The BEGINNING!

[Carthrat]

OOC: Nitpick! Crossbows aren't cliche! Longbows are cliche!

IC: And so, after some travelling, the group arrived at Escaville.

And it WAS Good.

And in Escaville, there was a Noisy Tavern. There was also a City Hall, and a Blacksmith, and a theif who promptly stole all of John Trueswords gold and racked off to the tavern, and a-

Wait.

Theif.

Stole gold.

Oh dear.

[Bean Bandit]

OOC: *Blinks innocently* Is that my cue? Oh well, I'll behave as though it was. (If not, lemme know and I'll erase this)

Note: I'm mostly winging it here, as far as cliche goes. (My experience is limited)

IC:

Jean smiled to herself as she pushed open the door to the tavern and seated herself at a table.

Thank GOD for clueless hero-types. If not for the easy mark she'd encountered on her way to the tavern, this trip to Escaville would have been a total BORE.

Seriously! What was wrong with these villiagers? Not a single priceless artifact or immensely valuable trinket amongst them! It was like they were PEASANTS or something!

Jean shrugged and waved to the serving wench...

[TannimFodder]

Hammerfist Axebeard payed no attention to the new human entering the tavern.  He was sitting next to a heap of bodies taller than he was as he nursed another bucket of beer.  The fight had been pathetic, to say the least.  He hadn't even worked up a good sweat.

[Anonymous]

Storming up to the Tavern, John threw open the doors and stomped into the establishment.

Scanning through the crowd, John paid no heed to the huge pile of unconscious men near the dwarve.

Where was she?

"There she is!" John called out to his traveling companions, rushing the thief.

[calendar]

Lallie followed her adorable, handsome leader into the bar, grabbing the longbow and the arrow slung over her shoulder.

This was fun!

[TannimFodder]

OOC:  Dwarve?  DWARVE?  I'm a dwarve, am I?  This insult shall not be forgiven!

Hammerfist the DWARF glanced over at the excitable human and his elven companion rushing over toward the other human that had just entered.  His eyes gleamed with speculation as he noted the decidedly 'heroic' features on the male.  Those types always had trouble following them.  And usually they were involved with Quests against Impossible Odds.  Just the kind of thing he had been looking for...

[Bean Bandit]

Jean looked up as the mark entered the bar.

Interesting. He'd managed to find her, despite looking as clueless as that cleric that was following him around.

In fact, had she been forced to lay bets, she would have fingered the elf-girl as the smartest one of the bunch.

Still, he had found her. This was not a Good Thing.

She tossed her long brown braid over her shoulder and looked up at the hero-type with wide green eyes, affecting her best 'innocent look'.

"Is there something the matter, my lord?"

[Rezantis]

Before James could reply, Fredumont strode forward, glaring down at the girl seated at the bar.

"Yes!  We are adventurers, on a GREAT QUEST in service of the CAUSE - and YOU have STOLEN our friend's gold!  In the name of the CAUSE, we DEMAND it's return!"  The ranting cleric glared fiercely, "Hand it over, and we shall not SMITE you as a HERETIC in the name of the CAUSE, for the CAUSE is just and the CAUSE is MERCIFUL, and the CAUSE is-"

OOC: Et cetera.  SOmeone wanna interrupt/do something/have a random bar patron smash him over the back of the head with a stool to shut him up, thus instituting a cliched barroom brawl?  (hint hint)

Yeah, I know Tannim already had one.  I don't care.  We need another, 'on screen'.  :P

[TannimFodder]

By the time Hammerfist was watching the priest go on and on, ranting about a CAUSE, the majority of the people he had already beat on were waking up and crawling away.  Some were staggering to their feet, and still angry, ready for round two.  Also, many more people had entered the tavern, also fresh and ready for a fight.

Axebeard was getting bored of the rant.  Several other people in the tavern were also glaring at the priest.  Granted, this was good in the way that it confirmed his suspicians.  But the damned priest was just too long-winded, and he wondered what he could do to stop the priest /and/ get into the good graces of the group so they would take him along.

One of the people who he had put down with a simple punch to the head finally staggered up and made their way to the door.  As the patron passed in front of Hammerfist, he kicked the unfortunate man right into the priest, while yelling in a high pitch voice doing his best to imitate a human, "SHUT UP!"

