Last week I joined with a new band of adventurers looking to earn fame and fortune by hitting things with swords. They go by the name of 'The Fearless Seekers' and aren't to be confused with 'The Feckless Seers', a group of hapless druids working out of The Green Watches who foretold extensive bruising in my future and then tried to attack me with their holy cudgels. But I digress. The Fearless Seekers: destined for greatness or fated to be nothing more than a smudged footnote in history? Read on to find out.
I met up with the Fearless Seekers as they arrived at the dilapidated mansion of Count Johnson Johnson the Third, a noble of little repute lording over an estate of fifty serfs out in Sevvenia's Blue Cliffs Shire. The Count had posted up a notice asking for help in retrieving the ring of his great grandmother, which had been stolen during a break-in at the mansion three nights previously.
UMBRAGE
Things did not begin well. The leader of the Seekers, Argo Thrane, a six-year veteran of adventuring and formerly of The Stone-Cold Basilisks, took umbrage with the butler's manner and decided he had been the inside man for the break-in. Count Johnson-Johnson was duly roused by the sound of shouting and beating and arrived down in the reception hall to find his manservant whimpering on the floor and confessing to every crime that had been committed in the province of Sevvenia over the past fifty years.
It turned out that the butler had an alibi as well as now having three broken ribs. This made the Count sceptical that these adventurers were up to the job, but Remembrance Stark, the Seeker's resident thief (and previously housemaid in the Royal household) successfully deduced that the intruders had left through the back door and this led them to discover a series of tell-tale boot-prints in a flowerbed.
SEXUAL TENSION
A few minutes of amateurish banter followed, where Thrane and Stark exhibited moderate levels of sexual tension while disagreeing over how best to proceed. The group finally voted to head to town and rough up every person they found wearing boots matching the offending print.
Several hours and sixteen assaults later, the Fearless Seekers were arrested by the Blue Cliffs Militia. As I write this, they are languishing in Mockley Jail, awaiting trial. All except Remembrance Stark, who successfully escaped her cell on their second night of imprisonment. Argo Thrane was subsequently heard pronouncing that Stark's childish devotion to him would see her return forthwith to free the rest of them.
Given the group's utter failure to retrieve the Count's missing ring, I have to give the Fearless Seekers a clear fail. While they did provide a reasonable degree of entertainment value - the bards are already singing songs of Burglary, Boots and Battered Butlers - if they achieve any feats of note under the leadership of Argo Thrane, I judge it will be thanks to luck rather than judgement. However, the young thief Remembrance Stark has definite potential and if I were to offer her any advice, it would be to let Thrane and the rest rot in jail, while she goes off and finds an adventuring band more worthy of her talents.
Max Skaylock
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