Recap 11
We take Kvarty, the wizard and Rock to the guard post of the fair. On our short „trip“ there, we talk a bit with Kvarty and he tells us that he's a big game hunter with experiences in hunting monsters. When he saw the flying beasts, he knew that the fair was in imminent danger, so he tried to help eliminate the threat. When he saw that Rock was acting utterly reckless and incompetent, he had to stop him before he could do any more harm. He continues to talk about ammunition and we ask him about his occupation. He explains that most times he's just organizing hunts for rich people, but we also learn that he is a bit of a bounty hunter. And while there is nothing wrong with hunting for an official bounty, it kind of seems that he doesn't always question whether the bounty is legitimate or not. Still, Kvarty was a great help in dealing with Rock, so we thank him, note his whereabouts in Flint and release him.
In the guard post (or rather guard tent), we see a small girl who's chained up for pickpocketing. She tries to convince us that she's innocent, but we try to ignore her since cases of theft are clearly a job for the police, not the RHC.
We try to get some useful information out of the flying monster's dwarven victim, but the guy is all nonsense and smells like he's been drowned in booze, so we order him to be brought to the nearest police station to sober up. Next one on our list is the wizard who used the golden staff and accidentally summoned more and more monsters. He introduces himself as Simon Langfield, a student of magic who didn't have enough money to buy himself a proper wand or even staff. So he resorted to a rather shady dealer to get one for cheap. We lecture him not to trust anyone who'd want to sell potentially potent or dangerous items in back alleys and tell him that we have to confiscate his staff.
Fortunately, Simon tells us how he got the staff: He was approached by a good-looking gentleman who saw him coming out of a magic item tent. This man sent him to a trinket booth where he bought a small chest containing information on how, where and when to meet the person who'd sell him the staff: some hooded, cautious woman. He says that the staff was extraordinarily cheap and that he only wanted to use it for self-defense. Which is what he did when the monsters started appearing out of nowhere. As he sounds pretty honest, we ask him for his address should further questions arise and release him.
Thinking about the description of the mysterious gentleman who approached Simon Langfield, we remember the description the young wizard gave to us from a similar description. One of the technicians working for MacBannin told us of a well-dressed man with a golden livree who also worked for the late mayor of the Nettles.
As we discuss the guy, the small girl approaches us again and tells us that she knows this man and might lead us to him if we could do her a favour. We brush her off first, but then she shows us the iron amulet she stole from the man. An amulet which looks quite similar to the ones MacBannin gave us when we tried to save the Nettles. We thank her for the tip and promise to return to her later – as soon as we finish our interrogation of Rock.
Rock tries to tell us that the whole incident was not realy his fault, after all he just wanted to protect his faithful fans. He says that he never wanted to hurt the victim, it just happened that his arm twitched and he misfired horribly. We kind of berate Rackus that he didn't listen to our advice to not use his damn pistol on an arms exhibit and that this mess is what his recklessness got him into. After all, he is now not only going to end up jail, but also might lose a good part of his fanbase. He is relieved when we tell him that we saw what happened and that he most likely won't be charged with attempted murder. Still his shooting is a t least a case of negligent assault, so he will face some time in prison. We advise him to get himself a good attorney before we hand him over to the police officials.
(well yes, we totally saw this coming. Rock seems like the child who has to burn himself to learn that fire is hot. And even after the whole story, we kind of thought that losing his fans might hurt him more than a prison sentence. On the other hand, having Rock in prison meant that the people – including us - were safe from his extravaganza at least for some time) (I still amused, why they despise Rock Rakus as much they do. They just met the guy but they hated him even before meeting him. Seems doing new music is always a bad thing if being judged by people who like old music?)
Next, we try to look out for more people who might be interested in cheap magic items. We manage to find a nervous looking young girl who is coming out of the trinket tent and who is carrying a small chest. We follow her to the Kaybeau station where she seems to be looking for someone. When she doen't seem to be able to find anyone (besides some workers eating lunch), she departs and heads to an impressive building in the central district. (The girl was there too early and i hoped the Players would come back later.) As we suspect that the girl might meet her shady dealer there, we follow her into the building (thanks to Caryle's spectacular knowledge of all kinds of locks) and try to listen to any kind of conversation she might have.
To our surprise, it seems like the girl we followed is actually the daughter of the Lord judge of Flint who came late for dinner and got grounded by her pretty angry father. We are pretty embarasssed to have accidentally broken into the house of such an important figure and sneak out again before we get noticed. As this appoach got us nowhere, we decide to talk to the little thief at the fair again. (*evil grin*)
The girl promises to help us to the best of her abilities if we can get her free and we agree that while being a little criminal, she poses no real threat and might have learned her lesson. She can lead us directly to the mysterious gentleman who doesn't seem too surprised to be approached by the RHC (well, he tried to flirt with Auryn, but was kind of sure that there had to be more to this Lady than meets the eye. Oh how right he was.). He introduces himself as Isaac Randall and instantly confesses that he worked for Macbannin, but thought that he was managing some sort of secret government research facilities.
We also arrest the woman who sold the small chests and confiscate all of her trinkets as evidence. Then we ask Margit to get both of them safely transferred to the RHC while we try to meet up with the actual black market „merchant“. We peek through the letters and identify the time and place of the next transaction. Being cautious creatures, we plan to examine the place an hour before the transaction should take place and look out for any kind of traps or hidden objects.
