RP (non-canon): D&D Mission 1: Getting "Acquainted"

Aurelus stood up from his bed and groggily donned his leather armor's vest and dressed up, unsheathed his longsword from it's scabbard and looked for a torch in his backpack. Once having done all that, he walked down the stairs to the first floor, sword in one hand, unlit torch on the other, only to hear the inn keeper talking about the town square meeting.

"...bloody rats... I'll burn the lot o em... I'll see how much smarter their wee brains are when they get burnt to a crisp..." He walked to Talarin and Denkou, grumbling in his groggy haze. Sleeping was one of Aurelus' most favorite past-times, and he did not like being interrupted from his past-times.

Talarin nodded to the innkeeper as he relaxed with the rats apparent passing. "So, they just swarm through once a day? Just like that?" he started for the door after Aurelus.

"Like I said," the innkeeper whispered as the crowd started calming down. "They haven't been in the town for a week or two, but we knew something was coming soon." The crowd quieted down as the cleric on the fountain raised his arms.

"Silence! Silence please. I'm afraid I have some troubling news. Upon further examination of the swarm that entered town today, the plague that has been magically enhanced and is now airborne. This means that everyone in town is now affected and the town is to be quarantined."

Angry shouts started coming from the crowd. "So we're all going to die?" "It's them damn wizards' faults!" "Have you found a cure?"

The cleric raised his hands to quiet the crowd. "Please people. I have yet to find a cure, but after several complex spells I have discovered that the disease itself is not magical, for it is very difficult to hold a spell that long. There is an external source somewhere within several miles that is feeding energy to the disease."

One man jumped up on to the fountain with the cleric and yelled, "You mean like them!?" He pointed to the southern exit. On a hill about one hundred yards from the village, was three figures.

"Those are them damn wizards!" The innkeeper screamed. "I'd recognize them anywhere."

"Arm yourselves!" Came a scream from somewhere in the crowd. People started grabbing whatever they could find that would hurt and a mob started out of the town. When the wizards saw them mob coming after them they took off down the trail, at a fast pace.

Talarin took off after the wizards as soon as they were pointed out. He had the feeling that they already had an escape plan set. Otherwise they wouldn't have shown themselves to an angry mob. So he shifted the his internal magical energies to atube his senses to magical vibrations. Hopefully he could find where they were heading.

Talarin can tell that there is a great amount of magic radiating through the villagers, but he doesn't detect any magical auras in the direction of the wizards. This might also be partly due to the fact that running is taking away a great deal of concentration from Talarin's magic concentration.

A Deep Imaskari was out of breath and hunched over, trying to get himself oriented. Confound it all! He thought, placing one hand on a nearby tree to steady himself. This is what I get for not training my body as much as my mind. Then and again, I never intended to involve myself with rouge wizards.

The relatively handsome humanoid took a deep breath and sighed, straightening out his body and stretching his limbs. Now that the other two have left me here, I suppose there's no need to hide my identity any longer. He continued to think as he began heading back towards the mob at a leisurely pace. When he reached the first of them, he held out open arms.

"Don't hurt me, I'm unarmed!" He told them, showing them his empty hands. "I can help with the disease!"

Denkou kept up with the mob easily, having had more then enough practice running messages to keep that pace. When she saw one of the wizards stop, she made sure to drift off to one side of the group though, setting herself up to come at him from the side, or behind if she could manage it. Even if she was good at talking to people, no telling if this guy would attack for no reason or not.

Talarin stopped running in confusion as he registered the magic auras coming from the villagers. He moved to the side and watched the villagers ran by. "They all are radiating magical auras. How does that happen?" he mused aloud to Joanna. He started stroking her head again deep in thought. "A mass enchantment spell perhaps? Possibly, but to what end? I don't think they need any help pissing them off and it's definately not calming them down." His mumbling was interrupted by the humanoid wizard who had been left behind. "I guess I better save him from that angry crowd." he said to Joanna.

The crowd slowed to a halt as the reached the Deep Imaskari. Naturally, they didn't trust him and started shouting angry remarks at him. People thrust weapons into the air as they called for execution. Finally the town elder broke his way to the front of the crowd. "Although this man may be wicked, he still is an intelligent creature of this earth, and he has a right to testify in his defense. If any of you wish to judge him before he is given that right then away with you." The elder turned to the wizard. "Speak sir, but be warned, they will kill you if you try to escape or attack."

"I am no being of a foul nature, so do not call me wicked. Secondly, the only reason I was with those two was because I was hired by the Crown to interfere with their efforts by becoming a spy. Those two are rebels of a most dangerous sort, and I shall say no more until I am in a less. . . hostile situation." The pale humanoid replied as calmly as he could in the face of an inhospitable crowd. He followed this up by searching his traveler's coat and pulling out a Letter of Marque.

Sorri had abandoned her search for a viewing spot when the cleric had given his report. A chill went through her.

I'm already infected? She went pale, then shook her head. First things first...she left as the crowd began its transformation into a mob, heading straight for the hospital. That was where she could find more information, more important information. Well, to her it was more important.

The half-blood halfling knocked on the door, then checked to see if it was open.

"Hello?"

