Category: Ransom and Salvage

Tricksy, Dagger, Richie, and Bizzle loiter in the Warren, throwing darts, making traps, and throwing traps. The sobbing man in Rooster’s office introduces himself as Sam Bob, and his lucrative problem seems to be that his beloved son and archaeologist, Tim Bob, has not checked in as anticipated to resupply a dig venture at Tranth Volantor. The absence of Tim Bob has left a large hole in Sam Bob’s heart and a large hole in the ground.

The mission is to rescue Tim Bob. Pragmatic Dagger inquires whether the pay is the same if Tim Bob is already dead already. Rooster hastily ushers the R&S operatives away from inconsolable Sam Bob. They gather up lots of extra rope, more than an adventuring party could possibly ever exhaust, and requisition horses for the uneventful journey to Tranth Volantor.

Tranth Volantor is a ruined fortification. Stacked crates of salvage rocks, coal, brass and copper nails and gears, lumber, and sundry other miscellany surround a recent campfire just inside the entrance. A conspicuous hole in the ground was created by something unpleasant bursting out of a formerly smaller hole in the ground, presumably to snatch away archaeologists milling nonchalantly around.

The party rappels down into a cavern ringed with twelve pillars engraved with GELDARXAIHX. Richie reckons that is the name of an aberrant, and Tricksy’s primeval awareness confirms several aberrations within a mile. They follow drag marks out of the raw cavern into a stone-worked chamber featuring a teleport pad, two floaty balloon things behind a door, and stairs up behind a different door.

Choosing the stairs over the floaty balloon things, the party wends through halls and chambers compartmented by doors trapped magically and mechanically. Before long, the party is overtaken by a pursuing pair of beholders who bellow threateningly about the party’s rude intrusion. Despite several random nasty eye rays, the beholders are unexpectedly susceptible to injury and succumb to reasonable violence.

Proceeding deeper into the dungeon, the party soon encounters another pair of beholders. Dagger attempts communication this time, but GELDARXAIHX and GELDARXAIHX are both indisposed to socializing. Richie charges them and falls through a floor illusion trap that sends him crashing into a spiked pit. The beholders are defeated and Richie is retrieved.

Proceeding deeper into the dungeon, the party soon encounters a second teleport pad just beneath a plasma sphere containing a super hot elemental waiting to incinerate anyone teleporting in. Skipping the first teleport pad was a wise decision. Self congratulations are cut short when Bizzle opens a double door, triggering a massive granite block to smash through the room and into the sphere. An explosion of hot elemental spray does less damage than it ought to, although the elemental’s take might differ.

Proceeding deeper into the dungeon, Dagger finds another floaty balloon thing and stabs it. The balloon pops spraying Dagger with spores. Dagger senses that he has now become the host of impending doom, but there’s nothing to do for it now except possibly refrain from stabbing any more floaty balloon things.

Dagger throws open a door which in turn throws him through a room with two more beholders. This time, Dagger turns the proverbial tables and yells that he is GELDARXAIHX as he runs out a door on the other side which flings him out of the room and into a wall. It’s a tough act to follow, but the rest of the party engages the beholders. The beholders telekinetically loft Richie and drop him through a hole to the next level down, a long fall. The beholders are defeated.

Richie whispers loudly up from below to remind everyone that he fell a considerable distance and would enjoy a little help soon. The noise attracts the unwelcome attention of some truly horrifying stitched and stapled together leather and bone undead who advance on Richie and pluck him off the rope lowered by the party. Richie is brutally slain, rent into pieces.

Concern for Richie is cut short by the flashing yellow top buttons of everyone’s Graycoat. Before Bizzle can retrieve his Graycoat Quick Start manual, Slick, Tatters, Barry, and Badger materialize.

Badger is remarkable for his twin hair points and mutton chops which are impressive even for a dwarf.

Dagger immediately spots the much younger dwarf Barry’s blue collar, R&S insignia owing to his access to Berronar Truesilver’s healing favors. Dagger requests medical evaluation regarding his earlier balloon spore dosage. Barry recommends a wait-and-see approach along with a high fiber diet and plenty of exercise.

Tatters explains that this here complex is a Beholder Hive which establishes when a beholder admires itself in a mirror and thus procreates.

Bizzle packs up what little can be found of Richie’s remains. Dagger continues ahead, discovering guillotine traps and a chamber with a foreboding mist-covered floor surrounded by foreboding statues. Badger climbs atop a statue. The statue throws Badger into the poisonous fog. A fierce fight ensues, and the statue golems are defeated.

Dagger finds another couple of floaty balloon things blocking the next hallway. Dagger estimates he has 14 hours to live from the last spore dose and therefore has nothing to lose by experimentally running through the hall popping the floaty balloon things. The spore cloud diseases Tatters.

Dagger “disarms” the next trapped door. Bizzle opens the door and is surprised to see a large spear impaling him where moments before there was only a healthy torso. A fireball trap is rendered “safe” by Dagger. Barry scarcely has time to consider why the room is talking to him before rapidly advancing Dagger is sucked through to the next chamber toward a whizzing fan blade. Badger forms a humanoid chain and Bizzle tosses in a rope. Slick hauls everyone out to safety and the vacuum door is closed.

Tatters suggests backtracking to any of the down-holes to proceed in a more downward direction, presumably toward the progenitor of the numerous GELDARXAIHXs, and also happily away from the vacuum.

The party rappels down a previously bypassed hole to the other side of the pit from which the necrosis carnex gang emerged to dismember Richie. Badger’s curiosity toward the weird creatures attracts their attention. A fight breaks out. The undead have a tendency to explode violently while simultaneously healing the others in their tribe. Barry turns them, and they retreat into the darkness.

Tricksy and Barry hang back to guard against the necrosis carnex attacking from behind while the rest of the party explores a large checker tiled room. Each square features a single letter in Undercommon. Dagger quickly surmises the letters in GELDARXAIHX are unsafe to support any weight, and all others will allow crossing to the other side. Bizzle, convinced the opposite must be true, confirms Dagger’s initial hypothesis by stepping onto a G and falling into the acid pool below. Bizzle belt blinks into the acid-free ethereal plane and explores beneath the puzzle while the others map out safe passage above. Mapping accelerates dramatically when Tatters thunderwaves out the unsupported tiles.

Dagger finds the most promising way forward, but the party is too scattered when he encounters a pair of beholders. The party dashes to engage, but the hasty defense results in Barry’s petrification and Bizzle’s deathray demise. With Barronar Truesilver’s timely intervention, Barry narrowly returns to flesh. The beholders are defeated. Dagger Plan B’s Bizzle to corpse dragging shadow form.

Shadow Bizzle finds that he can wield Sinestra, the evil scimitar. Cranky Shadow Bizzle defends his precious dragged corpse from looting and a couple of helpful attempts to improve his movement speed by mass reduction via dismemberment and / or trans-dimensional tricks.

The party resolves to continue down another level, mission first. Bizzle’s corpse leads the way and cushions other falling party members when the piton comes loose. Hopefully resurrection works on bean bags.

The party soon finds a connected pair of rooms with enormous, elaborate clockworks. After defeating a couple of beholders, Dagger shoves over a conspicuous lever. The clockworks halt, stopping the slowly rotating floor surrounded by statues.

The voice of GELDARXAIHX demands to know who has shut down his works? The party answers in unison, “DAGGER!” GELDARXAIHX demands to know the reason for the intrusion. Dagger explains they need to locate and retrieve archaeology boy Tim Bob, whom Barry concludes is one of these several petrified statues loitering on the ring of teleport pads. Would it be worth a spell to restore one of the statues? No, it would not, is GELDARXAIHX’s booming opinion. A beam of petrification smacks Barry.

