[tSoY] Dungeons and Dragnet

[Lackhand]

Hi! This is the story of the men and women and other of Crystalwatch, Sharn's Very Special Crimes unit (I hadn't read City of Towers yet ). This is a story of valor and humility, and of dreadful ends and humble beginnings.
It's about the human condition, and the inhuman condition, and the power of the story.

Those are all lies.

It's actually about having fun and seeing where that gets us. The rules and rogues gallery and generalized chatter are up here.

We'll be using the rules from the Shadow of Yesterday, and kit-bashing in elements of Eberron until they fit. Wish us luck : )

The players are VenezuelanWiz (an elf with a bizarrely... familiar... aberrant mark), Szircon (a changeling social climber), tursiops (justice-driven swordsman), aristeas (a little-girl investigator), and CaineWasFramed (an everyman, an ex-army goodfellah making good).

Remember, everyone: you've got 6 dice in your Gift of Dice pool. They'll refresh at the end of this arc, spend on everyone/anyone to make the story cooler.

ninja edit: Curtain rises!

It was a grim and grey day, from what slip of setting-sun light you could see reflected in the glass by the door of the Keg and Kettle.

Young pox-faced Strider, a runner from Black Book's dispatch, was damp with scattered droplets of the closest thing that you could get to honest rain this far from topside.
His hastily scrawled note, a faded receipt for a tin of chaw in a former life, was speckled with water and soot from the outside.

"Triple murder at corner of Creadle's Walk and Knight's Stair. Clawmarks, disembowelment, witnesses hint at shifter perp.
Come quick.
Sotto.
Postscript: Lots of ash at scene. No blood."

Strider looks at you hopefully.
His eyes are limned with filth, and red from lack of sleep.
It's a quick fifteen minute circuit to Creadle's Walk, over the the Struggling Bridge. It was built eighty years ago by dwarven refugees from the 'War, and it was called the Fifteenth Year of Our Glorious Struggle Bridge, then.
So it goes.

The rain begins to fall in earnest, but you're all inside, and it can't clean the dirt from any of you.

 

[Szircon]

"No blood at a dismemberment?" Kev looks troubled. "Vol cultists, maybe? And ash... Kara, I hope that means something to you, 'cause I've got no idea. Let's go. I hope the rain doesn't destroy our evidence." She heads for the door, already in the shape of the nervous male persona she tends to assume at crime scenes.

 

[tursiops]

Himura stands up without speaking and transfers his sword from its position on the floor at his right to his belt. He heads towards the door only stopping to look back if he gets there before all the others have stood up.

 

[VenezuelanWiz]

Let us be off in a rolling fashion

Valandil upon hearing the news stood, and proceeded to retrieve his cloak, his evidence kit, and his long knives. Turning to Strider he quietly said:
"Many thanks Strider, our host Terrapin
will provide you with well earn'd nourishment."
Then after ascertaining that noone was being left behind, he placed the cloak on his shoulders, exited whilst exclaiming:
"'Hell is empty and the devils are here'"

 

[Lackhand]

(Do you want to concentrate on something I've breezed through? Please, feel free, but comment on what you're doing.
If it gets confusing, I'll take smaller steps in the future; you can stop on the bridge and get wet, say "nevermind" and consult your banker, whatever.)


The rain fell in gouts and vertical streams, leaving slick traces on walkways and sending pedestrians scurrying for cover.
You pushed your way past ostlers and painted ladies, hegglers and cabbage-hawkers, crowding amongst the eaves, avoiding the murky waters laden with soot and grit.

Struggling Bridge is a quick dash across an open span between towers, a burst of open air and sunlight in nicer weather.
Public speakers come there in the evenings, and lecture on a variety of topics.

In the last arch before the bridge, you passed by a distant-eyed elven lass.
She implored you for a copper, thruppence for the plight of the nonhuman; hard to lead a life in Man's world, it was, sirs, deadly hard.
The arch was plastered with with Karl Karloffsson for Change! posters.

At the middle of the bridge, a lone figure stood, getting soaked.

Clangge, the warforged sergeant-at-arms, didn't seem to mind the rain.
He didn't mind or say much, ever.
On that one occasion, all he did was gesture for you to follow him.

He led you to the crime scene; an inn near several broad transits.
It was obviously the sort of inn usually used by adventurers, a cheap-looking three-level (above it, an eatery; below, a storehouse).
In the entrance vestibule, the stout and swarthy proprietress was giving a statement to a few ineffectual looking Shields.
She says that she saw nothing and heard nothing, the incident having occurred at 2 hours after midnight, and herself not residing on the premises

Clangge and Sotto show you the scene, on the second floor.
A small room with a bed, messy with the assorted knick-knacks of travelers.
Every flat surface was coated with a thick, irregular, clumpy red ash.
The walls, ceiling, bed, two bedrolls on the floor, and bodies were caked with the stuff.

The fragments of windowglass remaining in the frame were opaque with the dust; the shards of glass mixed with the ash among your feet.
A breeze wafted in through the broken window, overlooking a broad vertical shaft.
There was a midden-heap at the bottom of the shaft, and large windows (open to the air) spiked in at irregular intervals, capped with a stone dome.
A wall faces opposite, with the windows of a set of private dwellings.

