T A C: Session 04 -- 'For a Firmer Grasp of Alone' -- Report

General Summary

Orders of the Order

    Entry ------- -------- 1st; Individuals will be abbreviated to initials AOAP ie Grand Master = GM     They say that it is good to be happy in one’s work. I will have to try that some time. For now I write the events of this day here for future use.           The morning was overcast but the sun made threat of finding its way out from hiding. My betters were still asleep. GMP was upstairs abed. So was the rest of the Armory except for Hammer & Nails. They make a useful pair. A rueful one as well. Like their namesakes one was often found trying to hit the other. It was GVG who still stayed in the common room. He had fallen asleep there hours before. It fell to me to awaken him. He did not ask for food. This is why he remains thin, I suppose. He is too young to be wasting away. Gauntness may well lie ahead of him, if he’s not watchful. I tidy the room around his chair. There are leftover items from the past evening. Some bits picked off the XW’s armour…     Hammer arrives from outside. She does not stay long with the GV. Hammer is not one for idleness. Idle talk or idle action are both things she will move from. As she goes upstairs for a well-earned rest, Nails makes his presence noticed. Nails is an issue at all times. His usefulness normally outweighs any subtractions he takes from the Armory’s profits. Normally. I keep myself nearby, as I am used to Nails goading newer members of the Armory into foolhardy excursions. Death usually follows. So far, Nails has managed to avoid the same pitfalls that his newer charges often fall prey to. I pray that this is not forever the case. Nails needs to learn that lives matter, even if he places no value on his own.     He talks to GVG. The GM returns from his city-walk. Nails indicates that he has met up with an “Arm”. The GM indicates that this is rightly called an “Armistice”. Both agree that the armistice uses a weapon, called a stave. There is a city called Staves I’ve heard mentioned by one or two people next door to us. They have a relative living there who had to come to Alone. The woman had been wounded during an invasion of fiends. Her wounds wouldn’t heal. The healers were working on her still, even though she had been here two months. Fiends were mentioned. I wonder at this. Fiends in a place as large as this world is said to be? What stops them from taking it over? I will need to ask the GM. He is knowledgeable about this, Miranse.     GMP tells us he will seek out this Armistice who has been mentioned twice this morning in two reports, both Nails’s and Derientoans’s. She had told GMP earlier that the Avernalspawn had committed themselves to a surveillance of the Brown Citadel. They had learned that the leader of the citadel, Dammerdol did not leave it often. I added to her report that if things here are as they are elsewhere, then such a citadel will provide safe harbour for its occupants and greater striking power to its commander. It is much the same as a caster in his tower, when a keep is manned by a general. Likewise, a ship’s captain aboard his flagship or an Order within its headquarters. All provide additional strength to those at home there.     The GM readies us and departs. Derientoans has already left so that there is only Nails to accompany the GM& GV. This isn’t a wise thing to allow so I ask to join them. I will provide assistance to Nails if he gets into too much trouble. I will try to judge this trouble closely. No point in getting involved too soon and irritating Nails. He likes a bit of strife in life. Who am I to get in his way? We find that Nails is able to take us to where he last spied the Armistice. We know this Sparington’s-type is named, Paladin but we seem to be unable to find his trail. Nails is not much of a tracker. The few times he has succeeded I have put down to obviousness of signs left by a target. Nails gives every effort but draws a bad hand. He cannot make the man.     At the same time as Nails searches the grass-covered street for Paladin, we are approached by a city official. This veer is a strangely tic-filled person, given to a slight stammer, much waffling in his speech and a nervous laugh that appears uncalled for and used at times that don’t merit it. His position is the captain of the town guard. It is not as important a title as even a low sort of town might suggest. The city has almost no need for a town watch. People come here to be healed of life’s afflictions, wounds that won’t knit and the like. For this reason, he suggests, the town has little trouble that might require a force to intervene. I have my own thoughts on this. It may be that the city is famed for housing the worst of diseases and malodorous illness and that this keeps most right thinking troublemakers away. There are easier and closer-by towns that can be profitable, that will potentially leave a person still healthy after a few day’s residence. We’ve only just got to Alone. I cannot say yet when or if some of us might catch whatever illness is housed near us. I will be laying on some unguent and lotion for the less serious afflictions. The more serious may mean an up-close experience of the skills of the healers of the city.     The captain of the town watch fills us in on some blank spaces we share of our knowledge of the city. There is a governor’s residence and a governor as well. Dammerdol has taken stewardship of Alone. Likely as not, due to an absence of any opposition. The ‘job’ seems easy enough, receiving payment monthly for doing nothing that the captain can tell us about. Further queries along this line, reveal that the town watch and the captain too, receive their payment from the same monies as the governor. This seems to be a long-ago established fund. The dividend of the fund provides just sufficient for the current groups to exist. This explains why the watch is small and under-equipped. It will have to stay this way unless more funding is found. I see no need to enlarge it, save the chance that the city becomes more enticing to others. An influx would mean a growing chance that thievery and the like might grow in occurrence and cause a larger need for the watch to get more actively involved.     The awkward captain leaves us to ourselves. GMP is signaled by a member of the Cornerstone from a town’s blockward away. We move to her. She tells that the cohort has been stationed since dawn, awaiting GMP’s return to the Saltic Bank. We make our way there directly. The rest of the cohort lolls about the steps of the bank. An unnecessary show of localised strength, I feel. No great harm has been done nor does GMP voice a concern about it. Inside the bank, we are greeted by a banking official. His title is, Chief Banking Officer. GMP gets down to immediate details.       