Friday's purchases were far more utilitarian in nature. She knew she wasn't going to be able to stay at the Ash House forever, so she looked into a place to stay that was large enough that she and her new coven-sisters.
When she returned to the Ash House, she said "I found us a place to live for now. It isn't much, but I have the only key and it has a big kitchen and an ice chest full of food."
When she returned to the Ash House, she said "I found us a place to live for now. It isn't much, but I have the only key and it has a big kitchen and an ice chest full of food."
Alyssa looks slowly around the dilapidated ruins of the Ash house. Her gaze takes in the ruin in its entirety: the rubble-clogged corridor, the sagging ceilings, the gaping holes in the roof, the charred remains of the window frames, the crooked front door. "Thank you dearie, but I like this place. It's an old wreck, for an old wreck like me to live in."
Every witch knows - or should know - the power of stories. And the wicked old witch never lives in a nice apartment in the middle of town.
Regarding loot I can do it, but I'd prefer that you did - take a job off my hands :)
The next morning a ghostly slip once again summons the PC's upstairs to meet their benefactor. Razelago is seated in his accustomed place behind the screen and immediately explains his new task.
"Nothing more than an errand today, but one well suite to your skills. I met with the Archbaron last night." The shadowy figure inclines a hand towards a stack of rolled parchments on the table. "He has issued several new decrees that he'd like posted across town to inform the citizenry. Post these decrees at the notice post in the church square, the jail, the Last Stand Tavern and the Castle Gate. And while you're at the jail, stop by the sheriff's office. The Archbaron has a second decree for you to deliver."
There is a short pause before Razelago lets out a distinctly nasty chuckle, "One that relieves Rhona Staelish from duty as sheriff of Longacre.
You have until noon to post the decrees. Perform this job as reliably as you have the last two and I will pay you another hundred gold apiece. If things go well the Archbaron has decided he wants to meet you - he has some positions in law enforcement about to open up."
-Anyone entering or leaving the town must be either sanctioned by the Archbaron or must obtain a writ of passage from the Longacre notary.
-People are forbidden to meet in groups of greater than six in private or 12 in public. Meetings for the purpose of celebration, education, or religion are not exempt, although families and businesses undertaking the natural course of business are.
-A curfew is now in effect from the hour after dusk to the hour before dawn; this applies to anyone in the town’s streets without a writ of exemption from House Fex.
-Any persons found in violation will be considered seditious agents and are subject to questioning, imprisonment, and summary judgment by the Archbaron of Longacre and officials of the town government.
Alyssa nods along in acknowledgement of the instructions, counting the places off on her fingers: "...church square, jail, tavern, gate. And relieve the sheriff of her duties. And can we relieve her of any other burdens, too? Her life, for example. Poor thing. Must be such a shame to be embarrassed like that. It would almost be a mercy to end her."
She brightens as Razelago mentions a promotion to enforcement. "Oh yes, dearie. I'm very good at telling people what to do. Got a lot of practice at it, oh yes, ever so many years."
Lavinia giggled quite a bit at she read through the decree, imagining how many holier-than-thou feathers would be ruffled. The prospect of relieving the sheriff of her duties was fun enough to think about, but the addition that she and her coven sisters might replace Staelish was almost too enticing to be true!
"Oh, these are beautiful!" Lavinia remarked. "Are we sticking together, or should we split up? Hit the church square, the tavern, and the gate separately; then convene on the jail and do that one together? If so, I call the the square! I want to see the look in the sword knight's eye when she reads it!"
"You might consider doing all of these jobs together." Razelago says from behind the screen. "Some of the townspeople will likely be... upset by the new decree. I would hate to have useful agents beaten in the streets like common thieves."
Lavinia bobbed her head from shoulder to shoulder while weighing Razelago's words. "Okay," she said with a shrug. "We'll want to be going soon then, if we're going to be finished by noon."
Friday put her hat on her head, picked up her new cane and followed her Sisters out the door.
