Mother of the Pearls: Bogus Booty

Main Story Arc; Mother of the Pearls; eta 8-10 Sessions (more like 11)
Mini Arc; Bogus Booty; eta 2-3 Sessions (more like 4)

Chapter One Finishing Ghial

By the skin of our teeth, we managed to defeat the Flesh Golems the necromancy Ghial had raised without anyone going down for the count. In truth, the Flesh Golems proved to be more resilient than Ghial did. Ghial fell long before the first golem did.
Being the good motherly figure that she is, Sahaquiel inquires about the whereabouts of Tyler. “Thirteen of us there were before Ghial, and thirteen there still is after Ghial, yet Tyler is missing. Do you know where he went?”
She looks specifically at the Kalashtar woman who joined us mid encounter. She dons the magenta of an Executioner of the Church, and is armed with a full blade. She, and one other Executioner were there with us when our ship was attacked just hours ago. She explains that she knew Tyler, and she came to deliver him news regarding family, and that upon hearing that news Tyler left immediately after the battle.
Arael finally lets her guard down. She’s sweating, slightly flush, and out of breath, which is abnormal for someone so trained in combat.
Sahaquiel, again, being the good mother figure that she is, notices this and asks her if she’s alright.
Arael, “I don’t know...I don’t feel fine, but I know that I didn’t overwork myself just now…”
Sahaquiel, “Ramiel!”
Ramiel perks up at Sahaquiel's call for her, and sees her worried over Arael. She hurries on over to see what's wrong. She finds Arael in pain, and using her knowledge in healing, Ramiel examines the wounds Arael received during battle, and finds the culprit. When those undead rats swarmed her, gnawing and scratching, Arael contracted a disease from them. She whispers to Arael about her predicament so that only she can hear her and explains that she cannot do anything about it here and now, and that she would have to take her to bed first before she can begin to heal her of this contracted disease.
Ramiel takes Arael’s arm over her shoulder and starts to walk Arael to bed, when Arael stops dead in her tracks.
Arael, “Wait a minute…”
Whilst wincing in pain and labored breathing, she takes her arm off of Ramiel and glares at Renko and starts to circle around him, sizing him up.
Renko, "What? ... Grrrrr" he growls back.
Arael, “Vyyssenyya, this man here called this dead guy there by name.” she points directly at the corpse of Ghial.
Vyyssenyya, …”Is this true? Did you know this guy?”
Renko, "Yes, I trained the man"
Ji-min, "...What?"
Renko, "Hey, we've all done things we're not proud of, and I'm just trying to make it right."
Ramiel walks over and stands by Renko, staring at the party, boldly claiming that she literally stands with Renko on this.
Sahaquiel, "Let's not forget who saved Ramiel, and a dozen other Matriarchs, and servants to the matriarchy from these God forsaken lands in the first place."
Ji-min, "Fair point..."

Chapter Two Reintroductions

A great big pyre was built to burn the undead bodies at the edge of town. We did our share playing clean up. About two hours later, just before Vyyssenyya gives us our next orders, she suggests that we all reintroduce ourselves so that we are properly acquainted and aware of each other. "New people did just suddenly pop in, and old party members suddenly just left, so I think it’s for the best." ((For fucks sake, someone from last week’s mental image of Ryujin wasn’t even Dragonborn. So.)) "Who are you, and why are you here?" asks Vyyssenyya.
Watching the pyre from a distance, (because the smell was horrible) the party goes around telling each other their story. ((This is mostly for my players to form a greater bond with each other.))
After becoming well acquainted with one another, Vyyssenyya decides to wrap things up by giving us our orders. However, before she even gets a sentence out, she was interrupted by private Gump.
"Excuse me, Miss big dragon lady! I got you a letter here from one of your friends. He gave it to me while we were still on Jenny, and told me to give it to you later in the day, and I was gonna give it to you earlier, but then we were attacked by a whole buncha undead."
Vyyssenyya, "Wha...Jenny? What's that? is that the boat?"
Gump, "Yes Ma'am. Well, boat's not really named Jenny, but captain says I can call her that anyway."
Vyyssenyya, "...Uh-huh... Well, thanks for handing me the letter Gump." Vyyssenyya tears it open and starts reading it. It was a short message, so shortly after reading it she just face palms, and says "Ohhh come on, are you stupid or something?"
Gump immediately responds, "Stupid is as stupid does Ma'am."
Vyyssenyya "Oh, sorry ... Wasn't talking to you Gump. You are dismissed private."
Gump gives her a salute, and the the kiss of peace on her ring, and takes his leave.
Vyyssenyya then informs the rest of the party that Daro and Ketsu had gone AWOL on their own accord to investigate the assassin amidst the ranks of those sea monsters who attacked us just hours ago.

Chapter Three Our Orders

Vyyssenyya, “Now that the operation to liberate Maharlika from the rebels is underway, Captain Angel was at liberty to explain the plan in a bit more detail...
Maharlika is an archipelago much like Eidolon is. She has hundreds if not thousands of islands, but there are three main islands that make up Maharlika, Shirikawa-go, the most northern main island, Guangdao, the central main island and Mindanao, the most southern main island. Normally, this quadrant would fall under the jurisdiction of Eidolon’s newest fleet, the 5th Fleet, but the 5th Fleet has been hunkered down and forced to play things defensively in Fort Fernando at Mindanao, the last bastion of Eidolonian, and Church presence on these God forsaken islands.
We, of the 1st Fleet, have been given the task of relieving the 5th Fleet, and assisting them in securing these islands with one giant naval island hopping pincer movement. We will tackle Maharlika on two fronts, the North and South. The 5th Fleet is already on the south end, and when the 1st fleet comes in from the North end, the rebels will be forced to spread out and see to their assets, which should free 5th Fleet up for the chance for a counter offensive.
Shirikawa-go has five port settlements on the Northern half of the island. Normally, an amphibious assault squadron like ours would only be tackling ports and settlements by the sea, then transport a proper army to do the land fighting, but since Maharlika is an archipelagos smaller than Eidolon, our seasoned and battle hardened troops are more than capable of securing this province without a proper land army. Plus, with the support of the mercs, the Grand Admiral was more than confident that he had enough bodies for this mission. Remember, it was the Crown of Eidolon’s wish to settle the civil uprising in Maharlika with as minimal involvement, and allied casualties as possible.
Vyyssenyya passes a sketch of the Shirikawa-go province, along with major roads, and major settlements.
Grand Admiral Dvorak will lead the assault on Kure, and the Kure Naval base that patrols the waters around Shirikawa-go. Once Grand Admiral Dvorak pins their navy down, and forces them to defend, Admiral Cortes, Captain Aguilo, Captain Navarro, and Captain Angel were to begin their simultaneous assaults on the other four port settlements.
