Twisting into a position to see inside the room, Ariadne sends her last magically charged coin whipping past Ghil to strike the massive reptile.
Vedika's thrown steel cuts Lamm and he hisses in pain as he feels his body grow numb.
Nethen cuts Gobbleguts with his whip.
Vazhimort glares at the Alligator.
Which ignores him.
Iorghil whips Barbed chains about the reptile. Which slumps to the walkway as its stubby legs are tangled.
Ariadne plinks away and her coin barely penetrates the thick hide.
Gobbleguts struggles to his feet.
Lamm hobbles closer to Vedika, eyeing the scramble at the entrance, "Useless creature!" He mutters at his pets performance.
He snaps another shot at Vedika
The party may now act.
Vedika snaps her fingers and vanishes.
Maintaining his mental connection to the alligator, Vazhimort sets a bolt onto his crossbow and fires at the "useless" beast.
"Vedika, take him alive!" Nethen calls as his snaps his whip towards the alligator as it's lumbers to it's feet.
Using the attack as a distraction Nethen tries to slip past the alligator. The walkway is narrow and wet but he attempts to move out of the doorway and around towards his target - Lamm.
Turning back towards the alligator Nethen sends his whip cracking out again, trying to keep it occupied to allow the others in, before turning towards where Lamm cowers in the corner, his eyes burning with righteous vengeance.
"Ghil, I'm going to need you to move so I can get in there and kill that thing." Ariadne says to the half elf ahead of her.
"Ghil, I'm going to need you to move so I can get in there and kill that thing." Ariadne says to the half elf ahead of her.
Squeezing past Iorghil, Ari works to get through the doorway, her gear managing to snag enough to slow her down.
Gobbleguts snaps at Nethen as he fails to slip past the beast.
Having got the taste he goes at him again.
Just failing to lock his teeth in Nethen's thigh and drag him under the filthy waters.
.
Glaring around with paranoid suspicion Gaedren Lamm steps back 5', hand crossbow lowered as he draws a dagger.
The party may now act. Nethen is in dire straits. What are you doing now?
Vedika suddenly reappears next to Lamm and lunges at him with long, extended, cobra-like fangs!
Sadly, she is unable to get a lock on him.
Ariadne slashes at the alligator, the massive reptile's wild thrashing causing her to miss.
Nethen screams in pain as the alligator's massive jaws clamp down on his leg and he sees his blood spurt across the dirty floor. He just about manages to wrench himself free before he gets dragged into the river. Barely standing and with his leg soaked in blood he hobbles towards the corner before lashing out at the alligator, an incoherent growl of rage and frustration coming from between his gritted teeth as he pulls his arm back to strike as hard as possible.
Nethen is battered and blood soaks his leg but he slashes hard across the Alligator's flat head and knocks it unconscious!
Ghil struggles through the small door into the room.
Vazhimort squeezes past Iorghil, Ariadne, and the narrow doorway. He laughs obnoxiously at Gedren Lamm from across the water and screams, "YOU'RE NEXT!" He affixes Lamm with his hypnotic stare and loads a bolt onto his crossbow.
Gaedren Lamm almost stumbles as he feels his limbs going numb. "What did ye do to me witch?" He hisses at Vedika.
The entrance blocked for the moment he lashes at Vedika with his dagger, dropping his hand crossbow to do so.
He misses and is being to look desperate.
The party may all act.
As Lamm lashes out with a dagger, Vedika intercepts his arm and bites him on the wrist!
TWANG!
Vazhimort somehow conveys his enthusiasm into his crossbow as the wire sings when it flings the bolt at Lamm.
Relief floods Nethen as the alligator flops unconscious into the water and he turns his attention to Lamm. He sees the old man backed into a corner by Vedika and feels more than sees a crossbow bolt flash past him in Lamm's direction.
Nethen advances towards Lamm, his teeth gritted against the pain in his leg. "You've got a lot to answer for, you bastard," he shouts, pointing at the cowering, desperate man. "And you're going to pay for all the pain you've caused to the people of this city." His whip lashes out towards Lamm's legs in attempt to bring the man down to the floor.
Advancing around the room, Ariadne focuses on Lamm, sneding a wave of distraction at the vile bastard to give Vedika an extra edge in the fight.
As soon as the other side of the door is clear, Ghil finally squeezes through.
Vedika bites Lamm twice. Once with an attack, and again when he lashes out at her.
Gaedren Lamm gasps in pain as Vazhimort sinks a bolt into his side while he is stunned by Vedika's attacks.
