07/12/2020 - Backstory Building, Flag Frustration and Devilish Discovery

## Backstory building

As the group headed toward the Waypoint, they discussed who should enter the auction with Kunai (a.k.a Norris the Dread).  Kunai suggested that Elyan should come for his persuasion skills, Ash for his psionic talents, and Blagden/Ratty for their general sneakiness and spying potential. Grace, Bayul and Galdor would wait nearby as back-up for if (when) things went south.

The conversation then turned to their character backstories and disguises. Kunai was to be a black dragonborn, whilst Blagden was very excited to re-invent Beatrice as a jewellery laden crime-Granny. Ash wasn’t convinced that Blagden wearing a metric ton of stolen jewellery was a good idea, and suggested that he should make Beatrice look a bit more refined. Galdor disagreed. Beatrice should dress as wealthily as possible, like the well-known crime-Queen of Kalimazoo! Unfortunately for Blagden, Kunai growled that he had actually met the crime-Queen of Kalimazoo. She was a hideous harlot who was to be avoided. Kunai thus agreed with Ash that Beatrice should avoid being too showy.

Talk then turned to their character names. Kunai was already Norris the Dread, but the others needed sick crime-boss-names. Elyan went for Caspar, whilst Blagden decided to just make Beatrice a Madame. Ash was not keen to pick a new name, so Kunai suggested that he could go by the second half of Ashtai instead of the first. Blagden pointed out that this would make him a ‘Tai’-fighter, which was obviously the coolest thing ever.

Blagden suggested that they should decide how their characters knew each other. He proposed that Kunai should be Beatrice’s grandson. This led to the others awkwardly trying to explain why it wasn’t realistic for a halfling woman to be the grandmother to a dragonborn... This explanation didn’t get very far, so the group gave up trying to get more detailed backstories. They would #improv the deetz on the night.

## Good thing Grace is here

The group then discussed what the actual plan for the auction was. Ash very sensibly recommended that they should first pre-scope the auction house so as to be aware of entrances / exits etc. And once inside, they should aim to make notes of what items were being sold and who the buyers were. It was likely that the guilds missing items would be there, so they needed to make it as easy as possible for the guild to subsequently track the items down. At this point Grace chimed in to ask whether the group had actually informed the guild that they thought they knew where the stolen items were…

Feeling somewhat chastened, the group admitted they had not. Galdor remembered that he had some magic paper for communicating with Dr T, so began to pen a letter. Kunai suggested that Galdor avoid telling Dr T about his exploits in the Sea Horse. Grace disagreed – from what she’d heard Dr T would be quite interested in this…

For the next few minutes, Galdor wrote a crazy-detail letter, including all of his side thoughts, live-edits and addendums. He ended with a P.S. outlining the opening times for the sea horse and the fact that he’d had a great time there, and a P.P.S to say that he’d bought a fabulous new hat.

Ash then began to quiz Grace on what she knew of artefact markets / general illegal trades on Eastshore. She explained that the illegal market in the docks was the centre of such trade, and was ran by a woman called Elianora. It was through these markets that she’d met Moira. She described how the council of Eastshore were aware of what went on there, and that Talos Chan and Kapena Nirmala (the councillor for trade) had an agreement with Elianora that anything particularly dangerous would go via them first. As far as Grace was aware there was no romantic links between Moira and Goltorah. She also added that Goltorah’s mansion was less than half a day off the road from their current location…

## A confusing entrance

The group decided that it was worth a quick and cautious look around Goltorah’s mansion. After walking for a few hours thy came across a large walled country house. Ratty snuck in past the main gate for some preliminary spying. He saw a fancy courtyard beyond which was a large front door. Through the windows he could see a study and a living room, but no sign of any people. Galdor noticed that there was one set of footprints going into the mansion but two going out. The ones going out were only a few hours old, suggesting that someone had arrived, picked someone up, and then left.

Deciding that it was safe to enter, but that they should avoid the main gate anyway, Ash found a spot to get over the wall. Blagden raced him up and just beat him to the top. Ash couldn’t see any traps and there was still no one about, so he gave the others the all clear to climb over too. Through the windows at the side of the house, Ash could see a study with desk, chairs, books and a weird flag-based windmill contraption. Going to the backdoor, Blagden deftly picked the lock with his magic gloves.

As it opened, Blagden, Kunai, Ash and Galdor were suddenly hit with a blast of magical energy. Finding themselves completely confused and disorientated, each reacted differently. Kunai immediately struck out at Ash, critically wounding him. This seemed to break Ash’s confusion, so he punched Kunai back to snap him out of it too. Blagden was about to sprint into the building, but Elyan managed to calm him down with a suggestion spell. Galdor wandered aimlessly for a while, before snapping himself back to reality. Seeing no further sign of magic, Ash edged back towards the door. Nothing happened, so everyone preceded inside.

## Flag frustration (#can’t roll above a 10)

Through the door was a pantry/kitchen, with no sign of any traps or arcane shenanigans. At this point, Elyan expressed his worry that Goltorah might come back, so they should be quick with their investigation.

