A Time To Be Thankful
A white haired woman known as “Faust” sauntered down the street early in the morning of the fourth day of the forty-third week of the year. She intended to aid a companion in need of an escort to Aradia. Out from the adjacent armory walked an inattentive woman with extraordinarily long black hair followed by a massive hulk of a man concealed in a robe. The white haired female jumped out of their way as to not cause a collision, and the pair apologized for not having watched their path, and went on their way. Faust, upon entering the coffee bar, not knowing exactly what the companion looked like decided to have a drink before she began to question people. Up to the bar approached a simple man from the former Iga Province. His name was Tobata, and he too had found interest in the job posted in Farrah’s Help center by the Companion. He too occupied his time by having a cup of coffee.
Already waiting inside was a wolf-folk man by the name of Kyru Siencyn questioning whether the halfling’s cooking was really region famous, while waiting to embark upon the very same mission both Faust & Tobata waited on. Outside a Gray Elf woman, Lirael Tathmieln, marched up on back of her companion Winter Wolf, Turin, encountering a man hitching his horse outside. Upon attempting to speak with the man, they found he was mute and could only speak through complex sign language. As Lirael entered the bar with him, she handed him a small slip of paper and asked his name and what he was up to as she was unable to properly understand his signing. He introduced himself as Roger Moreley and informed her that he intended to aid a companion in travel to Aradia.
As the elven woman read aloud the note, it prompted a man with brown hair in the back of the coffee shop to put down his book. Upon seeing the flock of people in the restaurant he inquired as to whom all were there to aid a companion in travelling to Aradia. The five adventurers’ intent to do so all made themselves known. The man became flustered as he introduced himself as Harmon Lujas and began to explain he was the very companion whom had posted the help request, but had only intended to hire a single person to aid him. As if by divine intervention, a large group of people marched past the coffee house making such a ruckus that it brought everyone’s attention to the commotion going on outside.
The group outside were all walking away from an aggravated man whom stepped with angered purpose after them, shouting all form of obscenities at them and ordering them to turn back. “You’re all under contract to remain on duty for the next three months! Now get back here now!” he clamored after them.
One turned back holding an official looking slip of paper between his fingers. “Yeah? Well try upholding a contract you don’t have!” they shouted back at the aggravated man whilst ripping the page before him in twain, leaving the aggressor behind.
The man following behind had thrown his hat to the ground and began stomping on it in his rage until he was approached by Harmon. “Frank, um, what seems to be the problem?” the companion inquired.
“You know this guy?” Kyru asked as he filed outside alongside the others.
“Well, yes, he’s the conductor of the train I was intending to ride to Aradia on.” Harmon replied.
“Well, not anymore. That was my entire damn guard crew. I can’t run this transit without having proper security on board.” Frank began to exposit “Ugh! I am going to have a mess of paperwork to go through.”
Inspiration instantly struck Harmon and he proposed to Frank that the group whom had all shown up to aid him could instead be the replacement guard crew for the train ride. The conductor inquired about their skills to Roger whom could not directly answer, but Frank still jumped on the offer as it would relieve him of much needed stress. He told them to show up to the train as intended and he would pay them all well for helping him out. The group disbanded temporarily to gather amenities for the trip and all reconvened by the boarding station. There Harmon explained the plan for which he had intended. They would be traveling to the city of Aradia for the tri-annual companion festival, but they would first be making a stop in the city of Otylia. Just a few hours walk outside of Otylia laid a temple of the temporal deity Ganzen, where Harmon intended to pray at before the festival. The companion told them that he could not pay them all as well as the guard job, but if they aided him he could bring them to the festival as his personal guests. With what seemed like a simple job and some R&R time to follow before them, the five of them agreed and began to gather themselves for the trip ahead.
Before embarking on the train at midday, the group met another person whom would be travelling along with them. A scatter brained Catfolk architect named Keiben Luvo. The group all boarded the train and agreed to begin taking proper shifts guarding the train. The guard group began to then socialize with the others riding the train; Shelly Kibent, a young woman selling souvenirs and snacks in her own cart, Marietta Firenza, an elven noblewoman whom constantly had her half-brother servant , Morris, carry a covered glass case, Alexander Esstman, the timid junior conductor of the train, Bart Demovire, a dwarven nobleman of some martial training, Robert Hartigan, a straight forward custodian whom headed up the back of the train carts, and Marcus Pilovich Vidat, the hot headed Halfling chef of the train.
