Trouble Upriver, 2008-10-10
From Tourmaline
Latest revision as of 19:08, 12 July 2010
Blaze hangs out (incognito) in a bar where river-dock workers, including Roggar drink. People in the bar are worried about a couple of riverboats that were expected over a week ago and still haven't come in. Conventional wisdom is that Someone Got Em on the river upstream to Copal.
A scouting mission is put together to Go See What Happened, comprising:
- Erik, a gangly boy in his late teens
- Tavis, a burly dockworker. His brother is one of the guys who's gone missing.
- Misha, another river dock boss. She's lean and fierce, and she basically tells Roggar he's going to be managing her crew while she's gone.
- Blaze (going by Maria Tanner)
The party finds a dead body in the water, which they bury. Further upstream, they find a somewhat abused tree and an anchor chain attached to a rock (hypothesized to be used for catching boats) -- there are footprints and signs of something boat-sized being dragged on the bank, but no bodies nor sign of where the hypothetical boat might have got to. Also some black grease. As the party pokes around, Erik thinks there are people watching from the woods. Blaze and Misha decide that if the party is going to get jumped, they might as well do it on ground of their own choosing (though there hasn't been any jumping *yet*...), so the party starts making its way back down stream. But they have the twitchy sense that they're being followed...
After some hide-and-seek in the woods, the party makes for high ground, where they end up surrounded by a bunch of guys with crossbows who tell them to throw down their weapons in the name of the King. They are a bit confused by the party and their belt knives, but after some questioning, decide that they really are just a bunch of dockworkers out hunting bandits, like they claim to be. The leader of the crossbow-men (named Varrin) decides that he can't let the party wander home and tell people there's an ambush laid for the bandits; he'll just have to keep them around until either the ambush catches the bandits or enough time passes to imply that the bandits have been scared off. Blaze and her companions, not having much choice in the matter, agree to stick around and 'help' find the bandits.
After some days of staking out the rock-and-chain, the scouts report that some flying people are moving the rock! The soldiers (with Blaze and friends tagging along) Get 'Em, killing or capturing most of the bandits -- however, three manage to fly away across the revier, including the mage with the fly-mojo. Varrin interrogates the captured bandits and establishes that their procedure is:
- The stolen ships are flown west, with captured crew, at night, using the boats themselves as transport platforms.
- The captured crew is dropped off at the last day camp, while the boats continue to a river to the west that goes downstream to Agate, where they're sold.
- The crew are held for a while in a stockade at the last day camp, until they behave themselves, or are killed, after which the survivors are also sold in Agate. (It's not clear whether anyone in Agate is in on the whole business, or if the people they sell to just think they're merchants.)
- The leader is one of the bandits who was killed. There's only one mage, who may or may not be from Agate.
- This group is the dealing-with-captured-goods group; there are another 10 or so bandits in charge of the stockade. There may also be other groups the leader knew about.
Preparations are made to deal with the prisoners and hurry over to the stockade. Blaze convinces Varrin to let her and Tavis come along to the stockade, while Misha and Erik return to Tourmaline with the dealing-with-prisoners contingent (in order to let our friends back home know that they don't need to send out a search party for us, and also to get a chance to spread their version of our adventures, rather than letting the soldiers get all the bragging rights by default).
The stockade does not seem to have been alerted by the time Varrin's group reaches it. Varrin bluffs the guys in the stockade into thinking a) he has more soldiers than he really does and b) he's willing to burn down the stockade with everyone in it. This causes enough dissent/confusion among the bandits that the soldiers are able to get into the stockade and take it. There are a bunch of prisoners there, some from the recently-taken boat and some from the boat before that (including Tavis's brother); the prisoners all seem pretty badly broken in spirit. Blaze does what she can to cheer them up on the way home.
The soldiers and rescued prisoners are met by a happy welcoming party of friends and relatives upon their return, and Varrin lets Blaze and Tavis go their ways.