Beholder GELDARXAIHX swoops down, reactivating the mechanism lever as Dagger struggles to head him off. Tricksy, just in from abandoning Badger to the necrosis carnex gang, plugs GELDARXAIHX with some perfectly placed arrows and gets a sleepy time eye beam in response. Slick charges with his great axe of finesse and absorbs a disintegration eye beam before tripping into the turntable gap where the gears begin pulverizing him. Tatters launches sculpted fireballs and magic missiles. Dagger vies for control of the lever and is petrified. Tatter’s fireball slays GELDARXAIHX.

Barry restores “archaeologist” Sven who directs Barry to mission objective Tim Bob. Restored Tim Bob and Sven offer poorly coordinated explanations and disseminations. The group easily discerns that the operation was more a looting enterprise than one of research. Sven has a mental break and attempts to assault Tim Bob, as do the other restored archaeologists. Dagger delivers corrective groin kicks until order is restored.

The mission is a success despite the lack of any clawback funding.

The party descends the spiral stairs into a round room of the same metallic construction. The floor rings solidly, unlike the upper decks, and a section of the wall has been crushed in by solid rock as though the entire structure rests on this overburdened lowest level. Sliding doors ring the chamber. The damage from intruding rock exposes a surrounding cavern.

Glowing fungi in the cavern attract Shroom’s attention. When he attempts to collect some into a jar, Shroom realizes the cavern wall he is scraping is actually a camouflaged cave ape covered in the glowing fungi. The scraped ape bites deeply into Shroom. Three more hiding cave apes pounce on Bizzle and Shroom. Now it’s on, like some kind of mashup of a pack animal and a giant simian rolling barrels down a deranged structure in an attempt the prevent the party from advancing.

Tricksy, already standing on the wall ready with her shortbow for whatever trouble Shroom stirs up, marks and shoots the closest ape. Tatters joins in with a firebolt. Shroom hammers away with symbiotic entity and a halo of spores trying to barely kill the apes just right to raise them as zombies, but Bizzle finishes off the first ape before Shroom can capture it. Slick runs in swinging his great axe. An ape runs to meet him, but the axe gets loose and sails overhead embedding into the already dead ape.

While the party is distracted by the cave apes, a mind flayer creeps up behind Tatters and attaches to his face. Tricksy scrambles across the wall to get away, putting arrows into her new mark. Tatters blasts a thunderwave, but the flayer maintains his tentacle grip. Tatters avoids the tentacles probing for his nose while Tricksy plugs the flayer with arrows. Tatters gives the flayer a second thunderwave and finally knocks it back, dead.

Bizzle moves to help disarmed Slick and drops the attacking ape, but this leaves two apes beating down Shroom. Shroom crams a salvage bar into his mouth and puffs a halo of spores over one of his assailants, zombifying it. Slick retrieves his magical great axe and plants it into the last fighting ape. Tatters splashes the ape with acid and Bizzle cuts it down. The apes have rough jewels embedded into their foreheads.

The party explores a passage the mind flayer exploited to ambush Tatters. Bizzle checks through the fallen mind flayer’s possessions and comes up with a magical sword. Vaguely aware of the tendency for his scimitars to liberate other weapons, Bizzle proposes someone else carry the magical sword. Tatters accommodates, strapping the longsword to his small gnome frame.

Shroom sends his zombie cave ape pet, Fubca, to beat down one of the doors. Tatters reaches out to Apholatzin with the helm of telepathy to inquire about artifacts and the possibility of opening some of these doors. Apholatzin offers Tatters all the rings he could carry as an incentive to depart. Fubca breaks through the door exposing piles of treasure, including rings. Tricksy points to a pair of cave apes lurking at the back wall. Tatters tosses a fireball at them. Shroom’s ice knife, Tricksy’s arrows, and Tatters’s ray of frost drop one ape, Slick’s sneaked great axe and Bizzle’s scimitars drop the other.

Shroom collects fungus while Bizzle uses a pan from his mess kit to scoop piles of rings into his greycoat. Tricksy hears the sound of a door opening and closing signaling the escape of a person of interest. She pries at the door with a dagger while Tatters freezes it brittle. Shroom gallops up riding Fubca who smashes down the door. Bizzle gives chase and finds the fleeing mind flayer in the next room. Shroom gallops by on Fubca with a hearty, Never bathe! Fubca and Shroom claw at the mind flayer with primal savagery.

The mind flayer blasts a psionic attack that stuns Bizzle and Tricksy and kills Fubca. Atop crumpling Fubca, Shroom lands on his feet in time to take a parting warhammer hit as the mind flayer flees the room. Shroom and Tatters pursue. Shroom captures the flayer with a halo of spores, releasing Tricksy and Bizzle from stunnation.

Shroom and Tatters can see a sunken room pooling a brine solution and occupied by a giant elder brain. Giant elder brain Apholatzin is accompanied by yet another mind flayer. Shroom sends his new mind flayer zombie pet in to feed on the giant elder brain. Apholatzin lashes out with a psionic attack stunning Tatters and killing the zombie. Slick puts a crossbow bolt into Apholatzin. Tricksy scales a wall. Shroom pokes his head in to cast confusion, but Apholatzin maintains well-ordered thoughts. Shroom ducks back out. The mind flayer finds him and attaches itself to stunned Shroom’sface. Bizzle blinks into shadow and slips up to Apholatzin.

Bizzle blinks back into material existence and beats on Apholatzin in scimitar double time. Apholatzin seizes scimitar Destra with a tentacle. Slick and Tricksy attack the mind flayer in an attempt to spare Shroom, but the flayer pulls his brain out of his nose collapsing his skull. Apholatzin grapples Slick with a slapping tentacle. Tatters gulps down a salvage bar. Tricksy finishes the mind flayer, but not in time to save the late Shroom.

Apholatzin becomes the sole recipient of attacks from Bizzle’s free scimitar, Tricksy’s marked arrows, Tatters’s witchbolt, and Slick’s greataxe. Apholatzin pops out into another, presumably safer, plane, very nearly taking the gooder half of Bizzle’s prized scimitar collection. Bizzle blinks into shadow hoping to confront Apholatzin there, but Apholatzin has escaped.

The party explores around and discovers an eclectic trove of artifacts: a small wooden chest containing a desicated eyeball, a monstrance, a chakram, a staff, and a small jar. Tatters collects the artifacts into his greycoat, confident that the chakram is the “ring” sought by their patron, Baron Van Fostern.

Bizzle retrieves Shroom’s Plan B [option 4] and smacks it approximately in the former location of Shroom’s deflated forehead. Shroom is completely restored, growing a brand new brain. Shroom removes any doubt as to his authenticity when he collects his old brain from the tentacled gob of the dead mind flayer. Classic Shroom.

From what the party can piece together, the structure is a crashed nautilus, a ship of mind flayers. Apholatzin the elder brain grew from a cultivated illithid, fed by the constant supply of Chult treasure hunters.

The party returns to R&S victorious and wealthy, but unknowingly incubating a brain fluke in Tatters’s prodigious brain.

The party has made its way to the center of the Chult jungle to a structure in the grip of a slowly encroaching jungle. Trapmaster Tricksy points out the walls and floor of this structure are made of an unrecognized metal, constructed in hexagonal patterns, and the door separating them from the escaping tentacle-faced guy has no mechanical opener. Tatters, tying up critically injured Bill the mule, overhears Tricksy’s observations and comes dashing up, out of breath but with a great idea. Tatters reaches out to the door psychically through his helm of telepathy. The door’s representative answers and offers to open the door. Discouraged by his own success, Tatters reluctantly accepts and the door slides open.

Shroom, already empathetically hugging the door, falls into the chamber. Shroom’s captured zombie servants shuffle in to help him up, but dissipate when they get near. Slick follows without dissipation and sees a curved hallway with more doors. Tatters follows Slick but freezes, catatonic, immediately inside the doorway. Shroom tries to waken Tatters by sticking his fungal fingers into Tatters’s mouth, but this previously established method fails. Shroom grapples Tatters and demands answers. Bizzle steps through and becomes catatonic next to Tatters.

