Arden Vul Session 11
The Deeds of the Ardent Fools
Date: Jun 22, 2026
Party: Florian (bard), Lorez (wizard), Cedric (Fighter), Johannes (cleric), Runner (Ranger)
See the whole thing on my Arden Vul campaign page.
A Description of the Action in the Thothian Precinct, Being an Account of the Deeds of the Ardent Fools in the Year of Their Commissioning by the Tagma of the Beast-Faced Ones
Composed in the rhetorical manner by one who had access to reliable testimony and has endeavored, insofar as his abilities permit, to set the events in their proper order and proportion.
Prooimion: On the Nature of What Preceded
It is fitting, before we speak of victories, to speak of their conditions. The reader who comes to this account without knowledge of what preceded it will otherwise mistake fortune for skill, and skill for the grace of heaven, and will thereby be edified neither in the practical nor the spiritual sense.
Know, then, that the Ardent Fools had already, in the engagement prior to that which we here describe, accomplished the greater part of the labor. They had entered the old administrative precinct of the Thothian order, a region of dressed stone corridors and dust and certain architectural ambitions that had outlasted the civilization that produced them, and had there encountered a force of the small barbarians known, in the local parlance, as the Plumthorn Gang. These are a people of halfling extraction, cunning in the use of prepared positions and poisoned blades, who had judged the moment propitious for territorial expansion at the expense of the Beast-Faced Tagma that holds the upper levels.
Five of the six halflings present had already been destroyed by means of the fire-working that the mage Lorez commands, a conflagration of the spectacular variety that does not distinguish between the guilty and the merely present. The sixth survived, scorched and vindictive, still possessed of her poisoned blade. Two of the Ardent Fools, the warrior Runner and the cleric Iohannes, carried her poison in their blood, and three fresh halfling reinforcements had arrived through the eastern door at precisely the worst possible moment.
This was the position. It was, by any fair assessment, uncomfortable.
On the Arrival of Cedric and the Commander's Virtue
Into this discomfort came Cedric, the commander, a man of martial disposition who had been absent from the previous engagement by circumstances the chronicler will not here detail, except to note that his arrival now was well-timed and that he himself appeared to find this unremarkable.
He surveyed the room. He called out in the manner of one who expects to be obeyed and generally is. Form up and fan out, he said, or words to that effect, and the effect was immediate: the panic gathering at the edges of the situation withdrew, and Runner and Iohannes found themselves steadied, which is not a small thing when one is carrying poison and facing three enemies and has also already been in a fight.
The rhetoricians of the military tradition have much to say about the virtue of the commander who steadies troops under pressure, and most of what they say is true, and we will not rehearse it here, except to observe that Cedric demonstrated it.
On the Destruction of the Surviving Sergeant and the Events Immediately Following
The sergeant who had survived Lorez's fire did not long survive Runner's bow. The shot was complicated in its execution but sufficient in its result. The sergeant fell. Runner had achieved this while the poison moved through his blood, which is the kind of detail that separates those who discuss martial virtue theoretically from those who have occasion to exercise it.
Iohannes engaged one of the new arrivals with his enchanted war hammer, an instrument of no small reputation, and struck the halfling through his leather protection. The halfling counterattacked with a second poisoned blade. Here fortune, or Providence, or the residual effects of Phlorian's musical enchantment intervened: that blow went awry and the second poison did not enter Iohannes's blood, though it came near enough that the chronicler pauses to note the narrowness of the margin.
Lorez, his greater fire-working already spent, reached for a lesser one. The attempt failed. The spell departed him in the manner of a guest who leaves before the entertainment has concluded, and he would not recover it without rest. He moved to the other side of the room and reconsidered his options, which is the correct response.
A Digression on the Ceiling Gambit, Which Reflects Well on Cedric's Understanding of Human Nature
Among the episodes of this engagement, the chronicler finds particular instruction in what he will call the ceiling gambit, though Cedric himself would likely not use this term.
He pointed toward the ceiling and called out something alarming, the precise content of which is lost to us, though its effect is well attested: the halfling toward whom the announcement was directed looked upward, found nothing, and in the interval of his looking, Runner discharged an arrow cleanly.
The halfling fell. This was Cedric deploying toward another's advantage what he might have reserved for his own, which the military tradition regards as a virtue of the higher order, and rightly so.
On the Arrival of Marcus and the Close of the Fighting
The beastman commander Marcus arrived at this juncture with six of the goat-faced soldiers of the Tagma. He had come, the chronicler presumes, expecting to find either a party in need of rescue or a party beyond it. He found a party that had reduced the opposition to one and was in the process of reducing it further.
