Move 443: Threatening TiggerThe tiger-man submitted to having his hands tied before Azrun walked off when Jana pressed her point. "My belongings are in the next cave," the creature whined at Jana. "You will find them after you kill me." He sniveled, almost crying, "I don't know why you came here to my home, so I don't know what information you think my life would be worth. I do know a little about the rock formation the other one asked about," he offered in a voice that aimed for nonchalant but landed somewhere near scared senseless. "It is a magical creation and an object of worship. The ones that made it have a temple nearby, but I think it is abandoned."
Dalgaer ended up in the area where the fireball had gone off, where he found the dust he was looking for and used some of it. Azrun went to another part of the cavern and started changing clothes. Aloysius went to check on Echo, as did Arachne. Arachne provided a little healing for the woman, looking a little worse for her efforts, but not as bad as she did after dealing with Blacky. Blacky and Kanon were both still sprawled on the floor where they had fallen.
"An excellent start," Jana congratulated the creature. She rewarded Tigger's cooperation by bending her arm so that her sword, which still within easy striking distance, was not pointed directly at its chest. "Please continue. What do you know of kidnapped people being brought down here? C'mon, keep talkin'. Azrun'll love it if I'm wrong and can't kill your stripey ass."
"I have heard there is a city they are being taken to, but I haven't seen it," the tiger-man replied. "It may be the kuo-toan city, but that is a long way from here, past the slimes."
"And everybody's still alive," Arachne mumbled, more in the direction of Echo's navel than to the woman. "Another triumph for Otter..." The voice sounded anything but triumphant and the little gnome leaned against the wall beside Echo. She showed no apparent interest in the prisoner's interrogation (or the debate between Azrun and Jana about whether to kill him now or wait until they got home).
"So, now what do we do?" she asked, perhaps to Echo, perhaps to some nearby god, perhaps without expectation of an answer from anybody. "If fuzzy face had a lair in the next cave over, that might be a better locale for staying in while we rest and try to recover and ... um, heal... And he owes me a purse and that's in that room. I guess we should look in that temple area for Renn. And ..." She turned her back against the wall and looked over at Dalgaer, where her ruined purse was.
"You're never going to entrust stuff to me to carry again," she sighed. "The potions -- the ones I haven't already drunk -- They're all smashed."
"Agreed," said Aloysius. He turned and walked back over to where Jana and Tigger were. "So, tell us about this stone structure and the place you believe to be an abandoned shrine," he said to the captive. "Know that information is more precious to us than treasure and that we'll tolerate no deceit from you whatsoever." With a nod towards Jana, he added, "Her mercies are most limited and are extended only now, to you, because the rest of us have asked for such. They can be withdrawn with but a word if you provide grounds, so be concise and be truthful, e'en if thy nature compels you to act otherwise."
When Aloysius stepped in with a series of unrelated questions, the creature looked a little confused in addition to being scared. "What stone structure?" he asked. "I mean," he whimpered quickly, "I need to know what you are talking about if you want answers. The temple is in another series of caves, and it is smooth sculpted rock. I do not think its creators are there now because there are monsters lairing in it."
Once Azrun was finished changing, he walked over to Arachne and kneeled down, "Are you ok, Arachne? I'm afraid I will not be able to make you invisible for a while." He held out his daggers and his flute, "These are the only items I have now. Everything else was consumed in the fire, including my spellbook. I fear I've become quite useless to the group. I have no spells and very little fighting ability." With that he stood and went to check on Kanon and Blacky. He did what he could to try to make the two men rest a little more comfortably.