The poor fool bowled the priest right over, and the priest didn't look happy at all.

OOC:  Fresh new faces, old ones still ready to fight, what more could you ask for?  ^_^

[Rezantis]

"...that we shall SMITE those HERETICS in the name of the CAUSE!  HAIL to the-"

The cleric broke off suddenly as he staggered forward as someone crashed into his back.  Turning around and throwing the staggering man to the ground, he glared at the man who had dared tell him to "Shut up!"

"You... do not respect the ways of the CAUSE!  HERETIC!  The CAUSE provides HERETICS for the SMITING!"

So saying, Fred picked up a nearby stool and flung it at the man.

[TannimFodder]

Turning to the man next to him, Hammerfist whispered to him, "are you going to let that priest get away with abusing your fellow countryman?"  Not bothering to wait for a reaction, Axebeard whispered the same words to the two other men seated near him.  Predictably, all three men stood up in anger.

Various other men, taking their cue from the three also stood up.  Their eyes had been on the priest, and hadn't seen the dwarf kick the man into the priest.

"How dare you come in here and attack us?!" cried one of the many tavern patrons.

The priest began, "The CAUSE is the-" before being interrupted by a beer stien to the face.  Spouting about the CAUSE the entire time, the priest waded into the patrons weilding a chair, striking them down with his awsome might.

The hero-type and the elven lady looked a tad out of sorts of what to do, but were quickly swept into the heat of battle as angry patrons attacked them as well.

Hammerfist leapt up onto the top of a table.

"FOR THE CAUSE!" he boomed before reaching behind him and pulling out his axe.  He used the weapon like a club, smashing the flat of it against all the men surrounding him.  He jumped off and began methodically smashing people to the ground.

Unfortunately, in his overzealousness, Axebeard nearly killed one of the few non-combatants.  The head he hit with the flat part of the axe had bounced off with such a force as to drive the spike end of it straight toward a young man in robes.

The young man was dressed in gaudy purple robes, with silver stars made of sequens adorning it.  Several of the sequens had been torn off from use.  The man was also wearing a pointed cap that was, if possible, even more gaudy than the robes; silver sequens nearly covered the purple of it.

With a small shriek of terror, the young man pulled his head down out of the path of the weapon like a turtle.   The axe impacted the pointy hat and embebbed itself into the wooden wall of the tavern.

"Sorry 'bout that," mumbled the dwarf as he yanked the weapon free.  He took a moment to pull the hat off the spike, and hand it back to the obviously frightened young man.  "Excuse me, I've got a fight to win."  Axebeard turned back into the brawl to continue with the fighting.

[Kwokinator]

"Grr... damn you, you stupid dwarf!" said figure in purple robes cried in rage as his head was almost chopped off by Hammerfist's axe. "I, Heezan Idjit, will punish you!"

Thinking back to his lessons under the Great Teacher-Mage Largo, he began Lesson 1 of GTML... "Always taunt your enemies!"

"My l33t f1r3b4ll 5k1llz w1ll k1ll j00!"

With that, he launched a fireball at Hammerfist's direction. "D1e!"

[TannimFodder]

The fireball flew straight and true.  However, it impacted not on it's target, but on a person who had stepped into the line of fire in order to club the dwarf.

Hammerfist didn't even glance behind him as the irate wizard taunted him.  Over the din of battle, he didn't hear it.  The thing he did hear, however, was the screaming agony of a man on fire.  He turned around to see a man drop a stool from his fingers as he writhed in pain, fire covering him.  The dwarf looked at the wizard, whose hands were outstreached, and nodded gratefully toward him.

"Thanks for the assist!"

[Anonymous]

John sighed as he waded through the mob, holding his sword ready to use it on any that got in his way.

Honestly, didn't these people have anything else to do besides causing all this havoc?

Grabbing the back of the girl's shirt, he hauled the thief out of the Bar during the resulting chaos. After all, he had absolute confidence in his group.

Really.

Dropping her once they were outside, he glared down at her.

"Now...can you 'please' give me back our money?" He calmly asked, simultaneously sheathing his weapon.

[Kwokinator]

"Grr..." Heezan growled, smacking the spellbook attached to his waist. "j00 n0t l33t!"

With another growl, he began flinging fireballs after fireballs in Hammerfist's direction. "Ph33r my l33t f1r3b4llz!"