Tatters and Bizzle find themselves in a village and in a conversation with the disembodied voice of Apholatzin who offers any old thing they would want: riches, magic rings, bus fare, you name it. Bizzle peeks into the buildings and in fact there are piles of treasure. Apholatzin is not especially forthcoming with his plans and designs, but does show some interest in bartering for Bizzle’s sentient scimitars, Destra and Sinistra. Apholatzin screams in a weird language, then Destra and Sinistra scream and vibrate back at him. Unnerved Bizzle activates his blink belt, abandoning Tatters, and finds himself in shadow world but back in the structure with Tricksy. Slick and Shroom have popped over into the mind village.

Tricksy and Bizzle work out that it’s probably better to be in this reality than in the mind village. Tricksy forms a lasso and they yank Tatters’s body back through the doorway. Tatters returns spiritually. Shroom’s catatonic body falls to the ground so Tricksy lassos him next. Tatters and Bizzle yank Shroom through the doorway a little harder than necessary. Slick is retrieved last, lamenting the loss of bismuth.

The party agrees to explore less comatizing paths into the structure, moving counter-clockwise around the center. Their path is blocked by more doors so Tatters reaches out with the helm of telepathy again. Apholatzin answers. Although disappointed by their departure from the mind village, he opens all the doors for them. Shroom fearlessly runs right into a room of consoles. He seems normal, or at least not catatonic, as he sets about hammering the arrays of neatly arranged jewels embedded into the consoles. Tricksy observes Shroom while Bizzle and Tatters check out a raised throne overlooking the workstations.

The tentacle-faced guy drops from hiding on the ceiling, perfectly positioned to attach his tentacles to Slick’s brains, but Slick side steps defty. Shroom knows a mindflayer when he sees one attach itself to his face to stun and psychically damage him. Tatters summons a high level sleep spell that knocks out the mindflayer. It slowly oozes off Shroom. Shroom gently eases it to the floor.

The mindflayer won’t stay unconscious for long so the party hovers over it, preparing their best spells and weapons. They nominate Slick to go first with a critically mighty chop to the mindflayer’s neck [65 slashing damage]. The mindflayer’s head pops off and forcefully splatters onto the wall. Shroom’s spell is already erupting, spraying the head into a mist that covers him in a film of atomized mindflayer debris.

Tricksy, being tricksy, wonders if this round metallic structure itself is the ring artifact sought by their patron, Baron Flocculant Van Fostern. Gnomes Tatters and Bizzle confer on that possibility, drawing on their shared artificer’s lore. Although the structure does appear to be a great carriage of alien origin, there is no possibility that it could be restored to its original operation, whatever that looked like.

The party resolves to press on to the center of the structure, hoping that the mind-trapped hallway that gave them so much trouble earlier would now be inert with the thorough destruction of the mindflayer. They cross the hallway without difficulty this time to a closed door into the center of the structure.

Tatters again focuses his helm of telepathy on a door, but now Apholatzin is rather snippy at the destruction of Cidivox, the mindflayer. He won’t open this door. Tricksy jams the point of her dagger into the jamb and pries the door open enough to get the tip of her crowbar in. Shroom shoves on the crowbar too forcefully and the crowbar breaks. Bizzle retrieves a backup crowbar and Tricksy forces the door open enough for them to squeeze through.

In the quiet post combat moments of the darkened ruins deep within the Chult jungle, the group dedicates some time to investigation and contemplation. There are no artifacts for Van Fostern in the ruins, nor treasures for payment beyond what Slick loots from the grungs. 

The treasures themselves, Tatters reckons, are smothered in a non-magic psionic energy. Bizzle gets a rare moment of insight, envisioning the inhabitants of the unruined village suddenly departing without rational cause. He tracks the grungs and finds the path orthogonal to the group’s travel is often patrolled. 

Shroom looks for mushrooms but wouldn’t ignore an artifact if he sees one. He finally finds a shelf mushroom. Satisfied, he resumes harvesting grung poison for Tricksy’s specimen jars. Tricksy doubles back stealthily and attempts to spy their persistent pursuer from a tall tree. She senses the pursuer is right behind her in the tree. She sends Knit X circling around, but Knit X buzzes negative contact. Heeding Tatter’s warning about the possessive treasure, Bizzle and Tricksy offload gold and rubies onto Bill the mule. Slick would prefer to hang on to his loots, thankyouverymuch.

The party camps off the road and divides up watches. On second watch, Shroom hears a patrol of three and wakes each cohort with a probing fungal finger in the face. Tatters whispers that maybe they should be quiet and let the patrol pass. Bizzle nods affirmatively but springs out of the jungle at the three grungs anyway.

Two green grungs get stabby and the red grung casts a growth spell on nearby vegetation. Shroom shoves through the dense growth and, declaring loudly his intent to avoid bathing, primally savages a green grung. Slick retrieves a potion of flying and sails over the plant wall, charging at the red grung with readied axe. Tatters dispels the growth and strolls through, slinging firebolts. Tricksy adds her arrows to the injured green grung. Bizzle keeps contact with the red grung, but a botched swing sends a scimitar tumbling into the jungle. Bizzle runs after it. The red grung attempts to retreat, but Slick drops axe first from above. Bizzle rejoins, knocking the red grung out nonlethally. Bizzle sits on the red grung and secures it with mithril banding. Tatters and Tricksy take out the first green grung and advance on the second. Tatters dusts off his quarterstaff, hoping to knock out a second prisoner, but unbathed Shroom cuts in with primal savagery and slays the last green grung.

Tatters detects the red grung’s thoughts while Bizzle questions the uncomprehending creature in common. The language barrier doesn’t matter because red grung only thinks about all the treasures that Slick is busily gathering up. Bizzle shows red grung the dead troll. Where is that dead troll’s gold treasure? Tatters probes deeper thoughts and sees a robed, tentacle-faced creature with an enormous hoard of treasure. Detect thoughts fades at thirty feet so Bizzle measures out that length of robe, tethers the red grung to Tatters, and removes the red grung’s bindings. The red grung leaps into the air, yanking Tatters off his feet. Once the red grung tires out, Tatters uncurses it, gives it some water, and sends it on its way. Tatters then uncurses Slick and suggests he transfer all his cursed treasure to Bill the mule.

The party camps uneventfully and, thinking more clearly in the morning, realizes their grung encounters have occurred on concentric patrol paths, suggesting that they are moving directly toward the hot center of Chult weirdness. No one would be surprised to find a tentacle-faced creature with a hoard of gold in that center.

Later that day, the party approaches circular ruins. The road is blocked by a large maul-wielding man, a druid, and a ranger. Shroom hails them and proposes they be well met, but Shroom is met only with bland aloofness. Shroom takes offense at the shun and accesses his symbiotic entity. Slick takes a couple steps away from Shroom’s new and improved death scent while taking measure of the three road blockers. He notes they are wearing crude jewelry. Tatters dons his helm of telepathy and suggests the three might remove their cursed jewelry, but they are too busy thinking about a clear and placid lake to pay any heed. Another thought breaks in on the channel, impressed by Tatters’s awareness, and damages Tatters’s mind with feedback.

Bizzle charges the maul man with a surge, but accidentally hucks a scimitar into the ruins. Tricksy starts plugging the maul man with arrows. Shroom natures out and pursues the ranger with his warmushroom and halo spores. Slick sneaks a fatal axe attack on the ranger. Tatters selects the tiger-shifted druid and firebolts it back to druid-shifted druid. The druid shifts to gorilla form and pummels Slick. Shroom smashes the gorilla back into druid with his warmushroom and then puffs a halo of spores that unkills the druid into Shroom’s pet zombie.

