The Unwritten Tales

Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½ or any related characters in any way, shape or form.

Author's Notes: I consider this seed a marvel of reverse engineering. When it first came to me, it was in the form of Ranma and his new adventuring company appearing in the Tendos backyard after a semi-failed attempt to escape from one very pissed off dragon. Instead of writing that, I went right back to the beginning and, well, this is the result. This bears no relation to the Legends of Aeron serial, beyond the fact that both it and this are Ranma/D&D 4e crosses.

Dungeon Delvers – First Meeting

Wella Spellsmith groaned at the throbbing behind her temples as she finally roused herself; she hated hangovers. Wait a minute… she knew she hated hangovers, so she tried to avoid drinking more then she could handle – and she could definitely handle one lousy cup of mead, even if it had been served in a cup designed for tallfolk. Drinking that, and wondering at a peculiar aftertaste, was the last thing she clearly remembered.

"Ah, crap." She stated as the implication sunk in.

"Does your mother know you use language like that, little girl?" Asked a stranger's voice.

"Who are you calling a little girl? I'm a twenty year old halfling woman." She reacted immediately – no, not because she was bothered by cracks about her height (they were a fact of life if you went amongst tallfolk), but to cover the fact that she had been unaware that she wasn't alone. She looked around in the dark, cursing her lack of night vision, until finally her eyes adjusted enough that she could see that, yes, she was chained up like she thought (though, honestly, she should have been able to feel and hear them), and there was one other person; a teenaged human boy, who looked to be chained to the opposite wall.

"Halfling?" The stranger asked, Wella's eyes now adjusted to the gloom sufficiently that she could read his body language and see that he seemed genuinely curious.

"Yeah, you know, the Little People, the River Walkers, the Eternal Children, the Lucky Ones? What rock have you been living under?" She asked, then sighed; it didn't really matter. "I don't suppose you know who brought us here?" She mentioned idly.

"Bunch of weirdoes in cloaks. They all had this symbol on 'em, though." He mentioned.

"What kind of symbol?" Wella asked; this was information she couldn't pass by.

"Sort of a T growing out of an O, if you know what I mean." The stranger told her.

Wella paled. "Shit. Shit! Torog cultists! Of all the rotten luck!"

"Torog is…?" The human asked.

Wella stared at him incredulously. "What were you doing when the preachers were making their circuit? How could you not know who Torog is?"

"I'm from out of town." The human shrugged.

"Torog, the King That Crawls, the Whisperer in the Dark, the Clutching Shadow, the Crippled Gaoler! Surely you've heard of him!" She demanded.

A blur of shadowy motion that she assumed to be him shaking his head was her answer.

"Terrific. I get stuck in a cell with an absolute moron. Torog is the Lord of the Underdark, God of Imprisonment and Torture. Cultists of Torog abduct people so that they can sacrifice him to their foul god by torturing them to death, as slowly and as painfully as possible!" She spat, finding a flicker of petty relief in the way her cellmate acted upset by her revelation.

"We gotta get outta here!" He insisted.

"I agree, but we ain't going nowhere. The two of us are both chained up nice and tight, it's something these freaks are good at, so unless you can break all that metal…" She said, and then stopped as a very distinctive sound came to her sensitive ears. The sound of metal being stressed and twisted until it broke apart, a sound that was ultimately why she had been thrown out of the clan-fleet, followed by the faint tinkling of metal falling onto stone. Her cellmate stood up and then advanced on her through the gloom, squatting down beside her and reaching out to grasp the chains binding her arms to the floor.

"I can't do anything about the shackles, but I can deal with the chains." He told her.

"That's all I care about; fashion sense don't mean a thing to me if I can at least get out of here." She insisted. A part of her still couldn't believe what was just happening, but as her newfound ally promptly tore the chains binding her apart and helped her to her feet, she found sheer relief at the glimmer of hope overwhelming that. "Thank you! Thank you! Do you think you can do that to the door?"

The human looked at said piece of furniture; what light there was in the chamber consisted of torchlight coming through the small, barred window, but it was enough to outline sturdy wood, strong iron, and the general good craftsmanship that marked a Torog-consecrated jail cell. Then he looked back at her. "I can break through it. Might take more then one hit, though."

Wella pursed her lips in thought. "If we're going to break out, we should probably do it as quickly as possible… bastards took my pouch-belts, but I've still a few tricks up my sleeves. Stand still." She told her ally the last two words directly, having been muttering the previous vocalized thoughts to herself.

