A History of the City of Grantabrugge, 1287-1289
To Brother Gilbert of Seeker, the cause of many of the things described here.
Every city has a bar like it. It's the one where the adventurers drink- and here I use “adventurer” to describe a state of mind: someone who seeks out the unusual and the exciting, who likes to use whatever skills they have in dealing with the interesting things that come our way, not necessarily in combat. So, when an experiment I was conducting in the Alchemists’ Guild in Yorvik went slightly wrong (well, I say slightly; it blew a wall off) and I was hastily “transferred” to Grantabrugge, it was natural that after a lifetime of drinking in the Orc’s Head back home with my family, I would seek out the Grantabrugge equivalent.
And so, after asking around asurprisingly warm April night, I walked through the door of the Wessex Arms. I was rather relieved by what I saw; the same dark, yet strangely welcoming atmosphere, and the same interesting mix of clientele (it is probably worth noting for those new to city life that most citizens appear to prefer drinking with their own kind, whether segregated by race, profession, beliefs or any other division one would care to name). At that time, the city was under attack by Norscan invaders and the Arms was a common target, mostly due to its location next to the river- though I suspect it was also because its reputation had preceded it and the invaders wanted a challenge. Either way, all the raiding parties were repelled by the drinkers and as a result of this and other adventures I found myself becoming as well known a first aider and healer as I had been in Yorvik. I do wonder, actually, if the Arms is part of a vicious circle. The regulars are all adventurers in one way or another, and tend to enjoy a challenge. So its attackers see it as a prize- proof of superiority to be gained by its conquest. And thus, more people are drawn into the world it creates in its defence, and the cycle continues…
But I digress. The Norscan invasions were merely background to the really strange occurrences of that spring. It began with what is now known as the Changing of the Races; all Kender and Elemental Elves changed to True Elves, a race looking much like elemental elves with human colouring. Old stories describe this as the elves’ ancestral form before they gave half their souls to the Elemental Lords to aid their fight against the Dragonlords nearly thirteen hundred years ago. It is thought that some remaining True Elves became the race we now know as Kender- certainly their reactions to healing potions support this- though how this occurred is as far as I am aware unknown. At the same time, those priests of Bast who had been granted catlike features by Her lost them, any half-breeds became the race of one of their parents, and I heard stories from the North of orcs losing their wild nature, standing upright and acting in a more civilised manner. The change itself was very painful, though mercifully quick.
Accompanying these strange happenings were rumours of the long-sunken island of Atlantis emerging from beneath the sea, whispered prophecies that the unborn child of John Devlynsson, High Priest of Ishmund and Jera Jandoval, Master Fire, was the “Child of the Sword”, linked to some mystic artefacts, and the visit of strange creatures named “Teloi Pantoi” (pronounced approximately “Teloi Pantoi” in Common) to the city. Notable among the regulars at the Arms at that time were Brendan Arundel, Lord of the Northern Granges and High Priest of Azrael, Sir Elaine Wessex, High Priest of Humact, two skilled scouts named Daniel Jameson and Curtis Darton, and the soon-to-be-infamous Brother Gilbert of Seeker. Amidst a plot to capture the heir to the throne, Prince Samuel of the Seven Shires, and force the King to name his own son Prince William of Wessex heir in his stead, Lord Brendan was unmasked as an impostor- he was actually his twin brother Lucas, more well known for his devotion to drink and women than to any god- (though he had been masquerading as the High Priest of Azrael, he was in fact a lay follower of Humact.) A lot of political mess followed, during which Lord Lucas was alleged to have fathered a child on Lady Julia Galfrese, High Priest of St John. I do not know the truth of this matter, though she certainly was in the early stages of pregnancy and Lucas never outright denied it; rumours of a stolen love potion and the head alchemist Dr Quicksilver’s death having been not as natural as it appears were rife.
Even more strange premonitions, dreams and portents followed, until finally Lord Lucas, Daniel Jameson, Curtis Darton and Sir Elaine were imprisoned on suspicion of treason. They appealed against it, claiming that the prophecies foretold that they must be on Atlantis on Midsummer’s Day to prevent the destruction of the world. They were broken out of prison a few days later by Julia Galfrese and Sarah Moreton, a red mage. Under cover of a distraction (if you can call blowing up the city walls and impersonating Odin to invite in the Norscan troops a distraction) organised by Brother Gilbert of Seeker, they stole the King’s ship and sailed off. That was the last I ever saw of any of the prisoners. Soon after, on Midsummer’s Day, most people who had changed race returned to their original form, though a few of the True Elves chose to remain changed. A very few people changed race entirely, including a small number of dragons who flew off to Atlantis to be with the rest of their people. So either the prisoners were right, and managed to save the world, or it was all a false alarm. But then, how did everything sort itself out so neatly?
