Rooked! (Part 1)

## Summary

This episode follows a trio of Queen's Men, Jerry Rigz, Dell Talqamar, and The Boogeyman.

## Events

The story kicks off during around time of the events in the story at Episode 36, in which the Queen of Thieves hussled the heroes and their allies at Saint Vitruvio's Cathedral. The trio of misfits are gathered around a table small chatting, the tavern Skull and Swords within Emberwood Village is infamous for being a meeting grounds for Queen's Men entering or exiting Drakkenheim. The room is heavy with anticipation as everyone in the bar knows that the Queen of Thieves herself is coming to meet with the trio.

She enters in rather dramatically, slamming open the tavern door and shutting out all the lights from the lanterns with it, and appearing at their table. She offers them a contract killing job, kill Barthazol Barthas, the Castellan of Drakkenheim, who is currently held in the Prison of Drakkenheim, once the Asylum but now acts as a stronghold to the Followers of the Falling Fire. She offers the group 30,000 gold coins to be split amongst the survivors. The offer comes at a time where Lucretia Mathias, who usually guards the Castellan, is coming to meet with the faction leaders at Saint Vitruvio's Cathedral and the Queen of Thieves, so the Castellan will be vulnerable. The Queen of Thieves is trying to provide a distraction as well as move herself forward by going to attend the meeting, and as such the three mercenaries have 8 hours to complete the assassination. She leaves the group with some potions, poisons, and some trinkets to aid them on their mission before leaving.

The crew decide that the best point of entry is travelling through the sewers as they're all well versed on how the sewer system is best traveled. From here they decide that the best course of action is to go towards the well in the center of the Prison. Here Dell uses her boots of flying to reach the top of the well and peers out to see a set of guards approaching the well. Upon hearing their approach, she casts Darkness upon herself to hide.

During her time hiding, the guards seem to be collecting an absurd amount of water by throwing the bucket down the well and hauling it back up, nearly hitting Dell a few times, but she dodges it easily while relying on her keen senses. As the buckets come down, Dell, Jerry, and the Boogeyman all dump one of each of their viles into the first three buckets of water drawn from the well.

Perceiving how long this might take, the group decides to move on to another possible entry point. They move onto the bottom of a cistern that's completely flooded. Using his homunculus construct, Jerry deduces how long the underwater tunnel passage will be. Diving in head first, the group go through without a hitch, only leaving the Boogeyman a tiny room to get stuck but he manages just fine.

Appearing out of the pipe, the trio seem to be in a storage room of sorts within the tower of the Castellan of Saint Silena's Abbey. Jerry decides this is a good point to give everyone Aid by having his homunculus inject them all. This ends their first hour of the mission. Locking picking the door to the this room, they end up in a armory and start collecting assorted ammunitions and bombs. Dell comes up with the idea to rig the door with explosives with her alchemy skills, and Jerry goes to fix the padlock with Mending and his tinkerer's tools, sabotaging the lock and successfully rigs the door with a bomb.

The Boogeyman listens in on the door to the next room, hearing soft mumbling which sounds like people praying. Jerry swigs a potion of gaseous form and drifts into the next room to investigate, to which he sees the main hall, which is adorned with banners of Drakkenheim, deer heads, etc. Within the main hall there are several people, three women and a man praying over very meager and cheap looking food. He continues up the spiral stairs opposite of their door and finds a room well kept with a few owls. Returning to his crew and reporting his findings they decide that the Castellan must not be here, but they want to interrogate the group in this next room.

That being the plan, Jerry casts invisibility on himself, the Boogeyman takes a potion of invisibility, and as they enter the room they each have their own assignments they coordinated on: Jerry to get the double doors locked and barred, the Boogeyman to go engage the group, Dell to minor illusion a sound coming from the spiral stairs opposite of their room then to cast silence when the Boogeyman strikes.

The plan goes off mostly without a hitch, except with the illusion not actually needing to be cast as the sound created is echoed by an actual guard coming down and dropping his crossbow. The Boogeyman completely obliterates one of the followers and begins to hide. The hooded trio throw back their heavy cloaks, unveiling their ripped bodies and they assume martial poses as they go to engage the thieves.

The group manage to kill all the followers and subdue the last remaining one, dragging her down into the waterway and interrogating her there. Jerry goes to fix up the room as the other two interrogate the victim, bringing the campaign to the second hour of infiltration. She's adamant on not giving up information until Dell begins to tug away at the delerium infused in her chest, to which she gives out a loud blood curling scream. She lets the group know that the Castellan is taking prayers in the crypt, and is promptly killed, bringing the group to the third hour of infiltration and the alert level to two because of the scream.

The group head up the stairs and see a pair of guards coming down the opposite staircase to check out the noise, and in response Jerry disguises himself as a halfling that has taken the pilgrimage and says that his delerium crystal snagged on his clothing and was the source of the screaming. He also states that he is here to repair the bell up above and goes to sabotage it, though the guards are suspicious and are also wondering where the people in the main hall were, saying that they were the personal guards to the Castellan, leading one to investigate and the other to lead Jerry upstairs.

Jerry yells to the one investigating the main floor that they must've gone out to the courtyard to pray, and as he goes to open the door the Boogeyman shoots him dead and cradles his body before it hits the ground. Going upstairs, Jerry deceives the guards saying into thinking he's repairing the bell and successfully takes off the chime in the middle of the bell so it won't be able to sound the alarm should they get caught. Having done so, he has some small chat with the people there and find out that the Castellan was actually inside the Barracks serving food.

With this new information, the trio head back down and head into the courtyard to find about 18 guards all fast asleep with the drawn buckets of water and cups of water all about them. The sleeping poisons have successfully taken it's toll, and with that the episode cuts to be concluded in the next part.