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Family Matters - Forgotten Realms Waterdeep Campaign
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<blockquote data-quote="Isida Kep'Tukari" data-source="post: 6297602" data-attributes="member: 4441"><p><strong>Sessions 32 & 33</strong></p><p></p><p>When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were preparing for their fight with Father Geb in just under two tendays’ time. </p><p></p><p>First off, William wanted several scrolls, particularly <em>dispel magic, dimensional anchor</em>, and <em>magic circle against evil</em>. Feeling particularly paranoid, he made certain that the <em>magic circle</em> scroll was Enlarged, and searched high and low to find a <em>dispel magic</em> scroll created by a particularly talented spellcaster. </p><p></p><p>Garden was also feeling particularly paranoid, and hunting low… and lower (he’s a gnome) for some poisons to put a crimp in Geb’s style without striking the man stone dead. (Garden has <em>some</em> standards.) After several days of searching, he found two that would serve, though they were shockingly expensive. One was a poison called Night’s End, which fatigued and exhausted its victim before sending them to sleep. The other was a poison imported from Kara-Tur, komodo dragon poison, which would slow, then paralyze its victim. Those two little vials were to be safely tucked away until the appointed time. </p><p></p><p>Garden had also obtained a wand of the delightfully long-ranged spell <em>Melf’s acid arrow</em>, a keen spell that would benefit from his training in targeting the vulnerable portions of humanoid anatomy. Knowing that activating wands was difficult for one without much arcane training, he also hunted amongst the job-hungry young arcanists of the city to find one who, without asking questions, would show up at a certain place at a certain time to cast a spell of <em>eagle’s splendor</em> upon him, then leave. For a the right amount of gold, it wasn’t too hard to find someone.</p><p></p><p>He also called upon the Origami clan, hiring several guards so at least two people could be watching over his shop day and night, both to protect his and Charissa’s investment as well as the lives of themselves and their employees (Nira Darkfire and the three other gnome apprentices).</p><p></p><p>Charissa got to making a <em>far-reaching sight</em> for her gun (working alongside her magician business partner Marlowe Miccar), so it would be easier to shoot Geb quite directly in the head when she found him. She also learned that purchasing <em>divine bane</em> weapons was best done through the church of Ilmater, who sometimes used such a weapon quality when fighting against priests or divine champions of Bane. Such bullets would be very expensive, but with enough lead time, they could be obtained (she would be responsible for making the masterwork bullets herself, though, as her art was rare).</p><p></p><p>While she was between bouts of crafting, she did hear a peculiar rumor that someone had commissioned <em>magebane</em> arrows from an artisan in the Temple of Gond. While not illegal, and certainly such things were useful for adventurers exploring the horrible halls of Undermountain, it was unusual and stuck in Charissa’s mind. </p><p></p><p>A few days after these preparations began, Garden, Steven, and Evelyn received an invitation to the Lady Wands’ home, with a phrasing that made it clear that “no” was not an acceptable answer. Garden got himself a new set of duds, and then all went, Steven taking his wife Ravinica (the Golden Queen) along with him. </p><p></p><p>The Lady Wands received them in a parlor, which she sealed with magic as soon as the tea and cakes had been served. She looked troubled, and with good reason. Lady Wands was not having a good year, with the disastrous amber ooze incursion at Higharvestide, then the realization that one of her husband’s bastards was out to ruin her family. And things had taken yet another turn for the worse.</p><p></p><p>As Garden had been doing some independent investigations on her behalf (albeit for some quiet pay) and the Violettes were the leader of their little group (in the Lady Wands’ eyes), she needed them to hear the news first. Her husband was dead, in Calimshan, apparently of an accident involving yet another of his extra-marital affairs. (A tragic case of mammary suffocation, or something equally sordid.) With Geb’s father dead, Lady Wands was certain that Geb would try to enact his vengeance upon her. She had been the one to throw both him and his mother (the illusionist daughter of a Calimshan harem slave) out of the house. Geb was the eldest Wands bastard, and Jayrin had been barely a year younger, of a different mother. They had both been exiled when Lady Wands had still been very angry about the affairs. The subsequent bastards she had been more philosophical about, and they lived and worked on a distant Wands estate.</p><p></p><p>Lady Wands thought her estates were well-protected, but something else might occur, because Geb had little else to do but seek his vengeance. If the group could put any trouble in Geb’s way before it came to her doorstep, she would be grateful. The group said they were already planning such a thing because of what Geb had already done. Ravinica added she would try to see if anything was happening from the planar side, and do something to help if it was.