ADVENTURE 40 - THE KIDNAPPING OF EDMONT STANWYCK
PC Roster:
Feron Dru, half-elf druid
Rale Bodkin, human rogue
Slayer, half-orc barbarian
Telgrane, human conjurer
The Guildmaster of the Greyhawk City Adventurers Guild was a rotund individual by the name of
Farthingale. He generally kept busy behind the scenes, spending a great deal of time either in his office at Guild Headquarters or elsewhere in the city, making contacts with those individuals who could be counted upon to keep the Guild running smoothly. Therefore, it was a bit of a shock for the assembled members of Wing Three to receive an early morning visit by him in their communal living quarters.
"We've received an immediate summons," huffed Farthingale, winded from his rush down the hallway from his office. "One of our biggest backers,
Lord Spencer Stanwyck, has requested a group of adventurers for a delicate operation he needs handled. He's sending a carriage around front, and I want you to go do whatever it is he needs done. I don't need to remind you of the importance of keeping our financial backers happy! Now go, quickly, don't keep him waiting!"
The group of four was shooed out of the building, exiting just as a carriage was pulling up. The group piled in, the driver flicked the reins, and the twin horses trotted them off to one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Greyhawk City, coming to a stop at an elegant mansion. There, a liveried butler escorted them into an elegant library, where Lord Stanwyck greeted them curtly.
"I’m told that you’re good at your jobs, and discrete," he said without preamble. "I find myself in immediate need of people with your skills. This morning, my only son,
Edmont, was kidnapped from his own bedroom. A note was left detailing how much it would cost to get him back alive.” Lord Stanwyck tossed a crumpled piece of parchment onto the table before the group. “Five thousand in diamonds, to be brought to a specific alleyway in the Styes, at midnight tonight. I’ve got the ransom right here," he said, pulling a velvet bag from inside his vest. "I want you to deliver it for me."
As Rale reached for the bag of diamonds, Lord Stanwyck continued. "I won’t mention names, but this exact set of circumstances has occurred to another nobleman of Greyhawk in this past month. Apparently, somebody has decided to make a good living out of kidnapping and ransom. Well, I won’t hear of it!" He slammed his fist down on the top of his desk in anger.
"I want to make one thing perfectly clear here. I am not hiring you to deliver the ransom and get my son back to me safely. I am hiring you to deliver the ransom, find out who is behind these deeds, and slaughter every last one of them, down to the last man! You do that, and you can keep that ransom for yourselves." Almost as an afterthought, he added, "And try to bring my son back to me safely, if possible. If not, I'll pay to have him raised."
He looked over the group standing before him with a critical eye, starting with Slayer, who had weapons bristling from his belt, back, and boots. "Too tough looking," he commented to himself, then moved his gaze over to Telgrane. "Too fancy-pants," he dismissed, frowning at the ornate piping on the young wizard's cloak and robe. "Too girly," he said of Feron, whose tight-fitting dragonhide armor enhanced her half-elven figure. Finally, he settled his gaze on Rale, and smirked. "Perfect," he grinned. "You, you're team leader on this mission. You look low-life enough to blend in with the scum of the Styes. I want you to be the face of the group; the others will be invisible - I'll have
Carstairs provide you with three
potions of invisibility. I want those low-life kidnappers thinking they're only dealing with one scrawny punk instead of a group of seasoned adventurers." Rale bristled at the description, but swallowed down the comment he was going to make.
Lord Stanwyck summoned his butler with a bell, and upon his arrival dismissed the group from his office. Carstairs filled the group in on what they needed to know. According to him, Edmont was six years old and was taken from his room on the second floor of the manor some time between nightfall and this morning. He was discovered missing when a nanny went to wake him, only to find him gone and the note left on his pillow. The note was a composite, made up of different words apparently written on different sheets of paper by different people using different handwriting and glued together on to a single sheet of paper – probably as an anti-scrying aid, as any attempt to scry the message could lead any one of a dozen different ways. Lord Stanwyck believed the group responsible was some kind of cult, for the previous kidnap victim was returned alive after his ransom was paid, but he fled his home willingly several days thereafter. Lord Stanwyck wouldn’t authorize the release of the previous victim's family name - no need to drag their good name down with an embarrassing scandal, after all - but Carstairs did say the victim was a boy of ten years or so. He also said Lord Stanwyck believed the boy was probably brainwashed into returning to the cult of his own free will.
