[Game Thread] Chapter 5: The Price of Keeping Secrets

[FoggyKnight]

Brie pulled out her little bird-shaped whistle from her pouch. "I can use this." She blew sharply into the bird's tail, and the bird gave a brief noise that sounded like a woodland bird's 'predator' screech. She felt uneasy about staying in town; the same hiding places that gave the guards what stealth they had, also offered places for the predator to hide, places she wasn't familiar with. Seeing that Vorn was settled on his plan however, she stayed quiet otherwise.

[Admin Chuck]

Grunk likes Vorn's plan, so far as plans that involve staying inside the town go. "What about those signal stick things? We could have couple of those too." A gleam enters the big orc's eyes as the idea of a fight begins brewing in his brain. Grunk has always been an orc of action, not one to sit around and let things just happen to him, which is what had been going on the past two days. Now that a plan is growing and they have an idea to stop this person from chasing them and trying to kill him and his friends his mind clears.

Another thought occurs briefly to Grunk, but is soon discarded. I wonder if he would stop attacking us if we assured him that we're not going to go after more of the stones? It's not important now, as they don't have the means to just sit down and chat with their attacker, and the answer is probably no anyway.

[Humble Athena]

"I really don't think you need me for this." Jer'meae meekly interjects again. "I'm not with them, and while this has all been very very interesting and I would love to see how it turns out, I would very much like to not get into a fight."

[Aeternis]

"Not with them?" Vorn glares at Jer'meae. "You were involved in the whole mess, weren't you?"

"From what I gather, she's about the only reason we didn't get gassed." Moric offers, in a rare thankful tone. "But she don't run with this pack. Just was in the right place."

"And the message on the wall was for you." Vorn looks to Brie and Grunk. He considers this for almost a minute in silence before speaking again. "I am going to say you don't have to be a part of this if you don't want to." He points to Jer'meae. "As a group, the lot of you might stand a chance, but one on one I don't think there's a man or woman in Belton who would last fifteen seconds against our quarry. You're smart enough to know that. I'd ask you stay in town, at least until the morning, so a clerk can take your statement - you were a witness in the original incident after all." He waves to one of the guards, who moves to escort Jer'meae out. Vorn seems to half expect the merfolk to redact her statement and stay put - it's plain he doesn't quite trust the word of anyone involved who isn't among the city's garrison.

There is a brief silence after the merfolk woman is escorted from the room. To everyone's surprise, it's Moric who breaks it: "I had an idea." He says suddenly.

Vorn looks up, and visibly seems to dismiss Moric as just some slimy mercenary, but is too polite, only just, to tell him off. "Let's hear it then." He prompts.

"Okay. First." He gestures to his compatriots and himself. "The stuff this guy used was sleeping gas, right big guy?" Moric gestures to Grunk, who he probably remembers as having gotten most exposed to the gas in question. "That suggests he wasn't aiming to kill us."

Vorn frowns. "No. You saw what he did to the captain. Burned him through with magic."

"Yeah. But us, he tried to gas. My hunch is, if we lie low, he'll try to draw us out. He can't just kill until everybody's dead. He'll try to trap us, but that'll tell us where he is. Then all we gotta do is be clever enough to counter-trap his trap."

Vorn clearly hadn't thought of this, and it's clear he doesn't like Moric's logic very much (or maybe it's just that he doesn't like Moric). "And if he's willing to wait you out?"

Moric shrugs. "Then we've lost time, but something tells me this guy won't leave without what he came for. C'mon, Lieutenant, let's just wait out the rest of the day before we go making the first move, hmm?"

Vorn sighs. "Do the rest of you share this view?"

Moric mutters something, which might be Common or might not, falling silent and looking away when Vorn takes notice.

OODM Whenever something feels too easy, that means someone's not telling you everything.

[FoggyKnight]

Brie looked a bit unhappy as the merfolk lady left, but couldn't blame her for leaving, seeing as this wasn't her fight or her problem. Then she looked a bit more unhappy with Moric's suggestion. "Does that mean we're back at the cages idea? Can we wait outside?" She asked, hopefully. She hadn't really noticed that the hunter was trying to keep them alive versus everyone else, and she found this information worrisome with Vorn's insistence that his men be involved.

She was startled as Moric muttered something in the Codex language under his breath, vaguely resembling a ruffled chicken that had just suffered a dog running through the henhouse. Did he know that all along? Is he after our Codex-es? Codices? Whatever that word was?

