Aisling smiles, finding the Raven's humoure slightly like her own. "I think anyone who tries to call someone else "Brunswick" probably isn't much of a friend."
Vantine considers what something so illogical might mean. Surely he's trying to communicate something or other to us... Aw, maybe... Her heart goes out to the lonely bird-man.
"Would you like for us to call you Brunswick?"
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Vantine notices and stage whispers to Laria.
"We'll talk later."
Aisling catches Laria's expression, which makes her laugh. "Sorry. I was just thinking the same thing on the way here, funnily enough. We've had a rough morning and I think we're all copmentstating slightly." She points at the scrattches the lemure devils left on her breastplate armour. "Even I don't go up agasint devils every day. But i assure you I'm normally as serious as a death sentence."
Laria nods slightly, grinning. "Not to worry. You're all welcome to relax for some time, but what exactly did you do this morning that made you so tired?" The halfling woman looks at the exhausted nobleman. "Rexus mentioned something about a livery on the other side of the city..."
Jessibel, like Vantine, fails to understand the Brunswick reference. Maybe it's an older person thing.... She does, however, catch the vibes between Vantine and Laria. Calistria herself would be impressed by your appetite, girlfriend!
Catching a skeptical look in the halfling's eye, Jessi decides it's time to sound a bit more competent...a bit more rebellious.
"We should have recruited whoever threw the dagger and hit that big ugly dottati leader in the throat," she says in a terse whisper. "And was I seeing things or did the wound seem to start healing immediately? What's up with that?"
Jessibel gives the matter some thought, closing her eyes to dig deeper into her memory banks.
As to what she is, Jessi remembers hearing about some relative of one of her brother-in-law's servants performing a contract with a devil that allowed the devil to coexist with the mortal - a pseudo-possession, which gives power in life at a price in death. Maybe that's what Nox is? She'd have to investigate more with others to know for certain, though.
Jessi thinks that if she is a "devilbound," as they're called, holy weapons or spells would be able to prevent such easy healing as Nox displayed at the riot the day before.
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Having been battered almost to complete exhaustion by the snowstorm, Nyxra doesn't say a word as the party reaches the coffee house.
"...Nyxra." She manages to get out in between exhausted gasps for air.
"So. Jessibel, Vantine, Aisling, Raven, Nyxra." Laria points at each of the Ravens as she says their name, committing them to memory. "Good. Now, what exactly happened over there? You don't look like you're wounded... though it sounds like you fought some devils." Laria looks at Aisling and her armor.
Aisling grimaces. "We fuoght a few things: some big rats and then some gremlins. We got to the cellar and found someone had carved summoning runes all over the wall. We ended up having to fight a couple of minor devils. So yes, quite a morning."
"But it wasn't all bad. We did find what we were looking for, at least I think we did." She looks at Jessibel and Rexus. "How are you doing with those coded messages?"
"We were looking for left over Silver Ravens things" Vantine tells Laria in a conspiratorial tone. "The devils were very awful. Blobby things almost without form, and the room we found them in was steeped in evil."
"You all got out safely, which says good things about your skills." Laria says with a smile. "And you found some useful documents? That is good news."
Rexus chuckles dryly at Aisling's question. "In the copious amounts of time I've had walking from the Livery to here, I have managed to decode none of them!" He shakes his head. "Apologies. I am feeling quite off from the journey over. Suffice it to say that they are safely dry and preserved, and that I will look at them as soon as I can muster the energy to do so."
Laria smiles affectionately at Rexus, before turning her eyes to the rest of the Ravens. "Alright, since you're here and are willing to risk your lives against Thrune, let me tell you - I've worked for longer than some of you have been alive as a contact for the Bellflower Network. While I did some other work for them before that, what you'll be most interested in is my expertise in setting up and running surreptitious organizations."
She sighs. "And while I'd love to tell you that I have plenty of contacts with the Network and other would-be resistances against the Thrunes, most of the Bellflower Network pulled out of Kintargo back when Barzillai first struck. The rest, and my other contacts amongst the smugglers and criminal types have gone to ground, and are keeping their heads down."
"That being said, I do know of a few folks who would be open to supporting the reborn Silver Ravens... but you'll need a base of operations before we can do any of that. Fortunately, I have one in mind. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure whether it's safe at the moment."
She looks at the Silver Ravens quietly for a moment, letting them digest the information.
Jessibel opens her eyes after her bit of deep recollection and uncharacteristically glares at Aisling. "What I found was not coded messages," she informs the Iomedaean. "I found a journal that once belonged to someone named Silverbelle and is written in Elven. Like Rexus, I've hardly had the time to peruse it in any depth."
