Flipz

Oh, the joys of taking a couple hours to look things up while posting. xD

"Careful, 'boss'," Arthur interjects, making certain to inject the term with as much sarcasm as possible. "Sounds to me like you've got one finger pointing forward and three back at yourself. You were more than happy to tell me to put on the red and blue after my stupid mistakes got people killed in the name of selfishness, yet curiously Kayla, a woman who gave her life to try and make this city a better place, never got that offer because in your eyes she was--and I quote--'a pain in my megablocks for far too long.' Because she annoyed you. You can ramble on about law and order all you want, but at the end of the day, the law should serve the people, not the other way around. Neither you nor your predecessors seem to understand that. I won't deny your attitude is better than Lilbelly's 'the law exists to serve me' garbage, but it's still not good enough--not when you're willing to execute everyone who disagrees with you at the drop of a--" Arthur cuts himself short as Karie launches into action. As he watches his friend retreat, he nods softly, before turning his glare back to Particia. "I may not want your life...but I do want your badge. Once we've dealt with Rosier, we can elect a new Captain of the Watch--and this time, hopefully we'll get someone with a heart, not a rulebook." With that, the Skirmisher turns his back on his former superior, following Karie in the general direction of Illdria and the Shadeaux.

"'...yours...Throlar...Wineghilm.' There we go." The Skirmisher neatly folds the parchment, lays it within the envelope, and utters the activation phrase. "I've got Z-mail." With a burst of pink smoke, the parchment vanishes from Arthur's hands, sent off to its intended recipient. "I'll be honest," he adds, "I don't have high hopes the Bonapartes will be reasonable--Hestia was always the best of them, and look how far that got the city, after all--but at least we can say we tried." "I'll take you up on that. I've some things I'd like to discuss with Illdria at a later date, but..." The Skirmisher glances at Patricia. "...Let's just say I'd much rather not share a boat with the Watch and leave it at that."

Arthur shrugs. "Ask the Founders, they're the ones who hijacked the system. From the sounds of it, though, the Doomsayer was the one in charge of all their mystical junk, so with him out of commission it should be back to normal?" Arthur shrugged and pulled some pink parchment and a corresponding envelope out of his pack. "If you want to test it, feel free to dictate a letter to me, and I'll see if I can send it off."

Arthur scoffs. "Come on, Karie, I'm crazy but not quite that kind of crazy. We're taking everyone with us first, obviously, at least back to shore. I'd suggest putting everyone up for the night in the Hall, but given its real estate and what we're going to go fight next, that...might not be the safest option."

Arthur winces at the mention of Cousland's name. "Cousland is...inflexible. A good leader knows how to compromise, even how to admit when they're wrong and take a different approach. She...can't. I don't agree with her vision for Eubric, one without change, one without redemption. She saw the suffering of the Hovels, and her response was to throw up the damned wall rather than trying to actually help people. I may not like Ulric's plans to conquer the city, but you can't deny his programs for feeding the hungry and housing the helpless are actually helping people. Patricia, meanwhile barely funds the reformed Syndicate and leaves them to their own devices, rather than actually trying to help them out-generous the Wolfgang, and her Watch still treats anyone in the Hovels, regardless of circumstance, as automatic criminals for the horrific crime of being poor--and that's saying nothing of the slave trade she's done nothing to abolish. There's a reason Kukulkan went to the Wolves for help, instead of the Watch, after all. Patricia may be trying to clean up the Watch, but frankly I don't think her version of it is all that much better." Arthur shoots Pretzel a look. "Speak for yourself, Pretzel. What do you think I've been doing the past two years, sitting on a couch doing nothing? We may not have actually fixed the city's problems, but no one can accuse Mom and Noel and I of not giving it our all." The Skirmisher shakes his head. "You would not believe the logistics of trying to organize charity, especially having to argue our case to the main branch every step of the way. We finally, finally sway the rest of the family, finally decide we're ready to step up and help independently regardless of what the Alliance or the Union say...and then all this happens." Arthur removes a well-worn sheaf of parchment from an inner pocket, unfolds it, and smiles wistfully at its clearly oft-amended contents before re-folding and stowing the parchments away once more. "I suppose they are just plans. But still--they're not nothing." Arthur shakes his head. "The Bonapartes shouldn't get this place back. Have you seen the Harbormaster's office? No, no, the Bonapartes cannot be allowed to re-establish their stranglehold over this city's commerce and military, just ask..." The Skirmisher frowns as he scans the freed prisoners. "Where's Captain Illdria?" Uneasy, he nods along to Wanderburg's plan. "I'd be more than happy with that. Hel, Illdria would probably light the match if you asked her." He peered around the other prisoners, hoping his friend had merely been obscured from view. "Couldn't agree more. Now if only y'all had thought of that before trying to trample us all into the dirt."

