The FHRTT delivers the recovery team to the garden outside the three story museum. Casing the exterior, there are no windows and but one door as promised by the mission profile, an indictment of the deplorable fire codes in Baldur’s Gate. Nanny keenly perceives the door is already ajar so Bizzle peeks in and gives the all-clear to Strings who slips in to find two slain museum guards, odd since typically a dead guard would take a sick day and have a living guard cover for him. Strings hums a little tune to inspire the team to new heights of achievement as it appears the mission has gone pear-shaped even before their arrival.
This entry lobby features a statue of Oghma, four doors that continue to the interior, and a faint trace of poison gas Nanny senses and Beard disavows. Beard, never at a loss for something inexplicably appropriate to do, casts a detect poison spell. Bizzle checks the bodies for the magical passkeys anticipated for arcane security in the gallery. He locates stones mounted to belt worn leather thongs on each guard and palms one to Strings, but also notices matching ligature bruising as though necklaces were yanked off each.
Beard, breathing through his beard, eases out into the gallery hall where the concentration of poison is a bit higher and determines the substance causes massive damage and obscuration. He can make out another prone body across the hall near a grand staircase up to the second level. Nanny scouts for traps and spots paintings displayed in a gallery on the right so the party moves toward them hoping to find Quicksilver and call it an early night.
Nanny realizes the paintings have all been cut out of their frames and also that two Gnolls have cut out of the darkness with thrumming longbows aimed at Strings who deftly catches one arrow using nothing but his lung. Beard, observing the complete lack of collateral damage vis-a-vis missing paintings, launches his signature fireball at the Gnolls obliterating them to ash in a single conflagration, or at least that’s how he envisions it would happen but instead lets go of the fireball too soon and it fizzles harmlessly. Bizzle dashes up to Two distracting him so Nanny can sneak in an attack while Strings mocks One viciously making him lose confidence and some health. Two makes an impressive move allowing him to miss both Bizzle and Nanny in a single attack and One, undoubtedly trained by the same master, misses Beard twice. Bizzle sinks Destra into Two and sinks Sinistra into the gallery wall where he reluctantly abandons it to flank himself between One and Two. Strings, Beard, and Nanny focus their efforts on Two and he departs the living world mocked, thorn whipped, and poly-sliced. While Bizzle and Nanny tag team One, Beard takes up watch into the gallery hall to ensure the ruckus has not attracted unwanted attention and Strings pulls on Sinistra to free it from the wall. Suddenly pulled free, the unbalanced scimitar swings back and strikes Nanny in a freak accident. One is quickly subdued and knocked unconscious until Nanny can tie him up and begin the helm of telepathy interrogation.
The following is harvested by Nanny from One’s thoughts, despite the Gnoll’s defiant and insulting mouth:
He is working for R&S’s competition, Darkwater Cartage.
His organization is presently looting the second floor.
The stolen paintings are still onsite, collected into backpacks.
The pilfered necklaces, likely the arcane passkeys, are in the possession of Dingo and Mutt.
This particular Gnoll has many pups at home who require sustenance, orthodontics, and tuition, but he would like to go on living anyway if he can manage to avoid professional censure.
One is gagged and shoved into a dark alcove to quietly contemplate his life choices, along with his less fortunate cohort Two likely contemplating his own weakness in the cleansing torture of Yeenoghu.
Just real quickly before leaving, Strings has a look at a large tapestry of a King and Queen left behind by the raiders. He thinks he might be growing fond of the piece, but then changes his mind at the last moment. Beard doesn’t know a lot about enthralling art, but he knows it when he stares at it deliberately, and that is exactly what happens next. Bizzle tries to wrestle him away, but then sees things Beard’s way; this really is a great tapestry. Strings suggests otherwise to impressionable Bizzle and changes his mind. Strings and Nanny exert a significant effort and numerous spells to dissuade Beard from the tapestry by force, by illusion, and by charm and eventually compel him to turn away. The piece seems like an attractive nuisance for public display, but there is no accounting for taste.
Moving back to the main hall immediately adjacent, it becomes apparent that all the display cases have been emptied except one featuring an obviously valuable scepter prominently located in the center of the room next to a dead Gnoll with a high concentration of poison gas. Strings steps up on the platform for a closer look at this cunning trap which he and everyone else in a 20’ radius enjoys: cloud kill. Everyone staggers out of the fog and up the stairs, alive if not well. Especially Bizzle who has prepared his entire existence to endure cloud kill.
