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"It's not silver or gold, but these aren't earned for nothing," Uaine remarks, tapping her bronze Aspis badge. "Surely we can handle ourselves. Or perhaps you'd hand us off to her after a while? I'll admit, we could act a bit much to cope with for one person." She tries to downplay their need to work with Krima.
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”Galvar, my good man!” Jahz heavily grabs the man across the shoulders in a one-armed hug. ”You take too much on yourself! I’m sure you need a break to use the chamber pot, grab something to eat, or just take a moment to get off your feet. We’ll be fine - and besides, you wouldn’t want to give Krima the idea that you don’t trust her, do you?” He winks at the halfling before guffawing loudly and giving the man a gentle push towards the lobby.
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Yeah .... guess you're right Galvar replies. Keep 'em out of trouble Krima
He then leaves. Once alone, Krima inquires as to what the PCs already know, and then explains that she thinks a prisoner matching Zefiro’s description was in the middle of a torture session when the interrogator was called away; he’s probably still strapped to whatever machines they have inside, along with people she suspects are fellow Bellflower agents. When Zefiro was first incarcerated, guards secured his documents in the prison’s vault.
Krima doesn’t know what the building’s traps are, but she suspects the interrogator keeps some kind of written memo for accessing the vault in his office. She gives the PCs an imperfectly cast duplicate of the office’s key that she recently made, and she “supervises” the PCs as they explore the rest of the facility.
((Where to now))
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Uaine mulls over the new information. "Is the torturer's door locked? We've had trouble in that department, more easily solved elsewhere by breaking through things. But that wouldn't fly here."
"And is this man alone with the prisoners during his...ministrations? If he had guards with him at the time, we could try to land a shift there. Or ask to watch during our break."
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”Oh, but before we do that, we should take this soup back to the kitchen and put it in the pot,” Jahz adds excitedly. ”Did you know that the herbs they were using would greatly enhance the knockout potential of something like taggit oil? And we happen to have some here...” He digs in his pockets for a moment before producing a vial filled with an off-white substance.
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Holan-Ji looks back and forth between Jahz and his empty bowl. His stomach rumbles like the growling of a primordial tiger. "Sooooo, no more stew for us." He sighs in disappointment.
"Okay. Fine. Good catch on the ingredients, smart guy," he complimments Jahz. "That'll knock out the guards, then we get the papers. Get Zefiro out of the torture device, and free the other Bellflowers."
He looks about and again wishes the Society had assigned a sneak-thief to this team.
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Sure ... that should work. Krima replied. Hopefully the taggit oil will only incapacitate them enough to prevent them from chasing us when we free the prisoners. So ... whoever is coming to the office, I better go too otherwise they might get suspicious. They're used to me running notes back and forth. Those dropping off the taggit oil ... erm .... should I wait for you first or would you rather wait for the rest of us to get back?
Maybe you should tell them I wanted seconds she sheepishly admits as her bowl is only a quarter full and the second bowl is empty.
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"Here, I've got a better idea!" Jahz answers Holan-Ji as he pulls out a bottle marked "For Special Occasions Only" and pours it into the bowl. "I'll take the bowl back and dump it back in the pot. Then you can get angry with me and yell at me that Krima wanted more soup, not less. You could call me stuff like 'bone-headed dolt' or 'numskull' or similar stuff - tough people say stuff like that, yeah? And then I'll apologize and say I must have misunderstood and put soup back in the bowl." He grins. "That gives us a reason to go back to the kitchen, get the stuff in the food, and leave without attracting attention. Sound good?"
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((No skill checks required)) As it turns out, the plan goes without a hitch and soon, all of you are in the back office with Krima. (revealed on the slide).
A smoldering fireplace illuminates this room, 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.
((Perception checks please))
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On the way to the office, Holan-Ji hands the bowl of tainted soup to one of the guards in the hallway. "You can have mine. I already ate," he says by way of explanation.
"That's close. It doesn't really translate from the Tien, but yeah, you got the gist of it," he confirms to Jahz as they enter the office.
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A DC 20+ Perception check reveals three significant documents: One is a copy of The Asmodean Disciplines, bookmarked to a chapter on crime and punishment with a handwritten note.
The 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 key is attached to the manual's binder.
The third is a letter addressed to the interrogator from the Nail’s ranking officer addressing the declining efficiency of reports exposing political enemies provided by Zarta Dralneen.
You also find a file of antitoxen in the desk.
((Two handouts added to the slides))
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Ferdrin looks over the discovered documents. This soundproofing mechanism is fascinating. The prisms can't be too expensive to make...
He continues on
Zarta providing reports to the officers here...? the intrigue is evident in his voice.
He zeroes in on an Asmodean prayer. There is a deliberately misspelled word, "ixpressly." I-X-P-R-E-S-S-L-Y. I think this is a hint for the riddle that provides the vault code.
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Krima has another look at the prayer ..... wait a minute .... not numbers .... words ... if you combine the 's' to the left of the 'ix' you get 'six'. Maybe each line has a hidden number.
Once she says that, both Fedrin and and Gorrig immediately see it. Each line of the text has the spelling of a number in it, giving the sequence 7–4–3–8–2–6–5–9–1.