Alyssa nods sagely at Razelago's statement. "Quite right, dearie. We don't want anyone to get hurt now, do we? At least not in front of lots of witnesses. So let's get on with it."
Making sure that she has all of her possessions (easy enough given how few she has) she walks after the others.
The coven makes there way to the Castle Gate and affixes the notice to the weathered stone gateway. The unofficial gate keepers, Bolouisia and Denton Gamel, watch with beady eyes and disapproving 'tuts' from their small house in the shelter of the wall. Once the decree is posted the gate needs to be closed, and neither gate keeper seems inclined to do a thing about it, simply watching and murmuring to each other. Fortunately Alyssa still has strength in her withered frame and, with a little help from Lavinia, she is able to drag the gate closed and secure it with the brackets on the inner side.
Posting the notice in the town square proves a little harder. The town notice post is already covered in posters, including at least three previous decrees from the Archbaron, raising taxes and duties. As the new notice is hammered in, a crowd forms to read it and the moment they do murmurs begin to go around - rapidly turning into protests.
A severe looking woman in well-worn serviceable clothes approaches the group. "My name is Doctor Rohalendi. I have questions that need to be answered about this decree. If I am called to an ill patient in the dead of night, I will break curfew - will this be punished? What is the context of 'family' most of Longacre is related by marriage or blood - can you please define this more clearly? Thirdly, how can a traveller from out-of-town obtain a writ of passage if they are not allowed into town in the first place to visit the notary?"
Her tone is not hostile, merely earnest and she shows no particular sign of emotion. The crowd meanwhile has fallen silent, and seems to be observing the exchange closely...
"We're just the ones putting up the notices, Doctor, not the ones giving it. Do we look like officials to you? We know as much about the curfew as you do. You should bring your concerns to the local Magistrate or a representative of the Archbaron."
The doctor nods at Friday's calm words. "Thank you. I will speak with the Notary in order to bring more clarity to this situation."
Seeing the doctor satisfied the crowd begins to disperse, still murmuring but not overly violent or unhappy.
Moving across the square to the Last Stand Tavern, plastered with colorful wooden shields and weathered antlers, it is clear that there are plenty of places to hang the decree.
Friday had never been to this tavern, so she knew nothing about it.
"Should we ask the owner if there's a particular place to put notices, or just hang it on an antler?"
Lavinia said little as they hit the gate and the ton square, but took stock of the two unhelpful guards and the woman with all the questions. She imagined she would likely see them again at some point.
At the Last Stand, she looked over the wooden shields and all the antlers. She pursed her lips at Friday's question. "We don't need permission to carry out the Archbaron's orders," she said. "But nailing it to a shield would be better than an antler, I think..." Lavinia looked at the shields, hoping to find one with an Iomedae emblem. Covering that up would add a little salt to the wound.
Alyssa shakes her head. "That might do, dearies, but if we want the decree to be seen then the best thing to do is to nail it to the door."
Most of the shields are old and defaced, representing a variety of the Empire's enemies over the past thirty years - no icons of Iomedae though.
Not seeing any shield worth covering, Lavinia took Alyssa's wisdom to heart and nailed the decree to the door.
The noise of the hammering draws a large, hairy and hugely angry man out of the tavern, holding a huge pot of something which smells absolutely delicious. He on the other hand seems rather less than delicious.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing to my porch?!" He yells, covering Lavinia in saliva and phlegm.
"Putting up a decree. We didn't want to put it on your decorations, so the door seemed best. Sorry about the noise," Friday said earnestly.
Alyssa nods, deceptively mild, in support of Friday's words. "That's right, young man, we're just doing as we're told, being good citizens. You are a good citizen, aren't you?"
"Yeah I am a good citizen," The man stomps forward to read the decree and goes redder and redder until his skin matches his hair - a truly unhealthy look.
"No congregating, curfew! Damn that s***ing **** he's out to ruin me! Damn you too you puffed up little *itches! Lapdogs of that bast*rd on the hill!"
