The investigation begins in earnest
Dramatis personae update:
Helga (Female Human Rogue from Fennoscandia)
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After finishing breakfast, they adjourned upstairs and discussed both Kron's escapades and their bounty on the Hark.
Helga knew no more than they did about the Hark, despite her local knowledge. She had only been here a couple of weeks longer than them.
They decided, after some deliberation, to let her in to the group. Her rogue skills might be useful.
That morning they went to the Mages’ Society to get their magic items identified - Cure Light Wounds, Invisibility and Bane potions, +1 Mace and a Cloak of Resistance in need of repair. They asked if the Mages would swap the mace for a sword and thy were offered a swap for a longsword if they paid for the Identify. They decided to keep the mace.
They then asked if magic negated a wererat's special defences. They were a bit disheartened to hear that it didn’t.
Could they repair the magical cloak with the hole? Yes, it would take a few days and cost 250 gp.
How much is the garnet from M'dok worth? The Mages were willing to take it as payment for the Identify and repair. They didn’t actually say how much the gem was worth, and the party didn’t ask.
Taking the gem, the Mages promised repair in 2 days.
The party then headed off to find a weaponsmith who might have silver weapons.
They found 2: One had no silver weapons and no time to make any; the other had 7 arrowheads and another dagger.
Gaelle bought the arrowheads to add to her ever increasing stock.
Sorting out their stuff, Gaelle handed the silvered longsword to Seigfried to use and Cord took the mace.
It was now late morning and they headed to the Watch headquarters.
Asked their business, they said they were from Byzantium and wanted any information they had about the Hark.
A Watch Sergeant was called, as the watchmen didn’t want to give any information out on their own initiative. He told them that the militia have made investigations but have had no success to date.
Helga tried to steer the conversation round to their investigations, so they wouldn't go over the same ground, with some small success.
Gaelle mentioned the warehouses, and asked if they could investigate them.
"Highly irregular, as they are private property".
"Speaking along the line of helping the militia in the investigation?"
Gaelle, being very persuasive, got the sergeant to agree to let them help, as long as they agreed to be sworn in as militiamen.
He called over a corporal to take them to the "chapel" and get them sworn in.
They took the vows without hesitation, before asking if there was a minimum period of service. Luckily, there isn't for them.
They then asked about the lost scout. Apparently, he followed a trail from the warehouses, but reported that it petered out near Wharf 4. The warehouses are a couple of hundred yards to the south of Wharf 4, nearer Wharf 11.
They decided to head to the warehouses immediately, starting with the food warehouse.
Arriving at the warehouse, Gaelle told the guards that they were there on official watch business to investigate the attacks and were let in to snoop around.
They found that it had been pretty well tidied up and Gaelle could find no tracks. Helga failed to get any information about how the rats got into the warehouse.
They conversed some more with the guards who said there was a lot of food eaten, much more than would be expected from rats.
Going outside, Gaelle cast around for tracks, finding a large set of rat tracks heading through the warehouse area to the north.
She thought at first that it was where goods had been dragged, but quickly realised what they were. That many rat tracks stopped looking like tracks at all.
Following the trail, it petered out after a couple of hundred yards, as it crossed a main thoroughfare.
Heading to the other warehouse, Helga looked around to see if they were being followed, but no-one seems to be paying them much attention.
This warehouse was locked up. Gaelle looked for tracks and found none that stood out.
Going round to the back entrance, Gaelle had a look around and, picking a time when no-one was watching, Helga unsuccessfully tried to pick the lock. After waiting for some people to move away, Helga tried again, this time successfully.
Checking for alarms, Helga stepped in to the dark warehouse.
Gaelle lit a lantern and everyone had a look around - Cord and Helga saw something shiny and metallic just outside the light, and some movement further away.
Helga backed behind Cord, who grabbed the lantern and ran over to where he had seen the movement.
Gaelle shouted "We're the watch. Show yourselves"!"
That was when they were attacked by the dire rats.
Immediately, Li Kung threw her glaive at Gaelle's feet trying to strike a rat through the doorway past Gracientus.
