DAY 401 (9th Tarsakh)(April) cont ...
[And so, dear, indulgent reader, I have just about gathered up the two threads of my story now, for as I was sailing west on the Sea Wyvern with my good lady wife, Fenrir and his companions in the Day Air Watch of Westgate were fighting an invasion force that seemingly come from nowhere, but would have repercussions for all of us we could at this stage not guess at. To continue...]
Fenrir, Relleme, Nors and Marrock bravely flew forward of the wall to meet the attack. They counted thirty or more flying troglodytes.
Fenrir used his eldritch blast while the others used crossbows. Marrock, not well used to fighting from the back of a magic carpet very nearly fell off it on his first shot! But he regained his footing and survived a fall that would have killed him.
Fenrir was doing the most damage, sometimes killing two or even three with his chained shots. Relleme finish off a couple with her crossbow and even killed another when the battle moved into melee range.
Fenrir managed to kill seven troglodytes in one blast! But his strategy was wrong, he was concentrating on the cannon fodder that were attacking Nors and himself in melee and largely ignoring the wizards at the back who were hitting them all again and again with magic missiles, acid arrows and other long range magic attack spells.
Realising this, he started to target the wizards, but this allowed a handful of the attackers to swarm past Marrock and Relleme and enter the city.
With no great desire to pursue them and with the idea of gold in his mind he ordered his squad down into the fields before the wall to gather up the dead and to search them for loot.
As they were doing that someone up on the wall shouted down at them. 'What the hell are you doing down there? The city is under attack, man the walls, man the gates!'
Fenrir, flew his squad to the south gate and helped mop up the stragglers from the doomed attack there. He then helped search the city for any that had managed to get in, so it was several hours before he managed to get back to his loot.
There were a few scavengers from the city, but they chased them away and still managed to get away with a reasonable amount of treasure.
It was ten in the evening when Trepplemar let them go home.
'Good job fighting off the fliers,' she said. 'But next time, be more situationaly aware. The whole city was under attack, not just the wall you happened to be on when it started.'
DAY 402 (10th Tarsakh)(April)
Today the Air Watch was Fenrir, Relleme, Nors, Marrock and Oloe.
Trepplemar told him there would be a big meeting the next day in regards to the attack of the day before.
That evening Fenrir took some exercise, sparring with the guards at his house.
DAY 403 (11th Tarsakh)(April)
[Note : Fenrir was unaware of it, but today the Sea Wyvern arrived at Spectre Island.]
There was an extraordinary meeting of the city bigwigs today. This included the Croamarkh himself, Hammersong the leader of the watch, leaders of the guilds and mercenary guilds and of course Trepplemar and Fenrir. It took place at the Market Tower.
Dreydal Trant was the current Croamarkh, elected - if you could call it that - by a corrupt set of merchants and nobles to run the city. He was arrogant, stupid and vain and a willing cats paw for those that really ran the place, from what I gathered from talking to Random about it.
Well, needless to say, Trant was very angry and blamed everyone but himself. Why did the city have no warning? Where did the attack come from? What happened with the early warning systems that were meant to be in place?
The truth was, the defence of the city was a shambles. The mercenary army was there if it was ever needed, but mostly they sat around in their barracks drinking heavily, whoring and gambling. Westgate had a long standing policy of not patrolling beyond its walls, and the only advance warning came from the marshall service that had placed eight members of Westgate law enforcement in the surrounding villages.
And that was it. Not only that, but recently the job of managing the marshals had been put into the purview of the magical arm of the city watch. Something signed off by the Croamarkh and that everyone was too afraid to point out to him.
The only person he had a good word to say about was Fenrir.
'This is my guy,' he said. 'Killed dozens of them all by himself. You're my guy right?'
'I'm here to serve...' answered Fenrir somewhat evasively.
Hammersong and Trepplemar seemed to get most of the blame placed at their feet. After the meeting, Trepplemar dryly observed, 'well you made a friend today anyway.'
It was nearly midnight by the time Fenrir got home.
DAY 404 (12th Tarsakh)(April)
When he arrived at work this morning Trepplemar told him to put Relleme in charge of the Air Watch as she had another job for him.
'You're a charmer, go down to the cells and interrogate two captured troglodytes,' she ordered him.
When he got there, a wizard of the watch tried a charm spell on the first prisoner but it failed to take effect. The creature had then been locked in an iron cage. It was the only one that spoke common.
Fenrir tried to talk it round, at first being friendly and then being threatening. The troglodyte seemed indifferent to both. Forgetting that he hadn't actually asked it any questions he wasted two hours getting a scroll of Comprehend Languages sent down so he could talk to the second one.
When he finally realised that both of them were quite happy to answer his questions anyway, he learned the following:
At some point previously, probably a month or two ago, down in the Underdark a 'sacred beast' was killed by hunters from the Overworld. This had enraged the priests of the city that the troglodytes had come from. The priests gathered together a force of warriors and volunteers to go up to the Overworld and wage holy war on the infidels of Westgate.
Both troglodytes were perfectly happy that they had done their duty to their gods and that now whatever happened to them they were sure to get straight to the top table in troglodyte heaven.
They were a bit vague on everything else, simply because they didn't know. They could not tell him exactly what the sacred beasts looked like and as the Overworld was very confusing to them they had virtually no idea where they had come from and since they had no idea of things like 'days', 'nights' and 'numbers' they could not tell him how long they had taken to get to Westgate either!
'So, the great big fiery horror in the sky that comes and goes, what's that? Is that a day or a number?' asked one.
Fenrir decided he heard enough and went back to report to Trepplemar.
In the evening he flew over to Spectre Island and talked to Random. He asked what was known about his reputation as Fenrir Thunderstaff in Waterdeep and as Raziel Lightningrod in Westgate. As a bard Random collected lots of knowledge about lots of things and in his opinion both names were 'checkered' in that there was good and also bad things known about them. He ventured that neither reputation would be enhanced or damaged by any revelation that the two names were the same person. He thought it better though, to maintain as many aliases as he could, in the interests of safety in their current endeavour. Random confessed to having seventeen aliases himself!
He head also heard a story about a new entrance to the Underdark that opened up a few years ago in the mountains to the south. It was from there that the troglodytes probably came from.
He also mentioned that the Sea Wyvern was anchored nearby.
'One last thing, old boy, Lady Gwendeth Thalavar is having a ball tomorrow night. I'll get you an invite, you get yourself a partner to take - and not some tart, bring a proper posh lady!'
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