When Auryn searches some randomly placed pipes, she is suddenly attacked by six miniature... cannons! After being hit by a glancing blow, we instantly fight back. Carlyle seems pretty irated by the sudden attack on his colleague and smashes three of the constructs to tiny bits.He gets shot afterwards, but both of them manage to dissemble all of them in the end. When we take a closer look at the creature's „brains“, we realize that they are actually pretty advanced and were acting autonomously (They had some kind of proto-processors inside them). We also see the brand of Fordren Industries on their hulls which unnerves Auryn. Pulling herself together, she calls Carlyle to be worthy of being an „esteemed husband“ for his prowess and manners.
(„No one shoots at a lady's face“ he said. Not that Auryn would call herself a lady, at least not in the traditional Risuri meaning of the word. But her calling him „worthy of being an esteemed husband“ instead of „gentleman“ makes them even I guess)
After the rather loud fight, we calm both the arriving police officers and the neighbours down and call the incident a simple malfunction of automatons. When we are certain to have cleared the meeting place of all „nasty surprises“ and any evidence of our fight, look out for good hideouts and hide there. At the given time, a woman and some hooded bodyguard show up and we try to arrest the two. As they don't seem to be very keen on going to prison, they attack us immediately.
It turns out that the „bodyguard“ is some sort of robo-golem who starts mauling at Mr. Carlyle. The woman herself draws a cannon out of nowhere and shoots Carlyle who gets blown through the alley and suffers a nasty wound to his chest. As Carlyle was in point blank range, she accidentally „kills“ her unseen servant and harms her robot with the explosion. This time, Auryn is the one to get angry and she downs the woman with a few precise strikes. Carlyle heals himself with an infusion and together we fight the robot which erupts a necrotic substance (witchoil?) after every hit. When we finally beat the thing, its chest erupts in some strange spacetime bubble and drops a lot of magic items to the ground. (Loot! Being avid Diablo players, we really laughed when we saw the magic items pop and drop out of nowhere. We guessed that this robo/golem/Eidolon was somehow crossbred with a bag of holding). As we knocked the woman out and don't want to interrogate her in the street, we carry her to the local police station and make sure that she is transferred to the RHC HQ as well.
(As a note: Kaja's cannon should really not be able to crit x4. We were so utterly shocked when Kaya rolled a 20 when she shot at Carlyle and had she confirmed the crit, he would have been done for good from full HP to – 30 or so). (The players were really annoyed about the cannon. A crit would have killed Mr. Carlyle.)
We head back to the KATE as we are still officially on guard duty. We use this time to return to the young Mr. Carlyle and ask him about the „processors“ we found in the miniature cannons. He explains that these parts were used as prototypes for developing the B.E.A.R. When we show him parts of the serial numbers we found on some of the parts, he checks them with his list of previous orders and tells us that they were originally ordered by Macbannin and paid for by the Flint treasury. (The conspiracy rears his/her ugly head again. *grin*)
After this, we make sure that the magical artifacts the woman wanted to sell on the black market are kept in a secure place. Carlyle wants to pack them in leaded linen, but when he touches the items briefly, he is subject to a sudden vision of his and Srasama's death and his rebirth as a Deva. This leads us to the conclusion that the artifacts might be cursed, so we demand that no one else should touch them. Carlyle analyses the artifacts for traces of planar energy (thanks, Gale!) and finds an aura of Apet energy on them.
After our work at the KATE is done, we return to the HQ for the interrogation of our prisoners. Carlyle suggests that we should include Team 1 in this process as we got clues that our suspects might be linked to the case Macbannin, which falls under Team 1's responsibility. Auryn and Margit do not object, so we invite them to join in. (The players are strict about responsibilities and always respect the other teams cases.)
We learn that the mysterious woman is called Kaja Stewart who, at first, isn't really keen on speaking to RHC officers. After an unnaturally intense verbal intimidation by Auryn, she opens up a bit and tells us that she had been conducting magical extradimensional research for Macbannin. She also developed the witchoil catalyst which was later used to energize the oil. When she heared of Macbannin's demise, she wanted to avoid being questioned and took all artifacts she could get her hands on. She then offered Randall a share if he helped her sell the items at the black market. We decide to keep her at the RHC a bit longer, but offer her to free her of being charged with the attack on two RHC constables should she cooperate. She agrees and we make sure that she's locked up safely in our cells.
We then ask Isaac Randall the same questions, but he doesn't really have more to say than Kaja. We also decide to keep him imprisoned for the time being as we don't know whether the two of them were the last ex-employees of Macbannin we'd run into.
Team 1 thanks us for our „invitation“. In return, they share a story of a mysterious case they couldn't wrap their heads around. The lead us to some abandoned warehouse of a Vantrys steelworks factory. There they show us the body of a man who must have been dead for quite a while. What is most intriguing about the older human is the fact that he has been tied up with some massive steel rod and had his head smashed by a heavy object. Besides him lie the remnants of a bronze golem which has been smashed to pieces by some unknown force. We immediately link the bent metal to our very special friend, Leone Quintal.
We search the crime scene for further clues and find an iron ring, the initials A.G., a shattered rusty amulet, timetables for ships sailing to Elfaivar, and some really high quality piece of cloth. In addition, it seems like someone has poured witchoil down the dead man's throat. Auryn immediately identifies the cloth as Elfaivaran high fashion fabric and concludes that this must have been part of a pretty high class garment. She remembers Nathan Jierre who said he saw her ancestor Kasvarina on Axis Island and muses whether Kasvarina (or simply one of her dresses) might have been here.