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, William had been given an assignment by his Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors’ (from henceforth known as WOMPs) superiors. There had been an unusual shortage in certain spell components, candles and small decorated bags, the items used in summoning spells. As it was not summoning week at any of the magical academies, nor was it hazing week for new students, nor had there been any other good reason for there to be so little on the shelves, the items were being bought up. But buy who and for why?</p><p></p><p>(William had briefly mentioned this assignment to the group during one of their meetings at the Empty Grave, so Garden, unbeknownst to William, asked an Origami clan guard to subtly shadow William in case something happened. William never suspected a thing.)</p><p></p><p>William checked the various stores, compared inventories (the WOMPs had tapped William for a reason; his warehouse experience) and found that at three stores there had not only been someone in buying up candles and bags, but also fly eyes and chaos ichor. The various proprietors each described a different buyer – a brown-haired brown-eyed human man, a slim red-headed human woman, or a blond green-eyed halfling. All, however, had scarred hands. As Charissa had shot Geb’s hands during their last encounter, William was pretty sure Geb was the buyer in all three cases, just disguised.</p><p></p><p>Fly eyes were used to maximize the number of creatures summoned in a summoning spell, while chaos ichor was used to target specific planes, usually highly chaotic ones like Limbo or the Far Realm. One of the proprietors had told the tale of how the box he had used to store the chaos ichor had, at various times, morphed into a melon, a hat, his own head, a cat, a fish, and a trombone made of cheese. He’d finally gotten a priest of Tyr to put an <em>axiomatic</em> charm on the box to make it stay a box. </p><p></p><p>All together, that spelled that Geb was securing components for a mass summoning, probably from the Far Realm. And because he was getting arcane components, and Geb was a priest, that meant he had arcane support somewhere.</p><p></p><p>After telling the group, Steven, Ravinica, and William went to the Temple of Mystra to speak to the High Priest. After the acolytes (not wanting to bring their superior the bad news that Sir Violette the Unlucky was here) had played a quick game of stone, scroll, knife, wizard, sage to determine who would announce them, they were conducted into the presence of the High Priest.</p><p></p><p>He listened to William’s account (with an enforced word-count from Steven so as to not tax the High Priest’s time) with grave concern. If Geb succeeded, he would cause untold chaos and destruction in the city. But he was not ready yet, not if he were going to pause for a… paid encounter next week. If the group could arrest him privately, that would spare the political and religious ramifications that could linger for decades. </p><p></p><p>Nevertheless, precautions would have to be taken. The High Priest said he would have several of his people in the blocks around the house where Geb was supposed to be, ready to employ a scroll of <em>dimension lock</em> to both prevent the incursion of summoned creatures and to prevent Geb from escaping by magical means. The High Priest also gave William tiles of <em>break enchantment</em> and <em>invisibility purge</em> that would activate if the tile were snapped – that would help with Geb’s tendency to curse his enemies as well as his sneaky nature.</p><p></p><p>A bit later, and separately but coincidentally at the same time, Charissa and William went to the Temple of Tymora to speak to the priests there about Geb’s impending incursion. The priest they eventually spoke to was very concerned about a holy war if the followers of Lady Luck went after Geb directly, and a war with the followers of Lady Doom could turn Waterdeep upside down. But they could, and would, be ready to descend upon the man if the group couldn’t arrest him themselves, just staying out of sight until the deed was done. And also, after the two had gambled a bit, they were given a coin of Tymora, the sign of the goddess’ favor. (As a point, though Lady Wands had asked Garden, Steven, and Evelyn to keep quiet about Geb’s identity as a Wands bastard, William blurted it out to the priest of Tymora first thing.)</p><p></p><p>A few days later, at the Empty Grave, Shandri had some disturbing news. First off, three of her urchins were missing, all of them in the same ward where Geb’s house was located. Granted, it was a populous ward, but it was also three urchins, and she was worried. Secondly, Brother Sallis, the priest of Tymora down on Sucker Street who used to run the shrine opposite Father Geb, was missing, his temple neatly closed up. No reason had been given, he was just gone.</p><p></p><p>And thirdly, Little Antler was dead, crushed by a wall in his cell collapsing. Just sheer bad luck.</p><p></p><p>Oh dear.