Captain said, that our objectives would likely be the least resistant, which is why we’re only a single ship amphibious assault squadron. Captain Angel’s orders were to take the port settlement of Saganuma village. Then to proceed southeastward and take Ogimachi, and Ainokura, and to redezou with the rest of the 1st fleet at Shirikawa village. From there, with the full force of the 1st Fleet, we will island hop to Guandao, or Mindanao, depending on where the rebels concentrate their forces. Alternatively, if they don’t want to gather up and go out with a last stand, and they instead start to spread thin and play a game of cat and mouse with constant skirmishing, then our mission will likely be delayed. But I don’t imagine it will be delayed too long, Eidolonians are experts in naval, and island warfare.
Captain Angel meant to split his forces. Ogimachi is heavily garrisoned, but lightly fortified, and seems to be the place where most of the rebels have retreated to, because they know it will offer greater resistance then either Saganuma or Ainokura. Captain Angel is leaving his sailors here, with a small marine contingent to guard and repair the ship, and the resistance leader of Saganuma, Ira Gamagori and his men will stay here and guard the village. The captain felt that the sailors, a small marine detachment, and the entire resistance of Saganuma is enough to thwart off that one untouched ship that just so narrowly missed ours when we were attacked out on sea. The captain, with main bulk of the marine forces, and the mercs will then lay siege on Ogimachi village.
However, Captain Angel tasked us with an important secret mission, a mission that he himself doesn’t know the full details of. Nevertheless, my father told Angel that this mission was likely just as important as disabling the Kure Naval base. The success of this mission has a direct effect on the length and difficulty of this war.
Ainokura village is mostly under resistance control already. When news of our victory over those Kou-toas and Sahaugins at sea reached land, the rebels in Sanaguma and Ainokura scattered, and fled to Ogimachi to fortify that settlement. While they scattered about, the loyalist resistance retook their villages, and led counter raiding parties to smite the isolated and scattered rebels who were sacking everything on their way to Ogimachi. ((By “everything”, I’m referring to these “satellite buildings”, which were crucial to most medieval villages and towns and whatnot. These “satellite buildings” are buildings that don’t necessarily need to be in the main village, but nevertheless play an important role in the village economy/dynamics. For example, farms. Farms don’t tend to be in the main part of the village itself, but rather is scattered miles around the village. Things like studs, ranches, orchards, mills, fishing hamlets, cemeteries, quarries, lumber processing, etc etc etc. There’s plenty of food and supplies in those satellite buildings that surrounds a village, and the fact that they are isolated from the main village makes them prime targets of raids. Raiding was actually a very crucial strategy for medieval warfare. A huge majority of battles during medieval warfare is actually just skirmishes and raids. Open pitch battles, and full on assaults on heavily fortified settlements were actually very, very, rare. This just goes to show just how important these satellite buildings are to a medieval village.))
We on the other hand, have been given the special task of assisting the loyalists resistance of Ainokura village in investigating a secret underground rebel organization that has grounded itself somewhere deep into the heart of the village. This is despite the fact Ainokura is already mostly under loyalist control. This investigation has been going on for almost two years now, which means that the resistance had the guts and resolve to do this while they were still under rebel oppression. After almost two years of spying and investigating, I’m told that they are just about to uncover the truth to what this secret organization is, and what they have done.
Since the main loyalist forces of Ainokura are busy playing clean up around the village limits, the resistance investigating this underground organization is severely undermanned at their most crucial hour of their investigation.
And thus, our mission is made clear - To help the resistance to investigate this occult rebel organization. In anycase, even if we did fail to shed some light onto the matter, Ainokura has a large ancient cemetery that will likely require the work of the Graveguard so that we don’t wind up surrounded by rebels and undead.
Oh, I should mention, the captain originally asked for Daro, but since no one could find him, he called me instead. Regardless of Daro and Ketsu not being here, our mission still stands. We have a time sensitive quest here. That being said, I wasn’t expecting us to be attacked just now. It’s an 8 hour march from Sanaguma to Ainokura, so we can either rest now and leave tomorrow around noon, or leave now, and arrive just after dawn’s first light, and rest when we get there."
((This is mainly for you people with night and day sensitive magical items.))

Chapter Four Bogus Booty Briefing

When we arrive at Ainokura village, it was already evening. We are welcomed by the locals, but their reception is somewhat colder than the last village we were in, but with most of their resistance playing clean up, who can blame them. We’re here to work anyway, not be paraded around every town we walk through.
The particularly perceptive ones get that feeling that their being watched, I mean especially so. They casually look around and catch a glimpse of an ordinary looking man, but he had on him a red armband with some characters written on it, and he did have rather thick eyebrows, but that’s not really an uncommon trait.
Using their insight, they saw his facial expressions. He was menacingly staring at us. Fists tightly clutched, his teeth were grinding, his lips and nose were twitching with rage, and there was clearly hatred, and ill intent in his eyes...This man wanted to do us harm.
...Just before the party really has a chance to do anything about it, you guys are confronted confronted by the leader of this loyalist resistance group, Hōka Inumuta.
Inumuta, “We’ve been expecting you.” He bows to greet you guys, then shakes your hands, and pagmamanos* all of the mothers. We’ve prayed for this day to come for many years. At last we can make these whoresons pay for what they’ve done to our beloved Emperor, and my village. But we must celebrate at a different time. Quickly, to my home, I have something urgent that needs to be discussed immediately.”
((*pagmamano, is the ritual of the kiss of peace, in this particular culture. It is the act of asking for the hand of someone, usually your elders, by saying "mano po" which translates to "hand please". The elder then extends their hand, and you are then to bring their hand to your forehead. It is a sign of respect among the Maharlikans, especially in the Mindanao province, where Oathkeeping really took off.
At this point, the menacing man was no longer there.
Ryujin decides to break off from the group in secret, to try and tail the man. He heads over to where he was last at, and fortunately does find tracks. After sneakily tracking this guy around, he traces him all the way back to this brothel. This brothel sits on a lone island at a lake in the village, and the only way in and out seems to be this one big bridge. Ryujin decides not to follow the guy, but rather decides to stakeout the establishment, in secrasy.
The rest of us follow the man to the center of the village where his home is at. He had two guards posted at the front door of his own home, and two more inside. We walk in and are led to the dining room area and sat around a big round table with a rotating platter in the center of it. We each takes our seats, Vyyssenyya, kinda awkwardly sits by herself in the corner of the room. He offers hot food and drink, so nobody needs to consume rations for the day.
Once we are all settle in and have gotten all of our small talk out of the way, he peeks out his windows, then closes the wooden shutters. He then proceeds to do this for all windows on this floor, and tells the two guards in his room to do the same for the rest of the house, then that they should go and guard his family. When they left, he and even proceeds to close the two doors that led into this room.
“Let’s get down to business...What do you know?”
Vyyssenyya explains to the man everything the captain told her.
