Of all the booths in the Velikir market, Crazy Akmed's was always a favorite. No where had anyone seen such a strange mix of goods. Nor had anyone seen anything arranged so wildly. Piles of books and scrolls were heaped between overflowing chests seemingly dropped and opened where the porters had left them. Items of priceless value mingled freely with worthless refuse. Enchanted weapons with illustrious histories were shoved under crude stone weapons seemingly assembled by children. Treatises on the very nature of magic, believed lost for centuries, were stacked mingled with base accounts of slight of hand.

The customers, those brave enough to risk browsing the booth (more than one person had encountered some forgotten creature, nipping from the depths of a chest) were carefully sorting through the debris. There was always a crowd around the booth, for invariably, the clientele was at least as interesting as the merchandise.

Standing in the midst of the chaos was Akmed himself. Short and unimaginably old, his face was as wrinkled as a relief map of the world. He had a long, wispy white beard and a puff of white hair tied back with a jade pendant. His silk shirt had its right sleeve rolled up, the left down. His left pant leg was rolled up with the right leg down. On his left foot he wore a heavy boot, a light sandal on his right. He stood placidly in the exact center of the booth, immobile, eyes closed, never saying a word. Any question was either met with a gnarled old finger pointing to the correct box, container or bookshelf or a short, slashing motion across his neck. (Which the locals took to mean "No, kind sir, I do not on this day have the item you have requested. Please ask me again some other time. Thank you. Do come again.")

On this particular day, the customers were very interesting and the crowd good. A young man wearing sandals and a wide hat of a strange design, carrying an odd walking stick, had been perusing the books for over an hour, muttering to himself in several languages. Another man, a local boy named Aden, was rummaging through the daggers and ignoring the dark looks directed his way by some of the crowd.

A young woman, flamboyantly dressed with a punching dagger at her hip and a shield on her back, had been rummaging through the entire store for even longer, much to the annoyance of her traveling companion. He was as much of a treat for the crowd as the other two, dressed in full armor and a sword at his hip. He watched with a stony gaze as the woman held up yet another dress to her body, admiring the way the material seemed to flame and smoke as it moved.

The crowd was just settling in, anticipating perhaps a squabble between the two, when shouts rang out from the south end of the market square. Two people - a young girl with flame red hair and a somewhat older man, came racing up Candlewright road and into the square, hotly pursued by a handful of red cloaked Vaal soldiers. The couple was leaping through the crowd, overturning stands and carts to try and slow up the soldiers. The soldiers were yelling instructions in the clipped, nearly unintelligible jargon of battle. This was no mere effort of policing, but a full military operation. The crowd melted away, as more and more troops filed into the square from other directions.

Escape seemed near impossible by the time the two reached Crazy Akmed's. The girl grabbed the armored man by an arm and, with the strength of the truly desperate, sent him sprawling into the guards. Unfortunately, the collision sent the armored man and three of the guards staggering into one of the bookshelves, tipping it into two more guards coming from the other direction, as well as the man in the hat. All three ended up rolling on the floor, sending Aden sprawling at the feet of an officer and tipping over a cage containing something winged, scaly and, apparently, fire breathing, into the hands of the young woman. With a screech, she sent the cage flying, straight into the officer. The cage's occupant, understandably upset, sent a gout of flame into the officer's face. He stumbled into more of his troops and soon the entire booth was a mass of struggling people, annoyed beasts and extremely dangerous and highly magical items.

The officer, enraged, drew his sword and gestured at the melee. "Arrest them! Arrest all of them, dammit!" The red headed girl threw herself on the armored arm of the young man, "Save me! They're after me, you have to help me!"

The soldiers climbed out of the melee and soon formed a half circle around the booth. With a loud ring, each produced a sword and leveled it at their would be prisoners.



Dramatis Personae
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Agent Jarot - man reading books
ZetaStriker - Aden Alaan, a man of high skill and low reputation
FreakyBoy - lady trying on dresses
Harrington - her armored companion
Marauder Pilot - would be escapee
Ellie - the little red haired girl

Soldiery of Baron Vaal - soldiers from a neighboring barony with a very loose idea of Velikir's sovereignty

Special Guest Star
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Crazy Akmed - who has a slight flaw in his character

Ixeldor throws the book back onto the pile and grabs his staff with both hands. He grins.....
A damisel in distress running from the evil baron? I love this job.