Carlyle tries to attune himself to the spirit of this place and the events that might have happened here and he recieves a foggy vision: The now deceased man leads a seemingly dazed and helpless Eladrin woman out of the iron ring. A bronze golem accompanies the two. Then a second man who looks just like Leone Quintal enters the scene. He uses one of the metal rods to magicaly tie up the first man and then force-feeds him a bottle of witchoil. The woman looks at the scene and seems shocked, but doesn't really react as if she was kind of drugged. Then the tied up man seems to order his golem to attack him and the golem smashes the man's skull with his fist. This causes the metalbender to enrage, he shatters the golem to pieces with his magic and then takes the woman's hand and leads her back to where he came from. (I think that it would have a shame if the whole scene was wasted without the vision. The riddle can not be solved at this stage and i feared that the incident would go unnoticed without clues.)
Carlyle mumbles that the man must have been very brave and honors him for what he tried to do. He carefully releases him from his bonds and suggests that he is given a proper grave. When he realizes that Auryn and couldn't understand what he just witnessed, he tells her of his vision. Auryn is shocked to hear that Kasvarina might be a captive of Leone Quintal. She concludes that Kasvarina might have been under the influence of some alchemical substance and that she might not have been able to control her movements because of this. She also kind of tells Carlyle that someone used a similar drug on her once and that she loathes even thinking about that incident. (*evil grin* another personal grudge Auryn will carefully nurse. Poor Leone will get his share of pain, if she ever confronts him again.)
To Team 1 we suggest that they could try out whether the iron ring might lead them to Quinta's tracks. We offer them to use the amulets we got from Macbannin but warn them that the metal mage is no harmless opponent. As much as we want to look for Kasvarina and Quintal ourselves, we still have to follow the rules and everything Macbannin should be handled by Team 1. Unless we want to oppose Saxby. Which is something we really don't want to do.
We return to the RHC to write down our last reports where we are summoned immediately to Chief inspectress Saxby (well, that escalated quickly). She is pretty angry about another request from Col. Sebastian Harlock from the military academy where he demands to get both the flying monsters and Kaja Stewart. Thinking about the fact that we just brought Kaja, Isaac and the beasts to the RHC on this very same day, we find this rather strange. As such „secret“ news usually don't spread that fast, we suspect that we might have a mole in the RHC staff who's handing out insider information to the military academy. (ouch, that caught me unprepared.)
Saxby finds this a reasonable conclusion and orders us to find the culprit as soon as possible. So, we gather information about all RHC employees who coud have had access to the information that we arrested Kaja and Isaac and brought some strange, dead, magical beasties to the examination room. Then we thin down the list to all people who were present in the timeframe between 1 and 3 hours ago (getting letters from the RHC to the academy and back usually takes at least 1 hour, and our interrogation was 3 hours ago). (My Players love calculating things and that gets me into trouble)
We search the attendance protocols and find out that a young technician left the RHC 2 ½ hours ago due to familial problems. We ask for his files and also send a letter to Pardwright University to check for the authenticity of his degrees and certificates. In addition, we plan to question all of the other staff next morning just to be sure to catch them all.
Before Carlyle can get home to get some rest, Auryn kind of demands that the two of them go out for a drink. She chooses the golden sawfish and orders a „Voice of Rot“ cocktail. (Which is something akin to a Zombie. So really strong stuff.). Before she's served, Kronk informs her that some reporters came earlier and asked for her (Auryn Galadin, not Calla Aurea). She finds this strange and asks Kronk to send them to the RHC should they need official RHC statements. (she really doesn't want her friends to get entangled in her official business and Saxby is already pretty unamused about the news coverage of the agents Auryn and Carlyle...)
They head over to a separee and discuss the reason why Auryn acted so unnerved after leaving the the KATE for the first time. She tells Carlyle of their invitation to Goodson's upcoming wedding and that she might not be able to avoid a confrontation with Francis Fordren at this event since he and Goodson seem to be business partners. She explains that she'd love to see the guy dead, but she knows that she cannot kill him without losing everything she cares for and everything she has built up for herself in Risur. She'd probably lose not only her job and her freedom, but also her friends and her good reputation. Nonetheless, she's fed up with hiding herself and also fed up with living in fear of a man or showing her true heritage. She says that she does want to attend to Goodson's wedding, but that she wants to do so with her head held high and therefore triumph over Fordren in the true spirit of Vekesh.
(„He's just a man and here I am on my home turf. Here I am in control. Here I got my friends and allies. I will show him that he has no power over me.“. She slowly realizes that, for her, this is a power struggle and she wants to believe that showing her enemy that she'd not only „survived“, but become more powerful in the process will help her truely defeat him on an ideological level)
Auryn then asks Carlyle to be loyal to her in this matter and to promise that he'd take her side and defend her should any kind of conflict arise. She says that she doesn't want to get rear admiral Dawkins involved at this point as she guesses that he might loathe Fordren as much as she does.
Carlyle is a bit confused about why Auryn might doubt that he'd be a trustworthy partner and asks her whether she has planned anything illegal or suicidial for him. She explains that he might get into conflicts of interest as his „descendant“, the young Mr. Carlyle, is an employee of Fordren and therefore doing his bidding – even if she thinks he is an honest and pretty nice man. She only wants to be 100% sure that Carlyle won't take „Fordren's side“. Carlyle tries to dissolve her fears and says that as long as she doesn't do anything that might endanger innocents (like Cecilia, Lord Vantrys or his family) or demand that he'd be her champion in some romance-novel like „duel to the death during a raging thunderstorm atop the roofs of Flint“, he'll be her partner first and foremost. After all, he's a RHC agent.
