(I feel like there should be some sort of opening montage at this point, showing each of the PCs in some sort of dramatic pose, or engaged in their trademark activity. But I don't feel like it. Nor will I inflict on you lame opening credit music, or even a douchebag putting on his sunglasses.)
This past Saturday, I finally got the group together for something an introductory session. As registered members of the Clifftop Guild, they each received an invitation through the guild to a meeting with a prospective employer, said meeting to take place at a posh little place called Moraggan's, a high-class tavern that caters to movers and shakers in the dwarven Highhold district. Upon arriving, they are escorted into a private room, where they meet Anton d'Kundarak, a young dwarf just starting his career in his family's security business. The PCs are informed by Anton that their services are desired to investigate a recent theft from the long-term storage Vaults maintained by House Kundarak under the Kundarak Bank of Sharn in Kundarak Tower. Anton stresses to the party the need for discretion in this case, and presents them with passes that will give them access to the Vaults without tripping all the security alarms. The payment seems rather large, and Anton explains that this is both to encourage their ongoing discretion and as compensation due to any unforeseen danger they might encounter. He also makes it clear that it is understood that actually retrieving the stolen item might prove to be impossible for them, but that if they do manage it, there will be a substantial bonus. He refuses to answer any questions about the owner of the item or about the nature of the item itself. After getting their signatures on the contracts, Anton departs, wishing them the best of luck. The party then breaks up to take care of last minute business, agreeing to meet at the bank within the hour.
Bombard arrives at the bank first, accompanied by Lisa. In order to speed things along, they immediately head below to get the preliminary magical inspection of the crime scene out of the way. The guard assigned to them, Lukas, shows them the vault in question, pointing out the large scorch marks on the stone of the corridor, where the first-responder team was fireballed by the intruders. Bombard and Lisa begin their investigation, looking for signs of magical assistance in the intrusion, but quickly determining, through tool marks on the internal mechanisms of the lock, that whoever bypassed the locks and alarms most likely used no magic at all, but was simply insanely good at their job. By this time, they are joined by Thal, Leland, and a newcomer, an elf who introduces herself as Greyfox and claims to have been sent by Ilyria. Obviously knowledgeable in the arts of breaking and entering, Greyfox assists the party in determining that the group who pulled off the heist knew exactly what they were after, and were highly skilled. There are traces of blood near the door, and they determine, from the wooden cradle inside the vault, that the object they are looking for is a metal cask or barrel. They also learn that the guards managed to engage the thieves as they made their escape in a small sky-car, and are described to the party as a male halfling, a slender woman or elf, a male dwarf, and a small figure in a hooded robe they were unable to identify, but who was definitely a wizard or sorcerer. Upon examining the balcony and outer door the thieves used to access the tower, they find evident of a fight, along with a bloody crossbow bolt of a type used by the guard and a small green scale that Bombard identifies as most likely coming from a kobold. The outer door also shows signs that it was opened by a master lockpick, who also managed to disable to magical alarms and traps that protected it.
What follows is several hours of bribes, questions, and scattered threats, as the party tries to determine the eventual fate of the getaway sky-car. Eventually, they wind up in a disreputable part of Lower Central, where they find the wreckage of the sky-car, along with a number of clues. From their examination of the scene, the sky-car was apparently damaged in the crash, and at least one of them was badly wounded, due to a large blood stain on the floor of the car. A trail of blood, obviously droplets, leads away from the wreckage for a few feet, and then disappears. Asking around the neighborhood, they manage to find one person who will admit to seeing anything, and she tells them only that she saw a sky-cab flying away a little while after the wreck.
Guessing that the thieves may have hired another care to get where they needed to go, they liberally spread some money around the gypsy sky-cab drivers who work the area. After a number of completely pointless cab rides, they learn of Wild Wili, who had told a couple of his buddies about a crazy fare he had picked up, which included a dead halfling. Tracking down Wild Wili, they convince him to tell them his story: " So, I was workin' Olladra's Kitchen, hoping to pick up an easy fare, when this jerk dwarf hops in and tells me to drive over to the ass-end of Myshan Gardens. I figure a fare's a fare, and haul ass over there. He directs me down to the poorer end of the street, and there's this wrecked sky-car with a bunch of whackadoos standin' around it. The dwarf, he tells me to stop and hops out to help his buddies lift this big iron barrel into my cab. I'm startin' to wonder how bad this job is going to fuck up the paint, when I see one of 'em, this crazy lookin' elf chick, dressed all in black, picks somethin' out of the wreck and puts it on the seat where she sits down. I look back and fuck me if it's not a dead fuckin' halfling. Don't even ask what it took to get the stain out. What did they look like? Well the jerk dwarf was pretty normal, I guess. Yer average jerk dwarf. Then you got the crazy elf chick. She was creepy as fuck, all in black, didn't blink enough, either. Then, there was this fuckin' kobold wearin' what looked like a sparkly bathrobe. Whatevah. Anyway, the jerk dwarf hands me a gold sovereign and tells me if I can get them over to Cliffside in ten minutes, there's another one in it for me. So I figure, fuck it. I shag ass out of there, with these loonytoons fares in the back seat, and head for Cliffside. We're almost over the gap to Dura when there's this fuckin' bump and my cab starts leanin' hard to the left. I'm tryin' to keep it steady, swearin' I'm gonna kill my mechanic when I see 'im next, and the crazies in the back start cursin' when it all goes ta shit. That fuckin' barrel slides right out the side, with the jerk dwarf hangin' onta it. The dead halfling follows suit a second later, and then shit gets weird. The creepy elf chick, she just steps right out the side, and stands on the air, like it ain't nothin', and the fuckin' kobold just vanishes. At this point, I'm thinkin', fuck the bonus, I'm outta here. I fly straight through Dura, and a couple minutes later, the cab's okay. I take it to the magewright, he can't figure out what went wrong, and I figure I'm okay with that. I don't really WANT to know. What happened to them? Fuck if I know. You think I was stupid enough to go back and check?"
