Undead Visit

[ Argile did his Downtime. One of his tasks was to finish the long-term project to acquire a new hidden base. So they now have a second base, hidden. ]

Ever since their base was no longer secret, the Budgie Smugglers, always set a watch each night. Tonight was no exception, and it was fortunate that they did. 

 

A couple of hours before light, Huilam [Jamie] and Sorrow [Jeff] were the two on watch.  Everyone else was asleep in the bunk room (Lammy [Kevin], Burrito [ Darryl], Ampersand [Shane], Argile [Richard] and Moonlight [Chris]). In the marmalade room was Greywacke, Tylin, and El Cid.

ghoul

There was scrabbling on the wooden slates on the roof, then scratching in the ceiling cavity above Sorrow. The metal front door, next to Huilam, went frosty. The base is built on the large Scabport wharves, so they had a stairway down to a floating platform below where they moored their boat. There was a loud splashing noise down here amongst the piles. 

Sorrow was watching the ceiling above him. The plaster broke and an arm came through, followed by a ghoul. He shrieked an alarm. The group all hard this with a panicked start, and scrabbled out of bed, and started getting dressed and armoured.

Sorrow fought the ghoul before another joined it. Then Burrito was there to help him with bow in hand.

While the others were fighting above, Ampersand went through the cellar door to investigate the stairs down to the floating jetty. Moored to the jetty, was the party shallop, the Smoking Loon. In it were two skeletons pretending to row. But on the jetty platform were many many more skeletons, climbing up. They all looked at Ampersand with their dull eye sockets, and then all charged at him. He rushed upstairs and slammed and locked that door. The skeletons threw themselves at it.

The big fight continued: ghouls breaking in through the ceiling, skeletons smashing the cellar door, and the main iron door being assaulted by something heavy and solid.

Worried about the integrity of other parts of the ceiling, the group decided to leave, so decided to make for the stairs down to the boat. 

Burrito, Lammy and Ampersand worked on the ceiling hole ghouls. Lammy cast several Mending spells on the hole, which meant the ghouls in the roof cavity had to break through the lathe and plaster again. Burrito and Ampersand fought the ghouls that did make it through.

Huilam and one of the hired hands watched the front door, as the bangs continued.

Argile went to the stairs door, which was almost smashed now, and he threw it open and he and the hired hands fought some skeletons as they tried to break in. Two of the hands died before Argile decided a rush down the stairs, using his shield as a battering ram. It worked, and the skeletons were pushed down the stairs in a great heap. Another hired-hand died. The rest of the group followed him down.

Magda Romanov

Everyone boarded the Smoking Loon, the water churning around them with skeletons. Sorrow guided the shallop out from under the wharves and into the centre of the Scab river. 

Up on the wharf, silhouetted against the stars, stood Magda and some ghouls around her. Burrito took a shot at her, and hit her cleanly, but she just gave a cheery wave. 

They rowed up river, past the stone bridge, and stayed in the centre of the river until it was light.

_________________________________________________

Burrito went to the Panadine temple and got some more holy water. This put the party supply up to 12 vials. Holy water doses have a half-life* of one day.

* = Holy water and unholy water, or "blessed water" is a mature technology. The blessing process only has a limited time before the magic is lost; a half-life of one day if sealed, or one hour if in an open container. After that, it has "gone bad" and is just normal water. Holy water is also easy to contaminate. Anything unblessed that touches it will do this, or if it is poured onto weapons likewise. To use it, it has to be dashed over the target, or the vessel broken on the target, and the liquid must hit bare skin. But glass technology is also mature, so the holy water is stored in easily-breakable glass vials.  During the blessing process, the priests put an additive in the water which turns milky when the holy water goes bad.

[ In game, the half-life is handled by a D6 roll, at midnight, for each vial of holy water. An even number means it has gone bad. ]

_________________________________________________

They visited Lieutenant Chung sans Moonlight and Argile. Chung mentioned that the Council Meeting was later today, but there wasn't any other news.

While the party was with Chung, Argile took the two hired-hands aside and told them that he was not pleased the way they fought last night. They were cowards and that they better be more brave in future, even though three of their number died. "...Or else." he leered

"Yes, sir," they both snapped and saluted. "Permission to go for lunch, sir?"

He nodded and they headed off.  That was the last time they were ever seen.

