Planning for Scab Score 2

Rita [Ian] was first to notice: Sorrow [Jeff], El Cid [Shane], and Attlee [Kevin] now had a "dark glow" about them. This was especially noticeable on Attlee. When looked at directly, the three of them looked fine, but out of the corner of your eye, it was like a dark cloud cloaked each one. Those three had the IMAG boon. But so too did Ronny [Deacon]. However, Ronny had not had any dealings with the black skulls in the well chamber (a counter this was Argile [Richard]; he had had dealings with the skulls but he didn't have an IMAG boon). So maybe it was both that gave the dark glow.

Attlee was struck down by the marmalading, so he was put onto the grill.

While they had been busy with Fort Eugor, a stack of notices mounted up on the party notice-board in The Luscious Pixie.

Olivia Bryce

One was from Olivia Bryce of the Vege Scavengers. So Sorrow and Argile headed out to The Sign of the Ambidextrous Nymph. Olivia was there with a guard. She had been badly beaten; sporting a black eye and torn lip. Her guard had his arm in a sling.

She said some street thugs had done this. She didn't recognize any of them, but at the end of the beating, one of them had hissed "Next time your butt-boys probe us, we will be back."

"I don't know if this was because of you lot," she said. "Maybe coincidence? I doubt it. Anyway, how are you progressing on MY job? Have you recovered my yellow scab cultivars from that thief Sam?"

Sorrow sheepishly admitted that they put her mission on ice after the reconnoitre (when they climbed over Sam's Plantation palisade), and did other work instead: the Fort Eugor job.

"But we will be right on your job now," Sorrow said. "It has our full attention."

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There was a note from REAL Priestess Colleen Sanford. So Rita went to the temple.

Rita asked about the dark glow around her party members.

"Oh dear," said Colleen, alarmed. "They have the mark of IMAG. You better turn them from this path else their souls will be lost forever."

Rita promised she would do something.

In the Skull district sat the Scabport graveyard. The graveyard had been here ever since the city was founded, and it filled most of the district leaving only a few dozen streets for housing, markets and the odd tavern. Skull district was not a very desirable place to live, so only the poor, the wretched and down-trodden lived here.

The Wraith King
(artist's drawing;
indicative)

With more than a thousand years of interments, the graveyard itself was now bulging at the seams. These days, only the poor took their dead here; rich folks normally opted for interment in the relevant temple's tomb, dissolution, cremation, or burial at sea. The graveyard was safe during the day, but one would not want to venture in there at night. It was a poorly-kept secret that a being called the "Wraith King" "ruled" over the graveyard and, it was claimed, the entire Skull district. It was said that the Scabport Council allowed this so long as he (or "it") "caused nay trouble". In return for causing nay trouble, the goodly temples (especially REAL) were forbidden to "clean out the undead scum".

With this in mind, the REAL temple had their own policy: they allowed their priests into the Skull district provided that they only provided succour for the poor, and that they kept numbers low. Crusades and undead pogroms were not allowed.

"As an acolyte, dear Rita," Colleen said. "We want you and your group to do some investigations in Skull. We've recently had some reports of foul things from the graveyard wandering the streets to steal away babes and innocents."

Then she added with righteous ire:

"If this's true, then we ARE authorized to call in the Paladin Force ... to cleanse the streets with REAL's HOLY LIGHT and REAL's HOLY FIRE. And that won't break our 'greement with the Council. So, get us some evidence! Your contact is a man called Chang Billet, at The Chilling Thought tavern in Skull."

9 COIN.

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There was a note from IMAG Priestess Clara. So El Cid and Ronny ventured forth to the IMAG temple.

Here, they met up with Clara in the clammy IMAG meeting room, where she whispered from within her sphere of darkness. El Cid asked about the dark glow around him, El Cid, and Attlee. Clara paused, and when she spoke, her papery voice was smiling.

"I noticed this on you straight away," she said. "This is SUCH good news! You and your lucky friends have the beginnings of the Pall. This is what we priests are cloaked in all times. May IMAG's darkness prevail!"

She added joyfully: "With training now, you could become priests yourselves!"