Blagden, who was no longer under Elyan’s suggestion spell, checked the kitchen door for traps. There were none, but he did spot what appeared to be a weird chess board on one of the stone slabs. Kunai pressed it, but nothing happened. After Blagden lock-picked his way through several other internal doors the group found themselves in the study. There were bookcases all around the room, with eight coloured lights in a line along one of the walls. Near the door was the flag-windmill contraption Ash had spotted earlier. This had eight flags each with a colour that matched one of the lights on the wall.  There was also a desk with drawers that were seemingly unopenable, with no keyhole or other locking mechanism. The books were mostly about politics, geography or military history. Elyan looked for chess-related things but didn’t see anything. Kunai then found a large eight-symbolled rose on the floor below the rug.

The group assumed that the lights, flags and rose-symbols were a puzzle to open the drawers. However, despite much investigation(!), the puzzle solution remained frustratingly elusive. The group did not respond well to this failure. Galdor began stress eating pickled vegetables whilst Elyan started tilting \*every\* book in the room in case one was a secret door. Ash went off to the kitchen and managed to find king and queen chess pieces.

After quickly tiring of tilting books, Elyan took one of the flags over to a light and was overjoyed to notice a symbol on the bottom of the light! This allowed the group to finally match symbols to lights to flags. And once everything was correctly matched, the seemingly unopenable drawers opened! Inside were many notes that appeared to be a detailed inventory of the remaining items stolen from the guilds vault. There were also letters to various people, including Lilian Alfray – a name that Kunai had heard at the Rosewood – who was a famous “fence” (middle person for selling goods). Furthermore, the draw contained a few books as well as the Istus needle, which was one of the magic items that Kyris had been studying. Blagden then notice that one of the pieces of paper in the draw had some writing that said:

“king wants queen behind him, queen wants to be in front of King”. Realising that this riddle probably pertained to the chess board and pieces found in the kitchen, the group quickly figured that they should place the king and queen pieces back to back on the board. This caused the chess board to reveal itself as a trapdoor.

## Gelatine, gravity and golems

The trap door was locked, but Blagden made quick work of it and sent Ratty down to investigate. The trapdoor led to a cellar with a table in the middle. It appeared safe so everyone descended. However, as Elyan stepped forward into the cellar he suddenly fell into a hidden pit containing a gelatinous cube! Thankfully he managed to climb up before getting corroded to death. With the illusion now broken the group could see that a large 15 ft hole extended across the entire cellar, with just a small edge around the outside. Everyone successfully skirted the edge apart from Ash and Kunai, who both fell down. After much scrambling and some help from above, both managed to escape the slowly advancing gelatine.

To the left of the cellar was a door with no handle. As they approached a riddle appeared saying: How many drops can be put in an empty flagon? Ash solved this immediately as he’s #wise. And with the answer of “one” provided the door swung open to reveal a corridor.

Elyan tentatively advanced, fearful of further illusion traps! As he edged forward, he got to a point where gravity suddenly reversed and he was flung towards the ceiling. Thankfully, he was able to avoid serious fall damage so everyone else joined him. The group walked along the ceiling to the end of the corridor where they found that the door (that was still the right way up) had an arcane reverse gravity glyph on it. Using his mage hand, Blagden remotely picked the lock of the door at which point the glyph was deactivated and everyone fell back down. This would have caused some non-negligible group fall damage. However, Elyan was able to cast feather fall on everyone but Ash, who, being a monk, was able to land perfectly anyway.

Peering into the next room revealed some strange sigil’s on the floor, some boxes, desks and two large flesh golems! A fight with the golems immediately ensued. Galdor, Blagden and Kunai fired many arrows and bolts at the nearest Golem. However, Blagden’s non-magical weapon appeared to do absolutely nothing. Elyan viciously mocked the other one with some classic banter “I’ve seen more flesh on Ash!”. However, unfortunately for Elyan the Golem was too stupid to get the joke. Elyan then inspired Kunai whilst Ash lashed out with many punches. Realising that his weapon was useless, Blagden ran in and helped the others by distracting the Golems. This allowed Kunai to do a massive critical attack. As the Golem’s retaliated, Elyan cast invisibility on himself and Blagden. Ash then swapped out physical fists for psychic fists, which, combined with many mega-hits from Galdor, soon finished the Golem’s off.

## Devilish discoveries

With the Golem’s dead, the group set about exploring the room. There were two chests. One contained 8 empty glass jars. The other contained a black horn with engravings and a piece of black folded cloth. The group were pretty sure that this was the cornucopia shaped horn that Kyris had been interested in. The desks contained several books on necromancy and other evil shenanigans, as well as hand-written notes on the summoning of Kore, who was a powerful primordial Goddess. The group realise that the circular sigil’s on the floor were probably attempts at some sort of summoning ritual. On Elyan’s suggestion, the group partially destroy both sigil’s to ensure they couldn’t be used again. Elyan then went over to the final desk to take a pretty-looking orb. However, next to the orb was a basket full of blankets. Wrapped inside these blankets was a baby Tiefling that appeared to have been magically put to sleep! As Elyan carefully picked up the baby, Kunai messaged Grace to say that they had found the stolen “devil child” and would bring it up. Once back outside of the mansion and reunited with Bayul and Grace, the group decided that they should return to Eastshore to tell Talos that they had found the stolen baby in Goltorah’s mansion, and that they had evidence to show that Goltorah was still dabbling in necromantic shenanigans. The group hoped that in return for this information Talos would provide them with transport to quickly get to the auction, and that Talos would hold off breaking into Goltorah’s mansion / trying to arrest him until after the auction had begun.