In the third adventure in the Dungeons & Dialogue: Language Exchange series, a group of investigators from the Flaming Fists company must investigate the War of the Dark Cults and discover the main culprit behind a larger conspiracy against the city of Baldur’s Gate.
Baldur’s Gate had seen a brief period of supernatural darkness, but the curse was lifted by the actions of a party of brave adventurers. Yet the memories of the event began to vanish almost as soon as the black clouds started to dissipate and permit glimpses of the sky. Most of the city’s mainstream newspapers, like the Baldurian Daily and the Voice of Baldur, reported the event as nothing more than a period of unusually dense smog, resulting from the industrious use of mechanical wonders in Gray Harbor. Only the longstanding alternative journal known as Baldur’s Mouth, run by an enthusiastic crackpot editor named Ettvard Needle guessed at the truth, reporting that the supernatural darkness was the result of a dark conspiracy aimed at exploiting the city’s current military weakness.
The war raging in the Silver Marches to the north had drawn away many soldiers of the Flaming Fist mercenary company that guarded the city from within and without, leaving Baldur’s Gate vulnerable. Merchants from Amn and Elturel had overtaken the local markets, and the latter had brought large retinues of knights with them. Their presence, while profitable for the city’s inns and taverns, did not win them the affections of local farmers and vendors, who were being marginalized in their own markets, said the most recent edition of Baldur’s Mouth. With the tabloid newspaper in hand, five adventurers from the Flaming Fist company had gathered at the Elfsong Tavern to discuss recent events in the city.
Sage was a human diviner born to a merchant family. Her childhood love of flowers had propelled her on a path to predict the futures of ships and shipments through the study of divination at the arcane academy. She sought to help her family’s business while traveling the world in search of rare flowers in her research.
Russell Tuffington was an aarakocra paladin from the neighborhood upon the bridge of Wyrm’s Crossing. When the recent “air pollution” roused concerns among his neighbors, the local priest of Aerdrie Faenya had sent Russell on a pilgrimage to gain blessings for their community from various temples, hoping to bring peace of mind to the residents.
Baekran was born to a noble family on another plane of existence, but a mistake of dunamancy had shunted her to the world of Toril. She was previously drawn to Waterdeep and its unique fashion scene before settling in Baldur’s Gate, hoping that its vast markets would provide a means to gain admission into the library of Candlekeep. She hoped to ultimately conduct research at the library to discover a way to her true home.
N’taly Reccesiss, who came from a poor family in the back alleys of Baldur’s Gate, had dreamed of becoming a wizard. She scraped together enough money for a few arcane books, but she couldn’t wrap her head around them. She finally became a wizard for the Flaming Fists after donning a stolen headband of intellect given to her by her husband who was a local thief.
Tala Wepplehepple was a rock gnome fighter and the oldest member of the group. Her parents had wanted her to inherit the family business, but her adventurous spirit led her to enlist in the Flaming Fists instead. But after 50 years of fighting for peace and order in Baldur’s Gate, she had become a jaded and war-weary soldier, always in need of a stiff drink.
These adventurers had been called together by Durin Ironfist, an officer of the Flaming Fists who was a jeweler among the nobility by trade as well as a member of parliament. Durin had tasked them with putting an end to the violence that plagued the city in the absence of the Flaming Fist army.
Having received their mission, the heroes furtively glanced at the gaping hole in the ceiling of the tavern. They recalled the night when the violence and supernatural darkness had first begun around a month ago.
One Month Prior
It was a night like any other, before the black clouds had completely covered the sky. The five heroes had recently returned from another investigation into the Guild, the organization that controlled the criminal underbelly of Baldur’s Gate. Bold members of the Guild had stolen a magical fruit of time from the arcane laboratory of Delorean the Chronomancer. Delorean had beseeched the heroes to recover the lost artifact before it could be used for foul ends. The heroes had succeeded, and they received a single fruit as their reward, which Tala carried as the senior member of the party. But they had also made an enemy of the Guild in the process.