Once you have the combination, you head over to the Vault. 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. There is no keyhole, which indicates that the key you found is intended for use somewhere else.
Since you have the combination you can open the door by turning the wheel in alternate directions for the number sequence. Once you get the door open .....
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.
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There's a lot of information in here but three documents (see handouts) are significant.
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.
The former two reveal that Ianareth Alazario collaborates with the Aspis Consortium, that an Aspis agent named Kitio Aspenthi is active in Thuvia, and that the Bell of Obedience stolen from the Society years back was recently sold to the Hellknight Order of the Rack; this is exactly the kind of information Zarta Dralneen wants you to recover.
The third document reveals that, although she was raised a Dralneen, Zarta is in fact the last known blood descendant of House Davian, former rulers of the greater Hellcoast region and the most powerful noble house to oppose the rise of House Thrune (and thus be obliterated after Thrune signed its infernal pact).
((What now?))
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Ferdin reads over the documents, pleased at their find.
Yes, this is definitely what we were looking for. And, this last note is quite interesting. I wonder if this inspires a personal grudge in Ms. Dralneen against House Thrune.
He winces, thinking more of the two interrogation records. He holds these two up for a moment, for emphasis.
Not that this wasn't known before, but these two underscore how vital it is that we don't get caught in our acts.
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Holan-Ji is actually quite impressed at how smart Ferdrin is and how the spell-slinger figured out the code and what to look for. Really, he's impressed, even f he doesn't show it.
"Okay, so we got some evidence against Alazario, and we got the thing about Zarta. So now we go find Zefiro, right? But what do we do with this crate of his research?"
"Can you hide it in your office, and smuggle it out a little at a time?" he asks Krima as he heads over to the third and yet unopened chest. He checks it to see if it's locked, and maybe trapped. Though why they'd put a trap on it inside a vault eludes him, he doesn't doubt the paranoia of the Chelish.
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A smoldering fireplace illuminates this room, 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.
((Perception checks please))
Suussmaar is surprised that their plan went well so far.
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Suussmaar looks at the carefully organized codices and scrolls in the stone shelves carved into the walls.
”What are we supposed to do again with all these papers?!?“
He looks at the two statues of humanoid fiends holding red-flamed torches
”Just be careful that those do not attack us!!“
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When the team informs him about the three relevant documents, he is very intrigued.
”OK, so we found what we were looking for! I hope that there is also a little bit of treasure left that we can loot! Otherwise it would be hard for me to just leave here without some treasure so let us see what is in this chest!“
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Well... Ferdrin corrects. We found all, or a sufficient amount, of the evidence we're looking for. We still haven't found the person we're looking for, Zefiro, who very much needs a way out before he gets the interrogation treatment.
Tucking away the key documents, he then turns to Krima to discuss safe next steps.
Maybe, but with some care and caution we could perhaps maintain the security of your position here. Is there evidence of another individual we could plant here?
He then takes another scan of the desk and cabinets looking for cell assignments.
Now, about Zefiro...
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Looks like that key isn't meant for here - somewhere else perhaps.
Well, if you could think of a way to incriminate the Chief Interrogator Krima replies with a smile. That would be pronking hilarious
As for Zefiro - he'll be in the cells - unfortunately the entrances can be seen by those two guards by the barred gates - so we're going to have to be super sneaky. she ponders more Or you could try persuading them to let you take their place .. but .. that could be rather difficult
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"That's easy," Holan-Ji responds to Krima's suggestion of replacing the guards. "Jahz'll just talk 'em in circles. Tell 'em they get their break early or somethin' cause of the holiday. Gorrig and me will stand in for 'em," he says with a nod to his battle-buddy. "Then the rest of you go find Zefiro."
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Jahz looks up from cramming a handful of papers into his belt pouch. "Wait, what was that?" He gives the notes a solid push into the pouch , then walks over to the other conspirators. "Pathfinder pouch!" he says proudly, not waiting to be asked. "Lots of space and doesn't appear magical!"
"So we need to get rid of those guards?" Jahz ponders a moment. "Well, we could always bring them a bowl of stew. They've got to be hungry from being on duty so long. Or maybe we could tell them they get to leave work early today? Oh! And we could add that they should exit through the back door and not tell anyone else they're leaving because the captain doesn't want everyone else to start grumbling and complaining and asking why they don't get to leave early!" He grins before grabbing another stack of papers and adding them to his pouch.
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Jahz marches cheerfully to the pair of guards. ”Hey there fellas! Just doin’ the rounds, checkin’ on stuff, you know... Wait, have we met? Name’s Jahz, pleasure to see such dependable folks on the lookout. What’s yer names?”
The skald pauses, brow furrowed with worry. ”Now wait a second... If we haven’t met before - and I never forget a face - then you’ve been standing here for at least... six hours! Yee gads, man! Don’t you need to use the chamber pot or sit down or something? This is outrageous! Don’t you agree?” He turns to his companion(s) for confirmation.
”Tell you what - you two go relieve yourselves for a bit and I’ll keep watch here while you’re gone. No no, it’ll be fine, I’m certain. Now hurry before you make a mess in your trousers!”