Arthur laughs loudly. "Ha! That's cute. Clearly your observations failed to pick up the massive bribes half the Watch take--not to mention the fact that the Watch is funded by the Houses just as much as Heroica. More so, even; Heroica, at least, has a few independently wealthy patrons helping prop it up. I can understand y'all thinking the Paladins are good--they're not, they're a bunch of holier-than-thou racist pricks, but you're products of a different time with far different morals to most of us from the present day, so I wouldn't expect you to pick up on that. The Watch, though,is notorious for its corruption, the fact that they managed to convince you otherwise just means they played you like a fiddle." "Remind me again what exactly my family did, then? Aside from Zed and Sycamore's crimes that we've worked tirelessly to correct ever since, the only other incident I can recall is a minor conflict where we freed ourselves from the Guild's corrupt stranglehold over all Ether-users. Shockingly, short of that, we've mostly kept to ourselves, clearly a reason to drag us through the mud and try to ruin us." "Whisperer. You've got a choice: you can be a Hero, or a politician. If you're a politician, then keep doing what you're doing, keep your allegiance to a failed alliance that's better off destroyed. If you're a Hero, though? Your allegiance is to the people, to their well-being, the well-being of this city. I love my family, I'd lay down my life for them without a second thought, and at the height of all this mess I thought I well might have to, but that doesn't mean I'd lay down and blindly obey every last thing they tell me to do if I knew those orders would just cause more problems for this city and her people. Think about that, and maybe learn to read the room." "Throlar and Atramor are right. If you want to speak to the original Golden Dragon's spirit, I'll happily escort you and Chesterine back down to her grave to have a chat, but otherwise we need to call off all the fighting and rally against Rosier."

This may be my new favorite quote of the game. xD Hoo boy, if Kinto and Endgame have a thing, Endgame and I definitely have one as well, considering all the ridiculous things he let me tie into his plots. xD Yes, I'm trans, I use she/her pronouns but am okay with they/them pronouns if people are more comfortable with that. I get where you're coming from, but personally I don't agree with the argument "we won, move on"; it's by having discussions that a community grows and improves and learns how to not make the same mistakes again later on. In some cases, the reasons why someone's argument is right or wrong can be just as important as whether it's right or wrong in the first place...but that's just my two cents. ...speaking of RP, did Dyric ever deliver that letter Arthur gave him to deliver to Karie back at Ziegfried Manor?

Arthur sighs tiredly, but maintains his Diplomacy. "And you never considered that maybe the Watch and the Paladins are just as screwed-up as you thought Heroica was? Take it from a former Watchman--the Watch isn't nearly as devoted to honor and justice as it makes itself out to be. Not sayin' Heroica isn't without its own fair share of problems, mind, but the Watch has a definite throwing-stones-from-glass-houses issue in that regard." "Oh, yes, thank you so much for that lovely bit of yellow journalism," Arthur snarks, Diplomacy dropping in the process. "My family and I definitely appreciated having our names dragged through the mud for mistakes we've literally risked our lives trying to correct. I get it, we Ziegfrieds haven't exactly been pulling our weight in helping the city, but my branch of the family has been working for years to change the family priorities, and just as we finally started making headway this whole mess happened. Couldn't you have...I don't know, maybe talked to us first?" Though his tone is upset and sarcastic, overall the Skirmisher seems genuinely hurt by Lady Luck's casual flippancy about trying to destroy his family over--quite literally--nothing. Arthur rolls his eyes at the mention of the Crescent Union. "No offense to anyone who signed up, but I've thought from day one that Sungold and Crescent were some of the stupidest ideas to come out of this city in ages--and that's coming from a Ziegfried who's friends with both Lady Shanxian and the Shadeaux family. Neither of those alliances should have ever come to be, and hopefully the one good thing that comes out of today's nonsense will be their mutually-agreed dissolution." Arthur shoots the false Golden Dragon a look of utter disbelief, though he pushes his diplomatic training to the very limit to try and keep his outrage in check*. "There are so many things wrong with what you just said...okay, first off, the Nornalis was put in place specifically because the Dark Angel Lucifuge swore revenge against Heroica after the real Morduin sealed Lucifuge away, most likely at the cost of his own life! Second off, the eggs wouldn't need protection if you hadn't murdered your own descendant--Cain Tiamateus, a good man and my friend--and his faithful Dragon companion Smaragdea. And third...when we found the false Doomsayer, he was preparing to desecrate the corpse of the true Golden Dragon, and wouldn't listen to a word we said. I tried diplomacy, but he was so wrapped up in his own agenda that it ended up coming down to his 'life' or ours. You'll have to forgive me for choosing the lives of my family--by blood and by choice--over someone I strongly suspected to be a pawn of the Dark Angel who'd already tried to destroy Heroica and conquer Eubric once before." *OOC: Please treat this final statement as a Diplomacy attempt that failed on the maker's end due to uncontrollable emotion--i.e., something that would ping to other characters with the Diplomacy skill.

