As we left it, the party had just been released from the prison on bail and were heading towards the inn for a meeting with Hadar. They arrived at the inn but were told Hadar had left to complete some business. Resolving to wait until the man returned with their payment, the party spent an evening in the inn's tap room. There they analysed the paper Emily had found. Rather unfortunately, it appeared to have been written by Gregore's son. Since the usual cries of "What ho! We must slay this enemy!" seemed a little inappropriate, the party decided instead to find out all they could from the Father of Evil as Beard wasn't becoming known. Apparently the young man's name was (and is) Strauss - named for a famous musician according to Gregore and not, as Emily first thought, after a pudding. This brought about much debate. Is there a pudding called Strauss? There certainly was where Emily grew up, but when they tried to order some from the waitress all they received was a blank look. A brief description later, however, and a bowl of the stuff appeared on the table in front of them. Sharing a few mouthfuls around the inn proved very popular and Strauss was added to the inn's menu shortly afterwards.
Throughout the discussion, Ug had looked like he had something on his mind. Finally he asked the important question: "So, this legal thing then. What's going on?" Answers were varied on that score. Gregore explained that they would be questioned in a court of law regarding the fight in the street and a jury of men, presided over by a judge, would decide based on the evidence whether all they had done was defend themselves and hence be released with no charges. Emily described the trial as a roomful of people who would decide guilt based on such factors as social status of the accused, size of bribe, potential size of future bribes, potential favours, level of blackmail being applied, what the weather was like...
Emily was hailed a cynic.
The evening wore on. The party decided that skipping bail was a poor choice and they would face trial like the men they were. Which is to say they would lie continuously about anything to do with magic and instead keep insisting they were attacked by "persons unknown". Emily, for her part, was already a fugative and hence decided to simply stay hidden during this difficult period. With the Strauss flowing, a pleasant evening was had by all, although Beard was more grumpy than usual when he lost to Confucious at chess.
Finally the party went to bed. All except Emily, who decided that if she couldn't save the party from the inevitable corruption in the legal system she'd sort out the legal system before the party faced it. To this end, she slipped out of the inn and headed for the seedy area around the river docks to partake in one of her least favourite sports - Hooker Baiting. It was easy to find a lovely young woman who was eager to fulfill her every desire. The lovely young woman seemed a little more reluctant to follow through with her promises when Emily told her she only wanted information. Although this wasn't the most subtle of questioning approaches, some clarification was needed when Emily, in an attempt to find a contact in the local thieves guild, asked "So are you looked after?" and got the answer "Yes, I have protection." Eventually Emily got the name of someone to talk to, and paid the woman well for the information. Suddenly the whore was all smiles again, and Emily had to extract herself from her before she could be given some freebies.
Emily then went in search of her contact. Apparently he played cards a great deal so she turned up expecting to have to gamble. Talk over the gaming table was fairly sparse, but Emily could speak a bit of thieves' cant and asked several oblique questions about the legal practices in the city and how to nobble them. Unfortunately her companions didn't speak any cant at all and seemed the get the impression Emily wanted to become a whore. After some more obvious questions and the redistribution of some wealth over the gaming table (Emily was happy to pay for the information and since she was also a poor card player this worked out quite well) the thieves eventually told her there was a judge that could be bought for some hundreds of gold. Since this was well outside the budget of Team Poverty, Emily decided to call it a night and head back. Unfortunately the thieves had become interested in this unusual bald girl and had her followed, so Emily was forced to spend most of the night wandering in circles around the town to avoid leading them straight back to the inn.
The following morning the party, minus Emily, awoke and enjoyed a lovely breakfast with some leftover Strauss. Establishing Emily was alive, but really didn't want to be disturbed, and in the continued abscence of Hadar, they decided to go and find Mishkal then track down the money Hadar had left for them in a bank. Of course they didn't know which bank, but felt confident they could discover this on the course of their travels. Outside the inn, they found a pair of guards who were assigned to make sure they didn't skip town. Unsure as to how the pair would actually stop them should they choose to leave, the party headed into town with their escort. Arthur had dressed for the occassion, taking off his splint mail. Nobody had explained the civilised rules of banking to Ug so the greataxe came along too.
They found their way to Mishkal's church easily enough. Mishkal himself was busy attoning for healing people in the street, as well as loudly shouting DOOOOOOOOM at a bandit before inserting the Word of Pelor directly into his head using his hammer. Not overly bothered, the party moved onwards in the direction of the main bank. Beard was doing his Old Man act, presumably to annoy the guards, and was moving a s s l o w l y a s p o s s i b l e .
