3.5e Batman Campaign (2.0)

[Molan]

Spoiler: OOC: Oracle Investigates Letters, Spoiler Assists

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Before leaving the hold Barabara opens up the secret compartment and stares at it with a critical eye. Such compartments make some amount of sense as a security mesure against thieves, but more as a mesure to allow illegal smuggling, and this ship was a large one to be taken in so quietly by the thieves guild. Was there orruption inside the guild the captain was responsible for? Or was Fox himself forced into smaller scale criminality in the light of ramping pressure. Carefully Barabra peeled back the seal and read the contents of both papers, before hurriedly returning them to the seret compartment and going to fetch those local justicars she thought trustworthy.

Barbara took a look at the back of the envelopes. One was sealed with green wax, the other in dark blue. Her eyes widened (Know Nobility: Take 10 for 18) when she saw the green seal; it was embossed with the strange serpentine, question mark sigil of House Nigma.

The second letter was graced with a spade, which she didn't recognize. Fortunately, her companion did.

"That's the emblem of the Dark Market," Spoiler whispered. "I'd heard some chatter that they might be trying to edge back into Midtown, but I ruled it out once we started picking off the Thieves Guild. Seems I wasn't completely wrong after all."

Nodding, Barbara coaxed the envelopes open, careful to avoid actually breaking the wax seals. "That was easy enough." she commented offhand in Spoiler's direction. "Yea, that's because these have already been opened and resealed." the thief replied.

She read each letter aloud, to speed things along.

The House Nigma Letter
" The letter starts out addressed to 'Your Noble Captainship', and the entire first page appears to be a series of riddles, written in scrawling green ink.

Weight in my belly, Trees on my back, Nails in my ribs, Feet I do lack. What am I?

Directly below the riddle, written in a much shakier, blank-inked hand, is a single word: SHIP. The "S" in Ship was underlined.

I'm in the book, but not on any leaf; I'm in the mouth, but not in lip or teeth; I'm in the atmosphere, but never in the air; I wait on every one, but never on a pair; I am with you wherever you may go; And every thing you do I'm sure to know; Though when you did it I should not be there, Yet when 'twas done, you'd find me in the chair. What am I?"

Once again, below this new riddle, the second 'writer' has added his answer: "Letter O". This time the "O" was underlined..

The House Nigma letter goes on like that. Riddle after riddle crosses the page...at several points, the person answering the puzzles appears to have gotten frustrated and crossed out his answer more than once. Barbara turned the large parchment over, and felt a chill run down her spine. There was a single message written in back in green, and the letters that had been underlined on the previous page had been assembled in black ink below them.

I know you're growing impatient, my seaworthy friend. But don't worry. Once Fox is gone, you'll have a new master, and I will no longer have need of your services. Until I have what I want, you'll continue to pass information to my couriers as requested. In the meantime, assemble the clues I've been leaving you. The next -- and last -- letter will lead you to your precious Verena. Aren't family reunions just grand?

-- L.E.N.

Below the green paragraph, the recipient of the letter -- presumably the captain -- had spelled out the first major letter in each one of the riddle's answers: S O U C H A N I S L."

Barbara shook her head. She was reading an overly-complicated ransom note. Apparently the Captain of the Chraal was passing along information about the Merchant's Guild in order to spare (or reclaim?) someone named Verena.

She looked at the second note. This one was much simpler.
The Dark Market Letter

"Don't think I didn't notice you trying to give us the slip last week. Don't fug around with us Benson; this doesn't have to be a difficult relationship.

Your payment is in the gem pouch. All you have to do is perform your normal run. Once you've offloaded your cargo, our boys at the port will load your return shipment up no problem. All you have to do is keep our -- special barrels -- off of your manifest. We'll keep you compensated, you just return to port and deliver your merchandise.

Who knows, you keep doing us proud, we might even be able to help you out with your...other problem.

Don't forget; before long the Merchants' Guild is gonna be history and you'll be looking for new employers. Don't be an idiot -- look out for yourself, and your family. You've got a bright future.

- I"

If nothing else, they'd discovered what the Sapphires were about.

“If we’re casing the place after the fact, I’m guessing you’re checking for evidence of the inside job? Big heists normally prefer plants, and we already know Garrel was bought off, so best to double-check the rot isn’t all the way through. Or am I way off?”

That there was more than one way to bribe a Justiciar was well known in Gotham, but Stephanie doubted Merchants were much more expensive, and too few people were beyond the going rate for mage papers anyway. They found themselves searching inside the captain’s quarters. Oracle busied herself with tearing open sealed letters inside the secretive captain’s desk compartment. But it was the six sapphires that unashamedly held the light from the eternal torch in Spoiler’s hand that drew her. The ambivalent House Kyle rogue barely suppressed her grin. Hello, good graces. Only after making a showing of glancing at maps did she pluck up a sapphire to appraise the gem by eye, expression even. It was rare to find three kinds of gems in one night out.