__________________________________________________

The fore-shadowed council Seasonal General meeting was this afternoon. There was a crowd of townsfolk outside the Knives HQ trying to get in to the council chambers to watch it, and the soldiers were drawing lots as to who could join. Lammy lucked-out and he got in and joined the crowd in the public viewing area. He only recognized two of the 16 council representatives: Daisy Crown and Grover Tacket, the mad head of the Caribou Gorn druids.

The meeting began with the Rotation, where the representatives from Vingt-et-un, Hob and Funken Wagnall stepped down and were changed to reps of Nuke, Caribou Gorn and Kliban. The Kliban rep was not there, of course (rep Brandon and vice-rep Slimy had been murdered). Several procedural motions to fill those positions were proposed, but, since the meeting was quorate (10), these were overturned by the Chair. 

The motion to vote to change the Scabport constitution was tabled. As gazetted two weeks in advance, it was to change the council size from 16 to 19; to add one representative for the Knives, one for the Thieves Guild Police, and one for the Wraith King.

The Wizards' Guild reps put up an amendment: rather than grant a full seat, instead give the Rotation another fourth seat and place the Wraith King's rep into the Rotation cycle with the other lesser temples. But the IMAGs argued that the Wraith King was really represented by Canker, and currently Canker (and ANY of the so-called "naughty temples" [sic]) had no representation, not even in the Rotation. So, this change was actually fixing an age-old discrimination. The amendment was voted on, and it failed.

Tarquin Creole

After a lot of bickering and squabbling, the main motion was finally put, and they all voted.

Constitutional changes needed a two-thirds majority. With the missing Klibans, the ayes had it, as predicted, 10 votes to 5 (WGx3, REAL and Caribou Gorn voted nay), and so the motion was passed.

The Wraith King's representative was introduced to the room: Tarquin Creole, a Canker priest.

Argile spent all afternoon looking for the two hired-hands that had run off, with no luck. So, he put out a one COIN contract, his own money, to get their locations.

____________________________________________________

After meeting was finished, there was a slap-up feast at Chung's offices to celebrate the Knives' victory. The Budgie Smugglers were invited and all attended except Moonlight and Argile. There was plenty of delicious food, an open bar, and lots of loose women: exotic dancers, serving wenches and slave girls. But the whore-mongers of the party only had time for some quickie hand-jobs, because they had to leave early to get back to the Luscious Pixie before dark.

The party's blue-tooth skull was kept at this inn just in case it was magically tracked. So, using the skull, they contacted Magda. Again, she wanted to meet them face to face. But they fobbed her off with platitudes, diversions and veiled abuse, pissing her off royally.

Fearing retribution, they broke off the call and hurried to the new hidden base, which was a 15 min dash from the Luscious Pixie.

Lammy slept in the Wizards' Guild.

The night passed quietly. 

___________________________

In the morning, the holy waters were down to four.

They went back to the old base, and there were fresh signs of undead activity. And the vault in the old place had been opened during the night. Carte Blanche was left here; they didn't want to risk taking it to the new place.

At the WG, Lammy spoke to Daisy Crown in the morning. 

There was one Wizards' Guild job, but it didn't pay much. They wanted the trunk which was still at Fort Augmentin to be sent to Winjammer, the next town along the coast. But it only paid 4 COIN.

However, as far as they knew, Fort Augmentin was still locked down by the poison plague effects.

They also had the job to find the assassin who killed the Kliban priests.

Dust Extraction

The party (Huilam [Jamie], Greywacke [Jeff], El Cid [Shane], Tylin [Ian], Lammy [Kevin], Moonlight [Chris], and Burrito [Darryl]) were in the Scabport graveyard, on a mission for the Panadine temple to find some magical sand (which was suspected to be used in the recent plague poison). 

Mausoleum 5 & 6

They left the fifth mausoleum, afraid to enter a narrow passage, and went into the sixth one. There was a chamber here with four passages leading down, so they chose one and fought their way into another chamber (some skeletons). There was a skeletal statue here with two precious stones in its eye sockets (jet). Then into another chamber, where they met some ghouls. These were destroyed, but Greywacke was clawed and was paralyzed. But, good news, Huilam used the eye dropper and the dust here turned blue. The group filled up many containers with the dust. Then they hurriedly left the graveyard and went back to the Panadine temple.

Priestess Greta was glad to have the sample so she authorized the payment with a note for the Wizards' Guild, and then she began to work on the samples. 

