LogFate of Souls-Jason-1

Game log for the 2018/01/07 session of Fate of Souls, as taken by Jason

Ham has come to town, looking to collect the bounty on the soulstones. He's tight with Korin Taelax, Archivist to the Chronicler in the Great Library of Iolanthis. Korin has the soulstone of a former chronicler, containing the location in the archives of a first-hand account of the Battle of Minos Bay. That millenia-past battle sank a thousand ships, so anyone who can figure out where it was and reclaim the soulstones from those wrecks can expect to make absurd amounts of bounty money. The City Guard now patrol the archives, which will complicate any attempt to remove the book we're looking for.

In the dead of night, we sneak onto campus and to the door Korin and Piro think best. Korin, sadly, has no exterior key. Luckily, Bartleby's mate Bork knows a litle something about picking locks. It takes a little fussing and one quick percussive movement but it eventually unlocks, at which point we make a terrible ruckus opening and closing the ancient door.

The Archives have two aspects, "Dark as Fuck" and "Musty and Dusty." Korin directs to the area with the right epoch, four bays hence. Around the third bay, we see torchlight and hear the sound of boots. Hirazoth summons a breeze that blows out their torches, which buys us some time. We all try to sneak deeper into the stacks and hide, and though Bartleby and Piro manage to duck away, the trailing three have left footprints in the dust that lead right to them. Hirazoth thinks fast and summons a wind that blows away his footprints and Weyland's. Oh, and Korin did a lousy job of hiding, too. Ham mutters, "Trust me.. be the archivist" and shoves Korin into sight of the guards. He quickly grabs a scroll. One of the men says, "Well, well, well, if it isn't the Archivist," and draws a weapon. Korin stutters out an explanation of what he was doing. Ham steps out behind him and asks if he can help them. The boss guard tells one of his men to go fetch help. Ham asks if he can do anything for them, and they tell him to fuck off and leave the Archivist behind. The boss recognizes who Ham is, and asks why a bounty hunter is working for the Archivist. His second doesn't care, because regardless of the reason, they can just kill him. They can out as much as they can in this confined space. Ham rushes to stab one and proves to be quicker, and presses his advantage in their duel. The other two join the fray, and the advantage quickly shifts. Weyden comes in from the darkness with his warhammer and absolutely clobbers the mouthy guard. Bartleby tells Börk to defend Piro and joins the fight. His timing's bad, though, and he fails to connect.

Ham tries to finish off the concussed guard, and while he doesn't put the guy out of the fight, he makes him jump back, which opens up some space. As that poor bastard tries to straighen his helmet out, Weyden thrusts his hammer into the guy's ribs, which knocks him back even more. They trade blows, but now that the guy can see clearly, he's able to hold Weyden off. Ham's foe is on the verge of landing a dangerous blow when the dust makes him sneeze, buying Ham time. The leader goes after Korin, who runs. Bartleby chases after to protect the Archivist. The leader, realizing he's being chases, spins and drives Bartleby back. Hirazoth whistles up a wind to help guide his aim, so that he can fire an arrow or two with some hope of accuracy, and does so with style. Ham's opponent cuts him across the ribs. Weyden's opponent overextends and leaves himself open

Ham comes close to disaster but his opponent sneezes again, the poor allergy-ridden bastard, and he's also losing his nerve as he realizes that the famous bounty hunter before him doesn't give any fucks about any little gut wounds. The guard leader's speed doesn't help him now that Bartleby knows there's a fight on, and the dust isn't doing him any favors. Hirazoth takes a boy shot at Weyden's opponent, which almost goes wide, but the wind takes it and brings it squarely into the guard's knee. The guard falls and hits his head on the way down, and he won't be getting up again.

Ham tries to bluff his opponent off, but the guy only goes so far as to offer Ham the chance to leave, sans Korin. Ham declines. Weyden moves in to help Ham with the steely-eyed killer guard. That's good because Ham just got stabbed. Just as the killer is thinking he's got the upper hand, Weyden breaks his arm. Bartleby can't get inside his opponent's guard. Hirazoth shoots an arrow into the air and lets the wind bring the arrow in from an unexpected direction, convincing the guards that there's an archer out there somewhere.

Ham tries to take advantage of the distraction and disengage. He succeeds, leaving Weyden one on one with the steely eyed killer guard. The guard is still awfully quick, but with a broken wrist, he's not able to catch Weyden off guard. Piro sees Ham staggering away from the right and tries to join up with him, eluding Börk in the process. As the guards see her, they hesitate, uncertain about how many of us might be out there. The guard leader attacks Bartleby and almost gets through his guard - this fight might not go his way. Weyden lands a hammer swing on the steely-eyed guard's junk, lifting inches off the ground and then leaving him there in a heap. Bartleby breaks time and cuts the guard's face. Hirazoth cackles loudly at how stupid the guards are.

Ham tries to find Korin but can't, yet. Piro just saw Weyden win his fight and calls out to confuse the guard leader next. She's good at this game - as the captain sees hostiles in his peripheral vision, he tries to disengage. Bartleby blocks his path. "Listen, we have a job to do here." "Just surrender!" The guard doesn't believe we'll let him live if he surrenders. Weyden tees off on the guy. The guard's dodge is too slow. BONG. The guard goes down hard, and at that point, he surrenders. Bartleby disarms him and ties him up. The other two guards will be out for a while.

Ham continues looking for Korin, and this time, he's all over the guy. He assures Korin that we won the fight and it's going to be OK. The guard assures Korin that he's a marked man. We continue on looking for the documents we need. In the distance, we can hear shouts. Time will clearly be a factor here. Eventually we end up in the giant round room that Piro had seen in her divinations. At Bartleby's suggestion, Piro goes out and leaves some extra trails and opens some doors, to make the trail more confusing for the guards who are looking for us.

This room has many vestibules and connecting hallways, all lined with racks. Korin describes the book we're looking for and tells us that it was stored at chest height. Hirazoth turns out to suck at looking for things, making a mess and thoroughly pissing off Korin. Luckily others are more successful and we come up with the book. Time to depart, with much haste, and not by the way we came in. We know there are armed men nearby. Hirazoth conjures a wind at our back to keep them from hearing our noise, and though some of us are pretty slow, we make our escape anyway. The bad guys don't know where we went or what we took, although they may be able to guess, if the Chronicler told someone what the Archivist told him.

Now we're loose on the campus. We decide to split up a bit, sending Piro and Börk ahead. They get to the gate and notice that the guards are facing in, not out. They tell Piro and Börk that nobody is allowed to leave. They convince the guards that they're scared of the trouble on campus and just want to get out, and the guards let them through. Börk takes her right back to the ship.

Ham suggests we smuggle him out with the shit wagon, disguised as shit farmers. Hirazoth bribes them to do his will. They pile the stinkiest shit on top and are happy to bury Korin, Bartleby, and a shit farmer under it. With Weygen passing as a farmer, we go out through the midden gate. Hirazoth summons a wind to blow the stench before them. The guards conclude that the wizard is clearly crazy and that any prolonged discussion of his craziness would be counterindicated. We get clean away.

Ham then finds someone to stitch him up, and we all end up back on ship, getting the hell out of dodge on the ebb tide.