Stitches pins Bjargle, a scale-skinned elfy looking peddler of poison, to the floor under her considerable dwarven carriage. His limbs are pinned by Beard’s mud mephits. The mud mephits filling Bjargle’s mouth move aside so he can refuse to answer the party’s questions concerning the source of Chartreuse Death-X, known mundanely as Venom to Bjargle’s organization.
Bjargle answers his interrogators with derision and suggests a direct lineage between Beard and his summoned mud mephits. Stitches offers Beard a sprig of aloe for that burn and Beard strikes Bjargle in retaliation.
Bjargle summons his strength and throws Stitches off. He yanks free of all but one one determined mephit to run for it, but is repinned by mud mephit breath and Stitches.
Nanny watches out the windows of the appropriated house for would-be rescuers or returning homeowners while surreptitiously dropping eaves on Bjargle’s thoughts with her helm of telepathy as he’s questioned. As usual, the helm mines the answers that a reticent captive almost never gives up verbally under questioning from Beard and Stitches. It’s a wonder more adventurers don’t invest in helms of telepathy.
Nanny sees a figure approaching the building. It walks right up to the door and begins knocking loudly. The figure announces itself loudly through the door as Catty Batty. Catty Batty from R&S! Ransom and Salvage, the semi-secret special operations located at 123 Hush Way in Waterdeep for whom we all work! Let me in!
The ambiance of their covert operation ruined, Bizzle lets Catty Batty in. She takes in the scene of Stitches sitting on Bjargle, Beard screaming threats as he forces Bjargle to drink Stitches’ precious supply of fermented cat liquor, Bizzle futily suggesting Bjargle think of his future, and Nanny pretending not to pay any attention while scraping Bjargle’s mind for any hints of the origin of CDX. Nanny cuts to the chase: what if we pay you? But his price, as Nanny overhears his mental calculations, works out to 200,000 gp. That’s a nonstarter.
Nanny excuses Bizzle and herself to quietly discuss the telepathic harvest from Bjargle:
* Merrshaulk, who will feast on Beard’s bones starting with the legs, is some kind of religious figure. Possibly very hungry.
* Bjargle refers to himself as “pure-blood”, soon to be a Malison, and others as “half-blood”. They are yuan-ti.
* Shiv was merely a low level pawn, unworthy of the Holy Guardians.
* Bjargle derived the calculation of 200k gp by multiplying the 20 “producers” by the 4 vials per day by the 50 gp unit cost by the length of time the production would run.
* Even if he escapes, Bjargle reckons his life is forfeit because some guy named Bdexle is surely going to kill Bjargle for his shortcomings, kill the party, kill everyone. Bdexle is coming, possibly from a warehouse.
* Bjargle’s revelation that CDX is actually just frappéed unicorns is definitely probably untrue, which will be good news for Stitches who sobs uncontrollably at his vile fiction.
Stitches searches Bjargle and retrieves four vials of CDX and a strong smelling sandwich, a scent familiar to Nanny from the streets of Undertown. Catty Batty and Stitches sample the sandwich and get strong smelling sandwich breath. No one samples the CDX.
The party agrees that no more hard-won information can be extracted from Bjargle so he is tied up with rope and mephits and the party adjourns to a tavern other than the Bjargle-friendly Frosted Unicorn.
Across town at the Sea Shanty tavern, a lowkey, blue collar, dock worker-friendly establishment, the party meets proprietor Mr. Phhhlearbe who shows them to a dark table suitable for the discussion of dark matters and they order a round of fish stew and ales. Hyper extrovert Beard immediately disrupts the calm environment so Catty Batty sends him outside to stand watch for fallout from the Bjargle matter.
Inside, Stitches explains that Merrshaulk is god of the yuan-ti people. When Mr. P brings the stew, Nanny tips him a gold piece and asks for some local information in the finest symbiotic tradition of adventurers and tavern keepers. Mr. P never heard of Bdexle, but certainly the yuan-ti have been moving to Undertown in droves. Bizzle mutters something about making them pay to build a wall around themselves but sensible people at the table politely ignore his outburst and Mr P continues. Rumor has it that the yuan-ti are frequently around the south part of town in the warehouse district. He emphasizes the direction with his pointing finger before excusing himself.
Outside, Beard perceives the twang of a bowstring plucked in anger. An arrow appears sticking into the tavern wall beside him. He starts pounding on the tavern door screaming the assassins are coming, but he’s ignored by the party all too familiar with his antics. Mr. P draws a brilliantly shining sword from an old, nondescript scabbard on the wall behind the bar and suggests Beard come back inside the tavern. Mr. P expertly eyes the trajectory of the arrow and declares the culprit has gone so there is no need for Beard to lay waste to those buildings. He is adamant that innocent civilians, especially those with as many problems as Undertown’s poor, should not be needlessly incinerated and inhumed. Beard reluctantly agrees just this once.