</p><p></p><p>Also, a messenger arrived at the Empty Grave as they were discussing such dire happenings, a courier from the Wands estate. He bore a small wooden box, “with his Lady’s compliments.” Inside were six small purple-and-blue chains, very fine, that when wrapped around a weapon or wand or staff would make them the bane of the horrid abominations from the Far Realm. The group thanked the Lady on his behalf.</p><p></p><p>Shandri and William went urchin-hunting later that day, while Garden, Charissa, and Shell (the lass from the Busty Wench who had been unfortunately partially transformed by an over-ambitious priest of Umberlee, and had learned to use her differences to increase her level of clientele) went to cut off one more of Geb’s possible escape routes. They’d learned that Geb would have six bodyguards, and he’d leave them across from the house during his appointment, in a tavern called the Blue Mushroom (which coincidentally connected on the back to the Green Fairy Festhall). Three of the bodyguards were to keep watch on the house while the other three had appointments of their own, then they would switch. Garden wanted all the bodyguards enjoying themselves at the same time, and that meant making a deal with the Madame. </p><p></p><p>Garden was dressed to impress in pink pants, long pointed tasseled shoes, and a sparkly, sequined shirt in the manner of the legendary gnome bard Liberace. Attention was gathered, and the Madame met the three of them in a side room to discuss “their needs.” Garden, being fairly good at double-talk, spoke to her about some of their “concerns” (starting with a surreptitious bribe to get her to talk about her clients at all). When Garden outlined what he wanted, the Madame gave the indication that the “extra expense” was going to be substantial. </p><p></p><p>Garden then began to comment about the mural on the wall, one that showed many dancers dressed in strings of beads (and little else). He inquired as to how many beads were in the painting. The Madame “estimated” about three hundred and fifty. Garden thought there might have been as many as four hundred, and how quiet the dancers could be, even with so many beads. The Madame agreed that the dancers could be remarkably silent with four hundred beads. Then she called for wine and music, giving Garden enough time to bring out several jewels worth the price and subtly pass them to her. </p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, Shandri and William were searching for her missing urchins. The found the fate of two of them – one had left with a reputable caravan, having secured a job, and the other had taken service in a household in the neighborhood. Shandri lamented that she needed to teach her UPS urchins about letters of notice. But the third one, Marc, had been (according to two more of his friends who ran errands in the area) asked to come to a house a couple of days ago by a bushy-haired and bushy-bearded man with scarred hands. He’d paid the others for their silence, but between William’s gold and Shandri’s motherly stare, they quickly spilled their guts.</p><p></p><p>Getting the name of the man (Daavid Malk), they tracked down the house, only to discover, to their not-surprised horror, that it was the same house Geb was supposed to be renting. Quickly, Shandri and William called an emergency conference at Garden’s home. They were miserable with guilt. Marc had already been missing for two days, and given Geb’s track record with children (the splinterwaif, for example), he could already be dead. Both Shandri and Steven had duties and needs to rescue him. But if the group attacked the house or were seen there early, they threw away all their advantages against Geb, and also any clean possibility of stopping him before he unleashed Far Realm horrors on the city. It was a case of the needs of saving thousands of people versus the life of one orphan.</p><p></p><p>Faced with an impossible dilemma, Garden employed guile and stealth. He called upon Clan Origami ties for a major favor that would probably put his profits in the red for months, and asked the “black hats” of the clan to stage several burglaries in the same neighborhood as Geb’s house, and try to find and free Marc under that cover. Garden was good enough to know this sort of work wasn’t his forte, at least not when a child’s life was on the line.</p><p></p><p>The following morning, one extremely disgruntled and damaged Origami master thief, bearing a bundle of unconscious urchin, showed up at Garden’s doorstep. The thief in question was a gnome, Fulsomeway Richadare, who was operating under the considerable handicap of a withered hand, a pounding headache, and a screaming case of the heebie-jeebies. He told Garden (once inside the protected shop) that Geb had not been in the house, for reasons that had become apparent. When Fulsomeway had snuck in the house, it was full of diluted insanity mist, meant to slowly drive someone mad. Marc the urchin had been in the living room in some kind of diagram, shackled in place, and slowly succumbing to the poison’s effects. Fulsomeway also reported that there was a large cage in the basement, and several bedroom upstairs. </p><p></p><p>When Fulsomeway had unshackled Marc, he found there had been a curse-trap he’d missed (he berated himself for that), and it withered his hand into uselessness. One-handed, antitoxined to the gills, and using up probably a lifetime’s worth of luck, Fulsomeway had been able to escape with Marc, making it look like the boy had fled when the house had been broken into. (Fulsomeway had taken some expensive silverware as cover, not trusting the holy items on the diagram not to bite him.)