Inumuta, “I see. The captain is right, this underground organization is absolutely crucial to the rebel force’s activities. You see, when the Maharlikan rebels betrayed our emperor and assassinated him, the rebels quickly lost the support of the common people. We Maharlikans really loved our emperor, and despite some of us being a little disturbed how quickly we adopted to your Northwestern culture, and foreign religion, that was by no means an excuses to murder our Emperor, and commit mass murder. Without the support of the common people, those rebel nobles lost a primary source of their income which is needed for the war they’re waging. They went around sacking and pillaging their own lands, spilling the blood of even their own people, even going as far as to hire the Black Plague to help them terrorize and suppress us loyalists from doing our part. But you see, the problem with sacking and razing settlements and decimating most of its population is that it’s only a good source of income for one time. As the years went along, Fort Fernando kept standing and offering resistance, and so long as Eidolon’s 5th Fleet could maintain the supply route from Fort Fernando to Eidolon, they constantly had fresh supplies and even minor reinforcements. However, for the rebels, without any more settlements to pillage because they razed it all, they were running out of war funds."
Inumuta stands up, and leaves for just a moment to retrieve something under the floorboards of his kitchen. He returns with a large burlap sack, about the size of a large pumpkin.
Inumuta, “You see, In addition to bleeding us survivors dry, they came up with their own plan...to forge their own currency.”
The man places the sack on the middle of the table, and folds it down to reveal gold coins that slowly start spilling onto the platter on the middle of the table. There was probably over 200 gold pieces on the table right now, and they looked exactly like the real deal. The only off putting thing about them is that these coins looks freshly minted, but really, that’s nothing a little dirt, and mixing in with the real deal to throw people off.
Inumuta, “The underground organization here is a forgery. Forgery is highly demanding work, especially to make such plausible facsimiles. They would need a well-hidden foundry, a few dozen craftsmen, and a source of materials, all of which could be transported from elsewhere, but we’re almost certain that the forgery itself is here, specifically in the brothel.
Years ago under rebel occupation there was a time when a wagon came to our town in the middle of a stormy night. The wagon stopped at the brothel, and we briefly saw them unload the cargo. It was looted items from nearby villages. But here’s the kicker, it was only gold. Not a single gemstone, or silver object, or any other kind of valuables like arms and armor, just gold. Over the next few months we noticed that the rebels who occupied our village have been spending more and more of their money on our goods, and they’ve been taking less and less tax from us to fund their expensive war. That’s when they first started to circulate these freshly minted gold coins, and because we saw them transport the gold here, we know for a fact that they had the gold to coat these facsimiles.
We had to sneak someone from the actual mint of Maharlika to inspect the coin themselves, cause they wouldn’t let us locals leave the village without good cause. The man inspected the coin and found out that these facsimiles were just gold plated pieces of copper. It’s still worth some value, but unless we can stomp out their forgery, and confiscate all these freshly minted coins, and bring these fakes to the actual mint in Mindanao, they’re all completely useless. I take that back. They're actually dangerous.”
“I’ve two excellent spies investigating that brothel for almost a year and a half now, and after a year and a half of gaining everyone’s trust, and moving deep into the ranks of the staff, and copious amount of tedious investigation and snooping around, they think they know how to reach the forgery. but they’re severely lacking in manpower to do anything about it. My spies have reason to believe that the last batch of facsimiles are just about done, and they plan to sneak as much of it out of this village within the next two to three days. That would be disastrous. If the rebels get a hold of this gold, and start circulating it, they could hire more goons who’d delay and bog down your campaign more than necessary. Please, I need you all to help my spies, and stop the rebels from circulating these new coins. You somehow need to make contact with my spies, and infiltrate the forgery somehow. We’ve only just begun to clean up after their mess, we can’t stand to have our own lands taken from us again!”
The party starts strategizing a plan to discreetly infiltrate the brothel and make contact with the spies somehow. Their plan needs to be thorough and flexible, and they can’t just go in guns blazing cause it might scare the rebels which could make them scatter now, regardless of if the batch is completed or not.
The Radiant Mafia refuses to take part in this farce. They're certain that a brothel is the last place Ramiel of all people would want to be in, and besides, they wouldn't allow non working women anywhere near the red light district anyway, so instead the Radiant Mafia will just be performing their Graveguard duties. Vyyssenyya does insists that Ji-min and Marzluff help with the investigation this time around, as Vyyssenyya did request help from the other Executioner who traveled with them on Angel's ship.
Before the party gets into it, Inumuta informs the party important key details that he believes they should know.
Inumuta, "This establishment is an all in one, bath, brothel, onsen, and inn."
((It’s styled like a Japanese Ryokan, which means that the onsen and bathhouse part has Japanese style bathing culture, and etiquette which means and they don’t allow weapons and armor to be worn in this facility. They will ask for your weapons after you pay, and will store them somewhere, and will hand you special luxurious Yukatas for you to change into.))
((Unlike the other times I as DM stripped you of your arms and armor, your dealing with “the bad guys” this time around. Meaning, you can plan to sneak them in this time without major repercussions from law abiding characters. Just think twice before blatantly sneaking things in, cause if you get caught, you jeopardize not only yourself, but the entire mission.))
Inumuta, "Not everyone working in here is a bad guy. The rebels are working with the locals and blending in. This means that you can’t exactly go around telling every Tojo and Fuckface that your a part of the resistance, because you don’t know who’s good, and who’s bad.
Now, because this investigation launched in a time where secrecy was of the utmost importance, Inumuta doesn’t actually know what these two spies actually look like. He was the head of the resistance, and if he was caught and tortured, he can’t spill the beans on these two spies, but he does know that one spy is a man disguised as staff, and the other spy is a woman disguised as a prostitute. The two spies don’t necessarily know for a fact that you guys are the good guys either, cause the rebels have hired plenty of foreign goons before, and you could be one of them in their eyes. This is a time sensitive mission. I suspect you'd only have two days at most, and three nights before the rebels scramble with their forgeries."
((In game time only passes when I say so.))
Inumuta, "Your a bunch of foreigners, that alone is reason enough as to why everyone is very suspicious of you guys. The enemy suspects you guys are with the Eidolonians, and they suspect that you’re working with the resistance to uncover their forgery. For Bogus Booty, there'll be a custom system I invented to allow you guys to seem less suspicious so that you can blend in, and do investigation work, and still generally enjoy your time here."
(This quest had a whole custom home brew system I created where the party had a "suspicion" meter that straight up just tanked their charisma based skills, like diplomacy, bluff, streetwise, making it really hard to carry out an investigation. If that meter got really bad, then the bad guys go "oh shit, they're onto us" and scramble with as much fakes as they can. To counter this suspicion meter, I had a whole bunch of activities that they can do in the bath and brothel that will increase the suspicion meter, and allows the players to have either a neutral penalty, or even a positive bonus to their charisma based skills. The more they participated in the activities, the less suspicious they seemed.
Those activities can be viewed here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1am0_x-qgdvSNrYXIQXld9qki2eFlj8Sk0zedQ9xJlOI/edit?usp=sharing

Chapter Five Bogus Booty

The party decides to go scope the bath and brothel out, and find Ryujin staking the place out. They exchange information so that they're all up to date.
Before even coming up with a ... "plan", if I can even call it that, Ryujin Leroy Jenkins it, and decides to go in all high baller like. He gets the best bath he can get, and has all of his clothes laundered, and his armor polished clean. He then proceeds to the gambling stations and actually wins twice against the house, earning him 1g.
