After avoiding an assassination attempt, the Rabble track down the perpetrator to a seedy dreamlily den. When they infiltrate the building to confront whoever was behind the attack against them, they discover hidden truths and find more than they bargained for.
Player Characters: Balkris, Jeeves, Mickey Bishop, Reckoner, R. Sativus, Timber
I.
After the traumatic events in the Tomb of Saint Faela, Timber needed to rest and recuperate. He spent several weeks hitting the booze in House Vadalis until the butlers told him that he had drunk all of the household stores of liquor and wine. Travis, the junior butler, discreetly suggested that Timber visit the Silvermist Theater, a dreamlily den that sold all manner of intoxicants, from dreamlily to absentia.
Reckoner and Balkris, aided by the resources of House Vadalis, had spent the past month trying to repair and reactivate the Final Messengers discovered in the junkyard. They were beginning to make headway when they received word from the others. Mickey Bishop had gotten a suspicious message from an associate who had helped him in the past. They were planning to meet on the Menthis Steps which connected Lower and Middle Dura.
Balkris, Reckoner, and Timber prepared for the worst and hurried to the Menthis Steps.
When they arrived, it was as they had suspected. Assassins had gathered around their companions! They were a group of changelings led by a dragonmarked elf with the Mark of Shadow. What was more, the changelings shifted into the form of their elven leader to confuse the adventurers. Then the killers for hire drew their blades and wands attacked!
But the Rabble had grown powerful and were not to be trifled with. The heroes struck back fiercely. One by one, the assassins were slain by sword and spell, or hurled from the steps to the cold stone pavement of Lower Dura far below.
Only one of the changelings had survived the battle. But the heroes found that his mouth was sewn shut. Both Balkris and R. Sativus tried to interrogate him through their powers of telepathy, but to little avail. The changeling resisted them and bit down on a poisoned capsule inside his mouth. A puff of green gas escaped from between the stitches on his lips, and the changeling fell over, dead.
Before the changeling died, R. Sativus caught of glimpse of Professor Cinderveil from Morgrave University inside his mind. Cinderveil was the last person this changeling had seen before coming to the Menthis Steps. Yet it seemed from the fragments of his memories that Cinderveil was not the one who had enlisted the changeling. Although Cinderveil was involved in this conspiracy, there was someone else pulling the strings.
The heroes investigated the scene upon the Menthis Steps. On the body of the dead changeling, they found a mystical device known as a gem of seeing. They also discovered a number of notes dropped by the mob of civilians hired as hitmen before they scattered. They were ransom messages, suggesting that each of them had been forced into the job after one of their loved ones had been kidnapped. The notes were written on torn pieces of a poster for the Silvermist Theater.
As they were scouring the steps for clues, suddenly they heard the crying of an infant. The mother who was pulling the baby carriage had been trampled by the fleeing mob. Her baby girl laid upon the steps, crying in the arms of her dead mother. As R. Sativus took the baby in her arms and tried to comfort her, she wondered what to do with her next.
When they began to leave the steps, the heroes encountered a warforged musician being arrested by a group of Sharn watchmen. They were accusing him to “fitting the description” of a suspect in a recent investigation. But something was odd about the warforged. Its body was rigid yet spasming in a strange way, as if it was paralyzed or malfunctioning.
Balkris strode up to the officers and convinced them to allow him, as a representative of a dragonmarked house, to handle this situation, as surely the Sharn Watch had better things to do with its valuable time. The Sharn watchmen, fearing the nobleman’s wrath, quickly acquiesced to his demands and went on their way.
Now the heroes returned to the Vadalis estate to help the malfunctioning warforged and figure out what to do with the motherless child. Meanwhile, Mickey Bishop left them to find out who had ordered the hit on him and the other adventurers.
They would soon learn from Busker that he had been hired by the Boromar Clan and was placed near the Menthis Steps as a beacon for the mob of civilian hitmen. It was becoming clear that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to eliminate the Rabble.
II.
At Balkris’ estate, the heroes also had a visitor. It was Chief Inquisitive Kavill of the Sharn Watch’s Dreamlily Prohibition Bureau. He had come once more to ask questions regarding his investigation of the rogue House Orien nobleman, Cyril d’Orien, who had gone missing. The heroes informed him that they had good reason to believe Cyril had died somewhere in the Cogs.
Upon hearing this, Kavill grew troubled. With the recent removal of Councilor Nolan Toranak following his scandal, there was no one on the Sharn City Council to represent the Cogs. Without a cooperative representative, Kavill knew it would be difficult to conduct an investigation.
Balkris began to entertain the idea of running for office as the Cogs’ new representative on the city council. His companions urged him on, as did Chief Inquisitive Kavill.
