The Journal of Seped

Well we spent another day recuperating before heading in to poke around the cave again, and for some reason the druid showed back up with a mountain lion tagging along. I'm not terribly worried, but I think the pixie and the gnomeling might need to sleep lightly.

We finished poking around the larger part of the cave, it was mostly uneventful other then Eek trying to go fishing, and a giant ambush of lobster like creatures who employed tripwires. Luckily they proved more of an annoyance then a threat to trained adventurers such as myself, although it was amusing to watch the gnomeling ping pong around the room.

Finding nothing but a tunnel that seemed to go on endlessly we decided to return to town to regroup and resupply. For some reason my efforts to comfort J's mother went poorly. How is it the person who can carry the least gear wants to buy the most of it? Thank god we've got a packhorse and a cabin. After more time then I'd have liked we managed to equip ourselves for a longer expedition and we returned to explore the tunnel system. We found tracks that looked like they'd been made by slaves, so we figured we were on the right path. We found a locked door which took two keys, which we conveniently had, however it turns out the locked door contained a large number of orcs...

So there we are, beaten, bruised, but victorious due to my cunning plan and well executed death sentence on the cleric. As we tend to our wounded the druid, for reasons only known to the gods, walks into the damn lake dousing one of our few torches. I go over there to 'help' her out and see where she keeps her coin purse when this giant mutant eel shows up. Our entire party is in shambles except for that evasive fairy but I don't think he had much left up his magical sleeves, and there was no way I was letting this damnable fish eat my treasure that the druid was carrying. I laid into the beast with two quick blows catching it's attention, however it's counterattack was lethargic compared my to honed skills and I quickly side stepped it's strike.

Suddenly a brilliant flash of light appeared, startling the monster and causing it to rear backwards. Seizing the opening I launched a devastating attack deep into it's body, shearing through bone and flesh. The sight of the lethal blow almost drove me mad with the desire to continue to rend the beasts flesh however the urge soon passed and its devastated body quickly slipped under the surface.

Fortune was in our favor though and we found a stash of treasure behind the creatures small lair. Speaking of treasure, there was a lot of it, and it was heavy. Apparently the rest of the party is too good for manual labor so I ended up hauling a lot of it myself back up to our small camp outside. A few of the items turned out to be interesting, although I didn't find anything that truly fit my needs. I'm really looking forward to making excellent use of our new magical cabin though, what luck that we learned its command word through magical scrying.

We tended to our wounds and rested for a few days before continuing our exploration because we weren't really in the best of shape, but soon we will continue and find the rest of the valuables hidden away in this cave.

Well we certainly had some interesting events last night. The guild sent out some greenhorn after me for reasons I have yet to determine, and he's tugging along this stick of a druid, I still haven't figured out if they are working together. We've decided to let them tag along because I've met useful druids before, however this one isn't shining so far. After we met the new folks one of the evil bandits woke up and tried to play us for fools, but I quickly saw through his clever disguise and we eliminated another threat.

We explored the back of the cave and quickly found out that just because it looks like a rock, sounds like a rock, and acts like a rock doesn't mean it is one. For some reason our druid felt compelled to make up a name for the strange beast while it was impaling our fighter, luckily he was able to mostly shrug off the attack and severed the beast. After that we decided it would be a great idea to explore further, the nagging voices in my head are really hopping there's treasure down here to justify this.

As we scouted below my enemies superhuman sense pierced even my skilled stealth and as I crept around a building our opponents lept out and battle was joined. Things were going reasonably with that old red haired bastard until his reinforcements showed up, two freaky looking magical bastards and a horde of zombies! Honestly I can't tell you much of what went on, I found a break in the line to go after the cleric looking man and I quickly found him and myself locked in a struggle to the death... with 3 zombies helping out his side. I was up, and down, and nearly had him on the ropes after several might blows but he just healed himself again.. god I hate that. Eventually I went down and stayed down until our poor cleric Voras could patch me up after the fight was winding down.

Apparently from what the others told me the zombies where quite a problem, but I think this just stems from their incompetence in combat. Oh well, hopefully we can find a safe place to rest, I can recover my daggers, and then I can begin recovering all my new belongings everyone was carrying.

