Rinsluk the Luckless
Village of Abarel, and the Traverton on Iradel.
The door to Rinsluk's tavern above Abarel slams open, and Trinik enters, now dressed in fancier livery and accompanied by two hulking armored soldiers, wearing what Orosh recognizes as the distinctive helm and half-plate armor of Brightstar Champions, the elite guard of the Guild. Trinik takes off his glasses, wipes them, and says, "Rinsluk! Greetings from the Brightstar Guild!"
Rinsluk narrows his eyes and says, "Borlu!"
Akissi puts the woman and child behind her and Borlu notices this. "Thought to settle down, did you?" he says. People begin spreading out. Koros attempts to delay violence, stating that they have business with Rinsluk and the Guild can have him afterwards. Borlu responds by warning the party that this is Brightstar business, and they would do well to step aside. He gestures for his men to take Rinsluk, and they carefully move past the party to approach the man from either side, behind his bar.
Rinsluk keeps looking from Borlu to his presumed wife and daughter and back again, and says to Koros, "Protect me from these men and I'll tell you what you want to know." As Koros seems to agree, Ramach opens the hostilities by casting crown of madness on one of the champions. It does not work, but it gets a response from Borlu.
Borlu casts, and some flash of color with ribbons of meaning threaded throughout weaves through the room in an instant, leaving most in state of enchanted wonderment, oblivious to their surroundings. He then spits out at Rinsluk, "You don't get to be happy!" and casts magic missile at the woman Akissi is protecting. She drops to the floor, and Akissi kneels to heal her.
Koros, unaffected by the colors, pushes both Ramach and Orosh out of their stupor. Ramach gets one the champions with a short-lived crown, and Orosh flies into a rage and charges Borlu, slamming him with both sides of his weapon. Borlu's surprised and pained look gives way to anger, and he says, "Always the hard way!", and the interior of the inn is suddenly filled with a white-hot blinding fire, leaving a flaming hell-scape in its wake. He then vanishes.
The child is burned to a crisp, the woman also badly hurt - Akissi heals the woman again as Rinsluk runs over to them. He exchanges a few anguished words with his injured wife, and then insists that Akissi take the woman and the child's body to a back room. Everyone else, in various states of burned-ness, concentrates on the Champions. They prove to be far tougher than any foe the party has faced, and at least one time each make their swords glow a fierce blue light than explodes on impact with a burst much as Akissi's weapon has been known to do.
Rinsluk then runs behind the bar, grabs a long stick, pokes a panel above the back door, catches a large pack that drops down, and flees out the back. The two champions follow, as does the party, and finds two more champions on the back deck, the four of them now facing down RInsluk.
As the party fights the champions, Ramach and Koros surreptitiously remove items from Rinsluk's pack - a bag of gems and four scrolls. Rinsluk soon looks worriedly to another back door (the one off the back room to which Akissi took his injured wife and dead child), and then lunges for that entrance. He whips open the door, looks inside, and says, "No." He then enters. Orosh and Koros follow to find that the woman's throat has been cut. Borlu is in the room, and then again vanishes. Two champions have followed Rinsluk, so he runs back into he tavern inferno, followed by the champions, followed by Orosh and Koros. Akissi, Paetro, and Ramach have stayed on the deck facing the remaining two champions, trading blows.
Inside the burning tavern, Borlu appears again, this time firing magical darts at the fleeing Rinsluk, and tells the pursuing champions to grab him. Orosh and Koros surround Borlu, and their combined hits are too much for the little man, who falls amidst the fire he created. Orosh and Koros then concentrate on the two champions while RInsluk once again flees out the back. One champion chases him, another badly injured one flees out the front foor. Koros loots Borlu's pack and then drags both Borlu and the unconscious champion out the back door.
On the deck, Paetro has brought down one champion with precise bolt to the neck. Rinsluk runs out, grabs a bit of cloth from a pile, and leaps over the rail to slide down the snowy hill to the village of Abarel below. A champion on the deck attempts to leap the rail and chase him down the hill. Another, coming out of the tavern in pursuit, is shot by Paetro and brought down. One by one the party all grab waxed cloth sleds, and leap down the hill to give chase - except Akissi, who stays behind to tend to the wounded enemies and complete a capture of Borlu.
Paetro, Ramach, and Koros crash into trees or rocks and fall off their sleds mid-hill, and together outnumber and chase off the last champion, who flees into the woods. Orosh slides easily down into the village, and follows Rinsluk through the small town via snow-tracks and loud voices to the Mehu convergence celebration at the edge platform. Rinsluk is arguing with a man there, pointing to the now-visible burning tavern on the hill and then at the platform. Orosh grapples him and manhandles him back into the thicket of buildings. He is soon joined by Ramach and the others. Ramach pays an exorbitant price to get a small room in an inn, normally booked up by the celebrations.