As they were discussing what to do with their prize, Sage the diviner had a premonition and shifted her seat uneasily, just in the nick of time. An instant later, something crashed through the roof of the Elfsong Tavern and landed in the place where Sage had been sitting! When the dust settled, the heroes could see that the object was a headless corpse, wearing battered armor whose breastplate bore the symbol of a black gauntlet. This was the traditional symbol of the cult of Bane, one of the Dead Three Gods and the patron of tyranny. A blade protruded from the side of the body, which Tala the gnome fighter casually removed and considered while taking another draught of ale. It was a cruel-looking thing, long and wavy like a slithering snake. Her many years of guarding the city streets meant that such a weapon was familiar to her. Tala knew that this was a dagger commonly used by members of the cult of Bhaal, another of the Dead Three Gods and the patron of murder.
When the other taverngoers saw the corpse and the blade in Tala’s hand, some of them began to murmur loudly.
“A cleric of Bane has been murdered… The blade clearly belongs to a worshipper of Bhaal…”
The cults of Bane and Bhaal had many worshippers hidden through every echelon of the city’s society, both high and low. Even in this tavern, there were both secret worshippers and beneficiaries of the “services” that these clandestine organizations provided, whether they were in the form of political power through fealty to the Banites, or bringing death unto rivals with the hired hands of Bhaalist assassins. It was not long before the low murmurs turned to angry grumbles, which soon led to a brawl between the taverngoers. In the mayhem that ensued, only the heroes noticed that the body which had instigated the fight had mysteriously vanished.
Ever since that fateful night, a feud had raged between the followers of Bane and Bhaal, which spread across the city under the cover of the supernatural darkness, and innocent people fell victim to the violence. Though the perpetual night had begun to end, thanks to the actions of fellow adventurers from the Flaming Fists, the violence continued unabated. It was up to the heroes to find a way to stop the bloodshed, which threatened to make the city’s residents depart for brighter and more peaceful lands, like the shining city-state of Elturel.
Now, in the present moment, the heroes scoured their memories for clues to help them in their quest. Who was the dead man that had fallen from the sky? Sage had looked up through the hole in the ceiling and noticed an airship high above in the darkening clouds. Russell recalled that the armor on the corpse seemed strange, though he could not remember what was off about it. And most startling of all, N’taly had witnessed the body being snatched away by shadows and vanishing from sight! Meanwhile, Baekran had also noticed a suspicious cloaked figure, wearing a hooded cape of foreign make, who had been watching the scene unfold before escaping from the tavern. Baekran conjured an “echo,” a visage of herself from an alternate timeline, to follow the cloaked figure through the streets and alleys. The pursuit ended at the gates of Little Calimsham, the walled enclave built by immigrants from the land of the genasi.
The heroes decided to go to Little Calimshan in search of further clues, but first they would pay a visit to the office of Baldur’s Mouth to follow up on the newspaper’s strangely accurate reports.
Baldur’s Mouth
Russell the paladin was the most excited to meet Ettvard Needle, the editor of Baldur’s Mouth, which was a popular source of news and gossip among the common folk of the city and surrounding countryside. But his expectations were dashed when he saw Ettvard’s true face. The heroes arrived at the newspaper’s office and found Ettvard crueling whipping a small team of mechanical gondsmen and nimblewrights that were slaving away with quills and inkpots. The mechanical men were writing new articles for Baldur’s Mouth, but their stories were riddled with errors and even outright fabrications. Worse still, they were full of needlessly florid yet vapid language. What they produced did not meet Ettvard’s standards of quality, and therefore he spent more time fixing or rewriting their work entirely. He rued the day that he allowed himself to be convinced to rent these useless contraptions from the Temple of Gond. He vented his frustration by whipping the constructs with a flail, even as they ignored the punishment to dutifully continue writing unsalvageable passage after passage.
Baekran began to wonder whether these poor constructs possessed any semblance of a soul that might feel pain and suffering, when Ettvard Needle finally took notice of the adventurers in his midst.
The heroes asked him about the article in Baldur’s Mouth about the supernatural darkness that had briefly engulfed the city. Ettvard insisted that he had written that particular article himself, and Russell’s intuition told him that the editor truly believed as much. A month ago, he saw two objects falling from an airship in the sky. The larger object crashed through the roof of the Elfsong Tavern, while the smaller object which was barely a speck in the sky fell into one of the city’s waterways. These waterways were all connected to the municipal sewer system, which passed through the water and sewage purification tanks in the bowels of the Sewer Keep. The heroes realized that the larger object was the body of the dead priest that had vanished from the tavern, and they suspected that the small speck was the head of the priest. If only they could get their hands on the head! Then perhaps they could ask the cleric Durin Ironfist to cast a spell that would allow them to speak with the dead to help them in their investigation.
