determined to make his time as her prisoner as comfortable as reasonably possible.

[Sigil]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Interior Silversmith's Shop Action: Ritual Casting Identify Bonus Action: Morty Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Once committed to a Ritual, there was little else that Victoria could do without spoiling her efforts. On the occasions that she had performed a ritual spellwork before, there wasn't a pressing concern that it might be interrupted. Her knowledge of these things was not so complete that Victoria could predict what would happen in the event that she had to forcibly stop, either. Maybe nothing, aside from the spell's energy dissipating into the Weave around them. Maybe something, if the power was to rebound upon her or her ritual equipment. Or maybe a wholly unexpected result. The unknown was usually interesting; a poor temptation but one nonetheless. Such thoughts were fleeting and minuscule anyway as there was no way (that she might think of at that moment) Victoria would voluntarily sabotage a Ritual. But something hinted that it might, regardless.

The prisoner had moved. Not a lot, but enough to divert some of her attention. Tied up or no, Victoria didn't like the idea of a hostile entity around them only to provide a distraction. Even in her attempts to keep her mind on the spellwork at hand, a thought trickled in that roughly translated to, "Why are we bothering to keep him alive? Why are we bothering to keep him at all?" though she did not let a syllable of this reach the open air. Instead, she kept the issue of their enemy to the others in the party, specifically those who insisted on his presence in the first place.

The Ritual of Identification continued quietly as her free hand slipped into her pocket to produce a small, leather pouch. Victoria made sure to keep physical contact with the hammer, lest the spell fizzle away. Next, she picked up her collection of small bones again and tossed them like dice upon the cloth they were previously wrapped within, noted the results, and smiled. "Almost there," she whispered, her voice melodic and ethereal. One might barely notice the darkening of her eyes, which spread downward as if necrotic energy painted her face with sorrow, contrasting the barely visible tips of her teeth brought about by a grin of budding accomplishment. The ritual was coming to fruition.

[Dragoknighte]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Marita Bärbel Human, Cleric, Level 3 HP: 18/18 Armor Class: 18 Conditions: N/A Location: Silversmith Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Marita stood by in the background as the others went about their actions, discussing what to do next, waiting for the smith to do his work, performing sensitive rituals while there's a captive waking up in the corner. The nature of that hammer was something that in her humble opinion could be left to investigation (if any) after they were no longer in a state of impending doom, but the dominos had already begun to fall in that regard, so there wasn't much to do but watch.

What was of importance was that Mallard was offering to silver any weapons they had on them. Silently, since their guest was waking up and she didn't want to leak any more information than necessary, the cleric made her way over to the silversmith and unsheathed her dagger and held it by the flat of the blade, offering the handle for him to grab. The mace was her primary weapon, but by her estimation, trying to silver a blunt weapon like that would require far more time and material than the edge of a blade. Not to mention that she wasn't sure how much more effective it would be or not.

As far as their captive went, Marita started to put some thought into what they were going to do with him in the near future. If Kathryn wanted to suggest hauling him around time that would be a hard no. They were already walking around with targets on their back was it was without being slowed down with an unwilling third party. Ideally they'd be able to pump some information from him, but she had the feeling he would either be unwilling or unable to give them much of substance, even if she used some of her less elegant inquisitory tactics. Leaving him out on the street felt like another artless solution (possibly after knocking him out again), but it was likely the safest thing they could for themselves without ending the guy. She would keep an eye out for the situation and see if any other ideas jumped out at her.