Session Eight, Part One: A Delivery for Devlin
DM Note: We're in the land of frequent short updates for a while, as work is rather hectic. I'll grab time to update when I can, since I don't want to fall any farther behind than I already am. We may be doing a long session this Saturday again, depending on how the Friday website launch goes...
"We've got a package for Devlin." The tough-looking elf tossed a small leather bag lightly in her hand as she spoke.
The innkeeper's son didn't even bother looking up from where he was lazily cleaning his nails with a short knife. "You kin leave it here."
Now the human with her cut in. "We're supposed to give it to him directly."
A shrug. "Ain't seen 'm in a couple weeks. You kin wait if y'want."
The elf frowned. Then she set her hand down on the wooden desk. Something made a dull metallic sound. "Maybe we could take it up to his room for him." Her hand moved slightly, and she tapped her finger on the silvery coin that was revealed.
Now, the eyes moved - they stayed locked on the coin. "Up the hall on the left. Room 3."
But even as the Watchmen climbed the stairs, a shape slipped from the front room out into the streets...
"Look at all the dust," Di'Fier complained as they entered the room. "Looks like it hasn't been used for longer than two weeks..."
"Maybe...maybe not..." Dru crossed the room with a frown, inspecting the bookshelves.
Behind her, Di'Fier mumbled something in the arcane tongue of mages. "Nothing magical," he said after a few moments of concentration, wandering around the room. "Looks like it was our man - er, snake - all right." He bent down to the mass of pillows on the floor and held up a large patch of scaly skin.
Dru continued to study the bookshelves. "There's something not right. Some of these books aren't dusty like the others...and they don't fit in, either. Volumes of elvish poetry in the middle of books on architecture...someone's already been through the room."
Her partner sighed. "Maybe they missed something?" he asked, without much hope. Turning to the other shelves, he studied a collection of oddly misshapen jars. "Wonder what's in these...gah!"
Dru spun around. "What is it?"
"Whatever's in there...it moved."
As the two Watchmen looked on, a shape floated into view through the black syrup in the jar - an albino cave rat. A
living albino cave rat. Di'Fier cautiously set the jar back on the shelf. "I guess there's nothing else here."
"Wait a moment." Dru crossed the room to a bookshelf on the far wall. "Looks like a book fell back here." She pulled it free from its dusty prison and looked at it. "
An Accounte of Metals Base and Pure," she read. "Must have been back there a while." Dust billowed up from the pages as she flipped through them. "Over my head. Wait...what's this?"
Di'Fier joined her in looking at the book. On the back flyleaf was a sketch covered with geometric lines, notations and equations. "That looks like the lighthouse," Di'Fier said. "But I have no idea what the arrows pointing to the different parts of it mean."
"Look at the symbol in the margin, though," Dru said. "A V in a circle."
Her eyes met her partner's. As one, they said: "Councillor Verlaine."
The pair came down from the second floor, Dru with the book tucked under her arm. "Thanks," she said dryly to the kid behind the desk. "Very helpful. I'm sure Devlin will appreciate it."
As Di'Fier pushed open the door to leave, though, Dru's ears picked up sounds that set her hackles on edge. Any citizen of Freeport knows the sound of a fight, and a Freeport Watchman doubly so. The two burst through the door to assess the situation.
Three massive, tusked orcs had a young boy surrounded - a messenger, from the looks of the satchel that he clung to like a shipwrecked pirate to a floating beam. The rough laughter of the three humanoids echoed in the narrow street, but underneath it was the whisper of drawn blades. And then, a clear elven voice rang out over the scene:
"Hey! Pig-boys!"