A few hours later, Marzluf enters the bath, and chats it up with Lin, one of the bath maids who's been working here for quite some time. He manages to leave the charming impression that Marzluff often leaves, and manages to ascertain some valuable bits of information from her.
Renko comes in a few moments after Marzluf, with two escorts, Bas and Attadrax, who he claimed were his bodyguards. Renko, being the famous mercenary that he is, did not suffer the same suspicion penalties people had about the foreigners, and in fact, due to Renko's word and reputation alone, manages to make Attadrax and Bas seem less suspicious.
Ji-min, also being a native to these lands, suffered no suspicion at all, and walked in hours after everyone else did. Being the good monk that he is, he did not get drunk, nor gamble, nor indulge in the pleasures of the flesh like everyone else did. He took his bath, then spent most of his time in the onsen, and did a little investigation before heading off to bed.
After Ryujin's streak of luck, Marzluf comes in and challenges the house, but loses. He then decides to target familiar prey. He then challenges Ryujin to a high stakes round, and ends up winning the gold Ryujin just earned. ((If you didn't read the document regarding the rules about gambling, if you step down from a challenge in gambling, then you actually take a penalty to your charisma, as opposed to a bonus.))
Eventually, Attadrax, Bas and Renko joined them, and watched Marzluff and Ryujin duke it out. Marzluf and Ryujin had gathered quite the crowd, and everyone around them was intently watching the match. Attadrax sees that one of the painted ladies among the crowd, and decides that now was his time to shine. He nails his acrobatics, and does a flip onto the table, and lands all suave like (like imagine Jeff Goldblum in that Jurassic Park pose), but utterly fails his diplomacy check to negotiate with this painted lady. So he ends up uttering something in giant, and ends up drooling in front of this woman, which absolutely scares her cause she thinks she's about to be eaten, and just runs away.
Marzluf, after beating Ryujin, challenged them all to a five way game, but Bas threatened to beat Marzluf down if he didn't withdraw his challenge, and so he did.
Renko was reluctant to join in on it, but eventually caved, as did Attadrax, having nothign better to do just been rejected.
To our surprise, Marzluf manages to win once again, earning himself quite the handsome amount of coinage. Ya win some, ya loose some.
Frustrated, having just lost almost everything he had, Renko, grabs one of the painted ladies by the arm, and storms off with her to the private rooms. He then proceeds to hatefuck this poor woman, and when he finished, pelted the remaining coins he had left at her, and went straight to bed.
Ryujin did the same thing, minus the violence.
Attadrax attempted to do the same thing, but with the woman he ended up scaring away just a few moments ago. Marzluf decided to tag along with "his buddy Attadrax" and together they found her. Attadrax attempts to apologies to the poor woman, but just ends up spilling even more spaghetti. Marzluf, rudely asks the woman how much it'd cost for her to pity fuck his "friend" over here, and the woman reluctantly answered. Marzluff flipped her the coin, and more or less just finger guns Attadrax, while making clacking sounds with his beak while moonwalking away to do something else.
But Attadrax, having a bit more class than that, apologies on behalf of his friend for being rude, and tried to explain to her that he wouldn't do it if she didn't want to. To his surprise, it was the painted lady to apologies to Attadrax for hurting his feelings. She explains that she was just initially frightened by him, but now that she looks back on it, thinks the situation is rather funny.
She lightens up towards Attadrax, then asks him "Which half did you inherit down here?" while leaning in for a kiss, and cupping a feel, to which ((word for word, what my player said)) "his boner goes full super saiyan." ((like he went on his phone and started playing the sound effect even))
((At some point in this, we completely forgot to play Gaz, so we just RPed it as Gaz just makes the instant transmission sound form DBZ, and he is with everyone before the 4 way dice game ensued. Gaz, sober as the pope, tried to investigate the 2nd floor.))
Marzluf hooks up with his bath maid, Lin, who at the time was just finishing up with Ji-min. Ji-min spent his time with Lin mostly asking questions regarding his village, and the whereabouts of his friends. He did not like what he heard.
Ji-min got himself a drink then went to the onsen, then eventually went off to bed afterwards. However, before he left for bed, he actually stayed in the bath section and investigated a bit. He found out that the walls around the baths had secret panels which opened up, and poured the hot herbal waters into the tubs. This space behind the walls was a crawl space of sorts, filled with hot pipes running up and down that transported water around. With this profound information, Ji-min heads off to bed, and Lin was finally free to speak with Marzluf.
Marzluf temps Lin with a full gold coin, to do some freaky kinky shit with him, and she reluctantly agrees to it. Gold is gold.
The two sneak off, and get as much food as they can, and get a private room, where while he's making love to Lin, who was sitting in his lap, Lin starts to eat, and regurgitate the food back into the Kenku's mouth.
Unfortunately, this proved to be too much stimulation for Marzluf, as he blew his load embarrassingly early. Lin, kinda creeped out, and feeling very awkward about the situation, returns the coin, and asks that they never speak about this ever again.
Altho, before this freaky bird sex thing happened, Marzluf managed to drop one of the King's coins in the hallway of the baths where the guards regularly patrol.
A guard does manage to pick it up, and due to the magical properties of that coin, Marzluf knew exactly where that coin was, and decides to go check it out.
It leads him upstairs, to where Gaz was investigating. He meets up with Gaz, and he asks that he comes with him, and he does.
Marzluf intuitively knows the location of where that special coin is ,and is led to the back of the establishment, were a few guards stop him and inform him that this area in particular is employees only, and beyond limits to guests.
Marzluff manages to bluff his way in, claiming that he accidentally left something in his baggage, when they confiscated it from him. The guards completely understand, and take Marzluf to the locker rooms where they store people's stuff.
He finds out that the coin was still on the person, and not in fact in his backpack, and makes a bluff claiming that the guard stole his money that he had dropped
"Finders, keepers." says the guard. "If you dropped it, then you must not really care for it do ya? How do you know that this is your coin, and not someone elses? anyway? What If I said I dropped this coin, and simply picked it up?"
Marzluf then decides to make a gamble. To prove that coin is infact his, he explains how that gold coin he picked up was not in fact a real gold coin, and is in fact is a fake. It's a special magical item given to him. It's a set of 3 gold coins that allows him to know the whereabouts of any one coin, so long as he held onto the other two, and to prove this, he bet that he could guess who had the gold coin among the guards, even if they shuffled it up while he waited outside the room.
He made it interesting, even claiming that if he lost, he would surrender 5 gold coins to the 8 of them, but if he won, he gets to have that coin back.
The guard, kinda scared at the detail of his wager, decides that it's not worth it, and that he probably was telling the truth, and flips the coin over back to him.
But Marzluf takes it a step further, and claims that the guard stole the money directly from his purse, as opposed to finding it on the ground like he actually did. He intimidates the guard, and demands to see the manager. But the guards picked up on this, and were insulted by his pathetic attempt of intimidation.
The two guards beside him attempt to grab him. He dodges one, but is caught by the second one, and they all just collectively start dragging the Kenku to the front of the establishment. Gaz just staying back and watching the show. He's not getting involved in this.
