The Quastarte Delegation cures Charlotte of her mysteriously intractable six month ailment and departs the Albessac estate. Ash secretly retains the encrypted notebook from Tenrath’s home office. As the party hits the street, the more perceptive of them have the sensation of being watched, yet the area about the estate conceals no watchers.
The delegation retires to the Wayward House where attentive owner Verina sets them up with a common bunk room, bardic entertainment, food, and libations.
As the sensation of being watched recedes, Ash and Professor Steele comprehend Tenrath’s secret accounting ledger. The ledger reflects a business arrangement of a large initial loan from one party, then various outgoing expenditures and collections, possibly sub loans, with various other parties. A year back the pyramid began to break down and Tenrath fell into perpetual, possibly terminal, delinquency.
GG embarks upon an evening project of stuffing egg shells with flour. The egg shells acquired from Mithral Hall are too fragmented so he acquires raw eggs from the Wayward House kitchen and ponders removal of the unusable inside of the egg without damaging the shell. Professor Steele misunderstands GG’s request for help and demonstrates the conventional release of the egg’s contents with no regard for the shell or Briar’s bunk, despite Briar’s severe warning that GG’s project not foul his bunk. GG embarks upon a new priority project of restoring Briar’s bunk to regulation standards.
The delegation’s spellguard meanwhile adjourn to the bar for sustenance. Hops’s heavy thumb presses a gold piece onto the bar, a reward for some proper dwarven beer if any can be had instead of the available Gnomish Apple Ale and Manling Lager. Verina dispatches a courier to earn the gold piece.
A darkling by the name of Dom, resembling by dress and manner the criminal enterprise seen in the marketplace earlier in the day, enters the establishment followed by several henchmen who take up a corner table. Dom accompanies Verina into a side room to conduct a moment of business. It does not escape the notice of Ash and Briar that a bruise develops on Verina’s face after the conclusion of that business.
Hops introduces himself to Dom with a thick poke in the back of Dom’s head. Hops proceeds to explain his lawful-good standard for the treatment of women with a righteous double punch to Dom’s face.
Verina attempts to diffuse the fight. Ash attempts to draw Verina away from the scuffle. Briar attempts to keep the other darklings seated to limit the escalation. The darklings draw knives on Hops and Briar. Hops matches steel with his axes, but uses the flats to nonlethally smack Dom. Dom grabs a green suited civilian shield, and Verina grabs Hops. Sqyylarr lets some punches fly at the darkling menacing Briar. Barika measures her options.
Ash and Professor Steele run out the kitchen back door, circle around the outside of the building, and jump a garden wall amongst several darklings suspiciously hiding outside the windows of the delegation’s bunk room. GG grabs the remaining gear and exits out the window. Once discovered, Ash drops back over the wall and conceals himself, preparing to tail any departing Darklings. Professor Steele leaps past the darklings into the inn’s courtyard where Briar, Sqyylarr and Barika have taken the brawl outside at Verina’s pleading. Many more darklings emerge from the shadows and surround the party.
Hops casts daylight over the courtyard making all the darklings uncomfortable enough to withdraw. Sqyylarr and raging Barika can’t resist some parting nonlethal swings making a tidy pile of unconscious darklings. Hops non-nonlethally attacks Dom standing in the doorway of the inn. An orc wanders into the courtyard, but it’s just GG in disguise. The courier arrives with a couple of dwarven beers. Refreshed Hops sends him off with another gold piece for the next round.
Ash surreptitiously tails a few of the sylvan-speaking darklings escaping to a hideout. He observes their secret knock and returns to the inn where things have settled down for the moment.
Sqyylarr and Barika keep watch in the courtyard and arrange the unconscious darklings along the outer wall.
Briar and Verina, passing the anti-scrying coin amulet looted from dead Dom, converse frankly and privately about the pervasive protection racket. Verina is livid about having to add reparations to her protection bill on account of Dom being slain at her inn, assuming that she and the inn even survive this.
Hops resurrects Dom, drags him to a private room, and gives him just a sliver of health for questioning. GG, famous for unhinging other people, slowly reveals his mechanical hand and slams it down in a shocking grasp of the table. Dom is amused. GG shocks amused Dom dead, leaving him to be resurrected a second time. Hops agrees, in principle, to free Dom should he give excellent answers to questions about the local criminal syndicate. Ash moves Dom to the bunk room into a zone of truth to ensure the veracity of those answers.
Dom explains that the local crime syndicate, organized for about a year now, is run by notably attractive mistress Eravastika. Townies like Tenrath get themselves disappeared because they don’t keep up their payments. What ultimately becomes of the disappeared is unknown to Dom, but GG, for one, suspects necromancy. Thanks to the mistress’s anti-scry amulets issued to her lieutenants, the entire organization operates under the proverbial nose of the town boss lady Silverhand. Dom can’t exactly commit to leave town with no final contact; he has his tribe to consider. The interrogation concludes when the constabulary shows up to investigate the kerfuffle at the inn.
Constable Stout is more curious than outraged about the pile of unconscious darklings in the courtyard. Barika doesn’t know how to explain any of it so Briar takes over. The Quastarte Delegation, on a diplomatic mission to lady Silverhand, was innocently checking into the Wayward House when the thuggish darklings showed up, assaulted Verina, and escalated the violence to the entire establishment until getting their tyrannical clocks cleaned. Hops invites Verina to verify this version of events, and she does so. Guards haul away the darklings, including protesting Dom. Constable Stout seems on the level to GG. Briar requests a security detail for the inn.
The beer courier delivers a cask of Burleson’s Dwarven Ale to Hops. The bard improvises a song about eggs. The kitchen whips up a feast of hens, roast beast, and veggies for the guests, then helps GG prepare a dozen flour-stuffed egg shells.