Bizzle runs to retrieve the flung scimitar and encounters a tentacle-faced man also hoping to collect the scimitar. The tentacle-faced man retreats out of view. Bizzle yells out that tentacle-faced man is escaping, but his pursuit is stopped by a closed steel door.

A veteran man leads two orcs out of the ruins, flanking the party. Shroom takes out one orc and zombies the other just in time to replace the druid zombie that the veteran man slays. All weapons turn on the veteran man and Shroom zombies him, putting him up by one zombie in the exchange.

Tricksy, Slick, Tatters, and Bizzle lounge in the warren getting to know new R&S agent transfer Shroom, a likeable, fun guy lurking somewhere in a druidic cloud of unbathed spores. Rooster emerges from his office with rotund Baron Flocculant Van Fostern after an hour of unsuccessful negotiations. Whatever Fostern has in mind, R&S can’t provide a fixed scope or basis of cost, but Rooster consents to allowing agents to contract independently with Fostern, completely off book and sans standard death benefits package R&S provides to its employees.

Fostern proposes a share of the legendary immeasurable treasure of the Chult jungles in exchange for any and all recovered artifacts. Shroom eagerly agrees, but Tricksy negotiates an additional 500 gp, each, mobilization fee just in case the treasure is immeasurably small. Fostern agrees to the 2500 gp cash front much too quickly through death rattling choking fits of coughing. It seems Fostern has one foot over a barrel and the other on a banana peel. Fostern provides maps to the legendary ruins from which no other adventurer has returned. A ship is arranged and the party sails to Fort Beluarian, a run-down outpost of Baldur’s Gate at the edge of the Chult jungles.

The party heads to the nearest tavern, named Thrice for the number of its rebuildings, for a reconnoiter of the whole lost treasure situation. Charismatic Slick chats up some Baldur’s Gate militia. The soldier recognizes yet another treasure hunter when he sees Slick, yet another victim for the brain flukes that invariably bore into the brains of treasure hunting adventurers. Still, a demoralized Baldur’s Gate militiaman could retire in luxury with one of those plate-size rubies the soldier has seen.

Tatters knows all about brain flukes, ingested from drinking tainted water. He fills his bag of holding with waterskins and rations for the journey. Sundry other provisioning is made and the group sets off into the jungle where they soon meet adventurer Mercer and his mule Bill coming the other way. Well into the conversation about ancient ruins, artifacts, and plate sized rubies, Mercer’s head explodes from excess brain fluke. The party invokes finders keepers acquiring Bill the mule. Slick helps himself to Mercer’s boots.

A few days into their journey the party comes across an abandoned pack, left as though its owner had tripped and then mysteriously vanished. Slick sees no traps or obvious danger so Tricksy opens it, revealing a large ruby, two gold nuggets, and a couple of hungry looking purple worms. Shroom hammers a worm into purple paste with his petrified mushroom warhammer. Slick axes up the other worm into purple julienne. Keen-sensed ranger Tricksy hears incoherent whispers and senses the party is being watched. Tatters checks out the abandoned loot, but notices nothing amiss. Bizzle claims the giant ruby as their first progress payment and notices the warm sensation of happiness that undoubtedly accompanies the sudden acquisition of great wealth. The whispers unnecessarily encourage Bizzle to acquire more treasure. Shroom is visibly disappointed that no fungus is among the treasure and swabs out his nostrils to purge any purple worm brain flukes that might be in there.

Tricksy is pretty sure the group is being followed. Tatters advances cautiously and sees eyes peering back. The eyes, and seven similar pairs, leap out at the party in the form of cute little grungs trying to stab and poison them.

Grungs surround isolated, stoneskinned Tatters and try to lasso him. Shroom begins spewing clouds of fungi from his mouth which grosses out his coworkers, but the grung actually seem to enjoy the poisonous scent. The party fights its way through to Tatters. Shroom bites into the head of a grung with primal savagery and the few remaining grungs leap into the jungle.

Shroom carefully harvests four jars of poison for Tricksy’s arsenal of mischief. Slick, Tatters, and Bizzle loot crude necklaces of gold nuggets and rough gemstones from each slain grung. They feel pretty good about being wealthier and try to ignore the sense that something is watchfully following. The incoherent whispers persist, but only when they aren’t thinking about it.

Hours later, the party finally arrives at the ruins indicated by Fostern’s maps. Slick notices three little green lumps on the trail. Tatters moves closer to investigate and notices they bite Shroom when Shroom recklessly runs through them. Shroom haloes spores back at them. Tricksy runs up a tree with her shortbow ready. She encounters a grung in the tree hiding with his shortbow ready. Tricksy gets the drop on the grung and knocks him out of the tree with a couple of quick arrows.

Grungs emerge from all around, this time accompanied by a jungle troll. Tatters thinks it’s pretty weird for grungs and trolls to socialize. Tatters and Shroom clean out the grungs while Slick, Tricksy, and Bizzle confront the troll. The troll, trying to reach for Tricksy in the tree, claws, bites, and shoves aside his assailants despite Bizzle’s galline tauntings. Attacks land on the troll, but it regenerates until Tatters hits it with a fireball. Tricksy’s arrows slay the troll, and the last of the grungs are finished off.

Tricksy examines a large gold ingot crudely embedded into the troll’s chest as though through self-mutilation. She pops the valuable treasure out. Others collect necklaces from the slain grungs. The party’s attention turns to the ruins.

Tatters figures the ruins weren’t taken by force or anything like that, just abandoned for no obvious reason. He wonders whether it is related to the strange interactions between grungs and the troll, and what that has to do with the commonality of their gold and gemstone treasures.

They have had better days. The good faith mission to pay ransom to the unseelie fey for safe return of Trilosso Limburger’s kidnapped infant was on-track until a detestable team of Darkwater gnolls operating on behalf of an unknown client pear-shaped the entire deal by springing a trap. Now the fey are ooze and gnolls are whooping threateningly outside the keep. Worst of all, Bizzle’s helm of teleportation (PHRRT), by which they arrived at the remote keep, is damaged. Ranger Tricksy will have to guide them back through perils known and unknown.

A quick search of the room gets Bizzle a magical belt of two charges and gets Gnome a dagger of silver from the oozing fey. Some dead Darkwater gnolls have a meatstick each.

Slick grabs the unharmed Limburger baby in its basket. Bizzle grabs the unpaid ransom. Tricksy takes to the ceiling. Gnome gets stunned by a voice on a cold wind that assures the party it will not survive this treachery. Stone skeletons spring from the keep floor.

Tricksy and Bizzle start to clear the hallway out while Slick and Gnome take out the skeletons threatening the baby. Gnome casts orbiting Melph’s minute meteorites and declares he am pyromancer, spraying empowered meteorites and scorching rays from his jar wherever Tricksy hasn’t already left dead skeletons. The path is clear and the pyromantic heat is dissipated by a ramping cold wind shoving them down the hallway toward the exit.

Bizzle cautiously peers left and right where the keep opens into a courtyard. Gnolls. Gnome, aided by the cold wind, sails past Bizzle as readied gnoll arrows crisscross his showmanship. Meteorites and scorching rays kiss the four gnolls waiting to ambush them. Tricksy picks off the wounded gnolls from the outer wall.

Slick hangs safely back with the baby. The cold hallway wind pulls the baby basket out of Slick’s grasp and back up the hallway even while pushing Slick out. Slick scrambles upwind and catches the basket. Gnome suspects KK Girl Missus of this trick. Everyone else suspects Gnome may have a loose toggle bolt.

Ranger Tricksy surveys the landscape and chooses a forest route rather than marsh or hills. They are all her favorite terrain, but the forest, although the longest route to a nearby town, may offer cover for their escape. Or cover for malevolent forest plants and fey.

