Once we'd recovered from all the indignities of our brief encounter with the Night People, (the "Bakhna Rakhna," they call them here, although "goblins" would work for any normal person), we decided to track the little jerks back to their lair and see if we could reason with them or something. But no, our resident "expert tracker," the great Samar, was completely incapable of tracking this huge group of dimwitted thugs. Some tracker he is! So instead, since we noticed what looked like a fire coming from one of the other farms, we decided to head that way and see what we could do to help. This town should be grateful for our vigilance!

So we got to the burning farm, only to find that the local militia had beaten us there. They're obviously pretty incompetent, since they didn't save the farmhouse and almost as many of them lay bleeding on the ground as Night People, but for the moment, we were mostly focusing on their captain, who'd captured one of the little creeps and was in the process of torturing it! Well, no matter how obnoxious those pests are, torturing them is not the way to go, so I walked right up and explained this to the oh-so-noble captain, and after a long monologue full of racist comments and lots of foaming at the mouth on his part, we were finally able to find out that he'd actually learned something interesting in the process of breaking his captive's fingers. The Night People, he claims, are out looking for their queen, who's missing, and this explains why they're so much more aggressive than they used to be. Of course, he doesn't know anything else (seems like he didn't get very much out of the poor little guy), but this doesn't surprise me in the least; the captain is quite the idiot!

Since it was getting close to sunrise and we knew we were going to be roped into trying to find and rescue the Night People's queen, we decided to go back to Page's house and rest for a while. But when we got there, there were these little flyers at everyone's door! When we took a look at them, we found that they were posters for some carnival or another, but far more importantly, we all saw all these horrible images of evil and nastiness and it was really really disgusting and upsetting only somehow we couldn't look away! Needless to say, I was somewhat rattled, and we took them right down to show Page and ask just exactly what he meant by giving these to us!

So I gave him my flyer, and told him to be careful, and he looked at it and got this odd look on his face and I had to snatch the flyer away from him so that he would stop drooling. Wow, was he ever mad! Sir Page is apparently not much of a listener, because even though I'd already explained at least twice that we'd found these things in our rooms, he wanted to know why we were bringing these evil things into his house, and I had to explain it to him again. Eventually, he calmed down and explained that he had no idea about any carnival, really, but that we were (of course) going to have to go investigate later. I don't think I like this job that the others signed me up for very much!

I was hoping that I'd be able to catch up on sleep for a while before going to do the various things we had to do (look for the Night People's lair, try to find their queen, investigate the carnival, and so on), but the inconsiderate jerks who run this town decided that it was more important to interrogate the local heroes immediately than to try to stay on their good sides, so they brought us straight to the mayor's house to find out what we knew. I was rather unhappy to discover that the militia captain was mayor Holden's son, so he was also there, and what's worse, he got his stupid little bigotries from his father! Imagine, the very gall to imagine that being human made them better than me! Don't they know that elves are the highest forms of life?!? But no, apparently they don't. Stupid idiots!

Anyhow, the mayor and the rest of the village council wanted to know what we know, so we told them what the captain had told us. Then they asked what we thought the queen would look like, and I carefully explained to these poor dense idiots that she probably looked more or less like any other Night Person, but since Captain Pond Scum had killed his prisoner before we could ask it, we didn't know for sure. Haley, though, had to stick her two copper's worth in, and said that the queen was probably big and beautiful, at least to them. I don't know where she gets these odd ideas, but we have to bear in mind that the coming fiasco is her fault.

You see, the racist idiots who run this town didn't much like Blasse. You remember her, right? The serving girl at the inn? She is a foundling, and an albino, so naturally, Captain Pond Scum and Mayor Slime decided that Blasse must be the Night People's queen! Nevermind the fact that she's obviously a human, or that the Night People's queen went missing only recently and Blasse has been in town for longer than that, they didn't like her, so she was now declared a goblin. Wow, what a brilliant stroke of logic there! These people make my head hurt!

Anyhow, I, for one, couldn't tolerate this idiocy any longer, so I left the mansion with vague thoughts of arson or some such going through my mind (these people made me sooo mad!), but before I could get anywhere, a mob showed up, dragging Blasse along with them, declaring her a witch, and asking for the great pleasure of hanging the inhuman wench! I sensed Pond Scum's influence at work here... But before I could do anything, Haley burst out and started trying to reason with the mob (oh yeah, as if that was going to work!), and then Prihelm burst out and started trying to explain to the mob that he wouldn't let them hurt her (yes, and I'm sure they're all stricken with terror), and any chance of me rescuing the poor girl was irretrievably lost when Ferny, the innkeeper (who is soon going to be without an inn, if I have anything to say about it) decided that I must be a witch, too, because I sure don't look human. Well, naturally. Of course! Elves are witches! It all makes so much more sense now! I should have left these idiots to the hags!

