Their mission accomplished, the three heroines left the bazaar by climbing up the ladder Grogza had found earlier, bringing their unconscious prisoner along with them. From inside, the lock on the trapdoor could be disengaged by turning a knob, allowing to climb up onto the roof of the Trader's Garden.<br/><br/>Lizzy sent up the<em>dancing lights</em>that was the signal for their extraction. Before long, the silhouettes of Dixon and Drakula took off from Fort Lannis in the distance, wings flapping as they flew towards them. Right on due, experience meters dinged and increased, in Rayne's case, coming achingly close to filling up completely but not just quite.<br/><br/><em>(Gain 4000 XP for evading / capturing / destroying the iron maiden golem, succubus, and wood golem.)</em><br/><br/>Sabrith flew down on the drake, leading the griffon behind by the reins. "You made it!" she observed happily, as she handed Dixon back to Rayne. "All three of you too. Did you find the stations you were looking for?"<br/><br/>"Right here," Lizzy said, holding up the sack containing the shrunken stations. "How did the monster killing go?"<br/><br/>"We managed to clear a few streets, no casualties," Sabrith replied as they took off. "It'll relieve the pressure, but the monsters are already respawning one by one from what we can see, and it'll only take a few days to be right back where we started. Oh, and a pair of players respawned back at the fort while you were away - did you have anything to do with that?"<br/><br/><hr/><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;">Return to Fort Lannis</span><br/><br/>The victors' triumphant return to Fort Lannis was greeted with cheers and applause, but the celebrations were soon cut short - there was much to be done. Lizzy set up the crafting stations and went to work right away, converting shiny gold into less shiny but more useful magical items and equipment. Zombs and Starstrike discussed complex arcane and divine theories on the best way to safely hold the succubus, and in the end decided to hold her in a magic circle, in one of the dungeon cells of the fort, away from the frequently travelled passages.<br/><br/><em>(During downtime, Rayne has many options for what she wants to do - she can participate in them in the order she sees fit, or ignore them if she wishes)</em><br/><br/><hr/><br/><strong>Cleaning up the bazaar</strong><br/><br/>Now that they knew what to expect - a damaged iron maiden golem, zombies, and possibly ghast-ified players - Grogza and Sabrith discussed the possibly of making one more sweep through the bazaar, to see if they could find any other players and rescue them. None of the monsters in the streets outside had been spotted inside the market, suggesting that the place was free of monster spawners. The iron maiden was the major threat, but luckily Lizzy managed to scrounge up enough adamantine to craft a solution: a pair of adamantine battle-axes further enchanted with construct bane, weapons specifically designed to take down the golem should they encounter it once more.<br/><br/>"Say hello to the iron maiden for me," Lizzy said, her eyes hard.<br/><br/>"Don't worry, I'll give it a strong greeting," Grogza nodded meaningfully, as she climbed into the drake's saddle behind Sabrith.<br/><br/><em>(Rayne doesn't need to go on this mission, she can just see her friends off and wish them luck... unless she really insists on it, in which case she wouldn't be able to participate in any of the other events in Fort Lannis.)</em><br/><br/><strong>New allies</strong><br/><br/>Charlatania and XxxHawtAzn69xxX were asleep in the infirmary.<br/><br/>"Please keep your voice down," the cleric attending to them asked Rayne. She sighed, "I'm in medical school, so I get a chance to log on maybe once in a blue moon, and then this happens at the time I just happen to be online. When Zombs found out about my background, he asked me to play psychiatrist for people here, to take care of those who had been raped... I'm not qualified at all, won't be for many years still, and I'm terrified of making it worse instead of helping - but I couldn't say no, could I?"<br/><br/><strong>Magic item crafting</strong><br/><br/>Lizzy had commandeered the blacksmith's premises in the fort and set up her workstations there almost immediately upon. Now she practically lived there, fully absorbed in her work, cranking out items whenever she wasn't eating or sleeping. "What can I make for you?" she asked Rayne. "Feel free to leave me a list, because it can take a while - there's a limit to how much gold I can convert into items every hour, and everyone else has given me a long wish list already. The good news is, I can create gear at cost, which is half of what they'd normally cost, so you're getting basically twice the bang for your buck. You probably don't know this, but they changed the crafting system - used to be you could just set up the ingredients and then go fight monsters or log out, since nobody wanted to waste their time pretend smithing, but now I have to actually work at it continuously or it won't progress."<br/><br/><strong>Interrogating the prisoner</strong><br/><br/>The magic circle holding the succubus worked exactly as designed, securing the prisoner, while her out-of-the-way dungeon cell ensured that her contact and chances to corrupt other, less strong-willed players would be minimal. With Grogza and Sabrith doing a sweep of the bazaar for missing players, Zombs and Starstrike were present to oversee the interrogation and in case anything went wrong. Lizzy was present too, this being important enough to her for her to take time off from crafting.<br/><br/>"The worst you can do is kill me, which is what you would have done had I not surrendered," the succubus drawled, trying to affect as unimpressed and detached a tone as possible. "If you want me to talk, then you better offer me something in exchange. My freedom would be a good start. Don't worry, little ones, I am not so foolish as to attack you once I am out."<br/><br/><em>(The succubus's initial attitude is Unfriendly. The DC to improve her attitude is 28 for Diplomacy and 20 for Intimidate. Making concessions might lower the DC, and there might be possible actions other than Diplomacy and Intimidate that might affect her attitude as well. Her final attitude will determine how she answers questions once Rayne moves on to that stage.</em>