The Swordsman and Seig stared at each other for a moment. "Since I am the challenger", the Swordsman said, "You have the choice of weapons and to what we fight to, first blood or death, but we have to fight here; she specified I had to fight you here, because it is where you insulted her." Seig looks a him for a moment, nods to him and points outside , away from where the Ironguard were still discussing the death of the merchant.Heading outside, the two men head to the center of the street to begin their duel, while Rebecca and Rowena stood over to one side of the shop to watch."My name is Karl VonStrezel." the Swordsman introduces himself. "Seig (last name to be inserted when I find out). First blood is fine enough for me." "Agreed" said Karl.While watching them begin to start their duel, Rebecca happens to look around and notices that there is a young man watching the fight in a upper level of a building . What catches her eye, is that he is trying very hard not to seem to be watching, but is. Also, he seems familiar, but she can't quite remember where she has seen him, so tries to get Rowena to give him a look.Seig takes the first swing at Karl, and hits with a good blow, but Karl, who wears a panzerhand, is able to block it with his sword, and then takes a punch at Seig's sword at the point where the sword handle and thetang meet with his panzerhand, and the sword breaks!Karl steps back and states "I'm sorry I had to do that. Do you have another weapon that we may continue with our duel, or someone that will lend you one?"Seig shakes his head no, while slightly in shock, seeing his family heirloom dracheneisen sword broken at his feet. Karl looks around and points to a bystander and points to his sword. The man hands his sword over to Seig, and he and Karl re-set themselves up for their duel, after they give Seig a few moments to get used to the sword.Rowena looks up to where Rebecca had pointed to see the man she was talking about, but only sees his backside as he heads inside the house.Seig swings the weight of the sword around a few moments, then nods to Karl when he is ready. Once again they face each other, and Karl swings at Seig, but is blocked. Seig then returns the blow, and hit's theman's upper arm, causing a wound, and drawing first blood, winning the duel. Karl bows, and accords Seig the winner, while apologizing again for breaking his sword. "I am sorry that I had to fight you, but come down to the bar down near my house someday, and I will buy you a drink, or two.""I may." Seig said "But at the moment, I am still a little out of it. It has only been three days since I had a mountain almost collapse on me, fight some river pirates, and have a cannon shot at me."Karl looks at him in surprise, goes over and said "Forget later, lets go right now, and make it three drinks!""Ok, but I need to find someplace to acquire a couple of swords and find a place where I can have mine fixed." Seig replies to him, returning the bystanders sword to him with a thankful nod, and picking up his own broken sword as they begin to head down the street. "I know just the person." Karl said, while binding up his arm.Renee meanwhile had been returning from across the town, and as she turns the corner to the street that the duel was being fought on, bumps into a young man who is heading off in a hurry somewhere. He looked somewhat familiar, but she is wanting to get back to the group, and continues on her way.She gets to the duel as it finishes and heads over to Rebecca and Rowena, who are talking about the man that Rebecca had seen , as she tries to explain to Rowena what he looked like. Renee hearing the description, informs the two other women of the man she had bumped into down the street.Seeing Seig and Karl heading off , the women decide to head back the way Renee had come to see if they can find the young man. Rowena tries to use her tracking, but in the town gets all turned around, and it is Renee who finds out where the young man is. It turns out, from a couple of people she asked, that not too long after he had bumped into her, he had tried to accost a lady, and her bodyguard pounded his body to a pulp and threw his body into a alleyway trash heap and that is where the three women found him, moaning in pain.Renee picks up a stick and prods at the body, and he moans some more. A few more prods with the stick and getting not much more of a result, Rebecca and Renee each grab an arm and haul him up. Once they get him standing and somewhat conscious, Rebecca ask him who he had been watching the duel for. He gulps, while whining about being poked with a stick, but tells the women that he had been watching the fight to tell Eli Wenzel if the sword had been broken or not. Hearing this, the women decide that they need to take the young man to talk to Seig, and take him to the bar that had been mentioned earlier by Karl.Once there, they have the young man inform