Editing Journal 1: Aid in Lilingbroke (section)

= From the Journal of Talmuq ur'Tak =
Back to [[Dragonslayers]]

== 20 Lowspring 807 ==
After six months of training, I'm finally on my first mission! Me, the bard Aalari, and the rogue Glendower have been assigned to protect a team of diplomats going southeast to a town called [[Lilingbroke|Lily-Brooke]] so they can negotiate peace with the nearby [[Beings of Avo|ork]] tribes. I'm so excited for my first mission! I haven't had much time to explore so far, so this is my first chance to see what other towns are like here in the south. We've been traveling for about a day, so we have made camp for the night. The diplomats are mostly keeping to themselves and aren't talking to us, they rode in a carriage most of the way, but the other guards they have are really friendly and they let me ride in the cart for some of the trip. The cart was pulled by what looked like a strange small horse. They call it a Donkee, and his name is Steve. I like Steve. The guards are full of all kinds of stories of their adventures. Aalari is nice, too, but Glendower is kind of mean. While we were sitting around the camp, I told everyone the story of Brother, Sister, and Mother Earth, and they all really enjoyed hearing it. It's still so hard to understand that they have a completely different idea of how the world was made, but I love hearing all about their "gods" as they call them, and they seem just as interested in hearing the stories about Brother and Sister. I think it's time to sleep, now. Two more days til we arrive at Lilly-Brooke.

== 22 Lowspring 807 ==
After traveling through the morning, we got to Lilly-Brooke this afternoon. The land around here is so beautiful. The people here have totally tamed their land, turning wild ground into these "farms" where they grow their food. Even after six months here in the south, I am still amazed that the ground isn't covered in ice and snow. We met the mayor of the town when we got here, but I didn't get a chance to talk to him myself. The orks here come from two tribes, camped outside the town. The otorok tribe look a lot like us back home, other than the fangs and green skin. They wear normal clothes, like furs and leathers. Their leader is young and huge, and he looks angry. The Urthagar tribe dress like the people here in the south, with shirts and coats made of cloth, and shoes instead of boots. Their leader, old and walking with a cane, has some kind of glass circle in front of one eye, which I assume is some sort of magic device for seeing things that the rest of us can't. I am eager to talk to them to learn about their tribes and tell them about the Inuk, but I haven't had a chance yet. After the introductions, we retired to the inn for dinner and drinks. One of the diplomats, [[Ian van Montelle|Ian]], is a storyteller, and he entertained the entire bar with a rousing tale of heroism in the last war while our Bard, Aalari, accompanied him on her strange stringed instrument. She keeps telling me it's called a "liar", but I don't understand how an instrument can tell lies. Maybe it's supposed to be a joke? After his story, I got up and told one of ours, the famous tale of Sister Battles the Frost Giants. Most of the people in the tavern seemed interested, and the innkeeper was kind enough to give me, Aalari, and Glendower rooms here, which was nice because the diplomats forgot to get rooms for us. We also got free dinner and drinks for the performance. Another one of the diplomats, the dwarf, was particularly interested in my story and spent the rest of the evening asking me to tell him more stories about the Frost Giants. I was happy to oblige, after all, telling people about our tribe is what I'm down here for. Glendower seems to have found her way into Ian's bed, which I'm happy for because then I won't have to share a room with her and hear her constant negativity. Instead, I ended up sharing a room with the dwarf.

== 23 Lowspring 807 ==
Yesterday, we were told that our job today is to guard the diplomat's carriage while they negotiate with the mayor and the Ork leaders about land and water rights to avoid war. When we came out of the inn, the meeting was already starting. We saw the orks going into the meeting hall, and there was a large crowd of villagers yelling and throwing things at them. There seems to be some bad blood between the humans and halflings of the town and the orks. I hope they can come to an agreement. Now that the meeting has started, the crowd is starting to thin out. I am sitting here by the carriage, making sure no one touches it, but Glendower keeps going on and on about something being wrong. She doesn't trust the orks or the diplomats, she keeps saying that someone is hiding something. I've mostly been tuning it out while she convinces Aalari that she's right. She even tried opening the carriage, but there's some kind of electric trap on the door handle and she got zapped. Serves her right. Our job is to protect the carriage, not break into it. Her suspicions are getting out of hand. Now she's on the roof of the meeting hall and waving her hands at me. I guess it can't hurt to go over there and see what she wants.