(Seems like Carlyle is really into novels. Who would have guessed that?)
Auryn gets pretty drunk during their talk – after all, she just confessed some of her worst fears to Carlyle. Just when they are about to pay and leave, a small group enters the golden sawfish. Among them are Guy Goodson, his fiancee Cecilia and her uncle, Francis Fordren. Carlyle recognizes the man from their earlier meeting with Goodson, so he gently pushes Auryn back into the separee. He doesn't really want to risk a „showdown“ between his slightly agitated, drunk partner and Fordren. Auryn agrees to stay just a little longer until the Goodson/Fordren company has departed. She might be intoxicated, but she's not stupid and she knows that she'd need all of her mind's clarity to confront Fordren. She uses their spare time to thank Carlyle for his support and tells him that she'd really love to call him a friend as well. She just thinks that he's really buttoned up and reserved. Carlyle responds that this is just his nature and that he's better at listening to others than at talking about himself. He's been a butler for most of his life, so his own persona wouldn't really be that important in a conversation.
During our conversation, we notice two guys who are sharing stories of their past. (they were sitting in the next separee) Both have a strong beran accent and both talk about their exploits in various cities of our neighboring country. We don't pay them too much attention, but Carlyle realizes that they follow us for a while after we are finally able to leave the Sawfish. He remains cautious and is relieved when the half-orc and half-elf head down another alley after a while.
(Really expected them to be Fordren's or maybe even Leone's agents. We were pretty relieved to see that they were harmless – for now) (they were of course Lauryns Agents and their conversation was hiding the fact, that Lauryn was sitting there and listening to the constables conversation. Sir Nigel-Price will be unhappy to hear about the constable harbouring a grudge against a danorian industrialist visiting risur.)
With their „two shadows“ gone, Carlyle makes sure to get his partner home safely. When they both call it a day, Auryn briefly embraces her colleague and thanks him for his care. Then she leaves the visibly irritated Deva to get some sleep.
The next morning, Auryn gets to work pretty late and has a nasty hangover. We head over to Delft for our reports on what happened yesterday, when we see Margit emerging from his office. What nitrigues us more is the fact that she seems to be runing off to our office with a blushed face. We follow her back and ask her whether she said anything embarassing to Delft and she confesses that he just proposed to her. Both of us are more than just shocked at this revelation as there has been no sign that Delft would be showing affection, much less love to anyone. Margit tells us that she and Delft had been in a kind-of relationship for years, even if they never really spent time together besides their job at the RHC. Auryn makes a quick remark about the strangeness of Risuri men, but restrains from further inquiries. Margit is unsure about how to answer Delft's „request“ and we suggest that she might actually try to get to know her maybe-fiancee a bit better before buying a pig in a poke.
Delft is pretty worried about what happened at the KATE and asks us to do further research about Kaja's cursed artifacts and her connection to Macbannin. We mention that we are drawing dangerously close to Team 1's area of responsibility if we do investigate further in the causa Macbanning, but Delft brushes the argument off and encourages us to gather information discreetly. We also come to the conclusion that the atrifacts and the incident at the KATE might be connected to the growing number of people who suffer from distant madness, or, medically correct, distortion of dilataion. (Auryn refuses to use the sensational name some journalists invented „to sell more papers“).
Delft also mentions that there will be an audit with Viscount inspector Nigel Price-Hill soon, so we maybe should take the time to clean up any mess we might have left behind. As neither Carlyle nor Auryn did anything illegal or unethical, we kind of look forward to meeting our „big boss“ for the first time. („But... are you not worried about the audit?!“ „A meeting! With Price-Hill! We are so... EXCITED!“ Yeah, Team 3 is rather strange.)
Auryn also complains that Delft didn't warn her of Fordren Industries' booth and Fordren's possible present at the KATE in advance which he brushes off again in his very special Deft way of saying that she should grow up and be a big girl. This turns Auryn kind of sour and makes her leave the snarky comment that he might be more successful in his own advances should he at least consider spending some time with the subjects he cares for. Carlyle just stares blankly at Auryn's impudence, but she says that Delt totally deserved it when he dismisses them in a pretty rage-y way. (*grin*)
We turn to the mole problem afterwards. Therefore, we call all possible suspects to one of our bigger briefing rooms. Auryn then explains to them why they are here (security problems and leaked information) while Carlyle watches them and their reactions closely. When she finishes her pledoyer about unauthorized contact to military academy personnel, sharing information and possible financial advantages, she asks whether there is someone who'd like to confess or comment on the accusations.
Our prime suspect, the young technician then seems to meditate for a short time, only to act all confused and ask where he is right now and what he's doing here. (He calmly smoked his nicodemus leaf and then closed his eyes and left the place.)It turns out that this man is magically disguised (a suspicion Carlyle mentioned earlier), but doesn't know how he did it or how he even got to the RHC. When we relieve him of his disguise, we are surprised to find that this man is Doro, the mysterious courier we met at Macbannin's estate. (The man was wearing a hat of disguise and the constables where shocked that he looked like Doro when they finally turned that magic off.)
After a bit of interrogation and magical-alchemical analyses, we conclude that Doro is in fact a shoemaker who suffers from 9 months of amnesia as he has been possessed and puppeted by someone else via means of alchemy. We don't know how this would be even possible, but also realize that Doro, who had some medical issues before his possession, is now a pretty healthy man.
This still leaves more questions than answers, but at least we stopped the leakage and caught the mole.
