Twilight of the Heroic Age (Inactive)

Game Master Simeon

Armanus gets awoken by the halfling to take her shift. He notices Kristleifur been roused as well. Once he has himself situated, Armanus investigates the lockboxes.
Perception: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (10) + 2 = 12

Kristleifur carefully and very quietly moves towards the wooden area where he has been informed that is concealing something. He takes the elven woodworking tools and begins fiddling with the wall - slowly and quietly.

Armanus doesn’t find anything beyond what’s already been noticed.

Kristleifur, are you making a disable device check?

For the wood? Yes.

Perception to look for traps in the wood: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (4) + 10 = 14

Disable Device to quietly and reversibly open a gap in the wood for himself: 1d20 + 9 + 2 ⇒ (18) + 9 + 2 = 29

Kristleifur doesn't notice any traps. He easily opens the lockbox, revealing some papers and a large leather bag. Upon closer inspection, the lockbox also has a small switch on the back wall.

The lockbox is made of metal and is also too small to fit into. I'll count the disable device and perception as going to the lock.

Ah, I thought I had to make checks to get past the wood in order to get to the box. That's fine, he doesn't need to climb into the box itself. :)

Kristleifur will leaf through the papers for headlines and the like, and then open the bag to see what's inside.

He resists flipping the switch. For now.

Elsa feigns sleep, and watches the entrance, in case of interruptions.

Zyrel sits motionless in meditation by the entrance, only the darting of his eyes revealing he is not asleep.

The rest of the night passes uneventfully.

In the predawn light, as the muffled ship's bell rings the shift change, Zyrel walks over to Erick and carefully wakes the man.
"Shift change." he says quietly. "Time to discuss."

In the night

Kristleifur closes the lockbox, but keeps the papers and bag, then puts the wood back so it appears intact.

In the early morning
Very quietly:

"I have something to show you - and there's a switch in the lockbox."

He presents the papers and bag to the group, taking care to have no line of sight to them from the front door.

@GM: Kristleifur did look at these briefly already. Did he notice anything?

The bag is full of assorted coins, and the letters are all closed with wax seals.

Zyrel thinks "I might be able to reforge the seals. I will not do so without clear evidence we are betrayed." he adds quietly.

"Can anyone read the letters without ripping up the seals?"

Kristleifur looks around hopefully.

wax seals? Try steam. If you are careful, you can use a knife to pop them clean, after steaming them a bit. Not too long, or you'll melt the wax. Then reseal them later.

Elsa stretched and yawned.

Or open them, and use a mending spell to close them. Both work.

She then looks archly at Zyrel.

you do know these are already stolen goods. A moral stance is a bit late. Opening them or not would mean little to the baliff's at this point. It would mean the cells.

"'Stolen' is a bit harsh. It's not like we were going to *keep* them. But yeah, you're right, others might not see it that way. Let's try steam unless someone has another suggestion. They might be magically sealed."

"We don't know that it's stolen. Or illegal, that was why we were checking." Erick hisses quietly. "Let's not put our head in a noose just yet. Let's see if we can find anything else out."

"Well, there *is* that switch at the back of the lockbox. I didn't see any trap on it, but it could be a really cunning one. Though I'll flick the switch if that's the best lead we have."

"Hardly stolen. We were hired to guard them. We are guarding them. Nowhere in our employment did it require secrecy." Zyrel points out quietly. "Do not open the letters. Flick the switch, I suppose. Morally once we break the seal we are damaging property."

The tiefling's eyes shimmer as he casts detect magic on the letters and coin bag.

Elsa snickers Sensitive point, hey. Rationalize how you like, we were not given permission to open the box, and we did. Well, the gnome did, and we be accomplices. That's called stealin'. Didn't say we shouldna didn't.

Elsa's voice slipped a bit into a lilting absalom slum accent.

You are taking it too seriously. Anyways the magic thing is easy to sort.

With a quick pass, she casts detect magic, and examines the letter.

The letters and pouch are nonmagical.

Armanus looks to the halfling and shakes his head 'no'.

Zyrel, unsure of civilised mores in the outside world, holds his peace.

Elsa shrugs. it's clean of magic

Trying not to fidget, Kristleifur looks around at the others:

"So, anyone have a kettle handy?"