</p><p></p><p>Garden thanked him, and knew he’d be paying for this favor for a long time. Luckily, Shandri would probably cheerfully help him pay it. She kissed Garden when she’d found he’d gotten Marc out, and took the lad back to her temple to see if his mind could be healed.</p><p></p><p>William, putting his head together with Ravinica, thought that the ritual Fulsomeway had described would make a beacon for the Far Realms, bolstering summoning and gating. </p><p></p><p>With Marc returned, and Geb’s bodyguards secured at the Green Fairy, the group still was trying think of ways to negate Geb’s advantages, particularly his magic items. Even with a powerful dispel magic, sometimes very strong-willed people could push through the resistance. That’s when the group had a brainstorm.</p><p></p><p>Lurch. The redeemed beholder who was a resident and poster boy for the Church of Ilmater’s Order of Saint Alphone! If they could get him to help, a beholder’s anti-magic cone from the central eye was the most powerful deterrent to magic use possible, unless the other Churches of the city were willing to risk an all-out holy war by openly going after a priest favored by Beshaba.</p><p></p><p>They went to the Order, and spoke to Brother Derron, who tended to several of the redeemed, and called Lurch out to speak with them. (He had been eating breakfast – the offal from slaughterhouses.) The group told Lurch their request, and he asked them to wait while he spoke extensively with Brother Derron. Eventually Lurch explained he hadn’t left the walls of the Order in thirty years, but that all redeemed were given a test. Beholders lurked in the Far Realm, and Lurch could not, with all the good conscience he had, let his evil kin loose in the city. Though he was very afraid of what fighting might do to him, he agreed to aid the group in grounding Geb.</p><p></p><p>To aid him, keep the populace from panicking at the sight of him, and to not let Geb know Lurch was around, the group retired back to William’s uncle’s warehouse. For the price of some empty crates and the hire of some competent carpenters, the made one big crate that looked on the outside like many, something that could contain both Lurch and Brother Derron while sitting on the back of a wagon. They made it so a whole side could swing down, letting Lurch bring his eye into play quickly.</p><p></p><p>Lacking but a day now until Geb was supposed to be in place, the group gambled and prayed at the temple of Tymora for luck, plotted their plans, and hoped against hope this time they could finally get this bastard.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Isida Kep'Tukari, post: 6297602, member: 4441"] [b]Sessions 32 & 33[/b] When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were preparing for their fight with Father Geb in just under two tendays’ time. First off, William wanted several scrolls, particularly [I]dispel magic, dimensional anchor[/I], and [I]magic circle against evil[/I]. Feeling particularly paranoid, he made certain that the [I]magic circle[/I] scroll was Enlarged, and searched high and low to find a [I]dispel magic[/I] scroll created by a particularly talented spellcaster. Garden was also feeling particularly paranoid, and hunting low… and lower (he’s a gnome) for some poisons to put a crimp in Geb’s style without striking the man stone dead. (Garden has [I]some[/I] standards.) After several days of searching, he found two that would serve, though they were shockingly expensive. One was a poison called Night’s End, which fatigued and exhausted its victim before sending them to sleep. The other was a poison imported from Kara-Tur, komodo dragon poison, which would slow, then paralyze its victim. Those two little vials were to be safely tucked away until the appointed time. Garden had also obtained a wand of the delightfully long-ranged spell [I]Melf’s acid arrow[/I], a keen spell that would benefit from his training in targeting the vulnerable portions of humanoid anatomy. Knowing that activating wands was difficult for one without much arcane training, he also hunted amongst the job-hungry young arcanists of the city to find one who, without asking questions, would show up at a certain place at a certain time to cast a spell of [I]eagle’s splendor[/I] upon him, then leave. For a the right amount of gold, it wasn’t too hard to find someone. He also called upon the Origami clan, hiring several guards so at least two people could be watching over his shop day and night, both to protect his and Charissa’s investment as well as the lives of themselves and their employees (Nira Darkfire and the three other gnome apprentices). Charissa got to making a [I]far-reaching sight[/I] for her gun (working alongside her magician business partner Marlowe Miccar), so it would be easier to shoot Geb quite directly in the head when she