In the early morning of the second day of their train ride, as Lirael attempted to convince Roger to not attempt to hitch his bedroll to the top of the train to obtain a better visual vantage point the pair of them witnessed a flock of both doves and ravens flying above past the train on its same path, some of which seemed to be carrying a strange object. The birds disappeared from view, and the two thought nothing more of it. As the day waxed on, Kyru grew more and more suspicious of Marietta’s covered case, until he demanded she reveal what was under it. Without true regard to his care she told Morris to reveal the cases contents; a well preserved black flower. Something itched at the back of the wolf-folk’s mind as if he’d seen the plant before, but he was unable to pin down precisely where he had seen it before. He left her quarters with his suspicion still aroused.
Faust was not like most other women. She used her time and effort to learn more like most other people, but her area of focus was the undead. More specifically, raising and controlling them. Thusly her “pet hummingbird” was no hummingbird. An evil creature of demonic origin, “Billy Jean” as he called himself, became quite hungry. With Faust walking through the mount car on her guard patrol, she noticed Roger’s horse just sitting idly by. The White haired woman left her pet to his own designs in the cart as she walked further down the way.
However before the Quasit know as Billy could have his hungry way with the unsuspecting horse, Roger came along on his watch’s shift. Seeing his horse being attacked by a strange creature set off the mute man to protect the one thing he still truly had, alas, Roger’s efforts were in vain. The horse fell paralyzed stuck between the panelings of the mount car’s stable due to the poisonous attacks of Billy. The demon left the equine creature to its fate, while roger sought out help.
Distraught and confused he attempted to enlist aid from Faust whom had been walking by, however upon her touching the horse it reeled backwards n pain, for no small reason as she had utilized her magic abilities to further injure it. Protective of his mare Roger began to assail the white haired woman as Lirael passed by. Lirael quickly broke the tow up shuffling Faust on her way and tried to understand Roger’s signing, to no avail. Fed up with no one understanding him and enraged at his circumstances, roger sliced open his hand with one of his daggers and began to attempt to write in his own blood to convey his problem. Finally able to understand Roger’s plea, Lirael tried to calm him down and assure him that Faust seemed odd, but it was doubtful that she scratched the horse up.
Tobata arrived in the mount cart alongside Kyru right then to see Roger waving around a blood soaked sheet of paper. Upon the pair of them asking what had occurred, Lirael explained that his horse had fallen ill due to an unknown cause and would soon die from being prone and crushed under its own weight. Tobata posited that it was no more than a horse and Roger need no get in a crazed fervor, which only set Roger off even further. The mute man attempted to choke the monk, prompting the martial artist to temporarily stun him, allowing Kyru to overtake him with his incredible strength. With Roger restrained they tied him up and began to deliberate on what to do with the dying horse.
In the meantime while all the other guards were either sleeping or in the mount cart deliberating, Faust was thinking of way to change her appearance, for reasons unknown. She encountered the shop girl in her cart and purchased some hair dyes and needed to visit a bathroom. She entered Keiben’s bathroom, in order to utilize the dye, but not before proper using its facilities. When she went to flush the toilet, it began to quickly overflow. She sought help from the custodian whom had been making his rounds cleaning and he had to shut off the magi-tech system powering that restroom due to the overflow, putting Keiben’s bathroom out of use.
Faust apologized to the custodian for the inconvenience and they were both on their separate ways. She reconvened with Billy whom informed her that his dinner was essentially sealed. Hearing this, Faust decided to use the newly bought dye on his feathers throwing some of the red dye out the train on her “bird”.
The group decided to put the horse out of its misery and throw it from the train so that it would not deteriorate. First they allowed Roger to proper take the horse out of its misery, and then they all tossed the horse from the train, in time for Kyru to notice a splotch of red dye fly by. The wolf-folk looked out to see Faust and her bird looking back from a few carts ahead. Both parties just ignore the strange sight and went back to their business.