His eyes roll up and he slumps to the floor unconscious!
Loot:
+1 padded armor,
+1 dagger,
MW hand crossbow with 7 bolts,
brass key (unlocks all doors in the fishery),
Rusty iron key (unlocks the strongbox in area A14)
Very few of the trinkets or junk on the tables are worth much—Gaedren has already stashed the valuables in his strongbox in area A14.
Still, 7 applications of foulsmelling vermin repellent can be gathered from the table.
Finally, one cabinet contains a darkwood coffer worth 100 gp. The coffer is latched but not locked, and contains 20 doses of shiver that Gaedren hasn’t yet sold to addicts.
The drug is currently worth 25 gp per dose on the street.
What are you doing now? Lamm will die in 2 rounds.
"I'm of the mind to gather anything of value, and burn this place to the ground." Ariadne says with a sneer as she watches Lamm's breathing slow.
"Agreed," says Nethen as he limps over to Lamm's unconscious form. "We need to bring this bastard round though, I've got questions for him and I suspect the rest of you do too."
"Where are those potions? Let's tip one down his worthless neck before he snuffs it," Nethen suggests, looking around at the others.
"Seems like a waste of something valuable if you ask me, but if you need answers..." Ariadne says, staring at Lamm's unconscious body before passing a potion to Nethen.
Gaedren is well-schooled in the credo “secrets can kill,” and the miserable cur hasn’t survived to become the nasty old man he is now by letting people get the drop on him.
Yet he’s also a proud and bitter man, used to fighting tooth and nail to keep what’s his. In his youth, a more cautious Gaedren would have pulled up roots and fled his lair at the first sign of trouble, abandoning all of his thugs to their fate.
Today, Gaedren doesn’t take this route—he elects to stay and fight, not out of any loyalty to his thugs but simply because he’s grown too greedy to give up what he thinks of as his.
"Save it, spells get replenished after all." Says Iorighil who casts a Cure light wounds when you are ready to talk to your prisoner.
What are you doing now?
"Wake up you little s$$&," Nethen growls, shaking Lamm's bony shoulders. "You're going to answer some questions, and you'd better have the right answers."
"And if you try anything stupid, we'd be perfectly fine with killing you again, and bringing you back, over and over again to see how long you last." Ariadne growls, glaring at the man who had made much of her early life a living hell.
"And I'm in your mind! I can make what they do hurt very much!" Vazhimort replies, chipperly.
"I'm really excited to see what happens next!" he whispers to Vedika.
Gaedren Lamm awakes and groans. "Piss off scum." He sneers, eyes flickering around the room, seeing who is there.
When he sees Ariadne he cackles spitefully. "Kill me if you like trash. You'll still carry my lesson on yer face for the rest of yer life!"
What are you asking him?
Vedika crouches down next to Lamm. Her long snake-fangs shrink and retract back into her mouth seamlessly.
"We're about to take all of this away from you, you know. Someone finally paid attention and had enough," she says.
"So. The kids. We've seen that you keep many of them in here working. Anyone else involved? Maybe there's someone else you've done business with and we should take it out of their hide instead of yours?"
Nethen stands over Lamm's prone form, knuckles white as he grips his whip, hatred blazing in his eyes. "Where's my cousin? You took him. You took him, and you destroyed my parents' lives!" he shouts, anger getting the best of him.
"You're going to tell me where Dreykin is, and then I'm going to pray to Calistria for her guidance on what to do with your sorry hide," he says more calmly, but with an almost palpable menace.
Lamm isn't talking, though by the way his eyes flicker towards Gobbleguts when Nethen asks about Dreykin you fear the worst.
"Did you feed him to your alligator?!" Nethen roars into the old man's face, almost entirely consumed by rage. "Then Calistria is going to enjoy watching me do the same to you. Nethen grabs Lamm by his ankle and begins dragging the old man across the floor towards the unconscious alligator in the corner. "I'm going to tie you up here and wait for your pet to wake up. I bet he'll be really hungry after that little fight, though I doubt you'll satisfy him for long," he says, more quietly this time, his voice dripping with malice.
From the back, Vazhimort hops a couple times and points at Lamm.
"That's what you GET!"
Vedika backs away since the questioning has gone in a very different direction and she doesn't want to confuse the issue, since the group actually wants answers and not just an excuse to kill Lamm.
Satisfied that the bastard Lamm was getting exactly what he deserves, Ariadne begins searching around the area, looking first at anything on note in the open room, before heading for Lamm's office.
