The Story So Far

• Chapter One: The Mirelurk Malevolence
• Chapter Two: The Stygian Gambit
• Chapter Three: Reach for the Stars
• Chapter Four: Prisoner 13

Prelude: Prison

Neverwinter Prison was fairly pleasant, as prisons go.  The cells weren’t very cold, and the guards brought new rushes for the floor each week.  The worst that could be said was that the prison was far too crowded, with five or six people forced to abide in a space built for two.  The chamber pot filled up quickly, and even if you doubled-up on the bunks, someone was going to be sleeping on the floor.  To address the issue, the magistrates frequently assigned convicts to hard labor, repairing the city walls or working in the mines.  There was a lot of shuffling around, as inmates came and went.

It was not unusual, then, when five of the prisoners were ushered from their respective locations around the prison and placed into a holding cell all together.  What was unusual, however, was the fact that there was a strange object waiting for the prisoners when they arrived.  It was a small music box, ornately decorated in gold filigree.  A small golden key was resting on top of it, just the right size for the box’s keyhole.

The five prisoners looked at each other uneasily.  After a moment, one of them stepped forward and inserted the key, turning it in the lock.  The music box opened and began to play, filling the room with the crackle of a recorded voice.  It was clearly magical and entirely eerie.

After a long moment, each of the prisoners made their decision.  They all gathered near the door, taking the opportunity offered.

Welcome to the Golden Vault.

Chapter One: The Mirelurk Malevolence

After making their choice, the party of five — three elves, a human, and a dwarf — were escorted out by a tired-looking guard.  He led them out into the courtyard, his spear thumping on the floor at intervals.  The courtyard was nearly empty at that time of day, since no prisoners were at exercise or having a meal.  The only person there was a male gnome.  The gnome wasn’t in a guard’s uniform, but instead was wearing dusty brown robes and black fingerless gloves.  After glancing around and visibly taking account of each of the prisoners, the gnome gestured for the party to follow him.  

He led them into the small kitchen of the prison, near the courtyard, moving with the easy familiarity of someone who knew the way.  They walked to the rear of the kitchen, shuffling past three prisoners peeling potatoes, to a stout cellar door.  The gnome knocked four times, then he opened the door and ushered the party down into the darkness.  The stairs descended through an initial dank smell before turning into the light and airy smell of flowers.  To their astonishment, the prisoners emerged out onto a busy city street – and it was not in Neverwinter.  Glancing behind them, they found that they’d exited out of a door marked “privy” in the rear of what appeared to be a Chultish restaurant.  Several large flowerpots were set nearby, flush with vibrant blossoms.  Across the street was a sign for a shop: Varkenbluff Sundries.  They’d been transported to their destination in the city of Varkenbluff in the span of a moment… powerful magic.

A grave halfling messenger wordlessly handed one of the prisoners — Alnitak, a handsome elf with a sword at his side — a sealed parchment, and then promptly wandered off.

“Meet me at the Sage’s Quill today as soon as you can,” the missive read. “I beg your help in a delicate matter whose importance cannot be overstated. I shall await you in a purple hooded robe.”

The note was signed, “Dr. Cassee Dannell.”

Without delay, the party met at the appointed rendezvous.  As they entered the Sage’s Quill, soft light revealed mahogany furniture and luxurious carpets. A few genteel patrons murmured in the lounge. They soon noticed a purple-hooded figure tucked into a corner booth.

Dr. Dannell gestured for them to sit. The party noticed lines of worry etched into a face that seemed unaccustomed to them.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said. “A few weeks ago, I attended a dig in the Murkmire that unearthed a furrowed, light-green stone. I’ll give you all the details, but the bottom line is that it isn’t a stone at all—it’s the egg of an eldritch horror. Moreover, my research indicates it’ll hatch at midnight tonight.

“Trouble is, no one will listen to me. The university ignored me, and I was caught trying to steal the egg from the museum so I could contain it. Now I’ve been fired, the Murkmire Stone display at the museum opens tomorrow, and the egg is about to hatch.

“You’ve got to steal the Murkmire Stone and bring it back so I can save the city!”

After some discussion, the party agreed.  They pumped her for information, and she handed over a crude map she made of the public areas of the museum, as well as what she knew about the situation.  She had a way for them to get in: there was a gala event tonight for the opening of the new exhibit.  She had expensive fancy clothing for them and a set of tickets, so they could scout out the scene and possibly even steal the stone at the party.  To assist them, she gave them a bag of holding for their adventuring gear (and where did that even come from… they were unarmed and unarmored in their cells!).  Spindle, a thin-faced elf in thief’s leathers, took possession of the bag.  From the way he and Alnitak were bantering, they seemed to know each other well.

If the party succeeded in their theft, Dr. Dannell promised them they can keep her bag of holding and she’d give them twenty gold apiece.  Rich pay for a single night’s work at the party this evening, on the third of Uktar.

The former prisoners dressed themselves in fancy clothing, stowed their gear, and went to the party.  They’d been given their freedom, but now they had to earn it.

The party spent a few moments casing the outside of the building, examining what was nearby and what vulnerabilities might exist.  Most of them went inside, excepting only Spindle, who found an entrance to a basement loading dock in the rear of the building.  He popped the lock with a twist of a pick, and entered.

