Session 13: Trolltide

General Summary

27 MAR 2019 Session: With much daring and bleeding, we eventually kill the troll. As Bramus the Useless thanks us, mightily, we notice a tiny beholder watching us from the shadows. Our suspicion is that this is how the bad guys know our every move.   In the morning, we pack up the automaton for turn-in at the House of Inspired Hands. We return the automaton (in pieces) for the reward, and I engage some engineers to work on Reason. I want to stabilize the weapon and raise its ammo count before needing to reload.   We check out a bank for our bar-funding: Piergieron’s Place. Feng knows that a guild can act as a personal bank, if you’re in a guild; otherwise, one’s option is Piergieron’s.   The rest of the group gets the key checked out at the Blacksmith, Steam and Steel. The smith recognizes the work of Elaspera, a smith in the Trades Ward. Elaspara is a newer smith, not established, and sometimes works in the House of Wonders, other times in the Trades Ward. She shouldn’t be hard to find.   With a mind towards Beholder watchers, the group seeks Elaspara in the Trades Ward. They find her in the local tavern, drinking Dwarven whiskey and looking dour in a corner. Det buys two whiskeys to start a conversation. Lorin converses with Elaspera regarding the key. At first, she feigns little memory about her past work. Det drops the names of many guilds and impresses upon the smith the importance of the group’s task.   She is impressed by Lily’s guild affiliation, and shares that a similar key, at least, left her hands some time ago for a man named Volkarr Kibbens (lives in an old windmill in the Southern Ward). She also insists that we didn’t hear this information from her.   So, the group comes and picks me up from the House of Inspired Hands; I must leave Reason behind, as it is in pieces for upgrade. We collectively head for a ramshackle windmill, and the maps and figures come out!   We enter and encounter several squatters in the first level. They tell us that Volkarr is upstairs. We make our way up the stairs, and Feng nearly falls through. So, Feng and Det start throwing us over the hole in the stairs and into the upper level. The floor is not too sturdy, and all of this throwing and landing isn’t boding well for the structural integrity of the windmill.   In the next room, there is much debris and wrecked structure. Lots of pigeons are roosting in the exposed rafters. This room lacks any people, though. So we check the next room in sequence: lots of dust, no people. At the back of the tower, we find a locked room.   The fancy key does, indeed, work on the door. The interior is a well-kept apartment with a big bed, furniture, etc., and another locked door. I Knock the door, and two unkempt people, armed with shovels (probably the grave-robbers), are cowering as Det describes what he does to grave-robbers.   However, despite our usual M.O., we choose to interrogate them. They tell us that a halfling named Losser Mirklov (sp?) hired them, and he has a cellar-complex under the Trade Ward under a wig shop. They admit to taking some bones and a stone(!). The halfling took the stone from them and left.   We escort the grave-robbers back to the Constables, and Det doesn’t kill them! A minor miracle! We, then, meet up in front of the wig shop. Det charges in and I try on a wig.   We see a halfling woman who is scared out of her wits. Det asks, unpolitely, about Losser, and the woman claims to not know anything about any underground passage entrances. We investigate in a back room and the shop for a subterranean entrance, but come up empty. I take a wig (but I do pay for it).   We find an outside entrance barred by a gate, but the gate is no match for our brawn. Out come the maps and figures, again! We enter a sewage tunnel, which is nasty, hazy, and three feet deep with sewage. Initially, the tunnel lacks traps, magic, and other hazards; it just seems to be a crap-filled sewer.   We get to a branch point, and our stone path (accompanied by flowing shit) has a eastern-flowing downstream tributary. Det puts me and Gnosh on his shoulders and heads into this new, still-nasty stream. Det recognizes that the walls start to resemble Dwarven stonework. On the left-hand side (north), Det finds a hinged gate-door-thing, and we exit the shit river.   We enter a large chamber to the north, and it is filled with rattling Undead (presumably skeletons, at this point). Det announces “We have a Necromancer!” Combat is joined.   We kill the skeletons! Investigation reveals that the large chamber was once two separate chambers, and some stone stairs lead up to a bricked-up entrance.