Foundling of Darkness

"No thanks," muttered El Cid.

Clara had another job for them. The current representative of IMAG, the Foundling of Darkness [see Fake Kidnap Score entry] had sensed "a disturbance in the dark" which came from the vicinity of Fort Eugor. El Cid told Clara about the skulls from the well chamber. She noted that the Foundling had mentioned "objects of desire"; presumably it* meant the skulls. The job was to collect and distribute all these objects of desire about the city. When El Cid pointed out that the skulls magically returned to the pile whenever one was taken, she frowned.

"I will talk this night with the High Priest [Dark-eye Shadow]," Priestess Clara said. "And the Foundling of Darkness too. Return tomorrow for an answer."

El Cid left to return to the party's lair. Ronny was blocked by the guards and asked to stay back by Clara; she had need of his services.

Ronny arrived back at the lair, half an hour later, a shaking wreck. He was clammy and drained. His skin was crawling with imaginary maggots, and he was stinking of jelly-fish venom and butterscotch.

* = The Foundling of Darkness phases between non-binary and gender-fluid, and its preferred pronouns were "it", "pincer" and "mangrove".
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The next note was from Anton Chung of the Knives. He had been promoted. Not just to sergeant, as everyone expected, but all the way to Lieutenant. The Budgie Smugglers had made the Knives Preferred Contractors list, so he had some more work for them.

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Esme Deciduous

Before the Fort Eugor scores, the Group had begun a long-term project to create a front company with Olivia's score in mind. The raison d'etre of this company would be to buy scabs to sell in Spite. This company had now come to fruition and they christened it "Spite Agricultural Traders". They further dedicated some effort to make a legal paper-trail that would survive first-blush investigations [the game mechanic for this is to create another long-term project "debt"].  They hired an office in the Docks area too, and assigned their half-elf secretary Esme [cohort expert] to man it.

Now that Spite Agricultural Traders was running, Huilam [Jamie], Sorrow, Ronny, El Cid, Argile, Moonshine [Chris], and Burrito [Darryl] (in fact, all of them except Attlee and Rita) went on a trip to another scab grower, the Ochre Turnstiles. They met and schmoozed with the boss of the Turnstiles, Lou Serna, and indicated that they were a new scab buyer from Spite and were interested in buying scabs. Olivia had briefed them on the necessary technical questions so that they wouldn't fail muster as bona fide scab buyers. From this meeting, they got a benchmark price metric for a wagon load of scabs: 30 COIN (NZ$30,000).

Miss Prisk

Next, was the trip to their target: Sam's Plantation. Olivia had given the group some normal scab seedlings which they secreted in a hidey-hole in their wagon Carte Blanche. If all went well, then maybe these could be used to swap for the yellow scabs.

But when they arrived at Sam's Estate, the gate guards ordered them to park Carte Blanche outside the gate in the wagon park. Then all seven were ushered through the gate-house where they had to surrender all weapons, then they were shown into the scab tasting room. This was a stone's throw from the big warehouse where they suspected their target yellow scabs were.

A well-dressed half-elf lady arrived to talk with them. She introduced herself as Miss Prisk and she was "Sam's chief seller". She took their details and was very interested to hear about the new scab buyers from Spite. She brought out some scabs and gave them a tasting "can you taste the artichoke?"  There was always a handful of guards present.  After a bit of small-talk, the best price that Miss Prisk could give was 35 COIN for a single wagon load. But that would drop with more bulk, of course.

Samuel Baxter

Eventually, Samuel Baxter, the owner himself, turned up with two body-guards; muscle-bound half-elves with no necks. Sam was interested in seeing the new buyers from Spite, and he asked some inane questions. Sorrow came from Spite, and Huilam and Moonshine knew the city, so the three could answer the tricksie Spite questions. They did get Sam to mention about the yellow scabs, but he would only say that they were under development and that it would be a long time before Sam's Scabs could achieve commercial production.

Yellow scabs

Sam asked where they were staying in town, and when they said the apartment above their offices in the Docks region, he said they ought to come and stay in his mansion in the Mansion district.