There Rinsluk seemingly gives up, staring despondently at the wall and hugging his large pack to himself. Koros begins consoling him, offering sympathies and help in exchange for a bit of information. Rinsluk asks if Borlu is dead, because, "If he is alive he will not stop hunting me. He is not allowed to return to Angbol until he recovers what I took." While they let him recover from the immediate shock of events, Ramach leaves to find Akissi carting the dead - and an unconscious champion and Borlu - down the hill on a tied-together makeshift cloth toboggan. They stash these in a dark courtyard, and Ramach returns to the inn to report that they do indeed have Borlu. Koros gets an idea, and the party and Rinsluk move to the courtyard with Akissi.
Koros offers Rinsluk justice in exchange for information. - he may kill the man who murdered his wife and child if he tells them where he's hidden the Gate Compass. Akissi objects, and has plans to return Borlu/Trinik to the Baron Erodan to clear their names and maintain his good graces. While they argue, Rinsluk picks up Borlu and moves towards the edge, seemingly not caring if the party moves to stop him or kill him. They talk him into delaying, and dropping Borlu back on the ground.
He then flatly tells the party that after discovering that most of the buyers he approached would simply kill him for the device, he sold the Gate Compass to a clueless Baron on Iradel for every ounce of wealth he had, the Baron Bredini. He heard that the Baron died last year, and wonders if he too drew a fatal interest from other buyers. Orosh asks how they can trust him. Rinsluk shrugs and says he's got nothing to lie about or live for. Koros asks where all this wealth is now, and Rinsluk smiles wanly and says, "Here and there." Orosh asks why he didn't just tell Brightstar to get them off his back, and Rinsluk points at Borlu and says, "He would have killed me anyway."
Having given up his information, and with the seeming assent of the party (Akissi looking on disapprovingly) Rinsluk kneels and without ceremony cuts Borlu's throat. He watches the Brightstar agent bleed out, and then turns his back on his dead wife, burned up child, and the towering inferno of his long-time home, and walks off into the Abarel night.
The party buries the wife and child on the hill, within sight of the blackened husk of the home where they died, and marches their captured Brightstar champion (and Borlu's corpse) the two days back across Iradel to their house in the Baronite Valley.
Along the way Koros estimates the gems he stole form Rinsluk's pack at about 10 to 15 thousand gold pieces. Ramach identifies a silver circlet with Brightstar runes from Borlu's pack as a paired telepathic communication device, the location of the other end unknown but presumably on Angbol. A small cyphered book from Borlu's pack proves difficult to translate, although Ramach makes progress on it. Four scrolls stolen from Rinsluk's pack are all Scrolls of Teleportation Circle.
Back in the Baronite Valley, the party informs Baron Erodan of their return and he requests to come to them. He beings far more armsmen than he needs, but gives back Koros's coin after some small haggling. Although the party stammers out the story of how Trinik/Borlu attacked them, Erodan seems to know a lot about the situation already. He asks to see Borlu's body, and asks for the champion to be given to his custody. The party agrees, and Erodan leaves, surrounding the champion with many Armsmen. His young wife, before parting, says to the party in a light, high voice, "You left two other champions alive. They come for their brother."
The party then sends word to the Baroness Bredini, seeking audience. After a few days, it is granted. Koros speaks for the party, and leads the Baroness to tell them about her late father. She repeats that he bankrupted the family on a bad business deal, providing the further detail when pressed that he bought two items with all their wealth and intended to sell them for far greater earnings, but died in his sleep before he could complete the deal.
They ask to see the items, she says only one is still here. She believes her father send the other one to a potential buyer to prove it was real...without compensation of course. She shows them the one still at the manor, a silver box in the shape of the Gate Compass but with many internal gears disassembled on a desk. Koros offers her money for the "clearly defective item", and at first the Baroness refuses such a paltry amount. The party then offers services, and the Baroness grows thoughtful.
She then relates that although she feels her father's death was entirely natural, her younger sister Aidra has always maintained that he was killed over these stupid devices, and has spent the last year poking her head onto other Islands chasing this ludicrous theory. She went to Nade at the most recent Gate opening, and has not returned. The Baroness offers that she will give them the case of the device now, for the price on the table, and will give the rest if the party can find and return Aidra to the Bredini Manor on Iradel before the Nade Gate closes.
The party agrees, and quickly packs their things and leaves for Nade; the Iradel-Nade Gate closes in four days.