AD&D Session 93 - The Warmup
28th of Duscar, 835 PD
That evening, the party regrouped at Shadycreek Run’s fight ring to continue their attempt to recover House Mardoon’s missing pixie agent, whose rescue had become the price of securing covert passage south into the Empire. After Marcus’s earlier efforts to study the arena wards and learn how the resident mage had configured them, the group watched the opening doubles matches with particular caution. Marcus was unable to spot any obvious magical trickery during the early bouts, but he did confirm an important weakness in the arena’s protections: the barrier could be adjusted to block harm to the audience while still allowing spells to pass into the ring. On that basis, he warned the non-combatants to keep watch for outside interference rather than focusing only on the fighters themselves, as any decisive cheating was likely to come from beyond the sand rather than from the contestants openly in the arena.
When Whisper and Enikas finally entered the tournament, they performed far better than the party could have hoped. Their first match ended in a clear victory, and they followed it with a second win, putting them through to the final round and bringing the pixie prize within reach. By the end of the night, however, optimism was tempered by suspicion. With the pair now one fight away from winning the tournament outright, the party had every reason to believe the final match would not be allowed to play fair. What had started as an audacious but workable plan was now poised to become a direct confrontation with whatever rigging or outside manipulation the fight club’s organisers had prepared to protect their chosen outcome.