"What for?" He asked, an undeniable trace of suspicion in his tone… which was technically a good thing; showed he wasn't overly naïve.

"Without my components, I can't whip together any of my bigger spells, but you can never be stripped of the basics." She reassured him. She held up her right hand, curling all of her fingers except the first into a fist, and channeling her magical energy into it with a whispered formula, causing it to light up with a soft, gentle, rainbow-colored energy. "I can give you a kind of boost, a surge of power – it'll only be enough for one attack, but you're only hitting a door…"

He looked at her with an unreadable expression (though that was partially because she still couldn't see his face in this gloom), and then nodded slowly. "Alright, charge me up." He told her.

Wella nodded, and then reached as far up his chest as she could and traced an arcane sigil on his chest, the rainbow radiance flowing from her hand and into her cellmate. "Alright, let's go!" She told him. At once he whirled and lunged at the door - to her shock (she had expected, at most, that the lock would be torn off), the door practically exploded, a great shower of woodchips and mangled metal filling the air and clattering to the floor. She blinked in shock, stupefied by this display. "Melora's blisters..." She murmured, so dumbfounded she failed to notice that her cellmate had continued through the disintegrating door and out into the corridor beyond, right into the path of several Torog cultists. It was their shouts of surprise that snapped her back to reality and brought her running to help.

When she came onto the scene, however, she wondered if she was really needed; with a speed she had never seen anybody move with, except maybe that cocky elf who'd gone and stirred up a wild bee's nest in an attempt to get some honey for a girl he wanted to impress and promptly found himself being chased by hundreds of angry bees, her cellmate lunged at the Torog cultists with his bare hands.

One punch audibly broke the first cultist's nose, sending them tumbling across the floor, blood spurting from his crushed nostrils, and when a second cultist dove at him with a knife, without even looking the strange human reached back, grabbed the blade-wielding arm, and pulled the cultist over his shoulder and hurled her at the wall hard enough that she literally bounced off, ribs doubtlessly fractured from the impact.

Wella blinked in shock, and then realized a third cultist was fumbling desperately with a crossbow. "Oh, no you don't!" She snapped, thrusting her left hand at the Torog worshipper, index and pinky finger jutting straight, thumb, ring and middle fingers curled into her palm. Sparks flew between her fingers, the resultant tongue of crackling energy lashing out and burning her target with its power, dropping them with a crackling scream. With a smirk, she lifted her hand and blew away the traces of smoke trickling from her fingertips, then realized her former cellmate was staring at her.

"Nice trick." He told her, sincerely and with evident admiration.

"Eh." Wella replied, waving it off; it was just one of her most basic spells, after all. "You've got some pretty flashy moves yourself. Uh, I never did catch your name." She realized.

"My name's Ranma, Ranma Saotome." The human told her. "So, where do we go now? What's our next move?"

"How about getting me out of here for starters?" The pair flinched at the voice coming from one of the other cells, "Well? You aren't going to leave a person in this place are you?"

"Of course not." Said Ranma, before Wella could manage to say anything, walking over to the door from which the voice had come. "Woah, what's your deal?" He asked, which made Wella's curiosity and her warning senses start warring over which got to take credit for her subsequent actions.

"What deal? Come on, tallfolk, I can't see, what's back there?" She insisted, until Ranma offhandedly, and in a rather humiliating fashion, picked her up by the scruff of the neck and raised her aloft so that she could see into the cell. "Oh. A drow." She said, somehow infusing "drow" with the same disgusted resignation that a high society madam could use for the word "cockroach". Or "peasant".

"You aren't exactly a sight for sore eyes either, shortstuff, but beggars can't be choosers." The imprisoned figure replied. He was tall and lean, with narrow features twisted into a seemingly permanent expression of bitterness and suspicion. White hair hung loose and lanky, but his features seemed much younger then his hair color might have suggested, though it was hard to tell; his skin seemed to be a deep bluish-black color that blended into the darkness. Eyes the sullen red of hot coals glittered, ornate tattoos of scorpions stretching across either side of his face, from his eyes to his pointy ears. "I know what you're thinking, but I'm not one of them" He spat. "I'm a prisoner here just like you, so let me out already." He scowled.

"Ranma, don't open that door." Wella insisted, her tone remarkably commanding for a girl who was lucky to hit four feet square if she was measured to an inch.

The human blinked at her. "What's the problem?" He asked, making her wonder again, and this time in rather plain language, which turnip cart he had just fallen off of on his way out of whatever backwater he had come from.

