Replaces Table 3
Shera heads into the room, and looks around. "Just a storage room? Do you keep overflow prisoners here or are these cages for intake?"
"Just spares, only suitable for minor offenders"
***
Tem crosses the room, ready to explore the next room.
"Accounting and administration, you're guards, not scribes, no need to go there"
Galvar waves on, "Come on, I need to show you the common room"
Poe's natural curiosity bubbles to the surface and does a double take on the door before following the others out. Does this look like a scribes door? Is he distracting us from something.
Poe's instinct is that the comment is genuine, he's just not that interested in taking you places you don't need to go. The door looks pretty ordinary and you have no reason to doubt the description given.
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Cornelia takes note of that room and attempts to sense if Galvar is displaying any deception; however, she is much too distracted by what may lay behind the door.
"Yes, please do show us the common room, but I do have an inquiry about the records room. In the event of an escape and we need to search that room, are there normally individuals staffed in that room?"
"Usually a scribe slaving over blotting paper and an inkwell. Boring work."
”in the prison” he offers back.
Galavar leads the party back around to the other side of the foyer to another door and opens it.
This cozy chamber features wooden chairs arranged casually around two tables. Two blazing fireplaces warm the room — a western one facing in toward an open door and a southern one furnished with kitchen utensils and cook pots. Playing cards, dice, and other diversions litter the tables. A gamey smell wafts through the room.
Five guards are in here laughing and joking and having a good time, they pause briefly as you enter.
Galvar continues "This is our staff lounge, through one door is the barracks and then the privies are off of that, the other is storage for you guards, you can leave any valuables or the like in there."
Poe checks out the storage room, happy to off-load his bedroll. He relaxes now that his backpack is a little lighter. Of course, Poe takes the opportunity to try to spot anything out of place in the storage room.
Tem greets one of the offduty guards, attempting to break the ice. "Good gig you got here. Quiet, in the city, orderly. Whose family did you marry into to get here?"
The guards appear quite jovial and friendly, welcoming you in and suggesting you take a seat and enjoy the 'ambience'. "Not a bad job eh? Look it's not the best in the world, but the work is straightforward, not horribly difficult, and the pay is timely. Great job if you can get the work I reckon, the guests don't like it so much but then they didn't get here because they were collecting alms for the poor or building a Church of Shelyn"
***
Looking into the store room, the room contains chests for the guards’ personal belongings. Several spare guard tabards hang from the rack along the northeast wall.
Rolada looks over to the stove and spots a guard chopping vegetables and herbs into the gamey smelling stewpot - clearly the next collective meal.
Sajna sticks her head into the barracks. The room is lined with triple bunk beds. Three guards are just waking up, obviously recovering from a late night shift. They’re groggy but conversational as they don armor. They look to the opening door and Sajna peering through it at them "Excuse us milady, some privacy perhaps"
***
"How many prisoners are there now? Any particular troublemakers we need to keep an eye out for?" "Anyone particularly interesting or famous being held right now?"
"Dunno, a few? We rarely go in that part, it's the interrogators that head in there - every now and then one of us goes in to help drop off a meal or something, but there's usually little disturbance or trouble out of anyone after the first day" the guard lets the obvious reason linger "Of course they all claim to be important, or connected to this family or that, or have the money to pay some imaginary price... and every one of them protests innocence too - never locked up a guilty person apparently. Anyhow, we're locked in with 'em and missing all the joviality elsewhere."
Galvar seems to be making himself comfortable, there doesn't appear to be much more tour scheduled...
Poe grabs a tabard for himself and Tem then steps into the hall to stretch his legs. He is careful to stay within 50 feet of Tem... Tem gets really angry when he wanders off and breaks the tether...
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Tem sits with the guards and starts to swap war stories and telling tales of his time in the Molthune military, anything to keep them distracted from the activities of his team.
"...So there we were three days into Nirmathas territory, lancers on our tail when out of the supply chest crawls a young boy! It was the general's son!..."
