[Game Thread] Chapter 5: The Price of Keeping Secrets

[FoggyKnight]

Brie tilted her head slightly. She was having a hard time following the conversation between Jer'mae and the guard. "What's blackmail? Or 'Yojana's'?" She asked. She felt uncomfortable for deceiving the guard. She was trying not to out and out lie, but even the slightest deception was not her element, and she was fidgeting slightly from behind Grunk.

[Humble Athena]

"Blackmail's when someone knows a bad secret about you, and wants money to keep quiet about it." Jer'meae quickly informs the fur-clad woman, trying not to chuckle at the sarcastic man's accidentally self-inflicted pain. "Nasty business, but effective, for a smart criminal. Most everyone's got secrets, some bigger than others."

[FoggyKnight]

Brie frowned in further confusion. So someone could be tryng to 'blackmail' one of us? I don't know of a bad secret to hide. Just a plain secret. Although I guess it could be a 'bad' secret of the druid wants us to stop finding these codexes. She resisted the urge to reach under her armor to check for the codex around her neck.

[Admin Chuck]

Grunk follows along quietly, having said all that he's going to say on this matter to this guard. It might come to pass that they have to reveal what they know to the people here, but it sure wasn't going to be to some random guard.

On a whim Grunk casts his mind out to the Codex around his neck. Champion's Codex, what groups would want to keep you hidden?

[Aeternis]

The guard gives Brie a strange look with a raised eyebrow, probably thinking poorly about Brie's intellect. He ignores the question about blackmail. "Yojana's a magician, lives across town. She's good with codes and the like, and helps us out now and then." He offers. "What we're tryin' to figure out is, who's being blackmailed?" He again looks at a distant point beyond his charges thoughtfully. "Anyway, you were askin' about where this was found?" He gestures for the five to turn around. "Take a look."

Upon obeying, it's blatantly obvious that the guard wasn't lost in thought when he looked past them - he was actually looking at something specific. At this distance from the wall, the red and yellow painted letters and runes that have been put there (the lowest line being about fifteen feet up) can be read without too much neck-craning. Each symbol is probably two or three feet high, and the placement means they are readable all the way down the street to the outskirts of Belton.

Above the painted warning, which indeed matches the paper the guard handed Brie moments ago, a guard in a harness dangles from the walkway at the wall's top, while three of his compatriots strain against a pulley and rope to lower him slowly. From the look of it, the descent just started - the man in the harness is no more than four feet below the walkway.

"Whoah." Moric says simply.

"This is new?" Luthrin asks eventually, after a long pause.

"Well we know when it was reported, which was about forty-five minutes ago. I don't think there's been a guard patrol over here for a few hours, so it could be several hours old." This voice is Vorn, who has detached himself from his previous conversation and come up behind the group while they were looking at the painted letters and runes. "But I'd bet this went up since the gas bomb attack." He continues. "So, last ninety minutes or so. Probably applied magically. Any ideas?" He seems to expect that the group does indeed have ideas. "I'm no idiot. Ten to one odds this is meant for at least one of you."

OOC Handwriting analysis is rather useless if you apply your warning note in halfling-sized letters on the side of a stone wall using magic.

[FoggyKnight]

Brie glanced at Luthrin and Moric, but they weren't saying anything. Neither was Grunk. That just left Jer'mae, and she was fairly sure that the water woman was not involved in this, given that the runes were in the language of the codexes.

"Um, it could have something to do with the rock that Turik had dropped." She said, glancing at the others before looking back at Vorn. "There was a man with wolves in the woods that was unhappy I had it. He said that it was bad that it was not hidden anymore, and told us not to go hunting for any more. Turik also wanted it back, but I have not seen him since Luthrin and Moric brought him here. We believed his partner was around. We saw her before the shop you found us behind was attacked. That's why we were hiding, so she couldn't find us. We didn't want to be prisoners again."

[Admin Chuck]

Grunk simply shuts his eyes at Brie's admission. Damn. No other indication is given, especially about the Codex that he wears around his own neck at this very moment.

Then he remembers something else about their earlier conversation, when they had just met Jer'meae and she made him laugh so uproariously. "We saw her-" a long index finger points at the mermaid, "-walk in front of the shop, not Gertia. We thought it was Gertia, so we hid, thinking that she wanted revenge for Turik."

[Humble Athena]

Jer'meae steps forward, eyes turned up towards the strange writing. "Hmm..." she murmurs, pressing her fingers together so that the webbing in-between is fully stretched. "Magic is certainly likely..."

 

Bardic Knowledge (Method of Inscription): 18

[Aeternis]

"Rock?" Vorn frowns. "I know about the man that Mr. Flintab brought in some days ago, but there was never mention of anything like that." He gestures to Luthrin briefly. "After word from Malia proper came down that he was to be moved literally the same afternoon, the higher-ups here did a little homework and found out who that scum really is." Vorn's expression is one of sheer disgust - what he knows about Turik must be bad indeed. "But we're almost three days from the coast as the crow flies, longer by road, and he was a ship captain. You think this might be the work of one of his people trying to get something back?"