Alnitak and the other elf, an older fellow with hollow eyes named Stasha, went inside.  They were accompanied by the human and the dwarf.  Almost immediately, they ascended to the room where the party would be held, and they found the display with the Murkmire Stone.  It was quite large and heavy, and moreover, there were alarms and guards everywhere.  This was going to be a challenge.

The human, a brash young man named Chaster, began to make a scene.  He swaggered and caroused, badly flirting with the curator.  As a counterpoint, Alnitak smoothly moved from one person to another, chatting them up with a bard’s silver tongue.  He drew information from strangers and explored the surrounding rooms.  Stasha kept an eye out, looking for opportunities, while the dwarf examined the stone’s display case in detail.

Down in the basement, the stealthy Spindle thought he’d stumbled upon the key to the whole mission.  They could get in and out this way, there were no guards, and there was even the promise of a nice bit of loot stored down here.  It did smell odd.  Almost too late, he discovered that this was the smell of a lurking mimic, which took the opportunity to lunge for the tempting elvish meal.  The elf, fleet of foot, sprinted up the stairs in blind haste.

The room above appeared to be a break room for the guards, and it was mercifully deserted.  Spindle searched the room quickly, finding a few unusual passes stamped with the museum’s mark, and then slipped out to join the rest of the party at the gala.  He’d almost become mimic food, but he’d profited: the trio of passes were meant for the guards, and they’d render the holders invisible to the museum’s alarms.

The gala was beginning to wind down, and as Spindle rejoined the rest of the thieves, it was becoming clear that they were running out of time.  Chaster decided to gamble on something risky, and began being quite loud and disruptive.  He climbed the mechanical dinosaur display near the party, shouting and fumbling as though he were intoxicated.  It drew a considerable amount of attention, and perhaps the distraction was why Spindle was able to lift the contents of the curator’s handbag and Stasha was able to sneak off and ascend to the attic undetected.  Unfortunately, even that scene didn’t draw all of the attention away, and the guards gently but firmly escorted almost the entire crew outside at the gala’s conclusion.  Even the dwarf, Durin, who tried a clever ruse with a mechanical marvel in the privy, was brought outside.

Alnitak, Spindle, Chaster, and Durin met in the street as the museum doors slammed shut, and talked worriedly about the best way to get back in.  But it was Stasha, who’d simply hidden in the attic quietly, who was able to pop open the skylight and lower a rope to them.  The whole party climbed the wall except for Chaster, who was left on guard.  They were in.

Once inside, the crew was worried about the difficult task that lay ahead of them.  They knew there were many guards and that they had regular patrols.  Spindle had lifted a guard schedule and a key off of the curator, but none of that would get them past the six guards who were probably between them and the dangerous egg.

Durin chose that moment to reveal a remarkable ability that he had.  Carefully scrutinizing the exact manner in which the stone and marble of the museum fitted together, he analyzed the minute impacts of footfalls and shifts in pressure, and he was able to identify exactly where the nearby guards were standing.  It took extraordinary skill, but he steered the party a path around the edge of the museum’s second floor, around to the cafe.

Outside, Chaster went to visit the nearby city watch station.  Using most of his money (and some he’d borrowed from Stasha), he bribed a guard to let him borrow one of their uniforms, then he returned back to the museum.  If something went wrong, he’d be the one to come “help” the museum guards.

Meanwhile, the crew inside found a single guard who was having a snack, munching on a large loaf of bread and singing a recent popular song (“I love bread, yes I love bread, oh yeah”).  They crept up on her and knocked her unconscious, hiding her body behind the cafe bar.  Then they snuck behind the backs of two other patrolling guards, taking the opportunity to swipe a large rock that was approximately the same size of the Murkmire Stone.  Alnitak used magic to attempt a distraction, imitating the curator’s voice from another room, but the guards were only briefly fooled.  Hurriedly, the whole party stuffed themselves into a tiny custodian’s corridor, then — while a whole gaggle of guards and their captain investigated the suspicious room where they’d just been — snatched the Stone.

They piled back into the custodian’s corridor (barely) just in time to avoid the guards again… but the guards had noticed the missing rock and now saw the switch, and the alarm was raised.  The crew sprinted for their attic exit.

Outside, one of the guards burst out to the street and headed for the city watch station.  Before he got there, though, he saw a human member of the watch standing just outside.  “Help!” he said to Chaster.  “Someone’s robbing the museum!”

“I’ll go raise the rest of the watch,” lied Chaster pleasantly, heading in the correct direction before looping back to the shadows near the building.

The party ran as fast as they could, but Spindle fell behind.  When the rest of the party had reached the attic stairs, he was still at the other end of the corridor… and the guards were hot on his tail.

Thinking quickly, Durin used his mechanical magicks to ensorcel the hall behind Spindle with a snare spell, while Spindle himself dumped a double handful of ball bearings on the floor.  The ball bearings scattered everywhere with a musical tinkling: they’re a trusty tool of the modern rogue, and they never seem to run out.

Spindle might not have made it clear if it hadn’t been for these traps, since the guards were fast but not especially acrobatic.  The captain ended up suspended in the air by the snare, while the two other guards with her went skidding and fell hard on the ground, sprawling.