Autumn/Winter? 1287
Things settled down to an extent after that; although the Norscans claimed right by conquest to rule the city, the King had other ideas, and after beating several of their finest warriors and then their leader, Gundersson, in single combat, agreed that the Norscans could remain in nominal charge of the city providing the King’s Law was still enforced. Thus began an age of what they called peace and prosperity and the Grantabrugge people called bloody oppression. The common folk did start to mix- a few, including myself, learned their languate in an attempt to get to know them better, but fundamental beliefs such as the unnaturality (and thus illegality) of White and Black magic deeply offended many citizens and roused a few to action. Central to this was Ash, a young woman who, after changing from a kender to a True Elf several months before, was taken on as a personal pupil of Elendriel the White Shadow, then Master Light. In November 1287, the Norscans burned down the College of Light, and Ash lost her home and the small amount of stability she’d managed to build up. She began to hate the Norscans with passion and began to work towards removing them from Grantabrugge. She lay low for a few months, during which time a far greater menace threatened us.
Blue and yellow demons with long claws began to appear around the city and attempt to capture priests- they appeared to have some way of telling a priest by sight. Some of these demons possessed ordinary humans by stabbing them with their claws and somehow passing their soul into the person through it. Their name for these demons was “clawconduitone”, best translated in Common as “Claw Conduit One”. Those possessed would lose control of their bodies and minds to the demon mind for short periods at a time- during this time they would pray to something called the “Great One” and appear to gather at a shrine which was being built by other blue and yellow demons. I was unfortunate to be among those possessed, but this turned out (in a way) to be a blessing in disguise as Brother Gilbert was able to question my demon, and found out quite a lot of information. The blue-and-yellow race was enslaved by another race of much more unpleasant red demons who were trying to create a new God. However, they needed human souls to do this, hence the possessions- they thought that when the body died the human sould would go to this new god, which they called the “greatone” (Great One). The priests were taken for “research”. Gilbert’s work in unravelling all this was going very well (as, thankfully, were his measures to prevent me from coming to any more harm while possessed), until one evening in the Arms, Eric (later Mayor Eric) performed a ritual to allow Lord Kakatal, the Elemental Lord of Fire, to fight the Great One. Unfortunately Gilbert walked in halfway through this and interpreted it as a demon attacking Eric. He jumped into the ritual circle, causing a not entirely unexpected explosion and, sadly, the death of one of the participants. This surge of power enabled the demons possessing mortals to fully take over their bodies, and I remember nothing more until I was exorcised by John Devlynsson a few days later. Gilbert was then arrested by the Children of the Light for causing death by ritual magic. I managed to bail him out under the conditions that, on pain of death, he did not leave the city or perform any rituals until a trial could take place. But he remained convinced that he had devised a ritual which would shatter the Great One, and remained determined to perform it despite my best protests. And perform it he did, with some but not total success, willingly handing himself over to the Children afterwards. I think he thought he’d be hailed as a hero, particularly after negotiations by Devlynsson which allowed him to go out the following day with a group of adventurers to destroy the Great One (though the red demons’ leader, a particularly nasty piece of work known as the Tormentor, escaped.) But the Children of the Light have little sympathy or use for heroism as recompense for what is crime in their eyes, and he spent the next six weeks in prison seriously injured, having lost his hands and been badly burned in the ritual that did succeed in killing the Great One. The night his execution was due, Gilbert was broken out of prison by a small group of mages including Ash the light mage, as he had offered her help in freeing Grantabrugge from Norscan rule. He hid in a safe house for many months, and I saw him once during that time. Our son was born the following October.
