Motley Crew: Session 1

The party has been recently hired into the famous mercenary band of the Flaming Fists that help the city guard of Baldur's Gate with the day to day operation of the city. They were placed in the same squad and have been working together for a couple of weeks. Though, recently the city is plagued by refuges from the outside that are fleeing a destroyed town and panic on the inside as people talk about how Baldur's Gate could be next. 

The party is standing with the rest of their comrades as they try to keep the peace because people in Baldur's Gate want out of the city and the refugees want in the city.  The party witnesses Capt. Zogg and a good number of Flaming Fists wade into the crowd to disperse it as it was starting to get agitated. Theren decides to stand back and watch the events unfold as Garrick and Tonic wades into the crowd throwing pushing, shoving, and cracks whips to get the populace to disperse. Merrick stands on an overturned cart and gives a moving speech on how people need to return to their homes and let the professionals work on the situation.

As the crows starts to disperse, one of the Flaming Fists knocks down a peasant and picks up his coin purse and mutters some obscenities mixed in with a thank you. Garrick sees this and summons a whip made out of water to ensnare the hand with the coin purse which causes the mercenary to drop it. Garrick tells the peasant to take his money and go home as Garrick starts giving a lecture on duty. As this is happening Uthar steps forward, Tonic drops his hood to reveal is Drow nature, and before the situation could escalate any further Capt. Zogg moves towards the situation and orders Garrick to release his the mercenary and Garrick complies begrudgingly. The party explains their side and Capt. Zogg yells back at there are bigger things to worry about and before the argument could get out of hand  Merrick explains that they were sent by some people in government to Capt. Zogg for a special assignment. 

Capt. Zogg shakes his head and takes a deep breath. He then goes on to explain that the Cult of the Dead Three have taken root in the city and that he has a person that is an undercover informant by the name of Tarina that could point is in the right direction.

Tonic explains to his fellow companions that he knows the place well and it is no place for the faint of heart. The party soon finds themselves in the smokey room of the Elfsong Tavern where all the furniture is bolted down and this is mean looking female half ogre and a suit of armor standing at opposite ends if the room (the main bouncers). Tonic blows the half ogre a kiss and slaps on the patrons on the shoulder and asks, "How is the arm healing?". 

After sometime the part finds Tarina upstairs playing some dice and Tonic eagerly joins the game. After a few games Uthar leans close to Tarina and whispers that Capt. Zogg sent them. Tarina and Zogg remove themselves from the circle of the dice players as Tonic continues to throw a few more rounds and the rest of the party spreads out to keep an eye on as much as the bar as possible. After some time Uthar returns from his meeting and passes the word around that Tarina will not give us the information we need until this evening. We are free to wait at the tavern or come back as long as we are back before sunset. The party grumbles and Tonic tells Merrick that he has some pending business he needs to take care of and will return before sunset. 

The rest of the part decides to wait at the tavern and enjoy some food and drink and take up various positions around the tavern to avoid any surprises as Garrick finds a place where he can look out one of the few windows (they tend to get broken). Late in the afternoon the pale figure of the ghost elf appears (where the tavern gets its namesake) and starts singing a dirge. After the ghost sings a few more songs she vanishes and the party listens to the political, conspiracy theory, and obscene stories from the patrons. 

Shortly after the sun starts to set eight people walk into the bar that are obviously pirates. The leader as an eye patch and offers a flagon of ale and some coin to anyone who can direct them to Tarina. Theren takes his flagon of ale and walks up the stairs without saying a word. One of the pirates with a peg leg slaps one of the patrons on the back to try to get information about Tarina and as the patron is about to speak Merrick takes a few steps forward and asks, "Isn't it a little early for the rats to be off their barges?". The pirates do not take kindly to this and send of their men with weapons drawn towards Merrick and Garrick responds by taking a few steps back and throwing an ice knife at one of the approaching pirates which explode on contact and shows some of the pirates with ice shrapnel. Merrick takes advantage of the distraction and trips one of the pirates that got to close to him with his halberd. The pirate with the eye patch yells, "so you want to do this the hard way?" and motions more of his men  to charge forward. Theren from the top floor drops one of the pirates with a Firebolt, Merrick catches one of the pirates with his halberd, Garrick exchanges blows with another one, and Uthar charges another pirate with his great sword and ends up cutting him in half. The pirate yells over the chaos, "I am Deadeye!" and charges into the fray swing his scimitar which bites deeply into Merrick, Garrick continues to tangle with his foe, and Merrick is able to break skin on Dead Eye to try to create some space between the two. Theren who still has the high ground, throws down some Magic Missile that makes some of the pirates yelp in pain. Dead Eye, continues his onslaught and drops Merrick and Garrick. 