found him. She also learned that purchasing [I]divine bane[/I] weapons was best done through the church of Ilmater, who sometimes used such a weapon quality when fighting against priests or divine champions of Bane. Such bullets would be very expensive, but with enough lead time, they could be obtained (she would be responsible for making the masterwork bullets herself, though, as her art was rare). While she was between bouts of crafting, she did hear a peculiar rumor that someone had commissioned [I]magebane[/I] arrows from an artisan in the Temple of Gond. While not illegal, and certainly such things were useful for adventurers exploring the horrible halls of Undermountain, it was unusual and stuck in Charissa’s mind. A few days after these preparations began, Garden, Steven, and Evelyn received an invitation to the Lady Wands’ home, with a phrasing that made it clear that “no” was not an acceptable answer. Garden got himself a new set of duds, and then all went, Steven taking his wife Ravinica (the Golden Queen) along with him. The Lady Wands received them in a parlor, which she sealed with magic as soon as the tea and cakes had been served. She looked troubled, and with good reason. Lady Wands was not having a good year, with the disastrous amber ooze incursion at Higharvestide, then the realization that one of her husband’s bastards was out to ruin her family. And things had taken yet another turn for the worse. As Garden had been doing some independent investigations on her behalf (albeit for some quiet pay) and the Violettes were the leader of their little group (in the Lady Wands’ eyes), she needed them to hear the news first. Her husband was dead, in Calimshan, apparently of an accident involving yet another of his extra-marital affairs. (A tragic case of mammary suffocation, or something equally sordid.) With Geb’s father dead, Lady Wands was certain that Geb would try to enact his vengeance upon her. She had been the one to throw both him and his mother (the illusionist daughter of a Calimshan harem slave) out of the house. Geb was the eldest Wands bastard, and Jayrin had been barely a year younger, of a different mother. They had both been exiled when Lady Wands had still been very angry about the affairs. The subsequent bastards she had been more philosophical about, and they lived and worked on a distant Wands estate. Lady Wands thought her estates were well-protected, but something else might occur, because Geb had little else to do but seek his vengeance. If the group could put any trouble in Geb’s way before it came to her doorstep, she would be grateful. The group said they were already planning such a thing because of what Geb had already done. Ravinica added she would try to see if anything was happening from the planar side, and do something to help if it was. Meanwhile, William had been given an assignment by his Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors’ (from henceforth known as WOMPs) superiors. There had been an unusual shortage in certain spell components, candles and small decorated bags, the items used in summoning spells. As it was not summoning week at any of the magical academies, nor was it hazing week for new students, nor had there been any other good reason for there to be so little on the shelves, the items were being bought up. But buy who and for why? (William had briefly mentioned this assignment to the group during one of their meetings at the Empty Grave, so Garden, unbeknownst to William, asked an Origami clan guard to subtly shadow William in case something happened. William never suspected a thing.) William checked the various stores, compared inventories (the WOMPs had tapped William for a reason; his warehouse experience) and found that at three stores there had not only been someone in buying up candles and bags, but also fly eyes and chaos ichor. The various proprietors each described a different buyer – a brown-haired brown-eyed human man, a slim red-headed human woman, or a blond green-eyed halfling. All, however, had scarred hands. As Charissa had shot Geb’s hands during their last encounter, William was pretty sure Geb was the buyer in all three cases, just disguised. Fly eyes were used to maximize the number of creatures summoned in a summoning spell, while chaos ichor was used to target specific planes, usually highly chaotic ones like Limbo or the Far Realm. One of the proprietors had told the tale of how the box he had used to store the chaos ichor had, at various times, morphed into a melon, a hat, his own head, a cat, a fish, and a trombone made of cheese. He’d finally gotten a priest of Tyr to put an [I]axiomatic[/I] charm on the box to make it stay a box. All together, that spelled that Geb was securing components for a mass summoning, probably from the Far Realm. And because he was getting arcane components, and Geb was a priest, that meant he had arcane support somewhere. After telling the group, Steven, Ravinica, and William went to the Temple of Mystra to speak to the High Priest. After the acolytes (not wanting to bring their superior the bad news that Sir Violette the Unlucky was here) had played a quick game of stone, scroll, knife, wizard, sage to determine who would announce them, they were conducted