We take Kvarty, the wizard and Rock to the guard post of the fair. On our short „trip“ there, we talk a bit with Kvarty and he tells us that he's a big game hunter with experiences in hunting monsters. When he saw the flying beasts, he knew that the fair was in imminent danger, so he tried to help eliminate the threat. When he saw that Rock was acting utterly reckless and incompetent, he had to stop him before he could do any more harm. He continues to talk about ammunition and we ask him about his occupation. He explains that most times he's just organizing hunts for rich people, but we also learn that he is a bit of a bounty hunter. And while there is nothing wrong with hunting for an official bounty, it kind of seems that he doesn't always question whether the bounty is legitimate or not. Still, Kvarty was a great help in dealing with Rock, so we thank him, note his whereabouts in Flint and release him.
In the guard post (or rather guard tent), we see a small girl who's chained up for pickpocketing. She tries to convince us that she's innocent, but we try to ignore her since cases of theft are clearly a job for the police, not the RHC.
We try to get some useful information out of the flying monster's dwarven victim, but the guy is all nonsense and smells like he's been drowned in booze, so we order him to be brought to the nearest police station to sober up. Next one on our list is the wizard who used the golden staff and accidentally summoned more and more monsters. He introduces himself as Simon Langfield, a student of magic who didn't have enough money to buy himself a proper wand or even staff. So he resorted to a rather shady dealer to get one for cheap. We lecture him not to trust anyone who'd want to sell potentially potent or dangerous items in back alleys and tell him that we have to confiscate his staff.
Fortunately, Simon tells us how he got the staff: He was approached by a good-looking gentleman who saw him coming out of a magic item tent. This man sent him to a trinket booth where he bought a small chest containing information on how, where and when to meet the person who'd sell him the staff: some hooded, cautious woman. He says that the staff was extraordinarily cheap and that he only wanted to use it for self-defense. Which is what he did when the monsters started appearing out of nowhere. As he sounds pretty honest, we ask him for his address should further questions arise and release him.
Thinking about the description of the mysterious gentleman who approached Simon Langfield, we remember the description the young wizard gave to us from a similar description. One of the technicians working for MacBannin told us of a well-dressed man with a golden livree who also worked for the late mayor of the Nettles.
As we discuss the guy, the small girl approaches us again and tells us that she knows this man and might lead us to him if we could do her a favour. We brush her off first, but then she shows us the iron amulet she stole from the man. An amulet which looks quite similar to the ones MacBannin gave us when we tried to save the Nettles. We thank her for the tip and promise to return to her later – as soon as we finish our interrogation of Rock.
Rock tries to tell us that the whole incident was not realy his fault, after all he just wanted to protect his faithful fans. He says that he never wanted to hurt the victim, it just happened that his arm twitched and he misfired horribly. We kind of berate Rackus that he didn't listen to our advice to not use his damn pistol on an arms exhibit and that this mess is what his recklessness got him into. After all, he is now not only going to end up jail, but also might lose a good part of his fanbase. He is relieved when we tell him that we saw what happened and that he most likely won't be charged with attempted murder. Still his shooting is a t least a case of negligent assault, so he will face some time in prison. We advise him to get himself a good attorney before we hand him over to the police officials.
(well yes, we totally saw this coming. Rock seems like the child who has to burn himself to learn that fire is hot. And even after the whole story, we kind of thought that losing his fans might hurt him more than a prison sentence. On the other hand, having Rock in prison meant that the people – including us - were safe from his extravaganza at least for some time) (I still amused, why they despise Rock Rakus as much they do. They just met the guy but they hated him even before meeting him. Seems doing new music is always a bad thing if being judged by people who like old music?)
Next, we try to look out for more people who might be interested in cheap magic items. We manage to find a nervous looking young girl who is coming out of the trinket tent and who is carrying a small chest. We follow her to the Kaybeau station where she seems to be looking for someone. When she doen't seem to be able to find anyone (besides some workers eating lunch), she departs and heads to an impressive building in the central district. (The girl was there too early and i hoped the Players would come back later.) As we suspect that the girl might meet her shady dealer there, we follow her into the building (thanks to Caryle's spectacular knowledge of all kinds of locks) and try to listen to any kind of conversation she might have.
To our surprise, it seems like the girl we followed is actually the daughter of the Lord judge of Flint who came late for dinner and got grounded by her pretty angry father. We are pretty embarasssed to have accidentally broken into the house of such an important figure and sneak out again before we get noticed. As this appoach got us nowhere, we decide to talk to the little thief at the fair again. (*evil grin*)
The girl promises to help us to the best of her abilities if we can get her free and we agree that while being a little criminal, she poses no real threat and might have learned her lesson. She can lead us directly to the mysterious gentleman who doesn't seem too surprised to be approached by the RHC (well, he tried to flirt with Auryn, but was kind of sure that there had to be more to this Lady than meets the eye. Oh how right he was.). He introduces himself as Isaac Randall and instantly confesses that he worked for Macbannin, but thought that he was managing some sort of secret government research facilities.
We also arrest the woman who sold the small chests and confiscate all of her trinkets as evidence. Then we ask Margit to get both of them safely transferred to the RHC while we try to meet up with the actual black market „merchant“. We peek through the letters and identify the time and place of the next transaction. Being cautious creatures, we plan to examine the place an hour before the transaction should take place and look out for any kind of traps or hidden objects.