Marzluf decides to mimic the sound Ramiel made when he tried to plant the Kings on her. The whole party hears it, but ultimately doesn't really do anything about it.
They guards stop at the lobby area, and releases him by the entrance. They didn't kick him out, but they gave him a stern warning, saying, "We aren't common thugs you idiot. We live here, and are reliant on the good reputation of this establishment for work."
Guard 1, "Can you believe the guy? Not once, even while we were occupied by the rebels, people we considered out enemy, did we get complaints of stealing from anyone."
Guard 2, "Yeah man, I saw you pick up the coin. You didn't take it from his stuff."
Feeling lucky he wasn't just straight up thrown out, Marzluf decides to call it a night, and heads off to bed.
He later awakens in the twilight hours, the time that’s somewhere between the dead of the night and before the dawn’s first light, needing to take a piss, and get something to drink. He heads out of his room to where he can relieve himself.
Typical of traditional Shirikawan architecture, the rooms are on the outer edge of the building, and from the second floor, Marzluf steps outside and gets a good view of the outside. Ainokura’s Bath and brothel is restless. There are plenty of people out and about even at this hour. Immediately near you, there are a few men hanging about on the railing, enjoying the view of the lake, having a few drinks, and smoking their pipes, and chatting it up with one of the painted ladies, but without her makeup. Even in their off duty time, they like spending time in this bathhouse and brothel, which is a stark contrast to most other brothels we’re used to seeing. The steam from the bathhouse below is still rising, so you can safely assume that even at this late hour there are still customers enjoying the herbal hot waters this establishment has to offer.
Instead of tending to his needs, Marzluf decides to annoy the guys who were hanging about. With as much social awareness of an autistic child, Marzluf overstays his welcome with them quickly, and they leave to talk with their lady friend in private.
At this moment, Attadrax awakens, and steps out, for he too needs to take a piss, and get something to drink.
They find each other, and Marzluf shoves him back into his room so that they can talk in private. Unfortunately Marzluf thought he was onto something with those men he annoyed, but it ended up just being bullshit. This agrivated the half orc, as he really needed to take a piss, and Marzluf wouldn't tell him where the washroom was.
Eventually, they head out of Attadrax's room, and decide to go look for the washroom.
However, just about as the two of them reach the corner of the hallway they were in, they overhear a conversation taking place. The person speaking was speaking in a loud and deep voice. They weren't yelling or anything, just regularly speaking, but their vocie filled the room when they spoke, much like Vyyssenyya does, since she is a large creature.
Marzluf peaks around the corner to find a giant, yet dwarfish woman, with an escort of two young men, almost boys, who looked like twins.
The best way to describe this woman was that she was a giant, who suffered from some form of dwarfism. You'd think that make her normal sized, but it didn't. Her proportions were all off. She had a gigantic head in proportion to her body. Most adults are about six to seven heads tall, but this old woman was just barely two heads tall in proportion to her body. Her body proportions were even larger than Vyyssenyya's but she only stood at about five and half feet tall. She had wrinkly skin, long ears and white hair, testament to her age. She had a large pointed nose, and a giant boil on her forehead between her eyes. She wore a western style blue dress, and had these large golden earrings the size of apples, and gemstones on each of her fingers the size of walnuts.
The two young men, who still looked like boys to be honest, looked to be twins. They are wearing a white shirt, with slits on their shoulders, and a purple belt, with baggy pants. One was wearing red pants, the other was wearing blue pants.
The giant dwarf woman is speaking to a familiar looking man. The man had a red armband, and thick eyebrows, it was the man from earlier who was menacingly spying on them when they entered the village. Since Attadrax was here, he could understand exactly what was going on since he spoke giant. Unlike the woman, when the armband man with the thick eyebrows spoke, his voice did not fill the room, nor sound exceptionally deep, due to his size. The two are speaking back and forth about paying the people in the boiler room their wages for the week, while everyone else just passes by, some ogling at strange giant dwarfish woman. When they finish their conversation, and the giant dwarfish woman enters the elevator. Before entering she tells her two escorts to halt. “Let me go first” she said, and the two boys say in unison “As you wish Yubaba”. In common tongue now, Yubaba says to the man with thick eyebrows, “Just wait right here, I’ll have one of them hand it off to you.”. The man just nods in acknowledgement and takes a seat near by.
Yubaba goes first, and her two escorts stay behind and wait for the elevator. In addition to the two guards who are always by this elevator, and the man sitting down, there are a total of five people in this room, excluding the people who are just using this hallway as transit.
At this point Marzluf and Attadrax notice the smell of perfume. You know that this smell has been lingering a while already, but for whatever reason it just didn’t grab your full attention until now. You turn around to investigate the source of that smell and find a beautiful young Eladrin woman painted with makeup, wearing a kimono, and carrying an umbrella around. She had fair skin, and platinum blonde hair, and was considered a foreign beauty around here.
“Finally you’ve noticed me. The name’s Yatsuha”, she says, as she gives you a courteous bow. “That’s my boss, the bathhouse superior, Yubaba. She comes from a lineage of giants, but has developed some kind of dwarfism in her late years. She’s quite the character. trust me, you don’t want to deal with her. Unless your a paying customer that is. The elevator dings, and the two young men enter it.
Yatsuha, “Hey, your foreigners aren’t you? What brings you all the way over here in this part of the world?”
The two are kinda spilling their spaghetti here, but Yatsuha doesn't seem to mind.
The elevator dings again and one of the young men, wearing red pants steps out and tosses the man with the armband man a a small leather pouch that made a familiar jingling sound. The sound of money that is. Then, the armband man starts heading off.
The young man says, “Oh Kamaji, keep up the good work, ok?”, The armband man just raises his hand up in acknowledgement. The young man, turns around to head back into the elevator, but before he actually steps in, he catches sight of you three in the corner of his eyes. He just smiles and waves, and Yatsuha returns the gesture.
Yatsuha, “That's Kohaku, a friend and coworker of mine. We go back quite a ways, more than painted lady cares to admit really..."
Yatsuha eyes Kamaji as he starts walking away.
Yatsuha, "Hey, I gotta get back to work. You and your friends come look for me later OK? Maybe me and my painted friends can rock your worlds later.”
Attadrax finally is able to go to the toiletries and relieve himself, but Marzluf decides to tail Yatsuha.
He follows her and finds her leaned up against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, spying on Kamaji.
Marzluf returns the gesture, and sneaks up on her. Just when he was behind her, he says "Still haven't noticed me huh?"
Yatsuha was surprised, but more so concerned weather or not Kamaji noticed them.
Yatsuha, goes "Shhhhhhhh" as she places her fingers in front of her lips.
The two of them start whispering to each other.
Marzluf, "What's going on, why are you tailing him?"
Yatsuha, "Oh...uh well, I've had my suspicions about that guy for a while now.... he just gives me the creeps..."
Kamaji, this whole time was speaking to the foreman, who hands people their bath tokens ,and their locker numbers. After speaking with him briefly, Kamaji heads off once again, and Marzluf can tell that Yatsuha really wants to follow him.
