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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hayek" data-source="post: 5554706" data-attributes="member: 53760">Chapter 6 - High Finance… and Pirates! (s. 14-15)6.1 Missing Shipments (Part 1) The party wakes up the next day and finds snow falling on the city of Arastur, as winter has fully arrived. They first head to the residential property Erik was given. They find it to be a large, luxurious spread, already equipped with a handsome half-orc butler named Hunrit. Hunrit welcomes the new owners and the party is very pleased, to say the least, with their new home. Then, they head down to the business district of the city and seek out the New Moon Merchant Company’s offices. They aren’t particularly impressive, but aren’t completely run-down either. The company seems to be a fairly small but successful operation. Entering the establishment they speak to the current manager of the business, an elf named Yinlis. They present the seal and paperwork they received from Varna and Yinlis quickly accepts them as the new owners. He updates them on the merchant house’s current business outlook which is fairly grim. Bad Investments The business has been doing alright, but a couple of critical ventures have recently gone south. In the near term, the New Moon company had been generating strong, steady profits every year by dealing in a certain type of deep-woods truffle with the small village of Lindithis a few days travel from Arastur. The large fall crop was supposed to arrive a few weeks ago, but Yinlis has been unable to get in touch with anyone from the village, and a couple of messengers sent to investigate have not returned. More significantly, Yinlis financed a very large shipment of finely crafted elven furniture that was sent to the Jeweled Cities a couple of months ago. It was to be received by a merchant there, Jal’imry, who would escort it on to the great desert city of Ak’Ahana. There is a huge demand for this furniture there, but it is very expensive, and risky, to escort the goods through the deserts to reach the markets of Ak’Ahana. Yinlis is now involved in a dispute with Jal’imry’s merchant house, House Hajal, who insists the goods have yet to arrive in port in the city of Al’Zarqa, where Jal’imry was to accept the goods. Yinlis has it on very good authority from a reliable contact in the city that the shipment did arrive in port. The elven merchant goes on for a while about the specific contract terms that were laid out and when liability for the shipment would transfer between the two parties, and also begins going into detail about all the assets he had to put up to finance the crafting of the furniture in the first place. The party’s eyes glaze over a bit and they insist on the summary version which is that:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">First, the New Moon Merchant Company will go completely bankrupt in a few weeks unless the shipments of deep-woods truffles can be secured from the nearby village of Lindithis.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Second, the New Moon Merchant Company will go completely bankrupt in a few months due to the missing shipment of crafted elven furniture that was sent to the Jeweled Cities.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">To avoid going bankrupt from this issue, either:</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The missing furniture must be found,</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Or the party must prove that Jal’imry received the shipment of furniture and then press their case with a magistrate to make Jal’imry’s merchant house pay for the value of the entire shipment of lost goods.</li> </ul></li> </ul>Evil Undead Spiders are Bad for Business The party assures Yinlis they will take care of both of these concerns and tells him to just continue managing the day-to-day operations of the business. The first issue proves a relatively easy fix. The party makes a quick trip out to the small village where the deep-woods truffles are supposed to be harvested. They find its inhabitants have all been slain by a massive undead spider, known as a ‘tomb spider’. The creature’s victims arise as undead spawn, and the party is forced to fight a number of zombies and skeletons along with the spider itself, but they are hardened adventurers and are able to finish off the undead monstrosity fairly easily. In particular, The Zaza’s Axe of Light, an artifact she found in the dwarven tomb in the Watchtower near Verind’s Edge that was crafted to destroy undead, is very effective – granting her the ability to rain down radiant power upon her undead enemies. The Zaza senses a feeling of immense satisfaction from the artifact after the battle. <img src="http://theboundarylands.fileave.com/TomSpider_Upload.JPG" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> After the fight, the party searches the village and finds numerous crates of the deep-woods truffles waiting to be brought to market. They slowly haul them back to Arastur and Yinlis is overjoyed to, temporarily, have business booming again. With the infusion of cash the truffles will bring, Yinlis is able to pay a dividend to the new owners and the party accepts a generous payment of 2,000 gold. Reunion A few days later, the group of Verind’s Edge survivors arrives in town – Mujeh the goliath bard, Lock the halfling researcher, Lucinda the young village girl, and Old Breddy the (now one-armed) grizzled veteran soldier, along with the four remaining soldiers that the party recruited after the battle of Verind’s Edge. They are excited to see their friends again and share a round of drinks with Old Breddy and Mujeh. Lock is ecstatic to visit the great libraries of the fabled sages of Arastur, and Lucinda is just excited to be reunited with the party. The party fills the group in on recent developments and Mujeh offers to help with the operations of the New Moon merchant house, having always wanted to try his hand at business. The party also puts their recruited soldiers in the employ of the merchant house, to help Yinlis with any security needs the company may have. When not working for the merchant company, Aramil puts the recruits through some grueling military training, building them into an elite (or at least a slightly more elite) fighting force. After hearing the party’s story of the vicious tomb spider that could spawn new undead with its bite, Lock does some research in the city’s libraries. He confirms his initial suspicion – the tomb spider is an incredibly rare creature, and is definitely not a ‘natural’ undead creature, spawned by a common necromancer or twisted into existence from a place of dark necrotic energy. It would have to have been specifically created through some kind of powerful magical artifact that could tap straight into the Shadowfell and the awesome power of death over all living things. The party shrugs at Lock’s spooky discovery, not too concerned about the creature’s origins since the tomb spider has been taken care of.</blockquote>

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