See, I 100% agree with that first statement but 100% disagree with the second. We've discussed how things look very different from the QM's perspective compared to the Heroes' on the ground, and I think this is another one of those times; just because the odds are mathematically in the Heroes' favor for any given roll, the severity of failure means we're a lot more emotionally sensitive to risk and danger down on the ground, particularly in the final Quest with no more room to save characters we love (ours or others') if we lose them now. (It...also doesn't help that some characters seem to have abysmal luck, seeming to utterly defy actual mathematical probability, and that's bitten a lot of us in the rear before.) As far as the telegraphing, maybe it's a consequence of not having played in one of your Quests before, but I definitely haven't been able to properly interpret the various cues you've been giving. Whether that's because a lack of experience with you specifically or just having been away from Heroica for a long time overall, either way it's a level of communication that's gone completely over my head (when I haven't misunderstood them entirely), so that's definitely been something that's in play at least for me. Understandable for sure, though the fear of pandering is a bit less so for me. Back in the day, I definitely worried a lot more about specific players and/or Heroes getting "pandered to", but over time I've mellowed on it a lot and realized that catering a campaign to the specific PCs isn't so much a matter of pandering, but rather a matter of engagement. If I hadn't been "pandered to" by Zepher and Doc and Pie and Sandy and Endgame back in the day, Arthur would be a much more boring character with much less interesting stories behind him, and the same holds true for a lot of the PCs in the game--and, at the risk of seeming immodest, I think we in turn made the Quests we participated in more interesting by working to engage with them. Yes, it's a matter of personal style to be sure, but I'm definitely a lot less inclined to treat "pandering" complaints seriously compared to other concerns, and given how much work you've clearly poured into this Quest and others, I doubt anyone else here would consider a criticism of "pandering" against you seriously. All right, that's something I can definitely comprehend and work with, thanks. Definitely agree with Pala here. Heroica has always leaned hard into "Talking is a Free Action", throughout the entirety of its history, even in large, expansive battles. We've never respected any kind of Battle Order-based timeline for dialogue before, why should we start now? If the different battle sections were meant to be completely separated the way you're describing, where people in other sections are isolated from the others even beyond attacks' area-of-effect, we would have been split into separate topics again or something similar. Also? I...really don't like the implication that your vision of how the battle is being roleplayed is more important or definitive than the rest of ours. I understand your concern, that's fair and it's fair to bring it up. But that doesn't mean you can just tell the rest of us how to act, you know? There's a difference between raising a concern and dictating how the rest of us "should be" playing.

OOC: been AFK for a couple days, Arthur will follow Pie's action use (that is, staying put and using Diplomacy).

