I do not own Dungeons and Dragons or any of the characters.
Rumors
Edgin narrowed his eyes slightly, jabbing his rapier into the stick several times, shaving the sides off with the first two, both inside of the lines, before stabbing the stick in the center on the third. As he withdrew his sword, he looked to Jasper who smiled and nodded. Edgin grinned, and Jasper tossed him a newly carved wooden rapier, one with a round blade like a broomstick, a bell guard with a knuckle bow, and a grooves grip. He lifted his own matching one, and Edgin nodded, adpoting the same stance as Jasper, his left hand behind his back, his right bent with the training rapier in front of himself, and his feet staggered, standing nearly profile to Jasper. Mia stepped forward, inspecting his positioning and nodding approvingly.
"He's a natural," Mia noted. "You were right."
"Of course I was," Jasper smiled. "Now, Edgin, we're going to start off slow. The rapier I gave you is designed for slashing as well as stabbing, so I'll be training you to wield it as such. For now, just copy my movements."
Edgin nodded, and Jasper began to flow through the basic strikes and blocks he'd had drilled into him. His trainer had been a master. Someone who'd routinely competed in combat tournaments using blunted weapons against some of the best in all of Faerûn, and who had won several times. He could only hope that he could teach Edgin half as well as his former master had taught him.
After a while of Edgin mimicking Jasper's movements, and then beginning to go through them on his own, they began to spar, slowly at first, but quickly picking up the pace, Edgin improving slowly, but struggling, as expected.
Jasper deflected several strikes from Edgin before knocking his blade away with his own, jabbing his own at Edgin, who sidestepped, evading the strike before slashing, Jasper deflecting the blade and backstepping, nodding approvingly.
"You're far from a master," Jasper mused, "but you're proficient enough to not get uourself killed in the first two seconds of a fight, provided you're not alone."
Edgin nodded, smiling. "Thank you."
Jasper nodded abd looked to Aranea. He'd made her a training spear with a long, smooth shaft, then an elongated, aroow-head blade tip, allowing for dlashing strikes as well as thrusts. He was planning to get a real one when they stopped at the next town, but he was also toying with the idea of sharpening her training spear and making it Ironwood. She nodded as his gaze met hers, lifting her spear.
"Together," Jasper said. "See if you two are skilled enough together to beat me. You have infinite tries and a three minute time limit."
Both nodded, and Edgin immediately lunged, stabbing at Jasper, who knocked the blade away. Jasper apun instantly, knocking Aranea's spear away as well, only to have to duck as she swung the back end of the spear around at him. She'd picked up what he'd taught her about using a spear much faster than Edgin had picked up use of a rapier, making her the slightly more dangerous threat in terms of skill. However, Edgin's mental flexibility made him vastly more dangerous. As Jasper ducked under Aranea's spear's shaft, Edgin stabbed low, intentionally missing Jasper, only to then slash upward. Jasper was forced to lean back in order to avoid the strike, which gave Aranea enough time to spin, stabbing at Jasper again.
Jasper turned sideways, twisting his body and deflecting the spear, then stepped forward, slashing at her, only for her to block the blade with her spear's shaft. Edgin slashed at Jasper, and he spun, ducking under Edgin's blade before spinning back to his feet, drilling the end of his blade into Edgin's chest, forcing him back.
"Dead," Jasper said, as he spun around Aranea's spear, slashing her across the back. "Dead."
Edgin lunged, slashing, and Jasper deflected it, then slashed the other way, catching Edgin across the chest, then skip-stepped backward from Aranea's spear, allowing it to also hit Edgin.
"Dead twice," Jasper noted.
The two of them continued to struggle, Jasper allowing them to have a fighting chance, but finally, the time limit expired, Edgin dead eight times and Aranea dead five. Jasper nodded approvingly, setting his training sword aside as Edgin massaged the spot Jasper had stabbed him in the chest.
"That hurt," Edgin complained.
"It was supposed to hurt," Jasper smirked. "What did I say?"
Edgin sighed. "Pain is the best teacher."
Jasper nodded, then turned his head slightly, looking at an approaching travelor out of the corner of his eye. The person looked like they could be a traveling merchant, but their stride was too strong, their eyes too alert, and the dagger concealed behind them stuck out through their cloak every few steps just enough to betray its location. Jasper could see Mia had also spotted it, as she had her hands positioned to extend her gauntlet blades, but they waited. And when the man reached them, he stopped, staring at Edgin for a moment, barely more than a second, but enough to arouse Aranea and Doric's suspicions as well.
"Greetings travelors," the man smiled kindly, glancing around at them all, his eyes noting both Jasper and Mia's over-armed appearance, Holga's axe, and Aranea's lack of proper clothing, as she still wore only her ripped up top and shorts. "Might you be adventurers?"
