When Mordagin and I rode back into Rel Mord, having been absent for a full month, it looked gray and muddy. The winter had failed to cover everything in a clean white blanket of snow, leaving the grunge exposed for all to see. We passed through the eastern gate and turned up the first road on the left. The warehouse was just up a couple of blocks away. Mordagin and I both looked around, the people seemed to ignore our presence, just a couple of haggard travellers riding into a busy city. I saw the warehouse ahead, smoke coming from the chimney. That made me feel good, when we'd left, there hadn't even been a chimney.
"Looks like Refanij must be inside." I said to Mordagin, as I dismounted in front of the large stable door. I went to slide it open, but it was blocked from the inside. "Little bastard locked me out."
"He probably sold the warehouse to someone and split town with the money" laughed Mordagin.
I shot him an angry glance, threw him the reigns to Sally, my horse, and went around the back of the building to where the main door was supposed to have been built. Luckily it was just where it was supposed to be. Two barred windows flanked either side of it, but they were so dirty that I couldn't see inside. I rapped heavily on the door.
"Fuck off!" came the reply. I recognized Refanij's voice immediately.
"Pull your pants up and open the damn door you long nosed freak!" I shouted.
The door whipped open and Refanij stood there smiling, "You made it back!" then looking over my shoulder and only seeing Mordagin, his face dropped, "You the only two that made it?"
"No, no! No such luck. The rest of the feather heads are back near Chathold, hanging out with some cowardly Dwarves or preaching the same line of shit that Bran always preaches."
"Oh, I was sort of hoping that Bran didn't make it, but I was worried about the rest of them."
"They'll be back in a couple weeks or so. Where's that giant?" I said, as I pushed in through the door to the warmth of the room inside. Noticing that there was only a table and 3 chairs in the entire large common room, I added "man you think you could have furnished the place a little?"
"The giant split, said he was going home, all the way over on the other side of the Sea. As for the furniture, I'm going to be heading out of here soon as well, plan on going back home. Those drow could be tearing up my village, my people could use my help." Refanij responded, with somewhat less excitement in his voice than he usually carries.
"Hey before you two get all involved in the big reunion, you want to open the damn stable doors and get these horses inside before someone steals them?" interjected Mordagin.
Both Ref and I paused, then deciding that he was right, set off to get the horses in the stable. Ref moved off to my left and opened a door, Morby and I followed him through the door and into the stables. It was pretty dark, the only light came from one small opening in the wall over the stable door. Ref went over and lifted the wooden beam that was blocking the door from being opened.
We brought the horses into the stable, it had 4 stalls, and a hay loft. We caught Refanij up on what had happened in the past couple weeks while we were in Jalpa, as we unpacked and rubbed the horses down. When we finished, we went back into the common room. It was a 20 x 20 foot room that had a large cooking fireplace against the west wall. The masonry chimney was quite large and went up the center of the warehouse, providing a flue for the fireplace, in the common room, as well as a fireplace on the other side in the lab. There was also a smaller fireplace built into the structure up in the loft. The door to the stable was on the east wall. Another door leading into the lab was against the same wall as the fireplace, two doors on the south wall led to storage rooms, and a ladder led to the sleeping loft above.
Curious as to how the place had turned out, we let Refanij give us the grand tour. The lab, was completely empty, as were the two storage rooms off of it. We climbed up one of the ladders leading to the sleeping loft. There were two cots near the fireplace, and a tub right in front. Man I could sure use a hot bath.
Mordagin had the same idea, "Hey where can I get some water for that tub?"
"There are rainwater barrels right outside the front door, didn't you see them?" responded Ref.
"Yeah, sure I did, just didn't want to have to lug water all the way up here" replied Mordagin.
"You must have been confusing me with an inn keeper" said Ref.
With that Mordagin grabbed a bucket and headed down the nearest ladder to get things going.
I then had Ref show me the escape hatch in the roof and the doorway into the hay loft. The place was built with multiple means of escape in mind. All told there were 2 trapdoors & ladders leading to the main floor, an escape hatch in the roof next to the chimney and a door through the east wall into the hay loft and stables. Downstairs, you could escape through a secret door that led to an underground tunnel which Kordacc was going to get completed, as well as out the front door or through the stable doors.
I had some plans for securing the place that involved a couple of wizard locks, some guard dogs, and maybe some other cute little tricks. Right now though, I needed to get the money together to put in some safes, get some more furniture, cooking utensils, food, equipment for my lab, and tons of other stuff. I'd be out of money faster than you can blink.
