Hello all,

Part 50 is actually the first segment of a three-parter written for me by Laufey Green, a good friend of mine. Some of you might know her as the author of 'In the Cards' or as the creator of the Edwin Romance mod for Baldur's Gate 2. If you haven't checked out either yet, be sure to do. You won't regret it.


Tankards and Tempers

Chapter 50 : Returned To Sender 1 - Only the Deadliest Work in the Postal Services

"I'm bored", Laska said, sighing. "Who wants to go down to the Coronet and toss back a few ales?"

"By 'a few', I assume you mean 'less than twenty'?" Keldorn asked and temporarily broke off the loving polishing session he was having with Carsomyr.

"Twenty?" Korgan said. "Wha' kind o' bleedin' lily-livered weakling are ye, knight? It nay be a good night if ye can still count that high. HAR!"

Viconia smirked slightly and gave the tattooed elf a meaningful look. "This sudden onset of boredom wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Rose went away on that Management Made Fun seminar over in Trademeet?"

"No!" Laska said, not very convincingly.

"And that she won't be back for another three days?"

"No!"

"And that you miss her enough that you talk incessantly about her in your sleep?"

"No, no and no!" The elf paused, clearing her throat. "Ah…what did I say, exactly?"

Viconia's smirk widened a little. "I'd say that's for me to know and for you to torture yourself over, abbil. Unless, of course, you care to accompany me to that new art exhibition I heard about."

"But…"

"You do want to know, don't you?"

"That's blackmail!"

"I know", Viconia said, her eyes a little dreamy. "A subtle and sophisticated art. Don't you just love it?"

Keldorn shook his head. "Viconia, you should not make jests about things like that."

"Why Keldorn, whoever said I was jesting?"

It was at this moment that there was a loud and insistent brief knock on the front door of the mansion. Strangely enough, nobody was waiting outside. Not only the doorstep, but also the entire sun drenched street was utterly empty of visitors. "Blasted kids", muttered Korgan who'd been first to the door. "I'd like te…" Then he spotted the note that had been placed on the doorstep, neatly held in place with a large rock. This is what it said:

To Laska Leafwalker,

It would be to our mutual benefit if you and your companions would pay a visit to the Sea's Bounty at your earliest convenience. There are a couple of minor questions I should very much like to discuss with you, regarding the mail service of Athkatla. First, the matter of misplaced missives and where they might be recovered. Second, the little known fact that packages sent to an unknown address will, in time, be returned to the sender, and that said retrieval will have to be carried out by a third party, a third party that may already have been elsewhere occupied.

Rest assured that all this and more will be explained when we meet in person. I am positive that an arrangement could be made that would be advantageous to all of us.

Eagerly awaiting your arrival,

The Third Party

P.S. Please do try to keep the discussion civilized, no matter your personal preferences. That will spare us both a lot of needless aggravation, not to mention loss of blood. There is so much senseless violence in the world, wouldn't you agree? I'm sure you share my opinion that sensible violence is always to be preferred.

The adventurers puzzled over this extremely strange letter for some time.

"How could anybody", Laska complained, "manage to make a letter about postal service sound so ominous?"

Jan scratched at his short beard. "Now that", he said, "reminds me of my cousin Karl Jansen, who worked with the Instant Message messenger service for a while. See, a group of gnomish wizards thought it would be a good idea to get messages instantly delivered all over the Realms, the very second after you'd finished writing them. So they set up a lot of teleport portals, and then had their Instant Messenger Gnomes pop through them to deliver the letter before the ink was even dry, getting equally swift answers in return."

"But surely", Dynaheir said before she could stop herself, "that would generate a lot of useless and inane chatter, and eat up the time of the people involved so that they would spend far too much valuable time writing letters with bad grammar and little content?"

"Ah, I'm glad you asked that, Dyna! The point was to get the users addicted you see, and since they had to pay an hourly fee for being 'connected' to the portals, the wizards earned a fortune. Up until the day it all went wrong, that is."

The Rashemani mage sighed. "And what, pray tell, went wrong?"

"Well, the Instant Messengers started disappearing, one by one. Popped into thin air, they did. They'd go into the portals, but they wouldn't return. Very scary that was. Soon, not even extra turnips for supper would be enough to make the few remaining ones come to work, and the entire system would have broken down if it hadn't been for my cousin Karl."

"What did he do?"

"Brave gnome that he was, he jumped into a portal armed only with his strength, his wits, and his trusty slingshot."

"Let me guess. He planned to fire turnips with it?"

"Certainly not! Wasting good turnips like that, why the very idea makes my toes curl. I'm of a good mind not to finish the story now."

"Good, because…"

"But I always forgive my friends", Jan said eagerly, "so I'll do it anyway. Karl planned to shoot rutabagas, of course. You should have guessed that, really. Imagine his surprise when he came through the portal and found himself nose to snout with a very hungry Troll! Seems that the beast had taken to the Instant Messenger System, and especially the Instant Messenger Gnomes, and now he planned to eat poor old cousin Karl, just as he had eaten all the others. But Karl wouldn't stand for that, and he fired a steady stream of rutabagas, right at the troll's ugly nose. As the troll fell, good old Karl followed up with some Flaming Oil potion, and finished him right off. Then he proudly leapt back through the portal, prepared to become a hero. Sadly, the portal had accidentally been disconnected from the system, and he got the wrong address, landing right in the middle of a griffin lair instead. Good old Karl…after that we always called him 'The Stump'. But anyway, that goes to show that the postal service is very dangerous to work in, and only fit for the deadliest and most dangerous people. We should all be careful around whoever sent this letter, that's all I wanted to say."

