As evening descends on Falcon’s Hollow, Belton Harald,
always a ladies’ man, suggest that the group repair to a local attraction he
has heard about called The Rouge Lady. A bawdy-house and burlesque located just
outside the walls of the town proper that hosts a titillating revue of exotic
comforts and tantalizing spectacles. The party agrees, having no other
suggestions and longing for civilized entertainments after so long a sojourn in
the fairy-haunted wilderness of the Arthfell Forest. They find the
establishment and are met inside the doors by Kabran Bloodeye a hulking
Half-Orc with human affectations of dress and speech. Aside from his blood-red
eyes, Kabran's most striking feature is his missing nose, cut from his face
long ago in a far-off city, in punishment for crimes committed there. He wears
a bronze nosepiece over the crater in his face, which whistles disturbingly as
he sucks air through it, and dribbles blood and mucus that he wipes away with a
crimson handkerchief.
He reveals the cruelty of his establishment nearly immediately by summoning the two barely-teenaged serving girls he bought from their destitute parents to “Apprentice”, meaning learn the whore’s trade, who provide drinks and meek subservience.
Kabran leads our heroes to a table off from the main bustle, barely illumined by a single candle in a fancy Taldoran table lamp. Almost immediately, the crew of house descend upon the party, plying them for drinks and offering their conversation and company peppered with suggestions and offerings of pleasures mundane and exotic and hinting of skills that are as shocking as they are enticing.
Belton is subsumed by two high-end ladies of the evening who proceed to relieve him of considerable coin in drinks and edible delicacies which they hand-feed him and themselves freely.
Gaia, Najáre and Sif prove more resistant to the ladies advances but politely engage in conversations and frugally refrain from ordering over-many drinks. Seeing the failure of the ladies of the evening to gain ground against our heroines, Kabran sends over les boys du cabaret to ply the women with more penetrating pleasures. They reveal that The Rouge Lady offers several games of chance native to Falcon's Hollow, such as "buckle-chuck" (played with scrimshawed sheep's knuckles or wooden dice), Rouge Lady - Grim Lady (a card game with a Succubus Queen and a Corpse Queen as trumps), and Spin the Saw (using a circular saw blade on a nail that is spun to indicate odds, victory, or defeat).
While this goes on, a gang of six of the thugs of Payden "Pay Day" Teedum who is the Lumber Consortium's overboss in Falcon's Hollow and the right hand and bodyguard of Thuldrin Kreed stride in as if they own the place.
Pay Day Teedum is as corrupt as any fiend from the Abyss. If anyone angers his boss, he's the one to deal punishments, often in the form of dues, the latter behavior being responsible for his nickname "Pay Day". He hates Deldrin Baleson, the Sheriff of Darkmoon Wood, and only refrains from violent action cause he doesn't want the Sheriff to become a martyr. His swaggering bullies are one tiny slight away from busting Town Militiamen’s heads at any opportunity. They walk around as a law unto themselves and no one is foolish enough to defy them who wants to keep working or work, keep from being crippled beyond the capability of working.
Kabran Bloodeye
He reveals the cruelty of his establishment nearly immediately by summoning the two barely-teenaged serving girls he bought from their destitute parents to “Apprentice”, meaning learn the whore’s trade, who provide drinks and meek subservience.
Kabrans "lil' starlings" waifs
Kabran leads our heroes to a table off from the main bustle, barely illumined by a single candle in a fancy Taldoran table lamp. Almost immediately, the crew of house descend upon the party, plying them for drinks and offering their conversation and company peppered with suggestions and offerings of pleasures mundane and exotic and hinting of skills that are as shocking as they are enticing.
The shabby-sumptuous Rouge Lady interior
Belton is subsumed by two high-end ladies of the evening who proceed to relieve him of considerable coin in drinks and edible delicacies which they hand-feed him and themselves freely.
Belton's Fancy Parlour Whores
Gaia, Najáre and Sif prove more resistant to the ladies advances but politely engage in conversations and frugally refrain from ordering over-many drinks. Seeing the failure of the ladies of the evening to gain ground against our heroines, Kabran sends over les boys du cabaret to ply the women with more penetrating pleasures. They reveal that The Rouge Lady offers several games of chance native to Falcon's Hollow, such as "buckle-chuck" (played with scrimshawed sheep's knuckles or wooden dice), Rouge Lady - Grim Lady (a card game with a Succubus Queen and a Corpse Queen as trumps), and Spin the Saw (using a circular saw blade on a nail that is spun to indicate odds, victory, or defeat).
