Mystery in Mirage
21st of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
The idea of going right to DeVorge with the chests still locked is greeted with skepticism by Sirim, who seems to have gained something of a poor impression of the fellow from tale and rumor gathered. "A dandy, influential, is useful set before the thing well done, but I would not trust him to hold up a table on Third Moonday."
"Hold up a table?" Mina asks, though given the answer she'd probably rather stayed silent. Third Moonday is a harvest festival hankering back to the centuries of Nidalese ancestors protected by their dread patron. The ceremonial tables for the occasion are made of human bones of community members from past generations.
You at least try not to snicker at the idea of not trusting someone's reliability as a table leg.
"He is an elder without years, a poli-ti-cian," Gorok sounds out the word carefully. "He will have others to advise against folly. Beside, it is unwise to judge a bird on its feathers alone when its beak and talons may yet be sharp."
Thus resolved you head out to meet with Eduarmot... that is to say
row out. Anchored at the mouth of the Tamuth River, where it spills into the Androshen, is a vessel unlike any other. It is as though its builders had taken the body of a common river barge of the kind that ply the waterways here in Augustana, and piled atop it are the contents of several wheelwrights workshops, all gleaming brass but for the long steel tube, presently breathing white smoke into the powder-blue sky. She is called the
Madox Mirage and you are very much afraid Cob is in love.
Gnomes dressed in every color of the world above, and some you might have preferred not to see, walk her decks while odd blue shelled beetlefolk move though her ratlines (beetlelines?) while on odd being, halfway between rodent and reptile, directs the crew, or at least motions in the direction of the generalized chaos. At least it's easy to pick out Eduarmot and his two aids just from the their height, and no one is liable to think to look here of all places in search any hypothetical arsonists who set a business in the Embassy District ablaze earlier that morning... at least not any
intentional arsonists.
"What's he inspecting
that for?" Mina asks, obviously not knowing what to call the vessel.
"Three day wonder," Sirim scoffs. "The ship sailed in unbidden yesterday, probably slipped through an impermanent portal from the First World. They seem like the sort to take insane chances until their luck runs out. I think he's offering to make 'The Magnificent Madox' an honorary citizen of Almas."
"Why?" you can hear more than confusion in Gorok's tone and you are not the only one.
But Sirim isn't one to boil string grubs to sweetness: "Because they make for pleasant-seeming marvels, greeted with flowers and smiling children."
The worst part of it all is how little it seems to surprise your scaled friend to hear it.
"I don't have flowers. Wanna see how it works," Cob cuts in eagerly.
"We're here to talk to DeVerge," Mina reminds him gently.
He pulls a face, but does not argue the point. After all, he's the one with the chests.
Thankfully the crew of the Mirage are welcoming for their part, an impression only slightly marred by the alarming hiss of fluid and creak of metal joints as the 'boarding ramp' lowers for the five of you to climb aboard. One of the fey even produces a bowl of milk for Pepper from somewhere.
So it is you come face to face with Eduarmot DeVerge in front of a large slow-turning wheel. The man himself is garbed almost as colorfully as the fey crew, though in less haphazard shades of blue, silver, and gold, that all the better match the bright smile he throws your way... well, Mina's way at least. He does not quite seem to know what to make of Gorok and he does not seem to have noticed you.
"I bring news of urgent import for Representative DeVerge" you glance at the nearest crewman. "Is there somewhere private we can speak?"
Thus you are all hustled into one of the cabins, if it is on the larger side of small you could not say, having more than enough trouble trying to make out the architecture of 'commonplace 'ships. Still, if one could replace the fickle wind with something more arcane that might be worth it. A thought for another time as now you turn to speak, not half lies, more like nine-tenths truth.
"Yesterday, we discovered quite without meaning to that the Eagle Knights had been investigating the disappearance of a young woman two weeks past and also came to guess by the posting of the watcher who lost this sketch..." you hand him the parchment, watching closely. The whole plan hinges on this man's care for his sister.
A complex interplay of emotions shapes his expression as water shapes the stone beneath it; anger, loss, sorrow,deep and abiding, then anger again, but not of the same sort, the blade turned inwards.
Guilt. Words had been said that perhaps now cannot be unsaid.
"By senses arcane we had reasons to suspect a building of harboring unwholesome powers," you continue smoothly so we sent two of our numbers to reconnoiter the premises. "There we discovered..." Smoothly as though you were a mummer in a play you hand the sentence to Mina.
"A dark and unwholesome chalice." She motions to it, the look of disgust clear on her spell-scared, seemingly blind face. "Only the dead, only the
vampyr, have reason to sup from such a thing. It keeps the blood warm. "
"We also recovered two chests that were found with the cup, but we did not wish to unseal them least we be mistaken for common thieves."
"A... adventurers then?" Eduarmot struggles for words, which not-so-incidentally means he would struggle even more to pick out the holes in your story.
Akorian Bluff & Sense Motive: 35, 32 (Double Critical Success!)
Together you open the chests to find several changes of clothes, from ones fit for the nobility to the kind of rough homespun a peasant down on her luck might wear. There is nothing commonplace about the brace of daggers, one of which is both magical and alchemically treated, or the two clinking bags in the back, perfumes and powders, one held coin, a decent, though not fantastical sum, the other silvery tipped bolts, some more finely made that the other.
Contents of the Chests
- 5 Full changes of clothes meant to fit various personas
- 4 Daggers
- 1 Magical +1 Alchemical Silver Dagger
- 2x Sorcerer's Spirits; 1x Mage's assistant; 4x Love in Idleness
- Various perfumes, skin ointments and powders
- Mirrors, combs and other accessories
- 50 Crossbow Blots
- 25 Alchemical Silver Crossbow bolts
- 10 Mithril bolt
- 650 gc
"If she's carrying a mirror, this Breolia can't be a vampire?" Eduarmot says, not yet with suspicion, but you fear that too might come. "In fact it looks more like you'd expect to find in the bags of a vampire
hunter."
"Or a diabolist with enough wit to keep weapons able to cut baatezu at hand," Sirim informs you silently.
Dangerous ground that, connections to Cheliax are more likely than any other to lead to the Aspis Consortium in whose employ you still are.
What do you do?
[] Bring up the possibility of Breolia being a diabolist, explain you noticed an imp inside the premises while also doing your best not to mention what you were doing there (Opposed Bluff Sense Motive check)
[] Point out that just because someone means ill to the undead it does not mean they are a good person (Sirim Diplomacy -5 Penalty for being a smokeshade)
[] Write in
Darklands Dictionary
To boil string grubs to sweetness - to make something palatable at the expense of substance. String grubs are a common wild staples of Nar Voth, which have an unpleasant astringent taste. Boiling them removes the taste, but also makes them far less filling