The crew reunited outside after a rapid descent, and went to rendezvous with Dr. Dannell.  She was delighted to hear that they had the egg, but alarmed at the shouting and stomping outside.  The Sage’s Quill was right near the museum, and the party hadn’t quite made it out undetected.

After reconvening at Dr. Dannell’s (former) office at the university, a safer distance away, they handed over the egg.  She looked at it with fear and appreciation, and handed them each a pouch of gold with trembling fingers.

“I’ll take care of this,” she assured them.  “The crystal case is at my home, and I’ll bring the egg there and seal it up.”

The party was dubious.  Durin pointed out that they’d just stolen the very thing she was caught trying to steal earlier that day.  Dr. Dannell agreed after some convincing, and so Chaster dressed her in the city watch uniform, and Alnitak disguised her appearance.  Nervously but resolutely, the good doctor left.  She’d lost her career and she might yet lose her freedom, but she’d seal away the horror that was only hours away from rising up.

The job was done, and as the tension faded away, the crew looked uncertainly at each other.  They’d met their obligation to their mysterious benefactors, the Golden Vault.  Now, they supposed that they were free to go their separate ways.

Alnitak and Spindle had been captured with Durin while on a job, but the elves and dwarf didn’t seem sure that they’d be sticking together.  Likewise, Chaster had his own business.  Stasha was content to follow the dictates of fate, but what was fate telling him?  It was unclear.

Before parting, the crew agreed that they’d at least go to an inn and share a pint together.  They settled in to a small nameless tavern near the city gates, and Spindle bought a round for everyone.  It was a quiet, pleasant moment.  While each of the crew had tried their hands at crime to a greater or lesser degree, this was most complex heists any of them had ever attempted.  And they’d saved a lot of lives, to boot.  For most of the party — all of the party? — this was one of the greatest feats of their life.  And now it was over.

As Elnitak drained the last of the ale from his mug, though, he felt something metallic bump into his lips.  Puzzled, he lowered the tankard and peered inside.  His eyes widened in surprise as he reached in, and pulled out a glittering, golden key.

Taking it from his mouth, he moved to set it on the table, but it resisted oddly as he lowers it down.  It clinked against the air, as though something were invisibly present on the empty tabletop, even though probing fingers could still find nothing but emptiness.  There was something there, but it’s like only the key could interact with it.

Moving the golden key around, Alnitak discovered that it was an invisible box with a small hole in the front.  Another music box.  He inserted the key into nothingness, and turned it in the invisible lock.  Another music box appeared instantly, the lid opening soundlessly.  There were a handful of papers inside, and another recording began to play, filling the room with the crackle of a recorded voice.

Chapter Two: The Stygian Gambit

 The back room in the Brine Widow was well appointed, with a polished wood table, paintings of local landscapes, and wrought-iron lanterns. Platters on the table were piled with food, and a pot of tea steamed in the center of the table.  It was the thirteenth of the Rotting (Uktar), and it was time for their next job.

The tiefling before the crew had red skin, cobalt-blue eyes, and curly white hair she wore in long twists. Black horns rose from her forehead in tight spirals.

“Thank you for accepting my invitation,” she said, tightly.  “I’m Verity Kye, and what I’m about to discuss with you requires the utmost secrecy. I can’t stress to you enough how important it is that you speak nothing of what you hear within these four walls.”

After only a moment’s discussion, the group agreed.

“The Afterlife Casino is a new Nine Hells–themed attraction just outside town. The owner, Quentin Togglepocket, built it using prize money he stole from me, and I’d like you to give him hell. He’s hosting a tournament there. I want you to steal the erinyes statuette he plans to award as a prize, embarrassing him in front of the big names at the tournament. I also want you to steal back the five thousand gold pieces he stole from me. Bring the statuette and the gold here, where I’ll be waiting for you.”

According to Verity, none of the group would be able to simply get a job at the casino.  Quentin was only hiring tieflings — which had been her idea for the theme! — and obviously none of the crew would qualify.  She wasn’t a thief, and didn’t know what their best plan might be.

Verity had some things to assist the party, however.  She gave them a special bag of holding to carry the gold, but warned them that they wouldn’t be able to take anything out of the bag — to do so would require a command word that only she possessed.  She was a trifle cagy with her explanation, clearly wary of the future moment when she was going to collect a large sum of gold from them and pay them only a fraction of it for their trouble.

She also had a map.  The map Verity handed over was a hand-drawn floor plan of the casino and the employee-only areas. Verity paid Gildur Draak, a dwarf who worked for the construction company that built the casino, to provide her with information about the building’s nonpublic areas.  Of particular interest was the section with the high-security vault and the many security mirrors that had been placed around the casino, where they allowed the guards in the office to keep an eye on everything.

The tournament was only expected to last for two more days, so they didn’t have a wealth of time.  The crew decided to go that very moment to the casino for a first look and some gentle probing.  It was three miles north of Varkenbluff — a short carriage ride.

After they arrived at a landing next to the local river nicknamed the “River Styx,” they found several boats waiting for them.  The tiefling ferrier of their chosen boat ably navigated their boat downriver and into an underground channel. As the cave mouth swallowed the party, they heard music over the echo of a distant waterfall.

