Tess in the Cage *1027/01/20 evening* ===================================== The dustmen (priests of Hades) can't divine the place of someone's body. Jester's Palace =============== Ok. The palace is huge, but very empty. Lots of winding corridors, dead end staircases, etc. You see a few transactions occuring, looks like people selling stolen goods or arranging for goods to be stolen. No useful information here. Tess goes to the Fortune's Wheel. Fortune's Wheel =============== You spot several low lifes hanging around, sizing people up. They look you over and then ignore you - you look too dangerous. Some of the people arriving have bodyguards, who mostly wait outside. Inside, the place is extremely opulent. The main bar is huge, and features a carved dragon's head over it. The head makes a witty remark to someone. The other rooms are the bar-baiting room, the dicing cup, and the wheel itself. It's a big betting wheel. The dicing cup is where the high rollers go. On top of the fortune's wheel is an inn, for those customers who have enjoyed a bit too much. The customers here are generally pretty wealthy. Menu of the fortune's wheel: abyssal beef, divine dogmeat, hangman's ham, and final supper. The hangman's ham is served with spiced arcadian apples and arcadian eggs. The final supper is the house flank, seared and served with a chicken broth green tea dumplings, and a vegetable medley from the outlands lightly seasoned with arsenic for our tiefling customers (by request). The mimum bet is a silver, the typical bet is a gold. There are two special bits of the wheel. The golden square (which pays 1000-1) and the mages prize, which is a magic item. a Mimum of 10gp is required to try for the mages prize. The mage's prize has very low odds. From listening Tess finds out that the inn is clearly also used for secret meetings for various purposes. The inn is tightly sealed and warded. An inn rooms costs 40gp+, when available. The other bit you find is much less interesting - the singer is apparently from Ysgard. She is a silver haired, pale skinned half-elf. Ysgard is one of the planes. You haven't seen green elves with silver hair. Although she is a half-elf. You can catch the singer, she seems to be circulating. Tess chats with her pleasantly for a bit. She seems very pleasant. Wants to know what you are doing in the Cage, are you having a good time, that kind of thing. She lets the customers talk about themselves, they seem to like that. People in Ysgard like to brawl and fight for the fun of it - many adventurers who go there never leave - they just find it is their life to a T. Tess overhears several people talking about an item sure to get Tess's interest. An item called the 'chronosphere of Lagos'. All the major players in the Wheel are looking for it. It makes the wielder immortal, but not undead. There is news of it: apparently someone discovered a diary which said where it could be found. Several people fought over the diary so it changed hands several times, so now several people know where it find it - or would if they could translate the diary. The diary is encoded. The person you are talking with suggests if you are any good, you might want to get in contact with the major players in the back room. Odd jobs... Well, the palace of the jester is infested with cranium rats. It's driven all the cross-trade away. Anyway, cranium rats are large rats. The scary thing is, as there are more of them, they get smarter. As they get smarter, they get special powers. Like spells. The Jester might be willing to pay as high as 5000 gp for the job. Back room. Minimum bet is 10 gp. Some of the players are betting much more, and some of them seemed unconcerned at their loses of hundreds if not thousands. Tess is mostly fishing for info on the chronosphere and the diary - with the offer of helping decode. You realise you don't really have enough money to stay long, so you will have to be hasty (and unsubtle). No one reacts to your fishing for info about the chronosphere, they seem to disdain you as being cheap. The offer about being a codebreaker generates a lot of interest. Two of them (Sarlic Moonstoke and Ogier of the Middle Mind) are interested in employing you. Both of them want to see Tess's ability first, so they give him a test sample. Each of them is eyeing the other while they do this BTW. Tess can't figure out either piece of code (Decipher Script roll), and they don't want to deal with Tess further. Conclusion: these guys don't trust each other, so probably aren't trustworthy. Back at the Jester's Palace =========================== *1027/01/21* Ok, you eventually find the jester. Jeremo the natterer. You ask him about the cranium rats, and getting rid of them? He (in his stream of consciousness speaking) is willing to offer 3000gp to kill half the rats, 4000gp to kill almost all the rats, and 5000gp to kill every last one of the rats. They always hunt in packs. The bigger the pack, the tougher they are. How many you reckon you've got? Not sure, hard to say. Maybe 5 or 6 packs. And what sort of spells do they throw? Charms, magical missiles, that kind of thing. Maybe worse, if the packs have joined together. Tess: "Payment per pack killed - 800gp/pack, 5000gp if I get them all." he is a fierce negtiator, in his own style, almost as fierce as Tess :) He agrees to your proposal on a per pack payment of 800gp, 5000 gp if you kill all the packs. (Bargaining him down from every last rat for 5000gp.) Tess: "One other query? Do you know any guys who are good with code? There's some guys who've found something interesting and need someone to decode it." Jeremo: "You kill your first pack, and I'll tell you." Hunting Rats ============ Tess sneaks through the corridors and comes across two people discussing something. They obviously didn't hear him. Tess will keep hidden and listen in, then go around them in due course ... They were discussing breaking into a house (not for a while). A little further onwards, Tess heard squeaking noises nearby. Tess searches quietly for the source of the squeaks. Ok, after a few minutes, you spot a huge pile of rats, all swarming around each other. There must be dozens of the disgusting things. More than 50. They are all about 6 inches long. They appear to