Aerodus stands back as Tusilak leans over Nora to work his divine magic. He sees that the big man, also has the gift. He takes out a very nicely made dagger and walks over to cut down both Sev and Raina. Gently, he helps the devil-man rest on the ground but he carries Raina closer to the group - "Any healing magic left?" He steps back to let them do their work and nods in agreement when the use the potions to bring back the two (at least somewhat).
Somehow, as this is occurring, Aerodus is searching the bodies and then back to the group. He brings over the crossbow and the bloodied scale mail and puts it down next to Tusilak. "Lamm is your's for the taking, just as we agreed. Job well done, thank you."
When Raina stirs he tries to console her but knows his words are not heard. As she begins to perform a coup de grace on the wall Aerodus finally manages to restrain her, his words coming through,"Raina - enough! Enough! It was because of your initial bravery that we even made it this far. You are alive and Lamm is dead. He can't hurt anyone anymore. You did it."
Cataree snaps out of whatever she was in and begins sobbing into Tusilak's chest. The other girl, looks around awkwardly, her eyes shifting from Aerodus to the floor.
"Is-- is Alfhildr okay? Did they do anything to her?"
"You okay?" Talliree asks Raina.
"I've wanted to kill him for twenty years, and you don't see me tryin' to batter the place down."
"Thank you Balthazar and Nora. Thank the gods everyone else seems to be ok." Tusilak stands and walks over to Cataree. "And thank goodness you're ok. We were so worried. Is Alfhildr the other girl or the one upstairs?"
"My name is Alfsigr. Alfhildr is my sister."
Alfhildr answers before sighing in relief.
"What about the others? What's going to happen to them?"
Cataree quiets down a little bit.
"I... know some members of the Korvosan guard. I will let them know and we can find proper homes for everyone. For now I think that we've spent enough time in his place."
"What's in there?"
Talliree points out the door to the west end of the room.
"I think you're right Talliree. We need to see what else is here before we go. I'll take Cataree back to the Skaldwood, but its good to know you might know of way to find homes for the others."
Raina is almost about to punch Aerodus in the face when he dares to stop her, but regains enough of her senses to not injure one of the few people that she would almost consider a friend. In the end she winds up sobbing as the gravity of the situation hits her.
When the unknown gnome says something to her, Raina regains her senses enough to glare profusely at Talliree. "Well congratu-f**king-lations. Some of us almost f**king died again and yet... ugh. I don't need to explain myself to you!" Raina is clearly on an emotion rollercoaster, although at least being irrationally angry at the gnome got her to stop crying. She sniffles and roughly scrubs the tears away.
"Let's just make sure there's no poor kids left in there and then get the hell out of here before the guard gets us. Or before I throttle the gnome."
Aerodus opens the door to the small room in the corner.
This foul-smelling room seems to be a combination bedroom and study. A wooden bed with a lumpy mattress stands against the east wall, while a round table heaped with dirty plates, bread crusts, stained goblets, fruit rinds, and scuttling cockroaches sits nearby. At the foot of the bed sits a large strongbox, a slighty rusted lock securing its lid. A sagging dresser filled with moth-eaten clothes well past their glory days is in one corner—what appears to be a wooden hatbox surrounded by a small cloud of flies sits atop this dresser.
"Disgusting. Of course, he may have left a last surprise for us. Do any of you know how to look for traps on the strongbox?" While waiting for some with hopefully more skill at locks and traps to come forward, Tusilak casts detect magic on the hatbox, strongbox and scans the rest of the room.
Sev weakly makes his way over to Lamm's body and stares down at it in disbelief. He'd been robbed of his revenge, and the hatred burning inside him was not quenched by the sight of the man's dead form below him. He dropped his knees into Lamm's gut and kneeled atop the corpse, tearing into its chest with his claws as tears streamed down his face.
Nora pulls Sev off the man's body.
"You're gonna tear off his face and then we won't be able to claim the reward. He's dead. Get over it."
Nora draws her longsword and unceremoniously decapitates Lamm's corpse once the children, Raina, and Sev are out of the room. She places the disgusting trophy in her pack and drapes her cloak over the rest of the remains. "C'mon, Balth. We're almost done here."
She follows the others into the next room.
Aerodus takes a look around the room, seeing if there any further valuables. "If no one has the skill with locks perhaps Balthazar can use his significant strength"
Tusilak doesn't detect any magic, but when he looks at the hat box, it feels as if something is calling him. Begging him to come closer.