The cave’s ceiling rose high above their heads, and dancing lights bobbed around hanging stalactites. The river wound through the casino floor, splitting the cavernous chamber in two and passing under arched stone bridges at various points. Card tables and other gaming stations surrounded by chattering patrons filled the open space. A cheer rose from deeper in the cavern, which was decorated to suggest excitement, opportunity, and excess.

The ferrier steered their boat toward the left bank, and the boat rocked as it bumped up against a wooden dock. The ferrier then raised one hand, gesturing at the glittering sights before them, and intoned in a deep, raspy voice: “Welcome to the Afterlife. Temptation awaits.”

As they exited the boat, each crew member took a different approach.  Prod the place from every angle, they reasoned, and they’d find the weak points.

Chaster took the direct approach, simply walking to the front desk and asking about a job.  He figured he’d test the theory of whether all of the employees really were tieflings.  Verity had mentioned that some people wore makeup and false horns fixed with gum — if an old sea-hand like himself couldn’t get a job on the boats, though, that would be fair proof that the restriction was real.

A guard led him through the back corridors to the employees’ lounge, giving him a glimpse behind the scenes, where Chaster met the infamous Quentin.  The garishly dressed gnome had a devilish countenance to rival Mephistopheles, with ruddy skin (perhaps made redder with rouge) and a pitch-black little beard.  In a friendly but firm manner, he curled his lips in a lopsided smile. “Well, now,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Chaster explained his experience with boats and asked for a job, but Quentin turned him down cold.  The best the affable gnome could do was perhaps work with one of the casino’s suppliers.  Chaster thanked him, and made sure to take a good look around as he was escorted back to the casino floor.

Back on the floor, he spotted Stasha, and had an idea of how to test another aspect of the casino’s security.  The elderly elf had recently been blessed with the ability to change his appearance, thanks to the attentions of his otherworldly patron, and that gave Chaster an idea.  He picked a fight.

Once he’d decked the elf and knocked him into the river, he watched closely as security guards immediately closed in.  He was escorted out of the venue by security, in what was fast becoming his signature move.

In addition to taking a surprise bath, Stasha had managed to examine the security arrangement for the statuette and the tournament.  The betting was fast and heavy, and most of the attention was on the action, so Stasha was able to examine arrangements at his leisure.

Alnitak had immediately begun socializing.  He drifted into the Phlegethosian Spa and Stygian Baths, where a stressed customer could get a moment of luxurious pampering. The air in was warmer and more humid than in the casino proper and bore a sulfurous fragrance — sharp, but not unpleasant. A tiefling seated behind a desk gave him a warm smile. Chintz curtains were drawn behind her.

“Dear soul,” said the tiefling. “Care to enjoy a massage, relax in our sauna, or take a warm bath?”

Alnitak opted for the latter, choosing one of the baths with some students from the university.  They were bluff and hale young men, drinking and joking, and they warmed to the smooth Alnitak immediately.  The handsome elven bard chatted them up glibly, pumping them for information about the casino and what they’d noticed.  Almost at the same time, he ingratiated himself with a gaggle of giggling girls who were also students, all members of the Sisterhood of Rocca Rocca Nim.  He made fast friends (and perhaps more) over the course of a few hours in the spa and on the casino floor.

For his part, Durin hit the copper slots.  And he played some Life and Death at one of the tables.  And he took a look at the tournament.  This wasn’t the healthiest environment for a gambling addict.  However, he was able to look into some of the employees — and he was able to meet with a local thief who knew the lay of the land.

With some shameless, extravagant lying, Durin convinced the thief that he was a candidate to become a member of the illustrious Shadow Thieves.  This was not true and was very likely to result in the local footpad’s death, but the man was sufficiently annoying with his self-importance and unjustified confidence in his own pickpocketing skills that this was perhaps for the best.  For the low price of a deadly lie, then, Durin obtained two of the uniforms worn by employees.

They were on their way, and they went to bed with a sense of excitement — plus a few extra gold, since they’d walked away from the casino as winners.  The odds might be a against them, but they’d already beat them once.

The unnamed crew met for lunch the next day before heading back to the casino, and discussed their findings.  They felt like they’d made progress, and that they’d want to continue with gathering resources.  Rather than doing the job that day, they thought it would be best to wait until the last day, when they might have been able to obtain enough uniforms for all of them, plus security passes.  They might even be able to get one of the crew a legitimate position at the casino — the face-shifting Stasha could impersonate a tiefling with ease.

Chaster felt like he couldn’t go back yet, after speaking so directly with Quentin, but he thought that he could continue to provide useful distractions.  A casino that only hired tieflings, one of the most distrusted species?  That was something he could work with!  Stepping away from the crew’s meeting, he went to a pub full of roughnecks from the docks.  He plunked himself among them, ordered some ale, and began grumbling about the hornheads taking all of the jobs.  He was a cleric of the storm, and it was time to whip up a tempest.

Meanwhile, Spindle and Alnitak took the afternoon to look into the lives of some of the employees.  Spindle had followed some of them home the previous night, and so he’d identified a boarding house where they stayed.  He investigated and found some of their rooms — and staked out a few of them specifically.  He was confident he’d be able to burgle some more uniforms and passes, if they needed them.  Alnitak also bought a powerful emetic for Spindle to use on them, in case they needed them to stay home vomiting instead of showing up for work… and of course Alnitak couldn’t resist charming one of the employees.  Lydia, an employee at the casino, agreed to a date with the dashing bard at Rumpleton and Sons: An Art Place, the next day at noon.

