Aporeu chronicles Issue 68: Dirty Work for Jarvarax
Stories from the adventurers
This week
Some adventurers are helping an upstanding businessman and meet all kinds of trouble.
Naïlo, a big friendly Firbolg with some very interesting looking weapons. He has a cowboy hat, with a cute little thing hiding under it.
Aetvir, a Tiefling with a mechanical left arm. He was most helpful, and made sure I was able to keep fighting when things got a bit hairy.
Blaire, a lovely red-headed woman. Apparently an older sister to a woman named Kenzie. She's pretty good with words, as well as her bow.
GnArt, a rather.. active.. Gnome. Likes to talk a lot, and seems to take almost everything literally.
The note for the mission said we had to report at Mr. Jarvarax' office, so that's where we go. While we're walking, GnArt and Aetvir talk about mechanical stuff.
It seems that they're both 'Artificers', though GnArt has a mechanical.. thing.. that he rides around on, and Aetvir specializes more in the alchemical branch of things.
We have to go through a narrow alleyway, which is probably to make the ostentatious building look even bigger. This is the office to Jarvarax Holdings.
It's very early, about 7 in the morning, when we arrive there. We knock on the door, and a man with a uniform that doesn't really fit him opens the door for us.
Hobbes invites us in, and after talking a bit with the lady at the reception, we're led upstairs to the actual office, to receive our mission.
On the way there, we see some heavily armored guards standing watch. In the office, we see an elderly Green Dragonborn, lean and a bit lanky, with glasses that pinch onto his nose.
It's.. an experience. He certainly seems to think quite highly of himself. He has a list of tasks for us, but doesn't expect us to complete them all today.
Bit mean to say to people you're paying to do work for you. Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in a successful working relation, now does it?
I'm happy to inform you that we completed 3 out of the 4 tasks he assigned to us!
The first task was to clear some squatters from one of his properties that is slated for demolition. It.. wasn't as easy as it sounds, but more on that in a little bit.
The second task was figuring out why some of his tenants weren't paying their rent. That one also got a bit messy.
The third task was dealing with a wizard that didn't want to vacate her premises, after she had been told to move out. Something about experiments or something.
The fourth task was plumbing in one of his properties that wasn't working right, and the problem was somewhere in the sewers. We ended up not doing this one.
Jarvarax wants to get back to his work, preparing to show things to his investors or something, so we're escorted out of his office.
We decide to go check out the house outside the city walls first, and try to convince the squatters to leave. Peacefully.
As Naïlo knocks on the door to this run-down place, the whole thing falls off the hinges, and we startle some people inside, wearing red robes and using jagged red swords.
One of them runs off to their leader, the other charges at us. I couldn't get a clear shot at him, so I accidentally hit Aetvir. Sorry Aetvir, it was my first real fight as an Adventurer.
I think he didn't mind too much, because he helped me during the rest of the mission. Blaire and GnArt take this crazy guy out pretty quickly. Then we go inside, waiting for the leader.
But he never shows up. So we go downstairs, with Naïlo in the lead. He doesn't seem too happy about going underground, but he's brave.
As we get downstairs, we see 4 people on racks, one of which is passed out. And about 5 cultists and their leader, who is standing in some creepy red circle.
As I go in to try and take care of these crazy people their leader hits me with a bolt of lightning, and it hurt like hell. I didn't scream like he wanted me to, though.
Naïlo's courage inspires me to keep fighting on. The leader talks about some demon named 'Alvarez' or something, and this whole group seems to enjoy suffering.
So I take out the 2 cultists that were by me after Aetvir helps me get up after I pass out for a moment. I don't like that. Hope it doesn't happen too often..
I did my best to annoy these cultists by making their deaths quick, instead of letting them suffer. Had to get into the swing of things. Humans are a lot different from the beasts I trained on back home.
We manage to take out all but 1 of the cultists, which somehow manages to revive their slain leader into a grotesque being of bone and flesh.
Naïlo does some damage and distracts it, while I get behind it and cleave it in twain. There is.. a lot of blood. Good thing I learned how to clean things up quickly.
Aetvir picks up the creepy necklace that this guy was wearing, and Naïlo says there's necromantic energy in it. Sounds bad.