When Auryn searches some randomly placed pipes, she is suddenly attacked by six miniature... cannons! After being hit by a glancing blow, we instantly fight back. Carlyle seems pretty irated by the sudden attack on his colleague and smashes three of the constructs to tiny bits.He gets shot afterwards, but both of them manage to dissemble all of them in the end. When we take a closer look at the creature's „brains“, we realize that they are actually pretty advanced and were acting autonomously (They had some kind of proto-processors inside them). We also see the brand of Fordren Industries on their hulls which unnerves Auryn. Pulling herself together, she calls Carlyle to be worthy of being an „esteemed husband“ for his prowess and manners.
(„No one shoots at a lady's face“ he said. Not that Auryn would call herself a lady, at least not in the traditional Risuri meaning of the word. But her calling him „worthy of being an esteemed husband“ instead of „gentleman“ makes them even I guess)
After the rather loud fight, we calm both the arriving police officers and the neighbours down and call the incident a simple malfunction of automatons. When we are certain to have cleared the meeting place of all „nasty surprises“ and any evidence of our fight, look out for good hideouts and hide there. At the given time, a woman and some hooded bodyguard show up and we try to arrest the two. As they don't seem to be very keen on going to prison, they attack us immediately.
It turns out that the „bodyguard“ is some sort of robo-golem who starts mauling at Mr. Carlyle. The woman herself draws a cannon out of nowhere and shoots Carlyle who gets blown through the alley and suffers a nasty wound to his chest. As Carlyle was in point blank range, she accidentally „kills“ her unseen servant and harms her robot with the explosion. This time, Auryn is the one to get angry and she downs the woman with a few precise strikes. Carlyle heals himself with an infusion and together we fight the robot which erupts a necrotic substance (witchoil?) after every hit. When we finally beat the thing, its chest erupts in some strange spacetime bubble and drops a lot of magic items to the ground. (Loot! Being avid Diablo players, we really laughed when we saw the magic items pop and drop out of nowhere. We guessed that this robo/golem/Eidolon was somehow crossbred with a bag of holding). As we knocked the woman out and don't want to interrogate her in the street, we carry her to the local police station and make sure that she is transferred to the RHC HQ as well.
(As a note: Kaja's cannon should really not be able to crit x4. We were so utterly shocked when Kaya rolled a 20 when she shot at Carlyle and had she confirmed the crit, he would have been done for good from full HP to – 30 or so). (The players were really annoyed about the cannon. A crit would have killed Mr. Carlyle.)
We head back to the KATE as we are still officially on guard duty. We use this time to return to the young Mr. Carlyle and ask him about the „processors“ we found in the miniature cannons. He explains that these parts were used as prototypes for developing the B.E.A.R. When we show him parts of the serial numbers we found on some of the parts, he checks them with his list of previous orders and tells us that they were originally ordered by Macbannin and paid for by the Flint treasury. (The conspiracy rears his/her ugly head again. *grin*)
After this, we make sure that the magical artifacts the woman wanted to sell on the black market are kept in a secure place. Carlyle wants to pack them in leaded linen, but when he touches the items briefly, he is subject to a sudden vision of his and Srasama's death and his rebirth as a Deva. This leads us to the conclusion that the artifacts might be cursed, so we demand that no one else should touch them. Carlyle analyses the artifacts for traces of planar energy (thanks, Gale!) and finds an aura of Apet energy on them.
After our work at the KATE is done, we return to the HQ for the interrogation of our prisoners. Carlyle suggests that we should include Team 1 in this process as we got clues that our suspects might be linked to the case Macbannin, which falls under Team 1's responsibility. Auryn and Margit do not object, so we invite them to join in. (The players are strict about responsibilities and always respect the other teams cases.)
We learn that the mysterious woman is called Kaja Stewart who, at first, isn't really keen on speaking to RHC officers. After an unnaturally intense verbal intimidation by Auryn, she opens up a bit and tells us that she had been conducting magical extradimensional research for Macbannin. She also developed the witchoil catalyst which was later used to energize the oil. When she heared of Macbannin's demise, she wanted to avoid being questioned and took all artifacts she could get her hands on. She then offered Randall a share if he helped her sell the items at the black market. We decide to keep her at the RHC a bit longer, but offer her to free her of being charged with the attack on two RHC constables should she cooperate. She agrees and we make sure that she's locked up safely in our cells.
We then ask Isaac Randall the same questions, but he doesn't really have more to say than Kaja. We also decide to keep him imprisoned for the time being as we don't know whether the two of them were the last ex-employees of Macbannin we'd run into.
Team 1 thanks us for our „invitation“. In return, they share a story of a mysterious case they couldn't wrap their heads around. The lead us to some abandoned warehouse of a Vantrys steelworks factory. There they show us the body of a man who must have been dead for quite a while. What is most intriguing about the older human is the fact that he has been tied up with some massive steel rod and had his head smashed by a heavy object. Besides him lie the remnants of a bronze golem which has been smashed to pieces by some unknown force. We immediately link the bent metal to our very special friend, Leone Quintal.
We search the crime scene for further clues and find an iron ring, the initials A.G., a shattered rusty amulet, timetables for ships sailing to Elfaivar, and some really high quality piece of cloth. In addition, it seems like someone has poured witchoil down the dead man's throat. Auryn immediately identifies the cloth as Elfaivaran high fashion fabric and concludes that this must have been part of a pretty high class garment. She remembers Nathan Jierre who said he saw her ancestor Kasvarina on Axis Island and muses whether Kasvarina (or simply one of her dresses) might have been here.