The rest of the guards kept Roger penned within the mount cart due to his lashing out and strange actions. During the night however, Turin met with Faust while they were on patrol. Billy prompted Turin to speak seeing as Billy had been consistently aware that the winter wolf could speak. All them now knowing this, they decided to give Roger a good spook and make him believe he was going insane by having all of them say “We’re gonna get you!” to him and simply walk off as if nothing had happened. The plan worked as Roger’s psyche went further downhill.
Faust went to go visit Harmon and requested if she could be with him for the night and render her his services. He agreed as she was his guest to the festival as he would to any of the guards. As they finished their session, Faust was come upon by a vision of the Drow deity of Lust Leyna. The necromancer asked of the deity where she could obtain a greater power. The Drow deity told her of the Demi-Devil Deity Kazerabet and that she could locate a way to her in the capital city of Belva. That night during Tobata’s watch he nearly fell from the train severely injuring his legs, but he was able to tend to his own wounds before consequence came of his injury.
The next day would end up passing without consequence if not for the death of Keiben whom had died apparently after sitting upon Bart’s toilet. All of the guards, save Roger whom had been moved from being held in the mount cart to the guard quarter cart, came rushing to the scene to see what had happened. Due to her extensive experience with poisons Faust immediately recognized the poison to be that of the black lotus extract. With this knowledge out in the open, Kyru went to question Marietta on her ownership of a black lotus, which he had realized with the revelation of the poison. She revealed to him in an intensely displeased fashion that the flower was an heirloom of her family, and was of a non-poisonous variety. Kyru stormed off back to his job displeased with his findings and intent to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder.
The next day the guard crew set off to investigate the happenings of the prior day, intent to keep the remainder of the passengers safe. Bart put forward that he may be the next target due to the fact that the toilet that had been poisoned was his. Needing all the aid they could get, the other guards decided to let Roger loose and return to guard patrol. The other guards needed rest due to having been up longer than preferred. On his patrol during the morning Roger found a small pile of dust of unknown origin. He left it marked with a caltrop, and went back to his patrol.
When the other guards awoke later in the day after proper rest, Roger had become quite tired and returned to the guard cart without informing anyone of the dust he found. Ever her mischievous self, Faust at this point took it upon herself to attempt to further ruin Roger. Using her magical ability, she blinded him in his sleep. When he awoke he was intensely distraught and suffered massive panic attacks due to his new blinded status. Both Tobata and Kyru began to patrol during the night and with Turin’s help, they located a glove with Black Lotus residue in Marietta’s bathroom. They consulted the custodian as to a place they could put it. Robert allowed them to place it in the secret hold in the luggage area that also held official documents and part of the emergency brake for the train.
Along their way back to the front of the train, Tobata had a bit of a misunderstanding pertaining to Lirael, leading him to believe her to just realizing she was pregnant. Such was not the case, but the stress from the job and travel had been getting to the elven woman, and she decided she would be better off with a bit of rest. The sixth night of the train ride began to wax onward. Faust continued to search the train asking Robert if the rest of the group had happened upon anything. The custodian gladly gave her access to the lockbox in the luggage cart so that she could further investigate the glove, then he closed the box. Using Billy’s shape-shifting abilities to transform her demonic companion into a wolf, she began to attempt to track the scent of the residue on the glove. In the first class set of carts Turin was patrolling after hearing the noise of a struggle and came upon Bart whom quickly incapacitated the Wolf with a smelling salt pellet. The winter wolf had just enough time to send an empathic alert to Lirael from down the train which awoke her from her nap.
Lirael rushed down the train in order to aid her companion quickly followed behind be Kyru, Tobata, & Faust all of whom had seen her bolting down the way and assumed an emergency. Roger had begun wandering blindly down the hallway of the train attempting to discern what was occurring all around him due to the raucous noise; however he was of no real aid in the long run. When the guard crew arrived to Turin’s position, they found that Bart had already slain Morris and had made his way into Marietta’s room in order to attempt to assassinate her as well. They all broke down the down to quell the dwarven assassin, but not before he had landed his blow on the sarcastic elven woman and nearly escaped capture out the window.