Before Yatsuha can really do anything, Marzluf starts sneaking his way towards Kamaji, using his surrounding, and the people in transit to his advantage. He nails his stealth, and follows Kamaji to one of the gardens.
Yatsuha, who was really getting into it, was preparing to mimic his movements, and actions, but luckily remembered that she works here, and doesn't really need to sneak around. She just casually walks over to the garden.
She finds Marzluf, but no Kamaji.
Yatsuha, "Wha- where did he go?"
Marzluf, "I don't know."
Yatsuha, "...Wait a minute, before we continue, I need to know who you are. You're not rebels are you, your with the Eidolonians right? Can you prove that at all? You look like mercenaries, don't you have contracts?"
Marzluf shows her his contracted, and finds that it was signed by the High King of Eidolon himself.
Yatsuha then agrees to work with Marzluf, and any of his friends. Yatsuha finds some "do not enter" signs and places it at the entrance to the garden, so that no one contaminates the scene. She then stays behind to guard the scene and Marzluf tries to find the rest of the party, but just couldn't find wherever Ryujin went off to.
He gathered Renko, Attadrax, Bas, and Ji-min, but failed to find Ryujin.
He briefly explains the situation to his mates. (at least the ones that could be found) and asks Yatsuha if there was nay way she can get their party's gear from the locker room. and the party starts looking for tracks in the garden, and found that the freshest tracks led to the outer wall. On closer inspection, the wall pushed in, then sideways, revealing a secret door that led to a long stair ways that seem to lead to the bottom of the establishment. Yatsuha comes back with everyone's gear, and the party gears up before heading on.
The party splts up, half go down the stairs, half decide to descend from the vertical crawl space in the walls that had those pipes that carried hot water. They figured that those pipes had to lead to the boiler room. They dodged hot pipes on their descent.
The other half decides to take the long stair way down, and more or less go unchallenged... until they reached the last few steps that is. The last steps that led to the boiler room are broken, and they had to jump the last three steps.
Fortunately, they all make it just fine.
They find a door that leads to a dark room, filled with many pipes, values, and steam. It's the boiler room, where the bathhouse gets all of their hot water from. Pipes pump water from the lake, then is heated in this room before it is pumped elsewhere.
The room was very loud, and filled with a droning ambient sound so, it was fairly easy for the party to sneak around, and even talk to each other. They peak into the room adjecent to their and find Kamaji overseeing a bunch of workers shoveling coal into the furnace.
Marzluf comes up with a brilliant plan to call Kamaji out in the voice of Yubaba, since he could mimic her voice (being Kenku and all).
Kamaji was quick to respond, and orders her underlings to get back to work, as he went to answer to his boss.
He was then jumped by Attadrax and Bas, who gag him, and bind him up. After the party collectively threatens him with meanacing Jojo poses, Kamaji caves, and becomes a subject of their interrogation. He informs the party that there is in fact a forgery here. He tells them that the forgery is beneath the boiler room, and that the only way there was through one of the false pipes. To get to this false pipe, they had to climb the pipes around back outside the boiler room till they find a false entrance in one of the pipes. Marzluf then breaks Kamaji's leg, immobilizing him. They decide to backpack him, and leave the boiler room, without aggravating any of the people in here.
They find those pipes just outside the boiler room, and begin to climb across them around back to the back of the bath and brothel. They all make it, except for Marzluf who fails his skill checks here, and goes splooosh into the waters below. He decides to back to the entrance and get Yatsuha, who stayed behind and was making sure no one entered the garden.
Deciding to go on without Marzluf, the rest of the party decides to continue on without him. Lucky for them, it was the early hours of the morning, so the forgery was still not operating, otherwise the pipes you crossed over would have been too hot to climb. This one pipe among the dozens in the back of this bath and brothel had a false cover that pushed in, allowing access to the pipe. You really wouldn’t have noticed the cuts made on this pipe unless you were just a few feet from it, so anyone on a boat from the lake could not see anything wrong with this pipe. Imagine cutting open a tin can 75% of the way instead of 100%, so it still held in place, you just have to carefully bend it back and forth as to not ruin it. Looking into the pipe, above you was a checkered grating with a thick weave of rope tied to it, enabling the ascent and descent of people, and goods.
As you descend down the pipe further from whence you came, your vision became more obscured by darkness. You landed on something that just felt like sandbags, placed there to probably cushion one’s decent. Although you cannot see them, Kamaji did say that some of the pipes in the boiler room were fakes. They did not pump water, they pumped fumes, fumes from the forgery. Smiting these facsimiles require fire, and that produces fumes. What they have here is the perfect coverup. They say “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” but in this case, that sentiment was a part of the deception. They figured, the best way to hide the fumes from the forgery was to hide it in the fumes that came from the boiler room to heat the bath waters. These sneaky bastards worked when the bath was most active as to not draw any more attention to them.
When the authorities and their spies eventually came looking for the smoking gun, they found the smoke, but no gun, and it baffled them for almost a year and a half. They just weren’t in a position to interrogate and or torture everyone who worked here...at least not while the rebels were still about. (Cause remember, it was only recently this town was liberated. There's still a lot of chaos as the rebels are sacking and looting those satellite buildings around Ainokura, so the authorities have their hands full leading counter raid parties against the scattered rebels. It was amidst this chaos that these guys decided to wrap up their underground operation.)
The false pipes from the boiler room that lead to the forgery room carried with it a lot of sound. Which is why, despite not seeing them, you can still hear a muffled version of the ambient sounds the boiler room makes because the sound travels through the pipes really well. Other than that, you don’t think you can hear anything else... It’s dark and dank down here. Even if you were to place your hand right on your face, you’d still not be able to see it. And aside form the sandbag, er, alleged sandbag, cause I mean, you don’t know for sure, the ground feels like you’re stepping on natural earth, as opposed to, you know tile, wood, or carpet. You guys are just standing in the darkness.
They light a torch.
First thing you can tell is that you are in a cold dark dank cavern beneath the bath and brothel. This place is small for fighting effectively, especially with a party this big, and an unknown amount of potential enemies. North and west of you guys are the pipes from whence you came and that surround this particular corner of the building. Just south of you guys, is a wooden post, with some sorta metal plaque posted on it.
On closer inspection the plaque is very old and worn out. There’s a ton of what looks like claw marks on it. It makes it hard to read the plaque, if even there was anything written on it in the first place.
You follow the path ahead of you. The room you were in narrows down and leads to another portion of this cavern. This cavern is ever so slightly lit up. Dim light emanating from the north end of this room. It illuminates what looks to be a few anvils, chisels, hammers, tongs. Looks like smiting equipment.
As Gaz is sneaking around in the darkness he hears someone call to him from the darkness. “Who goes there?”. Gaz stands still and says nothing. "I can still see you." and the voice starts to describe what Gaz looks like. Around this time, Renko steps in with the torch, as does the rest of the party.