Something very tragic just happened. Glendower convinced me to go up to the roof with her, and Aalari walked away from the carriage to watch us. Glendower pried up a roof tile so she could listen in on the meeting, and, as expected, they're talking about land rights, but she won't let this go. She keeps saying people are missing from the meeting, but we can only see a tiny piece of the room. While we weren't watching the carriage, a villager tried to get into it. He was caught by the electricity trap and his hand got stuck. I got off the roof and ran over to him as fast as I could, but by the time I got there, the trap had killed him. This was our fault. If we had been doing our jobs and watched the carriage, that poor man would still be alive. I don't know what Glendower's problem is, but I'm tired of her seeing conspiracies everywhere. From now on, I do my job and watch the carriage. Maybe I can convince these three mercenaries who are riding into town right now to help me, since my teammates won't. Wait, did they just say something about lighting the meeting house on fire?

False alarm. Sort of. I talked to the mercenaries. They aren't planning anything, they just don't trust the orcs. They think they're going to betray the townsfolk, but I'm sure they're wrong. As we went to the tavern, we were joined by the half-ork Bula from the guild. When we left, we couldn't find her, so we went without her, but apparently she ran all the way here to catch up with us. She went into the tavern with us as we followed the three mercenaries. Before we could get much out of them, we were interrupted by two of the Otorok orks coming in for a drink. The mercenaries didn't like them being here, and we had to defuse the situation before it got out of hand. Once that was settled, I left the girls inside to try to get some information out of the orks while I went back to watch the carriage. But something strange happened out here. I saw another farmer going to try to open the carriage door, but when I jumped up to stop him, it turned out to be the mayor dressed in farmer's clothes. When I asked him what he was doing, he avoided the question and made up an excuse to walk away. I followed him for a bit, but he was just shaking hands and sucking up to the farmers around the town. But eventually, he circled back to the square and tried to open the carriage again. I had to stop him again, and this time he actually ran away. I think Glendower might have the right idea, but she's focusing on the wrong people. There's clearly something shady about the mayor. Once the mayor was gone, I noticed that our cart and Steve the donkee were gone. I followed the cart tracks until they left the road and led into a small copse of trees. That's where I found the cart, but Steve was gone. I marked his tracks so I could come back and find him later and went back to the town square. That's when I called the rest of the group out of the tavern so we could talk about this. They came out very drunk and without much information, but I tried to keep them focused long enough to tell them what happened. We decided to leave Bula to guard the carriage while we hatched a plan to investigate the mayor's house. Aalari and I were to get the mayor out of the house and keep him distracted while Glendower sneaked in through the back.

While we talked to the mayor, Aalari decided to charm him to get some straight answers out of him. He wasn't happy about that when it wore off, but we managed to find out that he isn't up to anything particularly suspicious. He really is just looking out for the safety of his town, and once the charm wore off, we managed to convince him that we were too. During this conversation, I found Steve the Donkee running through the field we were walking in, being chased by a couple of kids. The kids said they found him running around and I saw no reason to doubt them. I shooed away the kids and reclaimed our animal. We met up with Glendower, who revealed that she found a few unusual items in the mayor's house: an unusual orb and a magic scroll. While we were chatting with the mayor, Bula met up with the diplomats as they broke for lunch. The negotiations are not going too well, but, again, there was no sign of anything sinister. It wasn't until after the mayor and the diplomats cleared out of the tavern that we got our first real lead. The kid who works at the tavern, Dominik, said that he overheard the drunk orks talking about a bomb. This was alarming, so we knew we had to do something about it. First we searched for anything suspicious around the meeting house, but when that failed, we knew we needed more information. I woke up the orks and tried to get some information out of them, but that kind of backfired when Glendower's interrogation methods got a little too violent. The orks responded in kind, and, unfortunately, we were forced to kill one of them. The other we managed to knock unconscious.

Intellectually, I think I knew going into this trip that I might have to fight people to survive, but I never really considered the impact of what that meant. I helped kill someone today. I don't like the way that feels. But I suppose that is a necessary evil of the life that I have chosen for myself, and there is no going back from that now. I do not have time to worry about it right now because we still have to deal with this bomb. We stashed the body in the cellar of the inn, and we tied up the other one and took it up to Glendower's room. After a somewhat difficult (and gross) interrogation, we learned that the Otorok do have a plan to bomb the meeting house, but the bomb has not been placed, or even assembled yet. We are to go to a meeting point at midnight to find out more about this plot, so now we must wait.

