Well, We'll Well
Berta Pryya has a small well in her backyard. Lately, she's been losing sleep because she keeps hearing noises coming from the well. She thinks some local teens are responsible because she cracked their heads together a few weeks ago when she caught them shoplifting. The way she describes it, she suspects they've been tossing heavy objects into the well, but she's been unable to catch them. She thinks she heard a pig squealing down there about a week back (during Oumghui).
The next day, Berta cornered the boys and warned them to knock off the shennanigans or she'd let them have it. But the next night the disturbing noises were back, and worse, sounding like a goat or lamb was stuffed down the well. In the morning Berta caught up with the delinquents and gave them a thrashing, warning them she wouldn't hold back next time if they didn't let her get some sleep. After a hard night of drinking Berta collapsed into bed but immediately it seemed someone was dropping a sack of cats down the well. She raced downstairs to catch the teens in the act. Instead, by the time she got down there, they were gone and so was the noise. She went back upstairs and polished off another bottle of rum before mercifully passing out. Ever since, she's been drinking herself silly every night hoping to at least sleep through any further disturbances.
Then, night before, she woke up from a drunken blackout and skipped running down the stairs and jumped out her second-floor window instead hoping to catch the pair red-handed. She saw something disappearing into the neighbor's yard and followed them over the fence, across their garden and into the lot beyond where she lost them. She paid her tormentors a visit agin yesterday and was just about to trounce them again when two Town Patrol patrollers showed up (quite strange given Berta lives in the Salt Slums, which is notable precisely for its lack of Patrol presence). After an unnerving confrontation with the Patrollers, she was warned in no uncertain terms to leave the boys alone or else.
Frustrated, Berta tried to appeal to her neighbors, but strangely all of them swore up and down they hadn't heard a thing. She's in a genuinely sorry state at this point. She's angry at the boys for getting the best of her, she's genuinely scared she might be pissing off the wrong people and worried that she might be losing her mind a little. She has no hard evidence of anything and even though she knows the boys are responsible, they seem to have a knack for weaseling out from her wrath. She's exhausted, drunk and sick from binge drinking, and just wants to get a good night's sleep.
If the PCs talk to the boys, they'll insist they had nothing to do with any of the things Berta is accusing them of doing. They'll claim they weren't shoplifting and that Berta doesn't even work at the shop where she kicked their asses the first time. According to them, she went nuts when they were picking up some items for their parents and then screamed at them a week or so later out of nowhere and in public—something about making too much noise or maybe stealing from her well? Then the next day she shows up again out of nowhere and beats the shit out of them. At that point they were really scared for their safety and they happened to know a couple of Patrol officers. They hired them to act as bodyguards on their off hours, and lucky they did! Those guys saved them a third undeserved ass-kicking. They don't know what her problem is, but if the PCs can convince her to back off, they'll give them the saved wages they had earmarked to pay for the rest of the week's protection from the Patrol guys.
If the PCs talk to the neighbors, they'll act worried that someone as handy as the PCs would be working for or with Berta if they come on her behalf. They all say she's become completely unhinged lately, beating up local kids for fun, staggering drunk all over the block, crashing through people's property and screaming into the night about invisible animals. She even went door to door yesterday, drunk as a skunk, trying to get people to admit to having heard disturbances during the night. Of course the neighbors all told her they hadn't heard anything, they had heard plenty of racket at night for weeks—Berta!
The Town Patrol officers confirm the boys' story as far as it goes, but if the PCs mention that they were offered the rest of the week's wages to convince Berta to lay off, they will become incensed and potentially even hostile.
If the PCs decide to investigate the well, they will discover a cavern below in which several creatures have made their homes.
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