Creeping along the left wall of the second level, the team finds nothing but pilfered display cases except one with a golden egg remaining. No takers this time. Bizzle reports hearing elephants eating popcorn at a string orchestra rehearsal up ahead, but Occam’s Dagger reduces his credibility with the others. Transformed into a bat, Beard uses his un-Bizzle senses to hear footsteps from the left, a hall displaying several completely inert predatory animals, and footsteps from the right, a hallway devoid of visible inert threats. Nanny leads the others forward, locating no traps until she reaches the corner of the animal room where she easily identifies an arcana trap across the threshold to the left and two arrows sticking out her backside shot from a trio of Gnolls emerging from darkness to the right.
Beard reverts to Gnome form and sends his signature fireball back at the three perfectly grouped Gnolls, badly injuring them as the adventurers heal up for the new confrontation and take off for the offenders. A second longbow volley catches Bizzle but Nanny returns a short bow arrow sending One to the kennel in the sky and the two remainders divide in opposite directions. Everyone ducks off the main hall until something happens, and that something is two figures, one Human and the other Gnoll, emerge from around the giant drake that forms the centerpiece of the animal display behind them.
“Well! If it isn’t J. J. Guy Mister”, opens Beard, hopefully stunning the new contenders at least as much as his own party who recognize Dingo and Mutt, senior associates of Darkwater Cartage, when they see them. Dingo reckons no profit from losing more Gnoll henchmen and offers to negotiate a peace for whatever it is R&S might be seeking, as long as it doesn’t conflict with DC’s acquisition of 100% of everything. Beard indicates they might be interested in a certain painting called Quicksilver but only because his cousin failed art school and needs some cheering up. Mutt nudges Dingo, indicating the flying-boat-with-circling-dragons masterpiece in his bag. Strings reckons Beard has softened Dingo’s calm enough and asks Dingo what he wants for the Quicksilver. Dingo wants to leave. Nanny’s helm tells her the favorable negotiations are nevertheless inching toward violence so Strings agrees in principle but defers to group consensus. Dingo and Mutt make a good faith offer by placing Quicksilver into the giant drake’s completely inert maw and walking out, pointedly tripping the arcane trap on their way. Strings and Nanny can’t see how this successful parle could possibly go wrong, so Strings makes Beard invisible as he takes eagle form to make a quick retrieval of the painting. While he does so, the Gnoll that Bizzle has cornered grows suddenly agitated so that Nanny has to put him down.
As Beard reaches the animal display at the end of the hall, he can see that the features are coming to life, and the purpose of the arcane trap is revealed. The giant drake tosses the painting off in a random direction, to the edge of the room where Beard will have the most difficulty getting at it, and launches at full chat for Strings who notices the approaching danger and emphatically urges, over his rapidly retreating shoulder, that Bizzle and Nanny should immediately proceed to the emergency exit. As he reaches the nearby staircase, Strings finds the missing last longbow Gnoll from earlier and utters a tersely vicious mockery, killing him with the insult. Nanny falls in behind Strings and they beat feet for the exit with Bizzle holding back only just enough to keep the drake’s undivided attention on him.
Meanwhile, at the other end, most of the animals take no notice of invisible Eagle Beard landing on the rolled Quicksilver, but one keen wolf does detect this presence and pauses to investigate, somehow missing the huge bear lurching toward him attacking everything in his path. Without pausing to mourn the myopic wolf, Eagle Beard snatches up the Quicksilver and retraces his path to the first floor where he encounters an eagle’s greatest enemy: doors.
With proper dramatic timing, the R&S and DC principals all arrive in the entry lobby where Dingo and Mutt rudely attempt to bully the team out of the Quicksilver and must be reminded they are the party who placed the valuable painting irretrievably into the mouth of a giant drake. As it so happens, invisible Gnome Beard is just now invisibly stashing the invisible Quicksilver into his invisible Greycoat before Strings drops the invisibility spell.
About that time, the drake bursts into the room menacingly. Mutt coolly drops it with one hit, zero efforts. “You’re welcome.”
R&S gather themselves outside for the teleport where Bizzle, trying his best to be as cool as Mutt, offers, “Hey. Hey, you guys wanna ride with us?”
“Thanks, kid, we’ll do our own thing.”
“Okay, then, smell ya la–” and Bizzle activates the helm a moment too soon before he can finish executing his pithy cut, making him look like a dork.