Daisy Crown,
acting WG Liaison

The group went to the Wizards' Guild. Daisy Crown was on the reception desk and she was happy to pay them with an 8 COIN promissory note. This was eight COIN's worth of magical services and it meant that they didn't need a cart to carry the reward around, nor did they need a large vault to store it.

 

Daisy mentioned the murder of the two Kliban priests (Brandon Stapleton and Slimy Douche), and of course the group denied all knowledge. The dreaded council meeting was tomorrow, and so Daisy expressed a worry about that. Without any Kliban presence, then the problematic motion would likely get its two-thirds majority.

But the significant news was that the Panadines were planning to cast a Raise Dead on Kliban Priestess Slimy Douche (Priest Brandon, the other assassination victim, was elderly, so he was deemed less useful). The Panadines needed to get some fresh elder flowers from Lake Placid for the spell. Someone else had that job; "You lot know all about that, don't you?" But Priestess Slimy would not be alive in time for the meeting.

The other interesting news was that the Wizards' Guild would like to find out who murdered the Kliban Priests. They did think that the Klibans should bear the lion's share of the cost of this, but they were willing to contribute two COIN towards it.

[ Party did a Downtime. ]

El Cid went to the marmalade room and Ampersand crawled out [Shane changed character].

"Assassin's Knife"

The party went to the Kliban temple and spoke to the Head Priest, Walden Snell. They asked if he was willing to hire them to track down the killer of both Brandon and Slimy. He had been told by the Wizards that they would contribute, so he was interested. He offered 6 COIN, which was boosted by the 2 from the Wizards' Guild. The party agreed. 

The only useful witness was young Priestess Sabra Villareal. Noone witnessed the murder of Priest Brandon, but Sabra was in the chapel with Priestess Slimy, and saw her murdered by a black-clad woman "who just appeared". After the act, the assassin ran off. She used a strange wavy-bladed knife, and it glowed.

The group then did some sleuthing. First, to the Funken Wagnall's Temple. But, contrary to their expectations, [ and despite some good rolls ], the library had no "famous assassins of Scabport" books, nor "who's who of Scabport assassins" books; well, not living ones nor contemporary ones. 

But it wasn't a wasted trip. The wavy knife was quite distinctive. The library had a catalogue of magical weapons, and in it was a picture of a wavy bladed knife called an "Assassin's Knife". It was magical, glowed on use, and there was a footnote that said it "guarantees a kill". 

So, they went wandering in the Downtown district, and ended up in the Grapefruit and Corselette. There, they found their old mate Sonny Bowens of the Bronze Studs.

"I lost track of you guys when you last shifted base," he grumbled. "You needed to keep in touch." He had a sheaf of now-expired jobs.

They asked him about expert assassins

"Hmm," he said. "You want to try the Grey Wraiths, Jolly Jokers, Insular Rogues, or the TGP.  Oh, and those Budgie Smugglers are pretty good too, so I hear."

The Grey Wraiths were based in Downtown. The Jolly Jokers, in the docks. Both had hidden bases.

_______________________________

When they got back to base, Esme reminded them that they had a lot of messages from the Luscious Pixie notice board. These were messages sent from the graveyard, and asked the party to use the blue-tooth skull, after dark.

So, that night they contacted Magda on the skull. She quizzed them about their recent trip into the graveyard. She was not very pleased. A bunch more skeletons and ghouls had been destroyed, of course, so the group could not claim innocence.

"Zere vill be trouble," she said.

Kliban takes a blow

The party (Tylin [Ian], Huilam [Jamie], El Cid [Shane], Greywacke [Jeff], Burrito [Darryl], Lammy [Kevin], Argile [Richard], and Moonlight [Chris]) was back at their "secret base", licking their wounds after the trip to the graveyard. Having returned from a stressful trip, half the group needed to reduce accumulated stress, so Huilam, El Cid, Tylin, Lammy and Burrito all headed off to their vice purveyors to do this [at the cost of 5 'downtime debt']. Burrito had a family argument and his mother got upset with him. So, he ended up turning to Panadine for succour [ Burrito had 5 stress and the Vice D6 roll was 6. This meant he got 'lost in his vice'; so rolled again and lost his vice purveyor, i.e. his mother, so he had to get a new one. His vice changed from Obligation to Faith.] 

After a couple of hours, they returned to the base. And then a Knives patrol turned up. They told the group that Chung wanted to see them. Now.