== 25 Lowspring 807 ==
It's over. I have not had a chance to write in my journal until now. Much has happened over the last couple of days. That night, we found a group of Otorok assembling parts for a bomb. They had an entire cart full of blasting powder that they were unloading and stashing for later use. We were able to interrupt and slay them. In the battle, we detonated the cart. I have never heard such a noise, nor seen such a blast of fire. There was a wave of pressure you could feel in your chest. Once the fight was over and my ears stopped ringing, a group of the townspeople came running, led by the mayor, to investigate the explosion. We were able to prove to him that there was indeed a bomb plot, and we showed him the hidden stash. He finally believes that our intentions in protecting the town are true, and he helped us clean up the mess and destroy the remaining pouches of powder so no one can use them against us.

The next day, we met with the diplomats, who thanked us for discovering this plot, and were finally willing to take us seriously. Then they gave us a chance to really prove our worth. They gave us a mission to infiltrate the Otorok camp and find out what their plan was. This was not an easy request, as the camp was hours away, and only one of us could pass for an ork, but thanks to Ian's illusions, Glendower, Aalari, and I were able to look like them. We walked right into camp, and after a little asking around, found a high-ranked warrior who pointed us to the Otorok chief. We found him rallying his troops for battle. Turns out, their plan was to bomb the meeting, then use the distraction, and elimination of the most powerful people in the village, to conquer it. With the bombing plan disrupted, he was gathering his entire army to march on the town. They were going to be there by nightfall. We rushed back as fast as we could to gather the mercenaries and warn the town. That gave us enough time to build fortifications and prepare for the coming battle.

That battle was not something I ever hope to experience again. It was horrific. The Otorok orks crashed on the fortifications like a great wave hitting a glacier, breaking against the side and spilling over the top. I was able to use some of my magic to disorient them so they ran into the wooden spikes driven in the ground, but most of the fighting was done by the mercenaries and Urthagar orks at the front lines, in the ditch behind the spikes. We stayed back and to the side to give support from the flank, and a good thing we did. We had to fight off a series of Otorok trying to come around behind the mercenaries. I almost died in that fighting, but for Aalari's magic healing. I'll not forget that experience. The thing I saw while my life was slipping away… By the time our fight was done, the Otorok had broken through the defenses, and the fight was spilling into the town. We decided to use that as an opportunity to move to the other side of the battlefield to look for the diplomats, as we thought they might be the only ones powerful enough to turn the tide of the battle in our favor, and we had no idea where we were. We crawled through the ditch behind the spikes. The things I saw in that ditch will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. When we came out the other side, we were by the meeting hall. We looked inside. We found the diplomats, all battered and beaten. One was unconscious, Ian was catatonic. The Urthagar chief was wounded on the floor, surrounded by a few of his Orks. The Otorok chief and some of his men was standing over him in triumph. If the fight in this room finished in the Otorok's favor, the whole battle would be lost. We knew we had to act fast, so me, Glendower, and Bula ambushed him through the window with a simultaneous strike. Aalari used her Bard magic to heal the Urthagar chief so he could fight the Otorok chief, but we didn't need him to. Our attack from the window killed the Otorok chief outright. With their chief dead and a newly healed enemy chief standing in front of him, the Otorok soldiers quickly surrendered. The Urthagar chief took his opponent's head as a trophy and went outside to announce the end of the battle. The Otorok all either surrendered or ran, and like that, the battle was over. Aalari tended to the diplomats' wounds, while Glendower tried to snap Ian out of his stupor. Many mercenaries and Urthagar had died, so the rest of us helped gather the bodies, but thankfully, none of the diplomats or civilians perished. Since then, we've been cleaning up as best as we could, and resting from the battle. We received many thanks from townspeople and diplomats alike. The shopkeeper let me keep the magic staff she had let me borrow for the battle, which turned out to be very useful. The diplomats also gave us a way to magically contact them if we need it after they paid us for the job. Now, we're resting here for one more night, and in the morning, we head home to [[Wodesville]], back to the Stout Scoundrel and [[Peggy Redfang|Peggy]] to wait for the next mission.
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