Talliree watches in shock as Sev rips into Lamm's dead body, and her pale cheeks turn green as the scene gets to her.
Thankfully Nora pulls the wild man off before she really became sick. After Sev, Raina, and the two girls walk out of the room, she turns to Nora.
"The desire for vengeance is a poison. Try not to judge them too harshly. Lets get whatever the bastard kept that's worth selling and get out of here."
Tusilak walks over to the hat box, "I've got a bad feeling about this. Be ready to cover me if anything comes out." He cautiously opens the box.
The stench that assaults Tusilak threatens to overwhelm him. Decay mixed with cheap perfume wafts up and into the Shoanti's nostrils. Inside lies Zellara's severed head, crudely done up in makeup in a macabre mockery of life. She is obviously weeks dead, despite the attempt at preservation. Underneath lies a blood stained, cloth-wrapped package.
"What?! How can this be?!" Aerodus had held his bow up, standing slightly behind the shaman. He nearly loses his arrow such is his surprise. He lowers the weapon as he turns to Sev and Raina, for once truly speechless.
"The package, Tusilak!" There seems to be a sense of urgency in his voice, almost as if the man is trying to make sense of what is happening.
Tusilak spins away for a moment, fighting down the urge to vomit. "Keep the girls back. We knew Lamm was a monster...but this? And how can Zellara be here and back at her home?" Without waiting for answers, Tusilak reaches for the cloth-wrapped package and slowly unwraps it.
Raina steps into the room behind Aerodus and Tusilak and immediately chokes back vomit at the putrid stench wafting out from the hat box. The moment she spots the gruesome scene, she finds she can hold back the bile no longer, and promptly stumbles back out into the previous room to void the contents of her stomach in a corner somewhere.
Balthazar watches the grim sight from behind the Shoanti, tight-lipped but otherwise unaffected. He's seen the kind of cruelty that the city's crime lords got up to--a head in a box was only the beginning of that rabbit hole. Still, it was hardly pleasant. He bars the door with his physical girth, gently but firmly disallowing the younger charges to enter.
Aerodus' thoughts mimic Tusilak's. So who was that woman? . Like a flash he relives the images of their recent encounter, scanning her home and even her person for any clue. He feels ashamed - he is a consummate trickster yet he was completely deceived.
Tusilak finds a familiar deck of cards, amazingly unblemished, wrapped in the cloth. The designs and silver gilt edges are easily recognizable as Zellara's Harrow Deck. The two girls, Cataree and Alfsigr stay well back from the room. Even dead, Lamm still manages to control them through fear.
Talliree sticks her head into the room, then quickly braces against the wall by the door. Her body seized by the need to vomit. She, unlike Raina, manages to hold it in, but just barely.
"I guess the old bastard got a sick sense of humor."
Aerodus picks up the deck, inspecting if almost as if it weren't real. He turns to Raina but sees her vomiting and then instead turns to Sev,"You were there - how is this possible? We saw her just tonight yet this - she - looks like she's been here a week."
Opening the cloth and seeing the deck, it all hits home for Tusilak, "She has been here a week. And yet, her spirit is so strong that she came back for us...and to see Lamm's evil ended." The shaman seems to gain confidence as he speaks. "My quah, the Skoan-Quah protect the spirits of our people. I do not know the ways of the Varisians like I do the Shoanti. But Zellara has shown a spirit as strong as some of our most honored ancestors. I will see to it that she receives the protection and honored care she deserves."
"You believe it was Zellara's spirit itself that was before us? Not some disguise or ruse?" He pauses for a moment, thinking, "Fascinating."
Talliree manages to finally get her stomach under control and take a peek into the room.
"Wow, never knew he was this much of a slob. Do we even want to know what's in the lockbox?"
"Yes, let's open it." Without trying to make it obvious that he associates such shady work as lock-picking with the demon-man Aerodus turns towards Sev,"Can you open it?"
Sev seems completely detached from the situation, and stares blankly at the far wall of the room for several moments before realizing he's been addressed. "What? Oh. Yeah." The tiefling gives the lock a cursory once-over, and even in his obviously distracted state, he makes a good showing with the tools.
Sev's skills may be suffering a bit from his recent ordeal, but the lock doesn't seem to be too much more difficult to pick.