I mean...given her other specials, pot, meet kettle, really. Heroes don't get to just ignore the effects of items/consumables/Specials/other game rules just because it's not on-brand for them, so why should the enemies? I get what you're going for, the whole "living embodiment of the idea of luck" thing, it makes sense for her. But if the "no build is or should be untouchable" concept is in place for Heroes, it damn well should go both ways; if she gets that luckiness from the "Lucky" effect, then it should be subject to the rules of either temporary or permanent Luck, however it's being applied to her, or if she's getting it by, say "all Heroes who target Lady Luck become Jinxed before their attack", then that ability needs to respect Jinxed immunities, and so on and so forth for other solutions to the dilemma. Whatever mechanic grants or affects a character's abilities, it becomes mechanical when it's set into place and then becomes subject to game rules, and in turn becomes vulnerable to exploitation. It's the same basic root as the age-old GM's complaint "my party killed/seduced/magically brainwashed the campaign's final boss in the second session with a lucky roll"; if you don't want a character affected by the players before a given point, don't let the party interact with them via game mechanics at all prior to that point. If you really want to force every player targeting Lady Luck to have to roll twice and take the worse result, regardless of anything else in the game, then that should be her skill, point-blank, word-for-word rules-as-written. It's cheap as hell, and maybe that's the point (i.e. forcing all the players who've been abusing Lucky all this time to feel what it's like to go against it or whatever), but at least it's not co-opting existing game terms to mean different things than usual and twisting the game's mechanics into knots to do it. However, that also applies as a larger concept; if what you want from the fight is "even taking an action against these untouchable gods requires sacrifice and character death", then don't bother with Levels and HP and Specials, just give them a Passive that says "all characters that target [X] will be tallied at the end of the Round and [#] of them will instantly die from [X]'s retaliation, bypassing all immunities", and replace the HP meter with "dies only when it's thematically appropriate". And before someone responds to the latter with "okay, you're being clearly ridiculous and exaggerating to make your point," no, Pie literally did that already and it was awesome and we all praised Pie for it. I'm sorry if I sound enraged in text, I'm really not that upset really, I'm more just a bit put off at getting complaints from the QM about how the players are playing the Quest when the QM's expectations of how the party is supposed to play aren't being made clear. Are we supposed to lose? Are we supposed to fight the "Founders" but only win at massive cost? Are we supposed to be ineffectual and useless against them despite the abilities we have at our disposal? Are we supposed to quaver in fear or respect and just give up? Or are we supposed to throw everything in our considerable arsenal at them in a last-ditch series-finale-tier display of heroism and badassery because at the end of the day the "Founders" are mortal and together we're a match for them? At the end of the day, despite my mechanical nitpickery and admittedly overpowered build, I am a roleplayer here to tell a cooperative story; communicate to me the story you want to tell and I'll do what I can to help tell it to the best of my ability. If I seem exasperated, it's because we've already had this discussion after the last "Founder" fight, at considerable length, and apparently improved little to nothing of the underlying communication issues as a result. The closest I got to a solid answer then was something along the lines of "the Founders are supposed to be larger than life, and aren't your average adversaries", and...yeah. They're well beyond average, and definitely larger than life. But they don't have to break the game's rules to be larger than life; we've got a good couple dozen Heroes who've already proven that. This is the final battle of the final Quest. Now isn't the time to play games and try to subtly influence the players to fit within the loose outlines of the Quest that's been written; now is the time to point-blank communicate how we want this game to end, and then work together to make it happen. I don't want anyone involved in this Quest to go out with regrets; now is the time to leave everything on the field, cards on the table, say what you need to say. If the story we're building in trying to take down the "Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "the Heroes used every sneaky trick in the book, a book they've written over literal years, to take down the false Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "against all odds, the Heroes put themselves in harm's way to protect each other's backs again and again and again and made sure everyone made it out alive" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that. Are you trying to tell A New Hope, or Rogue One, or something else entirely? We're all telling this story, but at the end of the day, you're the QM, you're the one running this nightmare of a hosting responsibility, your voice is arguably as important as all the rest of ours combined. Share that voice with us, so that the rest of our voices can be harmonious rather than discordant. ...that went way longer than I intended it to, and even after editing sounds way angrier than I'm intending it to be. (This is why we don't let Flipz think about games and storytelling and "True Art" and nonsense like that when it's 4 am and she's tired; she's liable to go off on a wall-of-text rant with tons of tangents and side-points despite the base issue being a minuscule rules disagreement. ) Clearly, though, I've had more pent up about this than I myself even realized, so it's probably a good thing to get it all out. xD

I mean, the whole point of the Tiger Balm is it being a dual-edged sword; on Heroes it's fantastic protection against negative effects at the cost of not being able to use positive ones as a crutch, while using it on enemies nullifies their positive effects at the cost of not being able to inflict negative effects on them. Making her immune to that honestly just seems cheap, considering that the counterbalance to Tiger Balm is already built into the item itself.

