The 20th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty
When this session occurred, we hadn’t met for three weeks due to conflicting summer vacation plans among the grad students who make up most of my players. Hiddlebatch’s player was in China for some reason at this point, but the other three managed to get together and we declared it a quorum.
At this awkward time directly after completing their mission for the Kech, and without a specific mystery to look into (like the disappearance of Krich that started this whole business), I had been hoping the players would make some plot-relevant choices, or hatch some sort of madcap scheme. However, they seemed somewhat… directionless.
GM: So now that we’ve… kind of reviewed the last session, and --
Quimarel OOC: Discussed [Makpov’s player’s] dream.
GM: -- And discussed her dream, and eaten chips… what do y’all want to do?
Quimarel OOC: I wanted to become more prominent in terms of local politics. I wanted to make myself more important to the town.
GM: Yes, I remember you saying that.
Quimarel OOC: I have no idea how to do that.
Makpov OOC: Apparently I’m the favored whore of some politician.
GM: The ambassador.
Makpov OOC: You could use me as leverage.
[pause where a plan might be, but isn’t]
GM: I was hoping y’all might have fleshed out your plans a little bit in the three weeks since our last session.
Quimarel OOC: I was in Houston. Brain no worky.
GM: Does your brain shut down in warm climates?
Quimarel OOC: It does, it does.
GM: Like a troll?
Quimarel OOC: … yes.
GM: … have you read any Terry Pratchett?
Quimarel OOC: No.
GM: Oh. Well, you should. It has trolls whose brains don’t work in heat.
After some hemming and hawing, they decide to look around. Quimarel wants to know if she might have noticed any sort of “government thing happening” in which she might “make her voice known”. As it happens, there is a sort of legal/political kerfuffle going on, in which some miscreants have broken into the offices of the Royal Intelligence Corps.
Tamarie: (in tones of shocked outrage) WHO WOULD DO THAT?!
Quimarel decides she will be very vocal about the need for tighter security, but otherwise declines to get involved with this unsavory situation. After some minimal poking around, she finds that the Town Guard have noted a rash of apparently unrelated thefts this week, which they are blaming on humans.
Specifically, a group of human criminals whom the Capran government had sentenced to hard labor in the Wastelands and shipped north, only to somehow lose track of. The criminals in question had vanished for some time, presumed escaped -- their guards were found dead -- but have recently been spotted walking around town here in Noroiras. They are all dressed in rags, covered in minor scars & injuries, and have some fantastical tale about being held in an underground prison somewhere inside the town limits. Nobody believes this ridiculous story, especially since they credit the racist priest outside of town with their rescue.
The party makes uncomfortable eye contact with each other. “Who could that be…” mutters Quimarel. “I mean… I don’t know… um…”.
Makpov, OOC and apropos of nothing: I imagine the fairy we found looks like the GM.
GM: Right, and you still have a drunken fairy.
Tamarie OOC: He’s still drunk?
GM: That was how you decided to keep him under control.
Tamarie OOC: That’s horrible. That’s not what I remember. I remember making him a little house. And a sweater.
Quimarel OOC: A terrible sweater. It had three holes: two for his arms and… one for his wings?
GM: And none for his head.
Tamarie OOC: It was fine; the colors were just all wrong.
Quimarel OOC: Puce green.
GM: I thought puce was like pink.
[Digression follows, in which both the spelling and the meaning of “puce” are debated and eventually Googled, along with “mauve” and “salmon”, before returning to the game.]
“So,” Quimarel muses, “what I’m hearing is… if someone were to capture some of these criminal types and throw them into lockup, they might win the favor of the townspeople.”
Quimarel: Who wants to capture the people we freed? [pointedly, and very in-character, does not pause to hear opinions] Yaaaaaay -- let’s do the thing.
The players attempt to make some Gather Information rolls, and the GM realizes for the umpteenth time that Gather Information isn’t a skill in Pathfinder. They make Diplomacy rolls instead, which Quimarel and Tamarie both fail dramatically -- Quimarel rolls a natural 1, and Tamarie gets a total of 5. Makpov declines to roll.
The three of them find a reputable source. Well, he’s kind of dirty, but this ain’t no high-falutin’ Southern court -- reputable sources can be dirty. Actually, he’s really dirty. And scraggly. And it looks like he hasn’t bathed in several months.
Tamarie: He seems reliable.
Quimarel: Trustworthy. He’s an old soul.
They know this man, in fact. He’s kind of hard to miss, since he lives on the street. That’s not “lives on the streets”, note… he literally lives in the middle of the road.
Quimarel OOC: We’re asking… Homeless Steve?
GM: Sure. Homeless Steve --
Tamarie OOC: We could call him Bucky.
GM: Huh?
Tamarie OOC: Bucky.
Quimarel OOC: Bucky. Sad trash homeless prince. One-armed sex hobo.