Tonic kicks in the tavern door and fires some arrows into the pirate that was engaged with Uthar and says to his fellow friends, "How rude, starting a party without me!". Uthar cuts down another pirate before he is dropped by Dead Eye and Theren throws an ice knife which ends another pirates life. Tonic keeps up his barrage of arrows as Dead Eye quickly realizes that it is just him and one of his men left. The remaining pirate also realizes this and makes a run for it as Theren stands up on the balcony and starts waving his hands in the air and saying magic words. Dead Eye takes cover behind an upturned table and says, "I will pay you more then you can imagine for Tarina, bring her to me at the docks, I think you are the only one with any intelligence here". Dead Eye then sprints for the door and takes a partying shot from Tonic which the arrow bites deep into his hip and it does not slow Dead Eye down. 

Tonic decides to take chase of Dead Eye as the rest of the party tries to assess the situation that just unfolded. 

After sometime, Tonic returns dragging Dead Eyes body with him and places a handful of jewelry in Merricks hands. In the aftermath, the party realizes that Garrick did not survive his encounter with Dead Eye and the party pays for use of one of the private rooms to try to talk as the bar staff moves quickly to clean up the mess. Tonic passes some coin to the bartender and says he is sorry for the mess as he enters the room the rest of the party went in to. Merrick holding his head, quickly corners Tonic and an heated argument enures about his whereabouts and if he was around then Garrick might still be alive - Tonic during the lecture shrugs his shoulders and mouths "Scoundrel". During this argument, Theren notices a note slipped under the door and starts to read it. The note is signed by Tarina and explains that suspected members of the cult are seen going in and out of a certain bath house at night but it operates normally during the day. 

The party takes a few days to recover and one of those days, a bright eye recruit with papers from Capt. Zogg shows up at the Elfsong tavern and singles out Merrick who was eating breakfast. The young recruits name is Gabriel and in Zogg's letter, he offers his condolences at their loss but understands that they will need all the help the can get. After Gabriel is introduced to everyone over some ale and breakfast they decide to head to the spa in the morning and see what they can find. They have badges and writs of authority to act under Flaming Fist business even though they were advised to leave their uniforms behind. 

The party makes their way to the bathhouse and inspects the outside for any type of secret entrance as mentioned in Tarina's note. As they enter the bath house they see some people enjoying the baths and are approached by one of the workers asking if the need help. Uthar flashes his badge and explains they are on Flaming Fist business and are looking for someone that is wanted. The party continues their investigation and ends up corning two masseuses in the back rooms as Tonic gets a hint that one of his not being honest with their questions about the foot traffic they have seen. Tonic pulls out a rope and explains that we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Merrick sees this interaction and jumps to explain that the employees look sick and need to take the day off and offers them all some gold if they close early. During this interaction Theren finds a hidden door in one of the back rooms and announces that to the party. The guilty masseuse quickly says that all she knows is people at night come and go and their only task is to keep business running as normal. 

The party makes sure the everyone exits the building (who has not already) and locks up the place. After a quick conversation they decide to head down in the tunnels with Tonic taking a lead position to scout ahead. The party walks through the dark tunnels for awhile before coming to three doors, each of the doors depicts one of the Dead Three on them. Tonic opens the door to the left and finds that the path quickly descends into ankle deep muck and the path on the right does the same. Tonic with the rest of the party close behind him at this point opens the middle door to find three people in black robes laying on the ground in a triangle with a torch in the middle. Tonic does not hesitate and stabs two of them before anyone else can react. Merrick and some of the other party members are distracted by their shock as the third cultist in a black robe stands up and starts to cast a spell as the one of them on the ground tries to take a swing at Tonic from the ground with a spiked skull flail. The cultists fall quickly to Merricks and Tonics blades as Merrick turns to Tonic and yells, "What if they were disguised prisoners or something?". Tonic once again shrugs his shoulders and mouths "Scoundrel" before he explains out loud that he prefers to live to enjoy life.

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PLAYERS THOUGHTS: There was a lot of good interaction in this session and it was great how the different players approached different problems. The bar fight was really interesting as I did not think my character would be gone that long on my unfinished business (which ended up being a assassination mission by a chance of the die that the DM rolled). The mission was successful with a few complications. What also made the bar fight interesting is that a few people forgot about certain class and racial abilities as well as the DMs dice were hot! I think our DM must have rolled about 5-7 criticals. 

The shrugging my shoulders and scoundrel joke came into play as one of the players joked out of character about how Jack would look at his fellows whenever he did something underhanded and he would shrug and say "pirate". The joke stuck and my character adopted that stand but replaced the word pirate with scoundrel. 

I was really impressed with the player that played Garrick in his RP and how he took his character's death on the chin even when the DM gave him out to survive. The player decided to keep the death and roll up a new character.