He flails for a moment and then hurls the chilli pot at Lavinia, covering the mesmerist and much of his porch in hot chilli!
"And stay off my property!" He roars, rather like an angry boar, before marching back inside and slamming the door hard enough to make the shields rattle.
"Tsk." Alyssa makes a sound of mild disapproval. "The young people today, they've no manners... Oh, you poor dear." She pulls out a black lace handkerchief and does her best to wipe the mess out of Lavinia's eyes. "Would it make you feel better if we came back tonight and burned this place to the ground?"
Lavinia shrieked at the hot chilli, momentarily stunned and blinded until Alyssa began to help. "That wretch!" She snapped, while trying to clean some of the spicy mess from her face and clothes. She nodded slightly at Alyssa's offer to come back and burn the place down that night. "Can we? Please?" she asked, hopefully. She shook her head a few moments later though, knowing it was probably a bad idea in the short term. "No... Some other time, maybe. He knows who we are, and where we're staying...it'd be too obvious."
Lavinia looked around as she stepped off the porch, hoping there had been plenty of witnesses to the tavern keeper's assault. What the public saw mattered -- and how they interpreted it mattered more. She hoped the oaf had made himself look like a cruel monster with his actions.
A few people seem to have caught the incident, but none of them seem inclined to catch Lavinia's eye. It looks like Claggan's opinion is more in tune with the people's feelings than anything else.
Friday wiped a splash of chilli off of Lavinia's face and put her finger in her mouth.
"Mmm. That's not bad. Needs a little more spice though."
"I saw a horse trough over here. Lets go get you cleaned up."
Alyssa nods, considering the good sense of Lavinia's words. "Well then, dearie, why don't we go and relieve that nice sheriff of her position? After that, we will be the law, and who knows what sort of bad things might happen to troublemakers? Wouldn't be surprised to see some buildings catch fire. It's very contagious, you know..."
Alyssa is a priestess of Gyronna: disproportionate revenge for slights real and imagined would be on her business card, if she had a business card.
Lavinia gave a sour look towards the varied citizens. "Wretched people," she mumbled to her coven sisters. "Let's got visit the sheriff... I'll clean off on the way."
After pausing in an alleyway for Lavinia to neaten herself up, the coven makes their way to the Sheriff's office. Inside, a large common room contains three desks and a table with four chairs. Two doors exit the common room to the north, opening onto a narrow hallway with two jail cells. To the west of the common room, a waist-high railing separates the sheriff’s office from the rest of the jail. You find Rhona Staelish inside, enjoying a cup of tea with her five deputies, good-naturedly chatting over the small annoyances of their week.
Sheriff Staelish takes both the decree and the letter from Alyssa and read them thoroughly three times before passing them to her deputies, mumbling to herself. "...too much of a coward to do his dirty work himself..." The former sheriff then removes her black vest, embroidered with the symbol of Cheliax, and slaps her ebon-handled longsword on her former desk.
While Rhona Staelish isn't pleased about the archbaron's decrees, her deputies are far more troubled, and grow even more so when they learn that Sheriff Staelish is being dismissed from her post. "There is no way we are going to comply to this absurd!..." deputy Ballenry started but was interrupted by Rhona. "Yes you are. Unfortunately this decrees are the law..." She then turns her attention to you. "I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about what the townspeople are in store for with thugs like you in charge." She retrieves her personal crossbow, as well as a few effects from her desk, keeping her frustration bottled the best she could, and then leaves quietly soon after, refusing to make eye contact with any of the coven the entire time.
Staelish's deputies, on the other hand, aren't willing to give up quite so easily. Deputy Curtwyn draws and loads his crossbow. "This ain't right. You can't just throw out this town's only justice. It ain't right!" Most of the others seems to share similar sentiments but deputy Ertha moves between you and intercedes before things erupt into violence. "You heard the Sheriff... put down your weapons and lets get out of here." She then takes off her own vest and throws it to the floor. One by one, Staelish's deputies resign, leaving the jail to you.