The sight of the bodies didn't effect you at all. Like dolls or mannequins, they were, not flesh-and-blood people. Broken toys.

They were split from stem to stern, a single, smooth cut, with parallel lacerations.

The victims were two men and one woman, with the older man's head missing.
They weren't local, but were on the registry as the Company of the Pale Three.

Paler now, o'course, according to Sotto.

The witness was a dragonmarked Finder in their employ named Orgrim d'Tharashk.
Orgrim, a Sharn native, was employed to try to figure out the location of a book of maps related to some later doings of the unfortunate Three.
Sotto had already sent round a few Shields to interview him, and gives you a transcript of his report.

Orgrim had been trudging up Knight's Stair past the dens of temptation there when he thought that he saw a pack of shifters some fifty feet ahead of him, drunken and looking for trouble.

Not a racist lad, he claims that he followed them out of "professional interest", rather than looking for an easy mark, or accusing them of loitering. He saw them shuffle through a side door from the Stair, now known to lead into that, ahem, "garden".

He abandoned his pursuit of them and continued on to meet his employer but apparently decided that temptation could be bought with later coinage.
By the time he had laced back up his trousers, his employers were in the state you see 'em now.


The streets were otherwise deserted, which is uncommon but not unheard of at that hour.
The watch had not yet managed to find other witnesses, but then, they'd not yet tried.

Sotto leveled his eyes and you and twisted his mouth -- complete with waxed mustache -- into a frown. It's clear that he's perplexed about how, exactly, to proceed.

 

[CaineWasFramed]

An adventurer's inn and no one heard anything? That seems unlikely, or at least magical.

"Excuse me ma'am," Darrien says, approaching the proprietress. "Do you have a record of the guests here? In particular I need to speak to anybody who's had significant contact with the deceased, if you can think of anyone. I'll also need the names of your night staff, if you please." Taking out a small sheaf of paper and a bit of charcoal he begins to take notes.

Discern Truth good success (0,-,+ and 1 rank) to catch her if she seems to be hiding something.

 

[tursiops]

Himura peers out the broken window and then looks back at the bodies. "Messy..." he mutters. Kneeling down near the bodies he prods the ash. When nothing spectacular happens he rubs a pinch of it between his fingers. The clumps break resulting in ash in his hand becoming true powder. There is a slightly metallic tang to the air accompanying the burnt smell released as some ash dust "poofs" into the air. Himura stands back up his fingers now smudged red-gray and waits for something exciting to happen.

 

[VenezuelanWiz]

The astute application of knowledge

Valandil quickly scanned the sootened room. Reaching for a vial from his evidence kit, Valandil crouched to examine the blackened area with care. Unstopping the vial he placed some of the soot into it for later analysis.

Valandil also raked his memory for any mention of known dragonmarked powers that could do something like what they saw in front of them. After that he tried to determine what the soot was with the chemicals in his evidence kit.

First Lore(Dragonmarks), to remember any dragonmarked powers of this sort. If I fail I assume I recall nothing of import (-,+,+, 1 rank = 2)
Next Natural Philosophy(Alchemy), to ascertain what the soot is composed of. I assume if I fail I will need much further analysis and a bigger lab (0,-,+, 1 rank = 1)

 

[Lackhand]

Darrien: the proprietress is a human woman leaving middle age from the far side, with sagging skin and greasy black hair and a gentle hairlip. She was notably distressed by the questioning she was being put to.

"'m an honest woman, officer, all I does is let rooms. I've a pair of boys, m'sons, that runs the place come nightfall. They hain't come home since this trouble, nor been to work at the Post since, neither."
She's not lying, though she is obviously distraught.
She opened the Inn for them when one of the more enterprising lodgers, who have since fled the scene, came and fetched her.

As for the record of guests, there's a ledger, which records that the slain party.
They signed under Company of the Pale Three in a flourished hand, which matches the signature directly below -- an Emerikol the Elder.
In more regular scripts, Tanya Eldan and Dag Cartwright signed for the same room; they still had 20 silver on their tab.

Other guests: A group of six assayers from the Mror Hold is signed in, a gabble of names as classically dwarven as Smith might be human.
They held the attic and room across from the unfortunate Pale Three.
There were a pair of Thranish travelers, a husband and wife, but they had checked out that morning to continue their journeys.

Himura: Yup. It's gritty and charnel, and crumbles under pressure.

Valandil: An Aberrant mark could absolutely do this.
Otherwise, a particularly vengeful, powerful, and immoral Mark of Storms could perhaps summon up the anbaric strength to wreak this kind of havoc... but the damage would be of a different pattern, surely?

The soot has a metallic tang to it, and a bitter odor besides. It's high in iron, and in potash; it is of high resonance to ælemental fire, and air.

It's blood. It was blood, until through some arcane means, it was induced to burn, probably via necromantic means.

That's bad.

 

[CaineWasFramed]

"Looks like we got two more missing, the sons of the proprietress," Darrien said, returning to the room. "As for other witnesses we've got a band of dwarves across the hall, still registered here, and a couple claiming to be from Thrane who checked out earlier in the day. Any luck with the ashes, or on figuring out where in Khyber all the blood went?"