"We might," Jasper nodded. "Might you be an assassin or a spy?"
The man tensed before sighing. "Spy. I'm a Harper."
"Then you should know we all got Pardoned," Jasper warned him.
"I know," the Harper nodded. "I'm not here for that. I'm here because...I could use your help."
"With what?" Edgin asked warily.
"Something is...unusual in Baldur's Gate," the Harper began. "There's been a largely benevolent Thieves Guild there for years, until recently. "A new Thieves Guild recently moved in and slaughtered the previous guild, taking over. But these ones are murderers and rapists. However, even setting that aside, their movements are suspicious. They're too organized, and their takeover was too fast. Something greater is working behind the scenes. We need someone to investigate. Someone who can take care of themselves."
"We don't work for free," Jasper said.
The Harper nodded. "I had assumed so. I will pay you a handsome sum once the situation has been resolved. Each."
Jasper looked to the others. One by one, they all nodded, except Aranea, who simply shrugged. Finally, Jasper nodded.
"Deal," Jasper agreed. "But we can't go straight there. We need to get some new equipment, first."
The Harper nodded. "We have someone that will meet you there. They'll know when you arrive."
Jasper nodded, and the Harper turned, walking away. Jasper turned to Edgin and Aranea again, and they continued to spar.
Aranea hummed thoughtfully as she examined her entirely black armor in the mirror. The armor on her torso was smooth and shaped like the top of a backless dress. It had a strip of metal reaching up to her collar with a thick leather strip around her neck in a high collar, then extended down, widening as it went to cover her breasts, then reached down to reconnect low on her back, out of the way of her spider legs. It thinned again high in the hips, the bottom merely wrapping between her legs, thinner in fron than in back, like panties.
She wode a pair of armored gauntlets reaching to her elbows and with clawed fingers, greaves and cuisses that covered her legs entirely up to mid-thigh before giving way to flesh. Her armored boots had pointed toes, and rigded soles to give better grip against the ground. The last part of her armor was a custom mask with a thick, black band around her head, then several vertical strips of metal reaching from just below her chin to several inches above her head. They were thicker at the top than at the bottom, making them closer together around her chin, and a thin metal band was attached inside of them to hold them steady. The metal splints were uniform, waved slightly on the outsides, and were curved into an arc away from her face inside. At the top, where they stuck up, they were pointed, giving the appearance of a sort of crown.
She nodded to herself, lifting her new spear. Its shaft was black with a silver ring in the center, then a silver, conical point on the back end. The head of the spear, however, featured a silver stretch of round metal with a silvery wing etending about two inches from the front before folding toward the ahaft, feathers in. On the back side, there was a small setction of rounded metal sticking out an inch with a small, double-edged blade about three inches long extending from the end of it. From the shaft side of the rounded base of the back edge's blade was a decorative silver spiderweb, which reached three inches backward along the shaft. Then, there was the blade. On either side of the blade were a pair of thin crescents, their rounded back edge inward, then a long, double-edged triangle blade from there. Including the crescent, the spear's head was about eighteen inches in length.
"How do you like it?" Jasper asked from the doorway.
Aranea looked over at him before smiling behind her mask, though she pulled it off immediately. "The armor is comfortable and easy to put on and take off, and the spear's beautiful." She stared at the spear for a moment. "What are they made out of?"
"The spear, gauntlets, boots, mask, and leg armor are all the same Mythril-Adamantite alloy as Mia's longsword," Jasper said. "The armor's made from Ironwood-reinforced Bulette hide."
Aranea nodded, admiring her armor for another moment before turning away from it and following Jasper out of the room to the others. The others all glanced over her armor, nodding approvingly, before turning to Edgin.
"Alright," Edgin nodded. "Let's go see about this new Thieves Guild. And maybe while we're there we can reallocate some of the things they've stolen."
"You realize we're supposed to be good guys, right?" Doric asked.
"Yes, but good guys need money," Mia pointed out.
"Also, you're the only one in the group who's never been a thief," Jasper said. "Not counting Aranea. For the rest of us, it's kind of an instinct."
Doric sighed, nodding, and they left the inn, heading south toward Baldur's Gate. The sun passed over their heads quickly, and they all traveled largely silently. At one point, a group of Hobgoblins tried to rob them, only to die screaming as Jasper and Mia slaughtered them. Then, finally, they reached Baldur's Gate. It was late and raining, so they headed for the nearest tavern, one called the Elf Song Tavern. As they walked in, a haunting, femenine voice singing from all around them. And standing in the middle of the tavern and arguing, every eye in the bar turned to them, stood a Dwarf, a Moon Elf, and a Human.
