Day 2: The Plot Thickens

The second day of the adventure will dawn bright and cheery, with a bit of a crisp April morning. The adventurers are looking forward to taking their first ride in the Landship Katrina. They will be very succeptable to motion sickness, having never ridden in a land vehicle before.

The morning is interrupted by a startling discover. Widow Evia Krank is found dead in her cabin, a needler dart in her neck. She has died of the poison, which took effect almost instantly. There is little sign of a struggle and the door is locked from the inside. A large amount of jewelry sits on her nightstand, untouched.

It apparently happened before she went to bed, for she was still in the dress that she had been seen in at theatre the night before (an nobody on this ship wears the same thing twice in a journey, let alone twice in a row). There is the distinct smell of rotten meat in the room.

Laren says that he heard a loud thump the night before and the sound of her dog barking wildly. His cabin is across from hers. He had thought nothing of it, thinking that her punt-dog Bernice had jumped off the bed or something. Besides, he was very occupied with the missus, if you know what I mean.

This is one of the first things that catches everyone's eye: where IS Bernice? The spastic little spitz is nowhere to be found.

Searching the ship will turn up several oddities, some of which are clues, some of which will be red herrings.

Things Found	Explaination
Someone has broken into the liquor cabinet the night before	Red Herring: This happens often.
Huge Splattering of bird droppings on observation bubble	Herring: Chance passing of titan eagle during night
Holy Symbol burned into side of landship	Herring: Mayor's wife painted oil on ship and set it alight, trying to burn the wicked craft
Title to the Comet Velocipede Showroom	Clue: The imp has this folded up in his little backpack, trying to hide it
an ugly scratch in the floor of the widow's room	Clue: Scratch caused by assasin's walking cane.
faint smell of smokepowder in widow's room	Clue: murder weapon was a skaven smokepowder needler.
A dirty footprint of a classy boot. It bears a designer label in the tread	Clue: This is a footprint of her assasin, located in her room.
half of a walking stick lying on the floor of the widow's room	Clue: Inspection will reveal that the stick is in actuality a hollow tube, the end of which is like a hypodermic needle with a hole down the center of it. It is the front end of a skaven needler, which shoots needler darts. Two extra darts are in part of it that slides to reveal a secret compartment
small bag of snuff in widow's room	Clue: Left behind by assailant
wall statically charged on side of room opposite body.	Clue: Portal caused lightning to leap all over the room, but focused on wall as it opened
widow's satchel missing	Clue: Deeds/Titles to her magimotive velocipede business in satchel
Very small winged imp found under Widow's bed	Clue: Mai'tron's (assasin) familiar got left behind when Beatrice jumped through and the portal closed before it could get back in.
Small scoarch marks in lines/patches throughout the room	Clue: Portal caused lightning to leap about the room until it zipped down a main metal support. It zapped things in the engine room.
Crankmaster Frakdrek, dwarven engineer zapped as he slept in engine room the night before.	Clue: Electricity zipped through the ship along a main support in the widow's room

What Happened

Baron Mai'tron Kaipher, one of the magimotive steam lords, was looking to move in on competing industries. He owns Saphire Magimotive, an upstart company that makes cheap magimotive carts. At his direction, flyers were sent out to the major manufacturers of magimotive carts, velocipedes, hoverboards, and rollertracks, the things he saw as competition to his products. He sent the invitations quoting the normal price for a tour and his "introductory price" that he said was just to spread the word about his new mode of transportation, the magimotive landship, Katrina being the first ever built.

Baron Kaipher seeks to take the transportation market on two fronts. First with his cars priced within reach of the common man. Secondly, he launched the Katrina to introduce the concept of traveling in style to areas where the magimotive train does not yet go, which is most everywhere other than Grunburg, Alexander, Geyon, Trondheim, and a few stops along the way in small towns. He wishes to make the landship the preferred mode of travel for people of wealth, offering an onship gambling hall, jester, band, operetta, and brothel by night. This is to make things truly an event for those that travel in it. As part of the special offer, the passengers were not to let anyone know where they were going as the Katrina was not yet officially released yet. "If everyone knows, spies will already be looking to steal my invention. This is a secret test run," he had told them, and they had bought it all.

The upshot is that Baron Kaipher has his competition far from home with nobody knowing what became of them. The centaur attack had actually been his idea as well, but it had not proved as effective as planned. The centaurs had taken out the three best archers before the rest of the crew could react. What had not been taken into account was that Gina would be checking out the ballista at the time of the attack. She had dropped two centaurs and the rest fled. This had definately not been part of the deal. The ballista had been jammed on purpose as a precaution, but Gina had done her job well and had it operational by that time. The ballista has iron shields around its turret, making it VERY difficult to score a hit on its operator. Gina, on the other hand, had both the high ground and the skills to back up her title of weaponmaster. She had served aboard a military airship for 5 years and knew ballistae extremely well.

Baron Mai'tron Kaipher is a retired adventuring mage of 3rd level. He has done more than his share of magical research through the wizards that work for him. He had one of them, Perell of Seestadt, open a portal for him into the widow's room. He stepped through the portal and shot the widow with a skaven poison needler, a smokepowder weapon that fires small metal darts filled with poison. The design makes it almost completely silent, the weapon of choice for the assasin with the funds and connections to procure them.