Stasha, meanwhile, assumed the form of an entirely forgettable tiefling of the infernal persuasion, and went to try to get gainful employment.  Quentin was just as affable with Stasha as he had been with Chaster, but he wasn’t quite willing to hire someone off the street without any references.  “You worked in Neverwinter?  Anywhere I might know?”

Stasha tried to conjure up some likely-sounding lies, but it didn’t quite succeed.  Momentarily defeated, he went back to town briefly and visited where Spindle was staking out the boarding house.

Chaster found luck in two separate locations, making angry speeches about the foreign tieflings stealing all of the jobs and corrupting the children.  And while he didn’t have good fortune at a third establishment, he was lucky enough that he was able to start a fistfight with a stout tiefling businessman — and win, handily.  By the end of the afternoon, he’d gotten much of the city stirring with discontent.  They were nearly to the point of rising up as a mob, but even Chaster’s best bigotry couldn’t get them there.  He settled on writing a vaguely threatening letter to Quentin, promising to be able to assist with the issue if Quentin would meet him in town at the fancy restaurant portabello the next day.

At that moment, Stasha was himself back meeting with Quentin.  This time, he’d pulled out all the stops.  He’d gotten a forged letter of reference from Spindle, he’d disguised himself as a beautiful female tiefling with perfectly tousled hair, and he’d begun his charm offensive with a clerk at the cash desk, Travis.  Before the hour was out, he’d been hired as “Alicia,” given a uniform and pass, assigned to the cash desk, and been given five golds’ worth of chips to play with.

Alnitak had dragged Spindle along in the evening to the Afterlife Casino after they assisted Stasha, and they met up with the gals from Rocca Rocca Nim and the bros from the previous evening.  They attended the circus’ lion show, watched the play at the tournament a little, socialized, and took the opportunity with Stasha to test the security on the statuette’s case.  Stasha’s conjured invisible servant tampered with the front of the case and it flashed bright for a moment, paralyzing everyone nearby.  Quentin was apologetic, but Alnitak insisted on a round of free drinks for everyone and made a date to meet back up with the girls the next day.  Not coincidentally, Alnitak’s big fuss gave some space for Stasha to keep examining the trophy case: all eyes were on the elf with an entourage who was making a loud fuss.

And all the while, Durin gambled.

They were all going to have a busy day tomorrow, the last day of the tournament.  Stasha had to report to work, Spindle had to mildly poison and rob some employees, Chaster had to finish out his racist rabble-rousing, and Alnitak had two different dates to get to (as well as a robbery to help with).  The stakes were high, but they were out of time.

The final day of the tournament, each member of the party got busy.  Spindle had a harness made for his choice of magical item (an immoveable rod), so that a number of people could all be buckled into it, and then proceeded to burgle the rooming house used by some of the casino employees, making off with three more employee access cards.  Alnitak, on the other hand, had a lunch with Lydia at the same time that Chaster met with a contemptuous Quentin.  Lydia was pleasant but not helpful, and Quentin was rude and dismissive of Chaster’s rabble-rousing, recognizing him from the previous day and mocking him as “boat boy.”  Ironically, Chaster had in fact rented a boat to use on the lake near the casino that very morning, acquiring it from a lovely wizened lampreywoman for a small handful of gold.  (She promised a pair of lamprey pies to go with it.)

As the tournament began at noon, the party put their various plans into play.

The manipulator, Alnitak, gathered his group of Rocca Rocca Nims and guided them over to the high-stakes room where the tournament was unfolding.  He knocked into Quentin, spilling the gnome’s drink.

“I’m so sorry,” the bard said graciously, but Quentin remembered this troublesome (and influential) patron from the other night, and apologized with a tight smile himself.

“No, it is I who am sorry — I am happy to see you again.  Please, when I have this refilled, may I offer you and your friends a complimentary glass?”

“Thank you,” said Alnitak… and as soon as the wine arrived, he poisoned Quentin’s draught.  Within minutes, Quentin’s smile became even more strained and he started to look distinctly green under the reddish pancake makeup.

Spindle waited in the wings for his chance to get at the prize statuette, watching the tournament unfold.  There were only four players left, and one of them busted even as he was watching.  They were running out of time.

Stasha, the inside man, learned about how the cash cage worked.  The coins and chips were magically exchanged by the enchanted desks, and so there would be no opportunity to simply shove money into Verity’s bag of holding.  He was going to need to get directly into the vault.

Asking for a break, he used his disguise and position to go to the back rooms, and reported to the security team that there were some problem players who Travis needed help with.  This lie would only buy him a moment, and he used it to flirt and distract the one remaining guard while his magical unseen servant floated around and explored.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t find a way to get rid of the last guard.

Chaster had his own specialty, and it was rioting of various kinds.  He took this moment to sneak into the circus holding pen and hide in a storage bin briefly until he saw the chance to free some circus animals and start some fires.  One way or another, he would give the rest of the party the distraction that he knew they would need.

At this moment, all hells broke loose.

