Rexus emerges from the library thirty minutes later walking very quickly and occasionally looking over his shoulder. He is carrying several large books and gestures to you to start walking towards the exit before he get to you. As he pulls parallel to you he speaks to you in a loud stage whisper.
"Um, quickly, please head for the north gate. Walk fast, but don't look like you're walking fast!"
Carlissa sighs and then whispers something while barely moving her lips. "You stole something, didn't you? Or at least borrowed something without permission...am I correct?"
Rexus walks ahead of all of you as he makes a beeline for the exit. "Well, it may be that my recently departed parents did not prepay my tuition for the semester so technically I do not have borrowing privileges anymore but I happened to run into an assistant librarian who didn't know this and not the head librarian (who would have known this right away), but then I saw the assistant librarian give me a quizzical look as I was heading out the door with the books and begin looking something up in a big book on the circulation desk and I have a funny feeling we're about to be in a bit of a chase, so move quickly but don't look suspicious!"
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Carli sighs again, though in a non-suspicious way.
Charlize can't help but smile - as someone from very humble and poor origins, she was used to this kind of borrowing with good reasons. She turns around and moves fast with Rexus and Carlissa, trying to do it as non-suspiciously as possible.
As you are moving quickly (but not too quickly!) to the northern postern gate, you notice a harried looking young man emerge from the library. He quickly scans the quad, notices you, then moves quickly to catch up, his shoes slapping against the pavement stones.
Meanwhile, up ahead, you see that the postern gate is closed and the doorman who opens it is asleep in a chair next to it, his dog at his feet.
Charlize thinks, as fast as she can, and as they approach the doorman she steps forward. She's rough looking, hoping to pass as security escort to a low noble.
"Quick, doctor, here! Through this gate, you'll get quicker there." - she says, towards Rexus, then turning towards the doorman - "Sir, we need your help with a quick passage. We're the escort for Doctor DeFidget, and the doctor has to reach quickly Lady Quizcal, Countess of White Roses. He finally found the right reference and medication formula for the rare illness she has, and we believe he may be able to save her life! The good lady may yet survive!"
Charlize's quick thinking bamboozles the doorman, who jumps up to open the postern gate for everyone. You quickly rush Rexus through and by the time the young librarian reaches the gate, you have ducked down a side street to disappear into the back alleys of Villegre.
"Thank you so much for pulling my bacon out of the fryer back there, Charlize. I owe you one." The young student smiles at the stonemason and you can't be sure, but he might be blushing a bit as well.
From here it is only a short hop to the Long Roads Coffeehouse where you enter through the back door, make any order you wish at the counter, and quickly set up camp in the private back room. One of you catches Laria's eye (who is working in the kitchen) and she joins you there after a short while.
"Well, what did you discover in Redroof?" she asks you as she enters, wiping her hands on her apron. "Was that old livery really a Silver Ravens hideout?"
"That seems to be the case. The findings there were out of place for it to be just a common stable. Particularly, the silver ravens we found. It appears that they took their designation literally."
Laria cocks her head to its side. "Silver ravens? You found birds there?"
"Statues of them, to be clear. They're not living birds."
"Magical statuettes, to be more precise," Carli chimes in. "Though...we're not sure what they do or how to make them do it."
Charlize just holds her silence, at this point. Crossed arms, she looks at Laria and nods in agreement as her teammates speak.
"Do you need help identifying the magical properties of the silver ravens? If you do, I know a guy. Well, I hope he's still around. With the recent troubles you can't be sure, but he's pretty resourceful. Let me know."
"On an unrelated topic, I was wondering if I could ask for your help with something?" Laria's tone changes to utter seriousness here. "One of my contacts has gone silent and I'm beginning to worry about him. His name is Nan Comerivos and he ... well, I'll just come out and say it, he's a smuggler. He is very good and getting things in and out of Kintargo without the authorities getting wind of it."
Here she leans in and drops her voice to nearly a whisper. "The basement of the Long Roads connects to the Kintargo sewer and to a long-forgotten secret shrine to the goddess Calistria. Because of the shrine, I've called those chambers the "Wasp Nest". I've used them as storage for things I didn't want the government to know about for a long time. Nan has been sharing that space with me lately, bringing in Varisian textiles and storing them in the Wasp Nest until he could find a buyer. He brought in some textiles several weeks ago and has been dropping by every few days to check on them. The last time he came was three days ago. He went into the basement to check on his goods and has yet to come out. With all the craziness lately I haven't had time to check on him. I hope he's just laying low. I know someone is eating the food and wine I leave at the bottom of the stairs for him every day, but I'm beginning to worry because when the coffeehouse is quiet at night I sometimes hear echoing laughter coming from the basement that doesn't sound all-together human. Would you mind checking up on Nan for me?"
"We can check it out for you. It certainly sounds concerning at any rate."
Carli gives Laria a quick nod, seconding Draco's offer to help.
Laria gives a long sigh and nods. "Thank you so much. It will be a load off my mind to see Nan again. Unless you need something from me, I will leave you to it, yes?" The halfling woman stands up, looking at all of you for confirmation.
Carli asks for a description of Nan and then says she's ready to investigate the basement.
"What else, or who else, should we expect to encounter at this... 'Wasp Nest'? Besides Calistria followers, I guess."