"Look hayseed, here's the abridged version, I am a type of elf. There are many types of elves, but the one I am specifically are known as Drow, feared and rightly so for being slavers, torturers, murderers, you name it we've done it with a smile all while existing in a state of eternal paranoia and backstabbing each other. We're innately magical, we can see in the dark, and generally make the few seconds of your remaining life very, very miserable before we sacrifice you to our unholy spider goddess."

He shrugged at Ranma's expression, "Doesn't give you a good reason to trust me does it? Well that's the other drow, I on the other hand am a member of a group of individuals, not just other drow but humans, dwarves and even a few halflings and more, who are opposed to the various dark gods worshipped in the Underdark, Torog being one of them. I am not going to kill you, nor am I going to stab you in the back, I am here to shut this place down and if I'm going to do that, I'll need help just as much as you do. Hells, I won't even insult you for obviously coming from a isolated backwater so ignorant of the rest of the realm that you believe yourselves to be the center of the universe."

Ranma looked at the drow with an icy expression, then turned to Wella. "Is he telling us the truth?" He asked her.

"It's pretty much true, what he said." She admitted. "I've heard of a group of rogue drow that actively fights against Lolth and her kindred faiths, and supposedly they wear scorpion tattoos like this fellow, but it's only a rumor, as far as I know." She shrugged in emphasis that she was also unsure of what to do here. "Still... maybe he can help us. At least let us know what sort of threat we're up against...?" She began, her tone suggestive and her last words clearly addressed to the drow.

The subject of her not-so-veiled hints shrugged, "Sure, why not? First off, there were two others in this place. I managed to see one of them, some high and mighty dragonborn, getting dragged out for sacrifice. She was kicking up a real stink, had to use at least ten men and cursed chains to hold her still. Still didn't stop her tongue; full of typical holy folk arrogance and dragonborn drivel, as usual. At least… she did until one of them made a crack about her being a prime sacrifice to the King That Crawls; then she started shrieking death threats and curses until she was out of earshot. Frankly I was glad for it, these ears of mine are sensitive."

He looked thoughtful for a moment, "Cell next to mine had someone else inside it, but when a cultist came in to drag him off for sacrifice, he came out saying that the bastard had offed himself. Shame really, he was a good conversationalist."

"So that's, what, about 12 cultists, and presumably a high priest or priestess of some sort?" Wella asked. "Of course, we've handled three of them already, so that means a few less... but, still... you gotta point. We're gonna need some help for this."

"So glad you actually agree with me, did those words taste as foul as you thought they would? And I believe we are up against a High Priestess, and her pet mercenary."

At that, Wella sighed in defeat. "Alright Ranma, rip the door open."

"Why don't I just use the key?" He suggested, holding up the item in question, having taken it from one of the bodies of the defeated cultists that he'd searched once opening the cell door had been momentarily vetoed.

Wella's face took on an embarrassed flush as she admitted that, yes, that would indeed work. Once the drow was free, he introduced himself as "Malaggar" and disdainfully took a short sword from one of the cultists - which he promptly used to slit the throats of the two cultists that Ranma had downed, as the human had evidently only knocked them unconscious. Ranma exploded.

"What the hell did you do that for!"

The drow looked at the human askance. "What, you want these idiots coming after us and putting a knife in our back? Or outflanking us and warning their sick friends? These assholes were going to peel off our skins and drown us in vinegar - and they still will if we let them live. We've got no reason at all to spare them."

"Ya could have tied them up! Hell, why not lock 'em in the cells? That's what they're here for!"

"And risk them getting out? They're Torog servants - some of the more blessed of that cult have the ability to make bindings of any sort fail. Even if we stripped them naked, they could have been able to just tell the cells to let them out and they'd have been free. Not to mention that we need all the advantage that stealth and speed can give us - we can't afford to let them live."

Ranma clearly searched his mind for something, anything that would make a good argument, before he snarled, more to himself than to the others, "Fine, but I don't have to like it."

"Like it or lump it, if it keeps you alive, what does it matter? Like me using this shabby little thing." The drow grumbled, staring balefully at the rusted, grease and soot-smeared shortsword he was now holding. Its blade promptly lit up in eerie green flames, which then vanished. "It'll do, until I find where they took my sword."

"We're wasting time here. Lets find the store room, I'd bet a dragon's tooth that'll be where they have our gear." The Drow nodded as Ranma spared another momentary glare before nodding as well, the trio quickly moving down the corridors. After few minutes, stealth was abandoned as every hallway and room was deserted, everything from washing to foodstuffs was left alone, though some had obviously thought to take some cooking off the fires when they found the kitchen.