Upon request, the butler led the group to Edmont's room to look around, passing by a portrait of the young lad on the way so that the group could see what he looked like. Feron was aghast at the sparseness of the boy’s room: there were no toys or decorations, merely writing utensils and paper, books (mostly on nobility, coats of arms, and the history of Greyhawk City), and a wooden desk with a stiff-backed chair, besides the bed and dresser. Carstairs, uncomfortable with criticizing Lord Spencer or his attitude on child-raising, merely stated that the Master had the child’s best interests at heart. He also mentioned that Lady Stanwyck had died when Edmont was two years old, and that Lord Stanwyck had never remarried.
Rale examined Edmont’s window and found a mark where it had been pried open with a knife from outside. To Rale's practiced eye, the outside wall looked like it would be difficult to climb, although certainly possible by someone trained in such things.
The group took the three
potions of invisibility from the butler, thanked him for his assistance, and promised they'd do their best to get Edmont back safely. From what they had seen, Edmont's safety was a much bigger concern to the elderly manservant than it was to his own father. Carstairs thanked them, wished them the very best of luck, and returned to the manor, while the carriage returned the group to Guild Headquarters to make their plans for the evening.
During the day, their Guild rings were confiscated from them, as they were being magically upgraded; upon their return, they would be able to be used once per day, automatically recharging 24 hours after use. But in the meantime, they wouldn't have the comfort of being able to "bink" back to Headquarters if things got rough during their present assignment.
At midnight, the group was in the alley prescribed by the ransom note - Rale waiting impatiently, the others nearby and invisible. All was quiet, and nothing happened for a good five minutes or so (during which time the other three started worrying about how much more time would pass before their potions wore off), when suddenly a cloaked figure approached. "I am to give you this," he said, passing over a sealed envelope. Underneath his hood, he was identifiable as a kenku - a member of the Collectors, as it turned out, a group of information brokers that the adventurers had dealt with in the past. The kenku introduced himself as
K'klawk, and volunteered that he had been paid to deliver the envelope, but had no idea who hired him (and wouldn’t give out information on a paying client in any case) or what was in the envelope. And with that, he turned away and vanished back into the shadows of the alleyways.
Rale opened the envelope and squinted to read its contents by the light of the moon. It directed him to enter the sewers via the manhole at the opening of a nearby alleyway and wait there for the exchange. The manhole opened to a metal ladder leading down into the darkness. Not liking the idea of open flames in the sewers, Rale had Feron pass him one of her
everburning candles, and climbed down into the darkness. The others followed, still invisible. About ten feet down there was a platform along the side of a slow-moving current of dark, dirty water.
Soon after the group entered the sewer, a figure approached from the edges of the magic candle's illumination. It was a fat, upright toad-man, standing upon an enormous, floating crocodile. The toad-man held a filthy bag over one shoulder, which wriggled as its inhabitant tried in vain to escape. "Throw the ransom over here, now, and no tricks!" he croaked.
"I want to see the boy first," replied Rale calmly.
"First the ransom, or I drop the kid in the water and let my pet gobble him up," replied the bullywug.
"Fine, fine," responded Rale, and deliberately tossed the bag of diamonds in a high arc, forcing the bullywug to look up to ensure he caught it. While his attention was thus diverted, Slayer let loose with an arrow from his bow, turning visible in the process. He had shot at the crocodile, not wanting to accidentally hit the kidnap victim in the bag if he missed a shot at the bullywug. Telgrane likewise became visible as he shot off a
magic missile spell at the bullywug, confident in that spell's infallibility as far as targeting went. However, the toad-man staggered under the assault, and he dropped the bag in his attempt to catch the bag of diamonds. The bag, and its squirming contents, hit the crocodile's broad back and plunked into the filthy sewer water.