Spoiler: Sapphires, appraisals and dubious morality

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Take 10 Appraisal: 15. (+2 Demon’s Head, +3 Intelligence, +10 Taking)

If the captain seems corrupt based on the letter evidence, and later what I might find in the chests, then I will liberate the shiny sapphires. I’m not above using a Bluff to distract certain PCs to do it, either. >:)

If the captain seems innocent, and there’s no obvious sentimental reason the Merchant would want them (evidence it’s for a fiance, needed for a spell to heal someone), I’ll ‘pay’ at a rate that favours the captain for the sapphires, based on my Appraisal check. Come here, little beauties.

After the gems and two heavy chests I'm happy to move on to Fox.

Stephanie made an intrigued noise at spying the heavy chest across the room, beside the wooden bed. She waltzed over to it only after a preliminary glance at the charts on the shelves, aware of present company. Nobles rarely enjoyed seeing expensive locks easily undone. “This chest could be hiding the valuable evidence you need to further break the Thieves’ hold on Midtown. I might even be able to finesse it, given a few minutes. But I’m more a concerned Gothamite helping make the odd citizen’s arrest against dangerous criminals; potentially damaging the property of family men isn’t really a hobby of mine.”

Alibis were a habit that her shifty elf friend had massaged into her skull over the years, and they had saved Stephanie from jail and the grave on more times than she cared to consider. However respectable a front she had insisted on showing everyone at the Mage College, the blonde had still spent the evening armed and kitted to traipse freely around private property, far past curfew, and without any care for the Guild Master’s opinion or approval. Never mind the dead arsonist. A witness capable of puzzling out practical alchemy, linguistics and arcana, Barbara would know how little Spoiler cared for laws. But people, and plausible deniability, were entirely different.

“I’d really need a nod from someone in the know.” She unfolded her purple leather case of tools tantalisingly, but looked over at Oracle innocently. “Do you think the Justiciar’s would understand?”

Spoiler: If I get the Jbe nod of approval, Take 20 (Open Lock) twice, and Take 10 on Search and K: Local (The Cat)

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Search: Take 10. Just confirming that, yknow, it’s safe. I’m pretty sure it is, but no one needs a trap to ruin our day.

Open Lock: It normally takes 1 round (6 secs), so Take 20 takes two minutes. So four minutes total per heavy chest (one in captain's quarter, one in crew quarter). Result 32 for both (+10 baseline, +20 Taking, +2 Masterwork kit).

Take 10 on K: Local. 20 The Cat. I can’t remember if I’m completely making it up, read it in a wiki page, or if it’s confirmed, but does The Cat actually likes gemstones?

Basically, I’m collecting gems that could be sold at worse, or grant me a little more sway with House Kyle at best later on, maybe. But stealing is only okay when it’s from morally dubious people.


After the gems and two heavy chests I'm happy to move on to Fox.

Barbara began to reseal the two envelopes, and Stephanie got to work on the chests.

Spoiler: OOC

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Are you skipping the lockbox in the brig?

She managed to open both of them with just a little patience and effort. The Captain's chest included, among other things, multiple bottoms of rum and whisky, an assortment of fine clothes, crucial letters of marque that licensed the Chraal for it's trade as a ship of the Merchant's Guild, 4,500 gold pieces, an unidentified spyglass, and three unidentified potions.

The ship in the crew quarters was more dubious; an unidentified cutlass and an unidentified dagger, an unidentified suit of leather armor, to unidentified potions, 550 silver pieces, 1,200 copper pieces, 20 Gold pieces, two pieces of what looked like stolen artistic statues, several bottles of rum...and what to Spoiler's eyes was unmistakably a healthy-sized stash of hard drugs. There were also several sets of commoner's clothes.

"It goes without saying that as the largely unaffiliated though unperecuted merenary spellcaster 'Oracle' I have no particular insights into what the Justicars would or would not understand, much less any power to sway them should my assumption be incorrect." Replied Barbara with a knowing smirk.

"However, where I to make an unfounded speculation as to the potential feelings of ... say the heir to justicar's keep, or others with some understand of the pracctices of the justicars, I'd guess that cracking open safes in locations that up until only a few minutes ago were held by ambitious and violent members of organised crime comes close to standard pracctice, and certainly has the potential to be overlooked as long as they're just examined and not say, picked entirely clean.