His familiar, an imp named "Squigs" jumped into the room to find the legal papers that the baron knew that she carried with her. Her dog had gone nuts, leaping through the portal as the dart hit its master. It broke the concentration of the mage keeping the portal open, and the portal slammed shut with the imp still inside. The baron also did not have time to get his needler cane out in time either. The front half was sliced off neatly as the portal shut, falling to the floor in the widow's room. The baron did not dare go back for his imp and to clean up after himself for fear that the noise of the attack might have raised attention inside the ship.

After an investigation has been done to the satisfaction of the Katrina's owner, which is surprisingly brief, he expresses a desire to get things moving again. He sees little need for looking for clues and such and makes this quite clear. He communicates this to the captain through the use of a magic mirror in the captain's possesion, an oval mirror with a decorative handle made of ivory.

Day 3:Journey

About two hours into the day's travel, what should come sailing over the trees but Carmanil (aka "sleek") Deerstride, a middle aged human just trying WAY too hard to turn back the clock. He is 49 (for the 3rd year running) and gives new meaning to the term "midlife crisis."

Atop a Bambleweenie 7000 Hoverboard with psychadelic paintings of lightning bolts, fireballs, and all that is cool. Sleek wears dyed blue and red chamois bellbottoms tied at the waist with a cord made of woven gold cording. His shoes are the finest airboard specials, pointed leather moccasins with a grippy sole, made of the same type of material that tires are made of in this world, "gummi," a substance extracted from trees and baked into its non-liquid form. He wears a tee-shirt with the "Rocker's Refuge" emblem emblazoned on the front of it. He wears a black leather jacket, the finest that Kirdah Fredric, the famous half-elven designer has to offer. His hairdo is black and long on one side and shaved on the other. He looks the part of someone almost completely failing to be cool, but putting in the effort nonetheless. He wears round lens dark glasses and show WAY too much smile. He flexes on cue and is generally larger-than-life. His airboarding style lacks in finesse. Typical 'boardin quote: "Yeah, baby yeah! Catch that draft! Yahooooooo, ... whoah! Too much! Not again... oh, SHIT!" This is usually followed by a crashing sound and a stream of profanities that the author will kindly omit for the younger readers among us. Sleek survives many of these crashes due to an obscene amount of luck and the repeated potions imbibed from the freedom society which have made his body very flexible and his bones all but unbreakable.

Sleek boards over the tops of the trees to the left of the road and careens out of control towards the landship. He crashes into the observation bubble and lays there for a minute rubbing the more damaged portions of his body. "Yeeeeaaaaah!" he screams upon finding no serious injuries. He checks his board for damage and looks concerned about the nasty gouge in his "ride." (Anyone else would be overjoyed to find it in one piece.)

Gina is the first on the scene, vaulting from her perch in the ballista turret.'"What in the nine hells are you doing here, Carmanille?!" she screams.
He throws his hair back and announces,"That's Sleek to you, mama!"
As Gina rockets up the stairs toward him, she unsheaths a wicked-looking black scimitar.
"....uh, I mean GINA," stuttered the middle aged man, holding his damaged board in front of him as if it were a shield.
Gina topped the ladder to the upper deck and upon reaching the top rung, her sword arced toward Sleek's midsection. He gasped suddenly, not that he was hurt, but she had neatly sliced the drawstring of his spendy pants, which dropped down around his ankles. Sleek looked very hurt, like a child with a broken toy. He scowled at her. His finger glowed pink and he fused the two pieces of cording back together.

Laren came from a hatch in the lower deck which led to his room to see what all the commotion was about.
"Sleek!" he shouted happily,"What brings you to these parts?" Laren saluted smartly and bounded up to where Sleek waved back in utter enthusiasm.

"Centaurs, man!" said Sleek, lifting his solglasses.
"You don't say!" "Yeah, dude, they're like comin' from the south. They bruised my board!" said Sleek, holding up his airboard to show an arrowhead wedged in his board.

"Right bastards, they are!" agreed Laren. "To arms then!" He produced a stubby brass horn from his vest and rent the air with its off-tune blare.
Gina hopped back in the turret, swinging it around. One of the rumble buggies came up from behind to join the main ship, while the one scouting ahead turned around and headed back at the sound of the blast. On the upper deck, the barmaids and cooks streamed out of the upper doorway and began to ready the ship for combat by pulling up hinged iron panels into their place where they fastened to the upper rail on the walkway of the ship. The Katrina looked more and more ready for a fight.

Sleek whipped off his solglasses and produced a pair of odd-looking goggles from a leather fanny pack. He mounted his board on the upper deck, wetted his index finger to check for wind direction and speed, put his feet in the board's tie-downs, and said,"Chickaboom!" which was apparently the command word for the thing to come to life. Sleek stretched out his arms, balancing himself, knees bent, then shot away with a little hiss. A thin blue trail of smoke blew out the tail of the craft, but this was merely for show. Sleek made a steep ascent over the trees, and was gone with nothing but the exclaimation,"Bitchinnnn!"