The remaining guard rushed to help with the loose lion and baboons and fire, shouting for more assistance, leaving Stasha behind.  The disguised elf slipped through the nearby door and glanced into the vault.  Inside, the hulking remains of a minotaur stood guard, baleful blue light glimmering in the hollow sockets of its horned skull.  He sent his unseen servant to begin stealing, and then stepped up for combat, joined a moment later by a breathless Chaster.  The minotaur’s eyes shone, and it lunged.

Back at the tournament, Quentin began violently vomiting, rushing to throw up into the nearby Styx even as people began to rush out of the circus, fleeing a loose and bloody lion.  Alnitak used the opportunity to trigger the trap on the statuette’s protective case again, paralyzing the remaining guard (and his posse of sorority girls), allowing Spindle to nimbly spring the lock open and swipe the statue.

In the vault, the minotaur skeleton shrugged off the attacks of the cleric and warlock, lunging forward and goring Chaster brutally through the chest.  It tossed the broken body aside, and rounded on Stasha.  Stasha, however, still had some tricks.

“I got you,” he said, and called upon assistance from beyond.  There was no one to see, thankfully, as his face filled with unholy might, distending and hollowing as fell forces poured into his aged frame.  He seized Chaster’s prone form by one ankle and hurled him back out of the vault.  Only his unnatural power saved him when the minotaur skeleton dealt him a crushing blow to the chest.  The attack thundered into his chest, wrought with a club the size of a table, knocking him against the wall… but the warlock simply rose again.  Death could not claim him, since it was already filling his soul.

Stasha slipped out of the vault and hurriedly healed Chaster, and the cleric rose to his feet, renewed and angry.  He burst back into the vault and faced up to the hulking monster again.   Snatching the dagger of Silvanus from his side and holding it before him, he poured forth nature’s power, the power that had a place for the storm’s roar and the glade’s calm.  The holy light scorched the undead, and it cowered away from the pair, giving them a chance to clear the entire vault.  They fled.

Alnitak and Spindle sprinted out of the tournament room at the same time that Stasha and Chaster arrived back at the main floor.  And unfortunately, that was also when Quentin saw them and understood what was happening, and also when the lion arrived.  Quentin ducked into the water of the Styx to hide while guards rounded on the lion with spears, and all the while dozens of people fled, screaming.

Alnitak thought that someone should do something about Quentin, so he skipped forward with his dagger and smashed the gnome in the face, trying to knock him out.  The blow only broke the gnome’s nose, however, and he yelped in fury.  Quentin’s cry took the form of something hellish and unintelligible, the scraping sibilance of damnation.  He invoked powers to which he had been compacted — it turned out that not all of the brimstone he flaunted was fake: Quentin had indeed made some sort of deal with devils.  Two spined devils clambered out of the water beside him, their twisted limbs horrifying the few guests who yet remained.  Long tongues lashed from their fanged mouths, and bulbous eyes looked for innocence to despoil.  “Boat boy!” screamed Quentin as they hauled him from the river, blood streaming from his face and casino patrons running and screaming.  Chaster was the one who’d threatened him earlier that day, and now here everything was going wrong.

Chaster and Stasha fled into the crowd, burrowing into the mass of dozens of patrons who poured into the boats to leave.  Chaster simply dove into the water and swam upstream with strong strokes, while Stasha shifted his appearance yet again and lied his way onto a boat.

That left Alnitak and Spindle, who were cut off by a pair of devils, a wounded lion, and one increasingly infuriated gnome.  Left with no other options, they sprinted for the waterfall at the edge of the casino.  They strapped themselves into Spindle’s harness as they went, and then leapt out into nothingness.  The roar of the waterfall accompanied their plunge downward — the lake below was a hundred feet down.  Spindle violently slammed his thumb on the button of the immoveable rod, though, and their drop halted abruptly.  They hung in space in the middle of nothing, dangling from the rod.  Above them, Quentin gaped in shock and screamed curses in a foul language, unheard.

The pair plunged ten feet, then stopped, then fell again, over and over in nauseating repetition.  It took a while.  At the bottom, they hung there while Chaster and Stasha rowed over gently, and the four then sculled off across the lake, admiring the statuette and enjoying fresh lamprey pie.

They’d come close to getting caught, or possibly even dying, but in the end they’d stripped the entire vault and ruined the casino.  No one would forget the open appearance of hellish minions — it wasn’t just objectionable, it was an actual crime, and Quentin would need to flee or face prosecution.

Verity had been avenged beyond even her wildest expectations.

And all the while, Durin gambled.  It might have been a bad idea to bring a gambling addict to a casino.  After a while, he noticed that everyone else was gone, and quietly cashed himself out with a shivering and horrified Travis.  Devils and an injured lion and a mounting fire all remained, but the crew had gotten away as free as birds.

Verity was very happy, needless to say.  She had promised 100 gp apiece, but upon receiving back her bag of holding (suitable precautions having been taken to ensure everyone’s safety), she ended up offering triple that, throwing each of the crew a heavy sack of three hundred pieces of gold.  In addition, she offered the other items that were in the vault: a gold and ruby necklace (250 gp), a jade rabbit figurine (75 gp), and an enchanted rapier.

“Thank you so much,” she said.  “You succeeded beyond even my wildest hopes.  Quentin is ruined now, and I heard that he’s already fled with whatever he could scrape together.  In fact, since the casino is only a little damaged and I have the capital for it… I might see if I can step in and save it.  It was my idea, after all.”