Feron made a face about what she was about to do, but leaped into the sewer to rescue the boy. She got a grip on the bag and struggled to disentangle the boy from it. She got his face to the surface, where he gasped greedily for air.
Meanwhile, the bullywug had not been alone. Several others of his kind popped up out of the rancid water and attacked with halfspears. However, the original toad-man,
Ribbort, now free of the bag, made a much easier target for the heroes. He was soon peppered with arrows and
magic missile spells, to the point where he fell over backwards behind his crocodilian mount. Rale immediately dived in after him, leaving the massive crocodile to Telgrane and Slayer as he desperately made a grab for the bag of diamonds. "Got it!" he cried in triumph, then came to a disheartening realization: as the holder of the ransom, he was the number one target for the other bullywugs. He scrambled to get back on the ledge and out of the toad-men's element. The giant crocodile soon followed Ribbort in death, attacked by arrows and spells from the relative safety of the sewer ledge.
With Ribbort and the giant crocodile slain, the other bullywugs apparently saw that they were overpowered and swam back the way they'd come. Rale, Slayer, and Telgrane started following them along the sewer ledges, until a massive, bloated form lumbered into their way, stepping out from an intersection. It slammed tentacles at the group, pulling Slayer into the water and trying to drown him, but while the half-orc held his breath, he didn't bother holding on to the rage that was building up inside him - rather, he let it loose, and swung his greatsword into the bloated body of his enemy. Telgrane blasted spells into the thing as well, and Rale even aided in the fight once he realized that the other two bullywugs had escaped into the darkness of the sewer. It wasn't likely they'd be easy to track down here. The otyugh was soon dealt with, and a disspirited trio returned back to Feron and Edmont.
"Well, at least we've saved the boy," said Feron, pulling Edmont up out of the water. He clung tightly to her, his face buried into her chest. Telgrane gave her a hand, pulling her up out of the water and back onto the ledge. He was wearing a frown.
"What's the matter?" asked Feron, giving reassuring pats on Edmont's back and hugging him tightly to her.
"That boy is giving off an aura of illusion magic," replied the young conjurer. He'd recently cast a permanent
arcane sight upon himself, giving him the ability to perceive magical auras within 120 feet. It was already looking like it had been a pretty smart move.
"He's not the kid?" asked Slayer, stowing his bow across his back and grabbing up a longsword, which he poked in what everyone thus far had thought was Edmont Stanwyck's direction. Rale held a dagger to the boy's throat. "Who are you?" he snarled.
"I'm Edmont Stanwyck, and I want to go home!" wailed the young boy, clinging tighter to Feron, who was starting to worry about just who it was she had pressing his face into her bosom.
"Not buying it!" snarled Rale, pushing the point of his dagger into the boy's neck until it drew blood.
"Okay, okay!" yelled Edmont, whipping his face up. "Calm down, everybody calm down, no need to get hasty here. It's all cool, okay? And if you kill me, you'll never get to Edmont in time!" At the threat of his immediate dismemberment, "Edmont" admitted that he was really
Billibuck Bandicoot, a halfling rogue with a
seeming spell cast upon him to give him Edmont’s appearance. He was a member of a halfling thieves guild which laired in the sewers, and they had a pretty good gig working with a group of bullywugs called the Mudswimmers: the rogues kidnapped the human child of a well-to-do member of Greyhawk City's elite; they passed the victim off to the bullywugs for whatever nefarious purposes they had going; in the meantime, after collecting the ransom, a fake "rescued victim" was returned to the wealthy parents, and said "victim" cased the joint and made off with a mass collection of valuables, never to be seen again. However, Billibuck was willing to take the group back to his thieves guild, where they'd be able to show them where the bullywugs had been taking the kids. The group agreed, but bound the halfling's arms tightly behind him and held him at swordpoint as they traveled the sewers.
Billibuck led them past a locked grate (he had the key on a chain around his neck), and up to a closed door, where he said he'd have to give the daily pass-phrase to get them in. The group agreed, and they knocked at a door with a much smaller door at head-height to a halfling. "Vocabby 'bugaboo,'" said Billibuck. "Deez forby fee-fyfum. Underhill the pork-pie wiffa eight-foured starters, seemsa argee." And with that he took a sudden dive sideways off the ledge and into the dark sewer waters.