So, they all traipsed off to the Council Offices, sans Moonlight and El Cid who were too scared. Lieutenant Chung was down in the conversation pit with four no-neck bully-boys. He of course questioned them. A corporal had been killed, and a squad of guards magically slept, but not before they witnessed it all. The Budgie Smugglers were certainly distinctive, so it didn't take too much effort to work out what happened. Huilam didn't deny the killing, but when asked why they were in the graveyard, he made up some cock-and-bull story about searching for a relative's tomb.

"Then why didn't you bastards just go in with no weapons?" sneered Chung. "That's why the guards are there. You won't even get stopped then."

Lieutenant Anton Chung

Huilam was about to speak, but Chung stopped him.

"Don't tell me some more bullshit," he said. "If you weren't heroes of Scabport, I'd have El Cid and that wizard of yours disembowelled, and the rest of you all whipped."

He looked over them all, and eyes stopped on the quailing Lammy.

"Anyway, the bosses upstairs won't let this go unpunished," he said. "Send that prick El Cid here, these fellows will give him a good seeing-to."

"Ooo," said Greywacke, always up for a beating. "Can I help too?"

They all went back to base. Moonlight and El Cid were still hiding in the rafters, so they told them the news. After some persuasion, El Cid relented and Greywacke and Argile escorted him back to Chung and his men.

Chung's bully-boys laid into El Cid with brass knuckles, clubs and scourges. Greywacke and Argile were given  iron-shod staves, and they enthusiastically helped. El Cid got a brutal beating, breaking joint bones, his ribs and jaw, and was knocked unconscious - eventually (his tough-as-nails feat only prolonged his agony in this case by keeping him up).

El Cid was stretchered back to base by Greywacke and Argile. Moonlight's recent training enabled him to cure El Cid's severe injuries with Greater Heal spells [He had level two cures]. 

At one bell (one hour before dark), Argile went to the Kliban temple for his appointment with Priestess Slimy Douche. This was the first time anyone had seen her, and Argile was shocked at her breath-taking beauty; such a tragic name for such a vision of loveliness.  The fate of irony was strong with this one. As Kliban was the god of Fate, this made a lot of sense.

Kliban Priestess Slimy Douche

Argile took with him the chest from the Cankers (with the black nappers) neatly wrapped up with a bow.  He presented this to Priestess Slimy as a gift - to be opened later.  

Then he had an interview with her: the story was that Argile was considering becoming a  follower of Kliban.  Throughout the meeting, during the quiet times, he could hear the barely-audible scratching of the angry black nappers, like little finger-nails on wood, inside the chest compartments. He hoped she didn't. As fate would have it, there weren't many quiet times; Slimy waxed loquacious and talked and talked. She spent most of her time in temple, but she did reveal that she had a boy-friend called Frederick Formaldehyde. 

Just before dark, the meeting was over and Argile went back to base.

_______________________

Just after dark, there was a loud knocking on their iron door of the group's "secret base".

Magda Romanov was standing there in the frosty air. She was, of course, one of the vampire liaisons from the Wraith King. They guessed what this was about.

Magda Romanov

"It has come to our attention zat you vere deep in our home," she said. "An' zat you vere greeted by some ov our ... lesser aides.  You met this greeting viz ... violence and destruction ... and contempt for unlife."

As an explanation, Huilam went off on a cock-and-bull story about recovering a family heirloom from one of the family crypts. 

Magda replied that they only need ask and she can send some minions to do a thorough search to find it, and "After all, you still haf ze blue-tooth skull. Zo you can contact uz any night."

(This skull was kept in the the Luscious Pixie tavern.)

"My master's good vill only extends zo far," she said, and then departed into the night.

___________________

The next morning, Tylin went to the Kliban temple and to the morning service to see if Priestess Slimy was still around. She certainly was, in fact she was taking the service. 

He communicated this to the group, then he went back to the street outside the Kliban temple and secreted himself into an excellent hidey hole. 

The rest of the group went to the Funken Wagnall temple to do some research on Frederick Formaldehyde. There was nothing on him specifically, but there was a significant family in Scabport named Formaldehyde; they had a manse in the Mansion district.