That winter, Ash began to step up her own efforts to remove the Norscans. She realised that the particularly virulent plague that had come to the city was being spread by rats, and started suggesting that the Norscans keep rats as pets and hang them up in their windows (I have no idea why they took this advice on board, but they did). Rumours that she was behind a pie shop suspected to be the centre of an outbreak have never been confirmed, though I think it not unlikely. Anyway, the Norscan army ended up severely under strength and eventually (after a couple of weeks of “encouraging” reports from Mayor Gundersson, who had fled to his country manor), the official Norscan presence in the city departed, though some merchants, traders and a few mages and priests opted to stay. Ash was, to put it mildly, rather pleased, and I’m glad she lived to see her efforts bear fruit. We think she was murdered by a necromancer a few weeks later, though she was permanently living in a variety of disguises so we are not quite certain it was her.
Spring/Summer? 1288
The Norscan leadership, if it ever looks back, will probably consider that their people were pulled out at just the right time, as almost as soon as they left, the city was beset by four more menaces. I shall deal with these in the order of their resolution. The first, and smallest, danger we faced was that of the Bavarian potion sellers. Coming from a far-off land, they brought with them a new healing potion which was not only better than the standard potion sold by our Alchemists’ Guild, but could cure both body and limb wounds with one dose, something which we had never been able to achieve. Unsurprisingly, these potions were treated as a great breakthrough and for a few weeks the Bavarian merchants did a roaring trade and became rich. Of course, it was all too good to be true, and the downside turned out to be that once someone had drunk these potions, if they did not drink another within a few days, they became increasingly violent and suffered from hallucinations. They needed about one potion per week to remain socially functional, and so became dependent on them. The Bavarians, of course, increased their prices as they had a captive market. A week or so later, their offices were mysteriously burned to the ground, and they fled. I managed to develop a cure for the dependence a few weeks after that, but it was so expensive, and the supply of rockrose, the addictive herb, so low that not everyone could be cured. Several mercenaries died, strapped to tables in their madness so they could not hurt anyone else, but thankfully there were few other deaths.
The next danger we faced was the revenge of the demon lord Tormentor. Having been thwarted the first time, he learned from his mistakes and this time sought to turn himself into a god in a ritual powered by draining the souls of possessed priests. More priests were captured, more still possessed, including (so rumour has it) John Devlynsson of Ishmund, the only man in the city capable of performing exorcism. Eventually James Dervish of the Scouts’ Guild recruited a band of Arms regulars (who else would be foolhardy enough to try?) to attempt to break into the Tormentor’s camp and kill him. They were Joel of Ishmund, who had been possessed himself, Sesqui of Humact, and Edgar Folly, Sarah Moreton and “Magical” Eric, all of the College of Fire. And they succeeded, slaying the Tormentor as he began his ritual to ascend to godhood, and perhaps more impressively, all made it home alive.
Which brings me neatly on to the gravest danger the city had faced in the time I had been there: the rise of Antenor the Black. There had been rumours of the arrival of a powerful necromancer; certainly random undead attacks in the city had greatly increased in number, and evidence had been found of Vivamortian rites taking place inside the city! But the people were too caught up with Bavarians and demons, and responded in their usual stoic fashion by destroying the undead as they showed up and otherwise ignoring it. It is perhaps worth noting that two of the Arms’ most notorious patrons, August and Alistaire, turned up around this time, using Antenor’s activity as a cover for their own dark deeds. Even the capture and sacrifice of Den Tellin, someone we’d seen in the Arms a few times, by a necromancer went mostly ignored. This state of affairs continued until the group who killed the Tormentor were ambushed on their way home from that adventure by one of Antenor’s lieutenants, Lucerne the Black, and left naked to return home with warnings carved into their skin. Whatever Antenor sought to do with this message we shall never know, but it finally spurred the city into action. Grantabrugge began to call for help, ready its people for war, and make preparations for an influx of refugees from nearby farms and villages. And it is just as well we did; Antenor’s army was growing more numerous by the day and it became harder and harder to leave the city without coming under attack. Slowly but surely the city was coming under siege, and day by day more people from outside arrived, bringing with them tales of burning villages, destroyed crops and friends killed and raised as extra minions of Antenor. Four weeks after the Tormentor was slain, a plot was finally formed. Everyone in the city able to fight would, lead by Humacti warriors, engage Antenor’s army head-on (and the fighting strength of Grantabrugge is considerable, especially when you include the mages hurling spells from the walls). While this was going on, a small group of volunteers recruited from (where else?) the Wessex Arms would sneak round the back into Antenor’s base camp and kill him while he was distracted. I feel their names should be recorded for posterity; they were Sesqui of Humact, Charlotte of Corfe, another Humacti priest, Thea Chalice of Morvana and Borric, a mercenary warrior. By some miracle the plan worked and Antenor was slain, his powers failing at the last as the minions powering him were killed. From my position behind the walls, performing surgery on the wounded who made it back, I heard a great shout as the undead stopped attacking with any purpose, and from then it was “just” a matter of mopping them up, helping the surviving villagers back to their homes, cleaning up the mess and working out how to feed everybody. Even as I first wrote this, well over a year on, the effects were noticeable; the harvest was small as not all the farms were back to full capacity, a few buildings had been hastily repaired and it is worth remembering that many citizens lost friends and family. But we survived.
