"There will be no getting sick in the Traveler's Cloak Inn for as long as I'm still the proprietor," she sternly instructed. "I don't care if you are a friend of Volothamp Geddarm's, or not. You are an embarrassment to all of the well-mannered gentlemen who have passed through these doors before you. I don't care where you go, just don't come back here until you have learned yourself some manners."
The portly thespian tried to protest but found himself unable to hold back the upcoming deluge from his stomach and formulate words at the same time. Passepout instead concentrated on just keeping from passing out.
Releasing the actor's collar, and with a little bit of encouragement from the sole of her shoe, Dela propelled the green-faced thespian out into the Mulmaster city streets, where the human projectile quickly wandered off, and passed out.
Moments later, Dela's afternoon tea was interrupted by a contingent of Hawks with a warrant for the arrest and confiscation of goods for both Volothamp Geddarm and Passepout, son of Idle and Catinflas.
Dela, the perfect innkeeper, informed the guards that both guests were no longer on the premises, and that if either of them returned, she would immediately inform the local authorities.
Mentally she added in her own mind, once I've warned them and sent them on their way, of course.
Dela had no desire to alienate either the local authorities or her guests, which is probably why she was considered to be a model innkeeper for all Faerun.
In the dungeon of Southroad Keep:
A light was flashed once again through the window in Rassendyll's cell, when the guard retrieved the plate that had previously borne the slop that had been dinner. As the footsteps of the guards retreated off into the distance, Rassendyll waited for the return of his visitor.
Seconds stretched into moments, moments into hours, hours into immeasurable blocks of time that felt like years, yet the abbe Hoffman did not return.
Rassendyll reflected as he waited. Before the arrival of the dwarf, he had despaired and welcomed death, accepting it and his own continued captivity as inevitable and beyond his own ken.
The appearance of the cheerful dwarf had changed all of that. Maybe his inevitable fate was not all that cut and dried after all. True, his magical abilities and secrets had left him, and he was imprisoned in a hideous mask of iron in the bowels of a Mulmaster dungeon, but no matter what he had thought before, he was far from helpless and the time for action had arrived.
Rassendyll decided that it was time to take control of his destiny for the first time in his cloistered life. If an old dwarf has the spark of life within him, why not a mage-in-training?
Checking the small window in the door for a guard who might overhear his actions, and finding the coast to be clear, he moved away the blocking stone from the tunnel entrance, and with great care to avoid the telltale sounds of metal on rock caused by the hitting of the mask against the dungeon wall, Rassendyll shimmied through the entrance and crawled through the dwarf's tunnel.
The girth of the dwarf's torso necessitated a wide tunnel so the masked prisoner had little trouble moving through it. Within seconds, he arrived at its apparent end, and carefully pushed a stone not unlike the one on his end of the tunnel away, and hauled himself up into the dwarf's cell.
Hoffman was resting with his back against the cell wall. His eyes were closed and his breathing was unduly labored.
Rassendyll's heart sank. It appeared that his newly found reason for living was in his final hours.
As the masked mage moved the stone in place, he accidentally hit his head. The clang, soft as it was, announced his presence, and the dwarf opened his eyes.
"I have company, I see," Hoffman said with a weak grin.
"Good manners required that I return the neighborly visit," Rassendyll replied, approaching the infirm dwarf. He was shocked by how sickly the dwarf now appeared, when he had seemed so robust, not counting the coughing fit, when he had visited Rassendyll's cell earlier.
Hoffman instinctively read the look of surprise that existed beneath the mask on his fellow prisoner's face. "I hope you don't mind me not going to the effort of casting a keeping up appearances spell. It would take a bit too much out of me at the present moment."
"Not at all," Rassendyll replied, his grin obscured by the iron mask.
"You were going to tell me how you wound up with that coal bucket on your head," the dwarf reminded him.
"A blind wizard smith put it on me at the direction of a cruel but handsome looking man who resembled myself."
"Tell me a little more about this good looking fellow, the bad guy. You can fill me in about yourself a little later."
"He was dressed in silken robes with fur trim, and around his neck was a pendant of a blood-encrusted dagger. The blood was made up of red gemstones. Rubies, maybe," Rassendyll tried to recall.
"That pendant represents the office of the High Blade of Mulmaster. I believe that the tormentor who looks just like you is the tyrant Selfaril himself. Rumors pass occasionally through these dungeon walls, and I recall that he ascended to the throne after killing his own father," the dwarf explained. "Are you sure that you resemble him?"
"Indeed," Rassendyll replied. "If I could remove this mask, I would show you."
"Don't even try," Hoffman advised with a cough. "It is clearly ensorcelled. I'm afraid that not even during my younger years would I have been able to defeat a spell as strong as this one."
"It also seems to have removed all of my own spellcasting abilities."
"You were a spellcaster?" the enfeebled dwarf inquired.
"A mage-in-training," Rassendyll explained. "I had been in training for my entire life. Now, all those years have been wasted."
"Maybe not," Hoffman asserted. "Though the ability to do is desirable, the ability to wield and recognize is also of great benefit."
"I don't understand."
"The enchanted metal of the mask acts as both an insulator and a leeching conductor of your magical abilities and spells. It prevents any spells formed within from being cast out, while conducting the knowledge and innate powers from within, onto its metallic surface, and eventually causing them to dissipate in the air around you. What it doesn't do is prevent you from using the general knowledge you obtained in your studies, such things as recognizing spells that are cast by others or using magically powered artifacts and objects."
Rassendyll chuckled at the dwarf's optimistic observations. "Little good those vestiges of my training will do me here," he said, trying not to sound too despairing in the presence of the obviously dying dwarf.
"Don't be too sure," Hoffman replied, his voice weakening rapidly. "My years of tunneling around here are coming to an end. Originally I had an agreement with the former resident of your cell, that when my time had come I would aid him in his escape from this hateful place."
"What happened to the former resident?" Rassendyll asked.
"He died at the hands of an overly playful guard, whose solution to the boredom of his regular duties was torturing the prisoners. In Kupfer's case, he went a little too far."
"Oh."
"When a person dies in the keep, their body is placed in a sack with a weight and dropped down the same drain that the garbage goes. It leads to an underground canal that eventually empties out into the Moonsea. The dead are bagged and weighted before the dinner service, and then collected on the same trip they retrieve the plates. I've seen it happen many times over, and it runs like clockwork. You can tell when it happens. The guards ring a bell to signal that someone has to bring down a sack and a weight."