Erdan doesn't have much experience with gods, animals, or animal gods. 

 ((Guidance should apply for Haseren))

(( Haseren MVP! )) 

The canine howls echo through the night, rising and falling in a near indistinguishable note of sound. Haseren, cocking your head you listen for a moment and are able to pick out individual 'voices' among the din, counting six distinct howls. Your experience leads you to but one conclusion: they hunt.  

The streets around you are dilapidated, potholes the size of small animals like pools of deepest darkness in the filthy streets. Rubbish and debris has been allowed to simply collect in the street, all picked clean a thousand times by scavengers bipedal and otherwise. 

A smell wafts in from ahead of you. A reek would perhaps be the more apropos description. It is like swampland mixed with an open sewer. Standing water allowed to stand too long, if where it were standing was also the destination for the filth of an entire city. 

The tale of the Flooded District is one well known to you. Thar's poorest slum during the days of the Empire's ascendance, it had nevertheless been home to a thriving and lively community of the city's lowest tier workers, day laborers and those down on their luck.

A mighty aqueduct, built centuries ago, towered over the district as it ran clean, fresh water from the river to the west to the palace and the wealthier districts in the southeast of the city. The Withering and the years of neglect and decay that followed saw maintenance of the ancient stone aqueduct slip further and further down the priority list of a ruling class itself rapidly descending into ennui and decadent escapism. Tragedy was, in hindsight, inevitable. 

A broken stone had been all it took to send first a trickle, but within minutes a flood of water pouring down into the district from high above. Tens of thousands of gallons of riverwater cascaded down, rapidly becoming trapped between the city walls and the rising city streets around the area. Hundreds died in the first hour, their soaked and bloated bodies trapped in their homes or simply floating face down in the still water. The sewers overflowed near immediately, the filth of a city washing up into the water until little remained. 

This was over three decades in the past. The flooded district, as it is now known, is an open wound on the city of Thar that weeps with the pus of neglect. It is a foul smelling, Gods forsaken place and the regular citizens of Thar avoid it like the plague. Unfortunately, beyond it lies what remains of the western gate. 

(( Reminder, if Dahme'dre hits you with guidance you can add d4 to your skill checks. Practically, I suggest you roll both dice pretty much every time >.> ))

Aio was taken aback by the sight and smell of the aptly-named Flooded District. She was not a big fan of large bodies of water. She knew how to swim, of course, but she wasn't very good at it. She had heard tell of a group of Aarakocra near the sea that could dive beneath the waves for minutes on end before soaring back to the sky, but she had no illusions that she could replicate those feats. Nor would she want to, not in this water. It looked and smelled like people had been dumping their waste here for ages. 

Never foul your own nest. This place is disgusting. 

Aio looked to the sky, noting there weren't as many lights in this part of the city. It was dark enough that she could take to the skies without worrying about being seen, not with her unnatural coloring and dark clothing. 

I would be leaving my companions. That Valen saved me... But I hold the scroll case. 

"I will fly ahead and make sure the gate is safe for you." Aio said, quickly spreading her wings and taking to the skies before anyone could object. 

I feel so much lighter up here. The wind on my feathers and earth far below me. This is freedom. This is peace. This is also far enough away from that muck that I can't smell it, so long as I'm moving quickly enough.

As Aio spreads her wings, Dahme'dre reaches out to brush the feathers, granting Aio Guidance for a brief duration.

"Return to us safely."

((Sagron, I have a question. Is the aqueduct still there or did it all collapse? ))  

(I always forget about it, but Valen has Guidance too. If we need to make more than 1 check per round, I can boost a second one.)

((I intend to cast or use a spell with this character in nearly every post. Emphasizing her comfort and reliance on magic. It's also why she's a woman. With a man he'd come off as an A-hole. Like all the Telekinetik guys in Looper.))

((Joe, sections of it are still standing but there are now huge gaps in it. Picture a stone bridge someone has taken irregular bites out of.)) 

The howls appear to be getting closer now, though still well out of visual range. 

Aio, you take a running leap and surge into the sky with the guiding magic of Dahme'dre seeming to linger on the very tips of your ebon-feathered wings.With a few powerful downward strokes you gain elevation, rising above the tallest of the still-standing tenements. You do not fly to high, because the darkness would completely obscure the ground and render your scouting flight self-defeating. Instead, you soar on aerials two dozen feet above the roofs of the buildings that flash by below you. 

The flooded district stretches out before you like a roll of black velvet marred by the misshapen lumps of those buildings still standing above the waterline. The few lights you can see are concentrated in clumps. Close to the party, still on what is effectively the 'shore' of the district, a single thieves lantern casts a soft light over a rickety wooden pier made of salvaged wood. Several small, rickety wooden boats are tied to this pier, and you spy several figures lounging nearby, one far too large to be human or even orc. 

Further west, well into the district itself is a platform constructed between two fallen buildings from the rotting timbers of several more. Lit by an eerilie glowing green brazier, the platform houses a shack and little else. The water ripples strangely around this platform, as if disturbed by something you cannot see. 

Finally, almost at the looming gates themselves, your eyes are drawn to a large building, at least four floors high. Once made of stone, it is now a mess of patches and makeshift repairs, wooden boards and masonry applied layer over layer to keep it standing. Two torches burn outside an improvised door just above the waterline, and a faint magic glow outlines a sign depicting a stylized face with its mouth open wide. From the roof of this building, a rope bridge has been slung to the top of the western city wall. 

As you circle back east in the direction of the group, your eyes pick out the faint traces of movement atop the water below. Boats, rafts or other flotation devices are moving over the surface of the water in multiple directions, but they are doing so without so much as a candle for light, their hulls painted black to further avoid detection. 