"Geez, do they really have to drop everything just to see one person get killed?"

Wella nodded at Ranma's question. "It is a cult Ranma, one of the nastier ones at that." She shot a glare at the chuckle from Malaggar. "With exceptions." She glanced a corner and then suddenly jerked back, the others stopping in their tracks immediately.

"Two guards, in front of that door. Looks important." Ranma glanced around the corner over Wella's head and nodded as she continued, "We're going to need a distraction."

The pigtailed teen looked around, and then spotted a pot nearby. With only a brief second to work out the trajectory, Ranma hefted the pot and sent it flying down another corridor, the sound of shattering clay grabbing the guards' attention and sending them running to investigate, the trio pressing themselves against the wall as they passed before dashing into the room, the halfling and drow sighing in relief at finding that they were in the store room. While Ranma stood guard behind the closed door, the two demihumans quickly found and retrieved what they were after. Wella took a set of belts, bandoleers and pouches with a relieved sigh. Malaggar, on the other hand, retrieve a rather nasty-looking sword, which he attached to his waist, and something very large wrapped in cloth.

After briefly checking to make sure everything was in place in her pouch-belts, the halfling nodded, "Right, lets get out of here."

Ranma nodded, and opened the door… just in time to run into one of the returning guards, the teenaged human scrabbling back and to his feet as the other guard scrambled to her feet and tried to yank a sword from her belt.

Ranma was expecting that, with the guards distracted, he and his impromptu allies could rush them and take them by surprise. What he was not expecting was for one guard to promptly grab the distracted counterpart by the mouth and ram his dagger into her back. The end result was Ranma's voice failing him as he watched the stabbed woman's eyes bulge out, blood and a faint dying cry spurting between her murderer's fingers, before he yanked the blade back out of her chest and dropped her to the ground like a piece of rubbish.

"Thank you for that timely distraction; I was worried I might have to let these worms live and settle for merely escaping with my life. Which would not have been to my liking, I assure you; I hate the idea of idea of running away with my tail between my legs." The murderous guard told Ranma, lightly and sincerely as though they were best of friends and he hadn't just seen him kill a partner of his own.

"What in the Nine Hells is going on, here?" Malaggar snapped, protectively placing the cloth-wrapped bundle between himself and the apparently mad guard.

The guard, meanwhile, merely shook his head softly and clicked his tongue in mock-disappointment. "And I thought you, particularly, would figure it out."

"You talk as if I know you." The drow answered testily.

"You do... as much as anyone can be said to know me." The guard said, grinning widely, shaking off his hood to reveal a blunt, battered-looking face with a shapeless, oft-broken nose, prominent scarring on one cheek, and gaps in his teeth. "Of course, when we last spoke... I talked like this." He said these last few words in a completely different voice; old and cracked and dusty, with an entirely different sort of accent, the sound clearly startling the drow.

"That voice... you're a changeling!" He declared, looking startled.

The guard said nothing. Instead he... rippled... form shimmering and twisting in a manner that brought to mind the way water in a clear pond shifted in response to dropping in a pebble. He lost several inches of height, skin turning a startling, almost artificially pale color, a porcelain white with touches of light gray in some areas, short-cropped black hair growing into a wild mane of eerie, pale green locks, features dissolving and flowing into something practically vestigial - a small, practically lipless mouth beneath an almost non-existent nose, two oversized eyes of pure dark gray, save for a white dot of a pupil, staring with a surprisingly warm light from within deep eye sockets. "That I am." He said, his voice different yet again, light, airy and soft. His robes swallowed him, having lost maybe two thirds of his former bulk, but he seemed unbothered by that.

Wella shook her head, before blinking at something and turned to Ranma, "Well?"

Ranma blinked and glanced down at her. "Well what?"

Wella made an exasperated noise. "How come you aren't asking what a Changeling is?"

Ranma blinked, and then shrugged. "Seemed pretty obvious to me. I mean, anyone who needs to ask what this guy is after seeing it in action has to be pretty stupid."

Wella flushed slightly while Malaggar and the Changeling nodded, before rounding on the newcomer. "So who are you anyway? How did you get here if you aren't one of the cult?"

The Changeling shrugged. "My name's Sim, and as for how I got in here, it was the same way I escaped. I was in here to just grab some of that loot back there." He pointed back into the storeroom and to the various sacks of gold in the back. "Well, you can see how well that turned out."