Kavill also offered to deputize any among them who would be willing to help him in his efforts to crackdown on the illegal dreamlily dens operating in Lower Dura.
“The worst of them is the Silvermist Theater,” said Kavill. “It’s the place where the poor people of Lower Dura congregated to escape from their daily woes. It’s also crawling with criminals and mobsters. Rumor has it that the owner of the place, a gnome illusionist named Salleon, has ties to the Boromar Clan.”
“Oh, he certainly does!” said Mickey Bishop, arriving at the tail end of the conversation.
R. Sativus knew that Kavill was still interested in herself and Mickey, due to their criminal ties and their association with Cyril. Thinking quickly, she greeted Mickey by saying, “Hi Tony! Good of you to join us!”
Mickey, seeing the Sharn Watch officer, quickly caught R. Sativus’ meaning and replied, “How ya doin’! Fat Tony is here!”
Mickey had just arrived from meeting his contacts Frankie and Larni in the Boromar Clan. They confirmed that Salleon the Illusionist was in fact working with the Boromars, and any hit that happened on his turf, which included the Menthis Steps, would have to go through him. Kavill was pleased with this information. If the owner of the Silvermist was involved in an attempted murder and in league with a criminal organization, it would enable Kavill to organize a raid on the Silvermist and catch the drug dealers red handed in their own dreamlily den.
“What a fine group of adventurers you have here, Lord Balkris!” Kavill exclaimed. “If I ever need a few good men for a raid, I’ll know where to look.”
“Does being deputized mean we would receive badges?” Reckoner inquired.
“Why, er, yes! Of course you would get to wear badges! In fact, I’ll be right back.”
Kavill returned an hour later with six shiny Sharn Watch deputy badges in the shape of a star, hot out of a magewright’s forge.
“If you are willing to risk your lives in a raid as deputy watchmen, you will most certainly get to wear one of these shiny badges. I must warn you though, a raid will be extremely dangerous, but you would also be generously compensated for your bravery.”
The Rabble thought over Kavill’s proposal and agreed to join the vanguard of the raid. For his part, Mickey Bishop was angry that someone tried to have him knocked off, and was eager to pay back Salleon for the slight.
Before the Rabble set out on their mission, they contacted Erol Potellas from the Courage Potion Factory and asked for a favor. The Silvermist Theater was a major part of the dreamlily trade and would be under heavy guard. The adventurers asked Erol to help them by providing a large quantity of sleeping gas potions. Feeling indebted to the heroes, Erol agreed to offered them what aid he could. Although he was unable to provide the quantity they asked for, he provided enough potions to put a large hall of people to sleep.
III.
Mickey Bishop and Timber went ahead to scout out the Silvermist Theater. They snuck around the perimeter of the building, gliding like a pair of silent shadows. R. Sativus’s rat went along for the ride so that the gnome wizard could see through its eyes.
The heroes had heard that Salleon was a powerful illusionist and that he had turned the Silvermist Theater into a shifting labyrinth of illusory passages. Sure enough, they found an illusionary wall behind which a docking warehouse was hidden. Several tall empty crates, each larger than a man, stood upon the docking bay. A huge door led into the Silvermist Theater, but the thin walls of the warehouse were peeling and pockmarked. R. Sativus’ rat crawled through one of the holes in the wall to see what was beyond.
Beneath the Silvermist, the rat discovered a series of old abandoned rooms that had been sealed up haphazardly when the theater had been built over it. The scattered bits of broken furniture looked like they had been smashed to pieces, as if a fight had taken place here long ago.
The rat also found an old leather-bound ledger which contained a loose page that was easily pulled out. It was a letter sent by a nobleman named Sterryk ir’Tyran and was addressed to the matron if an orphanage.
“Mother Strayne,
As per our agreement, find enclosed one year’s payment for housing the boy. Allow me to reiterate our key terms:
1. Nobody can learn the boy’s identity. He must remain distant from the other children.
2. The boy must work. He must learn how the worker children live.
3. No lasting harm may come to the boy. Beat him as you would any other child, but if he sustains permanent injury, the penalties will be extreme.
I wish you good health.
– Sterryk ir’Tyran”
These were the ruins of the Silvermist Poorhouse that was once home to the orphans of Lower Dura and the Cogs. It had once been a popular recruitment site for the Smilers gang that Timber had been a part of in his youth. Sterryk ir’Tyran was clearly a nobleman of influence, but who was the mysterious boy spoken of in the letter? And what had happened in this place that had left it in such a state? Was there a battle here many decades ago, or perhaps a massacre?
Before any of the other rooms could be explored, the rat heard sounds of gears whirring and felt tremors in the ground as of heavy, metallic footsteps approaching. Becoming frightened, the rat scurried away before the source of the sound came any closer.
VI.