Seig of what he had told them. Karl, over hearing the name Eli Wenzel, he ask a few questions himself, and finds out that the woman he had been hired by to fight Seig, had actually been paid by Wenzel to claim to Karl that Seig had insulted her. Finding that he had been used, in a dis-honest manor, Karl stands up and looks at the young man and informs him to tell Wenzel that should he ever see him, Wenzel would regret spoiling Karl's honor. Seig looks at Karl, and request that he should be the one to duel Wenzel, and Karl agrees, after a moment. They then let the young man go to deliver his message, and while Karl and Seig continue their drinking.The women decide to try and follow the young man, but before they get too far, Renee hears the clear and distinct lilt of a true Montaigne accent, and turns to see about six Musketeers, the Captain in particular is failure to her, and she talks Rowena into going up to listen to them, to find out what they are searching for. Rowena walks up to hearing distance and overhears the Captain telling several of the others to look over in that direction, pointing over to where Renee is standing, and then points around and bumps into Rowena and apologizes, then continues to direct his men on where to look for Renee. Rowena heads back to the other two women and informs her of what she heard, so taking the fact that as they watched, more Musketeers arrive to get directions from the Captain, Renee looks around and heads into the nearest dress salon, the other two women following along. Since she had heard that the Captain of the Musketeers had a description of her, she reluctantly decides she needs to change out of her slacks and into a ("gasp" !) dress. The dressmaker talks her into taking a bath and perfume and after a couple of hours, they leave the dress shop with Renee looking like a new woman, and they head back to the inn, it being to late to continue to try to find where they young man went. Seig had returned to the inn by then, and they sat down to have dinner, where Renee has to inform the group why the Musketeers were looking for her. It seems that she had ?found' a bit of money, and spent it the same night, but found out later that the person she had ?found' the money on, had been killed, and she was being blamed as the killer. (Black Jack Rackham can fill out this a bit if he wants too.)As they are eating, a man comes into the inn and talks to Klaus, the innkeeper, to ask if Seig is available to talk to. Issak had told him that Seig was a honorable man, and would help him. He has a friend he tells them, after he his pointed to their table, that has a house that has acquired a monster of some type, with hellish eyes. She is an old widow woman and she had gotten two men to try to get rid of the monster for her, and they had come out of the basement with their clothing torn and blood all over them, and scared out of their wits. He wanted to know if they could help get rid of the monster. Seig informs him that we would see what we could do, and then we finish dinner and go to look for the two brothers that had tried to help the widow.We head to a bar on the river port, the man named Dietmar Clemens, shows them to the bar that the brothers are at. It is a regular dive, with trash thrown all about inside, and other things, along with a horrid smell, that reminds Sieg of the days of his time in the army, when he would visit such dives.The two brothers are in the midst of a bunch of men, who seem to be betting on them. One is crawling around on the filthy floor, and the other is slugging down a mug of beer. The one from the floor gets up, and they take a few coins from the men, winning whatever it was that had been bet on. We could tell that they are well into their cups, as we head over to talk to them, Dietmar Clemens leading the way to introduce us, when the brothers notice him and yell out "Clemens! What are you doing here d**khead? And you bringing us women! How nice of you!" one of them points to Rowena "I'll take her!" "You definitely will not!" she replies to him. "I want the pretty smelling one!" said the other brother pointing to Renee. "Don't you dare touch me!" she said to him, so he looks over at Rebecca. "Don't you even think of it!" she said to him before he could say anything.Dietmar introduces us, and the brothers look over at Seig. "So are you a d**khead too, d**khead?"Seig is insulted at the words and ask the man to apologize for his words."I apologize for you being a d**khed, d**khead!"That is where we left off for the night.

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Fate, a four letter word, with a lot of strings attached.
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"We Pay to Plunder!!"
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The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Do not mettle in the affairs of Dragons...for you are crunchy and tastey with ketchup.