Duvors

Throlar Wineghilm removed his current artifacts and equipped the Infernal Armor, the Greaves of the Wolf, and the Gloves of the Hypocritical/Hippocratic Oath. He also equipped his Weathered Shield. "Vindsval," he said in a calm and steady tone, "I would like to borrow Verkenner for a while. Pretzel, your collection of scrolls may find more use in my hands than yours. You may also want to give those maces and that axe you're carrying to those who can use them." "I think Karie would prefer it if we were ready to leave as soon as she's done. I say we start preparations now."

"That'll be excellent thanks. To be honest the bizarre way time passes in the Faerie means you'd never be able to get any kind of lock on us even if we had a way of telling you when to open the gate to let us back in." "Miss," said Throlar diplomatically, "I believe it would be a good idea for you to make all haste in sending us through. Additionally, you may want to reconsider the price you're asking for an automaton as sending them through with us seems to be the only way you'll keep them out of the council's hands at this point."

"Ah, you mean Zoot. Well that makes sense, although saying that the archdemons answer to anyone is probably inaccurate. All accounts of them that I'm familiar with have them acting on their own initiative." "Well," said Throlar diplomatically, "This thing about the founders of Heroica returning, we've noticed one of them, The Fey One, is missing. In addition we've received a message from one of our former members that seems to allude to the Faerie being overrun by something related to plants. Which way or may not be related to a number of strange white roots that are overtaking the sewer system. There seems to be a clear connection between these things and this may have something to do with the sudden return of the founders. So if you have any equipment that can take us there we'd be grateful if you'd see your way to sending us over before packing it away."

"Who is this 'devil' person?" Throlar is confused by this as last he heard the old Xuese government had been overthrown and replaced with a representative democracy, with the aid of the Ji Pei no less. Throlar really didn't like the idea of this new council getting it's hands on even a few automatons. After all, they'd probably be sending them after himself and the other heroes if they did. "We want to go to Faerie."

"Very well, I'll take it." said Throlar, removing the Skull Mask, "And I'll take that scroll too if you don't mind." He turned to speak to Kiray "Here, you should probably take the Skull Mask now, unless someone else wants it. While I'm at it, either you or Skrall should take my Shattering Arrows as you're the only people here who can use them." Regardless of his companions' responses, Throlar was ready to leave for the Tritech Company's headquarters.

"And that's the problem. You're forgetting that the Wolfgang are just as responsible for this situation as the houses. They're the ones who came up with this whole 'king of Eubric' idea, everyone else was just copying them. Not to mention the fact that they've been just as active as everyone else in garnering support for their cause in Heroica. For crying out loud- two of our Veterans were working for them!" Throlar looked at him skeptically. "Well... just try and stay sober then. "Yes, staying here all day won't accomplish anything. By the way, Lind, you may want to lend that Trickster's Mask to someone else for the duration."

Throlar watched what was happening with a palpable sense of unease. While on some level he understood and sympathized with her sentiment he felt that Karie was being far too aggressive about this. The sudden change in demeanor at the mention of Lind's political leanings disturbed him. And besides... "No support for any unions or alliances? Karie, you're working with someone who is openly supporting the Wolfgang!" he motioned to Kiray, "Adding to that, you willingly went along with her plan to ally with them! Say it's an alliance of convenience all you want, but we've still basically declared our support for his cause! Or do you think that Ulric's ambitions to become king of Eubric have spontaneously vanished because we now have a common enemy?"

"The Nornalis is gone, we don't know if it's in the possession of the enemy or has simply disappeared entirely. As for who's running Fort Bonaparte, or 'Fort Freedom' rather, to the best of our knowledge it's some council of sailors and whatnot. Nautical types, I don't know, the sea has never been my thing. I always get seasick every bloody time..." "Not you specifically, though you can be if you want to." "Well, if you take a look at the front page of the Herald you'll notice one of the founders is conspicuously absent from the group photo at the front. Can you guess which one?" "Are you though? Last I saw of you you were completely blitzed out of your mind while wearing a stupid looking hat and fake elf ears and speaking in the most grossly exaggerated Charisian accent imaginable. You were also calling yourself by some stupid fake name as I recall. How do we know you can be trusted to behave in a rational manner? Or behave at all for that matter? For all we know you might just run off halfway through and get yourself killed." Throlar was somewhat surprised by his own words, he wasn't used to someone else being a potential liability. It felt like he was having an out-of-body experience of some sort.

Throlar had been planning to ignore the ignominious fool sitting at the bar, their last encounter had shown the dwarf that the individual before him was extremely immature and hardly worth consideration, however his remarks about roots suddenly brought to mind a line from the message Byblos had sent. 'A dark seed planted beneath the sun,' he thought, 'there's no way in hell this is a coincidence.' "Like hell it does," he said in response to the knight's last question, "Don't you read the news? All the houses have been destabilized or disbanded, and now we have this in their place!" he said, throwing down his copy of the Herald on the counter in front of Lind. "And now due to an unpleasant altercation with this new council the entire remaining membership of Heroica, including us and the remaining modern Veterans, are on the run from them. Now tell me, where did you find these roots? How many of them were there and how widespread did they seem to be?"

"I have had some experience with the Tritech Company too if that's any help."

"It's priceless cultural artifact and extremely important to the Norns, I would rather have it intact for them. Whether Heroica continues to use it or not is irrelevant until we settle the matter of whether or not Heroica will exist after this fiasco is over."

"We'll have to take it from them. Or destroy it. Taking it would be preferable though."

"Well it's not like we didn't suspect this already, but it's nice to have some conformation nonetheless. Do you have any proof of these statements though? It would be preferable to have some just in case someone needs convincing."

"Hello." "Yes, yes we do. Starting with 'why did you use the name Frustrated Flying Filly?' It's honestly one of the oddest noms-de-plume I've ever heard and I'm interested in it's origin."

"We're from Heroica, or rather were, and if this person is the same as the one were looking for then we simply must speak with them. Friends are in short supply for us at the moment and whoever wrote that article in the Herald is a potential one."

"No, we've seen our room, we just wanted to have a look at this one to see why it wasn't on the list. Even more so now that it's obvious that it's occupied." he said, motioning to the tray in Billian's hands.

"Well before we do anything I say we check out room number four. I'd prefer to know what's in there as soon as possible."

"Why would we do that? Even if room four isn't the one we're looking for I doubt that splitting up would have any appreciable difference in how fast we would search the building. It's not that large after all, and we're basically just going door to door and seeing how the inhabitants react to us. In fact I'd say that whoever found the right room would then have to go back to get the others, which would take more time. And anyway, if for some reason we were attacked then we'd want our full strength together." Throlar said as he looked out the window to check the time.

"A friend hopefully, come on." said Throlar before turning to ascend the stairs.

"Excuse me sirs," said Throlar to the innkeepers, "how many floors does this building have?"

"And how much would it cost us to have a brief look inside?"

"While I'm not familiar with any of these names I think I recognize the Aunt here as one of the Sisters of Danab who hired several heroes to act as security during their congress in Salamandria. I actually signed up for that one, I wasn't chosen to go, but still."

"Well that's a problem, the people at the Herald themselves seem to have no idea who this person is or where they live, the reason we're here is because this is where their payments are delivered according to the owner of the Herald."

"No. Well thank you for your time." "We were actually looking for someone who made a contribution to the most recent issue of the Herald, they called themselves the 'Frustrated Flying Filly'. Do you have any idea who they may be?"

"Sorry to bother you, but were looking for someone who contributed an article to the Eubric Herald recently, you wouldn't happen to know who that would be? They called themselves 'Frustrated Flying Filly'."