RQG 104 - Nice to Meat You

## Summary

The party scope out the compound as they plan the ultimate heist! Sasha is in her element, Grizzop is sneaky, Hamid is better when he's invisible, and Azu tries not to glow...

## Synopsis

The party are staking out Crank Industries, which is being guarded by some incredibly suspicious people. Sasha takes control of the party to lead the stakeout. She plans to make a trek around the complex, and tells the rest of them to stay still; Hamid can move, but only if he casts *invisibility*. She also asks Azu if she can stop glowing.

Grizzop says that he’s good at sneaking too, and proves it by asking Sasha to close her eyes and count to ten. Sasha gives him a blank stare, saying she’d never do that; Grizzop asks if she knows the game hide-and-seek, but Sasha doesn’t recognize it. He explains it to Sasha, and she agrees, closing her eyes, and Grizzop and Hamid hide. Grizzop manages to hide pretty well, but Sasha finds Hamid. Sasha re-evaluates the plan: Hamid is on a short leash unless he wants to be invisible, but Hamid says he’ll save that for later. Sasha and Grizzop will take half of the complex each, and look for entrances or anything suspicious. Hamid will stay with Azu and try to watch for the changing of the guards, but Sasha knows that only doing that over a few hours won’t give them that much of a picture. They decide to spend the rest of the day scouting around the complex. Sasha asks Azu if she can dim her pink glow, and Azu does. Grizzop takes off his armour so he can sneak better and gives it to Azu to watch over.

No one notices the party sneaking around. Azu sees nothing - she realizes that they aren’t doing extended patrols around the complex or random spot checks. Hamid is able to see the guard post, and notices that they cycle through the guards to keep everyone fresh. They’re not fulfilling the stereotype of guards, and are instead looking around for people, not playing cards, going places in groups, etc. They’re doing laps of the perimeter, and whoever is doing the lap has two dogs with them. They swap out who has the dogs, so each of the guards is familiar with them. There’s probably about ten people, with four always on the front and the rest patrolling. A delivery shows up at one point; the guards properly examine the delivery cart, and Hamid notices that it’s completely full of meat.

Sasha notices that the security is really professionally done, even if they make a couple of mistakes. The fences are all in good condition, the warehouses are more than a good sprint away from the fence, and there are staggered patrols inside and outside the fence. There’s one major flaw: there’s an outcrop close to the fencing that Sasha thinks one could either use to leap over the fence and use a warehouse as cover, or use a distraction to run a rope over the fence (the patrols are too quick to do that without a distraction).

There’s a lot of empty space between the warehouses, which is bad, but there’s not a lot of proper lighting - if it’s a dark night, they’ll be good. She also notices that there aren’t any magic users on the outside perimeter, and sees a number of warning bells placed throughout the complex - keyed differently, so that they know which alarm is going off. There is a central administration building as well; the only thing they’ve seen apart from the guards is someone coming out of the admin building and signing for the delivery. They put the main load of meat in a shed, and then deliver portions to different warehouses.

Grizzop notices that there’s a single guard who appears to be a weak link; he still does the patrol, but whenever he’s alone, it seems as though he really can’t be bothered. Grizzop also spots a lot of stuff that confirms what Sasha has seen.

Time skips to everyone reconvening at their spot. It’s not dark yet, but the sun is in the process of setting. Grizzop puts his armour into his bag of holding. Sasha explains that the guards know what they’re doing and aren’t amateurs - she asks how many times Hamid can cast *invisibility*, and he explains that he can make all of them invisible. He can cast it six times, so he’ll be able to cast it on the entire party once at the least.

Grizzop and Sasha can probably hop over the fence, and Sasha asks if Hamid and Azu would be able to walk through the front door, invisible. Sasha realizes that if she or Grizzop were able to hop in, Azu and Hamid would most likely be able to climb in the same way undetected as long as they move quickly enough. She asks how jumpy Grizzop feels, and he says not as much as she does.

They decide that they probably want to get into the admin building first, because whatever is in the warehouses is what is getting all that meat. Hamid asks if Grizzop would be able to set off an alarm on the opposite side of the compound, and he says that he probably can. Sasha likes that plan, and says that she and Grizzop will hop inside while the one less efficient guard is going around, Grizzop can hit a bell on the other side, and then they can get Azu and Hamid in, and they can dash into the shadows while the guards are distracted. The party are prepared to fight their way out, but Grizzop explains that they’ll have the drop on the guards once they’re inside anyway.

The sun sets and the moon rises - it’s slightly overcast. The party are waiting on the outcrop as Sasha and Grizzop get ready to hop into the compound. Sasha flips into the compound effortlessly. Grizzop doesn’t make it into the compound, misjudging the distance, but has time to scramble onto the outcrop. The guard is there with two dogs, and Hamid waits with a spell on his fingers. Grizzop tries again, and successfully makes it into the compound. Sasha is up a little way.

However, Grizzop makes a noisy landing, and quickly presses himself up against the base of the fence so that the guard can’t see him. The guard and dogs come running back, and another guard comes from around the side; it’s clear that they know something is up, and Grizzop hears them say that they’re going to double patrols and send people to each warehouse. They both walk off together. Sasha appears next to Grizzop, and they have a few minutes before the next guard comes up. Grizzop dashes off to shoot the bell and makes it, while Sasha gets ready to get Hamid and Azu in.