Later in the day, Huilam visited the Kliban temple. He spoke to some temple staff and used his Consort skill to find out more about Frederick Formaldehyde. He got some significant information on Frederick and learned that he was a chandler at the docks. (Chandler as in "ship supplier" and not "candle-maker"). Sure enough, one of the chandlers in the Docks district was "Formaldehyde's Chandlers". And inside they met Frederick himself, a tall and handsome fellow with a crew-cut and chiseled jaw.

Later that morning, Tylin spotted suspicious activity in the Kliban temple. There was a funeral going on. Brandon Stapleton had been killed. Stabbed, apparently. As soon as they heard this, El Cid and Greywacke hurried to the Canker temple, to try and claim credit for that killing. As they were shown inside by their guard, another Canker guard was exiting who was escorting a hooded woman in black. 

The Canker priest refused to let them take credit for the assassination, and he did admit that it was the hooded woman in black. When they asked why he hired another group for the same job, he calmly said, to increase the chance of success. He also confirmed that the two black nappers that he had given them had returned in mist form; that probably meant both compartments of that chest were opened. If the nappers kill or are killed, they turn to mist and return home.

The group came up with another plan to get Priestess Slimy. They'd invite her and her and Frederick for a fancy meal at the Salacious Succubus, one of the up-market inns in the Temple district, and ambush her in the place. So they made a booking for 11 be'light (one hour after dark) on the next day. This information was passed via runners to the Kliban temple and to Frederick in person.

Later on in the day, El Cid & Moonlight headed to the Kliban temple on the fleeting-chance of getting a pot shot at Priestess Slimy. They never saw her, so headed home just before dark. As they left, Tylin (still hidden) noticed that the two were being followed. He surreptitiously snuck ahead and told El Cid. El Cid then ambushed and killed the follower, with his black fist.

________________

They did nothing the next day until one bell. While the rest of the party was doing prep-work for the Salacious Succubus attempt, Tylin went back to the Kliban temple. And he was shocked to see another funeral in progress.  He made enquiries and it was for none other than Priestess Slimy Douche ! 

She had also been stabbed. They had been two slow.

Upon this news, El Cid and Greywacke rushed back to the Canker temple. The priest confirmed that they were indeed released from their contract. There was no sign of the mysterious woman in black this time, but they suspected her.

Since they had booked the Salacious Succubus, they all went and had a slap-up meal in remorse.

_______________________

Next morning, straight after light, it was time for another graveyard foray. 

The guard patrols were not hard to avoid, so they got to the centre of the graveyard easily.

In Mausoleum 3, they got down to the 4th level. It was laid out like the other two, with two skeletons on level 2, three ghouls on Level 3, and four below. They were not brave enough to tackle beyond Level 4, so withdrew.

In Mausoleum 4, at Level 3, there was a passage that split. One path went straight down to Level 4, and to four nasties. The other path led to a bridge that crossed a chasm. Looking down this chasm, as far as the light would extend, on both sides, there were niches and alcoves aplenty. Occasionally, a skeleton would scurry out of one, and climb upwards, but it wasn't too hard to shoot. Across the stone bridge, the tunnel continued down to Level 4, and to four creatures. The group wasn't game to progress.

So, they went to Mausoleum 5. The tunnel down from Level 1 to level 2 was a single-file passage. They weren't brave enough to go down here.

There was still another six or so significant tomb-like structures in the centre of the graveyard still to explore, so they weren't particularly interested to take more risk to go deeper. Yet.

Back to the Graveyard

Moonlight [Chris], Huilam [Jamie], Burrito [Darryl], El Cid [Shane], Tylin [Ian], Argile [Richard] and Lammy [Kevin] stood around the draw-bar of Carte Blanche. The suspicious attachment on the cart was worrying them, so they finally relented and took the cart to the Wizards' Guild to get an Identify spell on the suspect beam. This cost one COIN. Daisy Crown was the wizard who was tasked with the spell; four hours later, she reported the bad news. 

Suspicious cart chassis beam (marked in orange)

"It is a tracking device," she said. "But's also magically trapped, so unscrewing either of the two bolts to the chassis, or the two coach screws will set it off. Same's if you cut it, or drill a hole in it, or break it. It's been in-situ for many weeks. My spell does not say who's tracking. My spell also doesn't tell the effect of the magical ... uh ... discharge. Oh, and it's not evil too."

Carte Blanche would no longer be parked in the secret garage, but instead would be stored outside on the street. The party base was no longer secret, so they weren't particularly worried on being tracked. They did not want to dump the cart; new carts were rather expensive.