Charlize wasn't looking forward to a sewer delving but was mostly concerned with what kind of danger could be lurking there.
"And how do we identify ourselves to Nan, in case we find him? I can only assume the man may be a bit paranoid, so wouldn't trust our word to be working with you."
Carlissa nods at Charlize's point. "Yeah--if we can avoid any misunderstanding with this guy, it'd be for the best."
Laria nods at Charlize's point. "Well, you can tell him that I sent you to check up on him. If he doesn't believe you, you can tell him that if he doesn't come up on his own, you'll drag him up "inch by inch". Be specific and tell him that: "inch by inch.""
"What else, or who else, should we expect to encounter at this... 'Wasp Nest'? Besides Calistria followers, I guess."
Laria shakes her head. "That shrine to Calistria has been abandoned for a very, very long time. I don't think you'll find any wasp-worshipers down there."
Carli lights a torch and holds it in her buckler hand, ready to drop it at a moment's notice if she has to fight. Then she leads the group into the old shrine.
Before you can leave the private office and sitting room at the back of the coffeehouse, Rexus moves all the books he brought from the library onto Laria's desk. He then straightens his clothes before addressing you.
"As much as I would LOVE to accompany you into another soggy basement," he states with obvious sarcasm, "would you mind if I stayed behind on this one and got to work decoding the cypher we found in the Silver Ravens papers? I think I could probably be more useful doing that in the long run."
Once everyone is ready, Laria guides you through the kitchen into a small storage room in the back you have not visited. Once you are all inside, standing very close to one another cheek by jowl, she closes the door and moves aside a crate. Doing so automatically opens a trap door in the floor that had been hidden beneath it. Opening it reveals a tight and twisting set of stairs heading down into the darkness.
"The trap door is hinged so that you can open it easily from below when you come back. Thank you again and good luck!" she whispers, closing the trap door behind you.
Carefully making your way down the curling staircase, you arrive in a dry cellar containing numerous labeled crates of cooking ingredients, sacks of coffee beans, and other supplies needed to run the business above. Laria has told you that there is a secret door in the western wall that is opened by stepping on two different floor tiles in a certain order.
Carli takes a casual look around the room, but notices nothing out of the ordinary except an empty plate with cutlery near the western wall along with an empty wineskin.
"Well...let's do this!" Carli blurts quietly, triggering the secret door and then leading the others into the subterranean shrine. She looks around quickly for any immediate threats.
As usual, Charlize goes with the others in her typical grumpy silent way. Her eyes used to the dark, she tries to stay close to the front and walks besides Carlissa with confidence. She nods as the other triggers the secret door.
The group carefully moves past the secret door into an underground corridor that is slick with moisture and suffused with the smell of raw sewage, mildew, and rot. Carli's torch reveals that the other side of the secret door is also a secret door, although the trigger mechanism is not immediately obvious . The torch also reveals that the corridor extends to the south about 40' before opening into a larger room. The ceiling height in the corridor is 10 feet, and the walls have occasional sconces. Some of the sconces have torches in them, but all of them are unlit.
The sound of lapping water in an enclosed underground space can be heard coming from room to the south.
Draco is not stealthy in the least, so he can't do much more than walk in. He can however search for the trigger mechanism to the secret door, which he will do.
The group carefully moves forward down the damp corridor and into the first room . To the east you can see a large reservoir of dark, calm water that, judging from the smell, must clearly be the connection to the sewer Laria was talking about. A wooden pier extends twenty feet into the water, while another twenty feet out rises the top half of a statue of a beautiful elven woman. A new foul smell overpowers the stench of mildew and open sewer you have been breathing in here: that of rotting meat, coming from somewhere near the pier. Three holes have been knocked into walls here, two to the northwest, and one to the south. From your current standpoint, the light of the torch can't penetrate far enough to illuminate what is beyond this room. This room otherwise seems empty.
Carli can hear bird-like noises coming from the darkness to the south somewhere.
The brawler moves with the group, keeping her working hammer off. She was starting to miss masonry work but understood how important it was to step up out of her comfort zone at this moment.
Carli creeps slowly behind Charlize, rapier in hand, looking for whatever's making the bird noises...or any other danger.
As you move closer to the southern part of the room, the bird noises stop. You can now see further into the room to the south, which seems to be full of unopened crates, some of them draped in moldering tarps, creating a kind of maze. Two tables sit in the middle of the room scattered with playing cards and a single smoking, unlit lantern.
Carli faces the others, points first in the direction of the table with the lamp on it, and then mimics the smoke by spiraling one finger slowly upward. Now certain that the others are aware that there's at least one other person present nearby, she moves slowly toward the tables.
Now certain that the others are aware that there's at least one other person present nearby, she moves slowly toward the tables.
Realizing that she may very well be walking into an ambush alone, Carli stops, turns to her new friends, gives them a quizzical look, and shrugs her shoulders. Creeping back to them, she whispers, "Does someone have a better plan for flushing out whoever just snuffed the lamp?"
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"Honestly, too many birds in our path. Silver ravens... Now these noises." - she whispers back to Carlissa - "I don't know. Sometimes, the best way is the loudest way. I say we announce our presence, hope for the best, but go prepared for the worst."