Finding nothing important Ariadne heads into the small room.
A14 Gaedren’s Den
This foul-smelling room seems to be a combination bedroom and study.
A wooden bed with a lumpy mattress stands against the east wall, while a round table heaped with dirty plates, bread crusts, stained goblets, fruit rinds, and scuttling cockroaches sits nearby.
At the foot of the bed sits a large strongbox; a slightly rusted lock secures it and a moldy ledger with pages rippled from moisture sits atop
its lid.
A sagging dresser filled with moth-eaten clothes well past their glory days is in one corner. What appears to be a wooden hatbox surrounded by a small cloud of flies sits atop this dresser.
What now?
"Not sure how long it'll be before your friend there wakes up hungry," Nethen says, squatting down to talk quietly in Lamm's ear. "If I were you I'd start to answer our questions. Where is my cousin?" he growls.
Lamm glares at you and spitefully tells you, "He fed the Gator like all the useless brats do!'
He is lying.
What now?
Eyes taking in the filthy room, and quickly scanning for magic, Ariadne rifles through the clothes in the dresser, checking to see if anything of note might be hidden among them, and checking the drawers for a false bottom, before moving to flip through the ledger.
She tries the rusty iron key taken off Lamm, on the strongbox, saving the ominously fly covered hatbox for last.
The ledger is in code.
A character who speaks Varisian and succeeds at a DC15 Linguistics check can decipher the relatively simple code after a few hours of work.
Although the vast majority of the loot Lamm’s Lambs bring in is fenced relatively quickly, the old man has a habit of sorting through each
batch for bits of finery that catch his eye, which he adds to his collection of treasures kept in the footlocker at the foot of his bed.
The locked footlocker can be opened with the rusty iron key Gaedren carries or a successful DC 20 Disable Device check.
Each of these treasures is individually wrapped in a cloth that’s tied shut with twine.
The treasures include a narrow teak cigar case inlaid with tiny bits of jade (worth 25 gp,)
a 2-pound gold ingot bearing the Cheliax coat of arms (worth 100gp),
a miniature gold crown (worth 350 gp),
a fist-sized scrimshaw carving of a kraken with garnets for eyes (worth 200 gp),
a silver ring bearing the inscription “For Emmah—the light in my nights” (worth 150 gp),
a highly realistic and highly scandalous ivory figurine of two entwined succubi (worth 450 gp),
a masterwork shuriken,
an adamantine arrowhead,
a masterwork dagger with a strange blade shaped almost like a key bearing the inscription: “For an inspiration of a father” (worth 750 gp),
an abalone-shell holy symbol of Shelyn (worth 300 gp),
a glass tube containing a dose of oil of keen edge,
an obsidian wand of magic missile (23 charges),
a crystalline vial (itself worth 50 gp) containing a dose of silversheen,
and a bejeweled brooch with a broken clasp.
There is also a fine Harrow deck sitting beside the hatbox.
Even to an untrained eye, this brooch is obviously the most valuable object in the entire collection. The circular gold brooch depicts a house drake and an imp coiled around each other in an almost yin-yang pattern. The pseudodragon’s eye is an amethyst, while the imp’s eye is
an emerald. The brooch itself is worth 2,000 gp,
but more importantly, a PC who succeeds at a DC 15 Knowledge (nobility) check recognizes it belongs to Queen Ileosa herself. It was pickpocketed from a thief who stole it from a jeweler who was contracted by one of the queen’s handmaidens to repair the clasp—Gaedren hoped some day to use the brooch’s return as leverage with the queen should he ever be arrested.
A character who studies the curious blade and makes a successful DC 20 Knowledge (history or local) check recognizes the style of blade as one
used by the notorious Key-lock killer. a man who slaughtered over 15 dozen victims between 4690 and 4697 before his killing spree mysteriously ended?
What now?
Lamm glares at you and spitefully tells you, "He fed the Gator like all the useless brats do!'
** spoiler omitted **
Vazhimort looks at Lamm in confusion.
"I feel like you should have lied about that?"
He indicates Nethen and continues. "That's just going to make him angrier and want to do revenge on you even more! You could have made up some story about how he's still alive somehow, and that might have calmed him down. You must be pretty nervous and not thinking clearly! Understandable!"
The excitable gnome rubs his hands together and looks up at the others.
"What's next? Who gets to do the BIG revenge on him?"
"I'm going to check through the childrens' quarters, see who's left, look for anyone familiar," says Vedika impatiently. She then slips off to explore the rest of the fishery.