In the marmalade room, Ronny's lifeless body floated in the waist-deep marmalade. Dee Dee was drifting around floating on an inflatable life-buoy. Sorrow had joined her.

_____________________________

They all went to the Panadine temple to check up upon the analysis of the plague poison. Priestess Greta said her team had some preliminary results, and it did not look good. She suspected that the Wraith King was involved. But to prove that, she needed a sample of the foundation dust or sand. This would need to be collected from the source, so she wanted to group to venture to the very centre of the Scabport Graveyard. And to collect a sample: "Just a handful is all I need."

Greta gave them a vial of magical reagent, and an eyedropper. They were to put one drop on a "seam of sand. Or dust." If it turned blue, bromothymol blue, then they were to collect the sample from there. She also gave them 7 vials of holy water (in a smart bandolier).

But the Panadines could not afford to pay for this dangerous mission ("And don't go after dark!"), but she suggested that, since this would affect the city itself, they should go see the Knives to sponsor the trip.

So, the entire group (sans Moonlight) went to Knives, and were shown down to Lieutenant Chung's conversation pit. Chung listened to them patiently, and then just said no way, and shooed them away. The party was taken aback.

________________________

So, they headed off towards the Wizards' Guild. 

During that trip, party P.A. Esme intercepted them in the streets with two jobs from the Luscious Pixie noticeboard. One was from Panadine (already done), and one was a scrawled note from the Canker temple (god of Death)

____________________________________

Canker Priest

So, before visiting the Wizards' Guild, they decided to go direct to the Temple district and to the Canker temple. El Cid, Tylin and Moonlight were the only ones brave enough to venture inside the skull-shaped temple. (Plus Huilam still had the Protection from Evil field on him from the Panadines, which would last until the end of that day, so he would not be allowed inside any way.)

They were taken by guards deep into the stinking temple, and had to trudge through the slippery, ankle-deep muck on the floor, to be presented to the Canker Head Priest.

The Cankers had a job for some suitably discrete low-moral mercenaries. They wanted two Kliban priests assassinated. Priest Brandon Stapleton and Priestess Slimy Douche. They had to get the Canker priest to repeat that latter name several times with his papery voice. Yes, they had that name correct - poor girl; obviously it was fate.

Black Napper

Tylin negotiated: 5 COIN each murder. The contract required at least one to die.

The Canker priest gave El Cid a small chest with a split lid. 

"Inside," he rasped. "Are two black nappers. These are magical spiders with a fatal bite. After the bite, they turn into a mist, and return to us."

___________________________________________

Then they went back to the Wizards' Guild. Daisy was manning the front desk and performing as the liaison officer today (Sly Dunbar was out). They told her about the Panadine theory and how Chung was reluctant to pay for the Graveyard mission. Daisy listened and just said "Interesting." Then she had some relevant news for them:

Daisy Crown

In eight days time, there was to be a Council Meeting. This meeting had been delayed many times due to the recent city troubles. There was a controversial item on the agenda: the Knives wanted to increase the size of the council from 16 to 19, adding three more seats. The current 16 seats were apportioned: 5 Knives, 3 TGP, 3 WG, 1 REAL, 1 IMAG, 3 to other temples on a rotation, changed each season via lots drawn a year in advance. The three new seats were proposed to go to 1 Knives, 1 TGP and, very controversially, 1 to the Wraith King to give the Dead some say*. The WG strongly disagreed with this. 

Currently, the "Rotated" three temples are Vingt-et-un (Luck), Hob (Fire) and Funken Wagnall (Knowledge). But at the next meeting, they'd been decided to go to Nuke (War), Caribou Gorn (Nature) and Kliban.

To change the council size was a constitutional amendment and that required a two-thirds majority, i.e. 11 of 16. The Knives, and TGP and IMAG would be pro. WG and REAL would be anti. Nuke would be pro. Caribou Gorn would be anti. Kliban would be anti - Kliban always voted for the status quo ("that's fate"). This only gave 10.

The party did not reveal their contact with the Cankers, but did ask Daisy who the Kliban delegates would be. Daisy had to consult her Scabport Almanac and revealed it was Priest Brandon Stapleton with a backup of Priestess Slimy Douche.

"Now we know," muttered someone. Maybe, if the Kliban delegate never turned up, there'd be 15, and two-thirds of 15 was 10. But surely they'd still need 11.