 

Aio made it back to the group and landed softly. 

"Black boats on the water with no lights. Smugglers, thieves, assassins, or the like. There's what may be a Goliath at a dock just down the shore. He has several boats. It must be how outsiders get around. This way." Aio said, moving in the direction of the small dock where she saw the boats. 

I hope they don't mind me ordering them about. It's not like we established a pecking order or anything, but I'm the scout - I should be able to tell them what the best move is, right? This place is bad news, though. I'm starting to wish we had gone straight for the North gate. Either way, there's no way I'm getting in one of those boats. There's no way I'd be able to take off from one of those dinky little things. I'll be flying, thank you very much.

"Sounds good to me. Speaking of, I don't like those howls. We better get moving."  Valen's cloak covers his right half to mask the bared sword in hand while the other displays his shield free of concealment. Most would expect one of his Order to be ready to defend, but only a fool would expect him to not be ready for a fight. Still, naked steel creates anxiety for everyone nearby and it is tactically prudent to keep enemies ignorant.

(Right, the Guidance, go me. And after I went and asked for it too. Well, at least the roll was good anyways. The spell does have a duration of only one minute, so I'll note that it must have been recast a few times during our six minute walk.)

After the first howls, Haseren tells to the others: "Six canines. Maybe wolves. They are on the hunt." While waiting for their scout to return, he keeps his ears alert for the howls, noting that: "They are getting nearer. Probably after us, then." 

When Aio returns, Haseren nods at his information and starts moving just after he does, striving to stay close by.

"Well far be it for me to buck custom." Dahme'dre's torch moves off and douses itself in the water. "I've never met a Goliath I didn't like. Let's go check out his stock."

Erdan will pull out his crossbow. No sense in tipping his hand and letting others know he can cast spells. 

"Lets go! You can make deals with thieves, not so much with wolves."

Quote from Laurender >>

(... The spell does have a duration of only one minute, so I'll note that it must have been recast a few times during our six minute walk.)

...

The party, moves swiftly. Your feet slapping against increasingly damp and broken cobblestones. Water begins to splash under your feet, barely an inch but stinking and filthy. Small bits of debris lie drenched and decaying, often half submerged in the muck. 

((Presuming you take to the skies to avoid getting your feet wet Aio)) 

Behind you, the howls grow closer, until they seem to echoing all around you. Then, suddenly, they cut off and you are left with only the sound of your splashing footfalls and ragged breaths. 

Ahead, the beginning of the makeshift peer looms out of the darkness, the single thieves lantern marking it out. 

Haseren, your foot just touches the first of the slats when a crossbow quarrel comes whistling out of the darkness behind you, nearly grazing your ear and splintering the post on your left. 

A precise voice dripping with arrogant confidence, with an accent reminiscent of Elvish calls out from behind you, "That was a warning shot, turn slowly and let us parley."

A heartbeat later, a strange pair emerge from the darkness by the peer, from a completely different direction than the voice and the quarrel. In the lead is a halfling, small even for that diminutive race. He is wrapped in layers upon layers of dark cloth, as if he scavenged a dozen dour haberdasheries and wove the contents of each around his person. The wrappings cover him entirely, with only his eyes twinkling in the darkness. A special gauze fabric covers his mouth and nose, no doubt to make being in the foul smelling flooded district bearable. Valen, you notice that in the folds of the many layered fabrics are the hilts of many, many daggers and knives of varying sizes and shapes. 

In stark contrast to his small companion, the second stranger is a moving mountain. Taller by a full head and a half than even Haseren, he is almost as broad as he is tall, his very passage before the thieves lantern momentarily plunging the area into semidarkness. It is clear from one look that what stands before you is, if not a true ogre, then certainly a half-ogre. Armored in thick hide leather with seemingly random objects sewn into it, he looms over the surroundings. On his shoulder is a giant oar, which someone has taken the time to band with strips of iron. 

The halfling positions himself carefully, keeping you all between him and the source of the quarrel and says in a thin, reedy voice, "Look Bruja, some desperate souls have landed in our laps, making their troubles ours no doubt."  He rubs his hands together theatrically, as if lamenting the ill fortune. Bruja, for his part, just looms and glares at you all with an expression of barely contained rage, which on consideration might just be his resting expression. 

Valen will step forward, shifting his arms and cloak slightly to allow his pommel to peek out. He knew these were not reputable or pious types, but he wondered if these had any connection to the dark boats Aio reported. Replying in Elvish, "We mean no harm, but those behind us of are different intent. I would happily parley my services if you might grant us passage to this city's exit. You seem to be the type to value discretion and mutually benefitial arrangements." He dared not invoke The Bastion, lest he be seen as a ransom target.

Erdan will step forward as well, lowering his crossbow and raising one arm

"We  apologize for arriving unannounced. We did not intend to bring you trouble, but some... what did they call themselves.. .Jurists attacked the bar we happened to be at. They did not appreciate the fact that we survived. As my multilingual friend here said, we would gladly offer our services to you for safe passage out of the city. We are a skillful bunch, and I feel that would be worth more to you then coin."

(Persuasion? 18)

Aio circled above the group. There was a bit of a stand-off, but it didn't look like they were in immediate danger. She was still trying to make up her mind about whether or not she should come to their aid or continue on to Salvadar without them should they get into another scuffle. 

I was wrong. Definitely not a Goliath. I could probably hit the halfling at the first sign of trouble, but not before he clears a knife. I hope they can talk their way out of this. 

Dahme'dre prepares her oration as Erdan begins to speak. She lets out a breathe and leaves him to handle that but granting him Guidance to aid him. (1 if you'll allow)