2023-05-30 The Bagman
Player Characters
- Essa
- Remly
- Auri
- Igneous
- Ano
Summary
In Salmund, Remly talked to Nora. She asked him to investigate the disappearance of a tabaxi Murid named Whiskle, who disappeared recently in Quinder Hollow. He accepted.
Remly casted the friends spell on Al-Zabuj for a discount at The Enchantry. Afterward, Al-Zabuj angrily raised Remly's purchased costs by 20%.
Igneous and Remly purchased magic weapons.
The party traveled north, then east to Quinder Hollow.
They traveled to the mayor's office and met the secretary. He told the urban myth of the Bagman: an adventurer who got lost in an extradimensional space and became a monster. The Bagman would emerge from extradimensional storage to search to kidnap victims and drag them into his strange world, leaving a trinket behind in their place. The secretary described the three people who had been kidnapped: a tailor named Albalin, a girl named Ravendael, and a tabaxi named Whiskle.
The party traveled to the tavern and talked to Della, the tavernkeep. The only other patrons at that time were two families; Della informed the party that it was a family-friendly tavern. Remly bought a round of drinks for everyone present. Della told the party about the victims and their families, and told them that Ravendael had disappeared while her family were eating lunch in the tavern. She had been playing alone in the playground on the side of the building.
The PCs investigated the playground, but didn't find anything out of order. The families in the tavern came outside to play on the playground for a bit, and Essa talked to the children. The children mentioned that Ravendael had school two friends named Jilly and Lark.
The PCs went to the bakery on the other side of the playground. The baker offered fresh melon bread, and asked the party's questions. He was working when Ravendael disappeared and didn't see anything. He did have suspicions about a shady halfling traveler that he'd seen around town recently who he didn't recognize.
The party split up to investigate:
- Essa knocked on houses, asking villagers about the kidnappings. She met a half-orc man who knew Albalin. The man described Albalin as reclusive and quiet.
- Remly went to the Dimhouse, a hardly-lit inn suited to Subterranean travelers. He talked to the innkeeper, and with the help of friends, learned where the halfling traveler Mong was staying. He knocked on the door of room 202, and Mong answered. They agreed to come out and chat in the lounge. Remly mentioned the "eldritch root", but Mong said they weren't dealing with it at that time. They told how they were supposed to meet with "Whisker" Whiskle in the tavern, but he didn't show, so they waited in town for the last couple weeks looking for him. They mentioned being confused by the carved wooden frog left behind by the alleged Bagman; Whiskle hated frogs. They admitted they owned a bag of holding, but did not believe in the Bagman. They mentioned that Albalin owned a bag of holding, which his wife destroyed after his capture.
- Auri snuck into Albalin's abandoned tailor shop, Thurgis' Threads, using an ice lockpick. Inside, she searched clothing, ledgers, and books, but found nothing strange. She got the Thurgis' address. She detected no magic in the building.
- Igneous visited Gleaming Goods, the magic item shop, which was closing and packing. Shanyria Yewsap, the owner, told him that she was planning to leave after the Bagman incident. She believed the Bagman was real and that Quinder Hollow was cursed in some way. She had already moved any extradimensional storage merchandise to a new shop in Dustview, and was packing the rest of her store into boxes. She had already scoured the town to detect any out-of-place magic at Albalin's wife's request, but found nothing.
The party reconvened just as Ano showed up to help.
The party visited Dana Thurgis, Albalin's wife. She talked about how Albalin disappeared: he had gone outside to check on a bumping noise just before bed, and did not return. She found a woodcarved angel totem outside, which was fitting for Albalin's obsession with celestials. Believing in the story of the Bagman, she destroyed their bag of holding in the hopes of freeing her husband, but nothing happened. She pestered Shanyria about using her magical knowledge to find clues in town, but the "useless" mage did not find any leads. Dana mentioned that Albalin did not have many friends in town, and spent a lot of his time home or with her. She mentioned a couple of her own gossipy friends that she would meet from time to time, but didn't believe they were involved ("Bethany is the worst. I love her").
The PCs traveled to the Yarrow home, where Ravendael's parents lived. Kavar, her father, let them in and retrieved Anush, her mother. They told about how Ravendael had vanished in the playground when she was alone for just a moment. All they found was a bag of holding hidden against the building, and a crow feather. Ravendael loved corvids due to her name. She was a well-behaved girl, had a few friends at school, and had no enemies. They had no idea why someone would kidnap their daughter, and how it could happen in the middle of town, and so assumed that the Bagman was real.