into the presence of the High Priest. He listened to William’s account (with an enforced word-count from Steven so as to not tax the High Priest’s time) with grave concern. If Geb succeeded, he would cause untold chaos and destruction in the city. But he was not ready yet, not if he were going to pause for a… paid encounter next week. If the group could arrest him privately, that would spare the political and religious ramifications that could linger for decades. Nevertheless, precautions would have to be taken. The High Priest said he would have several of his people in the blocks around the house where Geb was supposed to be, ready to employ a scroll of [I]dimension lock[/I] to both prevent the incursion of summoned creatures and to prevent Geb from escaping by magical means. The High Priest also gave William tiles of [I]break enchantment[/I] and [I]invisibility purge[/I] that would activate if the tile were snapped – that would help with Geb’s tendency to curse his enemies as well as his sneaky nature. A bit later, and separately but coincidentally at the same time, Charissa and William went to the Temple of Tymora to speak to the priests there about Geb’s impending incursion. The priest they eventually spoke to was very concerned about a holy war if the followers of Lady Luck went after Geb directly, and a war with the followers of Lady Doom could turn Waterdeep upside down. But they could, and would, be ready to descend upon the man if the group couldn’t arrest him themselves, just staying out of sight until the deed was done. And also, after the two had gambled a bit, they were given a coin of Tymora, the sign of the goddess’ favor. (As a point, though Lady Wands had asked Garden, Steven, and Evelyn to keep quiet about Geb’s identity as a Wands bastard, William blurted it out to the priest of Tymora first thing.) A few days later, at the Empty Grave, Shandri had some disturbing news. First off, three of her urchins were missing, all of them in the same ward where Geb’s house was located. Granted, it was a populous ward, but it was also three urchins, and she was worried. Secondly, Brother Sallis, the priest of Tymora down on Sucker Street who used to run the shrine opposite Father Geb, was missing, his temple neatly closed up. No reason had been given, he was just gone. And thirdly, Little Antler was dead, crushed by a wall in his cell collapsing. Just sheer bad luck. Oh dear. Also, a messenger arrived at the Empty Grave as they were discussing such dire happenings, a courier from the Wands estate. He bore a small wooden box, “with his Lady’s compliments.” Inside were six small purple-and-blue chains, very fine, that when wrapped around a weapon or wand or staff would make them the bane of the horrid abominations from the Far Realm. The group thanked the Lady on his behalf. Shandri and William went urchin-hunting later that day, while Garden, Charissa, and Shell (the lass from the Busty Wench who had been unfortunately partially transformed by an over-ambitious priest of Umberlee, and had learned to use her differences to increase her level of clientele) went to cut off one more of Geb’s possible escape routes. They’d learned that Geb would have six bodyguards, and he’d leave them across from the house during his appointment, in a tavern called the Blue Mushroom (which coincidentally connected on the back to the Green Fairy Festhall). Three of the bodyguards were to keep watch on the house while the other three had appointments of their own, then they would switch. Garden wanted all the bodyguards enjoying themselves at the same time, and that meant making a deal with the Madame. Garden was dressed to impress in pink pants, long pointed tasseled shoes, and a sparkly, sequined shirt in the manner of the legendary gnome bard Liberace. Attention was gathered, and the Madame met the three of them in a side room to discuss “their needs.” Garden, being fairly good at double-talk, spoke to her about some of their “concerns” (starting with a surreptitious bribe to get her to talk about her clients at all). When Garden outlined what he wanted, the Madame gave the indication that the “extra expense” was going to be substantial. Garden then began to comment about the mural on the wall, one that showed many dancers dressed in strings of beads (and little else). He inquired as to how many beads were in the painting. The Madame “estimated” about three hundred and fifty. Garden thought there might have been as many as four hundred, and how quiet the dancers could be, even with so many beads. The Madame agreed that the dancers could be remarkably silent with four hundred beads. Then she called for wine and music, giving Garden enough time to bring out several jewels worth the price and subtly pass them to her. Meanwhile, Shandri and William were searching for her missing urchins. The found the fate of two of them – one had left with a reputable caravan, having secured a job, and the other had taken service in a household in the neighborhood. Shandri lamented that she needed to teach her UPS urchins about letters of notice. But the third one, Marc, had been (according to two more of his friends who ran errands in the area) asked to come to a house a couple of days ago by a bushy-haired and