Security for Ripa Daneo Mount Faire: 2nd half

It was day 5 of the Ripa Daneo Mount Faire and Damakaios, leader of the Ripa Daneo Freelancers, had tapped Cathance, Ana, and Tai to replace Dryali and Nix as the security he'd promised to Mudra Copperfeather, the male Holder dwarf, who managed the whole affair.  Fine Branch led them to the open fields southeast of Ripa Daneo, explaining his experiences for the first 4 days of the faire.  He skimmed over the brief layout, with the buildings in the south-center, flying mounts west, ground mounts east.

"Is there any equivalent of a V.I.P. area?" Ana asked, "That's where we should start."  Fine Branch thought about it, and shrugged.  "The exotic mount area," he decided, although that's where the group had left off the day before.

After parking their own mounts at the central building, that's where the four Freelancers headed, with Tai, Cathance, and Ana looking around curiously.  When they got to the area, Hawkie settled on Ana's shoulder.  They saw griffinflies and giant bees; some people selling mammoths; and in the center, a war rhino.  The person selling the war rhino was a nekomata with lion colouring, in silvery blue armour, and a large red gem on her hand.

Cathance was fascinated by the mammoths, but the others also saw dire frogs, and a manta ray that could fly in the air.  They saw the vendors selling magical items and exotic saddles.  Then Ana noticed the war rhino was leaving giant eagle tracks.

"Maybe we should have a conversation with her," Ana suggested, "That might not be chill with the guy running the Faire."

The Freelancers sauntered over, and seeing them, Oramne put her hand on the rhino, gem glittering in the Daystar's light.  She nodded at Fine Branch, and said, "300,000 gold!"  At his shocked face, she added, "I don't want you to buy her."

Cathance asked, "is it really a rhino?" pointing at the prints, and Oramne laughed. "Oh yeah," she replied, and pointed at one of the vendors, "sells horseshoes of deceit."  At that Ana stopped worrying, and the Freelancers wandered more.

A lot of people were there to gawk, so the Freelancers did too.  They found a vendor of giant flies.  These, and the griffinflies, were about the same price as a pegasus.

Ana eventually led them to the magic item vendor, who had three items for sale:

• martingale of starlight – decorated with stars, it could shine light in a cone, particularly useful when flying a mount at night
• Hunter's Saddle – had a built-in quiver which always had 3 magic arrows
• Hostler's Charm – when braided into the mane, the mount looks freshly groomed

Ana wanted the last item, which came in a variety of flowers etc.  She bought one for 75 eagles.  Cathance was also persuaded, once she saw one with apple blossoms.

The Hostler's Charm made Cathance happy as she thought about Jigsaw wearing it.

Cathance:  let's look at the hippogryphs!
Ana:  bats are cool, let's look at those
Tai:  I wanted to look at the griffinfly
Everyone:  those are right here!

They went back to the griffinfly vendor, but Tai was not interested enough to drop 2000 eagles on one.  So the Freelancers went to the hippogryph area for the afternoon patrol.

As they walked along the dusty paths between the vendors, Ana and Cathance excitedly discussed how to braid the charms into Pelorus' and Jigsaw's manes.  Fine Branch and Tai, though, were actually looking around.  They saw a pony section, riding hippogryphs, courser and destriers, etc.

The hippogryphs were in so many varieties and colours.  A vendor had full-sized osprey hippogryphs; another one had steller's jay hippogryphs.  Many had young, and sold either eggs or yearlings.

A paddock with a destrier section had yearlings which were cute enough to draw Tai and Fine Branch's eye.  Tai looked at the yearlings and was drawn to their cuteness; Fine Branch saw the dealer had a warming tent with "nests" for eggs made of pillows and cloth.  On the other side of the test was a paddock for courser hippogryphs.

A salesman outside was hawking "an investment in the future" while people wandered the tent.  A pair of humans in particular looked to Fine Branch to be… conspicuously inconspicuous.  He saw them put an egg into a small bag the woman had, with a wide mouth.  The bag did not change shape.

Fine Branch got the attention of the other Freelancers and gestured towards the pair.  "One person with a bag of holding– a woman, looks like a messenger bag," he told them quietly, just as the man put another egg in the bag.

The Freelancers quickly formed a plan:  Ana would charm person on the man, Cathance would suggest the woman show the eggs to the vendor to check if they were healthy, Fine Branch would tell the vendor to watch these two, and Tai would loom casually outside in case things went poorly.

Fine Branch went over to the Wild elf woman running the tent and started a conversation with her about the eggs, steering it towards his purpose.  Cathance and Ana went up to the pair of miscreants.  Cathance cast suggestion on the woman, "You should show the eggs to the vendor to check if they're healthy."  The woman's eyes widened at this bright idea.  Ana cast charm person on the man, "Hi, looking for some eggs?"

The charm person did not work.  The man's eyes narrowed as he realized what Cathance had done.

Tai moved towards the tent, ready to grab either person if they fled.

• Ana tried charm person again, saying "Look.  I know stuff is getting weird; now if you calm down and stick with us, it's all gonna be ok."
  • The man's face went flat, as Cathance murmured, "Luck is not your friend," trying to help Ana's charm person.
• The man sank his daggar into Cathance's shoulder.  Bleeding profusely, the little halfling shrieked, "Tai!!! I've just been stabbed!"
  • The man tried to stab her again but he fumbled and almost sliced himself.
  • One last swipe, which missed, and he tried to flee.
• Still shrieking, Cathance jumped over to him, swinging her warhammer with both hands.  She missed, so cast misty step to stand next to Fine Branch.
• The woman walked up next to her and Fine Branch, and pulled an egg out of the bag to show the vendor.  "I just want to check if these eggs are healthy," she said.  After a startled glance at Fine Branch, the Wild elf nodded and replied coolly, "I'll just need to examine it."