GM: Did you just say “One-armed --”
Quimarel OOC: Yes I did. Those words left my mouth. Let us not discuss it.
Homeless Bucky informs them that he knows exactly what’s going on. It seems that the Intelligence Corps vault was robbed… by mole people. These mole people are in league with the Capran Mob, which is why there are all these humans wandering around. He proceeds to nod sagely, an air of ancient wisdom coming off him in waves.
Quimarel: You keep doing what you do, Homeless Bucky.
Bucky: [burrows into the road like a ghost crab]
Realizing that Bucky’s wisdom has given them no leads as to where these criminals actually are, Tamarie and Quimarel roll again, with slightly better results. A short period of asking around leads to the information that the human (pronounced Ferengi-style) criminals mostly steal from the Marketplace of Rats. This more or less makes sense, as the open-air marketplace in question is the only place where valuables can be found in Noroiras other than “under heavy guard in the mansions of the upper class”, so it’s a natural target for thieves.
(The Marketplace of Rats, if anyone is interested, is so named because of the artwork found therein -- several freestanding statues dot the field where it is located, all of which depict, fairly grotesquely, goblin were-rats in the midst of transformation. The theory has been floated that these are not statues, but in fact the work of a basilisk. Nobody, in the several decades since the statues were found, has made any effort to address this matter further.)
Quimarel, Tamarie, and Makpov skulk into the Marketplace that afternoon, hoping to catch one of the thieves red-handed. They roll Stealth, a skill in which exactly one member of the party has any ranks. Quimarel blends perfectly into the shadows, even in the late-afternoon sun. Tamarie and Makpov pretend, incompetently, to be statues.
GM: Tamarie and Makpov, you get a lot of funny looks. At one point, an exceptionally shady-looking goblin offers to sell you some drugs.
Tamarie: Cool.
Makpov: I lick him.
Tamarie: What kind of drugs?
Goblin drug dealer: (somewhat loopy from Makpov’s hallucinogenic saliva) I have… ALL kinds of drugs.
Makpov: I lick him again and then steal his drugs.
The drug dealer’s eyes are wide and rolling back and forth. He seems terrified of something behind him that nobody else can see. Makpov manages to grab several bags of unidentified substances off of him before he panics and bolts, trying to escape some hallucination or other.
Quimarel OOC: “Misc. Drugs.” Great.
Tamarie OOC: We can give them to the fairy.
Makpov OOC: YES!
GM: You seem way too excited about that.
From Quimarel’s more effective vantage point, she spots one of the humans who looks a lot like one of the ones the party led out of the Kech dig site. He is casually walking by stalls and stuffing small items into the folds of his shabby clothing. He seems pretty good at it, too: Quimarel wouldn’t have noticed if she weren’t expecting it.
The shabby human further shows off his rogue level(s) by spotting Quimarel in her hiding place. Curious but not inclined to call the guard for obvious reasons, he peers towards Quimarel and starts slowly walking over, as if trying to decide what to do.
Quimarel responds by pretending to scan the crowd, making eye contact, winking, and generally acting as though she is merely there to drum up business. The human sees through the act [Bluff: 7] and says out of the corner of his mouth, “What’s going on here?”
Quimarel: Looking for a little company.
Hoo-man: Riiiiiiight. Didn’t I see you down in that whole underground-slave-thing?
Quimarel: I don’t know about underground… [Bluff: 25]
Hoo-man: Never mind. I… I must have mistaken you for someone else.
The human starts to walk away -- and Quimarel tackles him, yelling for Makpov and Tamarie’s help. Makpov licks him, and he fails his Fortitude save. Quimarel calls the guards over as their captive descends into hallucination.
Cpl. Moryo: What’s all this, then?
Quimarel: I saw this man stealing things from various booths. I think he’s one of the escaped prisoners!
Cpl. Moryo: Sir, I’m going to need you to turn out your pockets.
As the human is busy hallucinating and convulsing slightly, Corporal Moryo has to forcibly search him, at which point he turns up a number of hidden trinkets on his person.
Cpl. Moryo: Did you pay for these? What’s going to happen if I go ask the vendors about these items?
Hoo-man: [shrieking gibberish]
Cpl. Moryo: Sir, I’m going to have to take you off to lockup. [to Quimarel] And I’ll have to keep these items… as, um… evidence.
Makpov plants some of his miscellaneous drugs on the human, and the guard drags him off. These events have attracted the attention of a number of people who were just wandering the marketplace, so Makpov and Quimarel take the opportunity to name-drop the Squirting Squid and its soon-to-be-famous crime-fighting whores. The crowd is intrigued.
Quimarel begins to declaim to the crowd. “I feel that, as a pillar of the community, it is my duty to protect our town, which I love so much, In so many ways.” [Diplomacy: 22] Applause ensues. Quimarel goes on to answer questions, give directions to the brothel, and continue throwing around patriotic rhetoric.
