From The Sharn Inquisitive, by roving reporter Soyora Eyewise
It appears that there's a new vigilante group operating in the shadows of Sharn's Firelight District, one with undefined goals but plenty of power to back them up.
This reporter happened upon the news of this new, unnamed group during a regular stop at the delicious Morlock's Bakery for some of their delicious sweetbreads. While there, I happened to notice new windows being installed, and I asked the owner, a friendly gnome named Morlock Goodheart, what had happened.
"It's no secret that there are plenty of fights down in Firelight," he told me. "It's not unusual for us to be baking late into the night and hear scuffles on the street, and it's not that unusual to have to deal with some broken glass, whether from deliberate vandalism or the side effects of a big gang fight. But what happened a few nights ago? That was unusual."
It seems that Morlock had been up late baking with his warforged assistant, Mixer, when they heard the sound of an altercation out on the street. They went up to the top of the bakery to look out the windows and saw a local gang harassing what looked like adventurers.
"I'd guess there were about a half-dozen in the gang, and they looked like pirates, maybe former Lhazaarians who hadn't been on a ship in quite some time," Mixer told me. "They were battling it out with the strangest mixed crew of adventurers I've seen in quite some time."
I asked Mixer what he meant by strange, and when he told me, I had to agree. Amongst the group he counted a half-elf archer, the only woman in the group, along with one of the Q'barran dragonborn, who wielded storm energies like one born to the House Lyrandar, a goliath and a half-orc both using some kind of primal magic and a shifter. The shifter, I'm pretty sure, is the only one native to Sharn, a known thief and second story man who calls himself Smoke. The others, though? Rarely seen races, for the most part, and none of them local to Sharn.
Mixer said that the group handled the pirates fairly handily. At first, it appeared that their goliath was going to fall to the cutlasses and barbed arrows of the pirate raiders and their archers, who had hidden in the alley. Smoke entered the fight to attack the archers, but the dragonborn and the half-orc seemed to be in some kind of shoving match near a storm drain before rushing up to join the fight. And the half-elf archer? Mixer says she was up to something else before the fight started.
"There's a curio shop across the way from us," Mixer told me, "but the owner's been gone for a while, maybe a couple weeks, and it's been locked up. Then, about halfway through the fight, this half-elf comes out the door with a bow at the ready and starts firing on the pirate captain and her men. It was her that turned the fight around, to my mind. But I have no idea what she was doing in that curio shop."
This reporter did a little snooping around later and discovered that the shop's door lock had been picked, and one of the trinkets inside had been tied up, probably by the archer, to keep it from making noise.
The fight ended soon after that, but not before Mixer and Morlock had a little uninvited excitement of their own.
"We watched as the archer drew back her bow and fired, and the first two shots she fired, it's like she was firing directly at us!" Morlock said. "They crashed through the windows and missed by ears by maybe six inches."
Morlock now believes that the archer just aimed wide, not that she was aiming directly at them. But that night, late and alone in Firelight, they weren't so sure.
"After the fight was over, we heard bellowing outside," said Mixer. "I looked out and realized it was the dragonborn and the half-orc, and they were yelling at us."
What did they want? Fresh-baked bread, according to the bakers. The windows breaking had sent the scent of Morlock's delightful breads out into the street, and the adventurers, their foes now slain or fled, clearly sought to have a bite to eat.
"We let them in," Mixer admitted. "Honestly, we figured if we didn't, they'd probably crash in and kill us too. By our count, they'd killed three or four men and women, and it was only due to the other three or four running that they didn't kill them too. I did my best to put on my intimidating face and let them in for coffee, juice and a variety of our breads."
However, Mixer told this reporter that the adventurers weren't impressed by him. In fact, he said, the half-orc was extremely interested in him, and Smoke claimed that his friends had never even seen a warforged before.
"The half-orc kept poking at me, and I heard them arguing about whether or not I was alive," Mixer said, a bit insulted. "I swear I heard the half-orc talking about trying to buy me, like I was some kind of pet."
All things considered, Mixer and Morlock came out pretty well.
"The girl, I think Smoke called her Brynn, she offered to pay for the window along with the bread and drinks, and even threw in a little extra for the trouble," Morlock said.
What happened after that? Well, dear reader, your intrepid reporter wasn't about to let the story stop there. I did a little investigating, something The Watch doesn't do much of in Firelight, and found that the adventurers had stacked up the bodies of the pirates next to the door of the curio shop, and they'd clearly been in to do a little digging.
After that, I managed to follow their trail down to a storm drain, which Mixer said he'd seen them entering after having bread at their place. Just inside the storm drain I found a couple of dead Shadar-Kai and the remnants of a gelatinous cube, not to mention a dwarf that had to have been about two weeks dead. It's clear there was a fight, but what happened after that, who was involved, and who won?
Well, that's a story for another column. Have a pleasant tomorrow, readers, and remember, when in Sharn, always look up... the many stories hold many stories.
Delkan & Lyrich