After paying Wili to drop them off where he lost them, the party pokes around a bit and finds the divot in the street where the iron cask hit the ground, along with at huge splash of blood, which they can only assume came from the dead halfling. They find a trail of blood leading away, starting off as a constant drip, but becoming both more compact along the length of the trail and more diffuse across it. Looking at it, Thal remembers seeing, during the war, a wounded riding wyvern leaving a similar blood pattern while gaining altitude. As they look around for clues, Greyfox sees a face in a third-floor window quickly duck out of sight, and sprints for the tower entrance, hoping to find a witness. She's followed closely by Leland, as the rest of the group watches the nearby entrances to prevent an escape.
Greyfox and Leland find a squatter cowering in an abandoned apartment, desperately trying to hide from them. He cries out when he sees them enter the room, but some fast talking on Greyfox's part calms him down enough to get the story out of him: "I heard shouting outside, an' I looked out the window to see the woman in black, a dwarf, an' a small man in a hooded robe. The woman in black was carrying a big iron chest or something, with a dead halfling perched on top of it. The dwarf walked down that alleyway across the street into the darkness, an' a man walked out, dressed all in fine clothing. Then they all walked down the street for a ways, until I noticed the woman moving funny. Her friends were walking on the ground, but it was like she was climbing invisible stairs. The man pulled a sword made of light out of nowhere an' slashed her with it something awful, an' she ran up into the air. Then he threw that shining sword at her, an' when it hit her, it vanished, an' he had it back in his hand. And then the halfling, it stood up on the chest and, and, it looked like it hugged her an' it cried out, "Thank you, mommy" and then it and the big iron chest disappeared. She an' all the rest just stared for a moment, an' then she vanished, an' the little man in the robe vanished, and the man with the shining sword just walked away down the alley. That's all I saw, I swear!"
In return for this fantastic tale (which as far as Greyfox could tell the man completely believed), Greyfox gave him some gold for his trouble, and led Leland back down to the street.
Having been stymied in their investigation, the party split up: Greyfox and Leland to go nose around the seamier side of the city, to try to find out who among the city's thieves might have been talented to be involved in this; and Bombard, Thal and Lisa to Morgrave University, to investigate what was involved with teleportation magic and look into the matter of shining swords. Later that night, the group reconvened at Bombard's shop to swap information and mull over what they had found out. The teleporting question was a dead-end. While it was a difficult effect to pull off, House Orien was well-known to provide it as a service, and among those spellcasters who could pull it off, it was fairly common. Not to mention any devices that might be able to duplicate the trick. Shining swords turned out to be an interesting, but seemingly useless, topic, as the accounts of shining swords or swords made of light turned up numerous references to a wide variety of magical blades through the centuries. However, there was also an apocryphal account of a race of humans in far-off Sarlona who referred to themselves as kalashtars. They are apparently native to the nation of Adar, which is at war with the neighboring Reidran Empire. The stories in question recount some of these "kalashtar" having the ability to manifest blades crafted from their own spiritual strength. Given, however, that Sarlona, Reidra and Adar are all a long way away, and that little is known of any of them, it seemed to be a fruitless, though fascinating, line of inquiry. The identity of the thieves was slightly more promising. By asking around about the best lockpicks, Greyfox and Leland had found out about the death of one Bennie Pickfinger, a very talented halfling who had been found dead a week ago. A couple of days ago, his body had been dumped into the nearest gorge leading to the lava pools, after the "traditional" five-day halfling wake. The description of the halfling in the heist matched Bennie to a tee, leaving the party to wonder how a halfling lockpicker could be assisting in a heist, when his mangled corpse was in the process of being thoroughly waked by his buddies. Also, by all accounts, Bennie had little talent for magic, and took a lot of pride in not using any magic aid in his exploits. By asking around at the House Thuranni compound, Greyfox also managed to match the male human's description to a high-ranking diplomat at the Reidran Embassy.
Upon combining their information, the party came to the conclusion that however the thieves managed to pull off the heist, the party wasn't likely to find out much more. Without knowing what was in the cask, who the cask belonged to, or the identities of either the elf or the kobold, they knew they were unlikely to make any more progress. Given that, they compiled their report and expense account and sent it off to Anton via secure House Sivis courier. Frustrated, they returned to their daily affairs, eager to find a challenge they could settle conclusively.
Unbeknownst to some of the players, the events of this game were basically the aftermath of another game I ran in honor of my friend Lucas, who was visiting from San Diego for the weekend. I ran the heist with that group, which included Debbie and Shawn, and started off the regular party as the investigators. I have to applaud Debbie and Shawn for their resoluteness in refusing to metagame, though Shawn (understandably) could not resist making a couple of comments about the kobold. However, even they are in the dark concerning the true identity of the devious halfling and the mysterious contents of the iron cask. Kudos to all my players for a slightly bumpy, but ultimately enjoyable, first game session, and I promise, there shall be much hackings to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment