Aporeu chronicles Issue 336: Lauzea: Where's Weresh?
Stories from the adventurers
This issue
This story was brought to me by a lovely young woman with a friendly smile. I don’t know why, but she made me feel like things were gonna be alright. Which I needed, seeing the stack of work I’ve got left to go through…Lauzea: Where’s Weresh?
Dear adventurer's guild. The wizard Weresh has not been seen for a couple of weeks. His caretaker, the lovely miss Briseis, seems to be missing as well. The house is locked. We would like to offer you Chroniclers the chance to investigate this matter, to see if you are suitable to be of aid in the future. Signed, Kellen Ficklefen, archmage of the Academy of the Arcane in Loikon.Ashley Eisenhardt, aspiring guardian angel
Hello everybody! Ashley Eisenhardt here, but you can call me “Ash” if you want. I’m new from Ravnica, which is a really big city world with lots of Guilds. And I heard that you would appreciate it if I wrote a story about what happened during my mission for the Adventurer’s Guild. My first mission, and I’ve just been here a couple days! I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty excited. But let’s meet the rest of the squad I’ll be working with today, shall we? There’s Toblin the Halfling, Malcolm the Human, Fisher the Air Genasi. I’m a Fire Genasi myself. And once we get to Lauzea, we’re joined by Altum the Vedalken. Quite the eclectic group! Nothing I’m not used to from my Boros days, though. Anyway, because Toblin, Malcolm, and myself are all new to the Guild, we go to Lornan’s office for some more information. Lornan’s really quite nice, though I’m a little worried that he’s very sick. Hope he’ll get better soon! Long story short: The quest is on Lauzea and something for the Academy of the Arcane. Sounds like a magic school. I believe it might be the first time the Guild has received a quest from them, so we should try to make a good impression. After that, we head toward the Gate to get to Lauzea. Once it opens, I rush through. Guess I didn’t have to, since it just stays open until everybody is through. It wasn’t quite so generous when I got to Chronicle, hence my haste. Something new learned. We exit at a big temple complex, and meet with Altum there, who seems to have been waiting for a bit. She’s tall, just like the Vedalken back home. Guess some things are the same everywhere. She leads us to the teleportation circle that takes us to the Academy really quickly. That’s quite useful. Once there, we’re greeted by Astor. Who asks us which Archmage we’re there to meet. After explaining that we’re there on Guild business and they hired us, he takes us to Archmage Kellen Ficklefen. A Gnome wizard with a pretty cool office, and seems nice enough. He explains that the powerful and old wizard Weresh has an assistant who makes sure he doesn’t get into trouble because Weresh is apparently very old. And might make mistakes. Which have bigger consequences when you’re a powerful wizard, I suppose. But, Briseis the assistant failed to report in on time, so they’re worried that something happened, and they want us to go figure out what that something is. And to handle it if we can. The old wizards live in a town nearby, where non magical people are safe from their shenanigans. Weresh is an old Elf that specializes in Abjuration magic. Well, I’m less worried that he’s too badly hurt, since he can probably defend himself pretty well. The important part is they have a shop where I can get some snacks to try and lure Weresh out if needed. Then we’re told that long ago, Weresh was involved with some cultists and nearly doomed the world. That’s not good. He was tried for that and presumably suitably punished, though. What worries me is the possible connection to demons. Especially when we learn that Briseis was interested in his research, and she focuses on Conjuration. Kellen is honest and tells us that the chance of running into demons is high as he asks us to go to Weresh’ house and try to find out what happened. And hopefully save the mages from whatever fate befell them. We get the address of the house, and set off to the quaint little village where there’s a lot of elderly wizards roaming around. I get some “pigs in a blanket” that I can heat using my special Genasi gifts so they’re extra tasty, and then we’re off to the cottage!