Ettvard offered to show them how to gain entry to the tanks of the Sewer Keep without going through the city’s slow bureaucracy, but for a price. Baekran challenged Ettvard to a game of cards instead, to which he agreed. Ettvard’s lucky hand held a pair of Queens, but Baekran somehow produced a pair of kings, thanks to a little sleight of hands. Ettvard admitted defeat and gave the heroes the information he had promised.
There were two entrances that he knew of. One could be found in the house of one of the dukes of Baldur’s Gate. Duke Thalamra Vanthampur was the former Master of Drains and Waterways who had spent long years as a lowly bureaucrat renovating the city’s ancient sewer system before slowly climbing the echelons of power. Ettvard had heard rumors that the duke had built secret underground tunnels under Vanthampur Villa in the Upper City leading to the Sewer Keep and other parts of the city. The second entrance could be found in an establishment operated by the Guild which passed through the Undercellar, the vast shadow network of hidden chambers and passages beneath the streets of Baldur’s Gate.
Tala knew Thalamra Vanthampur in passing, being of a similar age as the hale old duke. The heroes might be able to find the tunnel under the duke’s villa, if they could gain entry into the villa in the first place. The alternative was to walk into the lion’s den of the Guild. The heroes suspected that any members of the Guild would be only too happy to extend an invitation into a trap, as retribution for taking what the Guild had rightfully stolen.
Unable to decide upon the best course, the heroes headed to Little Calimshan first to see what other clues they could obtain.
Little Calimshan
The walled enclave of Little Calimshan was a city unto itself. Immigrants from the genasi lands of Calimshan had carved out a place for themselves in the Outer City of Baldur’s Gate. They had their own walled and gated neighborhoods, as well as a large open-air market. However, the market appeared to be overrun by foreign merchants from Amn and Elturel, pushing out many of the local farmers and vendors.
Still more alarming were the merchants from Elturel who were fewer in number than those from Amn but were accompanied by a large army of mounted knights and men-at-arms, confirming the reports that the heroes had read in Baldur’s Mouth. Many of the knights wore armor emblazoned with a white gauntlet. Russell recognized it as the symbol of Torm, the patron god of guardians and protectors. The High Observer of the Church of Torm ruled over the land of Elturgard from the city-state of Elturel.
It was then that Russell remembered the armor upon the headless body that had fallen from the sky. He recalled that the dead man’s armor seemed peculiar, perhaps altered. Now that he laid eyes upon these freshly clad knights of Elturel, he was disturbed to find that their armor appeared similar to the armor worn by the vanished corpse.
The heroes asked the local merchants about the presence of so many soldiers from Elturel. They learned that the foreign knights were ostensibly here to defend the interests of their own merchants. But in the absence of Flaming Fist soldiers, these knights behaved as if the streets of Baldur’s Gate belonged to them. They even apprehended any “troublemakers” who complained about the Elturian merchants, claiming special jurisdiction under the authority of the High Observer of Elturel.
The heroes were outraged by what they heard, but they realized too late that their investigation was perhaps too indiscrete. For the knights of Elturel had taken notice of them. Hoping to escape their watchful gaze, the heroes ducked into a small tavern to discuss their findings in private.
Inside, the heroes ordered some food and drinks, and began to talk about their discoveries. As dark suspicions took hold, they began to wonder if the black gauntlet of the dead man’s armor was truly a symbol of Bane, or if it had been beaten and stained into a foul new shape. Had the body in the Elfsong Tavern belonged to a cleric of Torm rather than a cleric of Bane? Was the cleric’s death orchestrated to turn the cults of Bane and Bhaal against one another? Were forces from Elturel to blame for the violence on the streets of Baldur’s Gate, and were they now taking advantage of the absence of Flaming Fist soldiers to quietly invade the city?
Their discussions were interrupted by the arrival of their meal, which to their surprise was provided free of charge. Then they were joined by a woman who introduced herself as the proprietor of this establishment. The heroes quickly understood that she ran the place, not only this particular tavern but the whole neighborhood. This was Rilsa Rael, a high-ranking member of the Guild and the kingpin of Little Calimshan. She bade the heroes to enjoy their meal and leave before they attracted more attention than they already had.
