SAM: Did she come through here? MATT: "She was the last one to hire the mistress. About a week before you came." TALIESIN: (sighs heavily) SAM: What was the job? MATT: "I don't know." SAM: And she had some fellows traveling with her?
MATT: "She had five individuals following her, aye." MARISHA: What did they look like? MATT: "Didn't get the best good look. Kept it very hush-hush between me and the lady at the table. "Rest of them stayed at the back of the bar. Then they went on their business." SAM: Where were they staying? MATT: "Here." SAM: In our rooms? MATT: "Aye." SAM: That gives me the heebie-jeebies https://oncasinogames.com/canada/blackjack/. TALIESIN: That does not make me feel good. She is so dangerous. MARISHA: How was she a full week ahead of us? LAURA: Oh shit. Treev-- SAM: Because we went to Draconia. LAURA: I put Dust of Tracelessness on the ground. In her home. MATT: "What's that mean?" TALIESIN: It's going to obfuscate any of the scuffle. They're only going to find a body with holes in it. MATT: "So you're telling me that you came in here with a story about a murder of one of my finest mercs." TALIESIN: Yes. MATT: "And you decided upon finding this murder to get rid of all the evidence of said murder and "anything that could possibly point to you not being the murderers." TALIESIN: I did point this out to everybody before we came down here, but at the moment we were a little bit thrown by the dead woman. MATT: "I'm not going to lie, I mean as far as--" LIAM: Why would we come directly to you if that were the case? Why wouldn't we have not just left? LAURA: Plus, you know what? TALIESIN: They will be able to tell the body is at least a week old. LAURA: Exactly. Your man has seen a dead body before. He's going to be able to tell that it's been there for a while. MARISHA: I'm sure you have a cleric in the circle. Talk to her firsthand if you have to. LIAM: I'm curious if you can imagine a reason why we would come to you with this rather than sneak away in the night. TRAVIS: Yeah, I'm just curious how much the mead is? MATT: "On the house." He reaches under the bar and pulls up one thick, dark, red ceramic bottle. Cap's already off. He's plucked it off with his thumb and sets it in front of you. TRAVIS: My thanks. TALIESIN: I'm so sorry. MATT: "Guess it's possibly one of the major setbacks of this line of business. Very few grow "too old and gray and get to die happy in their beds. God knows I wasn't planning to." There's a long, awkward pause interspersed with bits of conversation for about 15 minutes before the hooded figure returns, enters the door, comes over and whispers for a good solid minute in the ear of Treev, before stepping back and calmly walking back to its corner. Treev sits up. "Well, parts of "your story certainly hold up. The body has been there for a while, at least from before I saw you. "Mind you, I don't know when you came into town. We only met a few days ago." TALIESIN: If we were smart enough to take care of her and smart enough to pull all of this off, this would be a ridiculous move. LAURA: (laughs) That we would come to hire her after we had already-- MARISHA: Killed her? TALIESIN: I would beg you to explain why we're having this conversation. MATT: "Oh, believe me. A lot of you doesn't make sense, period. So I'm just trying to figure it all "out." And he rubs the end of his long draconian snout. TALIESIN: The woman in question helped murder my entire family, took great pleasure and delight in it. I have been tracking her for years. MATT: "What you plan to do when you find her, then?" TALIESIN: Kill her. That's all. I've lost my taste for anything beyond that, but she is dangerous and she is evil. LIAM: In this moment, everyone in this room wants the same thing. MARISHA: We didn't come to you because we necessarily needed to go through the proper channels, we did it because we were trying to be forthcoming. Clearly you are all a talented bunch, so are we. TALIESIN: My feelings for her have become very complex. I don't care who kills her at this point. She just needs to be removed from the earth. MATT: "Which one of you is your dealmaker?" LIAM: I boot Scanlan forward on the tush. SAM: Hello, hi. MATT: "This one?" SAM: I make the best deals, I know the best words. MATT: "This one?" SAM: Sometimes it's Vex, but many times it's me. MATT: He leans over the bar and gets real close up to you, and takes a moment to (sniffs). "Aye, you "smell like trouble. I like that." Make a persuasion check. SAM: What am I persuading him to do? MATT: This is your essence of presence and telling him that you're the kind of person that-- SAM: Oh, my general charm? MATT: Your general charm. TALIESIN: I don't know what he's wearing, but it's very nice. SAM: Persuasion, you say? 29. MATT: "How is this for a deal? I got a nice fine look at your faces, I got friends all across these "lands. If what you say is true, you go. We let you leave. You find this murdering bitch, you kill "her. I want one thing, her good hand. I think that would be vengeance enough for the mistress." MARISHA: I mean, we don't have any use for it. TALIESIN: I feel very good about that deal. LIAM: Good terms. MATT: "Not talking to you. I'm talking to you." SAM: That's lovely, but we can't find her without some assistance. MATT: "Well, you've come to the right place. What assistance do I have to give you, what do you need?" SAM: We need to get this curse off of the thing that found your assassin. MATT: "Can't really help you with that, sorry, mate."