The Disappointed Regular Girls
While this goes on, a gang of six of the thugs of Payden "Pay Day" Teedum who is the Lumber Consortium's overboss in Falcon's Hollow and the right hand and bodyguard of Thuldrin Kreed stride in as if they own the place.
The Lumber Consortium Bravos
Pay Day Teedum is as corrupt as any fiend from the Abyss. If anyone angers his boss, he's the one to deal punishments, often in the form of dues, the latter behavior being responsible for his nickname "Pay Day". He hates Deldrin Baleson, the Sheriff of Darkmoon Wood, and only refrains from violent action cause he doesn't want the Sheriff to become a martyr. His swaggering bullies are one tiny slight away from busting Town Militiamen’s heads at any opportunity. They walk around as a law unto themselves and no one is foolish enough to defy them who wants to keep working or work, keep from being crippled beyond the capability of working.
Boss Payden "Pay Day" Teedum
Sif, not having finished with the ladies quite yet, succumbs
to the charms of a physically strong but shapely and athletic and fair-faced
whore who reveals as she drinks Sif’s mead that her specialty is fighting back
against her clients. Providing a struggle so they have to work to defeat her
and take her as a prize fought-for and won. Though their victory is always
assured, they pay extra for her struggles and sometimes she takes the liberty to
cuff one roughly on the jaw or sorely strike his tender parts before giving in.
Sif engages her services for a massage, an actual legitimate skill she learned
as a girl working as a bathhouse towel-maid in Absalom. They retire to her
cottage just outside the door of The Rouge Lady and services are rendered.
With the hulking woman warrior gone, the Bravos of Thuldrin
Kreed, now deep in their cups, get some Dutch Courage and saunter over to the
table where slender Gaia and bestial Najáre sit with their drinks as Belton,
now slid-back generous from the table-edge to accommodate two ladies on his lap
wallows in vice and drink. They pull up some seats and start laying into the
ladies with introductory talk and some clumsy, drunken attempts at charming
Gaia. Gaia is clever and orders the serving girl to bring a bottle of the
horrible moonshine from the Low Market and an identical bottle of water. She
winks and hustles off to return with two big clay XXX jugs heaving the horrid liquor
onto the table before Teedum’s Thugs and
sliding the water-filled jug in front of Gaia. All three ladies face off
against challenger bullies and their brothers stand behind them wagering and
taunting and jeering at the women, sure of a soon-to-come drunken fallout of
the ladies and the lascivious violation of their unconscious, foolish bodies
that will immediately follow. But the ladies drink like fish and hold up
against the three sellswords, much to their dismay and finally they give up in
defeat. Three of their six now vomitously, blindly drunk and barely able to
remain upright. The remaining three, seeing that the field of competition for
these smug ladies has halved, slide on in for some direct wooing. Their speech
full of macho innuendo and their hands wandering over soft feminine charms that
they ought not to in good society.
Gaia plies the drunken-but-still-able-to-talk mercenary for information, allowing him to be distracted by his touchy-feely explorations of her body, as she extracts from him the secrets of the gate passwords and stories about how his gang run all of the Lumber Consortium ‘business’ meaning how they extort, rob and swindle the poor, honest lumberjacks out of every dime in their despicable endeavors. She learns much about he cruelty and lack of humanity of Lord Thuldrin Kreed and his crony, Pay Day Teedum. About how Magistrate Vamros Harg is the corrupt and cowardly magistrate of Falcon's Hollow. And about how prior to relocating to Falcon's Hollow, Harg was a failed barrister in Carpenden. He tells her about how this seemingly young, attractive halfling prefers same-gender relationships and is known to be fond of finery! An unforgivable and disgusting flaw in the eyes of the gang. And lastly about how Vamros has a stormy romantic relationship with one of Sheriff Baleson's deputies, the handsome Tabrik Splint. She learns from the thug about how Splint is fearless and speaks openly about Kreed's corruption and the need for a change in the leadership of Falcon;s Hollow, and how his day is coming very soon when he slips up and wanders somewhere in town alone where Teedum's gang of cut-throats can teach him a lesson in savage beating and bloody murder in a dark corner or silent cellar away from the townsfolk's eyes. And lastly, about how Harg desperately tries to protect his lover from Kreed's wrath.