As someone who's QM'ed for Heroica and had a lot of Quest plans that fell through for lack of sets/illustrations, I would have killed to get someone would could make builds of this quality, even at microscale like this. The waves, the slope of the sand as it comes up from the sea...there's a lot of really nice small touches that add so much life to the scene. Excellent build, hopefully whatever comes after Heroica can attract more builders of this caliber to its side.

I'm...not sure, actually. Oh, and speaking of the Tiger Balm thing, it 100% should work on Lady Luck; the Tiger Balm doesn't *remove* the effect in the sense that a Neutralizer would, it grants her immunity to all effects positive and negative. To put it another way, it doesn't take the *Permanently Lucky* away, it just prevents her from being affected by it, just like a permanently-Hastened Hero would be unable to be Hastened while wielding that one high-WP axe Brickdoctor dropped that makes the wielder *Immune to Hastened*. EDIT: found the quote: Yeah, this is a definite misinterpretation of the way permanent effects work. Using a Tiger Balm on Dyric would 100% prevent his Lucky Die from making him Lucky, so the same would 100% hold true for Lady Luck. EDIT 2: ...also I have some serious concerns about myself that I instantly recognized that rules error as such, despite not having actively obsessed over Heroica the way I used to in almost two years...

OOC: Actually, if Petaldan throws his Smoke Bomb, we could probably get everyone out and still wall the false Founders in with the five of us moving it, if I understand how the enemy movement A.I. works. That said, I do agree that temporarily sacrificing a few Heroes is the better call, in the name of protecting the NPCs. I'd say evacuating Waldorf and Skuld are the priorities, but keeping Elphaba with Bellanotte is a good idea as well thanks to the whole Ether recovery deal.

OOC: I've been working under the assumption that ranged attacks still negate Free Hits even when unsuccessful, it seems like it'd be rather unfair if they didn't. Arthur gives Matthias and Chesterine a nod of approval as they make their preparations for the changed field of battle. Knife-tongue ignores the Black Knight's threats and carries on moving, but does change his destination to the Outer Wall. OOC: We're better served with Knife-tongue moving to a spot where he ISN'T one-shot by everything even in the Back Row. The party down there can handle two free hits, particularly if they're lined up to be from the Miracle Worker.

OOC: If a character is going to go down, I'd rather it not be an NPC who could end up permanently killed by the attack; Heroes at least are guaranteed to be revivable by Phoenix Essence and Necromancer so long as the battle continues, whereas NPCs aren't nearly as disposable. I'm aware that the outer wall party can't save the Harbor group this Round, but this at least gets more of us down there without getting pinned down by all the enemies up here. Arthur snorts at the false Golden Dragon's posturing. "Yes, because murdering everyone who disagrees with you and then on top of that anyone who even thinks about them in a sympathetic light is totally for the betterment of the city, and definitely not the mark of a corrupt tyranny even worse than what we had in the first place." The Skirmisher's sarcasm is unmistakable, but the tone quickly changes to diplomatic sincerity. "Look. I know for absolute certain you're not the real Golden Dragon, because I spoke to her spirit not long ago, and you're nothing like her. She would never approve of your attempt to destroy all Heroes, because -- and this is her own words, mind you -- 'Heroica was neither my nor my companions greatest achievement. No, it was the lives of those who sat under its roof. Those who came to us with neither family or friends and left with both. Those who lacked skill and left with confidence and competence. Those who only cared for themselves and left full of selflessness and compassion for those around them. We took farmhands and showed them the good they could do in this world a nd the pride in that. We took princes and showed them the humility that gains the respect of all men. Heroica was never a building that could be closed, it was a commitment to a community that would not stand back and idly watch the world destroy itself. It was a commitment to sacrificing oneself for the betterment of one's neighbor. It placed no absolute faith in either itself or any oth er institution, it put its faith in people.' And that is the Heroica -- no, that is the Eubric you're trying to destroy. I won't deny that this city and her Heroes have their issues, but damn it we've been trying solve them, we've been trying from the day this organization was founded and continued long after the true Founders were dead and buried. The nature of life is to try, to fail, and to get back up and try again until you get it right. And you have no right to stand there and try to wipe it all away just because you think you have all the answers. Take it from me; I used to think I had all the answers once, too, but all I really was was a colossal prick. I learned from my mistakes, let them make me into a better person. Even now, I don't have all the answers. I don't know what the best possible Eubric looks like. But one thing I do know? It's not ****ing this. So yeah, I am 'resisting' your efforts. Because they're hurting Eubric, and they'll hurt the rest of the world. I won't stand back and let the world destroy itself, and I will not stand back and let you destroy it either. Because like the real Golden Dragon said, that's not what Heroes do. If you're going to wear her countenance, then you owe it to her to uphold her ideals and recognize that what you're doing is wrong, that it goes against everything that Heroica stands for, and that it's time for you to stop."

