telerib | AD&D Game: No blood at all this time

OOC: There were a few serious PC-GM disconnects this time around; in particular, two out of three PCs didn't realize that the "Wild Man Quarter" actually housed the Wild Men. This had a very interesting effect on the encounters...

Upon crossing over a bridge onto one of the three islands that made up the Quarter, Grath had to be physically restrained from attempting a dwarven berserker rage. A wagon - his wagon! - was sitting right there - wheeless and painted with arcane symbols - in front of some sort of shop. Needing to calm down, he took Toriad (who was really nervous about being there at all) back over the bridge to get a drink or three.

Elianne investigated the shop. The proprietor was a short, broad man - no more than five feet tall - with a bushy beard and hair. She asked after the strange sigils and designs drawn on the wagon and on display on his walls; he was reluctant to go into it, but a large cash gift rendered him very talkative. They performed all of the usual hedge magic tricks - bringing luck, love or money; keeping out bad luck, ill wishes, or the evil eye; holding off bad spirits; and so on. At her request, he provided her with a sachet that was supposed to keep away bad dreams, once properly attuned to a sleeper, and a potion for curing, ahem, problems of manly stamina. She hoped the sachet would help Toriad, while the potion was a practical joke for Rinwald.

Alas, over drinks - where Rinwald discovered that his walking-around money had walked off, somewhere in the Quarter - the potion had no apparent effect. Elianne acquired some of Toriad's hair for the sachet. A new line of investigation was propsed - Rinwald would follow in Toriad's footsteps, trying to attract the attention of the forces that enspelled the former paladin. Elianne and Nicolette would follow discreetly, ready to help out if it looked like Rinwald was going to be hauled off to some dark ritual.

Toriad recalled stopping at "Momma Gretta's" before things got fuzzy in his memory. Rinwald went there and questioned a dodgy, plump old woman who (eventually) said she was Gretta. He said he was after the Sapphire Skull; she wanted to know why. He shrugged and said it was an artifact of great power; who wouldn't want it. She shook her head and disavowed any knowledge of it at all - before warning him to keep away from it, as it had bad ju-ju. He asked what bad ju-ju was; "Bad spirits," she said. "Bad magic, like the bokkors do."

"Who around here would do something like that?" Rinwald asked.

Perhaps he'd meant to sound shocked and horrified; Gretta didn't take it quite that way. Shouting and pointing violently with her wooden spoon, she indicated that Rinwald should leave now. He retreated and regrouped with the other two. Scratching their heads, they began to trudge back to the bar. Elianne stopped on the way there at the shop she'd been in earlier, giving the sachet and the hair to the man. He began some ritual which he abruptly broke off, claiming that the hairs were horse hairs. Elianne insisted that no, they were from her friend. No no, he shook his head, they were horse hairs, no mistake, and he wasn't getting involved in that. So sorry.

On the bridge, they met up with Stumpy and his three friends. The blue skulls on their shoulders caught their interest this time around... Elianne distracted two of them with a lacivious gymnastics display while Rinwald managed to get a charm spell on the most suspicious one. Some Q&A turned up:

Their leader, one Vashti DuPree, had a tattoo of a blue skull. Hence, the group's symbol.
They'd all met DuPree a few times, but weren't really her right-hand men.
She was an up-and-coming would-be crimelord; she was not a Wilder nor did the group have any affiliation with them. ("And neither does my mother!" Stumpy insisted rather vehemently).
The charmed pair were eager to get their good friend Rinwald in on the ground floor with them. The fighter looked useful, if Rinwald vouched for her; the jailbait they could get a nice cushy job at the Gilded Lilly...
Slim, one of the two watching Elianne, thought DuPree had something big planned for the New Year's celebrations in two weeks, but he didn't know what.

Elianne's flirting was finally getting to dangerous levels; the party excused themselves and headed off. Deciding that they needed another ally, they returned to Dorinne, the priestess of Mystra Grath had found. They told her they'd found Toriad and disclosed everything they'd heard on the way back to the bar.

And so we left off with the paladin trying to crawl into an empty bottle to avoid the priestess, who was doing her level best to pry him out of it... and a few half-made plans on the table to somehow infiltrate the Blue Skull Gang or otherwise get close to Vashti DuPree, who seemed like the best candidate for someone connected to the Sapphire Skull.