She has something else for them, too: an elaborately decorated music box.  This time there was no key, however.  Spindle took the box for safekeeping, but it remained silent.

Days turn into weeks, and weeks into a month.  The crew stayed in Varkenbluff, unsure of when (or if) they’d receive another assignment.  Chaster asked to have the lion if it survived, and Verity was happy to oblige.  He hired someone to watch it and attempt to train it.  Alnitak caroused around the local taverns while working at improving his skill with herbs — that emetic had been very useful! — with studying and experimentation.  And they all waited.

Then one morning, without prelude or introduction, there was a key under Stasha’s pillow when he awoke from an uneasy slumber.  He assembled the rest of the crew — did they need a name? — and turned the key in the music box’s lock.

Chapter Three: Reach for the Stars

It took the party a tenday to travel to their destination of Delphi Mansion, a manor home in the hills of Cormyr.  Regrettably, they also had to leave behind Durin.  Old habits had gotten the best of the dwarven artificer, and he was unwilling to leave the three-dragon ante tables.

The younger elves purchases horses to ride while stolid Chaster and inscrutable Stasha were content to trudge alongside, assisted only by a pack mule.

This was one of the first times they’d actually been forced to spend any time together, since they have otherwise kept to themselves, and the party got to know each other on the journey a little bit more.  Spindle shared with Alnitak a bit of news he’d picked up from the thief rumor mill: there was a big robbery back home on Evermeet.  The family library of the widespread Pyloreine family was thoroughly looted last month, with unknown thieves stealing numerous books and valuable items.

Cormyr was one of the most prosperous countries in Eastern Faerun and a very well-regulated country with vigorous law enforcement.  Unusually, at the border to Cormyr, the party must even wait in a queue to enter the country so they could register with the officials of the local garrison and receive their papers.  As they waited their turn in line, they had ample time to read some of the laws that had been posted for their perusal.

1. All persons entering Cormyr must register with the officials of a border garrison.
2. Foreign currency can only be used in certain locations. Please exchange your coins for Cormyrean golden lions at your first opportunity.
3. Adventurers must acquire a charter before undertaking any operation as a group.
4. All weapons must be peace-bonded. The only persons exempt from this law are members of chartered adventuring groups and members of mercenary groups that can offer proof of employment.
5. Harming cats is forbidden.
6. Bow your head to royalty and the local nobility.
7. Purple Dragons have the right to search you upon request.
8. Hunting on private land is forbidden.

The party registered uncomplainingly, got their paperwork, and let their weapons be peace-bound with pink ribbons and a special seal.  If they were going to use their weapons within Cormyr, they’d need to be willing to pay a fine or explain themselves convincingly if a Purple Dragon Knight spotted them.

It was the fifth of Hammer and bitterly cold by the time the group reached the isolated Delphi Mansion, a stately manor home that was so isolated in a Cormyrean forest that it was a full day’s travel to the nearest town or farm.  As the rounded a bend in the road under the dappled afternoon light of the forest cover, however, a ray of sunlight shone from above and illuminated a tree stump by the side of the road.  The disembodied head of a human woman appeared gradually, floating above the stump.

The woman was blond and unremarkable in appearance, except of course for the fact that her severed head was floating in the air, bloodless, and seemingly alive.

“My name is Elra Lionheart,” said the head. “My companions and I died trying to retrieve The Celestial Codex. Heed my words, lest you too fall prey to the dangers of Delphi Mansion. Markos is using the book to conjure an otherworldly being not meant to exist in this world. Meanwhile, his purple-robed cultists busy themselves with eldritch experiments. Beware creatures that look like puddles of eyes and mouths. Beware the thing that has hooks for hands. And beware the mansion itself, for it transforms weirdly. Most of all, stop Markos before it’s too late!

“My companions and I had a camp on a bluff due south of the mansion. If you go there first, you’ll find a backpack containing a map of the mansion and some notes we acquired from a dubious source. These might help you plan your approach.  Should you succeed, seek out the Rashemi in Mirabar – tell her of our fate.  Best of luck!”

The party was unnerved by the apparition.  It faded away before their eyes, but they moved forward with appropriate caution.  Ahead, they could see that a three-story mansion stood alone in a clearing. It had alabaster walls, windows on all three levels, and a closed double door on the ground floor. The area around the mansion seemed unnaturally quiet.

Carefully, they skirted the clearing, keeping to the cover of woods, and located the bluff that the head of Elra had spoken about. There was indeed a crude map, and some notes about a third-floor ritual room and a password for the locked windows. The password was “Krokulmar” — a word that sent a shiver deep into Chaster’s spine, although it was unclear why.

Stasha took this opportunity to introduce the party to a new friend of his that had been silently accompanying him, perched on his shoulder: a dusky-feathered raven named Ludwig. Ludwig knew a few tricks, like how to croak out some warbling words (mostly four-lettered ones) and how to follow commands.

“Go and fly around the top floor there,” said Stasha to his familiar, and the raven replied something simultaneously agreeable and unpublishable. It took wing, hooking around the building rapidly, and alighted back on Stasha’s shoulder.

After a moment, Stasha reported to the rest of the group the situation: “There is indeed some manner of transformed creature on the third floor.” Ludwig had seen two, in fact: a hook-handed monstrosity and a robed creature with one leering eye and a large book in its hands. Perhaps the latter was Markos Delphi?