Meanwhile, Emily had woken up and bathed. On the way back to her room, wrapped in a towel, she had noticed Hadar's study was open and the man himself had returned. She stuck her head round the door and spent a few minutes talking to him. He assured her the legal system was pretty dependable and buying a judge was probably not necessary. He also gave Emily directions to the bank and the keys to the safety deposit boxes with the rest of the party's payment and asked her to bring the party to him later. She asked if he could get her necklace identified - something he agreed to do.
Emily then hid the keys in her room and went to a temple. Using the gem she had found in the orc village, she bought herself some super-strong hairgrow tonic. She returned to the inn and applied one of the doses, letting her hair grow down her back. Taking her purse and hiding the tonic in her room she then went out and spent the rest of the morning having the most expensive haircut she could find.
Back at the interesting end of this tail, the party had found their way to the bank. Inside they went: the ancient man with a huge beard, the tall man with an ornate sword who was clearly a fighting man of some type, and the enormous barbarian carrying a huge axe. Understandably the cashier was a little alarmed. Gregore decided that he was the right man to do the talking here and explained that they worked for a man called Hadar and he might have opened an account for them here some time fairly recently. Of course he didn't have any identification, or a key to the strongbox, and it might have been a different bank, but he was hoping they would be able to help him out. Rather unsurprisingly, they were unable to help him out so with cries of "I'll be back!" he walked out and back into the street.
As they walked back to the inn, Ug felt there was something he had missed. "Why did we walk all the way across town to just go back again?" "Well" replied Gregore "We needed to find out about the banks here. And you never find out anything until you ask." "Couldn't we have asked someone closer?" replied Ug as Beard continued onwards at a pace on might more normally ascribe to a snail.
Eventually they made it back to the inn. Inside they were relieved to meet Hadar. "We brought Margaret. Did you get her?" asked Ug as they launched into a long explanation as to why they were over a week behind schedule. Gregore was put out at being mildly reprimanded. "I was dead for a day and a half!" he snapped at Hadar, who casually replied "Oh yes, I heard about that. But why did you go north in the first place?" "Well, we all discussed it and thought it was a bad idea. Then we did it anyway."
Midway through the debriefing, Emily returned with a lovely new hairstyle and gave everyone their keys. Hadar told them their next task would be to travel to the capital to investigate the members of his organisation that were selling information to nefarious individuals. Turns out those individuals include Strauss. Gregore still insisted killing his son wouldn't be a good idea, but the rest of the party were a bit more dubious. Before their trial, the party were told to go and undertake some of the previously promised training. They were to go a little way into the forest and join up with Team Pelor who were preparing for their march into the Area of Untold Doom. This had been cleared with the authorities and the guards were to escort them.
Later that day, the party mounted up and rode into the woods. There they found in an abandoned village around twenty Order of the Protectorate clerics, all in very shiny armour, with about half of them painting Z's on their chests and pretending to be zombies. The clerics were all looking very enthusiastic and were wearing huge grins and clearly all had the mentality of eight year olds. With Gregore's cry of "Oh gods, they're LARPers..." the party were introduced to Borghast the Cheerful, the group leader. He called them to order and explained the scenario. Apparently the training was to be a series of war games as one team defended the village and the other attempted to take it. Three hits and they were out. Seemed simple enough, if the clerics weren't too stupid to cope.
They were.
The party and their clerics moved in on the village, from many different directions. Somehow Emily managed to get an entire flank to herself whilst Ug and Arthur held one together. They delt with the zombie counterattack whilst a friend of Mishkal's, Joachim, led an attack from a different flank. His attack took a while to happen whilst they got lost in the wood, but when they came out they fell on zombie after zombie, gibbing them mercilessly. Emily meanwhile realised she had no chance fighting fairly so sneaked up to the buildings and, spotting a zombie-cleric hanging out of a window and watching the fighting on the other side of the village, sneaked up and chopped his armour straps. Understandably shocked, the suddenly naked cleric retreated to Borghast the marshall complaining Emily was cheating whilst his friend chased her around the village. Unfortunately, wearing breastplate as he was, he had trouble actually catching the girl and she smacked him round the face with her wooden sword before acrobatically flipping away. He followed, so she repeated the trick. Oddly he followed again so Emily beat the man out of the game as he failed to comprehend a blonde girl moving a lot faster than he was.
And there we shall leave it. The party won the first training scenario, beating the cleric-zombies senseless. Borghast remained cheerful in the face of Beard's general dislike of physical exercise and the naked cleric's whining. Emily has hair again. Everyone else is due for trial in a day or so where some men, good and true, will decide their fate.