True to his word, Refanij was gone in a week, headed back for his homeland, hopefully his family would still be there. I'd miss the little shit, he was the only friend I had around here that thought the same way I did. The two dwarves weren't bad company, and Mordagin was good for discussing magic with, Bran and Turok, well those to authority boot lickers will never be missed. Of the remaining party, only Kordacc holds the same low opinion of authority that I do, unfortunately he doesn't have the wisdom to keep his disdain from bursting out into the open, resulting in him getting tossed in jail, and generally getting into way more fights than I find to be healthy.
Mordagin went off to research some spells, while I spent time and money equipping my warehouse. Mordagin and I realized that we were unable to fund the cost of equipping a laboratory at this time, so we put that on the back burner until we could get some more gold. I dumped a lot of money into the place, adding several more cots to the upstairs loft, another tub, 3 floor safes, and assorted other furniture and cooking items.
I wanted to preserve the warehouse's function as a hideout and safe house, so I drew up some rules before the others got back in town. No one was allowed to use the warehouse as their permanent residence. Even I planned on staying at inns about 50 percent of my time in Rel Mord. No one was allowed to bring guests, unless agreed upon by myself and all those currently staying at the warehouse, that went for me as well. If you were staying at the warehouse, you were to keep your visibility to a minimun. In other words, you couldn't be seen going in and out of the place all day long. And finally, to cover up the activity that would unavoidably occur, I put a sign over the front door that read, "The Retching Slattern Inn". Hopefull such a name would turn away most potential guests.
To maintain a certain level of "inn-like" disguise, the common room was set up like a tavern, complete with ale kegs, not that they wouldn't be there anyway, and enough tables and chairs to accomodate a few people. Policy was that if anyone did happen to wander in looking for a drink, whoever was inside would act like they owned the place, offer the customer a drink at a reasonable price, but generally ignore him. Any requests for food would result in the response that the cook was sick, unless a meal was being prepared, in which case, it would simply be denied to the customer. Any request for a room would result in the response that all beds were full. I also got a couple of guard dogs that sleep in the stables and hang out in the common room. Anyone that got too wise would get the dogs on them.
Over the next two months, winter sat around Rel Mord like a lazy wet dog, dirty, ugly and cold. I spent a lot of time fixing up the "Retching Slattern", and spent most of my nights out on the town, drinking just a bit too much and spending more money than I should on trollops. I did find time, and spent the last of my money, researching a spell that I call Henji's Armor of Silence. I use it to provide an additional level of quiet to myself and others, resulting in improved stealth.
Mordagin buried his hawk like beak in spell books and magical research for the entire duration, throwing his money away on spell research, much like myself. We were only able to get him to come out on the town a couple of times during the winter.
T'Rojan spent a lot of time antique shopping with his daddy, to fill their new home. I hoped someone burned this one down as well. We did go out a couple of times, but none of the evenings were memorable.
Kordacc got back into town a couple weeks after Mordagin and myself, and spent every day digging the escape tunnel out, with a bunch of dwarves, and every night drinking his face off with the same dwarves. They finished up in a few weeks, the tunnel went down and under the city walls and out under a field. It was setup so that a couple of support beams could be pulled out, and the last foot of dirt would come tumbling down leaving an opening to crawl out of. A ladder was kept near the end of the tunnel for such an escape, hopefully it wouldn't be necessary. After he finished the tunnel, Kordacc went back to Prosperity with the dwarves, and spent the rest of the winter there.
Grumble had come back to Rel Mord with Kordacc, and spent some time in his temple, spent some time in the Slattern, spent some time drinking with the dwarves, and made a general ass of himself the entire time.
Bran and Turok stayed in Prosperity the whole time, claiming to be helping out the needy. What we really suspect is that the head of Heironeous' temple here in Rel Mord was getting sick of him hanging around so he suggested that he stay in Prosperity. Turok came back at the end of winter, claiming that Bran would be back within a few weeks. I think he just sent Turok ahead to keep an eye on us.
While we were waiting for the winter to end, I came up with the brilliant idea, and I do mean brilliant, that we should go back into those orc caves to avenge the death of Reiltis and more importantly to get our hands on the magic longsword that Bran lost to the orcs. Unfortunately everyone agreed with my idea.