#49 - Gamblers, Shifters, and Elementals

Excerpt from the Cypher's Codex: The Scrawlings of a Warforged Scholar

The carnival proved to be a successful adventure. All of the party members were able to secure tickets to attend dinner with the renowned Three, the King’s Protector. I actually met him once, after the Battle of Brey Crossing. He wouldn’t remember me but my former unit, the Brelish Engineers Brigade, set traps before the battle, helping to stave off the overwhelming enemy attack against King Boranel, Three, and his warforged companions until the greater part of the Brelish forces could relieve them.

Pictured: A ghost tiger of the
non-stuffed variety

Along with several of my companions I acquired a belt pouch of holding, an expensive curiosity. This pouch, which I call Spacium, is a finely made oiled leather pouch of ordinary size with a narrow opening of 2.5 inches in diameter. Average magic has been infused in the pouch to transform its inside into a multidimensional space, allowing me to put many items in it without increasing its external volume or overburdening me. I’ve read many theories about the science behind extradimensional spaces and look forward to analyzing this exceptional item. Magnus bought one for himself but had trouble understanding the peculiar physics of the item. His countenance was uplifted when I demonstrated the pouch’s use by inserting an entire javelin into the opening. I look forward to analyzing Spacium at a later time. With my remaining House Phiarlian shadow pieces, I purchased a finely crafted stuffed mimicry of a ghost tiger. King Boranel, my esteemed liege and rightful ruler of the lands of Galifar, is well known to keep two domesticated magebred ghost tigers as pets. I admit to having had a sense of loss since losing my first Rungo, the stuffed bear likeness that I found in the satchel I won by defeating the gargoyle in a duel in the streets of Graywall. I was forced to sell toy Rungo to a night hag under curious circumstances. She expressed delight to receive an item, even mundane, that was treasured at one time by a child. I don’t like to part with things but she had offered clues about the origins of the schema I found inside Claviger’s disabled corpus. I have named the new stuffed toy Stripes. On the way back into town, Kard announced that he would not be retiring with the rest of the tired party. He declared interest in a game of Three-Dragon Ante, a card game used to gamble coin. I was not in need of rest myself and I did not fully trust in Kard since his brazen admittal to harboring unbridled anger toward my entire race, so I insisted upon joining him. I asked Grapnel to join me as well, hoping to elicit discomfort from Kard by forcing him to be in the company of only warforged companions. Kard hid his discomfort, if he felt any, and seemed keen on getting to the game.

We went to the tavern known as the Everflowing Cup, a boisterous place filled mostly with humans drinking, carousing, and gambling. I sat in on the game with Kard and he explained the rules to me, much to the amusement of the roughians we were competing with. I won the first hand but proceeded to lose after that. Someone in the crowd that had gathered to watch us mentioned beginner’s luck, but I had not read any research on that subject. Perhaps Olladra, the goddess of fortune, offers a cosmic solution to what people call luck. When the stakes of the game finally peaked at 50 galifars I opted out. Instead I carefully watched the dynamics of the game being played. I think I have figured out the nuances of the game, some thoughtfully-used infusions could greatly increase a player’s odds of winning. Kard won the final round against Cutter, the “alpha male” of the group of human gamblers, and took in a count of over 200 galifars. Yet Kard still wanted to continue playing so Cutter offered to make things more “interesting,” and he did indeed. Cutter claimed to have possession of a shifter girl and asked us what we would put on the table to play against that, even though he did not produce said shifter girl on top of the table himself. This offer was quite distressing to us, as I took it to imply that he had enslaved a shifter. I rummaged through my possessions trying to find something of equal value to another’s soul. I asked Kard what was the value of a shifter girl but his response was no help to me. I pulled out my newly acquired Gryphon Feather, infused with the power of a feather fall spell. Cutter laughed at me, and looked around at the growing crowd and said, “Does this look like Sharn to you, warforged?”

Kard then offered to remove the middle digit of his hand if he were to lose the hand of cards. Cutter was shocked at first by this, so Kard gave Grapnel a dagger and gave him instructions on how to perform a crude phalangectomy. His forthrightness may just have stunned Cutter into accepting the wager. I had to further instruct a very confused Grapnel to hold his surgical action in case Kard won the bet, which thankfully he did because Kard won the final round of Three-Dragon Ante. I have no trouble performing my duties with three digits on each hand, but I doubt the warforged-disparaging human would have been the same without his fifth finger. Cutter grumbled a bit from his loss but stated outwardly that “Aza” was more trouble than she was worth. It turned out that Aza, the young shifter girl he had lost to us, was in fact his stepdaughter. No mention was made as to the whereabouts of her mother.