The team advances cautiously through the forest with Bizzle on point looking for traps, Tricksy guiding them along keenly aware of danger, Slick safeguarding the baby, and Gnome bouncing conspicuously around looking for rotting fruit and twigs for his Tricksy voodoo doll project. Tricksy becomes aware of a tree waiting to ambush them up ahead. Wood woads emerge from trees along the path and bludgeon Slick to the point he has to down his salvage bar. Quicklings zip across striking at Gnome, almost faster than he can give them impromptu names. Signpost the giant tree person sidles up and punches Gnome in the back of the head knocking him out.

The wood woads and quicklings recede into the forest. Bizzle stands on Gnome to force feed him a healing potion. Gnome critically immolates Signpost who quickly burns himself down after some arrows from tree topped Tricksy. Slick watches the wood woads meld into trees so he logically sets a tree afire with his torch. Gnome notes that he is not the one who has first ignited the forest and therefore can’t possibly be culpable if and when he lights the forest even more on fire. He scorching rays killing one of the wood woads when they emerge to attack Slick and Tricksy. The quicklings continue to zip around, and Bizzle manages to kill one accidentally by holding a scimitar out when it goes by. So that’s what they look like. Gnome stomps at the quicklings.

The party resumes forward movement despite the continued attacks, trading hits whenever the wood woads and quicklings present an opportunity. Bizzle rounds a turn in the path and finds a pair of gnolls directionally indicated by the arrows protruding from him. Gnome, informed by his belief that explosions can solve all problems great and small, sends a massive fireball back at the gnomes killing both and a third no one even knows about yet. Through the smoke and flames of burning gnolls emerges none other than Mutt, strongman of Darkwater. The hazy outline of Dingo can be seen even farther back. A couple of gnolls approach behind the party, but Tricksy and Bizzle quickly slay them.

Gnome attempts to reduce Mutt to teacup size, but Mutt shrugs it off. Gnome immolates Mutt. Slick draws his rapier, ready to defend the baby. Mutt smacks Slick with a flail, paralyzing him. Mutt snatches the baby and runs for waiting Dingo. Bizzle chomps his salvage bar and action surges to dash in front of retreating Mutt. Gnome does some weird magic stuff and blasts a pair of empowered fireballs at Dingo. Tricksy puts arrows into Mutt’s marked retreating backside. Dingo eats a meatstick of hangering and advances to smack Bizzle in back of his head. Mutt tosses the baby basket into the forest toward one of several growing fires and charges Gnome, knocking him out. Mutt swings his flail up at Tricksy in the tree.

Bizzle goes after the baby basket and grabs it away from the fire. At the urging of voices vaguely from the direction of his scimitars, he activates the belt of two charges looted from the unseelie fey. Bizzle blinks into the ethereal plan where he and the baby can safely watch Dingo and Mutt exchange beatings with Slick and Tricksy while Gnome enjoys slipping into death’s peaceful embrace.

Mutt chases after Bizzle, but finds neither Bizzle nor baby. Mutt screams in a frustrated way very unlike Mutt. Dingo breaks a sword across Slick’s armor and also screams in a frustrated way very unlike Mutt. They break away in retreat.

Slick stands on Gnome to force feed him a healing potion. Gnome can’t help but launch a couple of meteorites to chase Dingo already disappearing into the forest. A long forgotten Quickling slashes by Gnome nudging him closer to death’s door yet again. When the situation is safe, Bizzle returns to the material plane with the baby.

Tricksy leads the bedraggled team to the hamlet of Yoriick where they take a short rest until dark. Slick gets directions from a tavern, and they steal a couple of horses. They ride back to R&S headquarters and file a mission report with Rooster. It’s a double win by any measure, but Rooster is irritable anyway. Rooster needs a vacation.

In full swing of the annual R&S Winter Solstice Festival, designated duty officer Curly Three escorts an outsider into the party and over to Rooster. Rooster listens to the stranger for a moment before summoning his four most capacitated agents, Tricksy, Slick, Beard, and Bizzle, away from the barrel of solstice uther.

The gnome stranger hails from Iceville, a town known to R&S because of its beloved annual visitor, R&S brethren Kringle, who swapped his greycoat for a red coat to bring presents to Iceville’s boys and girls. The stranger reports that Kringle did not make his usual Kringlefest visit this year, and Rooster wants the team to find out why. White coats of cold resistance are issued in place of the usual warm weather greycoats. The white coat looks perfect over Slick’s Winter Solstice dress.

The party will begin by locating a keep, a light industrial toy manufactory operated by Kringle, in the forest outside Iceville. The location is secret, and the keep is magically shrouded to ensure it remains so. Today’s whimsical transport is a flying sleigh drawn by eight flying reindeer who will deliver the team to the nearby forest without complication.

. . .

The first thing Slick notices stepping out of the sleigh onto the frozen forest lake is a foul odor from the north. Beard dashes for the source of the stench and runs into a yeti. The yeti claws at Beard and paralyzes him with a chilling gaze. Beard’s beard badger, Booboo, emerges upon Beard’s head to survey the situation and booboos at the sight of the yeti. Slick charges into the fray with his axe and Tricksy runs up a tree firing her shortbow. Bizzle, last out of the sleigh, evacuates the reindeer by engaging the autopilot, a plywood gnome tied to the reins. Bizzle dashes around the back of the yeti giving Slick a sneak attack that kills it.

Slick dashes to a gnawed-on commoner dying in the forest and feeds him a healing potion. He is Lars, and he has come from Iceville also to search for missing Kringle. Lars explains that 300 years ago Kringle defeated a demon who kept Iceville in perpetual darkness to feed off the citizens’ fears. Lars infers from the team’s size and attire that they are Kringle’s helpers. Beard so emphatically praises Kringle, his 32nd most favorite boss, that Lars loses consciousness.

Bizzle investigates an abandoned sleigh of the same make as the one by which they arrived, but this one is tricked out for Kringlefest. The steel reindeer harness has been snapped. Reindeer guts are splattered up in the surrounding trees. Beard transforms into a reindeer to get a sense of what the reindeer were doing or where they came from. Ranger Tricksy can easily discern hoof tracks left by the arriving reindeer as well as promising boot tracks left by a rotund gnome abandoning the sleigh.

Tricksy leads the party in pursuit of the survivor along snowy trails. Bizzle carries Lars. Reindeer Beard launches into a full gallop across a snowy clearing until he’s pummelled with snowballs by snowmen who meld invisibly back into the snow. Tricksy discerns the snowmen from her treetop firing position and points their locations out to the party by lobbing pots of boiling water, melting one snowman. A snowman pops out next to Slick and ice claws him. Slick lights a torch and jams it into the snowman. Tricksy’s suturefly, Knit IV, helps Bizzle rearrange Slick’s attacker into a pile of snow. Snowmen surround Beard and knock him out of reindeer form with snowballs and ice claws. Beard tries to flank around to line up burning hands, but he’s knocked out.

The party scatters, hitting whatever snowmen they manage to glimpse. A snowball critically hits Bizzle in his ACL. Beard regains consciousness and casts a wall of fire which melts a snowman. Tricksy hucks alchemist fire, melting a snowman, but her next throw ignites a tree instead. Bizzle helps Slick chop down his snowman attacker. Tricksy steams another snowman with a boiling water pot. Slick finishes off the last snowman with a jab from his flaming torch.

Beard douses the flaming tree with a well-placed tidal wave. Slick spots an object in a snow drift. It looks like a snow globe, but the inside swirls with wispy evil instead of fluffy snow. Bizzle picks up unconscious Lars. Tricksy continues tracking the boot prints.

Tricksy leads the party to a bloody trail. Slick gets a sense that something isn’t quite right in the sound of the forest. Beard, still grievously wounded, dashes ahead toward the sound of a clock and enters an illusory field masking a small keep. A phalanx of toy soldiers shoots Beard unconscious with rifles. Tricksy sees none of that and continues tracking the blood trail to dead reindeer.

