Session 2 — The Dead Shop

The story so far, for the table’s memory. Told as the Dungeon Master gave it. It follows session 1.

The Shop on the Square

By midday the seven had gone to ground inside the Moon and Phoenix — the shop on the market square of Tyre they had fled into at session 1’s close — a Celeste building of ten-foot stone, its roof half fallen so that western light, and grass, and a few grazing sheep had crept in over the abandoned years. The northern room still kept the bones of a trade: an L-shaped counter, drawers, wooden shelves cut with Celestial script; a southern room lay choked in dust and old cloth. Out in the street a battle none of them had started raged on — shadow-creatures and a pack of blink dogs at each other’s throats, too locked in the fight to mark the shop.

What the Drawers Held

They spread out to search. Asher worked the drawers behind the counter and turned up thirty gold, a stone tablet inscribed with writing and images, and a ledger. Nyra Vail combed the shelves for more books; Zureth and Leif Stormcloak pored over the wall-script; Ace climbed to an upper floor and came down the richer by a large diamond, five small rubies, and a sapphire. Only Niðrerir could read Celestial, and he took up the ledger and the tablet and gave the rest their meaning: this had been a Celeste shopkeeper’s, a keeper of records and small relics; the Royal Guard are among the most elite of the Celeste forces; and beyond the city walls stands a customs house, through which valuable goods once passed. When talk turned to a common purse, Zureth would have none of it — the gold stayed in each of their own pockets.

Barred In

The street’s brawl could spill their way at any moment. Thorne Ashenpaw took the front door — which opened inward — and jammed a pair of glaives crosswise through the wall-hooks to bar it; it held, with an inch or two of give. Watching the shadows and the blink dogs wheel and strike outside, the seven turned to the harder question: how they would ever get out.

Thirteen Unfriendly Sheep

The grass had drawn sheep — thirteen of them, gathered in a back room and in no mood for company, aggressive and unfriendly to the last. Ace gentled them with Animal Friendship, and in the gentling saw the shape of a plan.

Bait for the Dogs

It was Thorne’s kind of plan. Drive the pacified sheep out into the square and straight into the melee, let the shadows and the blink dogs fall on the flock, and in the confusion double back for a cart and haul it clear. As the telling closed the cart was in the road and the bait was being loosed — the whole escape hanging on whether a herd of ornery sheep could buy seven people a clean run past a battle still raging in the square.