They eventually subdued him and brought the elven noblewoman back from the brink of death, with no thanks from her though. The group then incarcerated Bart to the mount cart of the train and attempted to interrogate him as to his reasoning. It wasn’t until Faust began summoning undead monstrosities before him as a scare tactic that he spilled his ploy. He had intended to assassinate Marietta all along the train ride, having bribed the prior guard crew to break their contract. However when the new set of guards was hired in almost no time, he had to adjust his plans. He rigged Keiben’s toilet to malfunction, so that the cat-folk man would need to use his toilet, knowing that Marietta would be too prideful to allow someone else to use hers. He laced his own toilet seat with poison and killed the architect to throw suspicion from himself. Then when the guards were all distracted down the way he would make his final move and slay her. However with Turin’s interference, his plan failed.
In Marietta’s room as Lirael attempted to reorganize things, she heard a strange rumbling coming from the black bladed sword that Bart had dropped in the fight. She reached out for it and took it in her hand. As she wielded the blade it began to speak to her, inquiring if she was the new master. When she complied to its questioning it shaped itself into a kukri, Lirael’s weapon of choice, and informed her to “find them and feed them” to it.
With the train calmed down, the final day of the trip passed without consequence and the group arrived in the stop-over in Otylia. Bart was taken into custody by the IFCS along with the remains of Morris and Keiben as evidence. Frank expressed to the group that despite their slight bumbling, that they fared better than the prior guard group. He paid all of them the rate he had quoted them before, save for Roger, whom he made pay for the ride due to having contributed nearly nothing. The group then began the trek to Ganzen’s Temple just an hour outside of the city. Along the way the group began to question Lirael as to how she obtained the strange black kukri, to which she was very evasive. It caused a great deal of tension for Turin as its mental messages to Lirael were causing mental distress for the wolf as well.
Upon arriving at the temple, Harmon made his prayer to the temporal deity and then found a strange anomaly in the prayer chamber. A door had opened as his prayer went on, that he had not seen when he had visited before as a child. Curious, he asked the group if they would venture further into the temple. Seeing no real problem with doing so they all continued in, leaving Faust and Roger to watch the entrance. Faust took this opportunity to further debilitate Roger and deafen him, but removed his blindness, but she was prompted to bring him down further at the sound of familiar voices down below. Upon descending they found themselves faced with a large chess board and an illusory image of the temporal deity Ganzen herself with an outstretched hand. Harmon unsuspectingly shook her hand, and the group found themselves positioned in place of the missing pieces on the board playing a game of chess against the goddess of time herself, or at least a projection of which. Kyru began to give proper order to their side for tactics and led the group to win eventually.
The game was not without consequence however. During the course of the chess match both Turin and Tobata had been captured, and they were not given back to the group until the group questioned where they were minutes after the game had ended. Upon returning Tobata however, Ganzen placed a strange grey glow in his chest. To this the ninja monk replied “Thanks?”
“You won’t be thanking me.” The temporal deity told him as he returned to the land of the living proper.
The six of them continued forward into the temple and reached a long sanctuary like room, where a haggard man holding a severed hand was walking towards a strange sphere with a symbol of Ganzen inside. Lirael quickly shot down the strange man with a single arrow, revealing a ghost to be possessing him. The ghost then let out a long continued wail, at which the group began to fall into a slumber.
In their sleep all of the adventurers were stricken with horrid nightmares. Faust stricken by memories of her sister who slayed her family and village, Tobata by a previous failure in front of one of his teachers, Turin & Lirael frightened by visions of attack from each other, Kyru by visions of surreal armies marching by him, and Roger by odd recurrences of his life flashing by. Both Faust and Kyru used their wits and their will to resist the nightmarish visions. Tobata and Roger though try as they might were not proper able to completely shake them off, with Roger now partially blinded by an infinite abyss and Tobata wracked by visions of his disapproving superiors.
Whilst the group had been occupied with shaking off their terrors, the strange ghost with only one hand had possessed Harmon and began walking back towards the sphere at the front of the sanctuary room. Faust had quickly picked up the black bladed weapon that Lirael had dropped during her nightmare. The Blade began to speak to her asking if she was the new master, and she replied in the affirmative and it shaped itself into a scimitar for the spell caster.