It took Rale only a moment to translate the Thieves Cant he had just heard, as it was in a slightly different dialect than that he was used to: "The password is 'bugaboo.' These four are foes. Kill the orc guy with the greatsword first, it looks like it's silver." He yelled out "Trap!" just as a small marble was tossed out of the peekhole door. It broke on the ledge, exploding into a
fireball; Billibuck was happily underwater by that time and doing his best to squirm out of his bonds while kicking away down the sewers. He snickered at how easily he had fooled the seasoned adventurers, and was still smirking when he came up for air. It was his last smirk, though, for as soon as his head surfaced, Slayer put an arrow into the back of it. Billibuck dropped back under the surface of the sewer water and didn't come back up.
Meanwhile, Telgrane, who had taken the least amount of punishment from the
fireball bead - no doubt due to the
ring of fire resistance he wore, practically a necessity when one has a Small fire elemental as a familiar - opened his tinder box and blew an ember through the still-open peekhole door. As it fell into the room on the other side, it expanded in form; by the time it hit the ground Infernia had taken her normal shape and was gleefully attacking the halfling guards she found there. Telgrane, Feron and Rale stepped aside as Slayer kicked the door in for them, then the four adventurers followed the fire elemental into the thieves guild complex.
Cleaning out the halfling thieves guild was fairly straightforward. The toughest section was at the far end, where the guild's leaders were found.
Guildmaster Troiden "Silverwhiskers" Brandibott; his seneschal, the gnomish
Pandobar Dinkletrousers; and the four highest-ranking halfling lieutenants were all wererats - which explained Billibuck's concern over Slayer's silver greatsword. Such concern was greatly founded, as the half-orc used it to finish off more than a couple of the wererats in their hybrid form. The halflings also had a water naga ally,
Sludgescale, who was responsible for the magical support such as the
seeming spells used to grant a halfling rogue the appearance of a kidnapped child. All fell before the adventurers' blades and spells.
The Guildmaster's study held some interesting oddities. For one thing, he had a collection of stone rat carvings on his bookcases, many of them very detailed and lifelike. Feron uncovered a ledger detailing the monies gathered by the thieves guild in their recent kidnapping schemes (naming the families they had targeted, five now in all, the two most recent being
Kelvyn Adderhorn and Edmont Stanwyck). It also showed that the guild had paid out money and transferred the kidnap victims to the Mudswimmers and referenced their lair as a partially collapsed and condemned public bathhouse in the northeastern part of the Styes. Another book of maps of the area allowed Telgrane to pinpoint their probable location.
Rale, meanwhile, had unearthed what looked to be a treasure map with some details about a wand, a gem, and a stone that could be combined to form a powerful artifact. There was a rhyming verse on the back, with handwritten annotations, likely by the Guildmaster himself. It looked like he might have been considering sending a group out to check out the treasure hoard; now that he was dead Rale was certain the Guildmaster wouldn't mind Rale checking the place out for himself. He slipped the map in his pocket with dreams of future riches.
There were two other areas of interest in the thieves guild, one of them particularly disturbing. That was the interrogation room, where victims were apparently strapped down to a table and injected with various chemicals by a crazed derro,
Torturemaster Divixio Vandercrag. Realizing that many if not all of his previous victims had been the kidnapped children, not even Feron was fazed when Vandercrag was given a taste of his own medicine: his wretched life ended strapped to his own torturer's table, injected with a needle filled with a green vial of powerful acid. Fortunately, it looked like the majority of the vials he used here were the blue ones, which when injected into a victim caused them to be lethargic and immobile, no doubt as a precaution before transport over to the Mudswimmers. There were cells nearby, showing signs of recent use. Feron's stomach turned at the thought that poor Edmont had probably been processed through here earlier the same day.