The jail contains three cabinets, two in the common room and one in the sheriff's office. The cabinets are locked, but with a quick search Anarxos finds a ring of keys in the former sheriff's vest, and hold an assortment of weapons and armor: three suits of leather armor, four light wooden shields, six clubs, four light crossbows and 40 bolts, four longswords, and six saps, as well as six potions of cure light wounds clearly marked with the symbol of Iomedae and two potions of remove disease. One of the cabinets also holds a key etched with the word "pillory," which unlocks the sturdy padlocks on the pillories in front of the jail.
In addition, a lockbox sits behind the sheriff's desk, once more opened with the sheriff's keys. The lockbox contains an assortment of weapons and contraband confiscated over the years. Inside is a wand of shocking grasp (16 charges), a masterwork bronze scizore decorated with a sculpted skeletal lion, 11 vials (one of them different from the others), a collection of 17 pornographic Taldan quartos containing scripts for two-performer "plays" (including "Her Highness's Tea Service" and "The Guardsman's Fine Salute"), seven skull-shaped onyxes, and a pouch containing 10 crowns (pp) and a bill of ownership for a "Halfling, male, 20 years, service-trained. Missing toe on left foot. Responds to the name 'Ardin.'"
Alyssa shakes her head ruefully as the deputies leave. "Well, they seem an impertinent lot, don't they? No respect for authority at all." Her expression brightens as they find the keys to the stocks. "So, dearies, who do we put in first? I vote for that rude innkeeper."
Lavinia breathed a genuine sigh of relief once the sheriff and her deputies had departed. It hadn't been a long day yet, but their task had been more exhausting and much less fun than she had anticipated. She expected reactions to be bad -- but she hadn't expected a face full of chili, or a deputy drawing his crossbow. Alyssa's suggestion made her laugh, though.
"Perhaps later...a simple arrest is much too mild for that ruffian," she said, savoring some twisted thoughts on how she wanted to handle the tavern keeper. Her grin faded to a slight frown. "But I guess we shouldn't arrest anyone until our promotion is official. We should lock this place down, and take anything we don't want stolen just in case any disgruntled peons break in. Then we can report in to Razelago."
"If we're going to do this, we need to do it right. Locking people up for no reason is a quick path to torches and pitchforks. We have to make it at least seem legitimate. We'll have to catch the innkeeper doing something wrong. Or frame him, I suppose, but real crimes are better than fake ones."
"Anyway, let's not count our chickens." Friday went about the office looking through things and collecting up the important items like Lavinia suggested.
The coven leaves the jail, locking it securely and making their way back towards Ash House. They leave the town without trouble and are within sight of their home when Staelish's four deputies step out from the crumbling porch.
"There they are! Get them!" The female deputy, who seems to be the one in charge, yells.
The coven gets one round of actions - the deputies have moved to about 30ft away.
Alyssa tuts at the breakdown of law and order. "Dearie me. Attacking a poor old woman in broad daylight. Won't any of you step in to defend me from your bloodthirsty companions?"
The last deputy nods at Alyssa's words, draws his sap and strikes hard at the man in front of him!
He strikes firmly and the man in front of him howls as his elbow is whacked and his arm goes numb. "What the hells Curtwyn?" He yells, looking over his shoulder in confusion and alarm.
Friday gestured and animated the sparse grasses and weeds.
Lavinia's expression soured at the deputy's ambush. "With behavior like this, I'm not surprised the Archbaron fired you..." She said, staring down the female. She wove her hand in a simple pattern.
All the deputies, except for Curtwyn escape the plants and close with the coven, battering them with their clubs.
However only Lavinia's foe is able to land a blow, and even that is weak as Friday's animated plants continue to entangle them.
Ertha nearly resists Lavinia's spell, but the witches hatred of Iomedean's overcomes the deputies will and she slumps to the floor, asleep.
"Should we lock them up?" Friday asked.
