Synopsis

The party awake for another day of hard labor in the slave pits of Tyr.  While in line for water that morning, Azra was approached by Lissan, who thanked him for helping her in her one-sided confrontation with Kanla. 

As Ryana began her work at the mortar mixing station, she was approached by a thri-kreen she met at the Inn of the Bleached Inix, named Chch’kraran, who immediately saw her as a clutch-mate by shared misfortune. They were striking up a conversation about their capture, as, the bullies who threatened the party the night before, came back to make good on their promise to "make them pay". Avin, Kr'zk and Zax worked to mortar new blocks of stone into the ziggurat, were caught unaware as the leader picked a fight with Avin, whose bravado was all but forgotten.  Push came to shove, punches were thrown, and a full scale brawl erupted in short order.  In the confusion, Zax saw fit to test out a poison on an overseer - killing him instantly and creating a mess the party was hard pressed to fix in such a hurry.  The body was dragged off for examination, and Rayni volunteered (as a healer) to check out the body, taking Tamana with her to keep an eye on things.  Back at the crime scene, minds were probed by a templar, and Zax panicked – so he attempted and failed to poison the templar who came asking questions, and another fight erupted. With quick thinking, Ryana managed to place Zax's poisoned needle in the belt of that templar, just as the rest of the guards and Rayni who was returning from her examination, came looking for answers. The templar was seized as a result of obvious poison evidence.  Rayni was there on the side of the templars to test the needle for poison, and no further questions were asked, with the screaming templar being dragged off for a crime of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

While in the evening gruel-line, Rayni made contact again with an old acquaintance she'd helped out in the Inn of the Bleached Inix, where Avin and Kr'zk were captured.  The group was still in danger of both draught and starvation, as the meager bowls of gruel the slave drivers provided were not nearly enough.  Rising to the occasion, Zax and Azra came up with a plan.  They lured  a slave and an overseer into shanties, then hauled off both the shanty and the dead body for parts - which pleased Ryana's new thri-kreen friend Chch'kraran, who was ecstatic to see the first of the bodies was an elf.  He promptly stripped the bodies, giving the bones back to the group as if they were any other item traded in the merchants' quarter.

Zax and Azra went off into the night to try to find a way out, charming another overseer in the process, who they promptly killed and made disappear in the same manner as the slave.  Posing as an overseer, Zax talked his way into the company of the guards and templars who stand post at the gate, but it all went sour when he went to the well one too many times and found himself surrounded by...next week's game!