His interest in the Great North Turret     His desire to own it     His disinterest in the Officer’s estimated price of 80,000 helms     His taking over the city, effective yesternight     That the bank may or may not be allowed to trade within Alone     Should he wish it, the Medallions-Croupier could be invited to join the city’s businesses       The bank Officer reacts with what I take to be calm anger. His voice changes from welcoming officiousness to clipped formality. A man to consider an enemy, I think. I will let Lonesome know about him. She will know how best to handle him. The GM then softens his approach indicating that until matters are required to be firmly resolved, he will be willing to pay a rental fee for the occupation of the turret. The Officer mentions that there is no provision for leasing civic structures but also that some kind of agreement can be written up, with a few days effort. This is seen as a best way to leave things. The Order departs the bank.       Outside again, our attention is drawn by the other scout of the Cornerstone. They have a stage-bow signal that is at once an invitation to come closer and a means to insult. That’s how I take it and always have. Invitation to sport with swords-stabbing and clubbing hilt-swipe and what-have-you. Fair enough to keep a cohort’s eye sharp and movements agile. We followed the scout to the building next down from the Saltic Bank. There it stood; wooden-thick walls, easily a man’s breadth through and sixty-foot high to its flat rooftop. Saying this, it is a structure strange in its overall shape. It looks like a church steeple without the church beneath it. If it was a steeple once, it had seen its top half chopped off and lifted away somehow. An act of a god? Perhaps one opposed to the one the steeple had been dedicated to? Unlikely imagining on my part. The more likely story would be that the builder had a reason to make the walls taper as the building rose. Definitely it would be adding to the building’s stability. Was there a reason to suppose that the city could be subject to tremors? It was too soon to know. GMP has mentioned a sizable-seeming cavern beneath Alone. These sometimes mean that the ground above is made shifty. Like as not, this may have been a feature of the city when this building went up. It will do for a reasoning for the time being. The scout of the ‘stone tells that he tried to climb up it. This because she noted a strange magickal effect atop it. As he climbed the exterior he was forced back down by a glyph of the Greenward. His interest had not been salved away by this and then he saw that we had exited the bank.       The GM and the GV needed to learn more. Nails offered to make up for his earlier failure. He climbed like the half-ape he resembles in manner and stature. Quickly he reached the point where the scout had been turned away. He reached past the point of his highest achievement. Pleased as I would have been to see a member of the Armory succeed where one of the ‘stone had failed, I wasn’t altogether dismayed to see a burst of Greenlight, shatter Nails confident verticality. He moved away from his handholds, arching over backward, like a graceful diving bird as it plunges seaward. In Nails case he is no great imitator of avians and the illusion was quickly dispelled as he hurtled into the effort of GMP and Commander O., who managed to halt his break-spine fall before he mashed to ground. Nails is not even bothered by his near-miss. I assume he had previously calculated that the city would provide a ready cure-all for any injury. I must ask him if this is a correct guess.       I turn to see GVG headed to the building’s front doors. I follow as I am expected to. Inside we are in a long room that extends away on either hand. Across the room’s narrow span and along the length of its wider wall, stand six sculpted heads. They are each different from the others. I do not think they are for sale. An archway is before us, cutting the room’s length in half. Noise of approach soon reveals a woman my age. She takes pains to clean the door jam with a cloth. She offers that the building is a museum. The sculptures are of the six former governors. She is friendly. She offers us the freedom of the place. The GV moves to the next room. Stairs lead up one side. The rest of the room is devoted to sundries. The woman tells us that upstairs is worth a look. This suits GVG’s design. We make our way up. The level is devoted entirely to what she calls the ballroom. I don’t see any such equipment. A ballroom sounds like a good training facility but not only are there no exercise balls, there aren’t any ladders, ropes or practice dummies to be seen. She is too motherly to think that she might have meant the other kind of ‘ballroom’, so I’m left unsure what the room is for.       GVG heads to the nearest widow and climbs into the window’s framing. A deep-set wall like this building’s makes that easy to do. Bars prevent anyone from exiting. I note that these would not prevent weather from entering… Shortly after this, we are re-joined. GMP looks over the situation and makes a chantried effort. I see no effect but certainly the use of Colour might have been the cause of the bars’ fastenings being loosened? Nails of course has his entry tools on hand. He makes quick work of the bolts that affix the bars’ frame to the wooden window frame. Bars removed, GVG sets off, out, around and upward. GMP orders Commander O. to follow. She does, with GMP’s last instruction to send down a climbing rope for us.       We arrive quickly enough above on the flat roof. GVG has managed to incapacitate a caster of some type. He wears Green as his predominant Colour. I see no actual reason to believe that this is the Colour he uses. It would be child’s play to wear one and use another? He asks to be allowed to heal the nasty wounds that the GV’s snipes have made in his back. This is permitted and the caster makes use of the Green sure enough. Creating a water jug from Colour, he pours a Green ‘liquid’ over himself from the jug. This seems to help, if not entirely prove effective. It is then agreed that we should return to our lodging. The GM quietly tells the GV that he thinks this caster, Scilvas, might be the Order’s first Mirantian recruit.         The man is capable of casting. He carries a fine blade. I remain to be convinced of his worthiness for induction. I will let Campaign know about this. The Armory must not fall behind in numbers.