Our session began with a rich dinner served for the Company (or at least for Tengelbur and Reiana) at the hospitality of the governor, who was even more corpulent, loquacious, and repugnant than usual that night. Items on the menu included:
- Crayfish and lobster boiled in oil and dipped in fine-ground red pepper.
- Roast seafowl in a pot with cinnamon and almonds from the Royal Wood
- Sweet and sour pork with ginger and a thick rice wine sauce, cooked with onions, cloves, ginger, and mace and glazed with a honey sauce.
- Pears in wine, with cinnamon and ginger
- A table rice wine; a sweet plum brandy for the apertif.
Meanwhile, Vanera found himself subjected to a smothering hospitality of another sort: Neryaleth, the aging keeper of the Norinlakor, after having been asked (a little hesitantly) what his favorite story was, immediately launched into a dramatic reading of "The Wooing of Kanle," and was eventually forced to excuse himself (at some pains) from the reading, lest he should be there all night.
Alone of all the party, Tanurendal was free to go where he would. Wandering through the courtyard outside the Governor's palace, he saw a group of soldiers escorting a young girl towards the gate--and recognized the young girl by the jewelry she was wearing as Kjanle, the sister of Laran, the caravan survivor they had been trying to help for several days now. He approached, trying to get at the girl, but was accosted by one of the guards. At that moment he (from the outside) and Reiana and Tengelbur (from the inside) noticed a number of guards closing in around the feasting hall, and at that moment Governor Neratsoan turned on Tengelbur and Reiana and accused them of having waylaid the caravan themselves, and called upon Laran to testify to that effect. Shaking, clearly under duress, and unwilling to make eye contact with Reiana, Laran affirmed the Governor's accusation, and the Governor ordered the two of them to be carried away and put in irons.
That's when Tengelbur leaped into action. Snatching up a chamber pot, he tried to hurl it at the guard blocking the window where he stood, only to nearly hit Tanurendal out in the courtyard instead. Then, he drew a dagger and rushed the Governor, holding it at the huge man's many-folded neck and demanding an escort out of the city. After nearly succeeding in negotiating with the governor's serving wench Thauthenai, (who the party had come to suspect was something more) he was flattened by a blow from the Governor's flipper-like arm, and the four companions were subsequently thrown into the governor's dungeon awaiting trial.
There, Tanurendal manage to open the waste chute of the Palace on himself, dousing the whole party in foul-smelling offal before they were interrupted by the enigmatic (and now fully clothed) Thauthenai. After a tense conversation, Thauthenai made a deal with the party: she would give them the opportunity to escape, and tell them where the girl Kjanle was being held, in exchange for information about the true purpose of their mission to Sencankarr. After satisfying herself with their answer, she made arrangements for their escape, and for them to meet Laran at the city gates.
An hour later, the party crept out of the dungeons--only to run into two guards on their way to their shift a few minutes early. Tengelbur managed to bribe them to keep their mouths shut, and the party rescued little Kjanle from the Governor's private Dormice-keeping house before rendezvousing with her brother at the city gates. Offering to let Laran and his little sister travel with them back to the Holy City, the party set out on the road with the rising of the sun...
