Aporeu chronicles Issue 80: Dirty Work for Jarvarax 2

Stories from the adventurers

This week

Doing some random jobs for Jarvarax.

Dirty Work for Jarvarax 2 by Pinker

After my last story I was told to be more concise. I will try so, of course. However as I always am already concise, I do not know how to improve in this. Of course my darling wife always told me I talked too much, however I never understood that, I always talk to relay a message, therefore I talk exactly enough.
Now on to my report for this mission. I had found a notice at the guild of some jobs needing doing for a Mr. Jarvarax. The note did specify they looked for people willing to get their hands dirty. Now I can tell you, working in a bookstore, with the dust, and repairing them with glue and ink, and of course the mess left behind by children with their sticky hands: I am very used to getting my hands dirty!
However, most of me got dirty during the mission, except my hands!
At the guild hall I met up with a charming fellow gnome, although he was a bit on the old side to be adventuring if you ask me, named Whiltin. The others I got to meet were Errus, Blanche and Barruk.
First we made our way to Jarvarax Holdings, a very posh building in a small alley. There we met with Hobbes who let us in to meet Jarvarax.
The dragonborn, Jarvarax, told us he had three tasks for us, and each of us would receive 10 gold per completed task. I will spoil the story: What a fraud!
First we went down into the sewers near one of his properties, where there appeared to be some drainage problem. After going down into the sewer, and indeed getting dirty, Blanche and Whiltin sent animals ahead, who told them that there were rats around a corner. As we advanced (I know that is the right word, I checked several adventuring books, as well as warbooks) we did indeed see a large rat, and soon we found ourselves surrounded by large rats, a swarm of rats, and a crocodile!
Of course being true adventurers we won, Blanche actually managed to drown one of the rats by pulling it down into the water with her magic!
We then soon found the clogged pipe behind where the rats were, and cleaned it out. Job done! We did also find the body of the plumber who Jarvarax had sent down there to unclog it in the first place, we decided to return it to the plumber’s guild, for which we were thanked and rewarded.
Next we were to go to the home of Olivia Vanderburgh, a business rival of Jarvarax, to persuade her to sell a certain property to him. However the poverty we saw in her office, and the defiance we encountered made a few of our party decide to offer our services to her to protect her from Jarvarax.
Finally we were to deliver a package to a representative of the thieves’ guild in a warehouse. When we got there, a guard was standing outside. While the rest decided to chat with him Whiltin wanted to try and have the package delivered without us going into the warehouse. I decided to follow him as the rest argued with the guard.
He turned out to have a neat trick, and the package just floated through the air towards a side door, as if it was being carried. When it was placed down we heard knocking on that side door and soon it was opened, and the package picked up.
From there, however, things got confusing. City guard showed up, wanting to ‘nick’ Yvonne, the leader whom we were to give the package to. Now by that time she had the package, and we had completed our task, however somehow we were drawn into the fight. I used my magic to sling a knife at her, but she easily avoided it.
In the end I used the same trick to throw the package out of the warehouse into some bushes where we later retrieved it again, after the thieves had been dealt with.
With the contents we had another talk with Miss Vanderburgh, who could make use of it in her troubles with Jarvarax. Then we went back to Jarvarax himself.
Now we definitely cleared out the drains, and we definitely delivered the package, however the greedy guy only paid us 15 gold each, outrageous! While I had been having some misgivings I was at that point satisfied we had sided right with miss Vanderburgh, who seems altogether much more friendly and reasonable.
And that was the story of my second adventure for the guild. I do wish my darling wife were here to see me at it, however, she probably would have all kinds of comments so it may be for the best.

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Dirty Work for Jarvarax 2 by Barruk

Today did not go as planned. I set out on a quest provided by Jarvarax with four companions. I do wonder if there are any strong members in this guild, I have yet to see them. It is not that the people in my parties cannot fight (they are amazing at it), it is just that they all seem to prefer to fight far away from monsters while using magic and/or missile based weapons. What ever happened to the strong barbarians and fighters. But I'm getting off topic. So the party consisted of 4 other members: Two cowardly Gnomes (Whiltin and Pinker) Who are handy with magic, but always seem to be far away from the actual fighting. One human Druid Girl named Blanche, she did look sort of familiar standing next to the 2 gnomes, but she did drown a rat using only plants (I must learn how to do that). And lastly the Tiefling Errus, what to say about him. He is an agent of Chaos, every time he does a spell I expect the entire building to explode. Every time he speaks I also expect the building to explode……… So far it hasn’t. I, Barruk, was the last member of the group.
We arrived at the dragonborn Jarvarax. He seemed well guarded for a normal businessmen. He had three tasks for us.

1. Do some plumbing
2. Convince a woman to sell her house
3. Deliver a Package to the Thieves’ guild

We decided to first go into the sewers. First the pets were send in to look for trouble (the mouse friend of Blanche and Pop, the weasel of Whiltin). They found a lot of rats and a crocodile. For some reason Blanche asked the crocodile to go away instead of killing it, and it actually worked. We did get to kill all the rats using acid, fire and real weapons. For some reason most of my group tried to kill them from a distance. And I was the only one brave enough to go close to the rats. However Pinker did see the error of its ways by only fighting from a distance by killing a rat with a knife (If he wants a real weapon he can lend my axe next time). Killing everything down in the sewer solved the problem (as killing everything usually does). I even got the carry the corpse of the plumber to its guild.
After that we went to convince some woman (Olivia Vanderburgh) to sell her house to Jarvarax. Apparently he wants the whole neighbourhood. Again the group decided to start talking instead of just killing everybody (this really is an interesting approach to solving problems). Apparently Olivia had some history with Jarvarax. He destroyed her family or something, I wasn’t really paying that much attention. I had to make sure I did not break the vase. We have some fast talkers in the group and Blanche and Errus seemed to like this woman, and convinced her to pay us not to kill them all. So this did work out for the best. Whiltin also seemed to like these people because he kept on giving them gold.
Finally we went to deliver the package to the Thieves’ guild, notably to a woman named Yvonne. We were told not to open the package beforehand. Of course that made the agent of Chaos want to open the package even more. After some discussion I took the package back and Whiltin kept it safe. When we arrived at the house where we should bring the package there was some discussion on how to proceed. Errus and Blanche wanted to walk in with the package. They started walking towards the door, so I joined them. We forgot that we did not have the package… and Whiltin and Pinker had other plans. Whiltin let an unseen servant deliver the package at another door. Everybody was confused. This became even worse when the towns guard arrived. Half our party wanted to help the towns guard, and half our party wanted to help the Thieves’ guild. Then finally everybody started fighting. I was not sure what our party actually wanted, I did hear that we wanted the contents of the box (a magical wooden charm that can create doors, and the plans for a heist). During the fight there was a lot of spider webs, fire, catapulted knifes and spirits. For some reason suddenly everybody (including the house) got a lot smaller compared to me. The fight itself was over pretty quickly. When we saw the towns guard were winning we joined them and everybody from the Thieves’ guild got killed. In the chaos, Pinker catapulted the box out of the building, and Whiltin,Pinker and me collected it. At the same time Blanche and Errus talked to the town guard. The town guards were happy with us helping them in this difficult fight, they even forgave Errus for almost burning their captain. Blanche and Errus even convinced them to investigate the illegal activities of Jarvarax. When we were all together again we decided that we should give the plans for the heist to Olivia, So she could use it against Jarvarax.
Jarvarax was not really happy with us. He even gave us half our gold for the package job, even though we did deliver it to the Thieves’ guild. Overall it was a rewarding day.
Barruk

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On the next issue:

Lots of Money!