Aza was a young shifter of eleven years with tiger-like (longtooth) features and a feisty yet sullen demeanor. Kard tried to calm the child and get her to tell us about her mother but she did not respond helpfully. I attempted to placate the child by giving her Stripes, knowing that children often used stuffed animal likenesses as toys. To me she did not seem interested in the ghost tiger so I took it back but Kard insisted that I force it upon her and she took it. I am not skilled at reading the nuances of children’s behaviors. We returned to the Golden Chalice and Kard gave her sustenance, which she accepted unappreciatively but with obvious voraciousness. The rest of our party had already retired by that time and Kard had Aza sleep in his room. I told Grapnel to stand guard outside her door and Kard joined him, although Kard fell asleep in the hallway, propped against the wall in a chair, almost immediately upon sitting. I spent the rest of the night in Magnus’s and Rendar’s room gathering up my arcane powers and practicing with the magical whip I won in the Graywall Arena, the Tongue of Hrasta.

In the morning, when Magnus and Rendar returned to an active state, I told them about Aza. Then Kard discovered that she was missing. We ran into the room to inspect the scene and I retrieved a situational report of the night’s affairs from Grapnel. He hadn’t heard anything from inside the room but confirmed that no one had entered or exited through the door he was guarding. He did tell me that he suspected Aza might have been into espionage, as her behavior was in line with a spy’s. I shared my findings with Magnus and Rendar. Magnus was mostly bemused by the entire experience but was not moved into action; he sat down for a lengthy meal. Rendar agreed that there might be a problem so I spent the next minutes coming up with a plan for finding Aza while the other’s ate their first meal. I intended to use Rendar’s Mark of Finding to locate Stripes. To maximize the efficiency of his power, he and I would run through the city in a circular pattern, hopefully homing in on Aza’s location. Aleae and Clarion arrived just then; they had spent the night outside the city at a temple of the Sovereign Host called the Arcadium. I apprised them of the situation. Aleae was similarly bemused by the events and sat down to eat with Magnus—whose appetite seemed to exceed even Rendar’s. She thought I was being foolish; she is such a selfish creature. Kard, proving again his lack of sympathy and disdain for teamwork, left the tavern in order to pray at the Arcadium. Exacerbated, I left with Rendar to find the girl. Within minutes of running through the city in a military reconnaissance pattern, Rendar’s dragonmark powers detected the stuffed ghost tiger inside a warehouse down by the city’s docks. Winded, on account of his limited hominid body, he remained to keep watch over the warehouse and I marched hastily back to the tavern to assemble the party for support.

I was on a mission by that point. I had a clear military target and a strategy to achieve my goal. I ordered the rest of the party into action. My demeanor seemed to stun my companions, because this time nobody argued with me and they prepared to journey to the warehouse. A hungover Myrcose arrived in the tavern just as we were leaving. I gave him a quick situation report and he agreed to direct Kard to the warehouse once he returned from his poorly-timed pilgrimage.

At the warehouse again, I quickly positioned the party in strategic patrols alongside two walls of the warehouse. I formulated a plan whereby I would climb to a window 15 feet high and gauge the situation inside the building. Aleae demanded more of an active role, but I insisted on taking first recon. I instructed her to send arcane messages to me every 30 seconds so I could relay instructions from above. I infused a piece of chalk with the magical essence of stealth, causing its bearer’s form to shimmer slightly when viewed by an untrained eye. I climbed to the window and peered inside, but the dim lighting in the warehouse prevented me from seeing anything of note. I messaged Aleae to join me, her eladrin eyesight being better suited for the conditions. Meanwhile, Kard arrived with Myrcose, who immediately walked off to “tend” to an errant dock worker that had stumbled upon our growingly tense situation. The opposite side of this wharehouse complex was busy with dock workers and we had hoped to avoid their notice. Aleae gracefully jumped through the window onto a high stack of boxes, having seen no immediate danger, and I followed her. Magnus grew impatient and started mauling the locked door near him, prompting Rendar to run around the building’s corner to another locked door. I lost sight of Aleae as she delved deeper into the structure but I heard no signs of immediate danger so I infused my gemstone eyes with arcane light and made my way to the door that Magnus was emulsifying. There were stacks of crates blocking his path, so I started to move them to aid his progress into the building.

From across the dimly-lit, box-filled space, we heard the loud clamor of crates and boxes being forced apart. At about the time that Rendar breached his door, a large amalgamation of packed soil and chunks of rocks, formed into a 12-foot-tall humanoid shape, stepped into view in front of Rendar. I immediately recognized this creature to be an incarnation of the Earthly Elements. The situation turned to chaos instantly, as much of the party was not in communication. I furiously ruptured the boxes to let Magnus and Kard into the building, and Magnus set upon the creature with fury immediately upon entering.

Having identified the creature as an earth elemental, and knowing that the raw power of the elements could not be easily controlled, I determined it to be a threat. I set about preparing an elemental prod from one of my spent wands, a new and powerful infusion against such beings of the worldly essences. Just as I was about to use the infused wand to manipulate the spacial location of the elemental, it was swallowed up into the ground. Rather, it descended into the earth of its own volition and power; I knew that it would reappear in moments and I readied myself for the ultimate battle, elemental vs. artificer. Were my alchemical fluids capable of boiling in the way Magnus flew into a rage, I would have been smoldering hot. The arcane power within me flowed. I was ready for this earthly creation’s next move.