Dirty Work for Jarvarax by Lilith
Hello everybody! I heard that people love to read about what happens on missions. So I figured I'd try my hand at it. Hope you all enjoy! For my very first mission, I'm joined by 4 people, that were helpful. I can honestly say that without them, I wouldn't have been able to write this story for you! In the order that I met them, they are:
We have a quick breather upstairs, where I share some of the leftovers from the feast I made last night to hopefully brighten everyone's spirits a bit, and regain our strength for the next task.
As some of you reading this might know, I'm a pretty good cook, and everybody seemed to agree that my cooking was very good!
We head back into town, to see if we can figure out why some people aren't paying their rent to Mr. Jarvarax. We go by Old Man Harold's place first, and he offers us some tea and biscuits.
He tells us that the Thieves' Guild is asking people to pay 'protection money'. Which is apparently to protect the people from what the thieves do if you don't pay.
Which doesn't make any logical sense to me. But then again, I'm still amazed that there's apparently a whole guild dedicated to stealing things. They must not have anything better to do.
Must be nice, living in a world where people can come together and dedicate themselves to just stealing things because there's nothing useful to do with their lives.
The whole neighbourhood is suffering under this Thieves' Guild extorting money out of the people living here.
The next house we visit belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, and their 2 small children. GnArt and Naïlo wait outside, to see if we can find the Thief woman with the bright red cloak.
Who is apparently the leader for this group. Her name is Yvonne. She's not really very good at what she's supposed to be doing, I think.
Anyway, the Anderson family confirm Harold's story about the Thieves' Guild, and that Yvonne is the one calling the shots for that group of ruffians.
They had a bit of money left to enjoy a nice meal on Yule with their children. I tell them to come to the market that evening, and I'll make something nice for them, and the rest of the neighbourhood.
Aetvir tells her that I'm a great cook. He looked so happy as he said it, too!
Naïlo knocks on the door as he spotted the ruffians and Yvonne, so we walk outside to handle this issue. It's not very nice taking money from people like they were doing.
There's some talking, but Yvonne thinks that we're some easy prey. She was sadly mistaken. Blaire hits Aetvir with an arrow, but he didn't seem too angry about that.
I guess it helps that he likes to experiment, and sometimes things don't go as planned. We fight, and after I get knocked out in this fight as well (I really don't like that..), Aetvir helps me up once more.
As I get up, Naïlo knocks out the guy in front of me. I ask him if he's got the 2 left, and he says yes. So I put out the fire that had started somehow, before it could start burning any houses.
I then run up to a thug that was reloading his crossbow, and surrenders as he notices me standing in front of him. Smart man. I tie him up.
Another one tried to run away, and Naïlo was a bit too enthusiastic in stopping him. But, we have Yvonne and one of her thugs left as captives, sort of.
I pull the arrow that Blaire put into Yvonne's ass with expert hands. She'll be sore for a couple days, but it came out clean.
She hobbles off to deliver the message that Mr. Jarvarax does not take kindly to people trying to muscle in on his turf. We take the thug back to the office so Mr. Jarvarax can do with him as he will.
And then we head out to our last stop of the day, Ms. Sipho. The place looks.. let's say 'eccentric'. It's all kinds of colors, and clashes with the surrounding buildings.
I can see why she needs to vacate. As we walk up to the door and knock, the cyclops marking on the door opens its eye.
We try to knock, but hear nothing. So we try 'knocking', to no avail. GnArt tries something with the lock, but that doesn't work either.
We hear Sipho's voice after a bit, but she doesn't seem willing to talk to us properly until GnArt starts carefully removing the window.
As hyped up and distracted as he seems sometimes, he has some really good ideas from time to time.
Inside, we talk to Sipho, who doesn't seem to understand that Mr. Jarvarax wants her OUT of the house, regardless of her paying the rent or not.
It isn't until we tell her that there might be a nice location outside of the city walls, recently vacated of its tenants, where she could possibly move into.
The fact that it's not directly adjacent to any other buildings interests her quite a bit. Normally, a wizard would get a tower in the middle of nowhere.
But I can agree that having something slightly removed, but still close enough to town to get your regular supplies with a short walk sounds rather ideal.
Hopefully that will satisfy Mr. Jarvarax. Spoilers: It didn't. But he paid us as promised for the work we did.
With a minor reduction for only leaving the job half finished. Which is fair, I suppose.
Still, would it kill him to smile from time to time? Now I wonder if there might be something stuck up his behind..
Anyway, that's the story of my first mission as an Adventurer. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
I enjoyed writing it. Here's to many more successful missions!
Signed, Lilith of Jurassea.
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