[Admin Chuck]

Grunk shrugs at Vorn's question to them, after looking at Moric oddly for a moment. "He does have a point. And it would be easier on you than having to follow us around all day." Another look passes to Moric as Grunk considers the source of the little thief's knowledge of Leyrian. "If we hole up at the inn or something, eventually he'll try to flush us out again right?"

[Humble Athena]

Jer'meae begins to shake her head, until the not-so-nice man explains her chance involvement to the guard. She gives him a smile, then nods quickly to the guard. "Yes, I was just passing by." She nods again when asked to stay in town. "Of course. I wasn't planning on going anywhere; there's still so much to learn about you land folk here!"

[Aeternis]

"Hole up in an inn?" Vorn shakes his head. "That's not how this works. No. There's no place in town that'll be safer than here, except maybe Yojana's. Maybe. And she hates guests." Vorn shakes his head at Moric's sudden reversal of attitude from sullenly, silently neutral to vocally opinionated - and the guardsman, far from dumb, seems to sense that something's going on. "What's the game, now? I wasn't born yesterday. What's changed from five minutes ago? What's - " His eyes go wide suddenly, and his mouth stops in a sort of half-open position as he seems to have a sort of epiphany.

OODM Okay, there we go, sorry for the delays on my part. If you notice anything in this post that seems off, given that I posted it after having less than 4 hours of sleep last night it is probable that things may indeed be off. Shoot me a PM, IM, or reply in OOC if you want anything double-checked.

[FoggyKnight]

Brie looked a bit blank as Moric leaned towards her and spoke. She clearly didn't know what he was talking about in general, but her eyebrows jumped together at the words "borrow" and "shiny red rock". Looking surprised, Brie reaches into the pocket where she kept her found "treasures", only to find of course, that her red gemstone from the cave she and Grunk spent the night at was missing. She was further confused by Vorn's mention of "her", the only her that he could be mentioning being the fish lady.

It wasn't until the conversation was over that Brie put it all together, and she whipped around to look at Moric with a shocked look. "Did you put the fish woman in danger with my rock?"

[Humble Athena]

[Admin Chuck]

Grunk looks quizzically at Moric, notably not condemning him for putting Jer'meae in unearned danger. "How do you know how he's tracking us?" The big orc is not unhappy with Moric's actions necessarily, especially if the rogue is right in his deduction, but it doesn't change the fact that they are going to have to confront this arcanist enemy at some point, likely soon.

[Aeternis]

"I don't know for sure, big guy. It's a guess." Moric admits. "But I had an... employer... pull something like that once. Did it with a stone, even, a diamond. The mark picks up the shiny stone, and then magic tracks it." He taps on the table. "Not really sure how it works - it's magic, you know - but nobody just drops a stone that big anywhere. That thing was worth what, ten platinum? Fifteen?"

"So, yes. He did put the mer-woman in danger." Vorn answers Brie's question for Moric.

"Probably." Moric shrugs. "Ten to your one he doesn't kill her though."

"What makes you sure he won't?" Luthrin asks with a frown. "We saw what he did to that guardsman."

"Yup. But still." Moric either can't or doesn't want to explain why he thinks what he just voiced. From the look on his face, it's probably the latter. He seems to sense incredulity on Luthrin's part, because he scowls at the Pelorite. "Fine, go on, chase after her yourself. He's probably already got her."

"Don't." Vorn shakes his head to Luthrin, counteracting Moric's mostly-sarcastic suggestion as if the lieutenant didn't detect any sarcasm at all. "Malhan's got it."

OODM No-one told Moric about the stone until Brie mentioned it, and then he decided to sneak a look at it with a timely sleight of hand. Once he had it in hand, he realized what it was (in his experience) probably for, and then set about... diverting it.

[FoggyKnight]

Brie flushed slightly in embarrassment, sensing Moric's condescending sarcasm floating in her direction. She had picked it up because it was red and admittedly shiny, and looked pretty. She didn't know such things like magic tracking. Moric's sarcasm was rubbing her the wrong way though, now that he had found a loose thread in her, he seemed determined to pick at it and pick at it until she became unraveled.

"What now?" She asked in a subdued voice. "We wait and see if the fish woman gets killed?" She glared at Moric, clenching her hand in a fist. Perhaps the guards would be polite enough to let her get in a few punches before they pull her off of him. Or maybe an axe swing if the woman turned up dead.

[Admin Chuck]

Grunk has an idea. It's such a simple idea that he stands silent for a moment to process it again, wondering also why it didn't occur to him immediately after Moric revealed what he did. "We should go after Jer'meae anyway. If our hunter is hunting her, we can hunt him in return."

[Humble Athena]