S2 E10: The Many Bargains to be had

In which everyone wants to make a deal, because everyone knows too much, and so everyone is now a liability.

• Tatiana is in a recruitment frenzy, though she can't find the con artist magician. The flamboyant minotaur bard Finby is, in the end, uninterested in helping, though he mentions he actually owns the bar. Galadrion St. Michel accepts the deal of 50 gold a day, plus whatever they find, they split.
• Cobalt makes some headway witht he guild and finds out about another shipment of glass and metal, which he decides to infiltrate in the guise of a customs official, with Tatiana and Galadrion tagging along as his enforcement. Unexpectedly the shipment is picked up by a skiff manned by a pair of Thri Kreen cajuns, with an outhouse/conning tower marked with the hive logo. On board, they find nothing terribly illicit other than some kind of ink vials and weird goop-food, as well as toasted mealworms. The Thri-kreen talk Tatiana into trying Balut, which is, well,Balut.
• They land at a ramshackle half-sunken building with the same logo on the door, and find a hidden passage to a second-floor hallway, tilted and damp but otherwise kitted out with ostentatious decor. A gnome guard eyes them suspiciously as they came up through a secret door that's secret from both sides - evidently a bug out door for escape that had been unceremoniously blocked by the Thri Kreen boatmen at the other end.
• Eldara, meanwhile, had a long but ultimately fruitless talk with Doctor Guggins. She was able to see her sister in a state of suspended animation, and considered switching places but opted instead to perform a small service in return for - if not her siser's release, at least consideration, and the advancement of 'the plan' which will lead to her sister's release earlier than otherwise. Some details are worked out - in the place she arrives, go to the end of the hall, knock twice and ask for 'Rupert". She's then teleported into the very hallway where Tatiana, Cobalt and the hired paladin are about to confront the gnome.
• Tatiana sees her: Hooray! You're rescued! But she really isn't - she really, really is not.
• Rupert turns out to be named Ambrose, but not really; with reverse hands, clearly Ambrose is a Rakshasa. learning of Guggin's little favor, he disagrees with the idea, but his high Charisma makes him very hard to read. Maybe he truly believes they should spare the Succubus, maybe he's only fostering discord - or maybe he has his own plans? But one fact remains, the Succubus is just doing her thing, but her ability to look like real people is valuable. Not just a disguise spell, where one is vaguely disguised as someone else simply to blend in - the Succubus is a perfect mimic, of voice and appearance and, if she's taken the time to get to know the person, she can be a very convincing copy. This makes it much easier to advance the plan, which Ambrose feels Dr. Guggins may have lost sight of - someone who can change into someone else is damn handy when you're planning to kill the king.
• At this news, everyone is understandibly SHOOK
• Ambrose purrs about this. "Oh. See, here I thought - I assumed - you were really insiders I just didn't remember seeing around the place. But you're not, are you? Treason punishable by death for you; just a side hobby, for me, able to escape any time, to virtually anywhere." And yet he hasn't escaped; and he's unwilling to explain exactly why or how he's gotten caught up in this plot to begin with. And part of this ploot, Ambrose reveals, is what the Underdome was built for - a resonance chamber that hits two very specific inaudible low frequencies, one that pacifies and one that agitates. It travels like a seismic pulse, far below hearing range, to a distance of up to 30 miles. That is, if Dr. Guggins isn't just completely full of lies.
• Ambrose can't say what the Zooanthropes are doing in the middle of it, simply that they are easily manipulated by the isopods; and of the isopods, he reveals they are in fact, a larval form of Thri-Kreen - and these of a very particular kind, from a queen whose essence isn't merely a royal jelly, but this stuff everyone is calling Honey - a potent and highly addictive euphoric in liquid form, a soul-transmitting energy repeater in solid form.
• Ambrose knows only a little about Jubliana Stroud, that she's too old to be what she is, and so must be something else - the signs all point to a vampire. A dangerous foe or a powerful ally, who can say?
• Perhaps a reclusive vampire and a bitter elf can hit it off, and fall in love?