Scoundrels, scoundrels
Next, Auryn wishes Carlyle a pleasant evening as she has to discuss lending a ship with her friend Dawkins. She then heads to the Rear Admiral's estate to tell him all about the threat of the terrorist dawarves, the death of Ekossigan and the dangers of the Bleak Gate all while sharing a good glass of brandy. Morris thinks that strengthening and renewing the seal of Macbannin would be a good idea under these dire circumstances, so he'd schedule a secret meeting for the next midnight.
Auryn also explains that she'll take Carlyle and Asrabey and travel to the Bleak Gate as soon as they find a way to get there. This way, she hopes to prevent the coming of Nevard's prophecised second darkness. In addition, Morris agrees to lend the Khalandurrin to the RHC for their operation against the Bezna.
The next morning, we meet up again to search Stanfield Canal for hidden ways to bring cargo to the Bleak Gate. To our surprise, we find iron rings worked into every bridge of the canal which means that they could interact with fitting amulets or the like. We question all workers who are working in the barge transportation system around the canal and who match up with Hammrton's descriptions of Kell guild contacts for any clues on what the hell might be going on there.
Fortunately, some of then can tell us that they did ship large crates through the canals which lost much of their weight in the process. They don't really know how this would be possible (besides the obvious “it's magic”), but all these crates had some strange, rusty-red symbols painted on them. So it seems like we finally found our way to the Bleak Gate. The only thing that's still missing is the
rusty paint itself.
Then it is time to finally strike against the Scoundrel's theater. So we team up with Asrabey once again, take our remaining police force and perform a cunning pincer maneuver against the building. This way we hope to prevent any rat from fleeing the sinking ship. Thanks to the dreadnaught, the scoundrels pose little threat to our police as many of the Kell guildies are simply too scared to fight the fearsome guy with the whip-like flaming sword. The three of us also have little problems with their witchoil golem. Inside, we find a lot of Kell's accounting books and a sample of the rusty paint. Carlyle says that he'll surely find a way to reproduce the material. We also find clues that the Guild was involved in smuggling and shipping tons of high quality material to the Bleak Gate over the last few years. So whatever they are building in there, it is most likely a gigantic project.
Unfortunately, there is no sign of Kell. Nor of Augst. So we do try to verify our suspicion by checking up with Jules' logistics and Sechim's shipments over the same time span. And it is as we already guessed: the Obs are working on something huge. Something that needs masses of Alkahest and other chemicals, as well as adamantine and steel.
Next, we meet Harkover Lee once again as he promised to bring one of the dwarves under his spell. Literally. He manages to dominate the terrorist with ease, and then orders the guy to spill everything he knows. To both our shock and relief, he knows about three mode bombs which are placed in the harbor offices, the backside of the danoran embassy and the Navras Opera house. All of them were placed by Soknik's when they got hired to do some refurbishment. Needless to say that Auryn is furious as two of the bombs endanger something or someone she holds very dearly. So we make sure these bombs get defused as well before anyone can get to harm.
Regarding the “big blockbuster”, we manage to calculate the timing of the countdown and compare it to the subrail's velocity and distance traveled and are shocked to find out that they actually plan to detonate the bomb while the train is underneath the Aurum. So their target is less likely Stanfield and more likely the whole danoran and risuri peace delegation, including our King and Principal Minister.
(Okay, so this turns Zubov's plan into a V for Vendetta meets 9/11? I mean... Bomb in a subway train and fanatic suicide bombers who try to destroy the city's iconic twin towers. Especially if you consider the staged hostage scene that happened afterward.
We also had a few jokes about who the designated survivors of the delegations might be “just in case” and came to the conclusion that adding devas, like Stanfield, to the team might be sufficient. Could be quite hard for the danorans though.)
Meanwhile, Team B is charged with guarding and escorting our two VIPs to the harbor where they welcome Bishop Rivaldo from the Clergy of Crisillyir. As Brakken already managed to book a table at the Sunset Beach for lunch, the group heads there directly after Rivaldo's ship has landed. Inside the restaurant, both Brakken and Team B immediately recognize the striking amount of Bravuras who guard the area. Most of them are working as waiting staff though, so neither Steffan Eberhardt nor Rivaldo take much notice.
After they just started to place their orders, Team B recognizes two additional guests who enter the Sunset Beach. And it turns out that these two are none else but Augst and Spinning Wheel. Unfortunately, they appear to be guarded by two additional guys who appear to be affiliated with the Kells, so neither of them seems like an easy target and they are all on bodyguard duty themselves on top of that.
So they secretly decide to tell the Bravuras about their targets (“Carlyle wrote that they hate the Kells as much as we do”), so Gaethan agrees to go to the barkeep to give him the news about their rivals. The Bravura seems to understand and hands Gaethan a fine bottle of wine, making elaborate gestures to describe the exquisite taste while also telling the half-elf that they'll take care of them without disturbing their guests.
“Ah. Nice wine. Thanks.” says Gaethan, before murmuring “....so...did I really order that? Guess it's drinkable...” which leaves the Bravura (who really happened to know a good deal about wine) speechless.
(Yeah, Gaethan tends to forget what he just talked about and he doesn't know jack about wine. Poor Mr. Carlyle, he'd mourn the loss of such a good bottle.)
While Gaethan is busy, Serena takes her messenger feather and heads to the restroom. She then uses the feather to send a message to Auryn and Carlyle about the news that they found Augst and Spinning Wheel but have their hands bound as they have to accompany the VIPs and don't really wish to drag them into combat yet again.