Jessibel then blinks and the edge she'd had in her eyes is gone. Turning to Laria, she asks, "Oh? What is this place you speak of? And why do you think it unsafe?"
"When I was working with the Network, I helped to make a place to help smuggle freed slaves from Cheliax to better ports. Magnimar, mostly, though Korvosa has opened up somewhat since they kicked the crazy queen from power. A few went as far as Andoran or Garund." Laria replies.
"Surprisingly, when we went to do it, we discovered that my neighbors don't even have ladder down into their basements - so we knocked down a few walls, and made a little sanctuary that has a waterway with sewer access - as well as access to the water beyond. Actually, there’s a shrine to Calistria down there, probably from when her worship was first forbidden. We decided - well, it was mostly me - to call it the Wasp’s Nest, in honor of those worshippers and their goddess.”
She grows solemn, her eyes darkening. "We used it for awhile, but when the Bellflower Network pulled out, I let an old friend - Nan Comerivos - take the chance to use it to smuggle in some Varisian fabrics." As she goes on, her voice grows increasingly quick. "But everything's been going to Hell and I've been trying to find my old contacts and keep my head down from the dottari and everyone, and I haven't had the chance to check on him since he first arrived - and I haven't heard from him since."
Rexus rises with some effort and puts his hand on Laria's shoulder. "Laria... I know these people will help. It'll be alright."
Tears shine in her eyes, and she takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself. ”Sorry. It’s been a s$*!ty week. Anyways, I know someone’s alive down there, because the food I leave down there is always taken away, and dirty dishes are returned… but I don’t know if it’s Nan. It’s not like him to, well, keep hidden in the Wasp’s Nest like this.”
Vantine knows Nan by sight, actually, as she and her mother have purchased textiles from him in the past. He’s a rather reserved fellow, but friendly enough when you get to know him. Her mother always praised his honest dealings. Maybe she knew more about his smuggling tendencies than Vantine.
"Of course we'll help!" Jessibel says with a smile. "I guess the question is if we can do so immediately or if folks need to rest up after our earlier excursion first to recover spells and the like. Me--I've got about half of my daily powers left."
Nyxra nods along. "Wasp's Nest. Okay."
Vantine knows Laria well enough to sense when she is covering for something. She knows the halfling is suffering, so she does her best to offer sympathetic remedies.
"I know Nan! Not as well as my mother, but I've always liked him. We'll certainly go down and take a look to see if he's alright."
Vantine sounds resolute, determined.
"If we don't find him there down below the shop in the Wasp's Nest, I can visit my mother and see if she's seen him recently, or knows of any other places where he might be."
Vantine takes Laria's hand and cradles it between hers.
"We'll figure out what's going on. Don't worry."
Vantine has to agree with Jessibel about considering a short delay.
"Would first thing tomorrow morning be too long to wait? I would be far for useful then than I would be right now, especially if there was to be some trouble."
Aisling is weary and out of spells, but she knows a cry for help when she hears it. "I don't think this can wait. the sooner we make contact with your friend the more likely things are to end well. I hope."
Laria looks torn, glancing between Vantine and Aisling. "I... would love for you to investigate as soon as possible, but if you need to rest and recover from this morning, I would understand. If there is someone down there that hurt..." she swallows, "or killed Nan, I don't want it killing you as well."
"If you want to rest, I have some guest rooms upstairs..." She rubs her face. "I sent my staff away when the Network pulled out, otherwise I'd have gone down to check myself."
”I call me Brunswick. You can too. If you want. It will have no bearing on our relationship.”
====================
The Raven listens to the halfling’ s plea, sipping on his coffee. Normally he wouldn’t have been able to partake in the food with the mask and all. Maybe I should wear the masquerade mask more often. There was a vague familiarity about Comerivos; some kind of import/export merchant. And a smuggler to boot? ”Can’t hurt to take a quick peek. We ravens are known for our stealthy and subtle ways. These tunnels sound fascinating.” Aisling’s unwillingness to wait does not surprise him. Iomedians are not exactly unpredictable. He stands, taking a pastry and passing it back and forth between his hands. ”I wouldn’t be too worried about Nan. Smugglers no doubt have cause to go to ground - metaphorically speaking... And literally speaking in this case, I suppose - all the time.”
"I'll just call you Raven if it's all the same."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Alright. We can at least go take a look. Where is the way down?"
”Please, my dear. Raven is my father. You can call me ‘the’.” The Raven insists.
Laria rises to her feet, her expression still conflicted. "There's a small trapdoor in the pantry - right next door to this room." Turning to Rexus, she looks at him with mock severity. "You go upstairs and rest, Rexus." Her tone is more scolding than angry, however, and he bows with a flourish.
