Hmm, looks like I get to rejoin the Army again; although not so much out of choice, as presumably by machination. I was told to go to this meeting, where a motley crew were assembled. Two military officers, a couple of sorcerors, some kind of hedonist (a healer apparantly!), a large ex-bodyguard and a quiet guy. We were told that we were to join the Ninth Legion (the Raven), who were in the North East.
We agreed to meet up a couple of days later, and I was asked to get some horses. I'll have to spend some of that time to find out what I can about these people.... Assignment to the Raven is a bit of a mixed blessing (to say the least) - it gets me away from the desk, and it's back into the Military, where I want to be, but it's almost certainly an attempt to get me (and my new compatriots) out of the way for some reason.
Well, that was an interesting trip. We met up as planned. Takashi (one of the two military types) had gone on ahead, but Artan (the quiet one - another Nellens as it happens) hadn't turned up. We decided to leave him behind and set off.
We ran into Takashi a few hours later - he'd been stabbed in teh back and poisoned. Tulas was able to cure the poison with magic, and we carried on with Takashi on a stretcher. The innkeeper where he had been attacked was rather unhelpful, but by the time we'd stopped for the night we had learned that a group of black-cloaked assassins had tried to kill him. Perhaps associating with someone who'd injure the Lord High Taxgatherer's son wasn't one of my brighter ideas....
We made the rest of our way to the port relatively without incident, except that we had to race against a small army of these assassins to get into the city before they killed us all.
Once in the city we discovered that the port was closed due to smuggling, so we smuggled a ship out of the port (obtrusivly) in order to leave.
We were chased by the port's (slow) warship, but the three pirate ships were more worrying, and the Solar we found who escaped. We ended up killing most of the pirates, including a renagade Dragon Blooded who was their leader, and completing our journey with a small crew, and a brand new large pirate ship (with 6 balistas!). Oh, and some of the assassins had snuck aboard the ship, but we think they'd all died in the attack.
I bet we're even more popular back at home now...
Gah! Remind me not to piss off that seedy looking sorceror, Asilano. He's only gone and summoned a large, spiky, demon. OK, he was a bit of a wimp in combat, but summoning a demon is a bit of an overreaction!