Grizzop lines up the shot so that the arrow deflects the bell and goes away rather than falling to the ground right there. It works perfectly, and the bell rings as the arrow disappears into the distance. Hamid and Azu hear the bell and start sprinting toward the warehouse; Sasha has already set the rope up, and Hamid and Azu scramble over the fence. Grizzop sees a very sharp and skilled response to the bell. The two guards on the gate don’t move, but every other guard converges and they have a quick conversation - one guard goes off in each direction, and Grizzop hears them say that they’re moving warehouse to warehouse. He heads back to the party and they reconvene outside the warehouse they jumped in by.

They decide to go to the admin building first, and Sasha gets her spring-loaded wrist sheathes ready. Grizzop gives Sasha her cloak back and puts his armour back on. Hamid casts *invisibility* on Azu, Grizzop, and himself - Sasha doesn’t need it. The party all make it to the admin building - the guard who was coming in to check the warehouses checks in at the admin building. The guard come back out of the building and heads to the warehouses, and the party dashes over to the admin building.

There’s someone awake and moving around inside, and Sasha asks Hamid if he can cast *sleep* on them. They go past the shed full of meat - they’re able to tell that a lot of it is being eaten regularly. Sasha unlocks the back door, and they all go in, finding themselves in a nondescript corridor. Hamid casts *detect magic*, but there’s none around. Sasha checks for traps, but she can’t find anything. Grizzop and Azu use detect evil, but they can’t detect anything either. Hamid asks if they want to deal with the person in the admin building, and Sasha asks if he can make the person sleep. The entire party is combat ready. Grizzop hears someone padding around on the second floor but doesn’t hear anyone else.

They all head up to the second floor. The first floor was mostly a typing area - space for a lot of administrative staff, but the desks all have dust sheets over them - the second floor has more of the same, but there are more offices. Someone is working at a desk, but keeps looking up and checking out the window. Sasha asks if Hamid can cast *sleep*, and Hamid says that he can try. He tells Grizzop to come with him, and tells Sasha to wait, since casting the spell will immediately drop his *invisibility*.

Hamid casts the spell and the person at the desk falls asleep; Hamid is no longer invisible. He goes over to the paperwork that the person had been filling out, and it’s an incident report about this evening’s events. In drastically different font underneath it, Hamid writes out that nothing happened and everything is fine. Sasha ties up the person at the desk and Azu shoves them in a broom cupboard. They have the run of the building, so they start investigating it.

The party realize that the admin building was made for a lot more people than are here. It was clearly a 24-hour operation with thousands of people, but everything is closed up apart from the floor that the person was on. They start poring through the records. There are no traps anywhere in the building, and they find more records in the basement. Most of them are written in some kind of cipher. They grab as much as they can, stuffing it in their bags of holding.

In the person’s desk on the second floor, they find a bunch of HR forms. It’s clear that they’ve laid off a number of people from the business, and the ones that are still there they’ve transferred to another branch. All of the employees in this company were goblins, but the party has only seen humans as they’ve been watching the complex. Hamid tries to crack the cipher, but fails.

Sasha asks Grizzop if there’s something about goblins that would make them harder to turn into robot zombies than humans - her and Grizzop are thinking that this entire plant could be a front for something relating to the simulacrum, namely, a zombie biomechanical upgrade to the tech that can turn people. Grizzop explains that there are no differences between humans and goblins that would matter, as meat is meat.

## Quotes

**Alex**: "Nope. Once something is a sentient race--"
**Grizzop**: "Meat is meat."
**Alex**: "Oh no! I've got to end on that!"
―Ben makes a Magnus joke.

## Dice rolls and Mechanics

* Grizzop and Hamid make a Stealth check: Grizzop gets 26, Hamid gets 17
* Sasha makes a Perception check: 23
* Azu makes a Use Magic Device check: 20
* Everyone makes a Stealth check: Grizzop gets 21, Sasha gets 38, Hamid gets 17, Azu gets 12
* Everyone makes a Perception check: Grizzop gets 22, Sasha gets 26, Hamid gets 15, Azu gets 9
* Sasha makes an Intelligence check: 13
* Sasha makes a Stealth check: 24
* Sasha makes an Acrobatics check: nat 20
* Grizzop makes a Stealth check: 14
* Grizzop makes an Acrobatics check: 9
* Grizzop makes another Stealth check: nat 1
* Grizzop makes another Acrobatics check: 22
* Grizzop makes another Stealth check: 24
* Grizzop makes another Stealth check: 22
* Grizzop makes an attack roll on the bell: nat 20
* Hamid and Azu take 10 to get into the compound.
* Everyone makes a Stealth check: Grizzop gets 11, Sasha gets 17, Hamid gets something [not said], Azu gets something [not said].
* Sasha makes a Disable Device check: 19
* Sasha makes a Perception check: 28
* Everyone makes a Perception check: Grizzop gets 24, Sasha gets 19, Hamid gets 15, Azu gets 8
* Everyone makes a Stealth check: Grizzop gets 37, Sasha gets 30, Hamid gets 34, Azu gets 26
* Everyone makes a Perception check: Grizzop gets 17, Sasha gets 20, Hamid gets 15, Azu gets 18
* Hamid makes a Linguistics check: 10
* Grizzop makes a Knowledge (religion) check: 23
* Hamid makes a Knowledge (arcana) check: 22