SESSION 39B: SHIVVEL, SLAVES, AND GOLD

June 14th, 2009
The 22nd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

With the way cleared by Agnarr, Tee slid through the secret door. The hall beyond ended in a chamber of finished stone. Several empty crates had been stacked to one side of the room, and there were a handful of sealed crates on the opposite side. Near the sealed crates were two open crates containing small bundles wrapped in paper.

Cutting open one of the bundles, Tee discovered that it contained a brick of shivvel. At a quick estimate, she guessed that each brick contained a hundred doses of shivvel (each worth 2 sp), and there must be nearly four hundred bricks stored here.

It was clear, however, that there had once been much more of the shivvel stored here. Tee suspected that the destruction of Linech Cran’s operation was continuing to affect the ratlings’ supply.

Poking around the rest of the room she discovered that a section of the wall could be removed, revealing a detailed map of the Warrens with several locations marked with crude symbols.

There was also a secret door leading to another chamber, this one empty except for an iron coffer. A quick inspection of this revealed that it was set into a depression on the floor – opening or moving the coffer would shift its weight and trigger the release of a gas (which Tee guessed would prove poisonous). She quickly disabled the mechanism and flipped open the coffer, revealing a mixture of silver and copper coins that she estimated to be worth about 350 gold crowns.

“If they’re running a major drug operation here, this isn’t nearly enough money.” (Not that this stopped her from levering the coffer into her bag of holding.)

Her suspicions proved true: There was a second secret door. Although locked, she was able to open it with the keys she had taken from Silion and Urnest, and thus discover what appeared to be the true treasury: Eight copper coffers filled with gold and silver worth almost 8,000 gold crowns.

There was also a ninth coffer marked with the skull sigil of the Deathmantle cult. It contained six masterwork daggers set on a shaped-cushion of black velvet; their blades glistening with a dark red paste. (When Tee showed them to Ranthir, he was able to identify the paste as hellblood venom — a poison distilled from the blood of demons that, when brought in contact with a mortal wound, would cause the blood to thin and bleed more rapidly.)

In one of the copper coffers there was also a box of ebony. This contained four strange, round disks about 8 inches in diameters. Crafted from a stainless steel, each seemed possessed of strange, interlocking joints – as if they were complicated, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles coated with viciously serrated blades. The sight of them made Tee uneasy. She carefully shut the box and slid it into her bag of holding.

Tor, meanwhile, had found himself standing over the dead body of a ratbrute in a long hall. Taking in the details of his surroundings for the first time, he discovered that there were four barred slave pens built into the walls of the hall. He approached the nearest one, and found nearly a half dozen prisoners. They cowered away from his light as he approached, but he quickly reassured them that he and his friends were there to help. He quickly visited the other pens, finding over a dozen prisoners in total (many obviously in very bad states of health).

A long, damp-eaten table was shoved up against one wall. It was covered in a variety of yellowed papers, half-eaten food, and the like. Tor quickly looked it over, trying to find a key. Instead, he found the withered, bloody stump of a human hand casually tossed in amidst the general clutter. His stomach churned. Quickly gathering up the papers, he told the others to keep a watch over the hall leading to the south, and then went back through the northern tunnel to find Tee, hoping that she would be able to pick the locks on the pen doors.

When Tor arrived, Tee was in the process of loading the crates of shivvel into her bag of holding. “Prisoners? I didn’t know we’d found prisoners!”

Tee hurried back through the tunnels. “There’s a secret door right there,” she mentioned in passing.

“How do you know that?” Tor asked.

“I can smell the rat-stench seeping through it.”

Once she had reached the slave pens she was able to make quick work of the locks. While the others discussed what they were going to do with the prisoners, Tee looked through the papers Tor had gathered up. They were mostly accounting of the comings and going of the slaves (others were completely illegible due to the poor condition in which they had been kept), but a particularly well-drawn map caught her attention.

SEWER ROUTES TO THE COAST

This well-drawn map details a route through the sewer tunnels leading to two undescribed locations near or on the Coast. One, leading north from the Blessed Bridge, appears to terminate near the Docks; the other, leading south from the Blessed Bridge, somewhere in the Warrens.

Ranthir, meanwhile, was feeding the malnourished slaves while Tor gently questioned them. It turned out that most of them had been freshly captured off the streets of Ptolus, many from the Warrens. Several were obviously shivvel addicts and easily preyed on. There was an elven prisoner, however, who had a different tale to tell: He had lived in the village of Onsafal in the Teeth of Light. He and most (if not all) of his village were captured by slavers and then sold through the black markets of Freeport. He had arrived at the Docks, been taken to a warehouse, and then sold to the ratlings.

Tee, joining the telling of these tales towards their end, removed the iron coffer of copper and silver she had taken from the false treasury. This money she distributed among the slaves. Elestra and Nasira, meanwhile, were getting increasingly worried about the dark, unknown depths of the unexplored southern passage.

“We need to get them out of here,” Tor said.

“And we can’t just leave them to find their own way,” Elestra said.

Running the Campaign: Clues Linking Scenarios – Campaign Journal: Session 39C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index