Elsewhere, Mickey Bishop and Timber had quietly entered the Silvermist Theater. Inside was a misty dreamlily den whose twisting corridors shifted and changed, but the changeling and shifter were well hidden and had ample time to explore the place. They watched from the shadows as the poor and destitute people of Sharn emptied their pockets for a sip of dreamlily tea or a puff from a dreamlily pipe.
In time, they found the largest hall where Salleon the Illusionist was giving a performance on stage. The gnome was entertaining his guests with a soothing musical performance by an illusionary orchestra. The image of a slow-moving river materialized on the gigantic glamerweave curtain that created backdrops for the illusionist’s stage shows. The tranquil music and scenery entranced the patrons of the dreamlily den so that they could not tell how intoxicated they were.
Mickey and Timber took up their positions on the gallery and among the crowd below. They spotted numerous bouncers patrolling the hall in pairs. All of them wore the yellow armbands of the Boromar Clan. These looked like hardened veterans of the streets and were no pushovers. Mickey and Timber would have to wait for the others to arrive.
They soon saw a party of guests enter the hall. Balkris, Jeeves, Reckoner and R. Sativus were seated at a table as guests. They must have entered the dreamlily den as clients. A pair of bouncers stood by their table at all times.
The heroes made their order and a tray full of cups of heady tea was set on the table. However, this was not ordinary dreamlily tea but something much stronger. This was absentia, which gave hallucinogenic visions produced by a temporary telepathic bond with a random individual, allowing the imbiber to see through that person’s senses. It was an expensive drug that appealed to warforged in particular, allowing them to live vicariously through the senses of the fleshborn, if only for a short while.
It was clear that the bouncers were waiting for the heroes to drink their tea. Reckoner drank two cups of absentia, and soon fell into a trance.
VI.
Reckoner was inside the body of a passenger on an airship. He was a noble who was trying to elope with his lover by escaping from the vessel. Though Reckoner could not control the actions of this body, he could see and hear everything as if he were really there.
While climbing through the ventilation shaft, the noble overheard a conversation between two important-looking individuals. They were Merrix d’Cannith and a man named Sterrik ir’Tyran. The noble could not understand their cryptic conversation, but it held a dark meaning for Reckoner.
Sterryk: “Have you dealt with that little problem of yours, my lord?”
Merrix: “You worry too much, Lord ir’Tyran. I have things under control. If the Thuranni do not take care of those meddling adventurers, then my slaves will lure them to the Silvermist Theater.
Sterryk: “I wish you would abandon your obsession with that place. It is not healthy for you to cling to the past. I am sorry for what happened there to the other children. It was an unpleasant business. But you know that I did it for the good of our house. You are the future of House Cannith. And you were becoming soft. The wolf cannot mingle with the sheep.”
Merrix: “You of all people should know that I can never let go of that place. It was the mud that made me.”
The vision grew misty and the voices echoed in a hollow void. Reckoner found himself back in his own body in the Silvermist Theater.
“It’s a trap! It’s a trap!” he began to shout, repeating the words as he crawled across the floor as if he was still inside a ventilation shaft.
The bouncers looks at Reckoner with amusement, but a moment later, bolts of eldritch power streaked across the hall and struck the illusionist upon the stage. The performer fell dead, but the illusion upon him subsided, and the heroes saw that the gnome was not Salleon. The bouncers pointed to the gallery were Mickey Bishop stood with an outstretched hand, a wisp of eldritch smoke on the tip of his finger.
The patrons of the dreamlily den screamed and stampeded toward the exit. The bouncers began to shout and pushed their way toward the stairs leading up to the gallery. The heroes saw their chance and all of them threw their sleeping gas potions at the bouncers gathered at the base of the steps. As the potions shattered on the floor, an explosion of green gas engulfed the Boromars. A moment later, all of them laid upon the floor, snoring loudly and peacefully.
They were not roused by the loud thunderous noise of metallic footsteps on the stage. Two giant metal claws wielding immense weapons of war tore through the glamerweave curtain. Out of the shadows of the ruined glamerweave, a gargantuan warforged titan stepped forward, crushing the hardwood floor of the stage with its enormous metal feet.
Standing upon the machine of war, there was Salleon the Illusion, grinning maniacally as he spoke.
“Finally! A performance worthy of my talents! My master, Baron Merrix d’Cannith, sends his regards. Now it’s curtains for you! Ah ha ha ha ha!”
To be continued…
Against the Lightning 1/2
Treasure
– Insignia of Claws
Gem of Seeing
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)
This lustrous emerald is fixed to leather head-straps that allow it to be worn over one eye. The gem has 3 charges. As an action, you can speak the gem’s command word and expend 1 charge. For the next 10 minutes, you have truesight out to 120 feet when you peer through the gem. The gem regains 1d3 expended charges daily at dawn.