Malcolm spots something moving in the house, and suspects demon shenanigans. He was right, and we’ll get to those in a little bit. I help Altum see if the “unwelcome mats” might be trapped. Good thing too, because they totally were. I disable the trap like a pro. I get some strange looks that I know how to do that. What? I had a course on trap dismantling during my Boros training. It’s not that weird. What’s weird is the rest suddenly deciding to have a walk around the house to check it out when I’ve just made the front door safe to open.
We learn that there’s a bunch of things in the house, most likely all unfriendly. Great. Nothing we couldn’t have learned from just going in. Which we do after I unlock the door, and Fisher uses his strength to move the crap that’s been piled up behind the door out of the way.
Immediately, the things inside make it clear they’re not happy to see us. There’s a buttload of ugly chickens, some spiky bastards, and a couple tiny ugly things that love scaring Fisher. Probably because he’s big and strong and very good at taking a hit or 2!
I won’t take too long on the fight, I’ve heard you guys don’t really like reading super long stories. So: The chickens are easily enough taken care of, leaving the spiky bastards and the ugly things. Toblin gets hurt pretty badly so he hides in the bathtub for protection, which I can’t blame him for. Once a path is cleared, I rush in and whack one of those spiky suckers with my wrench and leave him reeling from the hit, and the next whack takes him out! Fisher finishes off the other spiky thing in the room, and the tiny ugly thing that scared him for a bit to try and get him to stop ripping his buddies apart. I did get bit, though. That was kinda painful.
When we go to clean up the rest, Malcolm shoots the last spiky bastard, and Fisher kills the ugly thing that popped up out of nowhere. It’s not the end of the fight just yet. There’s 2 of the ugly suckers waiting in the restroom. But Fisher kills one of them, and I smack the other into the floor and it stops moving.
Altum checks our wounds, Malcolm finds a trap on the stairs going up, and takes out a single ugly chicken on that floor. We check it out, and find that Weresh is alive, but terrified of the demons. And when I try to convince him that we’re not bad by speaking Celestial, he calls me an angel! That’s sweet. Then he tells me to go away because he won’t let me kill him. Less sweet. Not even the promise of food gets him to open the door for us. I do leave him a snack that I’ve heated up. If he’s so hungry, I can’t just let him stay hungry.
Next stop: The basement. Which seems like it’s got a hidden access. Surely nothing wrong with that, right? I hope you got my sarcasm there. We check for traps, and indeed, there is one! I just gotta remember not to sit so darn close next time I try to disarm a trap, though. ‘Cuz it blows up in my face. Luckily I managed to dodge the brunt of it.
Down the stairs, Malcolm finds some baaaaad things. Well, 2 chickens and something that looks supremely unpleasant. Also Briseis, though we didn’t know that at the time. Obviously, we fight off the things down there. Well, most of us. I think Fisher has some trouble with the flying thing, since it takes him a bit longer to get down there. By the time he does, I’m lighting up the nasty thing with a massive blast of holy energy which it seems VERY unhappy with, and then Malcolm gets to put it out of our misery. And Fisher cleans up the 2 ugly chickens.
Briseis says she was trying some of Weresh’ research as compensation for “wiping his bum” for the last 15 years, but something went wrong and the things we cleared out spilled out of the portal. Malcolm confiscates the book because clearly Briseis can’t be trusted with it, and we ask Briseis to help us get Weresh out of his room.
When we get back upstairs, I can’t help but smile as I see the snack’s gone. Though he thinks Briseis left it for him. Oh well. I make both of them another snack because neither has had anything to eat but the snack I gave them for about a week. I also try to convince Weresh that not all angels are bad, but he seems to still be freaked out. At least he accepts the food and seems to enjoy that.
We bring both Weresh and Briseis to the Academy to show that we’ve done our job. And Kellen gives us a single potion. I don’t have the money for that right now, but I’m sure someone will want it. I share the rest of the snacks I got with the group as we head back home, triumphant after my first mission for the Adventurer’s Guild!
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