Making no effort to hide his annoyance, Orrias snaps, "This is ridiculous, it's a damned rowboat, we don't need to pay fifty sails to some middleman! We'll find this fellow who has the boat--or some other, I don't care--and negotiate directly once we've seen the goods."
The elf gives the gnome a polite smile that very clearly says sod off. "Newt, was it? Thank you for your time and for the pitch, but we'll be on our way now."
Alexite makes a swipe for the piece of paper, the diminutive gnome makes it disappear with a flourish, and now there's a dagger in its place. "Now, now, gentlemen. No need to be rude. I think you'll find that's the fairest price here in town, to be sure. But best of luck to you in your search. You'll not likely find what you need here in the future." He backs away from the group of you, and disappears among the items in his store.
- - - - - -
After a fair bit of searching the docks, you eventually find an old fisherman, ready to retire, who will part with his beloved rowboat for no less than forty-five gold crowns. "It be me livelihood, gents - and while I may no' have many days left in me, I'm wantin' t' make sure those last ones 're comfortable. What say you?"
Despite his utter lack of knowledge on watercraft, Pip attempts to examine the boat for holes, rot, or other obvious signs of significant damage that his magic would not be able to mend.
Pip nods his head, feigning some semblance of expertise as he looks over the rowboat.
"Unless my compatriots see something that I don't, I think we'll have a deal, my good man."
A few crowns lighter and plus one rowboat, you're able to get it securely to the grate opening on the bay, and slip it down the passageway to the Wasp's Nest. None of you are the most proficient of sailors or riverfolk, so it takes some solid concentration on all your parts to get it into place.
As you're settling down for the night after the day's endeavors, you hear a cacophany from the storage room - it sounds like a wall is collapsing! There's a rumbling and clatter as bricks crumble to the ground, and Korva and her sisters squawk in protest and dismay.
You rush into the room, and when the dust clears you see that the southern wall has a portion missing, and a large pile of debris is scattered about the floor there!
Indra moves to quickly check out what happened. "Pip! Is this your work?"
Orrias checks with Korva and her people to ensure they're alright, then draws his hand crossbow and cautiously approaches the rubble, checking to see if there are previously-unknown chambers beyond.
Nerris puts down her book in the process of helping Rexus and approaches the wall. Slightly flabbergasted at whats going on she says,"What?"
"Whatever it was, it wasn't me! I was over here!" Pip calls from the boat on the water.
Hearing the commotion, he rows back to the dock, having made some progress Mending the nose on Calistria's statue.
DD
Per
St
The dust settles, and you all approach cautiously (though Pip is somewhat delayed by being in the boat). Nerris immediately notices that there are marks on the wall that indicate the use of tools, as though the stone were weakened deliberately.
When she brings this to everyone's attention, Indra is first to spy an out-of-place piece of canvas in a far corner (away from the light). When she kicks it over, and underneath are a small hammer and chisel.
"What is it?" Korva squawks. She appears to be fine, as are her sisters, just a little shaken up.
Indra lets loose a feral snarl. "WHO?" she roars. "When I find out who has betrayed us, I will rip his limbs off!" Her already pretty menacing glare is especially frightful as she stares around the room looking for any clues.
She makes an arcane gesture while whispering, "promo," allowing her to see magical auras (detect magic]. She stands first facing the tools and then directly away from them.
Nerris starts to ponder the events very carefully. She says,"I mean this wasn't the only strange thing either. Remember when papers started flying about randomly and I thought it was just stress."
The tools themselves do not radiate magic. As your gaze sweeps around the room, you take in the auras you know from your allies' possessions, but nothing unexpected.
"Betrayal? Not us - you're the ones keeping the law from snatching us up. We've no reason to betray you," Korva defends her group. "There have certainly been times of day when none of us have been here. Someone sneak in?"
Orrias frowns in thought as he examines the marks on the wall. "Back at the old stable, with the dog pack, we encountered that little band of gremlins. Perhaps something similar is at work here? Though chiseling out a wall is strange. If it was intended to hurt anyone it failed, and surely someone associated with Thrune would have simply reported us...? Puzzling."
The other side of the wall is just dirt (roots, sand, silt, and - mostly - clay). The collapse doesn't appear to threaten a structural collapse for the hideout, but it will need to be shored up eventually, something that Laria would likely see to.