Slick, curious about the popping noises, follows Beard. The soldiers shoot at Slick when he comes through the field. Bizzle pokes through the field, gets a measure of the situation [SALUTE: five soldiers, shooting Beard dead, next to a keep on the other side of an illusory wall, wearing identical uniforms possibly in service of Kringle, time now, armed with rifles and bayonets] and returns to dump Lars in the snow. Tricksy sends Knit through to recon while Slick receives a follow up attack of bayonets and projectiles.

Bizzle charges in with his scimitars taking out the leftmost soldier. He shifts right giving Slick the sneakiness he needs to take out the next one in line. Tricksy gets the next one with her shortbow while Slick takes a refreshing potion break. Bizzle takes out the next one and Tricksy the next. Slick gets a sneak on the last toy soldier and the first squad is defunct. Bizzle stands on Beard and feeds him a healing potion in time for a second wave of toy soldiers to advance. Beard lights a bonfire under one of them and Tricksy finishes the job with an arrow. She and Slick take out the last toy soldier.

An inky darkness envelops Slick, and he is gored by an unseen assailant’s horns. Slick lashes back blindly with his axe and makes hard contact, breaking his attacker’s concentration. The blackness dissipates revealing an unpleasant demon introducing himself as Krampus. Bizzle charges in with flashing scimitars and boisterous taunting. Beard, from his repose, calls down a moonbeam of radiance on Krampus and then rolls out of the illusory field. Tricksy plugs Krampus with shortbow shots. Krampus breaks a nail clawing Slick into unconsciousness. Krampus is quickly overwhelmed by concentrated revenge attacks and falls dead.

Bizzle checks out a bulky bag Krampus carried; it’s full of dark toys like the dark snowglobe. Beard drags the mischievous bag into a clearing and, with the refreshment of his salvage bar, destroys the evil toys with a lightning storm. Bizzle stands on Slick and feeds him a salvage bar.

The team enters the keep, which is larger on the inside, and finds Kringle chained to his workbench, forced to construct toys for Krampus who then enchants them with evil. Liberated Kringle whistles for his eight reindeer but only five respond. They retrieve the sleigh and help Kringle deliver non-evil toys to the good children of Iceville, merely one day late.

 

Rooster announces that Tricksy, Slick, Bizzle, and brooding svirfneblin rogue loner Dagger are hired as bodyguards for a special envoy with an exclusive invitation to an auction of collectible items, which rumor has were stolen from the lords of waterdeep. Rooster doesn’t want the job traced back to R&S so disguises are mandatory, discretion is emphasized, and greycoats are forbidden. The team presents itself to senior provisioning manager Quint. He collects the greycoats and issues appropriate attire from an impossibly well-stocked wardrobe. Bizzle selects an outdated brown suit over his rumpled stiltskins with an extra charismatic brown bowler. For Tricksy, it’s long pants embroidered with shou brocaid to cover her rumpled stiltskins.

Slick fancies a fancy dress but settles for a dwarven kilt that’s a little on the frock side. Dagger requests a menacing black suit and trench coat which he’d be wearing on his day off anyway.

Rooster introduces client Finde Wervanion. She is an objective beauty made even more charming by an ear-to-throat scar. She wears her abruptly skeptical disposition like she wears her gold dress. She loudly doubts the team’s competence in general and Slick’s dress in particular. Smitten hue-mon Bizzle wins her confidence by introducing himself as Byron The Carpenter and attempting to bisect Rooster’s desk with a quick flourish of concealed scimitars.

Finde hands Bizzle / Byron a paper disclosing their destination, Ye Olde Bakery. Tricksy, connoisseur of scones, knows right where to go. Bizzle hails a carriage with his disproportionately short arms and makes himself a complete nuisance trying to intimidate the cabby for no good purpose, much to the cabby’s 

amusement. Slick reasons that one may simply hire a carriage with coin and demonstrates the effectiveness of said capitalism by paying the cabby 2 gp for a ride to Ye Olde Bakery. Bizzle opens the carriage door for Finde and sees that Dagger is already comfortably seated without anyone noticing. How does he do that?

They arrive without further incident at Ye Olde Bakery. A beggar at the door strongly suggests a contribution of some sort, and he blocks the door when Bizzle reaches to open it. Dagger sizes up the beggar, but instead of discerning hidden weapons he notices the beggar tugging a string that goes through the wall. Finde remarks on the positive attributes of the bakery’s day old bread. The beggar agrees, provided it’s Secondday. Finde drops a coat button in his mug. The beggar knocks on the wall in a pattern, and they are admitted into the bakery.

Four thugs poorly impersonating bakers conceal loaded crossbows behind the counter. Finde leads her bodyguards to a back room containing commercial quantities of bakers’ ingredients. Finde indicates an arbor of dried vines against the wall, and Bizzle enters the portal first. He arrives in a dungeon on the other side. The portal is one way. A natural cavern is to the right, a worked stone passageway is to the left through closed double doors. Fendi follows Bizzle through. Dagger comes through, not that anyone notices, followed by Slick and Tricksy.

Tricksy and Slick open the double doors. A Darkwater Cartage gnoll is guarding the antechamber beyond. Bizzle positions himself face to face with the gnoll while Fendi passes. Fendi directs them down a narrow passage that opens to a great hall. The team fans out around Fendi to guard her from the crowd of powerful Sword Coast shakers and their hired goons. The groups collect around illusory displays to study the offered items.

In a surprise for the Ransom and Salvage regulars, R&S principal Frug Ransom is attending the auction with protector Squat with his war maul. The anonymous mission and officious nature of the auction strictly precludes any mutual acknowledgement. Frug seems interested in a ship’s steering wheel.

A couple of arcane fellows loiter intently around a display of an orange crystal. A spellguardsman loiters intently around the arcane fellows. Quastarte must be collecting orange crystals for some reason.

R&S nemeses Darkwater Cartage aren’t concealing their presence at all. Three gnolls, including Bizzle’s personal archrival and role model, Mutt, mind a mysterious figure, Mr. Gray, covered head to toe in a dark, cloaking garment.

A well-dressed gnome, Quoji Caltix Uricorin Toryn, brought along a half-orc for muscle. Quoji is very chatty, but his attempts to socialize are rebuffed by the other participants guarding their intentions, bidding and otherwise.

Three cackling hags of three ages in three colors brought no muscle at all. Fendi greets them as “mothers”.

A jovial tiefling, Mr. Forgiveness, brought along a couple of golem protectors for power servos.

Fendi checks out the displays, but the object of her interest is not evident.

Mr. Cartwright, half-elf auctioneer, welcomes the bidders from the dais and explains the rules of the silent auction. A unwelcoming fog obscures a moving something behind Mr. Cartwright. Slick notices an exquisite sword with a scaled blue hilt on Mr. Cartwright’s hip. Dagger uses his helm of telepathy to probe the fog for intelligence. Feedback knocks him to the ground creating a scene. Bizzle drags Dagger out of the hall to minimize Fendi’s embarrassment.

Tricksy and Slick continue to study the fog. Dagger focuses his helm on the mysterious Mr. Gray and learns of his keen interest in a bone harp. Bizzle keeps himself between Fendi and any approacher. Cartwright reappears to begin the auction, and bidders are summoned to the bidding brazier.

First item up is a pair of evening gloves to store items like a wine goblet or a dagger. Mr. Forgiveness gets the high bid, beating out the mysterious Mr. Gray.

Next up is the bone harp of enchantment breaking. Unsurprisingly, the mysterious Mr. Gray wins this object of his obvious desire.

Next up is the orange crystal of conspicuous interest to the Quastarte mages. The three hags swoop in to vie for the orange crystal as well. The mysterious Mr. Gray approaches with some interest, but is scorned away by the other glowering bidders. The mages win the auction on a technicality of equivalence when Mr. Cartwright disqualifies the “still beating heart of his chosen enemy” as an acceptable bid from the hags. The hags get extremely tetchy at this rejection and adjourn to the back of the room to start some dubious chanting.

