The heroes had escaped Renaulton and were positioned outside the north gate. They had about 48 hours before they expected the king’s brother Prince Monroe would be departing from the city. Their plan would be to assassinate him and help further Diego (and the Masked Brotherhood’s) mission of overthrowing the royal monarchy of Renaulton.

Some local miners told them about a nearby trading post called “Chiqui’s” so they decided to head in that direction.

Chiqui’s was an interesting and lively place. Outside the main building, there were various tents set up with drunk barbarians and whores.

A fight between large mantis-like insects was taking place with a crowd gathered around them and placing bets. The party used this opportunity to make some money by utilizing Fizban’s dark staff to influence the outcome of the fight.

Afterwards, they headed into Chiqui’s and met Chiqui himself where they spent a good chunk of time conducting trade business. The party acquired some wearable furs (as the region had become noticeably colder). They also acquired some silver weapons, healing potions and oil flasks.

A large barbarian gruffly entered the trading post and pointed at Orion Payne, spoke something in his barbaric language and then left. Chiqui translated that the barbarian had challenged Orion in a hand-to-hand duel. No armor, no weapons.

Orion accepted and it turned into a brutal fight that Orion won narrowly.

However, he barely had a moment to catch his breath when the camp was attacked by vicious mountain rock baboons. The baboons hurled rocks from the mountain and one of them hit Orion and knocked him out cold.

Dyme and Warden quickly dragged him into the relative safety of Chiqui’s fort and Chiqui’s wife applied a poultice to bring him back to consciousness.

Fizban was able to cast a sleep spell and get all 6 baboons to fall asleep. One of them fell down the mountain side and died. Warden purchased some climbing equipment from Chiqui and scaled the mountain side and pushed the rest down so that they could be promptly butchered by the team. Chiqui was happy to pay a small amount for the pelts.

They spent the night at Chiqui’s and Fizban was able to use his charming ring to get some whores ‘on the house’. Fizban, Orion and Betmax partook in the whoring but young Dyme didn’t feel ready to lose his virginity in this way so he declined.

In the morning, some Ironfoot dwarves had come down from the mountains for trading but were unimpressed to see Betamax in their territory. One of the surly dwarves spat at him and this was enough to trigger Warden into battle and kicked off a big fight that the party eventually won.

The party headed back to the north gates to get ready for their assassination mission.

As expected, the royal carriage was seen leaving Renaulton. However, they noticed it only had 6 plated cavalry which was a little lower than expected but the party didn’t think too much of it. Fizban put the guards to sleep and they stole the carriage and fled!

When they opened the carriage, the prince was not inside! Instead, it was filled with explosives and the party realized it was a decoy. Luckily, all of the guards had been put to sleep and therefor it had not been detonated on them.

They hid back in the forest with their newly confiscated explosive carriage and waited for the REAL prince to show up.

A few hours later he did, with a full retinue of 15 guards.

Orion Payne, “Hiyaaa’d” the explosive carriage and charged the guards at full speed. At the last moment he used his Boots of Leaping to jump far away while Fizban fired a magic missile to explode the fast-moving bomb!

The explosion was huge, killing 10 guards and lighting the carriage on fire. The remaining guards fought valiantly and peppered Orion with crossbow bolts almost killing him permanently.

The rest of the party was able to kill the remaining guards. They captured Prince Monroe and began burning the dead troops. They also took the prince’s clothes and put them on a dead guard in hopes of giving the appearance of the prince’s death.

Instead of killing the prince they gagged him and took him hostage.

They decided to head out into the bush to find somewhere to make camp. Unfortunately, the north lands are a dangerous place and they were attacked by 3 frothing dire wolves.

In the fighting, one of the dire wolves latched on to Orion’s juggular and tore it out. The death was quick and permanent.

The party lamented the loss of their dear friend. It has been said that every man dies, but not every man really lives but Orion certainly lived live to the fullest in his last few days. No one will even remember that time at Chiqui’s when he tried to use his boots of leaping to aerial assault the dwarves but instead got stuck in a tree.