The mage puts on a burst of speed as he steps back and shouts a string of incoherent arcane syllables. A brilliant white line shoots from his hands and trace out a semi-circle between the guards and the girl. A massive wall of fire leaps where the line touched the ground, shielding the girl. The mage then lifts his hands up, on the other side of the flame barrier, the earth under the soliders feet starts to turn to soft mud under their heavy feet........


++using my Heroic Surge for the day to take two actions. Flame Wall and Earth To Mud respectivly++

From the other side of the firewall come several shouts of "Mage!" Three glass vials, filled with a clear liquid looking suspiciously like water, shatter at the base of the wall. With a roar, the flames go out. Ixeldor can feel a surge of disruptive magic wash over him. Those vials, whatever was in them, were holding powerful dispelling magic.

Of course, this has done nothing for the mud. The soldiers trudge forward, the mud squelching up to their knees. Two of the soldiers hang back, each holding a vial and ready to throw it at Ixeldor.

"Take'm!" shouts the officer, "We only need the girl and one or two others alive. Kill the rest."

Stepping back after tossing a miniature dragon at the guards in surprise, Tawna smiles sheepishly, getting ready to apologise.

Then someone says 'Arrest them all!' Her smile turns cold. Her hands are soon bladed; two punching daggers (the left with a shield built into it to cover her arm) adorn her hands. She uses the right blade to push her blonde bangs, the only long portion of her hair, out of her eyes.

"This girl isn't letting you take that girl with you." She holds her two blades out to the side, bowing slightly. "And I don't intend to die today. I hope you don't either."

Her smile turning gleeful, she leaps towards the nearest guard, blades flashing, while crying to her companion, "C'mon Eric, live a little!"

Ixeldor grins madly as the soliders sink into the mud. Ignoring the loss of his flame wall, he quickly pulls two scrolls from a pocket on the inside of his robes.
Game over suckers......

With the first scroll the wizard puts on the speed he needs to avoid the water-bombs, moving with un-natural speed, he reaches for the second scroll. Pulling it out, he holds it in front of him and reads aloud.

With three shouted syllables, the mud the soliders are emersed in starts to bubble and steam as it reverts to hard stone, trapping the soliders in a very solid embrace.

++Haste and then a scroll of Transmute Mud to Rock, also, if the entire area is only knee-deep that makes it about 40ft across, so t hey would have a hard time leaping out of it before it's stone-ified. And since the stone is really there (not an enchantment) it can't be removed with a dispel.++

Hearing the shouts from the other side of the market, Eric turned to see a familiar sight. Although back in Suzail he would have been one of the ones doing the chasing. He shook his head at the two fugitives, by the looks of them, probably con artists...pretty girl does the distracting while the other fleeces the clueless mark.

After a moment he reallized they were heading straight for Achmed's... and there were a lot more soldiers...not guardsman, charging into the square. What the hell was going on? He shot a quick look back at Tawna, she didn't look like she could have caused this. He hadn't left herside long enough, had he?

So why did this keep happening? Isn't there one single place we can go to without running into trouble? It's like she's cursed or something...

Eric stopped muttering to himself long enough to see that the red head was running straight for him. He had a momentary urge to grab the girl and end this debacle before it started. But something about her eyes... there was real fear there... not as if she was facing something like imprisonment.

So he decided to do nothing and he was much surprised when the girl grabbed him. Amazingly, he found himself crashing into some of the soldiers. Managing to extricate himself from the tangle, he was now in the middle of chaotic swarm of people trying to get away from the soldiers in panic.

Where was she?

"Tawna" he bellowed, looking around wildly.

Suddenly, he found the red haired girl in his arms, "Save me! They're after me, you have to help me!"

He stared at her incredulously,
Aw...by the gods...what did he do to deserve this? Could it get any worse?

A wall of flames erupted not two feet from his face.

Instinctively, he grabbed the girl and dived away from the explosion into the crowd. Luckily, he managed to land on the bottom and so avoided crushing the girl.

Of course... now that they were lying on the ground, they needed to avoid being crushed by the crowd.

Oh...what a lovely day for an adventure...