The coming of the mathemagician styling himself “The Apprentice”, therefore, was something of an anticlimax, rather understandably. It all started off quietly, by comparison. Elementals appeared, stealing all books, pamphlets and any other writing they could lay their hands on. They then started to place their hands on the foreheads of people termed “Chosen”, leaving behind blue hand symbols identical to those on the elementals themselves. Anyone marked in this way disappeared on death in a similar manner to an elemental elf. Gilbert was one chosen in this manner, though I only discovered this after his death when reports of the murder by elementals of a group of men including a false name that Gilbert had used reached the city. But as it turned out, they weren’t dead. Anyone who died while marked by the Apprentice was taken to his pocket plane- Gilbert managed to send me a letter via an elemental so I was able to find out what happened. The Apprentice planned to use all their souls to power his return from his plane to Albion, where he grew up. But he was foiled by Gilbert, Borric the mercenary and Roxie of the Scouts’ Guild, helped by other Chosen, his two elemental personal servants, who betrayed him, and a group of strange-looking lizard-like people calling themselves Vani. Gilbert fell in the final battle with the Apprentice. Borric and Roxie brought his head back to claim the reward from the Children of the Light. I didn’t begrudge them it; it was after all five hundred shillings that no longer belonged to the Children of the Light, after all.
And so the city appeared not to be under immediate threat, and the witch-hunt for Gilbert of course was over. Things were quiet, which was just as well for me as my son John was born at the beginning of the following October. Understandably my notes over the few months after that are somewhat sketchy; I was not only distracted by John but also by having an apprentice all but forced on me by the Yorvik Guild (though, seeing as I married him later, that was not precisely a problem…) All that said, I am fairly certain that things actually were quieter around the city- a well-deserved and welcomed lull.
Autumn 1288- Summer 1289
Of course, quiet in Grantabrugge never means silent. Even while distracted and deprived of sleep by John, I was still able to keep abreast (I hoped) of what was going on. The mandolin left behind in the Arms by Den Tellin on the night he was kidnapped and sacrificed to Vivamort was haunted- the most common results of touching it were paralysis or sleep, though pain, insanity and injury were all observed. Den’s ghost wandered around the bar, trapped by… something. A Fae named Viridian Creel turned up, ostensibly hunting something named “Rufus” but also taking the opportunity to be a huge busybody. My details are somewhat incomplete, but it seems to me that Rufus was some sort of dream-creature who found itself in the head of Kiram, one of the regulars who was at that point somewhat mentally unstable (perhaps I should instead say more mentally unstable than the rest) and was then released. For the release itself, I suspect Aellin, a bard who we at that point suspected of having Fae ancestry, though we later discovered he was the Fae Duke of the Granta in human form. Rufus jumped from host to host, causing the hosts to commit violent crimes, and was, at the start of December (I am told by Lucius Peters of St John) caught in one host and destroyed. In the meantime, another necromancer was defeated, this time one who had escaped Astalonian custody; under their code they had no proof of him having committed murder so they could not execute him.
Shortly after this followed one of the darkest nights in the Wessex Arms in terms of personal tragedy. Firstly, a group of bandits attempted to hold up the bar while many of the warriors were outside. In the battle that followed their return, Sarah Moreton was shot with a poisoned arrow and died instantly. Later that evening saw the disappearance of three other patrons: Sesqui of Humact, Silka of Luca and the trader Alastaire. The story we were told at the time by August, friend of Alastaire and (so she claimed) witness to events was that they had been attacked by undead and she had barely managed to escape. It is perhaps worth noting that Den Tellin’s mandolin exploded that same night and Den’s ghost was seen saying thank you before it disappeared. The next few weeks were a little quieter and more subdued as everyone tried to recover and look for Silka, Sesqui and Alastaire. New faces were seen in the Arms, most notably Zak, a True Elf who used to be a kender (and it showed), Mischa of Crofter and Lucie Rivers, a hydrokin warlock. And we thought things might settle down. However, the Children of the Light once more began to show their zeal, “clamping down” on “false cults” ie groups of worshippers of concepts, idols, well-known people or non-existent or dead gods. We began to worry.