"Hold on, I've got it." Sev fiddles with the lock a little more.
Sev gets the lock undone after a bit of work. Inside the case, each one wrapped in cloth and tied with twine, is a narrow teak cigar case inlaid with tiny bits of jade, a 2-pound gold ingot bearing the Cheliax coat of arms, a miniature gold crown, a fist-sized scrimshaw carving of a kraken with garnets for eyes, a silver ring bearing the inscription “For Emmah—the light in my nights,” a highly realistic and highly scandalous ivory figurine of two entwined succubi, a masterwork shuriken, an adamantine arrowhead, an abalone-shell holy symbol of Shelyn, a tiny glass tube containing a dose of oil, an obsidian wand, a crystalline vial containing a dose of silversheen, and a bejeweled brooch with a broken clasp. The brooch is by far the most valuable thing in the pile. It is crafted to appear as a psuedodragon and an imp coiled around each other.
After apparently voiding the contents of her stomach twice over, and spending another couple of minutes simply doubled over trying to catch her breath, Raina manages to recover, though she still looks incredibly pale. She pokes her head into the room just in time to see Sev spring the lock on a safebox of some kind; she scowls at the sight but says nothing.
"Probably stuff he's stolen from people over the years," she grumbles, glancing over the pile of gear. "He used to get us to pick pockets and grab things off of market stall tables and such."
"Yeah.. I doubt any of this stuff is legitimately his." Sev glances sidelong at Raina, then continues his appraisal of the goods. "The trick is selling any of this stuff. Nobody loses personalized valuables like this without making a fuss about it to every fop in town; we go to the wrong person looking to sell and then we're clapped in irons. I wish I knew who might have owned these. It'd be easier to collect a reward on their safe return than fencing them."
Talliree looks over Sev's shoulder. trying to help him out with pricing the things from Lamm's safe.
Aerodus' eyes sparkle as he sees what's in the box. So many nice valuables! As he hears the conversations regarding pick-pocketing he says,"Well, most of your marks were probably not as innocent or deserving as you might think. Don't feel too bad."
He moves forward to look over Sev's shoulder as the tiefling lays out what is found, trying to gauge their value. He pipes up with random tidbits of knowledge regarding coin stamping techniques, how best to polish and maintain jade, etc.
a narrow teak cigar case inlaid with tiny bits of jade - 25gp
a 2-pound gold ingot bearing the Cheliax coat of arms - 100gp
a miniature gold crown - 350 gp
a fist-sized scrimshaw carving of a kraken with garnets for eyes - 200gp
a silver ring bearing the inscription “For Emmah—the light in my nights,” 150gp
a highly realistic and highly scandalous ivory figurine of two entwined succubi - 450gp
a masterwork shuriken - nothing special about it, 6gp 2sp
an adamantine arrowhead - 60gp 5cp
an abalone-shell holy symbol of Shelyn - 300gp
a tiny glass tube containing a dose of oil - Spellcraft DC 16
an obsidian wand - Spellcraft DC 16
a crystalline vial (Worth 50gp) containing a dose of silversheen - 300gp total
a bejeweled brooch with a broken clasp - Around 1200 gp
As the group puzzles over the worth of items, Raina seems both bored and tired, leaning up against the wall with her eyes closed and her brow furrowed in either frustration or pain. "I don't want anything to do with the black market. Just in advance."
"I think... I think we should go back to Zellara's home. Maybe she's got a twin sister or something. Or whatever creepy spirit mumbo-jumbo Tusilak was talking about. Either way, I don't think we want to hang around a semi-legal warehouse with a bunch of dead people in it."
"What should we do with the kids upstairs?" Balthazar asks curiously.
"... children?" Raina's eyes snap open; she seems horrified. "Oh, no... Don't tell me this is where he's been keeping them..."
Not really caring about what was going on downstairs anymore, Raina rushes out of the room and heads upstairs to check on the children. She'll talk gently with them, asking them for their names and any identifying information such as where they may have lived before being captured by Lamm. Hugs aplenty are offered, and once she gets some ideas of who they all are she'll offer to play some simple games with the kids until everyone is ready to leave.
The first of Lamm's Lambs to speak with Raina almost knocks her through the hole in the floor. Even in the gloom, and despite the tears rolling down her face, she is obviously related to the ulfen girl below.
"I-is my sister alright?!"
The party down below searches through the rest of the two rooms, but finds little in the way of value.