Daisy went upstairs and consulted with some other wizards, and returned to the group. The WG would pay 8 COIN for the group to do the Graveyard trip to help the Panadines with the plague poison research. The money would not be paid in tangible chests, but instead would be in services. The party was happy for this. (And being in the form of services, it meant that they did not need to worry about storing the actual chests.)

* = The Wraith King's recent thesis on Critical Death Theory stated that the living-impaired were oppressed by the "cis-living", and discriminated against for the immutable characteristic that they were no longer alive. This was called "mortism". The living-impaired had difficulty expressing themselves, both orally and ambulatory (common symptoms were paralysis and soft-tissue decomposition), so there was a power dynamic between them and the living, adding to the mortism. Mortism was responsible for living-impaired individuals, without their enthusiastic consent, forcibly locked into air-tight containers ("coffins"), and buried or locked into stone prisons ("tombs" and "mausoleums"), or incinerated in pyres ("cremation"). Ironically, such blatant mortism was done by kin, loved ones and well-meaning friends, and they would even exacerbate such mortism with a celebration ("funeral" or "wake"). Finally, institutional mortism occurred later, when the living-impaired's estate and possessions were stolen and distributed to kin via a mortist contract ("will").

_______________________________

Tylin, Huilam and Argyle went to the Kliban's temple. Argile managed to book a meeting with Priestess Slimy Douche, which would be tomorrow at 1 bell (one hour before dark).

There were a few hours left of the day, so they decided to do a graveyard trip immediately. In the Skull district, there were more than the normal number of Knives patrols wandering around, and they were actively stopping anyone with weapons from entering the actual graveyard. But the graveyard walls were not very intact, so it wasn't hard for the party to avoid the guard patrols by entering through a random property's backyard. Then the group went straight to the very centre and found a large crypt. Sure enough, inside was a wide passage descending deeper into the ground.

And so they went down, and down, and down.

They encountered some skeletons, and a few ghouls. But these were dispatched with sword, arrow and Panadine holy water.

Their main danger was being stuck down here after dark, so Lammy watched the clock like a hawk. (All wizards carry a Wizards' Chronometer, supplied by the Guild, which shows the exact time. It also has an arrow which points directly towards the Great Kliban Temple at the centre of the Known World, so acts as a compass. This is why that direction is called "Klib".)

At every level, Huilam got out the vial and eyedropper and put a few drops on the dust and sand to see if it changed colour. They got down three levels, with no blue marks from the drops, before Lammy signalled that it was time to go, and so they made their way out to the sunlight, and out of the graveyard.  Just as night fell.

___________________________________

Next morning, they went back to graveyard. To a different catafalque and began the trek downwards again.

They got deeper this time, four levels this time, but they met consequently more undead.

Ghoul

As they were descending the ramp to level five, five ghouls attacked. The usual barrage of missile fire and holy water vials scattered, burned and defeated four, but one persevered. Argile took a brutal hit, which would have disembowelled him, but he managed to drop and avoid the worst of the damage, but was out for the count. El Cid was worse for wear and no-one else could fight, so they took off in a fighting retreat, four carrying the unconscious Argile.

[By this stage, party Stress was looking bad. They had spent a lot of Stress to help the missile combat and throwing holy water vials. 

Argile had to make his Resistance roll to save his life, but got to 9 Stress (8+ is bad). This zonked Argile and gave him the COLD trauma. 

El Cid, Tylin and Lammy were all on 7 Stress. Huilam 6. Burrito 5.]

  

To add insult to injury, as they rushed out of the cemetery, a patrol eight of Knives stopped them.

Generic Corporal

El Cid was leading and he was confronted by the patrol corporal. El Cid's normal arrogance and ill-manners came to the fore, and words were had on both sides, and they weren't deferential or respectful words. The corporal poked at El Cid with his sword.

"Do that again and there'll be trouble," said El Cid.

The corporal poked him again.

El Cid stepped forward and punched him in the face. El Cid hadn't really tested his new improved black IMAG fists (well, not against a living opponent). The poor corporal's face just caved in, right to the back of his skull, as brains, blood and spinal fluid spattered out. The rest of the squad gasped as the corporal's lifeless body sagged to the ground, and drew their swords. The party groaned.

Lammy cast a Sleep spell and Moonlight a Hold on the men, and they all dropped like nine-pins. The group beat a hasty retreat to their base.