But on February 3rd, something worse happened. The events of the evening were very confused, but pieced together later by Tebah, mage of the College of Light. August used a Vivamortian miracle to persuade Aellin to follow her out of the bar, where he was attacked and killed by a “Child of the Light” named Jed Chard, but not before August was herself hurt. She tried to use the same miracle to force Mischa of Crofter to heal her, but worded her command such that he remained able to tell the bar’s patrons that he thought she was a necromancer. She was killed very quickly after that, but Jed Chard escaped, followed by Szerk-Hae of Bast and Remedios of the College of Air. They were sent back into the bar as zombies shortly afterwards, leading us to suspect that “Jed Chard” was Alastaire in disguise, especially considering that nothing more was heard of him after that night. Unfortunately, the only thing we have proof of is the incompetence with which the Children of the Light (fail to) check their recruits. We were shaken up, obviously. Death does that. So does the exposure of a traitor and the knowledge that there is another one out there. But, as ever, we coped and moved on.
Shortly after this, the Children became so obsessed with cults that they stopped patrolling the city completely, not that this made an appreciable difference in the level of policing or fear among the city’s inhabitants. Although I remained preoccupied with John and my engagement to my apprentice, Francis, I stayed in touch enough to watch the inception of the Unified City Militia. The warlocks had taken over patrolling the streets, and doing a rather better job than the Children, but this situation was far from ideal as they were being stretched by all the extra duties. Things came to a head when the Children issues a statement that anyone worshipping any entity that was not one of the (as there were then) fifteen gods was an abomination unto the Light and should be slaughtered. As should be obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the customs of the elves, who follow their elemental lords, they had ostracised ten percent of the city’s population with one edict, and that tipped several of the Arms patrons, including three warlocks, Nathaniel Argenta, Lucie Rivers and Edgar Folly into action. A leaflet and posters calling for a unified, secular police force were produced and Mischa of Crofter spread the message to those who could not read. Although no major institutions in the city other than the Warlocks’ Guild openly and publically endorsed the movement, many tacitly gave their approval by allowing their members to join up, lending equipment of donating money to the cause. And a couple of weeks later, Mayor Eric signed a warrant for the inception of the Militia, to be led nominally by Earl Stroud, but really by Nathaniel Argenta as lieutenant and Edgar and Lucie as sergeants.
At around the same time, it became apparent that a lot of shallowings to the Dreaming left by the incident with Rufus had not been closed. While there were no Child of the Light patrols in the city, they continued to act with ever more zeal outside it, with reports hitting the city of murders simply on suspicion of being a cultist. The battle was not completely one-sided; more than once I heard of cults which had killed Lightists and stolen their uniforms.
And then the quiet abruptly stopped. In March, the twin avatars of the Balance appeared in the Arms to deliver a message from each of the Gods to their followers. While the text varied wildly, reflecting the characteristics of the God sending the message, the actual content was consistent and very simple: there is an entity calling itself a King, and it should be stopped. One further piece of information came from Ishmund, which was details on the location of a servant of the King named Talon could be found and stopped. Talon was a rogue Sordanite who had been responsible for some of the nastier murders that had been happening in the city recently. To cut a long story short, he was stopped and his body given to the Ishmundi. Found on him were plans and notes about the King and his followers. The King, or his servants, struck the next blow. Cards of the major arcana of a tarot deck began to appear in specific locations around the city; for example, “Death” cards were found all around the Alchemists’ Guild. These cards had small spirits in them and were “less magical than the world”, apparently. The spiritual state of the cards altered in various ways and according to events that happened in the city; this confused us all for a while, until we worked out that the state of the card depended on whether the King’s attack on the thing represented by the card had succeeded or failed. We managed to get about half the cards into “failed” state by perseverance, hard work, and occasionally blind luck. And then one evening in the Wessex Arms, Nathaniel Argenta, Richard Lomond of the College of Darkness, Luthos the mercenary and a man with a spiritually empowered weapon whom many of us later suspected to have been Alastaire in disguise seemed to disappear, almost fading out of existence. The world was very shaken up over the next few days, with rumours of a great battle in the planes of the gods, later substantiated by news of the death of the Triplicity and subsequent merging of Astalon and Ishmund to form a new god, Justice. That I am still here writing this makes me entirely willing to believe that our “heroes”, the gods, or some combination of them succeeded in preventing the King from destroying all creation. My wedding during the middle of all this mess may perhaps explain the slight incoherency of my notes, for which I apologise.