The party traveled to the barracks. They convinced guards to let them see the bag of holding that was held as evidence for Ravendael's disappearance. Ano reached in and found a Snavonese employee badge: someone named Tommy working for Wishkin Works. The guards also showed the party the wooden frog trinket from Whiskle's disappearance.
The PCs returned to Gleaming Goods. Shanyria was happy to sell discounted potions of healing. She also told them that Wishkin was a Snavonese corporation that dealt in "home solutions", mostly furniture.
They went to Whiskle's house. Breaking in, they found it abandoned and dusty. Remly found and picked a hidden strongbox open, and collected Murid spy notes and some jewelry.
Essa and Auri watched Shanyria pack her shop from afar, in case she did anything suspicious.
Remly, Ano, and Igneous visited Mong againt to look at their bag of holding. Mong removed personal items and let them examine it while Ano stepped outside. Ano camouflaged against the stone walls of the tavern, climbed up to the second floor, and climbed into Mong's room's window. He stole a bag of letters.
Mong told the story of a frog-related prank they pulled on Whiskle when they were young; they had led him to a "magical glowing pond" then dropped a frog down his shirt while he stood in front of it, causing him to fall in.
As it became late, Essa decided to spend the night at Shanyria's home to protect her from trouble. Shanyria accepted, and planned to move her belongings the next day.
The party visited Jilly, Ravendael's friend, for questioning. Jilly rambled about games they would play, but provided nothing about the Bagman.
Ano perused the letters stolen from Mong. They were full of spy notes and personal letters, but didn't seem relevant to the investigation. Remly wrote down a code for an unknown safe belonging to someone in Birchland.
R broke into the mayor's office after hours to peruse criminal records. He didn't find any new information about the Bagman or the disappearances.
Essa woke to hear Shanyria's front door open. She woke Shanyria and the two moved out the back window together. The rest of the party closed in.
Using strength, speed, and powder, they captured an invisible humanoid who had broken in. Shanyria traveled to the guard barracks with a neighbor for safety, while the PCs questioned the intruder.
The man said his name was Brakky. The PCs strongarmed him into leading them back to his camp, where he was planning to take Shanyria.
After following Brakky for ~30 minutes, the party arrived at a camp with a handful of guards and the three missing villagers, who were restrained. A human man, clearly the leader, introduced himself as Tommy. Tommy explained his plan: he was creating an artifical village run by dopplegangers in order to help Wishkin Works test their products. He seeked people to be interviewed by the dopplegangers, so that their personalities could be mimicked in "Quality Village". He needed a diverse variety of personalities in this village, and had already hired plenty of paid volunteers, but required personalities that he was missing: introverts and shady folk. His plan was to kidnap them, convince them to talk about themselves in exchange for money, and let them go afterward. Aside from Albalin, the captives had not cooperated. Tommy complained about how Ravendael kept crying for her parents. Essa tried to negotiate the return of the captives, but Tommy refused to give them up until he had gotten what he wanted.
The party easily pointed out how demented Tommy's plan was. He insisted that "sacrifices must be made for progress", but the plan seemed to even make his hired guards uncomfortable. The party called him out as greedy, as a kidnapper, as a psychopath, but he continued to try to justify his actions. Finally they lept into action.
Essa killed Tommy during the fight. The others intimidated the hired guards into stopping the fight, since their leader was defeated, and they agreed to stand down. The guards admitted what they had done with regret. The PCs freed the captives and collected money from Tommy and the camp.
Ano picked up Tommy's handy haversack. As he did, a dark, thin, talon-like hand reached out of it, grabbed Tommy's corpse, and dragged it inside the bag, leaving behind a single copper piece on the ground. It was the Bagman!
The party took the guards back to town, where they pleaded guilty and were sent to jail for a while. The party learned that Della, the tavernkeep, had helped Tommy's plan by watching for targets and acting as an informant for their routines. She tried to explain that she had done so to try to make sure things didn't get out of hand, and that she believed Tommy would find someone worse if she didn't accept. The PCs decided to report her involvement and sent to jail as an accomplice.
Albalin approached Essa later. He mentioned that some people have a comfortable life but want to adventure, and some have adventure but want to settle into a comfortable life. He showed her a secret: that he was not Albalin, but a doppleganger. They told Essa that the real Albalin was traveling with the dopplegangers to pursue his dream of exploring more of the world.
Comments