"Yeah, we can see that. Listen, this guy..." Ranma jerked a thumb to Malaggar, "said that these creeps dragged out some girl, a dragonborn or something, to be sacrificed. You know the way?"

Sim nodded and grabbed the dead guard's sword. "I'll do better than that, I'll help you out. Bastards took my gold when they grabbed me, and beat me up for the hell of it. Time to return the favor." The smile on his face was feral, indicated that he was going to do nasty things to the cultists, and Ranma suppressed a shudder as Sim started leading the way.

After a few moments chanting, the quartet heard the sounds of multiple voices chanting in unison. "What is that?" Wella asked. "I mean, I know it's the cultists, but what are they saying?" She hastily amended herself.

"It's Deep Speech. You don't want to know. Come on; the sacrifice is almost ready!" Malaggar snapped and began to pick up the pace, pushing past Sim and forcing the others to start running behind him.

"Hey, I know we need to hurry, but do you have some sort of plan?" Wella asked, struggling to keep up with them. The fact Ranma was looking back at her as though he was considering picking her up and carrying her just pushed her to go faster. Damn tallfolk, wasn't her fault her legs were short! She would not be humiliated like that!

"Don't need one. There's eight of them and four of us; we can take two to one odds… alright, I can, and I'm sure you losers can stay alive long enough for me to handle them." Malaggar said, gripping the handle-like end of his mysterious wrapped bundle.

"This is crazy." Sim pointed out as they approached a shut door, the chanting clearly emanating from beyond.

"If you want to slink off into the shadows, formless, ain't nothing stopping you." The drow spat.

The changeling bristled, clearly insulted, but stayed where he was. Not that he would have had the time to speak before they crashed through the door and into the temple-proper beyond.

"You want blood and pain, whoresons? Well, I've got a present for ya!" Malaggar screamed, now wielding the huge bundle as though it was a weapon… in fact, as it promptly burst into the same green flames as his now-discarded shortsword, it revealed itself to be a weapon. A sword with a blade easily as long as Malaggar was tall, the dark elf seemed utterly unconcerned with its weight as he brought the blazing blade sweeping around in a horizontal arc that simultaneously bisected and incinerated three Torog cultists with one blow.

"Infidels! Kill them!" Screeched a woman standing near the altar, on which had been bound a reptilian figure – clearly, this was the high priestess of this cult.

"I thought he said there was only eight cultists left!" Wella shouted as the robed fanatics surged towards them.

"I guess he was wrong – but it's not like it matters." Sim replied, breezily flinging a dagger straight into a cultist's throat and felling him with a blood-choked gurgle.

"Yeah, I've fought tougher battles than this just to get breakfast!" Ranma laughed, easily dodging the strikes of three more cultists, then laying them one of them out with a sharp jumping kick to the jaw.

Wella shook her head in disbelief, then yelped as she narrowly avoided being smacked in the face with a spiked chain. Leaping back as far as she could, she grabbed desperately for components in her pouch-belts, slapping them together almost faster than the eye could follow before tossing the resultant tangle of metal onto the floor. Her assailant grinned wickedly, though the grin faded away as the tangle suddenly sprouted like something from the Plane Below, reshaping itself into a caricature of a humanoid, one hand shifting into something like a giant drill. "Sic her!" Wella snapped.

Ranma rolled his eyes as he dodged the clumsy stab of his foe, replying with a backhand that broke his nose and sent him sprawling unconscious to the floor. He was about to move on to help out Sim, currently trying to hold off a particularly large and powerful looking cultist with just his daggers, when he heard the high priestess shriek. "Fight, you weaklings! Kill them! You're all worthless!" That wouldn't have phased him much, he honestly heard much better mad ranting back home, but this was followed by something like an orb of flaming blood slamming into the cultist he had just downed, who promptly screamed in pain and began to flail and tear desperately at his clothing. Ranma barely had the time to realize that the victim's flesh was bulging and rippling obscenely before the doomed man exploded, a great swarm of gore-slick centipedes ripping through the shredded meat and making for the martial artist.

"Aw, geeze! That's sick!" Ranma shrieked, lashing out with hands and feet to crush and smash the flesh-crazed arthropods.