“I can’t afford troublemakers on my turf. You already have a bad reputation with the Guild. Don’t make it even worse by drawing the ire of Elturel with your silly investigation in plain sight, above ground…”
Rilsa glanced slyly at an open door leading to a stairway that appeared to descend deep into the darkness. The heroes understood this to mean that the door could lead them to the Undercellar.
The heroes were perplexed. How did Rilsa know they were looking for a passage leading underground? And why was a member of the Guild being relatively hospitable? Why not have them killed, or poisoned? All they knew for certain was that Rilsa did not seem interested in murdering them on the spot. She had their own ambitions separate from the Guild, which the heroes had not interfered with. On the contrary, perhaps she saw them as an opportunity to further her own goals.
Whatever her reasons may have been, they did not get a chance to ask her. Three knights of Elturel, armed with fell double-blades and wearing breastplate armor marked with the symbol of a white gauntlet, strode into the tavern. They were looking for the heroes. The soldiers were soon joined by two more knights, both wearing splint mail etched with the same white gauntlet. One was muttering prayers to Torm under his breath. The other, who appeared to be the commander in charge, held up her lance and pointed to the heroes.
“We have been informed that you have shown great interest in the knights of Elturel. Therefore, you yourselves are now persons of interest. In the name of the High Observer of Elturel, I command you to lay down your arms and follow us outside.”
Sensing the onset of violence, the rest of the taverngoers fled from the premises and left the hall empty save for the heroes and the knights of Elturel. Even Rilsa Rael had vanished from sight, though no one had noticed when she had gotten up from the table. But the heroes had no intention of being led out of the building quietly and unarmed. With their weapons and wands, they met the Elturians in battle!
A grueling fight ensued as the Elturians hurled their magic flaming double-blades at the heroes. The heroes fought well with sword and spell, while Russell healed them with the power of his faith. But the Elturian knight who had been muttering prayers was soon revealed to be a paladin as well. He healed his own allies when they were grievously wounded, keeping them in the fight.
Rilsa whispered from the shadows, “Bring down the paladin of Elturel, or the battle will go against you…”
When the heroes followed Rilsa’s advice and brought down the enemy paladin, the tide of battle turned. Another Elturian soldier fell soon after. Their commander foresaw how the battle would end and signaled a retreat. She and her remaining soldiers carried the bodies of their dead and wounded outside where they mounted their horses and fled for the time being.
The heroes considered whether to give chase, but the streets of Little Calimsham were crawling with soldiers of Elturel. The ones they defeated would surely return with greater reinforcements, too many for the heroes to face. If only the army of the Flaming Fists could be called upon for aid! Then they remember the passage that Rilsa had hinted to them. They rushed through the door and barred it behind them so that pursuers could not easily follow them. Then they descended the stairway which led them deep below into the bowls of the city.
The Undercellar
The tunnels of the Underceller beneath Little Calimsham were connected to a vast and sprawling network that encompassed the whole of Baldur’s Gate. The mazelike passages would have been impossible to navigate without the markers written in Thieves’ Cant which gave directions and warned of danger. Though these markers were meant for the eyes of members of the Guild who could read them, Sage was able to comprehend them through the use of her divination magic. Moreover, Rilsa had left a series of helpful notes for the heroes to discover, guiding them toward the purification tanks beneath the Sewer Keep.
One such note read as follows, “Mind the crocodile trap.”
Not far from where that note was found, the heroes came to a flooded passage. The smell of sewage and waste was becoming stronger, and the filthy water splashed over their ankles, or for N’taly and Tala crept up their shins. In the middle of the hall, they saw the sharp metal teeth of an open foothold trap protruding through the surface of the water. It indeed looked large enough to catch a crocodile. The heroes thought to step over it, but Baekran grew suspicious. Therefore, she conjured an echo of herself from an alternate timeline to step through the hall in their stead.
When the echo took a step over the metal trap, a vicious crocodile leapt up from its underwater hiding place! Its jaws closed around the echo and dragged her away. Baekran shuddered as she imagined what might have happened, then pondered the perspective of the echo that she had just sacrificed. For in that alternate timeline, another Baekran had indeed met an ignoble fate in the jaws of a crocodile.
Fearful of what might happen should the crocodile return, Russell hovered over the water and used a hunk of jerky from his rations to lure the crocodile a safe distance away while the rest of the party rounded the corner to safety.
