TOL S8 E6 - Baboon Business
General Summary
After their heroics at the Green Market, the Silver Sisters, were surprised to have been given the use of a squire by the Brotherhood of Bronze, in recognition of their efforts. This squire, named Avery Farynwel, aided the party in several minor tasks and ingratiated himself to them.
After the party went to visit their old acquaintance Kem the Starkissed at the Jackal's Den, they were surprised by Avery's sudden reluctance. Later, when a message was sent to them from Cato Durthane, whom the party had believed was under the guard of the Brotherhood for his own safety, Avery again appeared uncomfortable. Through conversation it was revealed that the young lad had been sent by the Brotherhood of Bronze to spy on them and learn why they were interested in Cato Durthane. He had gotten anxious as his handler was a doppelganger named Stiletto, and she maintianed a cover as a cortesan at the Jackal's Den. Avery confessed and relayed that Cato was being held in the Requisitions building to avoid him falling into the hands of the Frosted Gold Company. This along with the revelation that the Tahmuras monk, Reyhan, was also being held and tortured in the Requistions building, led the party to decide to mount a jail break. However, Avery's resolute morals led him to ask the PCs to not harm any of his Brothers in the breakout.
The party decided to wait until there was another moment when the Brotherhood would be occupied during the siege before moving against them. Their moment came when a weyr of wyverniers bombarded the Sorty Gate on the south wall and attacked a column of cattle that were being evacuated from the Cattle Market. After some brief combat in the blast zone of the cattle column the party reconvened at the Requisitions office.
They lied their way inside and found three individuals: a pregnant woman revealed to be the lover of Sir Ambrose; Cato Durthane, alive and in good if desperate spirits; and Reyhan, brutally tortured and disfigured. They healed the poor monk and had Avery escort the woman out of the building. They then had Cato and Coriander use seeming to disguise everyone as Bronze Brothers. Cato and Coriander of Medb escaped the premises while the Silver Sisters went out to search for Cato's notes from the excavation, which had been taken and placed in Sir Gundaric's office.
On their way to the office, Fenrir grabbed the equipment of a Bronze Brother, including an officer's Helm of Coordination. After mistakenly breaking into Sir Ambrose's office, Lyle conjured eight baboons as a distraction, before the pair fled and managed to break into Sir Gundaric's office. Despite alarming the knight's paramour, they stuffed all of Sir Gundaric's documents into their bag of holding and fled once more.
Taking the form of a giant bat, Lyle flew south, but was shot down by the city's anti-air defenses. The pair then tried to lie their way out but failed. They were very nearly separated and interrogated again, when Lyle conjured another dozen baboons to distract the Brothers and the pair fled. They skulked through the abandoned city center, coming upon a wounded wyvern and wyvernier. Fenrir dispatched them before returning to the Olive Cup.
There Reverence Damron thought they were Bronze Brothers but the pair soon left only to meet Coriander who dropped their seeming and the two sides decided to lay low. They gathered their freed companions and slinked back to the Green Market where they managed to find a bombed out alchemy warehouse. Inside the warehouse's cellar, the party found a number of healing potions and poppy milk and Cato Durthane set up a sanctum that they could use to hide and heal.
Cato then used divination magic to try to find out if anyone had learned of their attack. Their identities were thus far not revealed, though they were considered individuals of suspicion in the hours following the raid. More concerning to the city of Jeharoa itself, the attack on the Sorty Gate had been an opening salvo in what appeared to be the Qartagonian ' first major offensive of the siege. The Grand Army of the Dragon had constructed siege engines and looked to be preparing to launch a full-throated assault on the city the following day.
Cato slowly began piecing together the notes recovered from Sir Gundaric's study. They learned that Sir Gundaric had an interest in recovering a mysterious weapon known as the Triptych Flame and that he had been torturing Reyhan to learn its whereabouts. The cipher Gundaric was using was in Infernal, a language none of them spoke but Cato knew to be tied to the fiends of the Court of Mists. This caused Avery to panic, as the order to which he had sworn himself to appeared to be led by someone with fiendish ties.
Avery asked the PCs about their goals and if this information changed whether or not the party would aid in the defense of the city. After a tense exchange, the party decided they would help if they could but that they would not risk being captured again by the Brotherhood of Bronze. Avery implored them to do what they could and seek the aid of Nizar the Turnclaw, Captain of the Ashkelonian Guard, whom it appeared Sir Gundaric loathed with a passion. They would leverage their minor celebrity from the Green Market and find some way to help the people of Jeharoa, whether that be providing medical assistance or lending their arms to the defense.
With that, the party took their breath, their minds turning over the following pressing questions:
- How would they get in contact with Reyhan's friend Jubilee, whom had asked for their assistance in rescuing him?
- How can they decipher the rest of Sir Gundaric's notes?
- What the up coming siege would look like?
- Whom they could really trust within the city?
- If Lucius Pellinore's conversation with them had been genuine and if what he said was true, then what does that means for them, and their affiliation with the Orphean League?
- Should they try to verify his claims with the hero Obadiah the Wise? What are Obadiah's motives?
- Do they need to figure out how to get to the Tahmuras should the city fall and Sir Gundaric race to gain the Triptych Flame?
- How will the Tahmuras react to Reyhan's condition?
- How does the Heart Hearth connect to Lyle's dreams?
- What of the apparent conflict between the Frosted Gold Company and the Brotherhood of Bronze?
- Will the Frosted Gold Company exact revenge on them for the death of Brynhilde Frost?
Rewards Granted
- Helm of Coordination
- Sir Gundaric's notes on the Triptych Flame
- Cato Durthane's notes on the Gate of Skulls
- Sir Ambrose's letters to his mistress Gaudette
- x20 healing potions
- x80 vials of poppy milk
Comments