"Much though I am grateful for your help at the Livery, I believe I can be of more use to you all if I start decoding the documents we found there now. The sooner I begin, the sooner I can get us useful information." The nobleman says as Laria grabs a pole and pulls down a trapdoor in the ceiling - revealing a ladder up into the second floor. Rexus grins. "Gods go with you, my friends. I'll also try to figure out what that weird magical page is... if I can find any references to it in the documents or the like." With that, he ascends the ladder.
After she shuts the trapdoor behind him, Laria turns back to the other Ravens. "Follow me, and follow my lead." She leads the group out into the main room again, where she's greeted by a chorus of complaints and jokes. "Alright, you lot. I've done some catching up with them, and we need some more time. Coincidentally, you all have things to do, too, no?" She waves them off, giggling.
The regulars nod and mutter their assent, though it's mostly grudgingly. Of course, it all seems in good fun. A few patrons stop by the bar to buy a few pastries for the road, but within a few minutes, the Long Roads Coffeehouse is abandoned. The halfling woman looks at the Ravens once more, and leads them into the pantry.
"Right here's where you're looking to go." She carefully slips a few thick, powerful fingers underneath a trapdoor, lifting it and ushering them down one at a time. They find themselves in a basement lit by a single lantern hanging on the rafters above their heads. It is full of assorted spices, ingredients, and bags of coffee.
"This is my 'legitimate' basement." Laria says as she climbs down, before slipping around the group to the far side of the room, where she shoves a barrel out of the way and runs a hand along the wall. "But the Wasp's Nest is in..." She finds what she was looking for and pulls open a door in the wall. "Here. Please, don't get yourselves killed. You're our best hope right now."
Laria steps back, eyes worried. "I'm going to go see that Rexus is alright - he's never been sturdy, and I think his journey across the city and back drained him more than he was willing to show. Cayden Cailean bless you all." She retreats back into the cellar to climb back out, but leaves the secret door leading from the Wasp's Nest to the Coffeehouse open.
The long, damp hallway the Ravens find themselves in is poorly lit with shadows lurking in every corner and a pervasive gloom shrouding the area. There are sconces in the walls, but no torches to fill them. Down the hallway, the walls widen, opening into what sounds like a pool of water to the southeast , and a tunnel to the west.
Before passing through the secret door, Jessibel casts a light spell on her rapier and prestidigitation to again color her snappy armor uniformly black. She also asks Laria for a description of Nan, so the party will know him if/when they find him.
While she waits her turn to go through the hole, Vantine sheaths herself in an invisible protective layer. "Näkymätön panssari."
Realising that stealth isn't their best option right now and that they're low on spells, Aisling lights up her sword with a quick prayer and moves to the front, her sheild up and ready for trouble.
The lights of the swords cast the dank corridor into sharp relief, revealing in stark clarity that they are in a very long hallway - only Nyxra can see the end, and even she can only see it dimly. Further down the hallway and to their left, they see the edge of a pool of water and a portion of what looks like a wooden dock. Opposite the dock there is a small tunnel with stairs downwards.
Aisling moves to investigage the dock, making a gesture with her arms to show she wants someone to watch the entrances at her back.
Jessibel follows after Aisling, taking up a position at the top of the natural stairs, peering down to see what her light source reveals.
The Raven draws one of his daggers and and slinks off into the shadows, eyes peeled for trouble. He does not go far because, of course, he cannot see in the dark.
[/dice]
As shadows flow and light shines over the room below her, Jessi sees that it was once full of furniture, such as beds, chairs, and tables - both human and halfling sized. At least, that's her best guess - the furniture is shattered, torn to pieces, and generally a mess. Clearly, something or someone has been down here since the last time Laria was. It seems unlikely that Nan was the one to break these, especially given that they look like they've been slashed, rather than bashed.
As the Silver Ravens proceed into the Wasp’s Nest, the water and its dock become increasingly well-lit. The sword-lights cast shadows down the stairs to their left, revealing glimpses of smashed furniture and a column deeper inside.
About twenty feet into the water from the end of the pier, a statue of a beautiful elven woman dressed in scandalously revealing garments extends out of the three-foot deep water. Her eyes betray a smoldering lust, but a quirk of her smile speaks of some sort of danger to her appeal.
"Someone or something has destroyed the furniture in the room below," Jessi whispers to the others. Catching a glimpse of the statue, the bard smirks at Vantine and adds, "There's your role model, just like Laria said!"
The Raven cannot help but be drawn towards the edge of the pool as his allies cast their lights upon it. ”Magnificent!”
The awe does not last long, however, as he spots something in the water. Not something, someone. ”Damn. I believe we have found our smuggler.” He says, gesturing with his dagger to indicate the floating body under the pier.