Carlyle tries to attune himself to the spirit of this place and the events that might have happened here and he recieves a foggy vision: The now deceased man leads a seemingly dazed and helpless Eladrin woman out of the iron ring. A bronze golem accompanies the two. Then a second man who looks just like Leone Quintal enters the scene. He uses one of the metal rods to magicaly tie up the first man and then force-feeds him a bottle of witchoil. The woman looks at the scene and seems shocked, but doesn't really react as if she was kind of drugged. Then the tied up man seems to order his golem to attack him and the golem smashes the man's skull with his fist. This causes the metalbender to enrage, he shatters the golem to pieces with his magic and then takes the woman's hand and leads her back to where he came from. (I think that it would have a shame if the whole scene was wasted without the vision. The riddle can not be solved at this stage and i feared that the incident would go unnoticed without clues.)
Carlyle mumbles that the man must have been very brave and honors him for what he tried to do. He carefully releases him from his bonds and suggests that he is given a proper grave. When he realizes that Auryn and couldn't understand what he just witnessed, he tells her of his vision. Auryn is shocked to hear that Kasvarina might be a captive of Leone Quintal. She concludes that Kasvarina might have been under the influence of some alchemical substance and that she might not have been able to control her movements because of this. She also kind of tells Carlyle that someone used a similar drug on her once and that she loathes even thinking about that incident. (*evil grin* another personal grudge Auryn will carefully nurse. Poor Leone will get his share of pain, if she ever confronts him again.)
To Team 1 we suggest that they could try out whether the iron ring might lead them to Quinta's tracks. We offer them to use the amulets we got from Macbannin but warn them that the metal mage is no harmless opponent. As much as we want to look for Kasvarina and Quintal ourselves, we still have to follow the rules and everything Macbannin should be handled by Team 1. Unless we want to oppose Saxby. Which is something we really don't want to do.
We return to the RHC to write down our last reports where we are summoned immediately to Chief inspectress Saxby (well, that escalated quickly). She is pretty angry about another request from Col. Sebastian Harlock from the military academy where he demands to get both the flying monsters and Kaja Stewart. Thinking about the fact that we just brought Kaja, Isaac and the beasts to the RHC on this very same day, we find this rather strange. As such „secret“ news usually don't spread that fast, we suspect that we might have a mole in the RHC staff who's handing out insider information to the military academy. (ouch, that caught me unprepared.)
Saxby finds this a reasonable conclusion and orders us to find the culprit as soon as possible. So, we gather information about all RHC employees who coud have had access to the information that we arrested Kaja and Isaac and brought some strange, dead, magical beasties to the examination room. Then we thin down the list to all people who were present in the timeframe between 1 and 3 hours ago (getting letters from the RHC to the academy and back usually takes at least 1 hour, and our interrogation was 3 hours ago). (My Players love calculating things and that gets me into trouble)
We search the attendance protocols and find out that a young technician left the RHC 2 ½ hours ago due to familial problems. We ask for his files and also send a letter to Pardwright University to check for the authenticity of his degrees and certificates. In addition, we plan to question all of the other staff next morning just to be sure to catch them all.
Before Carlyle can get home to get some rest, Auryn kind of demands that the two of them go out for a drink. She chooses the golden sawfish and orders a „Voice of Rot“ cocktail. (Which is something akin to a Zombie. So really strong stuff.). Before she's served, Kronk informs her that some reporters came earlier and asked for her (Auryn Galadin, not Calla Aurea). She finds this strange and asks Kronk to send them to the RHC should they need official RHC statements. (she really doesn't want her friends to get entangled in her official business and Saxby is already pretty unamused about the news coverage of the agents Auryn and Carlyle...)
They head over to a separee and discuss the reason why Auryn acted so unnerved after leaving the the KATE for the first time. She tells Carlyle of their invitation to Goodson's upcoming wedding and that she might not be able to avoid a confrontation with Francis Fordren at this event since he and Goodson seem to be business partners. She explains that she'd love to see the guy dead, but she knows that she cannot kill him without losing everything she cares for and everything she has built up for herself in Risur. She'd probably lose not only her job and her freedom, but also her friends and her good reputation. Nonetheless, she's fed up with hiding herself and also fed up with living in fear of a man or showing her true heritage. She says that she does want to attend to Goodson's wedding, but that she wants to do so with her head held high and therefore triumph over Fordren in the true spirit of Vekesh.
(„He's just a man and here I am on my home turf. Here I am in control. Here I got my friends and allies. I will show him that he has no power over me.“. She slowly realizes that, for her, this is a power struggle and she wants to believe that showing her enemy that she'd not only „survived“, but become more powerful in the process will help her truely defeat him on an ideological level)
Auryn then asks Carlyle to be loyal to her in this matter and to promise that he'd take her side and defend her should any kind of conflict arise. She says that she doesn't want to get rear admiral Dawkins involved at this point as she guesses that he might loathe Fordren as much as she does.
Carlyle is a bit confused about why Auryn might doubt that he'd be a trustworthy partner and asks her whether she has planned anything illegal or suicidial for him. She explains that he might get into conflicts of interest as his „descendant“, the young Mr. Carlyle, is an employee of Fordren and therefore doing his bidding – even if she thinks he is an honest and pretty nice man. She only wants to be 100% sure that Carlyle won't take „Fordren's side“. Carlyle tries to dissolve her fears and says that as long as she doesn't do anything that might endanger innocents (like Cecilia, Lord Vantrys or his family) or demand that he'd be her champion in some romance-novel like „duel to the death during a raging thunderstorm atop the roofs of Flint“, he'll be her partner first and foremost. After all, he's a RHC agent.
