Prologue

It was a breezy mid spring night when the thief broke into the governor's mansion, looking not only to do something no one had accomplished in 50 years, but to make a fat sum of money while he was at it. The mansion of course, is a prize any rogue would love to conquer. It was 5 stories high, surrounded by 20' walls on all sides, and situated on top of a foothill a little ways north of the capitol that it ruled. Guarded by everything from your average nightwatches always on patrol to the addition of hired mercenaries during times of economical trouble in the territory, when the mansion was particularly disliked by the common folk.

The thief, was no more than a dwarf who decided at a young age that mountain life was not for him, and had a knack for getting out of trouble just as well as he got in it. Being the dwarf that he is however, not many people trusted him to do their dirty work. Apparently, most people seem to thing only halflings and elves are fit to do the sneaking, and this is why he was standing in at the base of the hill of the governor's mansion, and about to attempt the best robbery in a half century.

The rogue climbed the hill in a quick manner, stopping only thrice to shrink into the shadows and foliage around him when he occasional patrolman walked by. So far so good.

The outer wall is where the first real problem lay. Night watches perched in their posts atop it like birds on a statue. Next to each guard was a bell, and if that bell rang, all hope of any kind of robbery will become lost in the abyss. Peering from the bushes no more than 50 feet from the wall the thief lie, going over the execution of the first part of his heist.

The governor was not a popular man, and so on frequent occasions the local village kids liked to toss things at the walls in pointless defiance to the rule the governor had. These things ranged from stones to eggs to molotov cocktails, and it would be no quincidence that another cocktail would hit the south wall tonight.

The thief lit up the towel and let the bottle fly, giving it as much hang time as he could. He ran toward the east wall and popped out of the cover of forest and shadow just as the brilliant orange flash went off.

This was one of the most risky parts of the operation, for if one of the guards decided to ring the bell and put the place on alert, the operation would end right then and there. This had already had this happen the previous two attempts in which the thief had to make a quick getaway. Tonight however, nobody felt the need to be the one to cause alarm if there was none, and so tonight the bells remained silent.

The rogue made it to the wall and quickly began swing the grappling hook he had brought. He let it fly and the hook sailed to the top, locking on to the wall in all the confusion. He scurried up the wall at a blistering pace, and took a quick peek over the top.

A lone guard was still looking behind him at the now dying fire below as he walked back to his post. The rogue saw him turn around and look forward, then spying the hook dug into the battlements. With a small gasp, the guard turned and ran toward the warning bell. He made it no more than two steps before the rogue leapt on top of the wall, and began chasing him down, simultaneously reaching into his belt and grabbing his faithful ruby encrusted dirk. (A dirk is a weapon shorter than a sword but longer than a dagger). He ran toward the fleeing guard, shifting his weight in the process to whip the dirk forward. It sailed through the air, striking home in the guard's lower left back, just above the liver. The man let out a quick yelp, but was almost immediately stifled by the hand of the onrushing thief. The thief, using his own forward momentum, rolled underneath the falling body of the guard and used his legs to throw the man over the battlements and 20 feet to the hard ground.

Finishing his backward roll, the thief got back on his feet and took a quick look around. He knew he had caused too much noise to linger any longer. He flipped the grappling hook around so it hung on the outside of the wall, facing the way he came in. Then pulling the rope across the top of the wall, and holding the end, he scaled down the inside of the wall. After reaching the bottom, he released the rope, and the hook end fell down to the ground on the opposite side. Out of sight, and out of mind.

He was now in the courtyard of the mansion. This posed a new threat, guard dogs. Those little bastards liked nothing better than to sniff you out and chew you to pieces before any guard would have any chance to get a hold of you. Being the simplistic creatures they are, there's no complicated maneuver he could pull to avoid them. The best idea is to not get anywhere near one. If that's unavoidable, then generally the idea is to first kill the guard, than kill the dog he was following. Without its master, dogs were nothing more than a stupid animal with the basic idea to kill anything that moves. However this animal instinct was still no match for a quick hand wielding a good weapon.

He made it halfway across the big beautiful courtyard without being noticed. The gardens provided plenty of cover against the naked eye, and by staying near the flowers, their scent helped cover up any faint trace the dog might get of him. However it was here, after darting across a pathway and into the cover of another bush, he turned to see a dog, no more than 5 feet away, its nose pointed in the air, sniffing, and its now interested master, looking at it curiously.

Ignoring the human first then dog thing, he crept from the shadows and attempted to silence them both in a surprise move. He was within jumping distance of the dog, when he leapt. The dog was first to notice, the incoming dwarf, but didn't even have time to turn its head away from the blow as the rogue plunged his dirk into the dogs neck. With his other arm he pushed the dog into its master's stomach, who was about to yell, but was stopped as the weight of the German Shepard knocked the air out of him. A barely audible "oof". In the next second the thief removed his weapon from the dog and brought the hilt down upon the guard's forehead. His head slammed into the stone pathway, but it was a merciful blow compared to the other option, of dispatching him the same way he had the dog.

