Finaghan Begins Again

Lounging in the back-room of the (formerly secret) bar, his feet still casually up on the desk, the head of the Stowanian Thieves’ guild, watches the Dwarf, the Halfling, the demi-Elf and the armoured Human walk back up the wooden stairs and out of his (now compromised) hideout.

It had taken Finaghan decades of lying and scheming to claw his way up to being named head of the Cottis Thieves’ guild. Dante’s recent splinter group of Assassins though, had rapidly become a painful thorn in his side. A thorn that the four Adventurers had kindly volunteered to tweeze out for him. Not just offered, but paid him fifty gold pieces for the privilege!

A paltry sum considering, but the feeble bribe still tickled him.

Dante had always been… difficult, arrogant, always chaffing against his authority, but with the resurgence of the Witches, his attitude had shifted into something much more… condescending. It hadn’t been long before the older man had poached a large slew of his Thieves’ guild minions for his competitive Assassins’ guild. Nearly a quarter of his members!

A loss in number that had greatly diminished his influence and the guilds’ power. Mostly though, it was a personal and professional slight that Finaghan couldn’t let stand.

Allowing Fortu and his adventurer friends to take care of this… problem, also overcame the sanction against guilds working openly against other guilds.

Finaghan smiles. Losing a lowly lookout and having to establish a new base of operations, is a small price to pay for getting rid of ‘old-man’ Dante. With him gone, most of his traitorous ex-Thieves’ guild members will come cringing and scurrying back.

He might even allow them to rejoin… after a certain amount of grovelling and an additional ‘buy-back-in’ fee.

Shouting over to one of his trusted barmen, Finaghan calls out.

“Bring over a fresh bottle of rum. The best we have; I feel like pre-celebrating a certain forthcoming victory!”

Uncivil Villains

“Please. Please don’t call me that.”

Cringing but still pleading, the gusset soaked lookout tries to shield his face whilst simultaneously covering his shamefully sopping crotch.

The four thugs surrounding him, all laugh raucously.

“What? ‘Pants-Wetter-Tattle-Tale’?”

“Why shouldn’t we?”

“yeah, that’s what you is, isn’t you?”

“You’re a stinky little pisser and you ratted us out to that armoured tosser, didn’t you?”

The smaller man, in the centre of the quartet of Thieves guild enforcers, gulps and begs.

“I didn’t mean to. I was trying to blend in and be inconspicuous, like what I was told to, but there was a Dwarf who noticed me somehow.”

One of the larger thugs shrugs.

“So what? You didn’t have to admit nothing.”

The quailing lookout grabs a handful of the big thugs tunic.

“It wasn’t him that made me squeal; it was the armoured Knight.”

Brushing off the clinging hands, the enforcer scowls.

“A Knight? A Knight?! If you ain’t learned to lie to a poncey nobleman, who can you be trusted to lie to?”

The young, panicking gang member, snatches at the bigger man’s grey tunic again.

“You don’t understand! He weren’t like no normal Knight what I’d ever seen before. His armour was dark and creepy but his eyes! His eyes were black as pitch! It was like he was Death himself and he was gonna rob me of my soul!”

The leader of the thugs shoves the slender lookout to the ground, where the others proceed to kick and stamp on him until he finally stops moving or moaning.

Walking away, the last thug mutters.

“Pants-Wetter-Tattle-Tale… That sorta sounds like one of those funny, long Gnomish names, don’t it?”

His three goon friends all turn and snigger at the slightly racist observation, despite their ex-lookout’s blood and brains still staining their boots.