(Seems like Carlyle is really into novels. Who would have guessed that?)
Auryn gets pretty drunk during their talk – after all, she just confessed some of her worst fears to Carlyle. Just when they are about to pay and leave, a small group enters the golden sawfish. Among them are Guy Goodson, his fiancee Cecilia and her uncle, Francis Fordren. Carlyle recognizes the man from their earlier meeting with Goodson, so he gently pushes Auryn back into the separee. He doesn't really want to risk a „showdown“ between his slightly agitated, drunk partner and Fordren. Auryn agrees to stay just a little longer until the Goodson/Fordren company has departed. She might be intoxicated, but she's not stupid and she knows that she'd need all of her mind's clarity to confront Fordren. She uses their spare time to thank Carlyle for his support and tells him that she'd really love to call him a friend as well. She just thinks that he's really buttoned up and reserved. Carlyle responds that this is just his nature and that he's better at listening to others than at talking about himself. He's been a butler for most of his life, so his own persona wouldn't really be that important in a conversation.
During our conversation, we notice two guys who are sharing stories of their past. (they were sitting in the next separee) Both have a strong beran accent and both talk about their exploits in various cities of our neighboring country. We don't pay them too much attention, but Carlyle realizes that they follow us for a while after we are finally able to leave the Sawfish. He remains cautious and is relieved when the half-orc and half-elf head down another alley after a while.
(Really expected them to be Fordren's or maybe even Leone's agents. We were pretty relieved to see that they were harmless – for now) (they were of course Lauryns Agents and their conversation was hiding the fact, that Lauryn was sitting there and listening to the constables conversation. Sir Nigel-Price will be unhappy to hear about the constable harbouring a grudge against a danorian industrialist visiting risur.)
With their „two shadows“ gone, Carlyle makes sure to get his partner home safely. When they both call it a day, Auryn briefly embraces her colleague and thanks him for his care. Then she leaves the visibly irritated Deva to get some sleep.
The next morning, Auryn gets to work pretty late and has a nasty hangover. We head over to Delft for our reports on what happened yesterday, when we see Margit emerging from his office. What nitrigues us more is the fact that she seems to be runing off to our office with a blushed face. We follow her back and ask her whether she said anything embarassing to Delft and she confesses that he just proposed to her. Both of us are more than just shocked at this revelation as there has been no sign that Delft would be showing affection, much less love to anyone. Margit tells us that she and Delft had been in a kind-of relationship for years, even if they never really spent time together besides their job at the RHC. Auryn makes a quick remark about the strangeness of Risuri men, but restrains from further inquiries. Margit is unsure about how to answer Delft's „request“ and we suggest that she might actually try to get to know her maybe-fiancee a bit better before buying a pig in a poke.
Delft is pretty worried about what happened at the KATE and asks us to do further research about Kaja's cursed artifacts and her connection to Macbannin. We mention that we are drawing dangerously close to Team 1's area of responsibility if we do investigate further in the causa Macbanning, but Delft brushes the argument off and encourages us to gather information discreetly. We also come to the conclusion that the atrifacts and the incident at the KATE might be connected to the growing number of people who suffer from distant madness, or, medically correct, distortion of dilataion. (Auryn refuses to use the sensational name some journalists invented „to sell more papers“).
Delft also mentions that there will be an audit with Viscount inspector Nigel Price-Hill soon, so we maybe should take the time to clean up any mess we might have left behind. As neither Carlyle nor Auryn did anything illegal or unethical, we kind of look forward to meeting our „big boss“ for the first time. („But... are you not worried about the audit?!“ „A meeting! With Price-Hill! We are so... EXCITED!“ Yeah, Team 3 is rather strange.)
Auryn also complains that Delft didn't warn her of Fordren Industries' booth and Fordren's possible present at the KATE in advance which he brushes off again in his very special Deft way of saying that she should grow up and be a big girl. This turns Auryn kind of sour and makes her leave the snarky comment that he might be more successful in his own advances should he at least consider spending some time with the subjects he cares for. Carlyle just stares blankly at Auryn's impudence, but she says that Delt totally deserved it when he dismisses them in a pretty rage-y way. (*grin*)
We turn to the mole problem afterwards. Therefore, we call all possible suspects to one of our bigger briefing rooms. Auryn then explains to them why they are here (security problems and leaked information) while Carlyle watches them and their reactions closely. When she finishes her pledoyer about unauthorized contact to military academy personnel, sharing information and possible financial advantages, she asks whether there is someone who'd like to confess or comment on the accusations.
Our prime suspect, the young technician then seems to meditate for a short time, only to act all confused and ask where he is right now and what he's doing here. (He calmly smoked his nicodemus leaf and then closed his eyes and left the place.)It turns out that this man is magically disguised (a suspicion Carlyle mentioned earlier), but doesn't know how he did it or how he even got to the RHC. When we relieve him of his disguise, we are surprised to find that this man is Doro, the mysterious courier we met at Macbannin's estate. (The man was wearing a hat of disguise and the constables where shocked that he looked like Doro when they finally turned that magic off.)
After a bit of interrogation and magical-alchemical analyses, we conclude that Doro is in fact a shoemaker who suffers from 9 months of amnesia as he has been possessed and puppeted by someone else via means of alchemy. We don't know how this would be even possible, but also realize that Doro, who had some medical issues before his possession, is now a pretty healthy man.
This still leaves more questions than answers, but at least we stopped the leakage and caught the mole.
. 