He made it the rest of the way across the courtyard and to the small wooden door leading into the mansion. The door was locked, of course, but an easy enough pick for a sensitive hand. It took no more than 30 seconds and the rogue had reached the inside of the mansion. An admirable feat, which was last accomplished 3 years ago, by a human girl named Iddia, who had been caught, and was now supposedly, was still sitting in a prison cell. (Or so says the cover-up story invented to hide that the girl actually had escaped a number of years earlier, and is currently living with a secluded group of gnomes miles away) As the rogue opened the door, he immediately noticed that the room was not only big and beautiful, but a literal death trap for a thief. Everything in the room was top of the line, premium quality carpentry. Everything except the floor, which looked to be nothing more than expensive tile with shoddy workmanship. But a man of the governor's stature would never stand for badly lain tile, and so the poor looking floor could only mean that the floor was a classic pressure sensitive trap. The tiles moved when stepped on, which undoubtedly triggered some sort death-dealing device. Whatever it may be, he didn't care to find out.

Looking around for a way to cross the floor without actually touching it, he wasn't surprised to find none readily available. Security was good here, no doubt about it. The thief scanned the room for something, any thing to bypass it. He had no choice but to take the long way across. Which meant prying up every tile he had to walk on, and disabling the trigger mechanism. Thankfully the tile was not secured down by any means and was simply lain there. When he lifted the first tile, he immediately found what the trap was.

Under each trick tile there was a small, inflated air sack, that when collapsed by the weight of someone's foot, blew a small puff of what was most likely contact and respiration poison. It was in a powdered form, and from what the rogue could tell, was probably meant to burn the legs and restrict breathing. Also from each tile led a cable, to what was most likely an alarm system. After cutting the cable and removing the poison sack, he repeated this process nearly 50 times to cross the room. It came as no surprise to him that not every single tile was trapped, but a surprising majority was. Now at the door he tried to listen into the next room. Hearing nothing he shoved a small mirror under the heavy oak door and looked around. Everything seemed clear, so after checking the doorknob for wires or poison, slowly opened the door.

He entered a great hall, easily 30 feet high, from which banners and decorations of all sorts dominated the shadowed walls. The familiar warning bell stood a few feet from where he stood. A guard was approaching, humming a familiar spiritual hymn of Pelor the Sun God, he had yet to turn the corner, and the thief quickly shrunk into the shadow of near by suit of armor.

The guard continued humming in a surprisingly in tune voice, and was reaching the climax of the song, which brought on much louder humming, and even a few fiery arm waves. After finishing the song, he was not far from the thief's position. He must have been a musician, because he then began humming a scale. Being far too distracted by the music in his head, the rogue simply waited for the guard to pass. Immediately following the leaving of the guard, he cut the rope attached to the warning bell. Then used the rope to help secure the bell in place. It could still be hit, and rung, but it wouldn't be half as loud as it normally should. Small matters like this were easy enough to do, and could be the difference between whether the night would end in crime or punishment.

The thief then proceeded around the corner from which the guard had first come. The hallway ended here, with a smaller hallway, and 3 doors leading from it. Taking the smaller hallway, he halted a few feet in, hearing voices around the next bend. A quick peak around the corner with his trusty mirror quickly revealed he had found what he was looking for. A large circular room with 3 guards in it lay in the reflective glass. Two sleeping guard dogs lay in the corner. The two guards were discussing how long it would take for the next shift to come.

"Well forget them, its not like they have any more desire to be here than you and I do. Let's just get out of here," said one impatient guard.

"Not tonight Rhhys, there are more vandals out tonight, we gotta stay here until the next shift comes."

"Well me and Duke are going hunting tomorrow, and I have to get to sleep."

"Go ahead then, I'll cover for you until they arrive"

"Thanks, a lot, I owe you one."

"You owe me more than just one."

The fact that the shifts were changing right now was no coincidence. The thief had a man on the inside. It was absolutely mission critical. Even the smallest details like the name of your victim's mother will change the course of the job. The inside man was no more than the secretary's assistant, but enough important messages passed through his hands, and one of them happened to be the guard shifts.

The guards got up, and walked over to the sleeping dogs. Gently shaking one awake, he turned and left. After the thief was convinced he was gone, he slowly crept over to the second sleeping dog, and with a precision strike, he killed it instantly with his dirk through the top of the dog's head. The soft thump was not completely ignored by the guard, who looked in their general direction, but seeing nothing of the thief in his pitch-black clothes, returned to the parchment he was reading. The rogue stole toward the desk into the center of the room where the crude guard's desk sat.

He was within arms reach of the guard, on his left side, and still being unnoticed, he blew a silent puff of air at the stack of papers on the opposite side of the guard, who briefly turned and looked. When he looked back, a blade was at his throat.

"Speak nothing, do nothing," said a the threatening voice of the dwarf "if you anything goes wrong, your mother won't be able to recognize the body after I'm finished with you."

The guard was paralyzed with fear, and with his other hand, the thief began sifting through the files of papers. Finally, his hand lay on what he was looking for, a small visitor's guide of some sort. It had a non-detailed map, the mostly indicated areas of commerce, but a small note in the east wing read, "governor's quarters, absolutely off-limits."


Okay, I'm sorry to just cut it off here, but it will continue in the next chapter I swear. Chapter 1 and 2 were orignally just one chapter, but I changed that fearing that the abnormally large chapter was discouraging people from reading my story.

So anyway, all I really want is to be read and reviewed. Be honest, brutally if needs be. I'm here to become a better writer than I was, and people pointing out my faults will benefit megreatly. And if you liked the first chapter, the second is even better in my opinion, so keep reading.