During all of this, the three guests of honor start exchanging experiences and views after they finished their lunch. It turns out that the Bishop is both xenophobic (
poor Dima) and seems to have rather strange fetishes
(in a hindsight: poor Brakken). Once Serena and Gaethan return, they all notice that someone is setting up a stage and it turns out that none else but Rock Rackus is scheduled as today's act.
Carlao turns all fangirl when she hears about it “Gosh, I'd LOVE to see Rock. His music is so cool!” she exclaims before reminding herself that she cannot possibly dictate her guest's schedules. Serena agrees and they kind of decide to go to his next gig together.
After a while, our team arrives at the Sunset Beach, but we decide to stay in the background first. The two Kell lieutenants slowly realize that this restaurant is not what it used to be, so they pay and decide to split up and leave. The two of us leave Spinning Wheel in the care of the Bravuras and take care of Augst and the two bodyguards. But when we are happy to have finally found Augst, we find out that Augst was merely an illusion spell worn by Spinning Wheel.
So we take this guy and his goons to the RHC all while we are still wondering who the other Spinning wheel might be. We find out that Spinning Wheel was only tasked with organizing the Guild's smuggling activities, so he pleads for mercy and offers to spill everything. We agree to get him charged for a severe case of smuggling, but not high treason. In return, he can get us more intricate information about the materials he had been smuggling for the Guild: in most cases high priced metals like mithril, adamant and specifically treated steel, but also acids. He's been doing this for three years now and yes, we can totally have that rusty amulet that's needed to take the route through the iron rings in the canal to “that other place”. He's a bit proud when he tells us that he stole that thing from Kell's pocket.
Regarding Augst, he can tell us that the lawyer vanished and that “this guy Norm” convinced him to stay and keep their contacts alive. Even if he was scared to the bone and simply wanted to leave the Kells after having heard about the charge of high treason. So this sounds all suspicious as hell as Norm is the one Cippiano called his inside job in the Kell Guild.
Shortly after, we get a pretty badly beaten “Norm” delivery who turns out to be another smuggler called Slylyx. He tells us that Kell found out about the real Norm weeks ago and turned him to fish food.
(Isn't that usually how the Familia handles things?)
He basically tells the same stuff as Spinning Wheel, but he's a bit more self-confident and almost proud. But he knows one intricate detail Spinning Wheel didn't: If one wishes to stay in the Bleak Gate for longer than 5 minutes after transitioning, then one would need to use a magic wand to make the transition permanent. And he happens to have one of these wands inside his home. He also had a magical amulet, but it was a one-time use amulet only and he used it up while trying to flee the Bravuras. However, if we got a hand on the rusty paint, then this might suffice as well.
So it seems like we got all we need to go to the Bleak Gate once Carlyle finishes his alchemical reproduction procedure. But there's still unfinished business as we still have to intercept the Bezna. So we take the hint of Team B that Kvarty Gorbati might have been the shooter at Soknik's and find him in an inn in Central. He's terribly sorry that he didn't know these guys down there were no attackers, but RHC agents and he also didn't know that his employers were followers of Grandis Komanov. We accept his apology and offer him a chance of redeeming himself: We'd like to intercept another shipment of the terrorists and he might be our backup shooter on the Khalandurrin tonight.
Kvarty is glad to be of help after that embarrassing situation so we plan to meet him in the harbor at the Khalandurrin's dock in the evening. A few hours later, we find ourselves and the dwarf aboard the mighty steam ship and drive large patrol circles through the Flint bay area. As the sun sets and the stars rise, we get a bit anxious that the terrorists might have just played us a second time. And we both know that the Vekeshi will be meeting pretty soon to re-empower the seal of Macbannin.
At midnight, we then suddenly spot small ripples on the ocean surface, indicating that there might be a ship driving closely by. When we see no corresponding lights on the sea, we come to the conclusion that this might just be the Bezna, driving without lights to avoid getting caught by our harbor police. So we ask our captain to head to the supposed ship's general direction and flash the Khalandurrin's lights brightly so that Kvarty can get a perfect aim.
As we already guessed, we can see the Bezna as soon as we put our lights to maximum. In reaction, the drakran ship accelerates almost immediately as they try to outpace their pursuers. We fear that these mad dwarves might just try to kamikaze-run into the harbor, so Carlyle takes Auryn's hand and teleports the two of us onto the deck of the Bezna.
The dwarves who appear to be just as bald as our Komanov terrorists are pretty shocked to see two people appearing on their deck and so they sound an alarm and try to fight us. They don't pose much of a threat, but soon after the alarm is rung, hatches open and several grotesquely deformed and mutated bulettes emerge from the decks below, ready to attack anyone who stands in their way (including some of the remaining dwarves).
We are soon surrounded by these abominations and agree to leave the Bezna via teleportation should we get totally overwhelmed. Thankfully, Kvarty throws in some well-aimed shots from his sniper position on the Khalandurrin to distract the beasts a bit. We're also pretty relieved to see that, while the mutated beasts are pretty resistant to our standard tactics, they are quite vulnerable to von Recklinghausen's rapier and time-space-based attacks.
(As I took it, Tiz used the bulette as basic creature and added some nasty random templates to them. If I remember correctly, one of them got turned into an ooze, another one was a bulette swarm, the next one was part construct and one was a multi-headed/hydra type. Whatever happens when you throw a normal monster into the Malice Lands I guess )
After a long and tedious fight we manage to slay the beasts and come out alive. Being already strained and tired, we then receive a call from the Old Stag to gather at Macbannin's seal. So we take a little time to thank Kvarty for his help and then excuse ourselves as we got another important appointment tonight.