The mob was just in the process of deciding they were going to hang Blasse and I then and there when Captain Pond Scum came out and said "now citizens, you know how we in Holdenby pride ourselves and law and order. We have to put them on trial first; then we can hang them!" Why did I not find that very reassuring?

They put Blasse in jail for now (for her own safety, of course), but declined to do the same for me (apparently, elves are on their own), which ruined the first escape plan. Then Page came up and explained that he would make sure that Blasse wasn't mistreated and that this farce wouldn't go on for much longer, so I should just go back to his manor and wait it out there. I didn't find that very reassuring either, to be honest. I mean, Page is okay and all, but it was a mob! You don't reason with a mob!

So we went back to the manor and I promptly started trying to make plans for breaking Blasse out of jail and hiding her somewhere where she'd be safe. Since it was still early, and jailbreaks only really work at night, we all decided to sleep for a while before we made our daring rescue, and this might have been a mistake. You see, Prihelm, the great idiot, meditated about the relative merits of my plan versus doing nothing, decided that my plan was a bad one. So he had to go sticking his oar in, and he explained to me that he'd overheard me making plans with the others, and that he couldn't permit me to break the law; we were going to be there at Blasse's trial to make sure it was fair and just, and then she would be released and it would all work itself out. Honestly, I don't know where he comes from, but I don't think that there's a more naive person in the entire world than our dear paladin. I was trying to find a way of discretely knocking him unconscious or locking him in the basement or something so that I could carry on with my good work, but before I could, the others decided it would be a good idea to try to prove Blasse's innocence by going to find the goblin queen. Yeah, right. Good luck!

I, alas, got dragged along with them ("let's keep an eye on Jen; she might do something rash if she wasn't supervised." Some friends! Puh!), so I didn't get the chance to go rescue Blasse on my own, either. For some reason, Prihelm thought the goblins would be at the cave that Page had mentioned (there's a cave near the old ruins, apparently), so he dragged us along with him on this foolish little quest, and of course, when we got there, it was painfully obvious that while the goblins had been there, it was two or three days ago, and they hadn't been back since. Pri wanted to just wait for them to get back, until I pointed out that we needed to be back in town and it was getting close to morning. I was hoping to make it back in time to rescue Blasse while the others slept, but this was not to be.

When we got to town, it was just in time to see the mob ready to hang the poor girl again! And naturally, the captain was egging them on, nevermind "honor" and "justice" and so forth! Casting a scathing glare at the paladin, I did my best to get to Blasse before she was killed, but it wasn't looking too promising! Just then, a dagger came spinning out of nowhere and cut the (taut) rope that was being used to strangle the poor girl, and this weird looking pair of men in skeleton costumes came out of the shadows behind some tall woman, glaring at the crowd and obviously ready to do some evil things to the mob if they interfered. They needn't have worried, since the mob, led by the heroic capatain (who seems to have wet his pants), fled in terror at the approach of these three people. They were, they explained, from the carnival, and they were here to rescue Blasse.

Hmm.. We didn't know if we liked this so much, but we agreed to go along with them for a while, and we got to the carnival just in time for the woman, Isolde, to announce that they would be moving on shortly. I wasn't sure I liked this, and I didn't even trust the carnival one little bit, so I decided to wait outside while the others ingratiated themselves with the various people there. Apparently, from what Haley tells me, they have some weird freaks there, and they thought Blasse would fit right in! There's something called the Twisting, which does strange things to people to make them kind of freakish and which normally is some weird stupid ironic joke or something. For example, there used to be a thief who was very sticky fingered travelling with them, so the Twisting turned her into a walking glue-person. Very droll. Haley can be quite strange sometimes.

Anyhow, the others were apparently convinced that the carnival was okay after all, nevermind the flyers that they sent us, so they just left Blasse with them and decided it was time to go home, our work being done. I'm very confused by all of this, but I think my first duty is to my friends, not to Blasse, so I'll have to take them back to Page and see if I can't get him to find out what those jerks at the carnival did to Haley and Prihelm and the rest. Then we can go rescue Blasse from her "rescuers." I hate having to be the responsible one, but right now, I guess I don't have a lot of choice. If only they'd listened to me when I warned them not to go in!