SESSION 44: THE LAW
Earlier that day…..
It is a beautiful day. A gentle breeze blows through the village and Risandor is enjoying sitting by The Salty Tusk, basking in the warming sun. It's spring and he marvels at the butterflies with their big orange and black wings as they flit around him. He reflects on their third expedition to the caves of chaos and starts to compose some tunes and stories that he can amuse the good folk in the tavern tonight.
Uthalin is sitting in the shade sharpening his Urgrosh. He hates the sun. It feels like it burns his skin. He'd been practicing with the Urgrosh it for the past few weeks. It is a highly complex weapon to use in combat with an axe head and spear point on opposite ends of a long haft. The axe head can be used as a slashing weapon that is deadly for chopping your way through the enemy and the spear point can be set against a charging opponent. He feels confident enough with this, his family heirloom, to favour using it now in combat compared to his axe and shield. It'll double his attacks and enable him to kill twice as many orcs.
Thomas and Halee have set up a small target and are practicing firing arrows. They've arranged a number of intermediate obstacles and are improving their skills at firing into a swirling combat and hitting targets with precision at short range.
Ansic is standing near the close combat post, hitting it repeatedly to build up his skill with the deadly weapon. Asmara is praying to Sarenare and wondering how she could better help the people of the small village.
The Castellan, Markis Greylock, the Curate, Heinrich, the Captain of the guard Garin and a detachment of men of arms approach The Salty Tusk. Garin and two of the men go inside and they drag out Eldred Hester.
"Why didn't you lodge your permit to manage another persons slave?" Heinrich shouts as he points at Thomas and Karleigh.
"We'll I didn't think…well they were only away for a few hours and so I didn't….didn't think….that I'd need too" Eldreds' voice trails off as his excuse tumbles from his mouth.
Heinrich turns to Greylock, "He's broken the law and must be punished. We cannot have the law broken and there must be recompense."
"I know the law", Greylock replies. "You would do well Heinrich to remember who is the Lord of these lands and that you have an oath of fealty to me."
"As you have your oath to Asmodeus" responds the priest.
Turning to Eldred, Greylock lowers his voice "This is a sever breach Eldred. The theft of another man's property, even if only temporary, is a grave crime. The punishment for theft is death. You know this right."
The blood drains from Eldreds' face at the mention of the sentence.
"But Eldred you are a good and faithful member of my community and have served me well and I believe that you didn't act in any malice and in fact were trying to enable the mercenaries" Greylock points to the characters "to go about their business in cleansing these lands, MY LANDS," Greylock looks down at Heinrich, "and thus I'll allow another to take your punishment for you."
As Eldred drops to his knees to thank the Castellan, Markis point to two of his men at arms and motions them to go into The Salty Tusk.
They emerge a few minutes later, dragging out Karla who is screaming and trying to resist.
They throw her to the ground and Heinrich raises his hands and shouts "Asmodeus sentence is quick and just" as he casts Burning Hands at the wretch.
Karla must make a DC 14 Reflex save for ½ effect. She has a -2 situational modifier for having being thrown to the ground and is cowering. She rolls a 20 and is able to effectively shield herself from the fire. She takes 5d4 of damage which is halved. Heinrich rolls 14pts of damage halved to 7. Karla has 4 his points and so falls to the ground unconscious and starts to bleed out. If she hadn't have saved she would have died in the fire.
"Asmodeus has provided a just sentence" mutters Heinrich and he walks off.
Greylock, Garin and the guards walk away and return to the Keep.
Karleigh tugs at Uthalin and they go to the hapless slave. Uthalin picks her up and takes her into The Salty Tusk. Asmara, having heard the commotion, runs down stairs. They place Karla upon one of the tables and Asmara whispers prayers over her fallen body and cases Cure Light Wounds several times.
Karla wakes and openly weeps. The pain from the burning is seared into her mind and will never go away.
Whilst Karla may be Eldreds' slave he cares for her deeply and he rushes to Asmara to thank her for her help. He asks the big dwarf to pick Karla up and take her to her room where she can better rest after her ordeal.
From the cross roads out of town Lothar and Trone are returning from their initial expedition to the caves. They can smell the gentle smell of cooking flesh. "Hmmm I loves me some pork" says Trone.
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Ok it took a bit longer than I thought it would but I've leveled up the party.
I had more detail from some compared to others so please just check your character sheet and come back to me and I'll make adjustments accordingly. Risandor you need to check yours in particular. I almost had an aneurism trying to work out all your skills and spells etc.
I leveled the hit points by giving everyone ½ rounded up. At third level you'll get ½ rounded down.
I've expanded the character sheet to try to get a bit more info in it but I'm trying to not let it get too big. So the major way that I did this was to include more info in the feats and skills section. You'll notice that every skill now has two numbers. The first is the number of ranks or points that the player has put into that skill and the second is their all up modifier. So for example, Halees' first skill is Acrobatics 2/8 indicating that she's put 2 points into it and has a total skill, after considering if it is a class skill, armour penalty check, characteristics, feats etc of 8.
For the arcane spell caster I've included all the spells in Risandors spell book or known to him and a number in brackets indicating that he's learnt that spell that many times for today. The * means that he can cast it unlimited times.
Same for divine spell casters but obviously they know all the spells so I've only listed the ones that they've learned for today.
I've included everyone's alignment as I was struggling to remember who was what. Hopefully that's no big secret.
For armour I've now listed the armour penalty check as well as the armour protection provided.
For Halee and Thomas, both of whom have the Feat Point Blank Shot, I've included in their stats their bonus to hit under and over 30ft.
For Uthalin I've figured that you've ditched your shield and axe now so that you can use your hereditary weapon. Let me know if you would prefer to have kept the shield and axe as a back up.
In the skills area: F = Feat, CF = Class Feature, S = Skills.
I've limited the amount of equipment carried by each party member to what I could fix in the box, ie just their main equipment, and then of course we'll have the party equipment list which anyone can draw from.
Probably the other thing I could add would be the characters languages that they speak.
Every character is quite complex in their own way so I just know I've made mistakes. So when you pick some mistakes up just let me know and I'll fix up the sheet as we go.
DEW