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Treev puts one hand out on the bar, he's got a big heavy coin in it, he's nervously tapping it. (few knocks on wood) TALIESIN: We think we know who did it. In fact, we are near positive we know who did it. MATT: You hear (door closing) as the door of the tavern closes and all the patrons you saw are now standing up completely sober and they're all taking a circle to the outside of your group. He's leaning forward, going, "All right, so you're clever. You came looking for the mistress, she "suddenly winds up dead.
You found her body." TALIESIN: And we tell you this as opposed to leaving. LAURA: We had nothing to do with it. We could've left town. MARISHA: Clearly we know how this looks, which is why we came to you first. TALIESIN: We are desperate in finding who did this. LIAM: What's the hooded figure doing right now? MATT: Still sitting in the back of that shadowed alcove between a bunch of barrels that are stacked and part of the bar side. LIAM: I'm going to keep focused there. TRAVIS: Is he still tapping the coin? MATT: No, the coin tapping has stopped. MARISHA: And what are the people around us doing? Are they, like, drawing their weapons? MATT: No. MARISHA: Do they seem armed? MATT: Do you take a look around? MARISHA: I want to just glance. TRAVIS: I take a very blatant look around. MATT: Okay. None of them appear to be armed, but they're all looking very closely upon you. You can make a perception check, Keyleth and Grog, if you'd like. TRAVIS: 13. MARISHA: Not bad. TRAVIS: There is a ceiling. MARISHA: Straight perception? 25. MATT: Okay. Yeah, you see them staring. They look pretty normal. TRAVIS: They look pretty. MATT: You do notice, what you didn't quite notice before, when you first entered, but a lot of these tables have like small cubbies on the edges, and each one of them are standing very close to one. One you see a little bit of a pommel that is barely poking out and they're all at the ready. This tavern definitely is-- Mercenary band uses this tavern as their base of operation and has definitely seemingly outfitted it to be functionally good place for mercenaries when they need to be. MARISHA: I look down in front of me. Is there any hidden cubbies in the table that we are at? MATT: That you are at? MARISHA: Yeah. MATT: You have to get down to really inspect. You want to do that? MARISHA: No. MATT: Okay. At initial glance you don't see anything, because everything is close to you, it's from a top-down perspective and you're blocked from seeing anything beneath. TALIESIN: For what it's worth, we will not draw first. We want to find her. Have any of your people seen a woman with one metal arm? She's so dangerous and now so much more dangerous. MATT: He goes ahead and puts his finger up this way and marks this direction. The figure that you're watching, Vax, steps out from the shadow and walks very calmly across the room, through all of you right to the edge of the bar by the door and goes-- not breaking eye contact with you, speaks out of the side of his mouth, Treev goes, "Go ahead and check their story. See her abode. We're "all going to wait here nice and patiently together until we figure out what the fuck is going on." TRAVIS: Makes sense. Do you have any mead? MATT: "We got mead." TALIESIN: In the meantime, I'd like to at least to start to tell you what we need next, for when our story is confirmed. MATT: "Well, you've certainly got a captive audience, so go ahead." TALIESIN: This woman has been tracking us. She placed a mystical tracker upon us at some point. We've just discovered it and we need to find a way to move it away and put it somewhere she does not suspect that we know that she placed it and does not see us coming when it's time for us to kill her. MATT: "So you're saying this woman that you're chasing is the one that killed the mistress?" TALIESIN: Yes. We believe so. LAURA: Your mistress has-- had a very powerful item on her. It's why we sought her out as well. MATT: "More so blinded-sided at the idea that the mistress was felled by someone. She could take "care of herself and has for quite some time." LAURA: From what I could see, her attackers were not alone. There were five of them. LIAM: They had an unfair advantage. MATT: "Five of them and a woman, you say?" His eyes narrow for a second. "Describe this woman." SAM: She disguises her appearance, so how we know her might not be how you have seen her. She has sometimes shown herself as an old woman. MATT: "Old woman?" And he starts describing. "Sort of a spindly gray-blonde hair, tumbles past the "shoulders, piercing blue-ish green eyes." TALIESIN: Always piercing eyes. LAURA: No, but here's the thing, maybe somebody did see her. TALIESIN: Maybe somebody did see her, and maybe they'll know where to get the gun. MARISHA: Even if they did see her, we know she knows how to alter her appearance. Also, no offense Percy, but I feel like we need to be careful on who you expose that gun to, from here on out. TALIESIN: I am keenly aware. MARISHA: Not only, one, for people who might think you're the culprit, but two, for people who are going to want to rip you off again. TALIESIN: She's the only person who's ever gotten a good look at it. She's the only one. SAM: So other than chasing her, going for the next Vestige on the list, the third option is wish her good luck and continue on with our mission ignoring the fact that she exists. MARISHA: Maybe she'll die in the Ozmit Sea. TALIESIN: She won't. LIAM: How long's it been since we left Draconia? MATT: Five days? LAURA: Not five days?! MATT: From your travel from Draconia, back to Whitestone, to resting in Whitestone, heading from there to the southern city, then travelling from there to Ank'Harel, then you've had-- TALIESIN: A lot of that was instantaneous. We did camp three or four days-- MATT: Well no, yeah about four or five days because you travelled then from Whitestone to south of Ank'Harel, then you wind walked to Ank'Harel, but then camped outside of Ank'Harel, because the time you got there was night, then you made it into the city, then you stayed for the evening, you slept again and the next night you went ahead and went into the casino, then slept the night there, so yeah, it's been about five days. MARISHA: Is it like a flying from east to west thing where we gain back a day when we go back? MATT: No. LAURA: But we don't have to fly, we just have to teleport there. TALIESIN: So long as we teleport we're fine. LAURA: But we don't have a plan. We have five days to figure out how to fucking kill a dragon. Oh Jesus. MARISHA: And we didn't get the Vestige we came here for, so-- TALIESIN: No we did not, in fact, it's worse. MATT: Well two weeks was the agreement, so you have more than five. Nine. LIAM: You can do anything in nine days. TRAVIS: We don't even have to keep the agreement, come on. LAURA: Potentially. TRAVIS: Just saying. We getting the gun un-fucked or what? TALIESIN: Let's go downstairs and talk to her employer. LAURA: Treev? MATT: Treev, yes. All right. TALIESIN: I'm going to leave the gun upstairs still. MARISHA: Wait, what? Don't we need it to tap the gun to-- SAM: Well we got to find out who's going to un-fuck it. LAURA: Is Treev downstairs? MATT: All right, you head down into the tavern, and at this time of day it's a little empty, a little sparse, maybe like, four patrons. Two in discussions, one that's deep in the cups and one in the midst of going through paperwork and in the far back you see Treev once again has his heavy spectacles on and is currently looking through that same book he was before, doesn't seem to pay any mind to you until you approach him. LAURA: Treev? MATT: "Oh, aye, good to see you. What can I do for you?" LAURA: We need to talk to you. It's rather urgent. MATT: "Then talk to me." Puts his book away, glasses on it, leans forward. TALIESIN: There's been a complication. The mistress is-- she's been assassinated. MARISHA: We hadn't heard anything in these past few days, we decided to pay her a call. MATT: He leans forward a little bit on the bar. Vex, Vax and Keyleth. You notice that the hooded figure, that originally delivered the note, is back in the far