"No fires in the hold of the ship, unless you want to be floating on a burning sinking ship. We should probably put it back for now. At least it's not anything immediately obvious or dangerous. The switch could be an emergency alarm or something, until you can figure out something about what it does and where it leads to, let's be careful about pressing it. We have a couple of weeks for you to poke around in the dark. In the meantime, let's see if we can get information about our employer. It would be natural for us to ask around on the ship about him, since we've never worked for him before. "

For when he has time the next day, GM, to ask around about the employer.

Diplomacy: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (10) + 11 = 21

"Put a rat in it. Tie a very small string to the switch. Close it up. Wait until we have an alibi and pull the string." Zyrel shrugs "It should look like the rat tried to eat it."

He looks around "Or tomorrow during the loudest part of the day we just pull it."

Erick taps his chin. "Should be plenty of rats around here."

Erick doesn’t uncover too much. Sedik runs a decently sized shipping business out of Katapesh that he inherited from his father. During Erick’s questioning, Zyrel is able to track down a rat in the hold with his keen elven senses.

Kristleifur ponders the switch to try and work out what it is for.

Disable Device: 1d20 + 9 + 2 ⇒ (4) + 9 + 2 = 15

Knowledge Engineering: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (5) + 4 = 9

"I" Zyrel announces with quiet dignity "Have caught a rat. I baited it with the remains of - and I use the word reluctantly - breakfast."

Studying the mechanism of the switch, Kristleifur manages to figure out it is connected to the wall of safes. He is also able to figure out it is not connected to any type of alarm system.

Kristleifur *quietly* lets the others know his findings.

"I've looked at the switch very, very carefully. It's not an alarm. It's hooked to the wall of safes. And good work with the rate, Zyrel."

Bumping the thread a bit.

Not sure what to post, I looked for info, didn't find any. Short of opening the other cases or whatever, not sure what else to post, but I'll post something

Erick nods. "Ok, just don't be surprised if that switch opens all the other lock boxes, so they can steal stuff from them." Erick whispers back.

There are still the letters to crack open

Until we have a way to reseal them, we probably shouldn't crack them open. IC, Erick is about done with checking, he's lawful, and while he's paranoid, he's not willing to violate his job to double check. Letters are just that, private communication, as far as he's concerned, so he's not really going to be interested in breaking into the letters. It goes against his ethics. He's bent his ethics as far as they'll bend right now. If we get more evidence of something foul afoot, he'll maybe bend them again. But for now, everything looks relatively above board. Besides, there's the distinct possibility that this is a trap meant to test us to see if we do our job or if we steal/sneak looks if given half a reason. The Johnson has no way of knowing anything about us, Erick would test people with an explosive rune in a letter to see if they were trustworthy to not read the letter. :) Yes, paranoid...

"I have the rat. Flip the switch, be ready to close the box on it." Zyrel suggests.

"It's deniable. I say we do it!"

So is the switch being switched?

Zyrel and Kristleifur are up for it. Does anyone object?

Erick's kind of iffy on it, but as long as they can get everything closed and buttoned up, yeah.

I'll let the party sort out what they want to do.

my vote is to flip the switch

The switch is flipped, and for a moment, nothing seems to happen. Then, a mechanical clunking noise can be heard. The wall of safes rolls to the side, moving along a mechanical track, revealing a two foot wide entrance. The small compartment is dark, though partymembers with darkvision notice four larger safes.

"What the hell was that noise?" Erick asks, at a normal conversation level, as the noise occurs, in case anyone is listening. Then motions for Kris to close the secret door, in case someone comes to investigate.

Kristleifur is momentarily startled by the loud sound, but glances with glee at the opening and what lies beyond.

He attempts to close the secret door by opening lockbox 14 and flicking the switch back to its old position, dodging any startled rat.

No no, not that door, the one that hides lockbox 14. IE: As if we hadn't been messing with the switch. I was trying to motion to make it look like the rat had done it. If you open the lockbox and flip the switch, it'll make another racket and there's no way we can dissemble then, plus you'll let the rat go.

Ah of course, now I visualise it.

Thinking better of it, Kristleifur will not touch lockbox 14, but close up the entrance to that area.