Not long after, the heroes continued to follow the markers and the smell of sewage until they arrived at last at a purification tank under the Sewer Keep. The tank was a large chamber filled with all manner of sewage that had been gathered there through underground channels and waterways from all the corners of the city. The stench was overwhelming! On the surface of the liquid waste, the heroes spotted the glint of a helmet which upon closer inspection resembled the helmets worn by the soldiers of Elturel whom they had recently fought. Inside the helmet they could see the pallid, gray face and lifeless eyes of a dead man’s severed head.
Russell flew over the surface of the waste and scooped up the helmeted head from the sewage. But just as he took it in his hands, his friends looked on in horror as long stinking tendrils reached up from below and wrapped themselves around him, then dragged the aarakocra paladin into the sewage! The druids that maintained the Sewer Keep had brought shambling mounds into these facilities to purify the waste, transforming them into living garbage mounds.
Baekran took a deep breath and hurled herself upon the mound in an attempt to rescue Russell, hoping to use the power of transposition to swap places with her echo. However, she underestimated the overwhelming strength of the toxic waste that made up the garbage mound. Though Russell was expelled by the mound, Baekran was swallowed up instead, and the stench knocked her unconscious.
The heroes could not let their friend be consumed by living garbage! N’taly the wizard conjured an arrow of acid and hurled it at the hideous mound. It burned enough of the waste away for Russell, who was hovering overhead, to pull Baekran’s body from the sewage. Then with the light of his faith, the aarakocra paladin laid his hand upon Baekran and revived her, bringing back his otherworldly friend from the brink of death.
Now, having found what they had come for, the heroes saw indeed that the helmed head had belonged to a man of Elturel. They were disturbed to see the face upon the head, which was a twisted mask of wrath. Baekran thrust the grizzly prize into a sack, and then the party sought a path that would lead them out of the Undercellar.
The Hall of Wonders
After much wandering, they found a way back to the surface and emerged in a vast hall filled with mechanical artifacts. The heroes realized that they were in the Hall of Wonders, the museum temple dedicated to Gond, the god of inventions, in the Temple District. Though they tried to be quiet, the loud clinking of Russell’s chainmail and the rustling of his feathers drew the attention of the museum’s caretaker. They were soon approached by a tiefling priest wearing a medallion emblazoned with a cog, the symbol of Gond’s priesthood.
“Greetings, friends! My, what a strange direction from which to enter our fine museum to our lord of invention, the mighty Gond. But no matter! May I interest you in a tour of our showroom? We have special discounts today, especially for surprise guests such as yourselves.”
The tiefling was Atorius, a former companion of Sage the diviner, and he seemed pleased to meet an old friend. Sage and Atorius knew each other from past adventures, which took them on a voyage through time and space. Sage knew that Atorius was no true priest, but a fiendish warlock. Yet she was glad nonetheless when Atorius offered the heroes safe haven in the temple so they could rest and recuperate, if only for a short while. In this hall filled with the many wondrous creations of Gond’s followers, the heroes cleansed themselves of the filth from the Sewer Keep and tended to their wounds.
But even as they emerged from their rest refreshed and ready to continue their investigation, they slowly realized that their host was nowhere to be seen. The shadows cast by the sconces upon the walls grew longer, and the flames upon the sconces grew dimmer until at last they sputtered out, plunging the entire hall into darkness.
Then the heroes heard hard, heavy footfalls upon the stone floor, and the clinking of armor. N’taly cast a spell of light to illuminate the hall. At the edge of her magical light, she saw something approaching. It was the form of a headless man, clad in dark armor emblazoned with the mangled shape of a black gauntlet of Bane, which they now realized was a perversion of the white gauntlet of Torm.
Baekran was startled by the sight, but she was shocked even more when she felt something moving in the sack that she was carrying. She pulled out the dead man’s head and saw that its eyes were open and its mouth was speaking with a gruesome voice.
“You fools… You have seen too much… You will ruin the plan… For the goodness of Elturel to thrive… This den of evil called Baldur’s Gate must fall… YOU ALL MUST FALL…!!!”
Two more shadowy figures emerged on either side of the headless figure. They were clad in armor, but the faces inside the helmets were contorted into terrifying masks of pain, and their bodies moved as if the limbs were being compelled into motion by the armor that was clutching them. The wearers were trapped inside their own armor which was animated by dark magic and powered by the suffering of those imprisoned therein.
