Your boots squash with fetid water as you plod through the Puddles. A thick fog hangs in the air, seeming almost to caress the flesh with an unnatural chill. As you stand outside the Soggy Piper in a foot and a half of brackish brine, you try to recall what was so damned important to demand your presence in the half-flooded slum during Absalom’s rainy season. You remember your meeting at the Lodge just a few hours earlier with your Venture-Captain, Adril Hestram.
A bear of a man with only a few teeth remaining in his head, he motioned you into the meeting hall with a casual wave of his grizzled hand. The human captain outweighed most of Absalom’s half-orcs, and though a layer of beefy blubber coats his frame, those of you who have tangled with him in the Lodge sparring ring know that beneath this thin veneer of fat lies nothing but solid, steely sinew. Adril’s wild beard wagged to the ponderous shake of his massive head as he examined a scrap of ancient parchment on the table before raising his eyes to greet your gaze.
“Come in then, Aliyah. Thank you for answering my summons so swiftly. The society is in need. An old and quite penniless historian, a bespectacled wag-beard by the name of Yargos Gill has recently made a discovery in an old archive that we have a great interest in obtaining: an ancient codebook left behind in the wake of one of Taldor’s many failed attempts at invasion. This several-hundred-year-old text would prove an excellent addition to our collection and must be preserved."
“Yargos makes his home in ‘The Puddles,’ Absalom’s poorest district, suffering from a well-known reputation as a haven for lowlifes. Following an earthquake ten years ago, parts of the Puddles now rest below sea level, resulting in frequent and untimely flooding. Those who can afford not to live there—don’t."
“The district is the stomping ground of pimps, harlots, addicts, knifers, and hoards of unseemly derelicts. It’s never been a kind place, but recent reports reveal some new nameless terror on her waterlogged streets. Several persons claim to have seen cloaked, skeletal-like figures marching through an unnatural fog. Ill tidings indeed. Tracking down Yargos is now a priority - lest some yellow-toothed thug cut him down, or one of these strange wraiths carry him beyond the pale. Find him, Pathfinder, and find the codebook. Your exploits will be recorded in the Chronicles if you succeed.”
The memory fades as a fresh deluge of cold seawater rounds a bend in the lane and assaults your knees. After searching for Yargos at his favorite eatery, the Soggy Piper, you learned you just missed him. According to the Piper’s staff, a gang of dangerous young tattooed toughs arrived ahead of you. They grabbed Yargos and several of his friends from their dinner table and dragged them to a nearby cliff at the edge of the Puddle District. The watch was called, but they will arrive too late, as they often do in the Puddles, when they bother to venture there at all.
It is early evening, the first Wealday of the month of Desnus, an old man is about to face some awful fate at the sea cliff known as Torsen’s Maw, and you are no closer to finding the codebook Adril sent you for.
Aliyah's mushy shoes leave wet prints on the ground as she quietly hustles to the cliff, Torsen's Maw. Along the way she grabs a pebble off the ground.
Six brash young toughs covered with tattoos of vicious, snarling dogs are prodding four terrified older men off the edge of a cliff into the sea. The prisoners are shackled together in a line with heavy chains, which shall surely drag them to the seafloor in short order should they tumble from the cliff’s edge into the churning waters below.
Aliyah runs, trying to stop the tattooed tough from kicking the group of men into the sea.
You run at the men, who only seem to hear you at the very last second, half turning at the sound of your pounding feet.
""
Speaking a shadowy word, Aliyah is engulfed in darkness. Tossing the stone at her feet as she closes with the ruffian, her hands coming up to sweep away any attacks.
Full darkness engulfs you and the gang members. A cry goes up in alarm from several of them as their sight is obscured. The one in front of you yells as he attempts to kick the men off the cliff, but his foot skiffs off the chest of the first old man, who winces in pain, but does not topple to the crashing waves below. The other men shackled together cower in the darkness.
Another thug, his hair all shaved off, lunges forward, swinging a spike-glove at you. You easily side-step the punch, your vision still functioning in the total darkness centred on the pebble you dropped.
Three of the four other thugs grope around, trying to get their bearings.
Aliyah lashes a strong kick out at the punk who just attempted to kick these four men off the cliff himself, as her prehensile tail pulls out a bag of caltrops, dropping them at her feet. Stepping toward the old men, she draws out her loaded crossbow.
"I'm here to rescue you, Yargos," she yells to the group of shackled prisoners.
Aliyah's kick lands squarely in the chest of the punk, shoving him off balance, causing him to stumble backwards. He angrily lunges forward again, his gauntlet raised to strike Aliyah.
"I'll kill you, you filthy witch - AAAAH!", he screams as he steps on a caltrop.
"You'll rescue no one, tiefling!" Shaved head yells as he swings a wild haymaker at the space where Aliyah was moments before.
A fat thug covered in sweat fires his crossbow off into the city, nowhere near any of the combatants. "It's a tiefling witch!"
The thug outside the darkness peers forward with all his might like he could see through the shadow that he can almost touch in front of him. "I can't see you!"
Letting her crossbow loose at the shaved head thug, Aliyah grabs ahold of the first man in the line of shackled prisoners with her tail, and starts to lead them away quickly.
"Follow me, quickly!"
"Stop, you bi -" The shaved head screams as your crossbow bolt slams into his shoulder, penetrating the leather armour there, and taking him down to his knee.
"Get her!"
"Where is she!"
"She's taking the prisoners!"