Big Trouble in Little Morgoth

The first case of the Freeport Militia campaign. The three, newly inducted officers and their on-parole, "reformed" criminal are tasked with handling a simple domestic dispute. Their investigation leads them on the hunt for a drug runner at the locked down docks.

## Plot

The chapter opens with the characters being interviewed by their new Boss, Inspector Macdonald. Once the final positions are settled on, the newly-formed militia are called in to investigate a domestic dispute at the home of a troll and dwarf interracial couple.

When they arrive, the female troll is suffering from signs of illness (unfocused eyes, acne opening up into sores). The bed is lopsided and has bloody pus stains on the troll's side. They find blue stains under the clothes at the bottom of the dresser. The chest has papers and personal effects and a false bottom which hides a cloth-wrapped parcel full of shiny blue powder. Alex doesn't recognize it.

The husband says his wife Helen works long hours at the docks and is cheating on him with an orc. He doesn't recognize the track marks on her arms. When asked, Helen says she works for MacTuddle but refuses to talk otherwise.

### **Initial Inquiry at Docks**

The militia head to the docks. They meet Zane, an orc necromancer, who says he has no girlfriend. He runs the docks 11A - 15B and mentions the recent cap on the number of undead that can be in the city.

Troll ghetto???

The group goes to the dock house to see what crew are hanging around. They talk to the dock house keeper, Marvy, and learn about the boats currently in port. The boats are:

* Beverly - cheese ship, Captain Newport, crew of orcs and humans
* Troy - mining equipment, Captain Rajah(?), dwarven crew
* Noontide - corpse ship, Captain Toby, crew of orcs goblins and humans

Marvy tells them that Newport keeps to himself and seemed ill. He hasn't seen him since his arrival. He's also noticed Helen talking to Davy recently, the second in command of the Beverly. Captain Toby tells them he's training up to be a necroengineer and that Helen helped him load/unload some of his cargo. He last saw Captain Newport 2-3 days ago and described him as having "flu-ish" symptoms. Captain Rajah is drawing on a piece of paper, staring out at the ocean and refuses to speak to the group (going so far as to call the tall people "biggers"). The drawings look like accounting problems but Alex can't see much more than that.

Outside, by the Beverly, the group meets an orc who is smoking and chilling by the gangplank. He introduces himself as Davy, the first mate and second in command of the Beverly. He knows Helen and knows she didn't show up for work today. He is *vehemently* against having relations with trolls though so he is unlikely to be her secret partner. He escorts the group to his captain and they get a look at Captain Newport for the first time. He is overdressed for the warm weather, reeks of whiskey, and looks very sick (clammy skin, shivering, coughing). He is not up for questions so Alex looks around the room before they are escorted back out. He has a bed, a chest of drawers, 3 kegs of whiskey, and a single desk in the corner on which he has the ship's manifest. Apparently the Beverly, having been in port a month and a half, brought in 600 wheels of cheese and has offloaded 60 so far of the less aged ones. In the garbage has has pipe ash, cheese wrappers, a dead rat and some dried up ham. They take the dead rat.

### **At Headquarters**

Back at the office, Alex performs an autopsy of the dead rat and discovers a lot of cheese, a small piece of leather, and some blue crystals inside of it. Ganeil is suffering from some sort of malady after he sampled the whiskey found on the Beverly.

Alex recalls later that when she opened the manifest to look at it, she knocked loose a piece of paper that partially read:

Semper frigic
2-43-18
Extra Large (crc
Paid in Full
Order #1

While there, Helen's lawyer arrived to speak to her and Alex unwittingly observed that the man, an orc, was hung like a horse. She asked if he had a girlfriend and he explained that it was complicated and asked if she would speak with him off-the-record. The lawyer tells her that he knew about Helen's drug habit and had been trying to get her clean thus far unsuccessfully. He threatened the people who got her into drugs in the first place not illegally but not subtly either.

### **Back to the Docks**

On the way back, they try to acquire a warrant to search the Beverly. The judge is reluctant until Zuglash, real quick and real subtle, produces forged paperwork that states the rat was a pet and would not have been on another ship.