corner, where it was and it seems to have stepped a couple inches out of the shadows as well, paying very close attention to this conversation. TALIESIN: Did we bring the note with us? Good. MATT: Goes, "So you are saying that the mistress was assassinated?" TALIESIN: And the cloak stolen. MATT: "Cloak?" TALIESIN: The cloak she wore. MATT: "And you know this how?" LAURA: We found her body. MATT: "Where?" LAURA: In her home. SCANLAN: Don't think that was her home. MARISHA: In her hideout. TALIESIN: In her room beneath the house. MATT: "How do you know where she lived?" TALIESIN: We are very clever. But not clever enough to stop this. This appears to have happened possibly before we even-- we don't know when it happened. It happened a while ago. LAURA: About a week ago. I think. MATT: Percy, make a persuasion check. TALIESIN: 13. MATT: Okay. England is one of the most exciting destinations in the world and if you’re thinking of going on holiday overseas, it is a prime destination. There are a multitude of cheap flights to London so getting to the capital of Britain is not hard, and, with the metropolis offering a huge range of entertainment, there is more than enough to keep you amused for months. However, England offers a huge variety of extraordinary places to visit other than its capital and though you may fly to London, travelling to some other destinations is well worth it.
Utilising London as a base is a great idea as there are many day excursions available for hotspots across Britain. Two great places to visit are the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge. The universities are a sight to be seen with glorious architecture attracting thousands of tourists each year. Oxford’s cobbled streets are a wonderful reminder that you are following in the footsteps of countless priests, poets, scientists and writers before you as they, too, explored the buildings. Meanwhile Cambridge, also with fantastic architecture, offers the added bonus of shopping and punting on the river, and for any trip to England at least one of these destinations should be enjoyed. Another fantastic location is Bath, a shining city which, in its entirety has been deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Having become the top social haunt of the elite classes in the past three hundred years, it has also become an iconic and quintessential English city, with Georgian terraces rising magnificently from the streets. Palladium parades, ancient baths, and a carefully designed layout make this city a top attraction. If you want to explore some of England’s rural locations, then one of the most famed and beautiful spots in the entire country is the Lake District. This stunning region is home to rolling mountains, natural lakes and quaint villages set amongst historic stone walls and ancient forests. It is a great area for outside activities with walking and hiking amongst the famed hills a popular pastime. Meanwhile, lakes allow for canoeing, kayaking and even swimming for the brave hearted, whilst crack nooks and hills are the perfect opportunity to abseil and rock climb. For more outside discovery in a completely different setting, Cornwall is a fantastic location. Its white cliff coastline gives rise to beautiful sand beaches and has become an iconic surfing haunt for Brits. Little coastal towns litter the area and this beachside location is one of the most stunning in the entire world. England can offer a fantastic experience where you’re visiting for just a few days or a month of two. Using London as a base is a good idea as there are many companies who offer day trips to some of the nearer locations. Meanwhile, you’ll easily be able to sort out short breaks away from the city if you want to venture further to places such as Cornwall and the Lake District. And for any holiday to England, you’ll almost certainly leave want to go back and see more. When I was 18 and 19, I travelled around Europe with my friend Randy. We split up when I decided to stay living in Marbella in southern Spain, and he decided to go on to Morroco with another Canadian.