bushy-bearded man with scarred hands. He’d paid the others for their silence, but between William’s gold and Shandri’s motherly stare, they quickly spilled their guts. Getting the name of the man (Daavid Malk), they tracked down the house, only to discover, to their not-surprised horror, that it was the same house Geb was supposed to be renting. Quickly, Shandri and William called an emergency conference at Garden’s home. They were miserable with guilt. Marc had already been missing for two days, and given Geb’s track record with children (the splinterwaif, for example), he could already be dead. Both Shandri and Steven had duties and needs to rescue him. But if the group attacked the house or were seen there early, they threw away all their advantages against Geb, and also any clean possibility of stopping him before he unleashed Far Realm horrors on the city. It was a case of the needs of saving thousands of people versus the life of one orphan. Faced with an impossible dilemma, Garden employed guile and stealth. He called upon Clan Origami ties for a major favor that would probably put his profits in the red for months, and asked the “black hats” of the clan to stage several burglaries in the same neighborhood as Geb’s house, and try to find and free Marc under that cover. Garden was good enough to know this sort of work wasn’t his forte, at least not when a child’s life was on the line. The following morning, one extremely disgruntled and damaged Origami master thief, bearing a bundle of unconscious urchin, showed up at Garden’s doorstep. The thief in question was a gnome, Fulsomeway Richadare, who was operating under the considerable handicap of a withered hand, a pounding headache, and a screaming case of the heebie-jeebies. He told Garden (once inside the protected shop) that Geb had not been in the house, for reasons that had become apparent. When Fulsomeway had snuck in the house, it was full of diluted insanity mist, meant to slowly drive someone mad. Marc the urchin had been in the living room in some kind of diagram, shackled in place, and slowly succumbing to the poison’s effects. Fulsomeway also reported that there was a large cage in the basement, and several bedroom upstairs. When Fulsomeway had unshackled Marc, he found there had been a curse-trap he’d missed (he berated himself for that), and it withered his hand into uselessness. One-handed, antitoxined to the gills, and using up probably a lifetime’s worth of luck, Fulsomeway had been able to escape with Marc, making it look like the boy had fled when the house had been broken into. (Fulsomeway had taken some expensive silverware as cover, not trusting the holy items on the diagram not to bite him.) Garden thanked him, and knew he’d be paying for this favor for a long time. Luckily, Shandri would probably cheerfully help him pay it. She kissed Garden when she’d found he’d gotten Marc out, and took the lad back to her temple to see if his mind could be healed. William, putting his head together with Ravinica, thought that the ritual Fulsomeway had described would make a beacon for the Far Realms, bolstering summoning and gating. With Marc returned, and Geb’s bodyguards secured at the Green Fairy, the group still was trying think of ways to negate Geb’s advantages, particularly his magic items. Even with a powerful dispel magic, sometimes very strong-willed people could push through the resistance. That’s when the group had a brainstorm. Lurch. The redeemed beholder who was a resident and poster boy for the Church of Ilmater’s Order of Saint Alphone! If they could get him to help, a beholder’s anti-magic cone from the central eye was the most powerful deterrent to magic use possible, unless the other Churches of the city were willing to risk an all-out holy war by openly going after a priest favored by Beshaba. They went to the Order, and spoke to Brother Derron, who tended to several of the redeemed, and called Lurch out to speak with them. (He had been eating breakfast – the offal from slaughterhouses.) The group told Lurch their request, and he asked them to wait while he spoke extensively with Brother Derron. Eventually Lurch explained he hadn’t left the walls of the Order in thirty years, but that all redeemed were given a test. Beholders lurked in the Far Realm, and Lurch could not, with all the good conscience he had, let his evil kin loose in the city. Though he was very afraid of what fighting might do to him, he agreed to aid the group in grounding Geb. To aid him, keep the populace from panicking at the sight of him, and to not let Geb know Lurch was around, the group retired back to William’s uncle’s warehouse. For the price of some empty crates and the hire of some competent carpenters, the made one big crate that looked on the outside like many, something that could contain both Lurch and Brother Derron while sitting on the back of a wagon. They made it so a whole side could swing down, letting Lurch bring his eye into play quickly. Lacking but a day now until Geb was supposed to be in place, the group gambled and prayed at the temple of Tymora for luck, plotted their plans, and hoped against hope this time they could finally get this bastard. [/QUOTE]
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