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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 455498" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chinese Take-outChapter 36, “The Jewelry Auction”, September 19, 1018, 6:00 P.M. The group of Hiroshi, Lannon, Lono and Mark head out to the Gem and Jewelry auction.   They are served a fine meal with unlimited beverage.  All eighty tables are full, and female models  parade across the stage during the meal wearing the jewelry.   The auction begins, and moves rather quickly through the first four lots, with three of them selling as complete lots.Hiroshi’s lot is fifth, consists of Mark’s four diamonds, Lono’s eight gems, Hiroshi’s forty-seven gems and Lannon’s rings.   The bid for the lot reaches a total of 255,000 GP, which is considerably less than the 335,000 reserve that they have set.  As the auctioneer goes to his stalling tactic of opening the sealed-reserve envelope, the auction house owner uses signals to ask Hiroshi if he wishes to waive the reserve.  Hiroshi indicates that he does not, and the auctioneer announces that the reserve was not met, and asks if the high bidder wishes to raise his bid.  He does, but not by much, so the lot is broken up into sub lots for individual auctions.The first sub-lot is the smallest of Mark’s four diamonds, which sells for 73,700 GP, higher than both Hiroshi’s appraised value and the reserve price.  The second sub-lot is the next largest diamond, which sells for 65,500 GP, less than the appraised value but above.  The next sized one is sub-lot three, selling for 99,100 GP, significantly above both the appraised and reserve value.  The final diamond is sub-lot four, which surprisingly only gets to a bid of 93,000 GP, well below the appraised value but still slightly above the reserve, so it also sells.    Lono’s gems only get a bid of 6,300 GP, which does not meet the 8,000 GP reserve and Hiroshi had not had time to explain the signals to Lono so they do not sell.   The next three sub-lots are Hiroshi’s gems, which bring in a total of 54,000 GP.  The final sub-lot is Lannon’s rings which sell for a disappointing 1,000 GP.   The last lot in the auction is the fancy jewelry, which also sells for large quantities of money.  Hiroshi and the others go to settle up with the auction house.  Their grand total for the lot comes to 386,300 GP, which they choose to leave as auction house credit.  This gives the party a credit balance of 347,670 GP for the next day’s action.   They head back to the Ming Estate.While Hiroshi, Lannon, Lono and Mark are at the Gem and Jewelry auction the group of Duegar, Fiona, Mojo, Kim, and Toshiro are sitting around the main living room of the Ming Castle, waiting for Serita to return from Shosun.   Fiona comments that “She should have been back long before now.”  Mojo comments “Yeah.  Maybe this is an opportunity.  It’s not too late for us to change hotels.”  “We’re not at a hotel,” Kim answers.   Serita then teleports into the middle of the room.  She unceremoniously dumps Timothy out of the bag of holding, intentionally flinging him onto the floor headfirst in the process.  The others in the room notice that she is red-faced and angrier than usual.   Fiona is the only one brave enough in the room to ask “What’s going on?”  Serita then shouts  “MEN!” and tosses one of the three bags of holding over Mojo.  She then says “Here’s your money.  All seventy thousand GP of it!”  “Seventy thousand?” asks Fiona.  “Yes, ask HIM,” she says, pointing to Timothy who is both now standing up and trying to find furniture to hide behind.  Serita then blurts out “We gave him only three instructions.  Don’t sell the gem for fewer than 100,000  GP.   Don’t take your eyes off the money.  And don’t spend it on gnomes.  You’d think he’d be able to follow at least one of those, but no, he messes up all three.”  She then storms out of the room towards her own quarters.The other surrounds Timothy, Fiona asking “OK, what happened.”  “You didn’t buy any magic beans did you?” asks Mojo.  Timothy tries to explain how he had the gem reappraised, as found that it was only valued at ninety thousand rather than Hiroshi’s estimate of one-hundred-thousand.  “So, you sold it for ninety?” says Fiona, “But the reserve was one-hundred.”  “I put the reserve at ninety,” Timothy says.   “So it sold for ninety?” asks Fiona.  “No, ninety-two” the tall cleric replies.   “OK, comments Mojo, that’s no so bad, not great, but not so bad.  What about the other twenty-two thousand.  That must have been some expensive gnome.”Timothy explains how the auction house fee was thirteen percent, bringing him down to eighty-thousand.   “That still leaves ten thousand.” Comments Fiona.   Timothy starts to explain how he bought some magical dust, that works as a potent sleep spell.   “Hold it, you’re saying that you bought ten thousand GP worth of sleep dust?”   “Yes,” he answers.  Fiona shakes her head, commenting “Why is it that it’s always the lawful-good clerics who get in trouble?”  Timothy is on the verge of tears, and says “I wish Serita was here.”  To which Fiona says “No, I don’t think you do.”  He corrects her, saying “No, I meant I wish she was there when I bought the dust.”  “We do too,” adds Mojo.Duegar asks “how much of this dust did you purchase.”  Timothy replies five doses, to which Mojo exclaims “You spent two grand on each one!  Boy did they see you coming.”  Fiona lets out an sigh, and starts to bang her head on the table.  Mojo stops her, saying “Don’t do that, you could hurt yourself, bang HIS head on the table instead.”   I’ll take care of this,” says Duegar.  He goes over to Timothy, and says “This will hurt you more than it does me.” He reaches into his old and smelly pickled hearing, which he begins to strikes the cleric with.  Duegar blurts out “You did this.  You know she’ll be complaining about this for the next thirty years, and we’ll be the ones who have to hear it.”   The others eventually stop Duegar from his assault with a deadly fish.Mojo says “I think this calls for drinks.”  Fiona looks at Timothy in disgust, and says “I may just join you for that.”  “Gee, that almost makes up for what Timothy lost,” comments Mojo.  “Well at least he didn’t spend it on gnomes” says Toshiro.   Timothy does not answer.   The others eventually return from the jewelry auction, and announce to the party that they now have 347,670 GP in credit for the next day’s action.  September 20, 1018, 8:00 A.M. The group of Cassie, Duegar, Fiona, Hiroshi, Kim, Lannon, Lono, Mark, Mojo and Toshiro gather in the main dining hall with two-dozen of the Mings for breakfast.   “I’m not surprised that Timothy hasn’t joined us,” comments Fiona.   Duegar again starts to explain his strategy of relating the half-minotaurs onto Morgarth.  Fiona turns to him, and says “Listen, we’re not buying any half-minotaurs,” she then turns to Lono “or Polynesian women either.”   The Ming leader, Tak-Tung, asks what their strategy is.   They tell him of their plan to purchase the Hengeyokai.  He points out one possible snag, namely that the Ming Estate has a strict policy of no slaves allowed within their walls.   “We’re not going to keep them slaves, we’re freeing them and bringing them home,” says Fiona.   Tak-Tung answers, “I know, but you can’t bring them in here with the collars on, and if you take the collars off what’s to keep them from flying or running away and being recaptured in the city by somebody else?”  He suggests that they find some alternative lodgings in this part of the city to bring them in the short-term.In order to have some gauge as to how much money slaves might sell for she asks Tak-Tung.  He answers that he does not know, that a few decades back the clan had actually gone to the auctions to purchase and free any captured dwarves, but that they discontinued that practice as it caused the slavers to go out of their way to find and capture dwarves.   Tak-Tung suggests going to the tax library, and consulting tax records for the auction house.  Cassie, Aradyn and four Ming Estate guards leave to do this, with her reporting back mid-morning.  She has found that human slaves tend to sell for between ten and twenty thousand GP, common monsters for less, and other humanoid races for more.  The highest price she saw listed, for a Fire Giant, was 120,000 GP.    They conclude that based on that they probably have enough for the Hengeyokai lot, although they may have to exceed the deposit amount and get some more money later.   They group prepares to head over to the auction.  Since only twelve of the fourteen can go, they decide to leave behind Timothy, who is still hiding from Serita, and Narg, who is still asleep.    Mojo asks Serita “Why did you say Timothy spent the money on gnomes?”  She answers “He didn’t tell you?  The fast-talking salesman who sold him the dust was a gnome.”  “Ah, that clears a lot up,” comments Fiona.They arrive at the auction house and put the additional 70,040 GP that came from the Shosun auction as a deposit as well as 4,500 GP from Mojo, 320 GP from Lannon and 100 GP from Toshiro.  This brings their total to 422,631 GP, allowing them to bid up to a total of 845,262 GP.</blockquote>

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