Cord was badly bitten, but they easily dispatched the smelly beasts.
Searching round, they found a dire rat-sized hole in one corner of the warehouse, and one of the crates broken open and the packing material scattered about. An urn was lying beside the case.
Gaelle found dire rat tracks coming from the hole.
Cord kept watch while they spent the next 2 hours moving the packing crates around, looking for trapdoors, finding none.
Gaelle tried to enlarge the hole but, finding that the tunnel was only big enough for dire rats to pass through, decided not to bother any more.
Helga looked for chinks in the walls through which someone might "mentally control" the rats. Finding several possibilities, she took Gaelle outside to look for tracks. Gaelle found a set of prints which may have been made by someone looking into the warehouse, but couldn't pin the time down to the last few hours.
Following the tracks out on to the wooden boards of the wharf, she trailed the person northwards, most of the party noticing that they were drawing some attention from workers on the docks. A group of dockers are standing open mouthed, watching Gaelle moving slowly with her nose to the boards.
They headed from Wharf 11 to Wharf 7 before the trail petered out.
Li Kung cast around trying to see if any of the dockers were less or more smelly than the others. He has a real issue with personal hygiene.
He spotted a couple of workers on Wharf 5 watching them surreptitiously, who appeared to have been made to look like dockers.
Thinking to intimidate the “fake dockers”, they moved quickly toward Wharf 5, intending to turn and block them on the dock.
Gaelle looked at the nearby warehouses and noticed someone on the roof of the one nearest Wharf 5, who ducked down out of sight. Perhaps, Gaelle's notice had been noticed.
"Perhaps we should go and talk to them", said Seigfried.
The party chatted amongst themselves for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do.
Apparently, Helga is the most intimidating individual, so she got the nod.
When they get to the dock, they moved on to it and Helga gestured to the dockers to come to them. They immediately dove overboard, much to the party’s surprise.
Helga and Cord ran up and on to the boat, while the others ran to the end of the dock.
Cord and Gaelle spotted the men swimming towards Dock 4. Gaelle ordered them to “stop or I’ll shoot” while Cord and Helga ran back along the dock, to head them off.
The swimmers failed to heed her warning so Gaelle stuck 2 arrows in one of them, sinking him beneath the water.
Cord and Helga arrived at Dock 4 a few seconds before the swimmer, who looked like he was going to swim straight under the dock.
Li Kung ran back onto the boarding looking around the warehouses, seeing the man on the roof again.
The swimmer swam under Dock 4, 2 arrows missing him. Cord ran across the dock to see where he would come out. Helga ran to the end of the dock and hung over the end. Losing her grip, she fell in, but saw the swimmer going towards an opening under the dock.
Cord ran to the dockside and climbed down to the opening. Helga dog-paddled under the dock, heading toward Cord, Li Kung following him down to the opening. Gaelle also spotted the man on the warehouse, who again ducked out of sight.
Cord lit a torch while Helga climbed up to the side of the hole, in case someone came out to attack them.
Li Kung and Helga listened at the hole, Helga hearing the sound of someone scrabbling along the pipe on all fours, some distance away.
Gaelle wandered back to Dock 6, to question some dockers.
"Who owns the warehouse on Dock 5, with the guard on?"
"Councillor Borral, he's a merchant dealing in a lot of different stuff".
"What about the one at Dock 4?"
"Dunno, we're just dock workers. Ask the Harbourmaster, he'll know".
Meanwhile, Cord, Li Kung and Helga moved in to the pipe, Cord leading.
At a crossing of pipes they were attacked by rats and the thief they’d followed.
A dagger flew past Cord's head, but he couldn't see where it came from.
The rats quickly dispatched, Li Kung and Cord managed to grapple the thief, subduing him.
They hog tied him and attached him to Helga's long spear (great white hunter-style) and took him out of the sewer, meeting the others outside, finding Gracientus wet from falling in.
They talked for a couple of minutes, deciding where to take the unconscious man for questioning.
They were aware of possible attack if they did it there, but didn’t want to take him anywhere too public.