Next up are four horseshoes of zephyring that allow a mount four inches of levitation over normally impassable terrain such as water. Mr. Forgiveness bids so that he can crack a joke about levitating his golems. Garrulous gnome Quoji wins the shoes.

Next up is an unremarkable ship’s steering wheel with a damaged nameplate Quicks– something. It attracts a lot of bidding interest, but Frug Ransom overly outbids the others for a definitive win.

Next up are a matched sword and helm of night. The sword is sharper than any smith could work, capable of cutting cans and then tomatoes and then cans of tomatoes. The helm lets one lurk about in shadow form making it simple to locate and acquire cans of tomatoes. The popular lot is won by Mr. Forgiveness.

Mr. Cartwright presents an unexpected bonus item fetched from the dark fog behind him. Here for their consideration is an old man in chains, but not just any old man in chains. The lords of Waterdeep created a dread disease known as marsember pox. This old man in chains has the only known immunity to marsember pox, and immunity is conveyed through his blood. Mr. Cartwright will even throw in a vial of live marsember pox to the winning bidder. The bidding for the curative old man in chains is fierce, mostly by bidders intent on keeping it away from the other bidders. Only the hags abstain in order to continue chanting up their malfeasance. Mr. Gray casts the winning bid for the curative old man in chains.

Now it’s time to exchange monies for winnings. Mr. Cartwright dispels the backstage fog revealing a dracolich guarding the auctioned items. Mr. Forgiveness and Quoji collect and leave with their items. Mr. Gray approaches to collect his harp and his curative old man in chains at which point Fendi warns Dagger that there’s about to be a kerfuffle. That’s all Dagger ever wanted to hear.

A flash of light marks the completion of hag chanting. A flash of light marks the mages’ counterspell. The spellguardsman clashes in against the hags. Squat’s Old Lady sails in and clocks out one hag. The gnolls surround Mr. Gray protectively.

Tricksy dashes to the ceiling where she can easily watch for threats to Fendi but attracts the mistakenly protective aggro of the dracolich. They exchange mighty attacks, forcing Tricksy to take a potion break.

Dagger notices the dracolich is missing a fang exactly like Mr. Cartwright’s sword. He sprints across the entire hall up to the dais, snatches Mr. Cartwright’s sword right out of his belt, and escapes with it but suffering a dagger wound in his back. On a hunch, Dagger commands the dracolich to heel and to stop attacking. The dracolich obeys a little, but takes a protective bite out of Slick standing too close to Dagger, frightening many on the floor.

Mr. Gray and his gnolls charge the dais. Fendi wants to get to the curative old main in chains before Mr. Gray, but Mr. Cartwright is in the way. Bizzle tries to

shove Mr. Cartwright out of the way but trips on the dais stairs. Dagger and his pet dracolich assault Mr. Gray and his gnolls. Mr. Gray pulls back his hood and gazes into Dagger’s eyes. It isn’t love that medusan Mr. Gray is expressing, it’s petrification.

Dagger’s final act is to douse Mr. Cartwright’s toothsword in basilisk poison, making for an epic statue.

While Mr. Gray’s gnolls are tied up with the dracolich, Fendi and Bizzle slice Mr. Cartwright into a change of heart. Bizzle lets him flee. Fendi protects the curative old man in chains. Slick joins next to her and Tricksy engages Mutt with help from Knit the suturefly. The dracolich takes out one gnoll, but the other two gnolls give Slick the business. Slick sneaks in a finessed axe attack. Mr. Gray gets a little panicked when the dracolich resists his stony gaze and urges the gnomes to meat shield him as he gives up on the harp and the curative old man in chains to retreat. Fendi hugs the curative old man in chains leading Tricksy to conclude that either Fendi has marsember pox or, yes, Fendi’s father is none other than the curative old man in chains. Awwww, kawaii, she mutters in orcish.

Meanwhile, the spellguardsman is surrounded by hags. Swinging Squat charges into the hags, knocking one over. He scoops up the spellguardsman and charges back out. The hags finally have enough and retreat without the orange crystal.

As the gnolls pull back, Bizzle gets the bone harp to play an old human restorative hymn. Dagger oozes back into warm life. The dracolich overrides his helm of telepathy and cordially requests the return of his freedom tooth. Dagger relinquishes the tooth. The dracolich departs heading further into the dungeon, which it turns out is the ancient dwarven mine of Undermountain. Bizzle tosses the bone harp to Mutt, but they’re keeping Fendi’s father. Tricksy, compulsive collector of dangerous knickknacks, collects the vial of marsember pox.

The team gathers around Fendi and her father to escort them out. Squat and his Old Lady guard a portal opened by the Quastarte mages for their egress. Mr. Gray peers at Squat intently. Squat peers back impressively, holding Mr. Gray and gnolls at bay and definitely not petrifying. The team leaves through the portal.

A troubled Rooster ambles into the common room studying the papers gripped in his betrayed hands. Slick, Tatters, and Bizzle follow Rooster back to his office. He worriedly retrieves a small metal box from his gnomish filing cabinet and places it in the center of his desk. Rooster reveals that he has uncovered a traitor at R&S. Bizzle and Slick immediately point at each other. No, no, no, the traitor is not in this room.

Rooster flips a switch on the small metal box and the group is suddenly standing on an ocean floor. A fish swims through Tatters and the group relaxes when it does not leave a fish-shaped hole. That and their regular breathing suggest this is an illusion.

The group observes the replay of a historical R&S mission in progress [The Golden Merchant]. Shark-mounted sahuagin harry the Kowalish Apparatus Thingy (KAT). A Craig-the-Insidious-like supervisor declares that the traitor is well-informed in that “they” showed up, but not the expected “they”. Rooster switches off the illusion.

From this bit of intelligence, Rooster has narrowed a short list of suspects which he hands out to Slick and Bizzle. Tatters has to look over their shoulders. On the back of the list is an open warrant to use when the traitor is positively identified. Rooster suggests a low-key interview process of the suspects. And if they want to requisition supplies, see the quartermaster first. 

A zone of truth would be super handy in this situation, so the task force goes to see the quartermaster, a teacup goliath called Andre the Goliath. No, Andre the Goliath does not have a couple of twenty charge zone of truth wands available. No, he can’t get such an item delivered priority next morning either. No, it makes no difference whether it’s ten charges or twenty. The team leaves Andre the Goliath to his incompetence and heads to the common room where there’s a good chance of encountering someone on the list.

Stepping into the common room, they hear the unfortunate sounds of Dischord tuning up his ocarina. To the sonic relief of the common room occupants, Bizzle invites Dischord to the cafeteria for a Pepsi and a chat. Under some light questioning by the party, Dischord claims to be a 20 year scribe at R&S, yet somehow has never met any of them, nor tried Pepsi. Tatters runs his helm of detect thoughts and confirms Dischord’s claims. Slick puts the squeeze on, asking if Dischord has heard the rumors of a traitor at R&S. Tatters reads him as legitimately concerned about a traitor, yet there is a murmuring corner of Dischord’s mind that blocks detection and rejects Tatters. Without evidence of a betrayal, the task force has no choice but to move on.

Conveniently nearby in the kitchen is suspect MMM preparing today’s lunch of seared rothe and mashed catatas. Mostly MMM seems to pedal the power source for the automated gnomish kitchen apparati that are preparing the meal. MMM grunts at their arrival. MMM grunts at their questions. MMM grunts at everything. Tatters catches on to the surprisingly efficient language of grunting and confirms that MMM has enjoyed 37 years of employment as R&S’s pedaling cook. Probing MMM’s thoughts reveals no betrayal, mostly just the pedal-pedal-pedal cadence necessary for his culinary success. MMM’s thoughts do reveal that he is in a great position to hear mealtime rumors of a traitor, and some R&S agents suspect Bizzle because of the timing of his employment. Tatters probes for a murmuring corner of MMM’s mind but finds only a void. Bizzle wonders if parasites abandoned MMM’s brain and moved into Dischord’s. Tatters emphasizes the metaphorical nature of the void.