The party leaves the Sea Shanty to avail themselves of the concealment of the dark night, aided by Nanny’s efforts, to sneak the few blocks to the warehouse district. Nanny reads the nearby thieves’ cant to locate the most dangerous area and they navigate to a long continuous fence with no yuan-ti in sight. They walk down the fence looking for holes through which to peer, but no such flaw is found. The fence eventually abuts the outside wall of an ordinary building. They continue following the edifice until the it becomes a stone wall. They follow the stone wall until finally arriving at a corner to turn. Around the corner is the front of a temple-looking building, with broad steps leading up to a couple of reptilian-looking guards. The party pulls back to discuss the possibility whether this reptile-guarded, temple-looking, danger-rated building in the middle of the yuan-ti occupied warehouse district might be the source of CDX
In the back of the party, Beard is lost in thought contemplating whether to transform to a rat or a snake. A couple of snake men unironically, but surprisingly, drop from the stone wall above and savage him with poisoned scimitars knocking him unconscious. His teammates rally to his aid, surrounding the greener of the two yuan-ti abominations. Stitches gets Beard vertical again and the party works together on Green Abomination. Stout Bizzle makes himself a tempting target while Nanny and poison-immune Catty Batty pour on blade damage. Beard gets revenge for the surprise attack by conjuring a lightning storm, killing Green Abomination.
The fighting attracts the contribution of the two guards, running up behind the adventurers who next turn their attentions to Blue Abomination. Stitches has already begun softening him up and Beard caught him in some of the lightning storm, so he’s easy pickings when Catty Batty strikes stunningly and flurries blows upon him. He doesn’t last long.
The guards, Green Malison and Black Malison, gang up on vulnerable Beard and Black Malison’s poisoned longbow arrow collapses him again. Fortunately, neither of the guards arrive in perfect fighting condition so Bizzle’s scimitars drop one and Nanny and Catty Batty easily take out the other.
The noise has not yet attracted the attention of other assailants so there is a little time for Bizzle to knock back both his Ransom & Salvage brand Cure Lite Potions and for Beard to get back on his feet courtesy of his Ransom & Salvage brand Salvage Bar. The bodies are looted and stuffed into Ransom & Salvage brand Body Bags.
Good to continue, Catty Batty casts pass without a trace so they may infiltrate the building. Most of the party must use the stairs to ascend, but Catty Batty runs straight up the wall, her lithe form poised magnificently on the railing against the moonlight for the guards’ supervisor to see. Catty Batty is assailed by four fresh yuan-ti.
Catty Batty’s cohorts run to catch up, utilizing some rarer forms of attack like Nanny’s shortbow arrow, Bizzle’s weaponized pet rock Rocky IV, and a nice metal heating from Beard that disarms one yuan-ti. Beard erupts earth under the yuan-ti as the two sides clash into melee fighting.
Green Two is the first casualty from Catty Batty’s rapier and she pivots to throw an elbow into Green One. Stitches’ auto-return warhammer goes sailing past Green One and doesn’t return so Nanny gets that sneaky kill despite dropping a blade. Beard bonfires Blue One and Catty Batty joins the roast dropping him too. Archer Green Two, the last remaining in this wave who introduces himself as Thhhh, becomes the center of attention. He’s switches from longbowing Catty Batty to poison biting Bizzle. Nanny sneaks a lethal attack on Thhhh and he’s out.
Two more yuan-ti join the battle from a door opening from one of the many surrounding apartments. Beard encores erupting earth under them and they unsteadily converge on Bizzle after Rocky V conks Blue’s noggin. Blue must be concussed because he fails critically to hit Bizzle and instead kills his longtime friend Purple next to him. Nanny puts Blue out of his despair.
Catty Batty digs past the erupted earth to enter the open apartment. She discovers several bowls and hot cauldrons, hopefully related to the production of CDX because the party may not have the stamina to assault a second warehouse.
The poison trade must have a deep payroll because yet another green yuan-ti, lurking in the apartment, bites and constricts her. A blue yuan-ti waits for the next adventurer to run in for him to attack and poison. Nanny obliges. Nanny fights back, but there’s nothing sneaky about it. Beard keeps his distance by creating a thorn whip to lash at Blue. Bizzle adds his scimitars to the fray.
Green regrets ever grappling Catty Batty as she monks on him relentlessly, killing him with an assist from Stitches’ warhammering. Blue meets a similar fate as Nanny sneaks a fatal cut.
With the short time available before the next inevitable wave of yuan-ti arrives, Stitches quickly surmises that the bowls of weaker CDX are concentrated in two stages of cauldroning to reach the final lethal potency. All that remains to discover is the source of the poison to start with, and Fly Beard finds the answer to that puzzle down a ladder in the corner of the apartment.
In the basement workroom, a yuan-ti herpetologist, quickly slain by the battle weary party, maintains cages of mature venomous snakes, milked for the active ingredient of CDX. An adjacent room contains breeding pairs and incubated eggs for the future expansion of the enterprise.
Mindful of the mission, the party notes the design of the concentrator cauldrons. They carefully select and gather several breeding pairs based on Beard’s expert observations. They also take the extraction apparatus and collect a sampling of eggs.
Bizzle uses the last teleport charge in his helm to return everyone safely to R&S where they learn that Rooster hates snakes.