Phlorian, the musician and arcane practitioner who serves as the group's primary diplomatic instrument, observed to Marcus that they appeared to be resolving his revenge problem on his behalf. Marcus did not respond, which is itself a kind of response.
Phlorian then employed his musical working upon Iohannes, augmenting both his force and his protection against the last halfling standing. Cedric charged. The halfling was lifted and slammed down. The fighting in the Thothian precinct was concluded.
The chronicler notes that Marcus and his soldiers were visibly grateful for the party's exertions. They managed not to say so, which the chronicler respects as a consistent characterization.
On the Administration of Antitoxin and the Confession of the Survivor
The poisons were arrested in time, the antitoxins distributed with a moment to spare. One vial remained in Lorez's possession.
Before the last halfling fell, Phlorian had put to him a question of the diplomatic variety: what had the Plumthorn Gang intended by this incursion? The halfling, assessing his position accurately, answered: Plumthorn thought this was the time for us to strike against the beastmen and claim this space.
This is the first direct testimony we possess regarding the strategic intentions of the Plumthorn faction. They had been watching. They had formed a judgment about the vulnerability of the Tagma and acted on it. Whether that judgment was correct, premature, or simply unlucky in its execution is a question the chronicler cannot answer from the evidence currently available, and he does not intend to speculate where the sources fail him.
Ekphrasis: The Halfling Room, and What It Contained
The room from which the reinforcements had emerged deserves description, as the details it yields are not without significance.
It was a chamber of modest dimensions, dressed stone, unremarkable in its features save for one: a peephole in the eastern wall, positioned to allow observation of the corridor beyond without being observed from it. The halflings had advance intelligence of anyone approaching through the beastmen's territory. They were not, in other words, simply brigands who had wandered too far. They were a positioned force with surveillance advantages, which suggests organizational sophistication the chronicler thinks worth noting even if the implications are not yet clear.
The dead yielded their equipment, as the dead conventionally do in these accounts: armor, blades, bows, coin, and four vials of the blade poison used against Runner and Iohannes. The heavy crossbow, which had originally belonged to the beastmen, was returned to Marcus's forces without negotiation. The remaining arms were sold to the beastmen for training purposes. The poison vials were retained, one per party member, which the chronicler regards as a practical decision of the kind experienced adventurers make without requiring philosophical justification.
The northern door, marked Danger in the Archontean script, was not opened. It remains unopened at the account's conclusion. The chronicler records this without comment.
On the Night's Rest, the Growth of the Company, and the Commission of Skleros
The party made camp in the halfling rooms. They consumed rations. They slept, which is itself an act of some discipline when one has recently been poisoned and the northern door is marked Danger and the room still smells of scorched halfling.
In the morning each of them rose improved, in the way that those who survive difficult things sometimes do. Phlorian had acquired new capabilities in his musical art. Runner had acquired the capacity to consecrate a perimeter against hostile entry, a thing with obvious practical applications in a dungeon. Lorez had expanded his repertoire of workings. Iohannes had confirmed that his actions aligned with his stated principles, which is a form of growth not every tradition recognizes but which this one does.
Marcus escorted them to Count Skleros, who received them not in the great hall where Deino holds audience but in one of the beastman's own halls, with officers attending. Skleros acknowledged the party's service without elaborating on his feelings about it. He then made his request: travel to the town of Gosterwick, acquire antitoxin in whatever quantity they could carry, and return within three days. He believed the halflings would wait that long. He promised a suitable reward.
The party agreed, as they generally agree to things that are in their interest, which this was.
Epilogue: On What Remains Unresolved and the Three-Day Clock
The chronicler concludes with the observation that concludes all good military accounts: the engagement described above was a success, but a success within a larger situation that remains unresolved, and the reader would be unwise to mistake the former for the latter.
The northern door is marked Danger and has not been opened. The six beastmen found beheaded in the corridor during the previous engagement have not been investigated. The Varumani ambassador, a figure of imposing bearing dressed in finery and disposed toward amusement, was present for Deino's ruling and has not been identified. The perception of beastman weakness that emboldened Plumthorn to act has not been explained.
Deino has further work for the party. Skleros will advise when the halfling situation is resolved, which it now is, and the party is walking toward Gosterwick with the commission in hand and a three-day clock that began when Skleros spoke and has not paused since.
Phlorian, who had privately worried that Skleros's promised reward might take the form of a drink from Deino, had been warned against accepting such a drink and intended to heed the warning. The chronicler, who knows something of Deino's hospitality and its consequences, thinks this wise.
Thus far the account of the eleventh engagement of the Ardent Fools in the precinct of Arden Vul. The twelfth begins on the road.
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