As the conversation comes to a lull around the table Seped decides it might be wise to inform his party members of his past, after all questions that have been answered are less likely to be asked.

"Sadly my upbringing was not as colorful as some of the others here, but truly some of the greatest tales have had the simplest beginnings. Life in the city with parents who ran a shop gave me many chances to learn useful skills, and my parents lives showed me the value of hard work."

Namely that value being almost nothing, Seped quickly learned he could do much better for himself by working outside of conventional means. Life in a shop gave him a constant stream of visitors to practice sleight of hand against, and the shop locks fueled his mechanical inclinations as he worked to defeat them. It wasn't hard to find pay for his services even in the just lands of Kael'Lon if one knew where to look in the city. If theft and tragedy plagued competing shops and his family profited, so much the better.

"By my 14th year I was apprenticed to a smithy in a neighboring town, as my parents felt the hard work would be good for me, sadly it was struck by a tragic fire just as I arrived, I decided to instead join a traveling troupe of performers for some time."

Actually the blacksmith was struck by fire just after Seped's arrival, and the owner was unable to locate his savings which had been stashed in a locked hideaway behind the forge. With suspicions rising Seped joined a troupe of performers, allowing him to sharpen some of his skills such as tumbling and knife work, his natural grace made him a quick star amongst their group. While he wasn't working he honed other skills wandering among the crowds that would gather, or visiting local estates during the nights.

"After 4 years of traveling the lands I decided to settle down for awhile, I purchased a small shop and began work as a broker of odds and ends."

After 4 years of amassing wealth Seped had come into contact with the Guild, and accepted a position in mid sized town as a contact and fence. He continued to practice his skills, for if stolen items showed up a pawn shop, well he could always provide descriptions of the dastardly men who'd sold their goods to him. Life was going well for Seped.

"Perhaps I'd been with the traveling folk too long, but on the same day I decided to close up my shop and take to the road, a strange band arrived in town, I decided to throw in my fortunes with them and see where I might go this time."

Actually, he'd received a surprising and brief order from the Guild

Guild

A group travels through your town today, their description is attached to this note, we would like you to join them and see that no harm comes to them that you can prevent unless we direct otherwise.

Securing his assets he quickly worked to ingratiate himself with the group, surely protecting them said nothing with regards to how they split whatever rewards they might earn?

"It was this chance that finds me with these gentlemen and truly I can say I have been surprised every day since that choice."

So useful lessons learned, dragons take things a little too seriously. You make one little comment and they get all eaty. Luckily I think I've discovered a way to remove at least one annoying person in the future should it be necessary. It's not like we still didn't get our deal with the dragon, (despite our group mates fears of our bovine bartering chips) and get some information about Ranchefus, so really two birds with one dragon.

I'm telling you, fortune smiled on us today, looting after a dragon does all the dirty work? Simply amazing. A whole cave of plunder, fame and fortune to claim as we show off the heads of our defeated foes, who are we to complain if she missed on barely capable giant? Our fighter was in fine form today and finished off the beast almost entirely on his own. I must admit, we also got lucky that the other party (whose remains I gleefully observed) did not have a rogue as skilled as myself, or surely the giants would have been dead already and the group would be waiting in ambush for us.

We picked up a new party member, although I'm dubious of his actual utility, he has grandiose claims to being a battle mage, but really it just seems like he's giving our fairy more of a chance to blow things up, and since I'm often in melee with said things I take a rather dim view on this addition. Time will tell if he works out for the best.

We did some scouting of the keep where Ranchefus supposedly resides, and by scouting I mean someone walked up toward the front door, right into a trap, and we had to run away with our tail between our legs. At some point I'm going to have to sit down and explain to these guys what the word scout actually means, it certainly doesn't mean get shot full of arrows and put the enemy on alert.

Hopefully we can recover from our false start since I suspect this keep is full to the brim with treasure as soon as we can remove the pesky bandits, and more then likely someone will even thank us for doing the job, as if we were doing it to help them!