The human was tall, with light brown hair parted down the middle and stubble wearing a white, button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled under a green, wool vest, grey pants, black boots, and leather vambraces. The dwarf had darker brown hair comved backward, a bushy, brown beard, a yellowish-brown button-up shirt, a blue, wool vest with a V-neck, thick, black, leather vambraces, grey pants, and black boots. The elf, on the other hand, wore a green one-piece with the front open to the bottom of her ribs, exposing her cleavage, dark green, bicep-length gloves with exposed fingers, and thigh-high, green boots with two inch heels.
"I don't care what ye lost!" the dwarf was growling at the human, his voice deep and gruff. "They took my family's axe! It's been in my family for generations!"
"You're both selfish!" the elf snapped in a deep, sultry, smooth voice. "Our first priority should be stopping the thieves, not our lost trinkets!"
"It sounds like we can solve both problems at once when we take the new Thieves Guild," Jasper spoke up.
"Who are you?" The human asked.
"We're here to deal with the Thieves Guild," Edgin explained. "And it sounds like you three are hunting them, too, so we could work together."
"And what do you stand to gain?" the dwarf grunted.
"We were offered a decent reward," Mia said, eyeing the elf, who was eyeing her and Jasper as well, being the most heavily armed.
"Sure," the elf nodded. "We're supposed to go through the cellar to get into the sewer, where the Thieves Guild are supposed to have their hideout."
"Sounds like a plan," Jasper nodded. "Are you three armed?"
"I'm a sorcerer," the elf said simply.
"I have this," the dwarf grunted, holding up a rusty dagger as his face clearly displayed his displeasure.
"I'm not," the human said.
"Well that's not helpful," Jasper sighed. "What's your skill set?"
"I'm a ranger," the human said.
"Archer?" Mia asked.
The human nodded, and Mia reached for her bow.
"If I may," a heavy-set, balding man in the corner spoke up. "I sell weapons and armor. I'd give them some for free, but..."
"But you have to make money to live," Jasper nodded. "So that'll be a bow and arrows for our archer friend, an axe for our stout friend, and..." he looked over at the elf. "Anything for you?"
"A staff," the elf said.
The man passed out the weapons, Jasper paying for it all before they headed down to the cellar. It was much more expansive than Jasper had expected, and was also infested by sewer rats as big as dogs, though within a few of minutes, between them all, they'd slaughtered them all. At the far end of the cellar, which felt like it ran under multiple buildings rather than only the Elf Song Tavern, there was an entrance to the sewer. One-by-one they all descended into the sewer until only Mia, Jasper, and their new Elf companion was left. However, as Jasper moved to enter the sewer, the elf held her staff across his path, blocking him.
"Changelings," the elf said. "Correct?"
"Correct," Jasper nodded. "Does that bother you?"
The elf considered for a moment before speaking. "Why are you really here?"
Jasper was silent for a moment before responding. "Until recently, all we'd ever been was criminals. But in Neverwinter, we were able to be something new. We got to be the good guys. Heroes. It felt better than being thieves or mercenaries, or assassins. So we came to help Baldur's Gate. The money we were offered is nice, but it's not our whole reason for being here."
"And the girl with the impractical armor is also a changeling?" the elf asked.
"No," Jasper shook his head. "Something else. It's not my place to say."
The elf nodded. "Why should I trust you?"
"You don't have to," Jasper shrugged. "All I can offer is my word that we mean to stop the Thieves Guild, not to pursue selfish interests."
The elf considered before nodding. "Alright."
Jasper and Mia nodded, and Jasper looked over at Mia, only to stop, raising an eyebrow as she placed the last of her armor in his shadow, having adopted a new form with replicated clothing. This time, her form was a Tieflig with pale, grey skin, straight, orange-red hair reaching past her shoulder blades, a long, thin tail, black sclerae with glowing, yellow irises, and a pair of long, slender, white horns reaching back over her hair and curling up just slightly at the ends. She wore a red, leather collar reaching halfway up her neck and connected to a cloth wrapped diagonally down over her breasts before looping around behind her, a bair of bicep-length gloves under her gauntlets, a blavk cloth wrapped around her waist several times with the ends hanging down in the front and back, a pair of black panties, and a pair of sandals with a strip of leather up her calf almost to her knees with three straps wrapping around the front of her shins and two over her foot.
The elf sucked in a breath as she also saw Mia had already changed from one beautiful form into another. Jasper and Mia both caught her eyes flick down to Mia's chest for the briefest of moments before the elf returned her gaze to Jasper. He had Shadow store Mia's armor for them and held his hand out to the elf's staff. She handed it over, and he pulled several metal shavings out of a concealed pocket in the armor, along with a small phial of tree sap. Then, as he chanted, the materials dissolved into dust and faded as he ran a hand along the staff. For a moment, it seemed like nothing had changed before he struck the staff against the stone floor with a sharp, metallic report.
"Ironwood," the elf realized. "Why?"
"It'll serve you better," Jasper shrugged, finally heading down into the sewer.
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