S4: In a Pinch

inside the pouch. She snatched them from Cuddlemuddle and scowled at him, declaring
that they would absolutely never have anything to do with him or his revolting
business.

Behind them an abrupt cough could be heard
from the front entrance to the Mattress Wholesale. In the doorway was a regally
dressed man with a long cape and a pencil mustache who was tapping his foot
impatiently. Jumping right down to business, he reintroduced himself as
Sebastapol, the landlord for the warehouse they were operating business out of
and had come to remind them that the rent of 100 gold pieces was well overdue. When
her protests were met with a threat to involve the law in settling their
dispute, Aurora decided to switch tracks and subtly sidled up to the man to
cast charm person on him. Not wanting to
push her luck with her spell when he seemed to resist her suggesting that he
waive the rent entirely, she merely convinced the man to give them an extension
and a discount. He was in no position to argue, given his state and was set on
his way as he loosely limped away absent-mindedly.

Cuddlemuddle waggled his eyebrows at the two
of them, suggesting that given their circumstances; maybe his business
proposition wasn’t so bad after all. With some encouragement from Doris, who
was also eager to make some coin of his own, Aurora sighed and rubbed her
eyebrows, agreeing to take on Cuddlemuddle as a business partner if he swore to
never steal any of the Witch Pincher’s loin clothes. Cuddlemuddle smiled and
said that he didn’t steal from friends. Aurora rolled her eyes and ordered
Doris to make some room in the Warehouse for Cuddle’s operations. Not wanting
to move anything around by hand, Doris opted to instead clear away a large
group of mattresses through the use of fireballs. The obnoxiously loud spell
drew the attention of a pair of guards who marched in and demanded to know what
was going on. Cuddlemuddle hid himself away, while Doris nervously and
uncomfortably answered some questions, casually mentioning that they were a
mattress wholesale and loin cloth selling business. When the more local guard,
Sly, began to become suspicious upon the mention of loin clothes Aurora tried
to play off Doris’s actions as him just having a screw loose. Sly said that he
had heard of many loin cloth related thefts in the area and recommended that
they report anything to them if suspicious activity happened regarding their
loin clothes.

After some quick scheming, and some disgusted
sighs from Aurora, it was decided that the three of them would steal some loin
clothes from a local morgue. Doris had the brilliant idea of heading outside
and aggressively confronting the first person he encountered to learn of the
nearest morgue, a line of questioning which would assuredly not draw attention
to themselves. Especially when the first person found was a little girl who ran
away with fear in her eyes. Unwilling to reassess his strategy, Doris turned to
next person he could find, which was an enormous shirtless bodybuilder. When
the large man raised an eyebrow at the line of questioning, Doris mentioned
that he was dying and the man softened, explaining that the nearest place was
Wilson’s Morgue a few blocks away. He also offered Doris his condolences and
hoped that he could find solace in his last few days, before wandering off to
do bodybuilder things.

Hiding out in an alleyway beside Wilson’s, the
three of them came up with a simple plan; Doris and Aurora would distract and
Cuddle would do what he did best. Doris cast a spell of invisibility on Cuddle,
giving him the cover he would need to do what he needed to do. Doris and Aurora
strolled into the reception area, which had a pile of corpses queued up on
either side of the room and were greeted coldly by the secretary who bluntly
asked them what they needed without looking up from her paperwork. After
explaining that they wanted to do a funeral service for their friend Goober,
the secretary sighed, put down her pen and explained that services like that
were incredibly uncommon in these parts and that it was probably outside of the
budget they were looking at. Cuddlemuddle tried to tiptoe past but snagged
himself on one of the corpses on the side of the wall and while struggling, one
of his loin clothes leaked out of his pouch, which drew the secretary’s
attention. Doris reacted quickly as Cuddle continued trying to sneak past by
casting a spell to snuff out all of the lights in the room. His subsequent
explanations of him having Spell Tourettes weren’t accepted by the secretary
who curtly told them to leave immediately. Not wanting to make a scene, the two
of them left and were forced to trust that Cuddle would get the job done.

In the back room, Cuddle found a shelf-based
system not unlike a row of bookshelves at a library, except with corpses draped
over lines that extended into the back of the room, apparently sorted
alphabetically via the Deadey Decimal System. Lurking around for some
particularly lucrative loin clothes, Cuddle suddenly heard the voice of an
incredibly old man who pleaded with him to help as the old man had been
mistakenly checked in and trapped beneath some bodies. When Cuddle ignored him,
he started shouting louder, drawing over a cloaked man with a glowing pair of
eyes. Cuddle hid himself at the back of the room, so that when the old man
protested that there was someone else in the room, the cloaked man simply
shrugged and assumed the old man was delusional and carried him off. Now alone,
Cuddle began to get to work, collecting all of the loin clothes that he could
salvage.

Doris, not wanting to abandon his newfound
business partner, decided to return to the front reception area of the morgue,
aiming to create a distraction. Casting invisibility on himself, he assumed he
might be able to frighten the secretary into believing there were ghosts. The
secretary immediately intuited that Doris had simply returned when the door
opened on its own and he tried to lift a corpse into the air to give the
impression of a haunting. The secretary lost her temper and moved to the door,
calling for guards on the street to come and deal with him. She was quickly met
by Sly and Leroy who promised to look into the matter with seriousness when she
mentioned that a horse headed individual had been bothering her.

A considerable amount of time had passed when
the cloaked figure returned and moved with purpose towards the row that the Halfling
was doing his work in. Moving quickly, the thief found a secret passageway at
the back of the room and with some swift sleight of hand, managed to quietly
open the door and enter without drawing any attention. Inside he found a
sketchy looking lab with corpses hanging on the wall. Looking to try to find a
way out, he tried to stack some of the lab desks on top of each other to reach
some grates leading to the roof, but accidentally knocked over some equipment
while doing so, starting a violent chemical fire. Throwing caution to the wind,
Cuddle decided to just book it past the cloaked figure and the secretary. The
secretary shouted obscenities after Cuddle when he raced past and told her that
there was a fire in the back. The cloaked figure, now revealed to be Wilson
himself, made to make chase after the thief until the secretary mentioned that
there might be a fire in the back, forcing him to let Cuddle go.

Wanting to unload their wares as soon as
possible given all of the heat on their tail, Cuddle mentioned that he had a
former business partner/ex boyfriend in the Maul that would probably buy the
loin clothes off of him. They were warmly received at the restaurant/pub known
as the Rusty Butthole and managed to sell them to the owner, Rusty, while him
and his naked chefs made food.