Arachne shook her head. "You don't want to try to challenge me for incompetence at combat. And as for the spellbook -- well, you've just made me feel better about the amount of stuff I _didn't_ lose to fuzzy face's wanton and wasteful attack. It does sound to me as though you should have first dibs on any pen, paper, ink, and blank books that
fuzzy has in his treasures. Maybe his spellbooks, too -- I don't know how that works. And then, you'll need to spend some long nights with Echo's and Aloysius's libraries. Right? I mean, haven't you done that sort of thing all along? You should be able to reconstruct an awful lot of your lost books that way, shouldn't you? Maybe even all of it,
because you guys share. "So I think you can recover; you're still plenty useful to the party. It's going to be a pain in the neck -- or maybe in the writing hand. And I think it'd be provoking enough to justify beating the stuffing out of fuzzy face -- really make him doubt the wisdom of ever throwing another fireball..." She looked up at Azrun. "What did you promise fuzzy face, anyway?" she asked. "Whatever it was, you probably shouldn't've. He may snivel with the best, but that doesn't mean you can trust him an inch. Whatever he says, you have to hear it with the interpretation that's most favorable to him and least favorable to everybody else. The tack which Jana is taking with him is exactly what he deserves. Or maybe too generous. She didn't need to give him all of ten seconds to start talking. Whatever you promised him, I think you should work up a legal basis for rescinding it -- and then do the rescinding. The last thing we need is for him to think that we'd have any argument about finishing him off if he doesn't continue to behave like a perfect little pussy cat.""Can you draw a map of the places down here you know?" Jana asked. "That would go a long way to making me feel more charitable toward you. Annotated, of course," she added with a grim smile.
Aloysius nodded. "Sound," he opined. "And after that, we want to know about the structure that protrudes from the wall," he said, pointing to the aforementioned structure that protruded from the wall. "We want to know every last detail about what you know of this area."
"I will need some paper and a quill and ink," the tiger-man replied. "I draw better if I have a place to sit," he added with just a touch of arrogance to go along with his still obvious fear. "That rock was worshipped by the hook horrors as a manifestation of their god," he told Aloysius instead of waiting until he had drawing utensils. "They felt something from it somehow. It is why they lived here and tried to protect it from the quaggoths that moved in. Personally, I believe it was created by the ones that made the temple. I have studied it enough to know that it is, or was, used for scrying and for transportation, but I wasn't able to figure out how it works. The enchantment seems similar to ancient elven magic, but I don't think it is exactly the same. I am not a scholar of magicks though."
"Indeed," said Aloysius as he dug through his pack, producing a quill, some ink, and a piece of parchment. "And how was it that you came to live with these hook horrors?" He handed the map making tools to Tigger. "Explain while you draw," he demanded.
Azrun shook his head, "I promised we wouldn't kill him if he told us what he knew. That's all. I'm just tired of all the killing is all, Arachne. We have an enemy that is helpless, does that mean we kill him just because we can. If so, what makes us different than the bad guys?"
"By the way in which we take the decision to kill," Arachne answered simply. "If we have an enemy that we kill, it isn't just because we can, but because we can and because we are agreed that the killing is needful. Azrun, you can't be tired of the killing yet -- or if you are in truth, then I think I should take you back to the surface and leave you there. Because there is certainly more killing down here to come. And -- Well, I'm tired, too. I'm tired of the gashing, the maiming, the burning that precede... That's exhausting -- for me, at any rate. The killing itself... creates quiet, actually. It removes, but the emptiness it leaves behind _is_ quiet."
Azrun stepped away and found a wall to sit up against. The bard looked very weary and haggard suddenly, "Spellbooks and posessions can be replaced...but not lives. I learned that the hard way." With that said, he closed his eyes and rested.
Arachne didn't allow him rest. "You picked a fight with Jana," she said softly, staying close to the bard. "Do you think that, if fuzzy-face tells us what he knows (as you asked), Jana would kill him anyway? Don't you trust her not to be evil? And don't you see that letting fuzzy-face see your lack of faith in Jana will only encourage him to try to play games with us and to try to play us off against one another? If you can't honestly believe in Jana, I think I would prefer that you dishonestly let fuzzy-face believe that you do."
Azrun looked at Arachne, "I didn't pick a fight with anyone. I was trying to talk our way through a situation instead of threatening our way through it. Some times a little kindness can go a long way. I just worry the longer we stay down here the better the chances we forget that." With that he closed eyes and let out a breath as if it was his last.
Jana moved behind Tigger while he drew, sword held ready. "You'll understand if I hover," she remarked as she took up her position.
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