He considers this for a moment. "Far's I know, you lot've done nothing wrong. By Malian law, a bandit forefeits his life and posessions to the travelers he attacks." Vorn finally says. It's clear he didn't really process everything Brie said, maybe because he's unused to the way she puts things or maybe because he latched onto the first thing and ran with it. "An outlaw makes sense, though, 'cause whoever they are hasn't so much as rented a bed in town, we'd know." Vorn turns to one of the men he was conversing with moments ago. "Get a group to check all the good camping spots within an hour's walk of town." He shoos that man off and turns to the other. "Head over to Yojana's place and see what she'd need to use magic to find our killer. I don't care what she says it will cost." He shoos that man away too, and turns back to the group, primarily Brie, Grunk, and Luthrin.

"Now. The story." He says, in a tone that indicates that he's not going to take "no" for an answer. "Anything you've got on this guy could help. Start with that rock you mentioned."

OODM All right. Now you don't have to actually do the whole story IC, you can just do a "Character A tells him the story over the course of a few minutes, making sure to mention X and omitting Y and Z because they paint him in a bad light." If you want to do it the other way, of course, you're free to. Note that you are informing both Vorn and Jer'meae. If you want to leave out a critical element, you'll need Bluff to cover it up, but for little or peripheral things you won't. If you aren't sure which side of the line something's on, let me know and I'll rule it for you.

[Admin Chuck]

Grunk stares hard at the stupid humans around him for several moments before deciding that he needed to speak before Brie dug the hole even deeper. "Turik was a pirate who took us captive." The big orc indicates himself, Brie and his cleric. "He tried to force us to work for him. As soon as we were off the ship and alone I tried to kill him. We won the fight but he survived and escaped." Grunk doesn't seem ashamed or worried about admitting that he tried to kill Turik in apparent cold blood. "He grabbed some of his crew and chased after us. We fought them and killed them all, except Turik, who Luthrin brought here so he could be brought to 'justice.' Of course, we took all his valuables before turning him over." Grunk leaves the story off there, hoping that maybe Vorn will run with the revenge idea some more instead of focusing on the rock part that Brie mentioned.

OOC I think that suffices for the absolute bare bones of the story.

[FoggyKnight]

"Grunk, we didn't kill Moric, either." Brie corrected nervously. "Unless you considered him as one of Turik's 'valuables'?"

[Aeternis]

Moric, who's been a bit quiet, gives Brie an arched-eyebrow, slightly scowling "Thanks for that" look and inches back from Vorn a few steps, but given that the area is swarming with three dozen or more of the town's guardsmen he seems to know he wouldn't get far if he made a break for it.

After a moment, he seems to decide that he's better off with his one-time captors than without them, and shifts slightly to put himself more behind Brie and Grunk as they explain.

OODM I was going to ask for a Bluff roll on excluding Moric's involvement, but that won't be necessary anymore. Continue. I was just getting in Moric's reaction.

[Admin Chuck]

Grunk turns a look to Brie that could curdle milk, before turning back to Vorn. "He's with us now. Was with Turik but knew when to cut his losses." Grunk doesn't like Moric much, but the little thief has been honest with them thus far, and there's no reason to cut him loose yet.

OOC Technically I guess there are reasons to cut him loose, namely the 250 gp he earned that we wouldn't have to pay him if Vorn took him into custody for being a pirate.

[FoggyKnight]

What did I say? Brie shrinks back slightly at Grunk's glare, and doesn't add anything further, letting the orc tell the rest of the story.

[Aeternis]

Vorn turns a suspicious glare at Moric, who slinks back a little and makes sure Brie and Grunk are between himself and Vorn. There's a brief, uneasy silence, during which Vorn is considering something. "If you do not accuse him of anything, then in the eyes of the law he has done nothing wrong." He finally says. "That's what Malian law says about what happens out in the wilds."

Moric drops his shoulders and breathes out in relief, but Vorn is not done. "But I detest sellswords of all kinds. You," he points at Moric, who treats the gesture as if it was the hand-motion to a deadly ray spell, "You will be on your best behavior while we find this killer, and after that you will leave Belton going south. Eriya can deal with you how they like."

"That was the plan anyway." Moric mutters, but if Vorn hears him he doesn't respond.

"So if whoever this is is after that object you have - " He frowns. "Rock? Stone? I'd imagine that the Captain's not dead over a pebble. Are you talking about a gemstone?" He gestures to Brie. "Perhaps we can lure this person out by using it as bait." He frowns. "There's an idea. All of you, come this way, we're going to the barracks." He gestures to the group and to three of the nearest soldiers. "You, finish searching the area and get that cleaned up." This is spoken to a man slightly farther away.

Meanwhile, the soldier being lowered from the top of the wall to scrub at the letters yells out. "Not working!" Those on the ground hear him call. "Pull me back up, let's try the acid." With that, those holding the rope he's secured to start pulling the plucky guard back up to the top of the wall.