Standing by the altar, the high priestess swore. Her faithful minions were falling fast; as she watched, a quintet of survivors fled for the door, only for the drow swordmage to teleport from behind them to be in front of them. His fullblade came crashing down on the lead cultist with an almighty thunderclap, rendering it impossible to tell if his victim was cloven in half before being vibrated apart or simply blasted to jelly by the vibrations pulsing from the giant sword. As it slammed down onto the gore-slick stone, waves of thunder rolled out and slammed into the other survivors, tearing flesh and stone with equal ease. As he raised himself elegantly to his feet, the blade still shimmered with thunderous vibrations. The halfling wench was cheering as her arcanomechanical automaton plunged a shrieking drill into the heart of one cultist, then she sent it to flank the cultist currently battling that changeling thief. The human was eliminating her centipede swarm with his bare hands. A motion from the back of her eye caught her attention and she spun away from the scene.

"You! Where do you think you're going? Get in there and fight!" She howled.

"Lady… you ain't paying me enough to tangle with them." The mercenary who was supposed to be her champion replied, not even having the decency to look at her.

"You faithless mercenary scum! I'll…" She shrieked, calling upon the powers gifted to her by Torog. Before she could unleash divine retribution, though, a throwing hammer sailed through the air to split her skull and send her body crashing to the floor. As the lifeblood poured from her body, the last thing she heard was her killer's voice.

"Better a live faithless mercenary than a dead fanatic fool."

Several minutes later, the last of the cultists was dead, and Sim was using one of his daggers to cut the dragonborn free. Sitting up, she rubbed her wrists and looked grateful. "Thank you; I thought for certain that the west wind would be carrying my soul to Bahamut's castle."

"Don't mention it. Yech…" Ranma said, trying to scrape off some of the foulsome slime that was centipede residue.

"Well, that was fun, but I guess it's here that we part ways." Malaggar stated, his fullblade clanking onto the stone.

"What? Aw, I thought we made a pretty good team." Wella said, looking disappointed. "I was hoping we could maybe keep working together? You know, start our own adventuring party?" She suggested.

"And since when do adventures grow on trees?" The drow retorted.

"…I do need some strong warriors to assist me in something." The dragonborn mentioned. "Oh, my name is Thava, an Invoker in the service of the Wyrmking." She added.

"I'm game." Wella immediately supplied.

"If you can pay me, I'll kill for you." Sim proclaimed absently, busily looting the corpses of the cultists.

Malaggar looked grim… well, grimmer than normal… and began stroking the flat of his fullblade. At last, he spoke up. "Well… I don't have anything particularly pressing to do…" He admitted.

"Very well… and what about you, human?" Thava asked.

Ranma looked pensive. "I don't know… I really should be working on a way to get home."

"Your village can't be that important to you." Malaggar declared scornfully.

"Village, nothing. I'm talking about getting back to my own world." The human stated flatly.

The demihumans stared at him in surprise, before Sim finally stood up, pockets bulging with coins and other valuables, and took a few hesitant steps toward him. "…You're a planewalker?" He asked.

"If that's a fancy way of saying 'fell through a hole in space and ended up on a whole different planet', then yeah, I'm a planewalker." Ranma said.

"If that is so, then I would suggest you come with us." Thava said confidently. "The Church of Bahamut is one of the most widely spread faiths in this world, and we have contacts with many other faiths of the light. If you help me with my mission, I'm certain the church will be able to help you find a way back to your world."

Ranma looked thoughtful, scratching the side of his head, and then nodded. "Well, I guess I've got no other clues… and maybe you guys can help me with this other problem I've got…"

"Then it's settled!" Wella cheered. "All we need to do now is come up with a name for ourselves!"

"Let's not and say we did." Malaggar mocked.

"Are you going to be like this the whole time we're around each other?" Sim queried distastefully.

As the two began to bicker, Ranma sighed and shook his head. Ah well, this was still more teamwork than he'd ever gotten out of Nerima. Maybe he had a chance to get home after all…

And thus the journey begins. Of course, how it ends may well never be told. For the curious, Thava is a Covenant of Wrath Invoker, Malaggar an Aegis of Assault Swordmage, Sim an Artful Dodger Rogue, and Well is just a "vanilla" Artificer with a more "technomantic" theme to her spells. Ranma is… well, technically a Monk. And for D&D veterans who may be wondering why I had Thava refer to the West Wind; I know that Bahamut has "Lord of the North Wind" as one of his titles, but his domicile is traditionally known as the "Palace Behind The East Wind", so I figured that the west wind would be regarded as carrying the souls of the departed faithful there. Probably not accurate, I know, but I'm not as caught up on the past lore as I might like to be.