Chapter 4 / Episode #106 — "Into the Mansion"
Date: Flocktime 2, 576 CY
Region: Safeton and the Northern Shore Mansion, Wild Coast
Weather: Stormy. Rain through the afternoon. The coast road is mud by the time they reach the mansion.
Players Present
Bellator Nocturnus, Fantra Paladin
Kagen Sunhammer, Dwarf Cleric/Fighter
Thorian, Warrior-Monk
Barnabuss, Healer
Squints, Archer of Safeton
Ray JeKwit, Half-Elf Fighter/Thief
Zymm, Elf Fighter/Magic-User/Thief
Flocktime 2 — "New Faces at Breakfast"
The morning after Harry's pyre was quieter than most. The group gathered at Barnabuss's place with the remains of the pig and the particular heaviness of people who slept well for the first time in days and woke up remembering why they needed it.
Two faces joined them that were not there the night before.
Ray JeKwit was a half-elf from Safeton — the kind of man the city produces in some quantity, lean and observant, with the easy manner of someone who has learned to read a room before committing to anything in it. He carried a fighter's bearing and a thief's patience, and he had heard there was work going. Zymm was an elf, slight and unhurried, with the distant quality that elves sometimes have when they are paying attention to something no one else can see. He was harder to read than Ray, which was saying something.
The group made room. They were short a halfling and the mansion was still waiting.
Flocktime 2 — "The Bleached Salmon"
Slash was at the same corner table, same untouched cup. He listened to the report on the lighthouse — the armory, the chest, the dagger — without visible reaction, which was its own kind of reaction. When they finished he reached into his coat and set gems on the table. Partial payment, he said. The rest when the job was done.
"And the job," Kagen said, "is the mansion."
"The mansion," Slash confirmed.
Kagen, Thorian, and Bellator had gone in to meet Slash while Ray and Squints held positions outside — eyes on the street, watching for anyone taking an interest in who was going in and out of the Bleached Salmon. Nobody came. The gems were distributed evenly when the three came back out, and the group turned its attention to the business of resupplying.
Flocktime 2 — "The Streets of Safeton"
Safeton on a stormy morning is a city that keeps its head down. The market district was open but moving fast, vendors pulling awnings against the weather, the streets slick with rain that had been falling since before dawn.
They split up to cover ground. Kagen went to the armorer and came back in dwarven plate, having traded in his old banded armor toward the cost and paid the remainder out of his share. The plate was the kind of work dwarven smiths do when they are thinking about durability rather than elegance — heavy, close-fitted, built to outlast the man wearing it. Squints replenished his arrows. Barnabuss made his way to the Church of Trithereon and donated a gemstone toward a silver holy symbol and four vials of holy water, which the church provided in exchange with the particular efficiency of institutions that understand the value of outfitting people who do dangerous work in the name of something larger than themselves. Zymm sorted through his spell components and settled on his preparation for the day.
A mule and cart were purchased for moving the mirrors still left in the lighthouse. Squints took the reins — he had driven before and did not make a production of it.
The street found them before they were done.
A short man materialized at Bellator's elbow with the practiced ease of someone who does this for a living, holding out a cloth bag and talking fast about gems, a bargain, one hundred gold pieces, an opportunity that would not last. Thorian's hand came down on the man's wrist before the pitch was finished and the bag hit the cobblestones and the man was gone into the crowd before anyone had fully registered what happened.
Bellator picked up the bag anyway.
It was empty. Whatever had appeared to be inside it had not survived contact with the ground, or had never been there to begin with. The hundred gold pieces stayed in Bellator's purse, which was the best outcome available given the circumstances.
Ray's belt pouch was lighter than it should have been by the time they reached the edge of the market — his silver mirror and comb gone, lifted clean without anyone seeing it happen. The city had made its point about divided attention.
Flocktime 2 — "The Mansion Gate"
The road north along the coast was familiar enough from the lighthouse work, but the storm made it worse than it had been. The cart wheels found every soft patch in the track. The rain came in off the Woolly Bay sideways and the group arrived at the mansion fence soaked and in no mood for additional obstacles.
The gate was locked.
They tried it the straightforward way first. When that produced nothing, they took ten minutes with the picket fence beside it and opened a gap wide enough for the cart and mules to pass through. The mansion sat beyond the fence line — stone, two storeys, shuttered windows, the double front doors closed against the weather. Large enough to swallow the lighthouse twice over.
The front door was locked as well. They found a window.
Flocktime 2 — "The Entry Hall"
The room they came into was large — eighty feet by sixty, the ceiling high enough to feel like intention rather than accident. Rain-grey light came through the shuttered windows in thin lines and showed them the shape of things: a floor of old stone, a bear rug spread across the center of it, a balcony running the width of the far wall with stairs rising to it on either side. Two hallways opened off the main room, one north, one south. Double doors stood directly across from their entry point.
The bear rug was enormous. Whatever the bear had been in life, it had been significant.
The group moved it out of the center of the room — not from superstition but from the practical understanding that large dark shapes on floors in abandoned mansions have a way of becoming problems when the torchlight moves. With it shifted, the entry hall was just a room. A very large room in a very quiet mansion on a stormy afternoon, with two hallways and a set of double doors and no indication yet of what was waiting beyond any of them.
They brought the cart and mules inside, out of the rain.
Then they began to plan.
XP Award — Episode 106
XP this session is awarded for gold recovered and returned to Safeton.
Partial payment received from Slash — XP per player to be updated on character sheets when full payment is collected.
Watch the campaign unfold at @thedmandfriends — blog.hommlet-dark.com
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