"Your...wand...?" Arthur shakes his head violently in a vain attempt to clear it. "Sorry. Must have misunderstood its properties. Just...try to keep the Founders from completely crushing the others before the rest of us can get in to hold them back." OOC: Forgot that dual-strike doesn't work with spells, it's been a while.

It takes Arthur about five seconds to realize he's apparently completely blind. The Skirmisher sighs heavily. "Actually, on second thought, forget all that." Arthur throws a Smoke Bomb, fleeing with (hopefully) the rest of the party to the Harbor. If Pretzel moves to a different location or chooses not to flee, however, Arthur remains with Pretzel. Catching sight of Arthur's motions, Knife-Tongue instead directs his allies to move to the Magpie instead.

Arthur takes a second look at the battlefield, and realizes just how the situation has improved on the wall...only to curse as he realizes just how the tides have altered. "Chesterine," he calls out, "switch your Locket out and equip the Sigil of the Cold Circle instead, then cast Darkness at the Walking Mountain from the Back Row. Don't worry, cousin, I've got your back." Keeping to the Back Row himself, Arthur eyes Cannoneer A warily before Throlar's shouted words break through his mental calculations, causing him to reconsider the attack; he takes a moment to meditate with the First Breath instead, before returning to barking orders. "Marco, I need you to start taking pot-shots at the Walking Mountain from the Back Row, dual-striking to Lady Luck as your secondary target; Vindsval, Benji, Althior, Matthias, I'd appreciate you joining in on the ranged attack as well; that should keep him pinned down enough for everyone else to work around him at least. Pretzel, I think the Pheles Kris would be a good weapon choice for the moment. Hoke, if you could drop down and shield the others from Lady Luck's Free Hit that would be spectacular. Everyone else up here, our job is to protect our ranged fighters while they occupy the false Founders long enough for our weaker allies to flee to safety." Though mistrustful of the sailors, Arthur holds his shield high, hoping his stature and defensive actions would lend more credence to Throlar's diplomatic efforts. Even as Arthur discusses the flight of the group in the Harbor below, Knife-Tongue touches Sküld and Waldorf on the shoulder and gestures for them to move to the outer wall along with him; there, at least, they had a chance against the foes arrayed before them.

Arthur carefully surveys the immediate battlefield, a plan slowly coming to mind as the pieces start to fall into place. "I think I have an idea," he says aloud, "but I need to make sure I haven't misread our tactical situation first." OOC: Will wait for the Round to be officially finished before I start posting actions and suggestions, but I think this will work.

OOC: ...random thought, couldn't characters with broomsticks use them to bypass the movement limitations the way Hoke can fly on Torc? Likely couldn't take passengers that way, but it'd at least be an option for getting where needed.

"Got it," Arthur says with a nod. He moves to the Outer Wall alongside Pretzel, careful to remain in the Back Row so as to grant his allies Encouragement from his presence.

With the swashbucklers swept away by the dark tide, Arthur let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Where to next? Push forward to the lower inner wall, or clear up the upper segments first and make a coordinated push? The summons are excellent, but finite, and I'm not sure we can take on the false Veterans at their current level of charge, especially considering what it took to stop the Doomsayer." If the party moves, Arthur follows Pretzel's movement; if the party remains in place, Arthur instead meditates using the First Breath, unless the plan is to charge the Lower Inner Wall after a round of preparation, in which case Arthur consumes the Hero's Cocktail from the Hollow Blade of his Duplovian Swift Halberd and also uses a Tonic on Bellanotte. Stowing his blades, Knife-Tongue gestures for everyone but Ezeran to leave the Magpie, and then for Ezeran to Flee to follow them, and moves to the Harbor. OOC: I apologize to Pie for any grief I have ever given him over trying to write Knife-Tongue's dialogue. xD