Tai walked calmly around to the other side of the fleeing man.  "Didn't you ever get taught, stealing is wrong?" he asked conversationally, then crit the man with his magical battleaxe, slashing his leg and slowing him down.  He crit on the backswing too, but used the flat to bludgeon the fellow, leaving him reeling.

• Ana cast reduce on the man, who shrank down to a size smaller than Cathance.  She started giggling at the sight of him.
• The man called out, "Sorry, Sheryl!" then disengaged from Tai and fled… much slower than he wanted to, because Tai slashed him.
• Cathance stepped to the corner and cast ray of frost at the thief, but missed.
  • She stepped back to where she was, and since her shoulder was still bleeding, she quaffed a healing potion.
• Fine Branch excused himself from the vendor, moved to the corner Cathance had been in, then successfully cast hold person.
• Sheryl pulled another egg out of her bag of holding and showed it to the vendor.  "How's this one?" she asked, "I think this is a courser.  Looking forward to this one."  The Wild elf gritted her teeth as she answered.

Tai strolled over to the held thief, pulling out his manacles, and manacled him, while Ana prepared to cast ray of frost if Sheryl ran for it.  <Narrator voice:  presumably these were nigh simultaneous, as Ana had to drop the reduce for her preparations, and Tai's manacles would not have held the reduced human.>

Cathance and Fine Branch made a plan to capture Sheryl after she finished showing the eggs to the vendor.  It took a short while; they'd taken 11 eggs!!!  Once she was done, the Freelancers manacled her, and took both thieves to the central buildings.

Mudra was amazed at their tale.  "Good job, I knew hiring Freelancers was a good choice!" he declared, and gave the Freelancers 100 eagles each as a reward.  The Steel Dragons took custody of the two egg thieves, and then Tai, Ana, and Cathance learned what Fine Branch already knew…

…they'd earn that 100 eagles, with all the interminable paperwork that had to be dealt with for apprehending thieves.

Once the paperwork was complete, the Freelancers returned to soothe the egg vendor, who was far from thrilled someone had lifted 11 eggs and then made a halfling bleed all over her place of business.  Cathance used prestidigitation to clean it up.  On the other hand, the Wild elf was very happy the Freelancers had stopped the egg thieves.  She informed the folks in charge of the hatchlings of these events, and the Freelancers spent the remainder of the afternoon playing with baby hippogryphs.

The next morning, Ana still wanted to see the giant bats, so the Freelancers dropped into that area.  A large part of this area was directly run by The Flying Foxes, a mercenary company that seemed to be predominantly orcs and half-orcs.  The Freelancers were a bit startled at seeing so many orcs… it was a strange feeling.

There were large tents with big, sturdy racks, and the bats hung from them.  Also there were many baby bats, which were in much darker tents; they were unacclimated to daylight and often scared by it when people entered or left the tent.

Giant bats are omnivores, and the Freelancers realized the area was less noisome than the hippogryph area.  But as they looked around, they saw that The Flying Foxes really did have things mostly under control, and their chatter was about setting up crossbreeding programs with other bat vendors.

That afternoon, the Freelancers went to the ground mounts section.  It was mostly horse dealers, but there were some mules, and a few oxen.

A camp of horses, somewhat apart from the rest, was held by a group of centaurs from Leander.  Interestingly, there was one camp, but multiple banners representing different tribes.  Tai saw some nice horses offered, and the horses in the centaurs' camp were well-cared for.

The horse trading in the entire area was brisk, but the people were not as well-dressed as those in the exotics or hippogryph sections.  There were also hobgoblin vendors, and a group of komodos wandering around, looking for ground mounts.

All in all the ground mounts section was very chill; there simply wasn't enough money changing hands to make it anything but.

The next day was the last day of the Mount Faire!  Fine Branch wanted to revisit the manticores area, and since Ana, Tai, and Cathance had not been there, they readily agreed.

The manticores area had a big section with the Manticores of House Lykaion; the mercenary group was running it, and also selling a large variety of manticores.  The Freelancers saw lion, tiger, and some panther manticores; but not a lot of snow leopard ones.  When they did find the snow leopard manticores, Cathance, Ana, and Fine Branch were taken aback to see they had fluffy tails.

Tai, who was from Aurora, did not consider the snow leopard manticores to be novel, and was paying attention to the happenings around them.  In particular, he saw House Lykaion guards stop someone from trying to steal a yearling.

Nothing much happened that morning, but the Freelancers did get to pet some of the manticore cubs.

Midday came, and Cathance proposed, "Let's go to the gryphons to see what mountain gryphons are like.  Naranjos is always talking about Snapper!"  The others were amenable so they headed to the gryphon area.

Despite it being the last day of the faire, a lot of gryphons were still on display, with many different types.  The Freelancers found the mountain gryphons; Tai thought they were small, while Cathance and Ana thought they were a "perfect size."  They saw the gryphons in 2 colourations:  most looked like Snapper, but there were a few with dark brown head, chest, and bellies.

The Freelancers came across a paddock with 4 or 5 young mountain gryphons playing.  This was not part of the larger paddock run by the Djogeon, but just some vendors with a clutch.  As they tumbled and fought, the pack tactics became clearer to the observing Freelancers, and Cathance started to understand why Naranjos was so smitten with them.

Fine Branch, mindful of the egg thieves he'd encountered before, was less watching the young playing gryphons and more keeping an eye on the brisk trade in eggs and gryphons that continued through these last hours of the faire.  But neither he nor the other Freelancers saw any troubles, and they concluded their security patrols without incident.

• Fine Branch → lvl9!