They decided to take him back to the warehouse where they fought the dire rats, pretending he was a drunken compatriot. Helga and Seigfried succeeded in the subterfuge, the others looked a bit shifty.
They got a few dodgy looks on the way, but made it there without hitch.
At the warehouse, they blocked up the ‘potential spy holes’ in the walls and set defences, before questioning their prisoner.
They thought that the Hark was an aggressive sort and would attack rather then let them gain information from one of his minions.
They set several crates around the dire rat hole that they could turn over into it, as well as a fairly light packing crate suspended by a rope over the rafters, held by Gracientus.
While they set their defences, Gaelle fitted the silver arrowheads to some of her arrows and Helga questioned the prisoner.
When they brought him round, they told him they were all evil bastards who didn't mind killing him (actually true), so he'd better tell them what they wanted to know.
Helga did the questioning, aided by Cord and Li Kung. Sort of Bad Cop-Bad Cop-Bad Cop.
"What do you want to know, don’t kill me. I've only been a thief for a week"
Helga - "it was a bad time to join"
He'd seen loads of rats, lots of big ones, a dozen or so men, 3 or 4 hobgoblins and a couple of dozen goblins.
“Apparently the big boss is a rat?”
“Dunno, never seen him. Only worked for him a week. “
"Any recognition signs?"
“I know the guys I work with and the bloke wot gives us the jobs.”
"Is the Hark the big boss?"
“Never heard that name.”
"What are the crimes you've done?”
“I watch the docks. One of the blokes says he did a merchant over, but he's a lying bastard.”
“Any Traps?”
“Tripwires with darts on every way into the chamber where we live.”
"Were they given anything? Any tokens?”
“They gave us this” (he nodded to a small pouch on his belt).
It contained a chunk of coriander root. The party took it and rubbed it all over themselves, especially their boots.
They untied his hands so he could draw a map of the bits of the drains he knew, Cord preparing his sword in case they were attacked at that moment.
They then knocked him out again and put him on top of a crate, out of the way.
Around 11 pm, they heard the warehouse door being opened not-quietly-enough, and saw the alleyway bathed in the light of the full moon.
Li Kung felt an affinity to someone he couldn’t see but, when asked from out of the darkness to leave, “This is not your fight. Go now, while you can!” he decided to remain with his "other" friends.
The invisible Hobgoblin thief crept across the warehouse and his invisible human wizard companion spiderclimbed up the wall into the rafters.
The thief suddenly appeared with his short sword stuck almost all the way through Gracientus, the wizard created an area of darkness between the party and himself, trying to hide his movements.
While the party attacked the hobgoblin and the dire rats that boiled up out of the hole (breaking through the crates piled on it), the wizard crept across the rafters and swept a fan of fire over those nearest his compatriot.
Li Kung was again “unlucky” with his glaive. It seemed to go everywhere except where he wanted it to.
The hobgoblin was neatly bisected by Cord and Gaelle bowed the wizard to death as he tried to spiderclimb his escape. The rats didn’t take much longer to deal with.
After taking items of interest from the wizard and thief, while Gracientus magically repaired the void in his abdomen, they decided to take the bodies and the prisoner to the watch barracks.
Gaelle sneaked outside and had a look around, spotting a figure on the roof of the adjacent warehouse. Even though only his head was showing, she shot him clean between the eyes.
Not seeing many people out in the middle of the night, they arrived at the barracks, being carefully challenged by the guards.
The party told them they'd captured people working for the Hark and they knew where his lair wais (Gaelle tried to explain, with Cord chipping in pertinent facts that were a bit closer to the truth than Gaelle’s).
They also wanted to stay the night at the barracks as they didn't feel safe.
Seigfried to Cord - "You don't feel safe? You chopped that guy clean in half!"
The desk sergeant called in the watch captain who de-briefed them.
They told the full story of their activities during the evening, without embellishment. The captain was impressed, and a little intimidated.
They slept that night in one of the barrack rooms, but left one person on guard with the desk sergeant. Glad for the company, the sergeant engaged whoever it was in conversation, except Seigfried, who he was told was an ignorant foreigner.