"Wish that be all ye said", Korgan muttered. "Why donnae we jus' go down there, find the bugger an' bash 'is skull in?"

"Yes!" Minsc eagerly exclaimed. "If there is evil lurking, Minsc and Boo will be first in line to chop it into tiny little evil bits!"

"That might not be the wisest course of action," Viconia said, shaking her elegant white head. "Let's find out who this person is first, and what he or she wants."

"An' then we bash 'is skull in?"

"Possibly, Korgan. Possibly."


The Sea's Bounty tavern was much the same as always. Dark, smoky, disreputable and stuffed full with sailors and pirates. One especially disreputable trio were perched on the bar, along with the small gray rat that one of them stroked lovingly. "What ever are you doing there?" Laska asked curiously,

"Performing", one pirate, the tall one with a peg-leg said.

"Yes", said the second pirate, a very fat one with rotting black teeth. "Performing."

"Best place for it", agreed the third, the bearded man with the rat. "Nice and comfy seat, and close to the grog. And Fluffy here has close to the cheese."

"Good point", Laska agreed. "But what exactly are you performing?"

The trio looked at each other. "Er…a manifesto to the fragility of the human psyche, especially as demonstrated by long and copious exposition to strong spirits."

"So basically", Viconia said, "you simply sit around and get drunk?"

"Er…"

"Well, ma'am…"

"Now that you put it that way…yes."

Laska grinned like a maniac. "Now there is an art form I can really appreciate, Vico!" she said.

"Minsc does not understand", Minsc said, scratching his bald head, "but Boo says that any man with a nice rodent is a man to be trusted. Tell us little pirates, have you seen any evil mailmen about?"

The three pirates looked at each other again.

"Um…"

"Sorry…"

"We've been too busy performing. Nice rat though."

"He is a miniature giant space hamster, but Boo says you must be forgiven for your mistake and not pounded into the ground since you mean well."

Leaving the pirates to their 'performing', the adventurers looked about the tavern. There were certainly plenty of customers about, every one more rowdy than the one before, but nobody was showing any obvious interest in Laska and her friends. Then one of the waitresses, a shapely blonde, came undulating up towards them. "Hello friends", she said in a sultry voice. "How may Gracie serve you?"

"BEER!" Korgan bellowed. "An' step on it, wench! Me beard has nay been washed in hours! HAR!"

Gracie smiled. "And a very nice beard it is too, sir", she said. "Even if I personally prefer something a little more understated." Her eyes turned dreamy. "Sooo cute…and now there's that other one too…such a hard choice…"

"Excuse us, my lady", Keldorn kindly told the girl. "If there was nothing else you wanted…"

Gracie startled. "Oh! Yes, there was." Her smile turned conspiratorial. "I was asked to tell you that a returned package is waiting for you upstairs. Second room on the right past the stairs."

"Asked?" Dynaheir said. "By whom?"

"Sorry, ma'am. Can't tell. You just go up there and you'll soon find out for yourselves." She smiled again and walked off.

"Hey!" Korgan protested. "What about me beer?"

Once the adventurers reached the designated door they gathered in front of it, weapons and spells at the ready. "Right", Laska said. "Be prepared for anything.There could be anybody in there, even Irenicus himself. And if so, let's come out of there with his rotten heart, all right?" General nods of assent followed, and a little weary sigh from Keldorn. "Go on Minsc. Open that door."

"Nobody bars the way of Minsc!" the berserker roared. "Door, meet boot! Boot, meet Door of Evil Blocking the Way!" He raised his mighty leg, and with an equally mighty CRASH the door toppled inwards into the room. Laska was first through, Ipsiya glowing fiercely blue and ready to do battle. And then she stopped, staring, and hardly noticed a cursing Viconia crashing into her back. She couldn't possibly be seeing whom she thought she was seeing.

Two men were sitting at a small table near the window, apparently engaged in a game of chess. One of them started violently at the sound of the breaking door. His face was very much familiar to Laska, though she hadn't ever expected to see it again. Edwin Odesseiron had lost some weight since last she saw him, and he'd also lost that appalling nose ring that he'd been wearing the day she stuffed him into a large crate bound for Icewind Dale. The red robe was the same though, as was the scowl on his dark face as he glared back at her, quickly composing himself after his initial moment of confusion.

The Red Wizard's companion was nobody Laska recognized, and he didn't even look up from the chessboard, giving her a few seconds in which to study him. A tall, lean man dressed all in deepest black, he was of indeterminate age. Older than Edwin certainly, but younger than Keldorn. "Knight to E4", he said in a low voice. One of the black knights gave a little squeak of assent and trotted off across the board, coming to a halt in front of the white king who sighed with defeat, threw up his hands in disgust and walked off the board, the rest of the white pieces trailing after him while the black ones cheered in piping voices. "Check…and mate", the stranger told Edwin with a small smirk on his face. "Looks like you still need to practice some more, doesn't it, boy?" Then he turned his head towards the adventurers, his black eyes betraying no surprise. "Good day to you, Laska", he said politely. "Please come in." He paused. "I would ask you to close the door behind you, but that statement suddenly seems a little misplaced, don't you think?"