be moving down the corridor somewhere. Tess follows the rats to see where they head, keeping at least 50 feet distance from them. They head through several corridors, until they stop. Then the rats move in a pattern, and small lights appear around them for a moment. Then they resume their sqeaking and milling around. Although they are not moving anywhere. Aldara is back down the corridor a bit, keeping an eye out for rats coming this way to hit Tess from both sides. Tess watches. They stay for 30 minutes. Then they move back they way they came, which means Tess will have to scramble to get our of their road. They are moving slower than Tess. They don't seem to see Tess as he scrambles out of the way. They pass the point where you met them, and continue. Tess follows them again. After a while, they go into a small hole in the wall. Aldara listens near the hole, and hears them on the other side of the wall. They aren't far, and appear to be staying put. Tess plans to flood the nest with oil and set fire to the oil killing most of the rats. Ambushing those that try to escape. Tess okays the plan with the jester first - don't want to get in trouble for setting the place on fire (the palace is stone). The jester said, "You burn the palace a bit, it comes out of your pay. You burn the place a lot, and the Lady will send you to the mazes." Tess bought 15lb of oil, experimenting in the hive to get it burning right with alcohol to light it. It burns viciously for 2 rounds, more oil can keep it burning longer. Tess goes back and explores around the nest, looking for other exit holes. Tess found two other exits and stops them up. As Tess stops up the second hole, he hears a querulous squeak inside. The nest is about 10 feet across. Tess heads around to the other hole and fails a scry check to notice that he is being watched, but he is sneaking and hiding. Tess sets the oil slick up as rats are coming out of the hole - about ten or so are out already. Aldara hides in the pouch. Tessarael throws the barrel then lights a molatov cocktail of alcohol and throws that igniting the oil. As Tess throws the barrel, more rats come out. Some are out of the area now already. Then you light some alcohol and throw it. By the time you do this ~12 rats are out of the oil area and ~12 are in the area of the oil. *WHOOF* The barrel starts burning, spilling burning oil around the area. Rats squeak in agony as they die. More rats inside qweak as they try to reteat back inside. Tess closes to melee the rats. 12 rats are climbing over Tess attacking him, and the rest are concentrating on casting spells. After four rounds, Tess has killed 11 rats. On the 5th round, the last rat bites at Tess and he feels magic wash over him, which he resists. Tess heard rats squeaking in unison to cast the spell from inside the nest. Tess has killed around two dozen rats, but plenty more remain. Rats are pouring out of the hole again - and it's their go again. The fire doesn't seem to be hurting them anymore (they must have cast a resistance to fire). Darkness courses around them, forming into a pseudopod which tries to drain life from Tess, but Tess resists and the pseudopod disintegrates. Tess' knowledge of spells was unable to determine what this spell, or any other spells cast in the battle were. There are ~12 rats back in the room, with plenty more behind them in the nest. The rats are 5 feet away. All of them have been casting the spell together, so maybe killing some of them will help reduce the danger they pose. Tess ponders teleporting away, but as he is barely scratched he steps forward and melees them. They cast another spell, trying to worm into Tess' mind. Tess fails to resist this time. the spell targets his breath. Tess realises he isn't breathing. If he thinks about it, he is able to take a breath consciously. However, this reduces you to a partial action as you struggle for breath. Tess' slippery mind manages to resist the spell next round and Tess continues fighting. There are now around 50 rats in the room, with more still more coming. The rats cast a spell. It seems the (same) spell is less powerful this time, easier to resist, so killing the rats has reduced their ability to cast dangerous spells. Tess kills more rats over the ensuing rounds. No more rats pour out of the nest. 12 rats are attacking Tess, and 6 are casting a short spell, which causes all of the nearby rats shimmer slightly for a moment. There are now 12 left in the room. Their tactics have been getting worse. Now all the remaining ones break and run as well. Some running into tyhe corner, some past Tess, some into the hole. Tess sends Aldara into the nest to kill those trying to escape, and she hunts down and kills three. Aldara will munch happily on lunch. Tess kills three that are hiding among the rat corpses. Two get away from Aldara through a hole which has been unblocked. Total 69 dead (actually it's 70, not that Tess knows), 30 run away. That encounter could have been a lot nastier without the planning, not that the plan went perfectly. Tess tries to bust into the nest and have a look. Aldara has a look around inside the nest for anything of value. She can take Tess' pocket torch and shine it around. Aldara finds a sack of coins in there. Tess sees if he can widen the hole, as Aldara slowly drags the sack of coins out. The craniums rats were smart little money grubbers - the sack contains platinum coins and a small magical metal shield. This treasure was probably stolen goods, taken from thieves killed by the cranium rats. Tess and Aldara hunt around for survivors, but found none. Tess cleaned up and then went to talk to the jester. Tess enquires as to the size of the cranium rat packs, and the jester replies, "Oh, the packs are pretty big. No one has been cleaning them out. That is as big as as a pack gets. Although all of the packs seem pretty big. The pack will come back again if you don't kill them all. I'll give you 600gp for mostly killing a pack." The jester says to talk to Sar the Scribe about deciphering scripts. Tess buys a 100gp pearl to identify the shield, and determines its basic property - it is a +3 small metal shield, which makes Tess happy. * Accounted for the +600gp -100gp for identify component * *1027/01/21 evening*