From the darkness, these guys step into the light, with squinted eyes, and their arms and hands over their faces. They look poor, and like they’ve been living off the bare essentials for a long time. They are certainly dressed in the bare essentials. None of them had footwear, many of them were bandaged up, and they were dressed in loose and ragged clothing, kinda like ponchos, with just a simple rope around their waist as makeshift belts so that their clothes do not drag or get caught up on anything they are interacting with. Nothing out of the ordinary other than that. Some men, some women, some humans, some dragonborn, a few eladrin and elves. You get a good look at them, and they get a good look at you.
“Kamaji? Ha. ha! Hahahaha!" they all start laughing wildly at the sight of Kamaji in his current state. "Wait, hold on, we’re not with them. We’re from the actual mint of Maharlika. They kidnapped us, and forced us to work here against our will for a few years now. Our senpais were killed for refusing to work with them, and our peers braver than us were killed for trying to mark these facsimiles. Please… we had not seen daylight in years…has the revolution begun? Has our Emperor retaken these lands? You must tell us!”
Renko affirms them that indeed the revolution has begun, but unfortunately the emperor has been killed.
Kamaji looks like he wants to say something, but the party doesn't allow him to say anything.
The party asks where the gold is, and the artisans show them the gold. 12 bags in total, each holding about 500-600 gold coins each.
The party took a while deciding what to do. They wanted to move the gold so that the bad guys didn't know where it was even if their cover was blown. They decided to hoist the bags of coins up, and just drop it into the lake, where it'll likely anchor down to the bottom of the lake just fine and dandy.
Bas fits as much as he could in his bag of holding, and the rest of the party decides to just carry the bags of coins out.
Halfway out, one of the artisans strikes the pipes in this room. The sound produced from this travels up into the room above. In the brief moment this happens, you look back at the artisan who did this and notice that he no longer looks anything at all like he used to. In fact, none of them do. You now find yourselves surrounded by...little children it looks like. Red-skinned kids, with two pointed horns protruding from their foreheads, and they have sharp teeth and claws. They pull out an assortment of firearms from their loose and baggy clothing, and aim them at you guys.
In an absolutely cute and adorable voice, like the loli onis are looking at you guys with the >///< eys and say, “Give it up! We are the descendants of the exiled oni demons of the Tsuda clan of Ainokura., and we have you… " she accidentally just drops her gun and pauses mid sentence.
Renko, "No, go ahead pick it back up."
Flustered, she picks the gun back up ”...surrounded!” From the darkness behind you guys you hear the sounds of even more guns being cocked. “And soon, there will be even more of us down here!”
Renko, "Wait a minute....what's going on here?"
"Your putting that gold back is what your doing!"
Renko, "No."
They enter combat.
Ji-min tries to block neck the room from whence the party entered, the one with the wooden post in it, but is shoved out of the way by these little buggers. All eight of them unload their rounds on poor Attadrax, and he goes down for the count. Next, these little buggers tried to devour them, which gave them major penalties to their saving throws. These little oni's attacks with their claws that caused slow, and powers that caused dazed.
These little loli onis were deceptively tough for looking like little children.
The whole party in general is surrounded and being outflanked. They end up bloodying one of the oni lolis and she gives them one last warning to surrender. But Bas kills one of them, and so the rest of the oni lolis decide to fight to the death.
All the while this was happening, Marzluf, eventually found Ryujin, and rallied Yatsuha. They decided on what to do next. They concluded that it was probably a bad idea to go and get Yatsuha's partner, and that they should catch up with the rest of them.
On their way down to the boiler room, the doors to the boiler room bust open, and Marzluf finds these red loli oni demons storming out the door. Marzluf and Yatsuha succeed their stealth checks, but Ryujin straight up just clown shoes'd it. The oni loli turn to face them. One bull rushes Marzluff, knocking him off the stairs, and back down to the waters again.
Seeing that they were outnumbered, and didn't have a proper defender with them, it'd probably be best that they just jumped off anyway, so Marzluf yelled for them to jump off. Yatsuha did this, but Ryujin did not, tryign to diplomacy his way out of this situation. The oni lolis just look at Ryujin all confused, then just pull their guns on him. He takes a few pistols to the face before he decides to just jump off too.
Back to the main party, they were kind of getting their asses kicked, except for Bas who just absolutely beasted on these kids. When things started to look bad for the onis, one of them tells one to make a run for it, and inform the bathhouse superior, and she takes her leave. The party was too engaged to do anything about it.
Eventually the reinforcements from the boiler room came down, to bring even more smack on the party.
Kinda pissed off at this point for missing out on all the action, Marzluf, Yatsuha and Ryujin are kinda just standing all mad, and soaked at the entrance of the bathhouse. Everyone seems to be giggling and laughing at them as they enter and leave the place. They try to make it back down, when all of a sudden Marzluf crosses paths with one of those little red buggers. They just kinda lock gaze, and are both acting like frozen deer caught in headlights.
Marzluf barely gets a word out, before the little decides to runs away. Luckily, Marzluf rolled high in his initiative, and got to make a few attacks. He blows a daily, but misses. He spent and action point, and blows another power, but also misses. He spend the rest of his actions aiding Ryujin's attack.
The little demons starts running into the bathhouse, past the lobby and up the stairs.
When it was Yatsuha's turn to shine, she double moved, and spent an action point to use her power, "Shuriken to the gut" which immobilized the little bugger.
Marzluf and Ryujin catch up and unleash hell on the poor oni, killing her.
Naturally this alerted the guards, and by the time they showed up, they had already killed the little demon.They ask Marzluf what had happened, and he begins whispering with Yatsuha, asking if these guards can be trusted in the first place. Yatsuha was fairly certain that at least most of them must be trustworthy since none of them had gone to the bathhouse superior upon seeing their own kind being slain.
Agreeing with her, Marzluf claims that his friends were down in the basement, fighting even more of these little demons, and they they had to get down there quickly. Before going, the boss of the guards tells one of them to inform the bathhouse superior of what has happened, and desperate to get rid of Ryujin at this point, suggests that Ryujin tag along with the guy.
They eventually show up, and arrest the remaining oni. Marzluf and Renko kept torturing them, despite them surrendering, Renko actually kills one in captivity.
The party tells the guards that they found a total of 8 bags only, and so the guards take the gold back to Inumuta, along with Yatsuha and Marzluf to keep an eye on them.
The rest of the party stays behind to discus something when the guards left.
There were in fact 12 bags of fake gold, not 8. There were still some in Bas' bag of holding, and they were deciding whether or not those guards could be trusted. While they argued about it, Bas just decides to deliver the bags himself, along with Yatsuha and Marzluf.
After delivering the rebel captives and the fake gold to Inumuta, the party returns to the bathhouse to meet up with the rest of the party who stayed behind...only to find Yubaba, and two large oni creatures standing at the top of the bathhouse balcony. Yubaba stands between her two goons, and they have that one guard bound, blindfolded, and gaged, along side Ryujin, who was in a similar state. One oni, Haku, had a large club raised over his head, ready to bring it down on the poor soldier, while another oni, Kohaku, had his large nodachi raised up, ready to chop off Ryujin's head.