We met up again in southern Germany, at a train station where we both, independently, and without seeing each other for months, decided to take the same train to Amsterdam. From there, I made my way to Amsterdam, then northern Holland, through Germany to Copenhagen in Denmark, where I was down to $5, so I hitch-hiked back to Hamburg. I got to the hostel 10 minutes after it closed at 10PM, along with 5 or 6 other young people who appeared out of nowhere. We couldn't get in; they wouldn't answer the doorbell, nor respond to our pounding. A cop came along and wanted to know what the hell we were doing (in German, of course). We explained the problem, he tried pounding, no response, took us all back to the police station and gave us each a cell. That's the only time I ever went to jail. I went to the Canadian Embassy in Hamburg and said I was flat broke, could I borrow $10 to get back to Scotland as I had relatives there and money and a return ticket in safekeeping. They said, "No." I was quite disappointed. Then the lady continued, "That's not enough for such a trip, we'll loan you $30." So I filled out a form in quintuplicate and they gave me $30 in Deutschmarks; when I got back to Canada, there was a bill from the Canadian government for $30. I made my way to the coast of France, Calais, and took the ferry to Dover. After buying my ferry ticket, I was down to about $6 or $7. At that time, Britain had a requirement that incoming tourists had to have at least 300 pounds in funds on the person. They didn't normally ask, but I looked like a bum: raggedy clothes, dirty backpack, long hair down to my shoulders, full beard. The Immigration officer looked me up and down, and started saying "How much money..." while he was opening my passport, then he saw my birthplace was listed as "London, England", and he stopped and said, "Welcome home, mate", stamped my passport and gave it back to me. You are about to take a cruise for the very first time. Panic sets in as you realize you have no idea what to expect. Right now you may be nervous, excited and overwhelmed all at the same time. Well I am here to offer a few tips that will help elevate some of those fears about taking your first cruise. So forget about being nervous and overwhelmed and just get excited! I’m here to share some valuable tips to make your first cruise a breeze!
Have you ever heard the saying “To be prepared is half the victory.”? Well it’s true. If you want to have a great cruise, preparation is key. For this article, I am assuming that you already have your cruise destination and cruise line picked out, but you are starting to figure out that you have no idea what to expect for your first cruise, so like many people you turn to others for answers. It seems like these days everyone has an opinion on just about every subject available. With the internet, it is possible to find out just about everything on just about anything. There is no reason that anyone shouldn’t be able to find out information on whatever subject is of interest. So my first tip for those taking a cruise for the first time is to do your research on the ports of call you will be visiting. In some ports you may only have 8 to 10 hours to experience your port of call. You want to make every minute count. You do not want to get off the ship and start scratching your head wondering what you should do first. When doing your research try to stay away from forums as much as possible, most of the time they will only confuse you. Ten people will say “it’s” the best thing ever, but you will find 10 others that will tell you “it’s” the worst thing they have ever experienced. If you do use forums try to ask questions that will offer facts instead of opinion. Here is an example of what I’m talking about. You could ask “Is the food on the cruise line any good?” With this question you will only get a ton of opinions. Instead ask “what kind of food is served at the buffet?’ This will get you more factual answers. Another thing that will help put your mind at ease for your first cruise is to get to know your way around the ship. You can get to know your way around your before you even set sail on your voyage. You can do this by doing a search for a layout of the cruise ship you will be sailing on. If you search for a printable copy of the ship, you can print it out. After it’s printed, stack all of the decks on top of each other in order of the ship’s layout. This way you can actually see what is on every floor and what routes to take to get there. It is also helpful to see exactly what is on the floor above and below the room you will be staying in. Finally the last tip for taking your first cruise is an important one. Breathe! Don’t forget you are on vacation. Relax; try to remember that there will be lots of people on a really big ship. There will be lines everywhere, lines to board the ship, lines to get off the ship and lines for buffets. Don’t let this stress you out. If you know what to expect and you prepare for it ahead of time, it will make for a much more enjoyable experience. When you are standing in line for 5 to 10 minutes waiting for your food, just remind yourself it’s all part of the adventure. Use this time to get to know your fellow cruise mates; after all they are in the same “boat” as you. Before you know it you be eating and more importantly you will have made a few friends along the way. |
AuthorRonald Jam is an avid traveler, surfer, skier and travel blogger. He has his popular video channel on YouTube. Ronald is also a Casino Expert at Casinoslots Platform. ArchivesCategories |