Back to Apple Lane - Part III

Last time our heroes discovered that the crystal they had been assigned to guard had gone missing. There seemed to be little they could do at this stage than wait for the return of Gringle and Quackjohn to Apple Lane in the morning.

Gringle returned to survey the damage - the kitchen door bashed down, most of the kitchen furniture matchwood, a pile of bodies in his temple room, many of his roof tiles broken...and some sheepish adventurers unable to explain how the crystal they were meant to be guarding, disappeared in the night. Gringle was himself at a loss to explain where the centaur and the dragon newts had come from, given that he had told the party to expect an attack from baboons.

Still, a missing crystal was a missing crystal. Gringle pronounced himself unable to pay bounty on baboon heads unless the characters could find it. He and Quackjohn did not have the name of the adventurer who had sold it to them, and no idea where the baboons laired up. If the adventurers wanted to be paid, he said, then they would have to go get it back.

He agreed to buy some of the equipment of the fallen attackers (e.g. the centaur's lance), and sold a Haste scroll to Quilliam. He also bought the Fertility runestone they had taken from one of the dead dragon newts for 200 silver pieces (Rothgar's player, despite being a mean haggler in Indian street markets, does not seem inclined to haggle in-game!)

Rothgar and Quilliam dragged the bodies outside, gave them another search, and debated whether to skin the centaur for its hide, with a view to making armour from it. Quilliam in the end decided the result would not be superior to what they were already wearing, and Maria again declined to have armour made for her. Finally, the set fire to them, and headed over to the Tin Inn to see if anyone could remember the mysterious adventurer who had come through a week earlier.

At the Tin Inn, across the street from the pawn shop, Quilliam had a chat with the landlady Bertha, who could remember the stranger but not his name or where he was going. He did not stay at the inn.Quilliam and Rothgar eventually eye-balled a somewhat disheveled man, sitting down and writing in one corner of the common room. They struck up a conversation with him, and discovered him to be a poet, called Pramble.

Pramble, a man struggling to make ends meet as a part-time poet and part-time scullion, was questioned fruitlessly about the adventurer, but this led on to a conversation about last night's fight at the pawn shop. Pramble was naturally keen to hear about the outcome, as he had watched it all from the inn and wanted to compose a ditty about the action. Rothgar was under-impressed with the fact that Pramble had not helped when they needed it, but Pramble professed he was not a man of action, but of words. He had, however, spotted the centaur, which he identified as Biglaugh Bigclub, a known bandit and part of a group that had been making a nuisance of itself in eastern Sartar recently.

Quilliam questioned Pramble on whether he was aware of any bandit lairs in the vicinity, and while the poet held out for some money before revealing the information, intimidation from Rothgar quickly changed his mind: he said that a troll called White Eye was rumoured to have set up a base near the Rainbow Mounds, about a day's hard march from Apple Lane.

Deciding that this was as good a place as any  to start, the adventurers bought some provisions and set off, deciding to make it an easy two day hike to the ancient monoliths on the Rainbow Mounds. Camping under the stars in the arid wilderness, Zariah rolled a critical while foraging for roots and rabbits, and discovered the tracks of four baboons, also heading in the same direction as the party, and seemingly carrying something heavy...

The next day they pressed on, and came upon the giant megalith called the Giants' Table. Beneath it, they discovered a cave entrance leading down. The party began quietly stacking rocks to form a small wall across the entrance, and then started a fire. The wind blew the smoke down into the cave, and the group waited patiently. Eventually they were rewarded by the unexpected sally of four rock lizards, which came pounding up out of the smoke and the darkness. Smiling grimly, Rothgar readied his axe...