Good day, Galvar, the lone guards says have you come to relieve me? My head is ringing like a bell from this paperwork, i'd much rather enjoy the flowers in the garden.
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Bell... flower? Oh wait!
Jalthas's helmet turns away from the dusty manuscripts, his deep voice rising from the hollow-sounding suit of armor. "You must be Krima. Well-met. It seems we have common friends who deal in the flower business. Bell-adonna is their speciality, I hear."
Then in a lower voice. "We've been looking for you - we got rid of Galvar temporarily, so we must make haste now."
I see, and your friend is now posing as Galvar. The disguise is not bad, though you might not fool everyone. Krima says, pointing at Anaristiel.
Tell me what you have learned. I have thus far seen that a prisoner matching Zefiro's description was carried away for a torture session, just when the interrogator was called away. Good chance that he is still strapped to those evil contraptions.
When he was first imprisoned, guards secured his documents in the prison’s vault.
I don't know how the building is defended, or what traps are in place. I suspect the interrogator keeps some kind of written memo for accessing the vault in his office. I have a duplicate of the key - I managed to make a cast of it. It's not perfect, but it should do.
I can 'supervise' you around the facility, or you can keep that disguise up. I think the first is less risky, but the choice is up to you.
As the sounds of good times fill the hall, and the guards become sloppy talking among each other.
Yes, I don't know how the interrogator remembers that passcode for the vault, he can’t even remember what month it is sometimes. All the important documents are in there...
Krima escort the rest of the group to the back of the building, where the entrance to the interrogator's office is located. The replica key doesn't fit perfectly. It will require some tinkering to open the lock.
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Mogall keeps Lance updated on the group's progress through the Message spell he cast earlier that will last 50 minutes.
If no one else has a way to open the lock then Mogall can use his arcane bonded amulet to cast Knock {link}
The adventurers don't have much luck with the replica key, but the unlocking spell cast by Mogall does the trick all the same.
A smoldering replace illuminates the office, casting red light over a massive corner desk littered with disorganized papers. A seven-foot-tall statue of a four-horned fiend with a burning crown overlooks the desk from the corner.
The desk hosts a jumbled mess of interrogation schedules, prisoner transfers, and Loyalty Day agendas.
One document is a copy of The Asmodean Disciplines, bookmarked to a chapter on crime and punishment with a handwritten note. ()
A second document is a twine-bound set of instructions for activating the prison’s soundproofing mechanism. The manual notes that the prisms emit light when active, and they create a wall of magical silence between any two prisms with an uninterrupted line of effect to one another. No sound passes through this border, but if an object, creature, or wall disrupts the border, the entire effect ends until the obstruction is removed.
A third document seems to be an important letter ()
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Adrianna roots around the office, looking for anything useful. She holds up a twine-bound set of instructions. "Listen to this," she says. "These are details about activating the prison’s soundproofing mechanism. The manual notes that the prisms emit light when active, and they create a wall of magical silence between any two prisms with an uninterrupted line of effect to one another. No sound passes through this border, but if an object, creature, or wall disrupts the border, the entire effect ends until the obstruction is removed."
A minute later, the observant monk holds up another document. "You're going to want to read this yourselves, I think..." she says and passes it around.
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"You like the bawdy ones eh? Well here's a sorry story about why its best to avoid the zombie slaves of Kaer Maga... heed the advice here lads!"
Lance starts up another tune.
"I met a maid in Kaer Ma-ga,
after one dozen pints of lager,
the tavern owner said
"forget her - she's dead!"
and that was the start of this saga.
I sought advice from a wizard,
who read a cut up trolls gizzard,
he said it was fine
so I fed her a line
And told her about my 'pet lizard'!
That wizards advice it was busted,
I knew he couldn't be trusted,
but I loved that wench,
disregarded the stench,
and now my sword looks rusted!"
While Lance keeps up his bawdy song in the guard room, the rest of the group manages to uncover a slew of documents. Anaristiel also finds an antitoxin in the desk drawer.
The chamber in the northeast corner looks rather sturdy. Steel beams reinforce the walls of this chamber, which is accessible only through a round iron door with an inset wheel. The numerals one through nine embellish the wheel’s edge, with the number one set in the uppermost position beneath a stone arrow.
Adrianna keys in the combination, and the round iron door falls away.
Dozens of carefully organized codices and scrolls fill the stone shelves carved into the walls, each labeled with names and sigils hammered into small brass placards over each niche. Two statues of humanoid fiends holding red-flamed torches monitor the room from the corners. Two open chests on either side of the door hold jumbles of unsorted documents, but a third chest in the far corner remains closed.
The documents contain information on Cheliax’s numerous political targets extracted from the Nail’s interrogation sessions, some of which provide highly sensitive blackmail material.
There are three further documents that are interesting. The first two are interrogation reports filed in the section marked with the Aspis Consortium’s sigil ().
The other is in a chest that stores a mound of Zefiro’s unaltered Chelish histories, including one annotated lineage amendment torn from its binding and left atop the pile ().
There's two sets of double door that allow possible ingress into the central structure of the building.
Beyond the double doors, the stink of unwashed bodies permeates a narrow corridor, illuminated by violet prisms set into sconces on the inner corners. Iron bars isolate the hall’s outer perimeter, where the walls are lined with manacles set into the stone. Dozens of filthy prisoners lie behind the bars, each one wearing a sign around his or her neck bearing an identification number, a crime, a red “X” next to the word “Interrogation,” and a release date. Two sets of iron double doors lead deeper into the building.
Each corner of the central prison chamber bears a sconce fitted for a fist-sized prism; only the southeast and southwest sconces are empty.
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Mogall looks at the dozens of prisoners, using the message spell he whispers to the others "Do we get extra credit for the mission if we free all of them? Would causes a distraction too. Would have to wait for us to get Zefiro first."
The small Wayang heads clockwise around to the first set of double doors, "Wonder where the other two Prism are, and do we need them?"
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A second document is a twine-bound set of instructions for activating the prison’s soundproofing mechanism. The manual notes that the prisms emit light when active, and they create a wall of magical silence between any two prisms with an uninterrupted line of effect to one another. No sound passes through this border, but if an object, creature, or wall disrupts the border, the entire effect ends until the obstruction is removed.
"Right, lets get the soundproofing up, no point having people yell and carry on"
Lance looks at the prisoners "A choice for you to make here - stay in your shackles - or come join in an escape. Reckon either choice is valid, so if you want in, or out, as it were - just say so."
I think I've seen items like that in the storage room, Krima remarks. Sure enough, a visit to the storage reveals two prism stored in a crate. One of the crystals has a visible crack in its surface that has leaked much of its contained magic.
It would be possible to perform basic repairs. A silence spell might just stabilize the prism long enough, or someone with sufficient spellcraft skills might be able to patch up the prism as well.