The other area of note was the treasury, where the thieves guild's ransom monies were stored, as well as the valuables looted by the halflings disguised as the missing children and returned to their "parents." Stored here were paintings, jewelry, gold bars, small carved statuettes, and the like, valued at a total of 35,000 gold pieces. The gold bars were all stamped with a family crest, showing them to be the property of
Lord Adderhorn, a well-to-do member of the Greyhawk nobility. Much to Rale's dismay, Feron insisted that they would be returned to their rightful owners. The loot was stored inside Feron's
handy haversack while Rale muttered to himself about the young druid being "no better than the damn paladin" when it came to property allocation.
Soon the guild had been cleared, and the group returned to the sewers in search of the Mudswimmers, Telgrane reading the map of the sewer layout they had taken from Guildmaster Brandibott's rooms. Suddenly, Slayer's keen eyes spotted an unmoving figure up ahead. It was a rat, like the scores the group had seen while traversed through the subterranean pipes, but this one seemed unafraid of their approach. The reason why became obvious when Slayer reached down and picked it up: it was a stone carving, like the dozens found back in the halfling guild. "Why would...?" the half-orc started to ponder aloud, when a horrendous hissing alerted the group to a large, reptilian predator approaching from a side pipe. It was an Abyssal basilisk, and suddenly the reason for the numerous rat carvings was made abundantly clear.
Faced with the possibility of being petrified, Telgrane and Feron jointly decided the dangers of pockets of flammable sewer gas were a risk worth taking, and he sent a
fireball at the multilegged basilisk while Feron followed up with a
flame strike. Slayer and Rale followed with their blades, reasoning the quicker they dispatched the beast the less likely it would be able to petrify any of them. The group got lucky, and dispatched the beast without incident.
Eventually, the sewers led to a section of dry tunnel; this was once an aboveground street before it sank into the earth, as so much of the Styes had done over the years. Ahead was the bathhouse, its floor once paved with elegant marble, but much of it now cracked and crumbling away. Behind a large statue of a pair of classical style bathers, there were two dark archways marked "Men" and "Women." A bullywug stood on guard duty here; upon the group's approach he grabbed up a hefty tower shield and blocked the doorway on the right, pulling it tight against the doorway as he backed into the anteroom. The shield was wider than the door, and a chain hung through the shield's arm-strap and hand-hold, which the bullywug pulled taut and attached to a hook on the far wall. The outer surface of the tower shield was coated in animal fat, making it slippery. Slayer tried tugging at the shield, but had little success. Telgrane's lament that Cal wasn't with them only made Slayer tug all the harder, but it was no use - the way to the right was blocked to the group, so they'd have to go through the door to the left, which meant the alert would no doubt be raised by the time they got to where Edmont might be held.
Rushing through the left door, the group passed a men's changing room and a huge room holding a large, open bath filled with rancid-looking, algae-covered water. A door in the back crossed over to the other side of the building, from which the group could hear a croaklike chanting. Crossing to the right side of the buried bathhouse, the adventurers discovered a similar-sized bath, this one originally intended for women but now filled with oozing, gloppy mud. Standing chest-deep in a circle in the middle of the mud-filled pool were five bullywugs, the largest one holding a dazed and drugged Edmont, his six-year-old head encompassed on both sides by the toad-man's webbed fingers. Behind him stood a much fatter bullywug; this was
Mud Lord Buglump, the one responsible for the chanting the group had heard upon their approach. With a triumphant crescendo, he signaled to the lead bullywug, and an awful snap was heard as the toad-man violently twisted Edmont's head to one side. Feron let out a scream as the bullywug released Edmont, whose lifeless body sunk slowly beneath the surface of the mud. She sent a bolt of electricity from a
call lightning spell screaming down at the Mud Lord, but it was too late. Edmont's sacrifice, the last of five such, had been deemed worthy by the Mudswimmer's demonic patron, and the mud started bubbling and boiling within the confines of the circle of bullywugs. A sudden stench filled the room, nauseating not only the adventurers but apparently the bullywugs as well, as a large, toadlike presence rose up from the mud pool.