Even more of those red little loli oni came up to Yubaba from behind, and they said "Yubaba, we caught them!" And they bring forth to the front of the balcony Lin, Yuki, Miyako, and Haruno, the painted ladies whom most of the party had slept with.
A wide smile from cheek to cheek grows on Yubaba's face. She pulls a blunderbuss from one of the oni's backs, and starts waving it around, saying, “My poor babies… I should execute half of these hostages on principle alone… But I’ll give you one chance to make this right. Return the bags of gold to me, and I will release these hostages unscathed."
Marzluf decides to argue the semantics of the situation, asking her when precisely when she would want her demands honored. Having heard enough of him, Yubaba blasts Lin's head off with the blunderbuss. A pink cloud forms, and rains down bits of her skull, brain, and blood down on the party below. Yubaba then declares her ultimatum. "Within the hour, if you do not come back with that gold, then I will execute more!"
However, Marzluf decides to push his luck. Using his expert skills in diplomacy, he makes a reasonable request of Yubaba. "As a sign of good faith, release us that one hostage" as he points are Ryujin. Yubaba gives it some serious thought. She has more hostages anyway, so she couldn't think of a reason why she'd deny this request. After all, in a hostage situation, you must be true to your word, and show that you can be reasoned with, else no one will parley with you. They cut Ryujin's bindings, and take his blindfold off, and release him.
The party decides to go back to Inumuta. Marzluf and Renko explain the situation to Inumuta, but claimed that the work they were contracted for is finished, and that they wanted their pay so that they could leave. Inumuta, and the rest of the party give the two a flabbergasted look. Attadrax and Ji-min state, that while their contracted work was indeed done, that they were not cool with leaving things like this. Quick on his feet, or perhaps it was his intent from the beginning, Marzluf makes a comment suggesting that they'd take care of this situation, if Inumuta was willing to pay more. Inumuta, not really having a choice, offers to pay them triple if they killed the traitors, and rebels remaining.
The party then spent the next 30 minutes trying to come up with a plan. At first, they thought of filling the bags up with rocks, but finding enough rocks to fill 12 bags in 30 minutes, was cutting it close. Eventually, Ryujin suggested that people hid in the bags. Yatsuha liked Ryujin's plan, claiming that her partner Kohaku would likely be the one sent down to investigate the bags, since Marzluf sucessfully negotiated the release of Ryujin, meaning that Kohaku was the only oni there who was not puppy guarding a hostage. Eventually, Ji-min and Renko decide to hide in the bags, and just for good measure, put a few pieces of the fake gold in half the bags. Additionally, as a fail safe, the party only brought half the bags with them, and Inumuta would hide the rest of the bags.
Confident in their plan, they carry it out. They come back with their wagon, and six of the twelve bags with them. In summary, one bag contains Ji-min, and another contains Renko, and all of the six bags have a few pieces of fake gold in them. When the party reaches the bridge that leads to the bathhouse, Marzluf says something along the lines of "Here we are, and here's the gold!" as he grabs a handful of the gold and drops it back into the bag. "Send someone to check it out yourself if you don't believe us."
Yubaba looks around, and sure enough, she sends Kohaku to check it out, just like the party had anticipated.
As Haku comes down to "inspect the gold" Marzluf uses his special Kenku powers to whisper something into Haku's ear as he walked by. "Just play along with it." he said. Haku winked his eye in acknowledgement, and since he had his back turned to the bad guys, none of them saw that.
Kohaku pretends to look through all the bags, even the ones in the wagons, and gives Yubaba a thumbs up.
Ryujin, using his expert skills in diplomacy was able to successfully bargain with Yubaba. They agreed to release one hostage for every three bags of gold Kohaku brought back. Kohaku then took the first three bags of gold, the ones containing Ji-min, and Renko, and brings them up the elevator, into Yubaba's office, then takes his leave to get the rest of the bags. Renko and Ji-min were quick to investigate Yubaba's office. Unfortunately, this woman is all about business, and material wealth. Other than real gold, and a few gemstones, Ji-min and Renko couldn't find anything to blackmail Yubaba with. Renko and Ji-min were not thieves, so they decided not to steal anything.
The two of them decide to head back down, when they run into Kohaku. Kohaku just stares at them, without saying anything. Renko asks "How many bags have you delivered already?" and Kohaku opens with mouth to reveal that his tongue has been cut out. He then holds out six fingers to answer Renko's question. They decide to head back to where Yubaba was on the second floor of the bathhouse, and find that Marzluf and Ryujin are stalling for time. They decided to start a ruckus by starting a pretend fight. Their performance was truly stellar. Their acting was so method, it's almost like they really were about to start fighting each other. Anyway, Yubaba was completely distracted by this fight among them, so much so that she and her lackey's failed to notice Kohaku, Renko, and Ji-min sneaking up on them. When they got close enough, they pushed Yubaba over the 2nd floor balcony ledge. She was so distracted that she failed to grab on, and hit the ground hard, and separated from her troop.
The bathhouse guards, and the party on the first floor all swarm to Yubaba, and went full on Brazzers on her. By the end of the second round, Yubaba was already bloodied, and had all sorts of penalties and conditions stacked on her that just made it difficult for her to really do anything. She tried to escape, but Yatsuha had struck Yubaba with her signature "Shuriken to the Gut" technique, which immobilized Yubaba.
The half-orc Attadrax manage to land almost 50 damage on Yubaba by himself, when he eventually got to her, but ultimately, Yubaba would be slain by Marzluf, who put a crossbow bolt straight between her eyes, right into her boil, which sent the puss splattering everywhere on the people in front of her. Yubaba’s corpse then drops hard, face first into the ground, and the bathhouse guards stampede over her corpse to reach the Kohaku, Ji-min and Renko who were upstairs duking it out, outnumbered and outflanked by the remaining oni.
Once Haku noticed that the guards were closing in on him, he decides to fuck off. Ryujin saw this from the floor below, and "heard the voice of God, who told him to attack Haku", but clown shoes'd it up. Haku, unchallenged and unimpeded in his escape attempt was able to fuck right off, to live and fight another day. He just began to hover in mid air, and hoverd himself into the lake, and clumsily fell in, using the water to cover up his escape.
Renko decides to make an intimidation check on the remaining loli oni. He fails his intimidation, but because of the exact wording he used, he asked them a question, in which they still responded to. Renko said something along the lines of “Are you sure you really wana go on with this?” in which the loli onis responded with, “Will you spare us if he lay down our arms?” The party agreed. The remaining oni retracted their claws, and put their hands up in the air. The party had a careful eye planted on these little buggers, and made sure to line them up against the wall to make sure they wouldn’t try anything funny.
That appeared to be the last of them. One guy escaped, but the rest of them were either slain, or captured. And only one hostage was (ahem, needlessly) killed during the entire situation. While the party definitely took the hard route by killing the loli onis in the encounter before this one, because they had done that, there just weren’t enough of them left to win a fight against the party, and nine other private security guards. The oni knew that, which is why they resorted to to hostages to get what they wanted.

Plot type

Story Arc