The Kaldahar Chronicles: Session 4, Part 2

Chapter 2: The Trial

The trial commenced in the morning after a night full of scheming.  The following plans were in play:

      My plan – sit in the back of the room and listen to the trial.  If they get off, great.  If they don’t, take note of the position of the hanging/execution block, go outside, and create an arcane portal that they could just step through and then run like mad.

  

      Dalziom’s plan – Plead his case honestly and calmly, as right was on his side.

  

      Ika’s plan – At first, I don’t know, apart from be at the trial.  Later on though, she came up with by far the most sensible plan, apart from perhaps Dalziom

  

      Seraphim’s plan – Find a way in through the sewers and make something up on the fly.

  

            Gotrek’s plan – A truly cunning plan.  As we shall see.  One minor flaw in it though.

Theme for the day: Lolcats.  There's a picture for every situation!

 Keep in mind, most people didn’t know each other’s plans, as in-party communication is not our strong point at the best of times, two of them were unreachable, and Gotrek was just devious and forgetful.  So yes, nothing could go wrong here...

I entered the courthouse, disguised in my face-obscuring noble clothes, and took a seat by Ika in the back.  Seraphim went looking for an entrance to the sewers, using Hand of Fate liberally to find his way.  Dalziom and Gotrek stood on the platform before the judge, and the trial began.  The judge read out the charges, and asked how they pleaded.  Dalziom replied Not Guilty, but Gotrek merely tipped a guard a nod and suddenly I was in manacles and being brought to the front of the room (anti-magic manacles of course.  They were prepared).  The dwarves were let off completely free and given their items back, and I was left on the platform to be judged for my crimes which now (after my incident in the alley) comprised a list of just about every crime they had, including offending the local elementals in the population by my use of frost-based spells!  I felt rather...betrayed.  But I remained optimistic that perhaps, just perhaps, Gotrek had a plan to get me out too.

And he did.  Oh god... he did.

Gotrek walked out of the building quickly and intently, followed by a bewildered Dalziom.

“Right,” Gotrek said briskly to Dalziom, the dwarven cleric of Kord.  “Quick, run on down to the temple of Kord and get them to save their fellow devotee.  They’ll get him off no problem, a dutiful cleric of Kord like.... oh.”

Rob, playing Gotrek, and forgotten who was whom.  He thought that I was the cleric of Kord, not Dalziom.  No.  I was an eladrin wizard, and the temple of Kord would not help me.  He in fact, had no way of saving me.  He’d simply gotten muddled up.  I had in fact tried to get the temple folk to get them to help Dalziom, but they took one look at my face and thought only of the bounty on my head.  I had to run away very quickly.

So, I was on trial, the dwarves were going to be no help, Ika was present but fairly helpless when in a room full of mages and soldiers.  Only two options remained: Seraphim, the only person in the city more wanted than me, could find a way to save me, or I could argue my case myself and clear my name.

A third option appeared, however.  Ika remembered that I was currently carrying the chest and the staff that the High Lord Odonel had sent us after.  If I was killed, they would be lost.  She ran out of the court and sprinted for his mansion.  Light dawned at the end of the tunnel.  I didn’t know she had done this, but there was hope for me yet.

Then Seraphim arrived on the scene, oblivious to the previous occurrences.  He did, to be fair, a much better and more thought out job than Gotrek, especially considering he had expected to arrive to rescue two dwarves and now found me shackled and stripped of my magic.  He spent the twenty minutes it took for the court to calm down again and the judge to read out my many crimes preparing two rituals – one to set up a distraction, and the other to remove the mage’s ability to cast by Silencing the area they sat in.  Then he moved in to get me out.

By this point I felt that my only hope lay in arguing my case, so I did so.  The first charge was aiding and supporting a known criminal (Seraphim).  It was as I was starting to explain myself and my relationship to the archcriminal that the man himself suddenly appeared and began carrying me off.  A Magic Mouth began screaming incoherently on the other side of the courtroom to distract people and after casting Spider Climb, he began climbing up the side of a wall with me in one arm.

The judge was distracted from this by the letter he was handed.  Ika had made it to the High Lord’s house and a letter had been dispatched that cleared me from all charges.  However, as the judge was reading it, the rescue attempt was already underway.  Naturally, I tried to continue my defence by screaming, “Somebody help me!  I’ve been kidnapped by a total stranger!”

Seraphim told me to shut up and cast a spell to get us out of the room as soon as he got the manacles off of me.  He cast Eldritch Blast on them, and rolled to hit, as Marius said “Just in case you botch.”

He botched.  My hands were incinerated, and the flesh was fused together so that my hands were completely inoperable.  The manacles did come off though.  In mind-numbing pain and having difficulty reaching my orb, I grabbed the nearest spherical object – Seraphim’s head – and, somehow, cast Arcane Gate.