Armed with the warrant, Davy reluctantly escorts them on the boat while they go down into the hold to collect one of the rat-eaten cheese wheels. It def has drugs in it. Talking to the dock house owner, he identifies the partial order form as one for a large amount of ice, probably crushed. The militia arrests the captain and Davy accompanies them to the station because he wants to cooperate and figure out what happened on his boat. They put the two of them in the back of the wagon and drive to the station.

### **Autopsy of Captain Newport**

At headquarters, the captain looks years older than when they last saw him, very pale filmy eyes. Turns out *he's dead*. Alex has the group lay his body out on the table in the break room and begins an autopsy, the first ever the rest of them have seen.

The body of Captain Newport:

* Is wearing a necklace of a silver symbol (unrecognized), full winter gear, filthy underwear, and reeks of alcohol
* Has thin strips of skin and blood under fingernails
* Streaks of withered black tissue in his throat, bad meat smell
* Grey streaks running down his back of loose skin
* In the anus there is alcohol and more dead meat, clear fluid with chunks of ice (going near it makes Ganeil's magical light go out)

This man has been dead for a while, preserved with liquor and ice. When the whiskey from the boat is checked it proves to be corpse brandy, the preserving fluid for undead laborers. Someone has been speaking through the pendant he was wearing to parade around like the captain has been alive.

Talking to Davy, the militia gets a better timeline. The captain came down with illness around two weeks ago. He never saw the necklace, the liquor was delivered, and he assumes he got sick from the other captains or just at the dock house. There were signs of poison damage in the throat so it's possible he never was ill and was simply murdered.

### **Confrontation**

On the way back to the docks, there are four merchants standing in the road looking lost and Alex recognizes hints of a glamour on them. They're doing no harm so the group move on.

As they approach the docks, plumes of smoke can be seen rising from where the ships were. The Noontide is undoing the ropes to pull out of harbor and Zane is on the dock with a crushed foot, trying to keep people from going any further. He says the zombies flipped out and began attacking people. The crews of other ships are strewn across the dock, injured but not critically. Captain Toby, from the Noontide, shouts to the militia that it wasn't supposed to go this way and a confrontation breaks out. Alex attempts to get Zane, the other necromancer, to out-dominate the undead but he's too injured to manage it. Flint is thrown from the docks. Shits fucked.

Toby does not survive the encounter.

### **Post-confrontation**

On Toby's body they find a knife, a syringe full of healing potion, a spell casting focus (+1), a book, and a small clay flute. On his ship, they find a lot of the cheese that was used to carry drugs. He also has 160 gold in a safe and two slips of paper that didn't finish burning before the fire went out. The first has the same black spot on it as is on the book and some text. The other is a letter that seems to be a cover identity and plans to come here instead of somewhere else. The militia decide to divvy up the 160 gold among themselves. Quietly.

The flute, as it turns out, changes the shape of the player into some other creature individualized to their person. Alex goes first as the resident bard and turns into a fire beetle. Flint turns into a unicorn. Ganeil turns into a beautiful white rhino. Zuglash a hammerhead shark. The inscription on the side, in Celestial, makes it sound like the flute turns them into their spirit animals.

On the way back into the station, armed with a dead body and some evidence, the four of them are stopped by a person who has no discernible features and casts no shadow. They give them a bag of gold before leaving. Alex, as she stands by, feels a sudden small weight appear in her pocket. She uses Detect Magic to tell that the bag of money isn't magical but whatever has appeared in her pocket is. She decides not to mention it.

## Individual Character Moments

### **Alex**

One evening after the case closes, she inspects the mystery gift she received from their odd benefactor. It's a small glass vial with two objects floating in fluid that resemble eyes but made of clockwork. She writes a letter to her father in case she dies and drinks it. She wakes up on the floor the next day. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she sees her new eyes: green, made of clock work, and giving her instructions to say "Ox Blood" to cast True Sight. Detect Magic reveals that the eyes are capable of Divination and Illusion magic but she can't figure out how to get more instructions from them.