All 01.0 - An Atypical Day at Work

On the morning of the 16th of Elul, two members of the Arlington branch of Contract Security and Investigative Services, were called in for a job. Caitlyn Devine  and Lucca Wakiya, partners specializing in observation and reconnaissance, met outside of the office and ribbed each other for a while regarding hygiene and a lost pair of pants, mostly in a good-natured fashion, before walking in. They found their manager, Ms. Willowick, at her desk. With little fanfare, she gave them their mission documents: a summary of the client, target, background, and a pile of dossiers on possibly related incidents. According to the briefing, the client had come to CSIS after the disappearance of his daughter. He suspected her employer, Viscountess Bethany Erzebet, a widowed member of the nobility. In an attempt to learn more, he took up a job at her estate, where he had apparently seen some strange behavior on her part but nothing incriminating; he wanted professional assistance to uncover the truth behind her actions. They found attached a mess of information regarding all of the local missing persons cases from the last 6 months, in case they found anything related, along with a profile of Victor Erzebet, her recently-deceased husband. Not being ones to be hung up on details, the pair left the pile of documents behind and set out to infiltrate the Erzebet estate.
With a quick stop by a local clothes merchant, the two purchased dresses to disguise themselves as chambermaids looking for work. In their new clothes, they went to the estate and went straight for the servant's entrance. They were greeted by a large, gruff woman; they found that the house was preparing for a party that evening, and was willing to take them on for the day as a trial run. They were given brooms, and told to get to work cleaning.
Working their way around the house, cleaning along the way, they found many busy staff, but nothing out of the ordinary. In a sitting room, Lucca found a pulp magazine jammed into a bookshelf, likely stashed there in a hurry by a maid; he stashed it in his dress to read over later.
They walked through the second floor and made their way to the third, where the Viscountess' personal rooms were located. Noise coming from one room suggested the lady was preparing for the evening. Finding a locked room down the hall, Caitlyn pulled out her lockpicks and set to work, springing the door open before anyone could spot them. Inside, they found a dusty office, filled with books and papers. Putting their skills to the test, they picked through the room and desk, hunting for clues. They found several strange items: a wand of Explosive Runes hidden in a compartment of the desk, a couple of seemingly random scrolls tucked into books, and, most oddly, three sheets of paper scattered about the bookshelves that registered as faintly magic, despite having only cryptic, meaningless runic doodles on them. The confusing scribbles were almost painful to look at, so the two took them and the other magic items as "possible evidence" of magical misconduct. 
By this time, they heard the lady and her maids set out towards the lower levels. They stayed in the room until the coast was clear, then spread out into the other third floor rooms. Unfortunately, they found nothing else of interest.
Deciding that they could use some extra insight, they went downstairs and found Mr. Blackwood, their client. They found him outside, working to stable the party guests' horses and carriages. They introduced themselves, and he confided that he had noticed that on many nights, he had seen the Viscountess going into a storage room for long periods of time. Marking that as the next point in their investigation, he offered to show them the way.
Going through the servants' passages, he took them to an innocuous storage room, filled with piled up boxes and old furniture. Lucca, picking up on a few minute details, managed to find a pressure plate on the wall; pressing it shifted a panel in the floor, revealing stairs leading down into a basement. Steeling themselves and preparing a light, the three set downwards.
The stairs went on for a great depth. At the bottom was an arched doorway; the heavy door was ajar, and a foul smell drifted out from the room. Caitlyn and Lucca went inside, but Mr. Blackwood could not handle the implications for his daughter. The pair found themselves standing in a stark and horrifying room: a stone slab was in the center, covered in dried blood. Torturous instruments lined one wall, and a furnace sat in the other. Another heavy door was on the far wall, closed tightly. Both were afraid, and poignantly aware that they were in over their heads. However, they decided that they should still open the door beyond, though they feared what they might find. Caitlyn began her work, and found that the lock was difficult; as she worked, Lucca thought he could catch the sound of someone trying to speak on the other side. Suddenly, the door to the stairs closed. The pair looked around, but saw no-one; Lucca could barely make out something dark dripping onto the floor by the entrance. With a yell, a bolt of fire sprung out and struck Lucca. The Invisibility spell melted away, revealing the Viscountess standing nearby; they had sprung an alarm without realizing on their way down the stairs. The Viscountess fired once more, while Caitlyn hurried to finish the lock, so close to finishing it as she was. Lucca launched his own fire spell at her, burning her and her dress badly. Furious, she ran at him with the blood-soaked knife she held in her hand. Lucca drew a knife of his own, and the two swiped at each other in a desperate battle. Opening the lock, Caitlyn yelled words of encouragement, magically bolstering Lucca's efforts. With a frantic stab, Lucca's knife buried itself in the woman's sternum, and with a gurgling cry, she collapsed, her blood pooling on the floor.
Both investigators, new to battle, were wracked with adrenaline and shock. After some hesitation, they decided to open the other door before running to the police, since again, Lucca thought he could hear someone alive in there. Swinging open the door, they found it was a cramped, dark cell, containing a single prisoner: a middle-aged man wearing filthy rags, with his ankle chained to the wall and his wrists cuffed behind him. He sat in a cheap wooden chair, and looked at them with pleasant surprise. He mentioned that he hadn't expected someone else to win, and inquired as to whether the Viscountess was dead. Though he seemed rather happy at the news of her demise, he seemed rather mild and reserved for someone who looked like he had been bound and kept in a basement cell for months. When the two tried to ask him about himself and what he was doing there, he gave the rather ambiguous and implausible reply that he was, in fact, a devil that she had summoned. He declared that since he hadn't unsummoned upon the woman's death, then his contract had more than likely passed on to her slayer, in this case, Lucca; he claimed that he couldn't remember his name, so Lucca was free to give him another one. Suffering from shock, Lucca babbled a bit and said that his name could be Jimmy. As "Jimmy" spoke, it became apparent that he seemed to know very little: from appearances, he seemed to be suffering from some rather extreme amnesia in addition to his delusions. Caitlyn, recalling the documents, noticed that he did in fact strikingly resemble the description of Victor Erzebet. As his shackles were unlocked, the man stretched out and thanked them; they said that they were going to sneak out and go report to the police, and he was welcome to join them. He frowned a bit, and said that he'd rather not; being a witness to 28 murders was likely to wind him up in an entrenched discussion with the law, and he was quite sick of being trapped in a small room. Agreeing with this, the two decided to return to the CSIS office to tell Ms. Willowick of what they had found. On their way out, Caitlyn paused to take a few magicked items off of the deceased woman: an enchanted ring, a hair comb, and a wand that she had used to cast Invisibility. Jimmy walked by with no more than a disgusted glance. In the hallway, they found the body of Mr. Blackwood, his throat slit. Overwhelmed, the three made their way out and to the office.
When the two frazzled youths walked in, one covered in blood and accompanied by what looked like a hobo, Ms. Willowick asked what on earth had happened. They explained everything briefly, and she sat them down and gave them some tea while she went to go contact the police. They sat mostly quietly; Jimmy had the revelation that he was a half-elf when his hand brushed by his ear, as apparently he had been under the impression that he was human. Ms. Willowick came back and told them that everything was taken care of, and that they should go home and get some sleep. Caitlyn offered her couch to Jimmy, who gratefully accepted, and they all went to put the day's horrid events behind them.
Category:Advent of the All