The heroes took up their arms to defend themselves against the onslaught of the headless cleric of Elturel and his horrors. But they soon realized that they were outmatched. The cleric raised up right hand and conjured a mystical circle of twisted runes, brimming with necrotic energy, which encompassed the entire party. The heroes were brought low by a magical circle of death! Sage the diviner and Russell the paladin fell instantly, while the others were grievously hurt. But the survivors did not even have time to mourn the loss of their friends, for the cleric was not yet finished. Now raising his left hand, he summoned the power of darkness and caused the shadows of the remaining heroes to come to life and attack them.
How could the heroes of the Flaming Fists withstand such awesome power?
It was then that Tala remembered the fruit of time which she was carrying. She recalled the words of Delorean the Chronomancer who had instructed her in its use, should the heroes ever find themselves in a dire situation. She had the power to conjure something helpful from her future self, or to transport herself and her allies to another point in time. In her desperation, Tala bit into the fruit. She felt time rewind to a point mere moments in the past, just before the headless priest had taken the lives of her companions.
This time, when the cleric raised his right hand to conjure the circle of death, N’taly the wizard hurled her magical bolts at him, and Sage the diviner called upon her powers of portent to ensure that the cleric’s magic would be interrupted, causing the runes to falter and break. The heroes were alive! Now, Russell flew forward and charged at the cleric with a mighty cry, calling upon Aerdrie Faenya, the goddess of the winged folk. Yet his voice and words were not filled with wrath, but rather pity and sorrow, hoping for the cleric’s redemption and deliverance from the evil in his heart.
A blinding light shined upon Russell’s sword as it smote the cleric of Elturel, causing his dark armor to crack. The cleric was dazzled by the divine radiance of the aarakocra’s blade. And somewhere in his blackened heart, his resolve faltered. Why did the radiance of a paladin’s blade burn him so? Why did Torm abandon him in his hour of need? Was he not fighting for a righteous cause in his crusade against the evils of Baldur’s Gate? Was there a chance that he was wrong after all?
The cleric took up his mace to strike down his foe, but somehow he could not bring himself to attack the aarakocra paladin. In his moment of hesitation, he was struck by the heroes’ weapons and spells, until at last Russell’s blade struck him once more, piercing his unbeating heart. Then the power of undeath that sustained the cleric fled from him. The severed head carried by Baekran closed its eyes for the final time, and its face changed from a visage of wrath to an expression of surrender and regret. Perhaps in his final moments beyond undeath, the cleric of Elturel had realized his error of his ways.
With the cleric defeated, the armored horrors collapsed into ruin, and the flames reignited upon the sconces on the walls. The heroes and the cleric of Elturel were gone by the time Atorius returned with fiendish contracts to offer them. The warlock turned priest was disappointed by a missed opportunity.
Epilogue
Ettvard Needle entered the office of Baldur’s Mouth one morning and found the body and head of a cleric of Elturel with dark armor, with a note from the heroes explaining all that they had learned and witnessed in their investigation. They described the conspiracy by forces from Elturel to sow discord in Baldur’s Gate by turning the cults of the dark gods against each other, and they left the cleric’s corpse as proof of their discovery. In their message, they beseeched the editor to spread the truth of the matter to all corners of Baldurian society and the criminal underworld.
During the months that followed, the skies above Baldur’s Gate became clearer, and the streets became quieter as the heroes did their part to quell the remaining violence alongside their fellow defenders of the city. In time, the cults of Bane and Bhaal would understand their mistake and broker a truce. Baldur’s Gate would never be a perfect haven for the good, the just, and the innocent. But it would become livable again, if only for a time.
Their quest achieved, the five heroes who ended the War of the Dark Cults went their separate ways. Russell continued on his pilgrimage, searching for blessings from Aerdrie Faenya for his community. N’taly retired from the Flaming Fists and joined a new mercenary company to continue her career as a wizard. Sage pursued her travels in search of rare flowers to continue her studies. Baekran, having learned that admission to Candlekeep required the submission of a book that was not already in its collection, resolved to spend the following years writing a tome that might grant her entry to the legendary library. And Tala, after all that she and her friends had been through, simply wanted another stiff drink.