The Fightin' Maiden
Gaia plies the drunken-but-still-able-to-talk mercenary for information, allowing him to be distracted by his touchy-feely explorations of her body, as she extracts from him the secrets of the gate passwords and stories about how his gang run all of the Lumber Consortium ‘business’ meaning how they extort, rob and swindle the poor, honest lumberjacks out of every dime in their despicable endeavors. She learns much about he cruelty and lack of humanity of Lord Thuldrin Kreed and his crony, Pay Day Teedum. About how Magistrate Vamros Harg is the corrupt and cowardly magistrate of Falcon's Hollow. And about how prior to relocating to Falcon's Hollow, Harg was a failed barrister in Carpenden. He tells her about how this seemingly young, attractive halfling prefers same-gender relationships and is known to be fond of finery! An unforgivable and disgusting flaw in the eyes of the gang. And lastly about how Vamros has a stormy romantic relationship with one of Sheriff Baleson's deputies, the handsome Tabrik Splint. She learns from the thug about how Splint is fearless and speaks openly about Kreed's corruption and the need for a change in the leadership of Falcon;s Hollow, and how his day is coming very soon when he slips up and wanders somewhere in town alone where Teedum's gang of cut-throats can teach him a lesson in savage beating and bloody murder in a dark corner or silent cellar away from the townsfolk's eyes. And lastly, about how Harg desperately tries to protect his lover from Kreed's wrath.
Her interrogation ends when the henchman tires of talking
and decides on better sport as the night gets old. He staggers to his feet and
with the help of his companion, they grab up Gaia under her arms and knees,
grappling her to near-helplessness and hefting her up to carry her toward the
door for a ‘step-outside’ which really means 'brutal raping in the moonlight'.
Then, to everyone’s astonishment the wooden Cigar Indian
behind the table against the gaudily papered wall begins to speak with a
homespun country accent and warns off the thugs before springing to life and
throwing back his Shoanti bearskin cape and fast-drawing a curious looking wand
of ash and holly wood and blasting a sanity-defying stream of angry cats in a
noisy, astounding wave at the offenders, pelting them with furry felines and
causing them to unhand the struggling Magus. A rollicking melee ensues as Sif
draws her glimmering magic sword and axe and Najáre slashes furiously with her
saber and glittering cruel-looking obsidian dagger. Belton drunkenly gapes in
stupefied disbelief as a sudden maelstrom of mayhem erupts before him. His two
slatterns panickingly cling to him for protection in their unarmored state of
partial undress, terrified at the prospect of deadly violence overtaking them.
Curses and daggers are thrown as the thugs draw their leather-clad truncheons
and swing with gusto at their former prey. But the mercenaries are drunk and
staggering and surprised by this sudden two-pronged attack and take telling
blows from Sif and Najáre two of their number falling dying to the wooden
floor, staining the carpets with pools of blood. Gaia lashes out with her
magical power and unerring magical missiles tear into the drunk who had groped
her in an honorless violation of her fair and courageous person. Following with
expert longsword strikes doing telling damage.
As the cruel villains regroup Gaia summons up a cloud of
mystical energies about Sif and she grows to twice her natural size, towering
twelve feet high and growing to weigh 800 pounds of hard muscle. Her magic
sword growing with her and allowing her to strike at these knaves from ten feet
away, cutting into the rear ranks of them. Cats fly furiously and the area is
littered with wounded tabbies and calicoes and scratched, bitten and bludgeoned
mercenaries. Trunceons blur to the left and right clobbering our heroes for a
moment before the drugstore cigar Indian strides out of the shadows, revealing
himself to be a strangely disguised Quick Jim in a Shoanti ethnic costume of
the Storval Plateau in far-away Varisia, as he grapples the leader of these
ruffians and shoves his “Catapult” into his drunken mouth as Kabran roars for
order and the tumult dies down. Kabran, an in-the-pocket crony of Kreed is not
at all happy that a drubbing of Boss Teedums bravos has gone down in HIS
establishment, knowing the trouble this is going to cause with Kreed. And roars
as the party to get out immediately, also vaguely implying that Teedum’s boys should do the same. Chief
Tea-Cozy, as Jim is currently called, states a few choice positions on the
preceding events lampooning and ridiculing the thugs before triggering his wand
and violently exploding the head of the leader of the group in a spray of
manifesting extra-dimensional cats and suddenly overfilled mouth-cavity, disgusting
and horrifying all who witness.
That having been done, the team makes a hasty retreat before
the vicious and enraged-looking Kabran, clearing out of the Rouge lady and
regrouping outside.