Alyssa gives a chilling little laugh. "Lock them up, dearie? I think we can do a bit better than that." She draws the short sword that Razelago gifted to them, and carefully tests the razor-sharp edge with her finger. "Attacking the Archbaron's representatives isn't respectful, dearie. And if you ain't got respect, you ain't got anything."
Assuming the others don't intervene, she will draw her blade across the throats of the unconscious deputies.
If they do argue against it, she'll grumble about the youth of today 'going soft' but will hold off on executions.
"Out here? In the street? With witnesses?" Friday warned quietly. "If they all turn up dead, it's not going to be hard for anyone to figure out who did it."
"We're the law now, right? They attacked us. We can execute them. Publicly. Maybe a nice hanging? There needs to be some kind of trial first though. Hence the whole locking them up thing."
"In my day, we didn't worry about witnesses - they worried about us, dearie." She sighs. But there's no point going on and on and on about the good times. "Still, you're probably right. Let's get them nice and locked up and we can hang them in the morning."
Still grumbling, Alyssa hoists each of the sleeping deputies up one by one and puts them in a cell. She makes sure to strip them of their belongings first - and their clothing. "Dignity's for them as shows respect, and they didn't."
Curtwyn protests loudly the whole way but Alyssa, despite her age is still far too strong for any single deputy and eventually all four are incarcerated in the jail they formerly ran.
Reporting back to Razelago, the shadowy patron seems quite amused by the incident. "You dealt with it well. Typical brash Iomedean behaviour, but I'm impressed, and I'm sure the Archbaron will be too. Report to his manse tomorrow morning at the ninth bell. Your payment is downstairs in the usual place. Leave the prison keys."
------------------------
True to his word Razelago has left his promised payment, 150gp each, in the chest in the living room. With no other instructions you have the rest of the day to do as you please before meeting the Archbaron tomorrow.
Friday goes to town and buys a very nice set of clothes.
Lavinia slumped into a chair, once the deputies had been locked up where they belonged, and she had collected her portion of the pay. Between the chili and the deputy ambush, she started to get a realistic idea of how the coven's reign would go. Still, she couldn't help smiling at least a little... Tomorrow would be an interesting day.
Alyssa nods, curtly; still slightly annoyed at not getting to slit their throats as they deserved. Especially the men. Always the men.
She sniffs loudly and disapprovingly as Friday returns from shopping in her fancy new glad rags. "Very nice, I'm sure, dearie. But I don't see the point, myself. This is all I've ever needed." She points at her black cloak and robes. "Don't see what's wrong with black. Goes with anything. Goes with everything, sooner or later. And it doesn't show the bloodstains."
With their purchases completed and the deputies dealt with, the coven is able to rest peacefully and wake with plenty of time to reach Scarlet Crown, home of Archbaron Darellus Fex.
Sharp gables and tall, narrow windows lend the archbaron’s manor an abbeylike quality, as though this were more a place for study and solemnity than leisure and laughter. A motif of rampant stags with antlers bloody from battle repeats among iron rooftop finials and on a crest above the stone entrance. At the door the coven is met by a bowing halfling servant, who escorts them to the second floor of the manor and opens the door to what appears to be the Archbaron's study.
The archbaron’s office is appointed in midnight ebony and crimson satin. Towering bookshelves, glassy-eyed taxidermic creatures, and curtained alcoves line the walls. At the far end of the room, a large desk and throne-like chair sit beneath a coat of arms displaying battling, bloodyhorned stags. Behind the desk, a wide window overlooks the manor grounds, and a spare-looking man with slick salt-and-pepper hair rises from his seat to greet his guests.
"“So you’re the agents Razelago has recommended? I can’t say you’re what I expected—but that might be a boon in the days to come. I am Darellus Fex, Archbaron of Longacre. Razelago tells me you’re the ones who reported our local priestess’s... lack of patriotism. As such, I thought you might be well suited putting an end to the threats to Longacre and the rule of law—my rule. If you’re amenable, of course. You would receive a salary of 150 gold pieces each week and wield authority as my deputies.”
He pauses and spreads his hands, inviting questions or comments.