Aden, dressed in a long, dark brown cloak that hangs over both his night-black leather armor, initially takes no notice of the manic girl, instead much more interested in finding something useful that Akmed might have hidden away. The arrival of Vaal's soldiers, however, cause him to quickly reasess the situation. Hazel eyes narrowing, he turns about to face the approaching soldiers, his hand already on the hilt of his rapier...

But before he knew what hit him, he was sprawled in mud, with a wall of raging flames threatening to make short work of his auburn hair. Cursing under his breath, he struggles to his feet as the soldiers dispel the wall of fire and prepare to attack the citizenry, a small crossbow already in the palm of his hand. "Vaal soldiers..." He spits out the words as if speaking some sort of curse, and as he struggles to fight his way further into Akmed's shop to escape the mud, extending his arm towards the nearest soldier, releasing the small block serving as the tiny crossbow's safety. Finger closing about the trigger, he sends the small bolt sailing at the man's face.

A ripple runs through the mud, hardening it to stone around the legs of most of the soldiers. One soldier screams and recoils, his hands wrapped around the shaft of a crossbow bolt protruding from his face. He struggles for a moment, then goes still, his body held up limply by his entombed feet.

At that moment, their is the sound of another force rushing up from the other direction. A half a dozen men at arms come jogging into the square, dressed not in the Baron's red, but the blue and silver of the Velikir Guard. The Vaal officer swears, then pulls an amulet from where it was hanging under his shirt. He speaks a word of command, then vanishes, leaving a perfect cast of his feet in the stone.

A few seconds pass, then, one by one, the other soldiers vanish. The Velikir Guard watch this without comment, then turn to Akmed. Akmed, simply shrugs. The head of the Guard looks over the little group, eyes coming to rest on Aden. He smiles grimly, "I'd say you have about thirty seconds before they reappear." He turns and leads the Guard over to the door of the Queen's Grace, an inn on the north side of the square, shooing a few curious onlookers out of the square.

Given the current balance of power, it appears he's decided this affair is none of Velikir's business.

The mage lowered his arms as the solider vanished. "Thirty seconds?"

With the danger gone, Ixeldor calmly brushes off his robes, appearing annoyed at the vast amounts of damage they suffered in the battle.
Dammit, scuffed. I'll have to memorize repair tomorrow.

Satisfied that there was nothing he could do now, he looked up and spoke to the girl as well as the other strange charachters who had gotten invovled.
"May I suggest we use that time to become scarce? I have a mass-teleport spell that can carry all of us, and I would rather not fight soliders armed with every magic weapon their baron can afford."

The red headed girl looks around nervously. Her eyes meet those of the Velikir Guard, who quickly look away. "Anywhere but here."

Ixeldor looks at the guard with distain.
Selfish bastard. I'll have to lay down a few spellfire levels worth of attitude ajustment on him later.

"Right, I can cast the spell at any time. Are the rest of you coming?" The mage says to the various adventurer types scattered around the "battlefield".

Aden looks from the mage to the many outlined holes in the ground and shakes his head. Personal feelings aside, he knew when he was outmatched. His voice a frustrated growl, he replies, "Fine, I'm in. Jus' don't take us too far away, I've got buisness in the area."

Eric looked towards Tawna. "I think we're better off not getting involved."

Tawna flashes a rakish smile back at Eric. "C'mon, Eric. There's a damsel in distress. No knight can resist!" She giggles a bit, then waves at the mage with her left-hand punching dagger, only realising halfway through the gesture she is still armed. She blushes slightly and slips the weapons back to her sides.

"Sign us up! My shopping's been ruined anyway."

"Ok....I think I know just the place...."

The mage starts to cast, but stops......
"Hold on, before we go."

Ixeldor quickly runs over to the ground in front of where the soliders vanishes, with a wave of his hand the words "I can cast Explosive Runes" appeared in glowing red text right in front of what would soon be the soliders view.

Suppressing a grin, the mage turned his face away so as not to look at the writing. Muttering the words of the more complicated "Teleport" spell, hi whisked the adventurers and the would-be escapess away from the battlefield. As the group was whisked through extra-dimensonal space, Ixeldor concentrated on the image of the small rocky outcropping he had fount about 20 miles away from the town......