Autumn/Winter? 1289
Then, apparently, followed a reasonably quiet summer. Francis, my brother Tom and I went to Yorvik for two months to see the rest of the family, and on our return were most surprised to hear that nothing of note had actually happened while we were away. But in October, things started happening again with a vengeance. The first thing we noticed was a lot of creatures moving in from the fens and the Ffolk lands. Goblins and trolls were far more commonly seen in the surroundings of the city than before, and also there came a race of fairly intelligent semi-aquatic animals, called Sahuagin by scholars but Swogs by everyone else in imitation of the sound they make. Adolescents and adults have poison glands in their cheeks; they can spit mild venoms onto their claws and do this to hunt. Then a new sentient race began to move into Grantabrugge, mostly keeping themselves to themselves at first. These strong, slightly magical creatures with very deep black shadows around the eyes began to fortify buildings apparently in preparation for some sort of invasion.
Nothing actually did invade for a while, though, apart from a plague of magical rockrose, the herb which made the Bavarian potions addictive. Somehow made magical by the Fae, a red variant of the normal herb grew everywhere in and around the city, mostly spreading along the ley lines to start with and then indiscriminately. The population were warned about its properties in time that addiction was kept to manageable levels, and the red variant does appear to be less strongly addictive than normal rockrose as far as I can tell. Eventually it turned out that a rockrose sample had been given to Aellin by the Fae, and he had modified it. Now the debt had to be paid back, and under circumstances that involved a trip into the Dreaming, it was, and the rockrose began to fade gradually. It was helped by a ritual designed to spread a potion (researched by Francis) to prevent the growth of rockrose over the entire city.
Meanwhile, a new cult seemed to be spreading. Nathaniel returned, telling a story of shaping the power wielded by the King into a new form chosen and moulded by those present. He told us that Luthos and Richard had made their part of it into a new god of chaos and knowledge, not a member of the Pantheons and hated by all the other gods, particularly Balance, who until then had had no opposite. To my mind this god seems dangerous- he is not bound by the treaty between the gods of the Mace and the Sword and as yet, as far as I am aware, he has not given any strictures or tenets to his followers. I am told all he desires and requires is worship, and he will Awaken and grant miracles apparently indiscriminately, including to Kender. Giving oneself to a God is not something to be entered into lightly and always comes at a price (though not necessarily an unpleasant one); that the price has not yet been named is deeply concerning, particularly from a young, desperate, power-hungry god.
However, all this was put aside for a time when we found out why the new race of humanoids had come. They were followers of Humact who lived in the Underdark and called themselves (as best can be expressed in Common as they think it rude for us to attempt to speak their language) the Sword Orks - trying to stop a rival group of the same people from outflanking them by moving above ground. They called their enemies the Fist as they were Mallan worshippers, and they were coming from the North-east, killing everything as they went, which explained the trolls, goblins, swogs and other miscellaneous beings fleeing before them.
And it turned out that the King himself had left a small garrison in the city with instructions to defend it against these attacking orks, so, to cut a long story short, we did.
It is not my place to give a long account of the battle; doubtless others will do so elsewhere in great detail. But the Fist army arrived on December 3rd 1289. They failed to take the Faerie Mound ritual site due to a magical thunderstorm “conveniently” occurring, so attacked the North and East gates of the city. Though the gates themselves fell, the Orks of the Sword and citizens of Grantabrugge were able to prevent the Fist army from advancing much further into the city. A strike force managed to infiltrate the Fist leaders’ camp and kill their commanders; on hearing news of this the remnants of their army turned tail and ran. The city was saved without too many casualties thanks to the efficiency both of our warriors and all those who supported them. We all pulled together, and that’s what made the defence work.
And, come to that, that’s what makes the Arms and indeed any other adventurer’s tavern work. People putting the resources they have together to achieve some quite remarkable things. So now we just wait to see what turns up in the new year…