Indra's features soften a bit as her rage simmers. "Apologies for my outburst." She inclines her head to Korva. "I did not wish for you to feel that I was implying this was your doing."
"Someone or something has been here. Perhaps it was those DISGUSTING creatures from the sewer. We may simply be in need of PEST control." Her tail whips around and hands her a cloth which she uses to pick up the hammer. "Sara, how is your friend's sense of smell? Would he be able to tell who may have used this recently?"
Alexite studies the area carefully. "I hope it's not just weird little critters...and I feel like they might have taken their tools with them too, no?"
Ruina sniffs all throughout the complex, but doesn't seem to find anything to draw her attention in particular.
"A mystery, to be sure," Laria says when she comes down later to hear of what happened. "I guarantee that none but yourselves have come through the coffee house, though I can't speak to the sewers. I'll see if I can find a mason that I trust to come down here and shore this up. I'll make sure you all get a heads up before the repairs are made, in case you want to head out. For now, we've another matter that might require your attention."
She gathers you around a table and unfolds a piece of paper. A boxy outline of a building next to a circular pit dominates the middle, and a smaller building to the side is included in the complex.
"This is the Sallix Salt Works. It's in Old Kintargo, and it got appropriated by Thrune right after the Night of Ashes. The previous owner wasn't the best representative of Kintargo, but they killed him all the same when he fought their takeover. Now it funds the government. Now, it's not taking it back that I'm worried about, no need to create that kind of target. There's an associate of mine that I think is being held there: Forvian Crowe. He leads a group of mercenaries, all of whom are being held captive at the salt works."
She looks around the table. "I don't know how many cronies Thrune has there, but they are mercenaries themselves, not Dottari or soldiers. They're led by a dwarf, Kossrani, a real beast of a fellow. While the others shouldn't be too difficult for you to handle, I'd make extra sure you're ready to take him on."
She opens her arms, "This'll be a pretty public operation, either way it goes down. Both Thrune and the populace will know that someone's doing something to go against the conditions here. If you get Crowe and his men out, you'll also have a solid team ready to help, just like Korva and her sisters, here."
She cracks her knuckles, and gestures at the paper. "So, what do you say? Ready to crack some Thrunie skulls?"
Mercenaries who have a strong reason to work against Thrune? Calistria's blessings, indeed. Indra's anger might get an outlet after all.
"Excellent. This sounds like the kind of help we need. But... we'll need a plan. If we simply march in, they'll have the advantage. Perhaps we could organize a distraction to draw some of the thrunies out? Any suggestions?"
Laria thinks for a moment. "The salt works is still in operation, and Crowe and his mercs are likely the ones toiling in it. That Kossrani is managing the thing, and he's still taking in wagonloads of wet salt from the brine springs every day. Maybe something you could do with them?"
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
"What about forged orders, requisitioning the prisoners for a work detail elsewhere?" Orrias offers. "Let some of Kossrani's troops escort the prisoners to a more isolated location, then ambush them. We can get information on the saltworks' layout from any captured guards or freed prisoners, and hit the Saltworks before our enemies realize they've been weakened."
Indra tilts her head. "That's not a bad idea. Do we have enough badges to pull something like that off? Do you know of any thrunies you could impersonate?"
"Huh. That sounds smart, ears," Alexite comments, looking over the crude map Laria's given them. "Better to split their forces if we can, too--more of an even fight, then."
Orrias strokes his chin and starts thinking aloud. "Really we just need the orders to look genuine, we'll only require a bare handful of disguises--grunts tasked with delivering message is all. What's crucial is a location where we can dispatch the mercs, while still being a believable place for a work detail to be required. Or perhaps we can spring the ambush on the way to that location..."
Orrias begins rooting around in his pack for quill and ink, and starts scribbling the outlines of the plan. "Very well, a prime location for our trap, and a believable officer for the orders to come from. I've a few ideas..."
I won't really be available to post tomorrow, but Orrias will try to coax a forger's kit (or at least the money for one) from Rexus, and I'll fluff it out once we've got a Thrunite officer + a location for our fake work detail. The roll below doesn't include the +2 if we get that kit.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
"Hold on there, Orrias. You're not going to enact any literary skulduggery on the Thrunies without me," Pip announces.
He helps with the forging, offering his scrivener's kit as a starting point in terms of tools.
