To Catch A Thief

Nesh and Managaratha reappear and Scout vanishes.

We want to wait to hear about the interrogation and get our promised share of the loot, and then go to Red to catch up with Thistle.

Around breakfast, [Phoenix 2] Volda shows up, but we say we're waiting at the moment. Managaratha wonders if there are records of who he visited in the past six months. That would be difficult. We lounge about until lunch-ish, when a messenger shows up and delivers a note and a bag to Volda. We go up to one of the rooms.

The information that was recovered from the assassin, to date, is that she was sent after us because her master discovered that we are the best key to getting Slayer out of Middlesea, and her master does not want Slayer released from the trap. (An orc, Slayer). We wonder if this is the same orc who Sergeant Susie would not want let out.

There is a bag of loot: a small amount of cash, four poisons of unknown poison-ness.

Managaratha yellow-calls Thistle. We will be heading towards Red. She's in Darstan still.

Volda arranges a teleport for us to Darstan, for the cost of our bag of coins.

We're now in a square in Darstan. Gale rescued a kidnapped librarian (Rosalind) here from an annoying relative of Baron Volstak.

Diomarch hails the duty paladin. He needs to see a senior priest, but stay out here, because it's complicated. The priest comes out. Diomarch gives him a reasonably detailed up to date report, and also says he wants to talk to Duchess Zerbina about the link. The priest thinks that she will probably not be willing to change her strategy - a lot of her forces are there. The Duchess is not doing as well breaking up the forming alliance between King Richard's lands and Berana (King Olanson). Also, Diomarche should not come into the temple of Rush himself.

Gale looks up Rosalind and regales her with the story over tea.

Managaratha finds a horse that looks kind of gilled and scaly on the common, and asks if he can sit on it. He sells his fancy rock and does so, noting that it bends oddly, more like a snake than a horse.

Dinner where Thistle is supposed to show up. Some people notice that there's a lady keeping an eye on us from another table, and Vidan thinks it's Thistle in disguise. Managaratha waves, and she rolls her eyes and leaves. Nesh follows stealthily. She eventually stops. "Nesh, right?" He apologizes for his friends. There's at least one person in town she doesn't want to spot her.

"What do you all want?" "Uh... that much I wasn't told."

They arrange to meet later on the commons. Can we help? Do we know a good fence? Nesh wonders why she hasn't gone home where she is in the thieves guild. She'd get a better price for it here... she'll go talk to Nesh.

She got teleported here, and tried to make contact with the local guild. Got in an argument with this "bitch named Marsha" who didn't think she was competent. Stole some of her stuff. In her stuff is what looks like the Duchess's signet ring. Nesh offers to handle returning it for a reward and the reward is hers. We can probably deal with probing in a way that doesn't implicate her, for example.

[Phoenix 3]

Vidan gets us an audience, and gives her a packet. There's something else that might be more sensitive - she takes us to a tower where a red mage takes away the guards' ears. O_o Lots of us have various investigatory abilities - we came upon a lifelink, is she aware of that? Yes. We thought it might be in an unfortunate state. Her husband's absence is day to day inconvenient. The lifebond is not day to day inconvenient...but she is concerned about what will happen when the timestop is ended. Her husband had taken a great deal of damage right before the timestop went into effect. She has recovered from her share of that damage - and is concerned that people get to him quickly.

Vidan also notes that the enemy has been pushing instability, in case there is anything we could help with. Since Middlesea closed and her husband went missing, there have been pressures on Darstan that have increased from neighbors in Red. It seems likely that one of Berana and King Richard's Lands were responsible for a recent intrusion into the castle. If you were to learn which of them that might have been, that would be appreciated. Berana has an envoy here publicly, Prince Sven. King Richard doesn't have anyone official.

Nesh goes to find the thieves guild. They tell him to go to the Temple of Jord and talk to Joseph. He slouches in and to the shrine of Jord, Joseph notes that he has a lot of DI resistance, but quizzes him on streetwise and some other skills he doesn't have. Before making plans, he should talk to either Alex at the Dragon's Claw or Marsha at the Stone Table.

Nesh and Gale talk to Marsha. Ex-pirates. Red guard dogs are something we won't be used to. Don't do too large a hit too often. Don't get too ambitious or claim we're Jord's left hand. She thinks there might be some jobs in the next week or so in case we're interested. If we're on a sanctioned job, we can run to a safehouse, but don't run to them on random jobs.

Nobody sneezes, though. Very disappointing.

We also recall that the Duchess actually asked that we figure out which of two people was responsible, not to investigate the theft. So we need to find the people and investigate them.

General gossip: Victoria is not all that interesting, she's always fighting Purple. Prince Sven is in town from Berana, everyone knows where. (The king of Berana has 25+ kids). Everyone assumes King Richard has someone here but nobody knows who offhand. Everyone is clear that the Duchess is the war leader, and Volstack is the ruler.

We visit Sven and give him a packet. He assures us that's very interesting. But he doesn't care about stuff outside of Red. (He is familiar with the Blue Mage, the most interested in outside Melmayne). Does he know who Richard's guy is? Well, give me two, I can get one to Richard. Vidan thinks that he is in communication with Richard about what to do about Darstan. Nesh thinks that he has moved here for the long term, not just for a bit.

Back to the common to talk to Thistle. Is Marsha a fence? No. So she stole it probably on someone else's behalf. She can show us. "What needs fixing?" (11 successes, 7 DI).

Get the ring back to the Duchess, Clearing Marsha out would be good. Stopping the war between Darstan / King Richard's lands / Berana from starting. Getting that back to the Duchess will help with that (getting it back to where Marsha was sending it would do best.). Marsha was sending it to George, King Richard's spy. Don't let George get it, that would start the war. Letting Sven get it would start the war more slowly.

We split up - Diomarch, Stella go up the stairs. Nesh (with Thistle) on the roof, Gale, Vadim, Managaratha, in the Kittiwake lurking in the alley on the second floor.

She goes out the window and we give chase. We fritter her down until she explodes, which Vadim confirms is Broken. (Gale loses her party clothes and Managaratha loses his ingredients).

Thistle and Nesh, tossing her place, finds them. (Nesh gives Thistle all the money).