Indeed, closer examination of the body does reveal some of the features that Laria described earlier, and Vantine recognizes him from his occasional visits to her mother's shop. However, Laria did not describe him as missing one of his legs, most of his left arm, and much of the flesh of his torso in what are pretty clearly bite marks.
It seems likely that something ate parts of him.
"...damn." Nyxra sighs.
"We're gonna need a safer headquarters than this!" Jessibel gasps.
Vantine hadn't mentioned it (it seemed a bit selfish considering the other reasons they were going down into cavern) but she is intrigued by Laria's mention of an old Calistrian shrine.
She's impressed by the beauty of the statue, but disappointed by it's location out in the water. She's too busy with these thoughts to take notice of Jesibel's snarky use of 'role-model' in her comment, something she might have taken some offense to otherwise.
"I wonder if this place is more flooded now than in the past. I don't think the statue would be placed so far out in the water on purpose. I wonder if it could be moved, or if not maybe some kind of walkway could be built out to it."
She isn't the first to notice the body in the water, but when Vantine is made aware of it she can positively identify it as Nan's corpse. She covers her mouth as a gasp, then a sob escapes. "That's Nan. I'm positive."
Vantine turns away and walks back until the body is again out of her sight.
Aisling does'n't see the body, at first. Once it's pointed out to her, she frowns. "Oh. Well. That's disapointing, I was hoping we'd be able to rescue him." She looks around. "Is there a boathook or something we could use to fish him out? He should get a proper burial, at lest."
She doesn't get too cloase in case whatever ate him is still around.
A brief search of the immediate vicinity turns up a small oar... but it is broken in two, and nowhere near long enough to get the leverage necessary to get the corpse out of its wedged position between the pilings.
One could probably try to fish him out without going into the water, but it might be somewhat difficult.
The Raven shuffles his feet awkwardly as Vantine retreats from the body. What should he say? Should he say anything? Neither the Raven nor Alexius had much experience with sympathetic socializing. He approaches her from behind and sets a gauntleted hand on her shoulder as gently as one can. ”I’m sorry about your friend. I can take you outside, if you need some time.” The most comforting words he can come up with sound hollow and uncaring to his own ears.
Aisling looks around but doesn't see any volunteers. She sighs. "OK. Get ready to pull me out the water if I fall in." Shc crouches down, trying to keep her balance while she heaves the body out of the water.
To her surprse, she manages to grab the body and not fall in herself.
Jessibel looks at Aisling with a combination of admiration and distaste as the Iomedaean plucks the partial corpse out of the water. She does her job to the best of her limited ability, providing light and keeping watch. Even so, bile rises in her throat at the thought of what the corpse must feel and smell like.
"I'll give you a magical cleaning when you're done," she whispers to Aisling.
Aisling manages to fish the corpse out of the water without falling in, pulling him up out onto the (relatively) dry land. Nan's corpse is truly mutilated, with both the obvious bite marks and several less obvious slashes, as though he was torn apart by something. Before anyone can examine him more closely-
Abruptly, the water erupts as something enormous leaps out of it, snapping at the Iomedaean priestess. Fortunately, despite her surprise, the things teeth scrape against her armor uselessly.
The figure is a white-scaled alligator (or is it a crocodile?) with scars across its back and sides. It growls, a deep, menacing noise, as it fixes its eyes hungrily upon the group.
If an alligator bites, it is rarely willing to let go until it can rip something off. Furthermore, perhaps more terrifyingly, it can whirl around on its back to cause more damage to something it's bitten, and knock them to the ground. On land, they are able to perform surprising bursts of speed.
Vantine pats the hand on her shoulder gently.
"Thank you, but I'm okay. I've just never seen anyone I know dead before, and Nan died horribly. It's such a shock."
And then, when the great reptile explodes from under the water to ambush Aisling, Vantine shrieks before getting ahold of herself and touching the Raven.
"Go help them! I'll be fine!"
The aforesaid reptile clambers easily up the dock, and snaps at Aisling again. This time, its jaws sink into the priestess' flesh, tearing and ripping at her with incredible lethality. Aisling is torn and shredded as it savagely shakes her about, unwilling to release her even as she flops about limply in its jaws.
Jessibel looks at Aisling with a combination of admiration and distaste as the Iomedaean plucks the partial corpse out of the water. She does her job to the best of her limited ability, providing light and keeping watch. Even so, bile rises in her throat at the thought of what the corpse must feel and smell like.
"I'll give you a magical cleaning when you're done," she whispers to Aisling.
Aisling smiles back and is about to reply when there's an explosion of pain and her entire world goes black.
The blood flowing from her injuries is proof that her heart is still beating, for now.