telerib | Insert Ominous Music Here

So, the plan was for Florin to lure Gabrielle - quietly - to the other tavern in town, the Iron Fist. (Which, as Andre discovered, caters to the local female warriors... thugs might be a better word). He'd try to get her to go out the back, where the rest of the party would ambush her. Florin suspected that, in spite of their promises to the contrary, his companions would try to kill the woman, but went ahead with the plan.

Just after the castle's bell tolled eight, things started to happen. A blonde woman entered the Iron Fist and started looking around; Florin recognized her as a Gabrielle flunkie and approached. He was asked to come with her, and three patrons got up to help enforce that request. He tried hard to cause a commotion to get away, tossing off his cloak and giving the traditional mating cry of the attractive blond: "I'm so drunk!" The rough toughs seemed interested until the woman declared, "He's Gabrielle's."

Simultaneously, the PCs skulking around the tavern began to hear the distinctive clickety-clack of rhacos nails. A mounted rider was approaching down every street leading to the tavern.

Yvonne enspelled one woman into stupidity; the backup would have certainly pursued her had TickTock not dropped the woman with a crossbow bolt. Yvonne got away.

Aphax secretly climbed up onto the tavern's roof, where he very unsuccessfully threw things at the riders for a while.

Andre and Nadia also fought a pair of riders (with a third on the way) and it just wasn't looking good - a rhacos nearly took off Andre's arm, and Nadia was knocked unconscious - when Aphax finally put two Morpheus pastilles into a torch. The huge cloud of gas that suddenly erupted put everyone except two rhacoi to sleep, and they hunkered down to protect their snoozing, fallen riders.

Another rider saw the blue cloud and spooked, trying to yell an alarm (thinking the Ritone sorceress was over *there*) and TickTock took a successful long shot at her. She didn't drop, though, and now the knights are starting to look up to the roofs to see where these crossbow bolts are coming from.

So we leave our heroes...

Yvonne, winding her way through Chameroi, heading... where?
TickTock, crouched on a roof with his crossbow, with search parties gathering below...
Nadia and Andre, unconscious in an alleyway with knights soon to approach...
Aphax on the tavern roof. He could easily carry off Nadia, or Andre, or cut a bunch of throats, before the knights arrive on the scene... which?
Florin, escorted under guard into the looming castle to meet the Ebon Lady Gabrielle...

Til next week!