"Arise,
Blurghus, and lead your worshipers on a blissful, chaotic rampage upon the dry-walkers in the city above!" cried Buglump in a fit of sacrilegious fervor. The hezrou grinned a crooked grin filled with razor sharp teeth. "So I shall," he croaked, biting the head from the nearest bullywug.
The remaining bullywugs were horrified at this sudden betrayal, as if the very thought of a demon acting in such a chaotic manner was completely unheard of. Feron continued her barrage of lightning strikes at the Mud Lord, her eyes filled with vengeance at the toad-man who had ordered Edmont's death. Slayer used his composite longbow to good effect, peppering the hezrou with arrows from a distance. Telgrane summoned a celestial lion to the scene, thinking that the creature's inherent goodness could be used to counter the demon's evil, then let it do the brunt of the physical attacks against the slippery hezrou while he blasted the demon with
magic missiles from afar. Rale decided that demonfighting was a bit more than he was up for, and concentrated his attacks on the bullywugs that were even now scrambling up out of the pool. Infernia ducked and dodged between the toad-men, providing a distraction that allowed Rale to put his ability to sneak attack to good use.
The Mud Lord summoned a fiendish crocodile to try to keep Feron at bay, but it wasn't long after he had done so that he finally succumbed to one lightning bolt too many, and fell backwards into the mud pool, never to resurface. Feron redirected her lightning bolts at the crocodile, and it too was soon slain. A
wall of fire cast by Telgrane sealed off the exit for the retreating bullywugs, and Rale, Infernia, and Slayer soon made quick work of them, so everyone was able to concentrate their attacks on the most dangerous foe in the room, the demonic hezrou. Fortunately, while by this time the celestial lion had been slain and its form returned to the upper planes of its birth, he had weakened Blurghus considerably. Despite the gagging and choking that came with getting close to the hezrou, the group was finally able to slay it, and its fiendish body discorporated in a puff of rancid smoke.
Feron jumped immediately around in the pool of mud and felt around with her arms until she found Edmont's body. Cradling it to her, she waded back over to the pool's edge. There was no doubt about it, the poor lad's neck was cleanly snapped; the only good thing was that it had been a quick and hopefully painless death, and that Lord Stanwyck had said he would have the boy raised if necessary. Having slain everyone in the halfling thieves guild and all the members of the Mudswimmers, the weary - and filthy - members of Wing Three crawled out of the mud and made the long trek back to Stanwyck Manor. Feron carried Edmont's body the whole way, wrapped in a clean blanket from her
handy haversack.
Lord Stanwyck was visibly elated at the group's success, and considered the death of his only son merely a small - and temporary - setback. He gladly allowed Rale to keep the bag of diamonds that had been Edmont's ransom, and dismissed the group with a hearty chuckle at the thought that he had succeeded where four other noble families had not. The Wing Three members managed to keep the disgust off their faces long enough to exit the manor without insulting what Farthingale insisted was an important Adventurers Guild backer.
- - -
It was days later that word of Edmont's final fate trickled back to the group. Apparently Lord Stanwyck was furious; when his own clerics had cast a
raise dead upon Edmont's body, the six-year-old spoke with them briefly through his own dead lips but refused to return to his life. "Do I have to come back?" he asked. "I like it better here. There are other kids here to play with, and nobody beats you for not studying hard enough. I don’t think I want to come back. But could you do me a favor, please? Tell Cook thanks for being nice to me and sneaking me food when Father was punishing me. Tell her I’ll miss her. Okay, I’m going to go play with the other kids now. Bye." And with that, the child’s dead eyes glazed back over, and his animating spirit was gone, leaving the flustered clerics with his sad, abandoned body.
"Serves Lord Stanwyck right," snarled Feron when she got word of the events. "You take care, little Edmont."
- - -
I used the Map of Mystery from issue #128 of
Dungeon magazine, "Sewer Stronghold of the Thieves Guild" by Christopher West, for the halfling thieves guild headquarters. Likewise, the Mudswimmers' ruined bathhouse came from a mini-adventure card that was included in the original "The City of Greyhawk" boxed set, one of the few things I've actually used from that game product (as I shamelessly mold and twist my own Greyhawk City and its immediate environs as needed).