Then we came to Deepwater. Like the wimps we are, we paid "protection", since we planned to be there for a little while (I'm really aching to take these protection rackets apart, brick by brick and limb by limb.). Deepwater turned out to be ALL about rules. They had a long list of rules (my head ached from just reading them) which you couldn't get into town without agreeing to follow. The typical penalty seems to be a bunch of your money, or death. Personally, I was fine with me. It seems that a society owes stability to its citizens, and how can you have stability without rules? Malif _really_ hated it, though. And since it was his idea to come to Deepwater, that was a problem. He was looking for a place to put up a building for the guild he's joined. We all told him that if you wanted to put up a building and then leave, and were hoping to have it still there when you came back, Deepwater seemed _perfect_. I also advised him that it seemed like a perfect place for a new magic store, since the town didn't have one, and since the shipping traffic meant lots of buyers would pass through (see, we're not just adventurers - we're businessman-adventurers, though we must suck at it given the state of our pocketbooks). Malif seemed unconvinced.

In Deepwater, we learned that someone has put out a contract on us. Vaugner's guild (which turns out to be a group of assassins; look at the kind of people I'm associating with!) refused the contract. But now we're left not knowing who put out the contract, or with whom. On the theory that it could be someone powerful, Malif learned to detect scrying. Sure enough, we were being scryed! Malif says he thinks it's coming from Yogar, so we're guessing it's the evil Belar (Klaus, etc.) who have it in for us. Much talk in the party about how not to get killed. I suggested that it might be smart to stick together in towns (I can absolutely see Errol getting it in the spice market, for example), but I'm not sure if anyone was listening. Certainly lends an added piquancy to the phrase "your turn to keep watch"!

We left Deepwater. I _really_ really wanted to take a sea voyage and go explore some of the northern islands, but we decided to go check out the mountains and their potential Drow ruins. Sigh. I'll have to wait a while longer to do my best "ahoy, matey".