Cornelia begins conversing with the would-be chef, "Just some herbs from home, not sure what they are called - just been using em for years, as have others who grab 'em from the garden. Meat isn't always the freshest so it goes a long way to keeping the taste alright"
"Thrick" he introduces himself as he chops a leek into the stew.
***
Meanwhile, the guards really aren't sure what to make of Tem, a couple are playing cards and look up appraisingly "Come join us for a game and tell us the rest of that"
Poe obtains some tabbards.
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Shera follows Poe out of the room and down the hallway. She's headed for the northwest door at a slow shuffle. She nods to the guard. "Want anyone to take over for you? There's some amazing stories going on in the common room, and I've heard them all before." She gives a little bit of an eye roll and a shrug.
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Putting on the tabard from Poe, Tem joins the card game pulling a few coins from his very solid belt to ante up. "Don't mind the ectoplasm. If you can, avoid dying in a cursed manor. That is a story of later, a drunk later... Anyhow, so there I was dressed up like a farmer, with the general's boy in rags right beside me facing down twenty lancers..."
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Seeing the others dressing the part, Sajna also picks out a tabard and slips the uniform on over the top of her sari.
Once she looks more the part, she heads back out into the prison and mirrors Shera, heading off down the northeast corridor.
"Hello!" She calls out to the guard at the end of the hall.
"Have you been working here long? I'm trying to get an idea for the layout of the place and am wondering to myself what is through this way? Do you mind if I take a look?"
As it becomes abundantly clear half the party has exited the room, Galvar summons the guards preparing in the barracks and takes a mass of guards from the guard room - Galvar is at the head of the group looking rather displeased. "You aren't to wander unescorted through here, did we not have this discussion?"
Tem has lost his audience and the joviality of the room has rapidly cooled...
Sajna finds herself somewhat surrounded, Shera and Poe slightly less boxed in.
Swords have not been drawn, but the mood has certainly become somewhat edgier and tense.
***
Thrick continues the cooking quietly.
***
It dawns slowly on Cornelia that two of the herbs Thrick is adding to the stew are natural catalysts for oil of taggit that enhance its potency and could affect anyone who tastes it.
"Well you aren't to wander about in here unaccompanied" he admonishes. "If you want to go places, you will have an escort. How am I supposed to rely on people who just get up and wander off at a whim and I can't find them where I need them?"
He seems to be a bit calmer.
The guards Sanja and Shera were talking to just nod in agreement (sympathetically) "You lot can't really wander free, and certainly not alone - it's dangerous in areas and there's some things we aren't supposed to see"
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Amarandlon puts on a tabard as well, and winces when he sees the others castigated for leaving the room. Despite his friendliness, it seems that Galvar will not be willing to turn a blind eye to us...not unforced, anyway. He's half-tempted to enchant the man on the spot, but there are too many witnesses, and he can see Cornelia in conversation with the chef.
If I know that human, she's plotting something...we'll see what emerges.
Poe squeeks in fright and hustles back into the barracks.
Cornelia offers to spice the stew, Thrick looks across "What is it?"
Meanhwile Poe and the rest of the party are herded back to the room.
Tem challenges the supervisor, which further turns the room a bit more edgy - Galvar looks at the Phantom with malice "There's a bucket and mop in the storeroom, reckon you can wield them with vigour at the latrines" - he has laid it down as a clear challenge, the rest of the guards have gone quiet.
You could hear a pin drop.
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"So sorry. I'll head back. I was just trying to be helpful. Nobody really wants to be here on a festival day." Shera will shrug and make her way back to the common room.
Shera looks to see if he's speaking to Tem or the entire group.
Shera seems to be mostly forgiven, and her transgression mostly forgotten as the scene with Tem plays out.
Cornelia offers Thrick the option of her delicious truffle oil and he pauses for a moment "I heard that is really expensive... too good for this stew, but if you have it spare then why not eh? A bit of a treat for the festival"