The sword informed her that it could rid the ghost from Harmon, but would need more mental power than just her, so she grabbed Tobata and touched the scimitar to Harmon’s possessed body. The spell caster and the monk ninja both experienced strange visions as they delved into Harmon’s nightmare. They arrived before a burning mansion, and inside found a library full of drugs, and encountered Harmon cowering before a monstrous elven woman with an image of the ghost standing idly by laughing. The pair of them freed Harmon from the nightmare by slaying the ghost both within the dreamscape and outside within the real world after it was forced away from the companion.
With the ghost destroyed the group began to collect themselves back together. Faust picked up the severed hand that the possessed haggard man had been carrying and stowed it away from sight, sensing some strange property about it. As they began to leave however, the grey glow within Tobata grew bright and covered his entire body. A large gray sphere expanded before the adventurers almost instantly and died off just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving behind an attractive woman in scant clothing with long dark brown hair, sporting two small demonic wings at her back. She gazed upon the dumbfounded crew and companion with satisfaction declaring that everything had gone off perfectly for her.
Hot on her heels however, another gray glow expanded and disappeared this time leaving behind four people. One man with olive skin, sporting both a brown and black goatee, glasses and a scar running across his left eye, clothed in a loose fitting purple and black robe, shouted for the rest to seize her. The others were a woman seemingly made of golden metal components, clearly of construct nature, an adult fire giant whom sported a pair of wings at his back and was lit aflame, and another man tan in complexion with short brown hair, wearing a black leather jacket with an odd metal brace around his heavily tattooed left arm.
However, upon arriving the construct woman flashed with energy and fell to the ground seemingly inactive, and the woman with wings at her back simply disappeared in a flash. Upon the construct woman falling inactive the three men began to attempt to communicate with each other, but apparently could not, shouting in completely unintelligible words to each other. The fire giant went into a coughing fit and the flames surrounding his body dissipated. Completely dumbfounded the six adventurers tried to communicate with the three men. The olive skinned man stepped forward and cleared his throat to speak in a clear and concise voice with every word seemingly plotted out beforehand. He inquired as to who the all were. When the group introduced themselves individually, the man seemed to revile himself at the mention of Faust’s name.
He introduced himself as Yuri, and his companions as Shi Goto and Francis. After inquiring what country they were in, he began searching through his bag, asking that the group’s leader step forward. Kyru approached the man whom had pulled out about seven hundred platinum pages and whispered to Kyru to make sure no one mentions him and his friend’s arrival and for Kyru to slay Faust at his closest convenience. Kyru gladly accepted the money and informed the others not to speak of them, and the three walked out with the woman slung over Shi’s shoulder with Francis concealing the pair of wings on his back beneath his cloak. The group followed out behind them returning to the city to take up lodgings for the night at an inn.
They once again saw Yuri and his companions speaking to a young looking woman in front of an old residence. Tobata overheard Yuri mentioning the name Chan Vanda as they were leaving the house coming towards the inn. The Monk questioned him on whom Chan Vanda is, and Yuri reminded him that Chan Vanda is a mover and shaker in the magi-tech development sector, and to mind his manners by not eavesdropping on people’s conversations. The night passed without problem and the next morning around 8 the group convened for the train met by Harmon’s coworkers on the transit also traveling to Aradia for the tri-annual companion festival. Frank, whom had been filling out paperwork at the station due to the incident, also boarded the train as its conductor. The three men from the temple still carrying the metallic woman also boarded intent to travel to Aradia as well. While boarding Roger noticed a small creature of black textured skin with small teeth on its underside crawl under the train, but thought nothing of it.
Upon boarding, Yuri stopped Faust in the middle of the hallway to confront her. Faust was completely unaware of what he was so angered with her for, seeing as how she had never seen him before but he seemed to know all about her. Yuri began to become very violent with her and was only halted by Francis’ intervention, which spoke to him in a very strange dialect of the giant language, and made him lay off of his attack of Faust. All the adventurers sat around being merry for a job had been well done for their trip, socializing with the companions and drinking and being merry. However, their job was far from over.