The nurse came to the hospital door and unlocked it. "I was worried when the mob became angry, so I locked the door. Hurry inside." She peeked her head out the door and checked down the street before closing the door and locking it again. "What's it like out there?"

Sorri slipped inside when the nurse invited her in.

"A man told them that the disease has gone airborne, we are all infected now," she said. The girl was oddly calm for what she was saying. "He said it was magically enhanced and taking power from something nearby...and then someone noticed three wizards standing outside the south gates." Sorri frowned in confusion. "I remember what you told me about the disease, but what if it's making the poison itself? If you cure the poison, I know there are some sicknesses that could just make more poison." She paused. "The man also mentioned using magic to study it. How can he be sure of his results?"

Denkou stepped up behind him automatically when he reached into his cloak, pulling her sword quietly as she came, ready to strike; everyone knows just how bad something small enough to fit in a pocket can be in a wizards hands, after all. No relaxing when he pulled out a piece of paper either; after all, it wouldn't be hard to fake the look, and embed a spell in the writing.

The elder grabbed the letter from the Imaskari and flipped it open. "It's genuine, signed by the empress herself." The elder closed his eyes and silently muttered something before opening his eyes again. "It has the royal spell of authenticity on it. It's a random aura that her spell casters created that they could place on her documents." He looked back down at the wizard. "Tell us all you know, now!"

-----------------------

The nurse nodded at what Sorri said. "The man you speak of a is a cleric, he used divine spells to detect magic on living rat specimens. He still doesn't know much, but he learns more by the day. We know for a fact that it isn't a poison, we've used antidotes, cast poison curing spells, cast poison prevention spells. We're confident it's not just a poison. We don't know much past that. Basically, it is a four day process. Their overall health begins to deteriorate at a fairly steady rate. It starts with headaches, moves to cramping, diarrhea, fatigue. Soon muscle deterioration begins, followed by loss of sensory perceptions, organ failures, and death. With the chain of events, we're lucky the spell isn't reanimating them, but that is a possibility, the cleric has casted spells to detect necromancy work and they came out positive for spells of a necromancy domain. What we know now is everybody has these evil spells surging through their bodies now, and the spell is being powered from an outside source."

"Fine then. I'm not going to tell you the part that will make these folks do something rather rash, though. Those two wizards are from Madsonia, but they are working with Weiss to secede and form a country of magicians. They do this to small villages to avoid getting major attention from any sort of governmental power, plus they could blame these attacks on the opposing country. Now, I know how and I know where this disease is powered and generated, but if I tell it now, this crowd is liable to get itself killed. I suspect there are many traps guarding the thing." The Imaskari explained, looking the Elder dead on in the eyes.

Aurelus wanted nothing more than to chase after the damned critters and burn them all to their deaths. However, he did not know where they were, and he did not know if that would affect the fact that he was plagued or not. "DAMNED WIZERDS!" He followed the crowd, running after the three figures before one of them stopped.

Once they got close enough to him Aurelus had gotten real close to the wizard, about two feet away, enough to aim the tip of his longsword straight to the man's neck in case he tried something funny. The crowd went on about how they should hang him in the village square until the village elder decided to give the guy a chance to explain himself.

Then it was all a matter of listening. When the elder acknowledged the authenticity of the letter the wizard spy was carrying, Aurelus put down his sword and let it's tip rest against the ground while his hand held on to the handle. If the mage tried anything suspicious he could still slash the sword in his direction from it's current placement on the ground.

In the meantime, Aurelus was wondering what the effects of this plague were. The innkeeper hadn't told them what the disease did, only that the damned rats spread it. And since it was magically enhanced, it could mean anything! Diseases like colds and chicken pox were nothing alike what he was imagining. Bloating up into sacks of flesh and organs, coughing up venomous spiders, or turning into the very rats that had given them the plague were the more grim pictures crossing through his head.

When the mage finished saying he couldn't tell the people about the source of the plague, Aurelus shouted, laughing at the irony.

"Hehe! We'll die anyways, wordspinner! What makes ye think we're not willin' ta die fightin' before the disease kicks in and kills the lot o us in our beds in unimag'nable ways!?

I SAY WE GO AND DESTROY IT!

WHO'S WITH ME!?"

Talarin put a hand on Aurelus's shoulder. "Calm down. I'm sure there's a perfectly sensible way for us to the source. Without endangering all these people." he said in a calm voice. Talarin then turned to face the wizard. "I assume that since you do know where the source is, you can also get by the traps?"

Apparently that one is the type that thinks with his muscles, not his head. The humanoid noted before noticing that the brash one's comrade had calmed him. In response to the question, he said, "For the most part, I should be able to. I've never actually been inside the place, but given that my companions were also wizards, I should be able to tell what is trapped and what isn't."

He took a quick breath before adding, "And if there is one among you that can tell what's cursed and what isn't, you can tell that I am just as infected with the disease as the rest of you."

The town elder though quietly. "Calm yourselves. Return to the the village and return to your normal work. Anyone with any combat or magic experience that is not vital to the operation of the town should report to the town hall in exactly fifteen minutes, ready to leave. Until then other high-ranking citizens will be meeting to discuss the events and plan the course of action." With that the elder turned and head back to the town.