Storm sorcerer Crackle suddenly appears behind the party. Not Cackle the laughing storm sorcerer traitor suspect, but Crackle the storm sorcerer sent by Rooster to help with the investigation of traitor suspects. It’s difficult to keep up without a program which Rooster gave to Crackle, but which Tatters still has to read over their shoulders.

Crackle’s arrival is fortuitous because synergistic peer review is one of his leveragable competencies. They find half-orc Sneak, the next suspect, in the armory. Crackle keeps Sneak off balance with rapid fire queries. Sneak gives six out of ten thumbs up for Rooster’s management style. He rates his own performance three out of ten, or is it ten out of three. It becomes apparent that Sneak doesn’t understand ratios very well, and that’s nothing compared to his problematic grasp of spatial abstraction evidenced by his most frequent customer and reliable friend, his own reflection in a polished battle axe. From mental monitoring by Tatters, it seems unlikely that Sneak is capable of masterminding a betrayal of R&S, but he could easily be subject to unwitting manipulation. Slick notices a dart missing from a dart display on the wall and asks about it. Sneak recounts that hood came in, hood see special dart, hood give money to buy special dart, hood leave. Is the purchase of a single dart by a hooded figure significant? Bizzle buys the 26 silver coins paid for the dart and activates the helm of teleportation to see where the payment associates.

Andre the Goliath demands to know why Bizzle is suddenly in his office. Yes, he recognizes that bag of coins as recently lent to a hooded figure, and here’s the contract on it. The contract is signed, X.

The task force regroups in the common room where Dischord entertains. Crackle requests “The King’s Feet Are Stinky” and they quickly leave to avoid any risk of hearing that piece rendered by Dischord. They head outdoors to locate the next traitor suspect, orange grung Dart.

As they approach Waterdeep Community Park, they can see a figure leaping tree to tree. They catch up with Dart who’s wearing gloves and leather sleeves. Bizzle rudely inquires why Dart’s gloves have so few fingers. Dart explains that five is the most common number of fingers for a grung, but the gloves and sleeves are to protect others from poisonous secretions. Bizzle shakes Dart’s gloved hand and does not die. Dart’s story checks out, so far. Dart has worked for R&S as an assassin for a couple of years. His specialty is blowguns which he uses to deliver his sweat poison to various political targets assigned by R&S. It’s a good living, except he resents his handle because nobody appreciates the difference between a blowgun needle and a thrown dart. Oh, also there’s that huge problem that Tatters picks up on from Dart’s thoughts: it’s true, Dart has a major gambling problem. He owes Andre the Goliath big time from three dragon ante, and his cheated winnings from alternate nights spent at the local tavern aren’t enough to cover his snowballing debt. Dart is vulnerable to compromise by insidious forces, but Tatters detects no such betrayal in his mind. Crackle detects no stashed hooded garment on his person that would implicate him in the dart purchase, not that Dart would stoop to even use a dart. Just blowguns. Blowguns are distinct from darts in any numerous ways—.

The task forces’ greycoats mercifully interrupt Dart’s enumeration of the differences between darts and blowguns, beeping an urgent summons back to Rooster. Dart needs help, but clearly is not the traitor. Tatters hands him a Gamblers Anonymous contact card and they hasten back to R&S to see what the hubbub is about.

Rooster leads the summoned task force to a secure hallway previously unexplored by any of them. He stops at a door sealed by mithril banding and hands Slick a bucket; it’s going to be bad. Arty the forest gnome, who was independently working the research side of this traitor case, has been murdered. Rooster removes the banding and opens the door.

Arty’s deceased body lies greying on the floor. His desktop has been burned. Slick investigates Arty’s corpse and finds it has been drained of every last drop of blood, yet there is no blood in the room or obvious wound. Tatters looks around for Arty’s research notes and finds a charred scroll which he must have been working on when the desktop was burned. Crackle pulls out Plan B and smacks it on Arty’s forehead. Shadow Arty pops out of his body and frantically looks around. Crackle calms him down.

Tatters starts the helm of detect thoughts on Shadow Arty while Crackle questions him. Arty didn’t see his killer, but he did hear footsteps, like a halfling’s lightness. He was poked in the neck before losing all his blood. Slick has heard enough: they are looking for a one-fang vampire. Tatters is a little more thorough and finds the glass dart, purchased from Sneak, sticking in Arty’s neck. It’s a needle of holding which has extracted Arty’s blood to a pocket dimension. Diabolical.

It seems the traitor has murdered Arty to prevent revelation of his identity, but he didn’t consider Crackle’s plan B. They quickly formulate a plan to flush out the traitor who will be forced into dealing with Shadow Arty to prevent exposure. Crackle casts invisibility on the team and they disperse themselves along a preplanned route that will reveal Arty’s “survival” in a controllable situation.

Arty drags his corpse to the hangar where Cackle is on the BURPS conversating with Jeff the Elemental. Cackle immediately spots Shadow Arty dragging his corpse and is, from Tatters’s read, genuinely dismayed at Arty’s condition. Cackle is not the murderer and therefore not the traitor.

Beaky 27 is also in the hanger, longingly observing PTATAs in flight. Beaky 27 has no concern at all for Arty’s plight, which seems perfectly reasonable once they notice he’s wearing a chalk board to communicate with his hearing co workers. Crackle directs Arty to drag around in front of Beaky 27 so that Tatters can get a read on him. Beaky 27 becomes genuinely concerned when he notices Arty. Beaky 27 is not the murderer and therefore not the traitor.

That’s everyone on the suspect list. Either Rooster overlooked someone, or the task force did. The common room is next on the dragging plan. Hopefully Dischord is still there with his ocarin-playing murmur mind.

Arty drags into the common room while the task force carefully scans the crowd for anyone with a suspect reaction. Dischord is present but has no reaction to seeing Arty. Arty, however, pauses uneasily when he sees Dischord. Tatters goes with a hunch and dispels magic from Dischord, but nothing happens. Slick carefully scrutinizes Dischord’s expression and concludes Dischord knows something about this, like maybe Tatters got the right target in the wrong way. Bizzle hangs back to observe Dischord. Crackle escorts Arty to the infirmary. Slick heads toward Dischord’s quarters to look for evidence to indict weird-acting Dischord. Tatters maneuvers to stay within thought detection range of Dischord. Dischord starts to head for his quarters, not so far behind Slick.

Slick has to break into a second security door that Dischord has installed inside his quarters. Dischord approaches with Bizzle, still invisible, clandestinely trailing close behind. Dischord gets irritated at Tatters following him and commands Tatters to betray. It’s the first indication of open hostility. Tatters counterspells and yells a warning. A head pokes out from an unrelated doorway, retreats, and then red alert klaxons begin wailing their warning of betrayal. Bizzle leaps from invisible stealth and scimitars Dischord so violently that scimitar Destra gets stuck in the newly resurfaced floor tiling. Tatters conjures up magic missiles, but Dischord counters them. Taking advantage of the confusion, Slick charges out of Dischord’s quarters and axes up Dischord with sneaky finesse. Crackle runs in from the infirmary just in time for the moment he’s been awaiting all day with itchy lightning fingers. He sends a bolt of lightning that passes fully through Tatters, then passes fully through Bizzle, then, with the little bit of lightning left over, kills traitor Dischord.

Rooster and a sizable cadre of R&S on-call security officers arrive in time to watch Bizzle cut the top of Dischord’s skull off in case an alien parasite is in there making Dischord do all these terrible deeds. It’s nothing but Dischord’s brain all the way through, so Bizzle plan B’s him for questioning.

Zombie Dischord eats his own exposed brain.