The group awoke in the morning to the sound and feel of many small creatures crawling all around them in their rooms. The entirety of the group found themselves surrounded by the same small black creatures that roger had seen one of boarding the train the prior day. The rest of the passengers on the train had seemed to disappear as well. They all began fighting their way through the tiny beasts, while trying to discern what precisely was going on. The train lurched forward suddenly at an increased speed. The group split to begin investigating, Lirael, Faust and Roger going topside to find the source of the creatures, and Kyru, Tobata and Turin inside the train to discern the speed problem, first searching for the emergency brake piece in the hold. Upon arriving in the luggage area, they found the emergency brake piece missing from the now eaten through compartment on the bottom by the creatures.
Topside, Faust and Lirael found a large mass of the creatures that were red in color. Roger had fallen prey to the poison of the creatures, falling unconscious and pulled towards the large mass of the other passengers. The other passengers were all huddled together atop the train by the black creatures. Lirael fired an arrow upon the red mass of creatures inciting a horrid shriek, as the mass of tiny creatures began to conglomerate into a single massive unit the entire width of the train it stood upon. The passengers and Roger were alike pulled in. Faust began using her summoning abilities to call undead aid to the fight as Lirael attempted to get in closer. In jumping across the distance between the carts a mass of remaining monsters caught her foot as she leapt off causing her to fall to the ground between the train carts. She only barely managed to catch herself on the connecting piece between the train cars and pull herself up. She had lost her left leg in the fall and was trapped between the carts in immense pain being surrounded by more and more black creatures.
As Kyru headed topside to aid Faust, Tobata ran to the conductor’s cart and asked what Frank’s status was. Turin, hearing an empathic cry from Lirael, rushed to the junction where she was stuck and aided her in fending the beasts off. Kyru arrived topside and used his superior martial prowess to destroy the monsters atop the train. Frank informed Tobata in the conductor’s cart that the monsters were gumming up the works of the magi-tech engine, had broken the main brake access and that they needed to activate the emergency brake. Knowing the emergency brake part was gone, and having learned earlier from a talk with Frank on their way to Otylia that one of the machines in the conductor’s cart was part of the engine, he put all of his force into attacking the engine piece in hopes of dead-stopping the train. Doing so caused an explosion to backfire against him and Frank.
Upon seeing this, Frank quickly shouted that the part he destroyed was only the regulator and now the train would increase in speed. The train indeed started to scream down the tracks. Tobata asked what would happen if they were to reach their destination going this speed and couldn’t stop. Frank informed him that they would just crash, but seeing as how the sensors for the tracks were sending signals down to the next station, at this speed the IFCS would have been informed and would need to obliterate the train with magic in order to prevent as many civilian casualties as possible. Meaning in short, if they didn’t stop the train soon they would die by disintegration from the IFCS. Just as Frank finished his statement, they both watched some paperwork float by the front windshield being carried along by the mass of creatures. Quick thinking led Tobata to realize that the creatures may still have the emergency brake part up top, and he made haste to go search for it.
Inside the mass of creatures, Roger awoke from the poison to see the other passengers and some belongings floating around between the creatures being bitten at constantly, all unconscious. He saw the piece of the emergency brake and quickly reasoned out that since it resembled the machinery of the train it was of importance and began to move towards it to grab it in the mass. Tobata arrived to aid Kyru and Faust in destroying the mass of creatures topside, while Lirael and Turin fought back the vicious creatures from encroaching upon the one legged woman. Upon knocking away enough of the tiny monstrosities, the red core creature was revealed and with e swift stroke of his sword, Kyru obliterated the beast, and the huddled hive mind mass all melted away from the passengers and belongings with Roger holding up the emergency brake.
Roger tossed the brake to Tobata, and the monk and warblade ran down the train making haste to activate the brakes as Roger awakened and collected up the people back to the carts. The two arrived in the caboose to activate the e-brake just in the nick of time to avoid disintegration, and the train slowed to a stop just on the outskirts of the city. Entering in, their wounds were taken care of and amended due to having saved the train from crashing. All was right and the day had been proper saved. Faust had undeafened Roger; her fun finished, and went to go attempt to obtain magical components. Upon arriving the shop keep mistook her presence for her sister Priscilla’s. The man fled after realizing his mistake and shooting a line of black lightning at Faust and missing. He left behind only a coin with a symbol of an eagle flying over a mountain. The group joined Harmon and his coworkers in the festivities in the city for the festival as guests and all would be well.
End of Episode Four Part A
Home 