"Hold on, I think I got a list of the more significant Thrune goon officers' corps written down in the back here..." Alexite pulls out a little blue book and begins flipping through it, scanning lists as Orrias works on his forgery.
When you finish up your falsified orders document, Laria gives you a low whistle. “I can’t imagine a Dottari in Kintargo who’d doubt those. Well crafted, Orrias! If you get through this rebellion alive, and I’ll have work for you in the future, for certain! Now, what about your timetable. When are you planning to have this all go down? As soon as tomorrow, or do you want to at least go near the place first to get a sense of what you’re looking at?”
"I believe a little reconnaissance is in order. We want to know what we're dealing with and try to figure out where to sneak off to should things go awry." Indra considers a moment. "I've been to the Salt Market before, but don't believe I've ever had cause to go to the Salt Works."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The six of you (and Ruina) slip out separately and meet up at the Salt Works in the late morning. The streets of Old Kintargo have their characteristic charm (and smell), and no one gets in your way as you travel, so you have any time you need to grab something on the way if you like.
When you arrive, there are two main buildings, as you saw on Laria's map. To the northeast, there's a small building , and it has a door on the west wall. No one goes in and out while you're there, and with only high-up windows, it's difficult to tell what it might be for.
The rest of the complex is primarily focused on an almost 60' diameter silo, with smoke coming out of chimneys at the top. There is a long, low building on the west side of the silo, perhaps a hundred feet long and fifty to sixty wide, again with high windows.
[spoiler=DC 15 Knowledge (Engineering) check]You think that the silo is likely where the salt is dried before long-term storage. It would be brutal, dessicating work to be forced to labor there.[/ooc]
As the typical lunch hour comes for most Kintargans, you see a bedraggled group of men ushered out into fenced-in the common yard between the larger building and the smaller one. There they mostly collapse to the ground, too weak to do more than slurp down the bowls of whatever gruel is passed to them by black-clad guards. You can see four such guards watching over the six 'workers,' and each of them has a familiar bronze pendant hanging about their necks. Of Kossrani, the dwarf, you catch no sign.
When the lunch hour draws to a close, a wagon - laden with damp wet salt - approaches a door on the south side of the building, and one of the guards disappears inside, likely to greet him. The three remaining guards kick the laborers out of the way, and back into the building so that they can resume their toil. The wagon is pulled through the large doors on the south side of the building, likely to drop off their delivery in the large silo. For the next while, the exterior of the complex is nearly silent, save for the eventual departure of the wagon (now empty).
Orrias was glad he'd brought one of the dottari militia uniforms with him on this little mission. "How quickly do we want to do this?" he asks softly. "I've an elixir of disguise prepared, and a uniform on hand. If we want to move towards the ambush position I'll deliver the message. It was my idea, so the risk should be mine as well."
" We could wait because it's not like I can't do that too. I just need to copy your formula. It's also safer in pairs"
"I agree. Better in pairs," Alexite mutters, watching the area. "If you and Nerris go in, the four of us can set up at the ambush point."
Orrias nods. "Alright, if that's the plan, lets head back and I'll teach you the formula, and we'll finalize an ambush spot."
Upon heading back to the base she earnestly grabs Orrias' formula book and begins to work on copying it.
[ooc]Sound reasonable?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Nerris decides to calmly look at the formula and take her time knowing that she can do it patiently.
Despite the experience of the past couple weeks, Pip remains a novice at such subterfuge. He simply does his best to prepare his gear and clothes as his teammates plan the mission.
With the letter prepared, several of you head over to the former site of the Lucky Bones, then start making your way from there to the salt works. It isn’t far between the two buildings, but there is a gatehouse for the main city wall in between. Marching a set of prisoners from one point to the other shouldn’t be too difficult, especially with the quality of your forgery, though one never knows.
On the east side of the gatehouse, it’s just a couple city blocks south to the ruins of the Lucky Bones. You can get there by the main thoroughfare, but if the orders specify to go along the smaller back alley, there are easier locations to set an ambush. Other alleys cross the one you would take, and there are storage containers all along it that could be set up as barricades, if needed.
This back alley also doesn’t appear to be too heavily traveled during the day, though the sound of fighting could likely be heard from the main thoroughfare, should a Dottari patrol (with good ears) happen by at the right time.