As the party discussed different approaches, Alnitak decided that the best way was the direct way. He marched towards the Delphi Mansion with forthright steps.

“Are you just going to the front door?” hissed Spindle.

“Yes,” Alnitak replied, airily. He knocked, then opened the door and called inside. “Hello?” He turned around, shrugging. “No one’s answering.”

There was universal agreement that it would be a bad idea to just go in through the front door (more than they just did, anyway) , and so the party agreed that it would be best to just climb directly to their goal. Alnitak threw Spindle’s grappling hook over the edge of the roof, and the party hauled themselves up to a mostly-empty room on the third floor. The window yielded easily to the password, and they entered without incident. The walls were plastered with intricate star charts with Celestial labels — Spindle identified the Thousand Eyes, the Great Snake, and the Owlbear.

Peering under a gap beneath the door, Spindle also reported that the next room was unpleasant-looking. This room was empty except for a circle of vile symbols on the floor. Standing in the circle was an eight-foot-tall, bipedal creature with two long arms, each one ending in a sharp hook. The hooks appeared as though the fingers of the hands had been twisted and melded together, and the monster had wet, red pits where eyes should be. The creature wore the tattered remnants of a butler’s uniform.

The group had a hurried discussion about what to do, but their discussion was interrupted by the creature. It lunged into the door, smashed through the top half with a splintering chop of one of its horrid hands, and attacked.

It battered Spindle and then Stasha as the rest of the party flailed at it. They did damage, but not enough to slow it down. The former butler’s hooked hands were terrible weapons, and it had no regard for its own safety as it hacked at the nearest target. There was a brief pause when it was driven from the room by a dissonant whisper from Alnitak, but it returned with fury, burying its hooks into the bard’s shoulders.

The hook-handed horror only fell still when Spindle, defending his friend, brought his daggers across the creature’s hands in a scissoring motion, severing the hooks at the wrists with a wet crunch. Hissing feebly, the thing collapsed to the ground.

The tattered butler uniform had a pocket containing a locket and a note. The plain silver locket proved to be under the effects of a magic mouth spell; when opened, it spoke in a hissing voice: “وœ๘ ذשھ๒.”

“Forever changing,” Chaster translated.

The note contained a sketch of a wine bottle and a row of four circles. The second circle from the left was crossed out.

The party advanced, but unfortunately someone’s foot smudged part of the design on the floor. As though in response, the door and windowframes grew teeth. They were teeth of every size and ilk, ranging from blocky cow’s molars to the huge sawteeth of a great shark, and they quivered in anticipation.

“Ludwig,” said Stasha, in his gothic voice of command, “you go.”

The familiar said several unpleasant things, flew through the door, and was immediately smashed by giant teeth and then stabbed by a flurry of pouncing stirges. It had just enough time to hiss complainingly before it expired. When it died, its flesh folded in on itself over and over, disappearing from sight by the seventeenth fold.

A little more carefully, the party used their immoveable rod to block the snapping of the huge, horrible mouth and advance to the next room. They could see from there into the room where the robed creature with a great green eye had been spotted by the late Ludwig.

Rubble lay scattered across the floor where part of the roof had collapsed. Perched atop the rubble was a hunched figure wrapped in a cloak. It gazed out at the sky through a window, unaware of anyone. A stack of books rested on a nearby stone, but Spindle’s careful theft revealed only that they were irrelevant tomes on stars and planes (as well as one unintelligible journal).

“ђљท?” rattled the odd creature — a nothic — taking them by surprise.

“แװĥĝœذשھ๒ ٌوжج ыס?” replied Chaster smoothly in Deep Speech.

The creature replied, “Ŧłฬำ ๆљ๑وœж ๛ֻבฯ. ฿๘ζΐ.”

“װĥذĥذ,” said Chaster, nodding. He turned to the rest of the party. “She says to look in the bedroom or his office, downstairs.”

A quick glance around the bedroom found only a hidden closet with a small lockbox — one so secure that none of the party could breach it. Still no Celestial Codex or Markos Delphi. They were going to have to keep searching, and hope that they didn’t meet the same fate as Team Aleph.

Exploring the rest of the second floor was similarly unfruitful. Eldritch energy continued to cause strange effects in the mansion, with multiple rooms becoming toothier than was natural. At one point, Spindle found that his shadow had become animated and hostile, mimicking him even as it menaced with shadowy knives. Fortunately, it was also amenable to his charm, and he developed a rapport with his other self.

Descending to the first floor, though, the party soon found themselves matched with a more dangerous enemy. Spindle and Alnitak, exploring one of the bedrooms, saw that the environs of one of them had been warped oddly. The bed was slumping in place and the floorboards were shifting as though soft. An amorphous mass of mouths and eyes lolled out from under the bed, propelling itself by oozing forward, fastening several mouths to the ground, and pulling its bulk behind. The mouth mouths began to murmur and chatter, each with a different voice: deep or shrill, wailing or ululating, crying out in agony or ecstasy.

Spindle and Alnitak sped away back down the hall, past Chaster and Stasha. Chaster set himself in place with his shield and began to hurl his spear at the mouther, while Stasha bombarded the creature with bolts of eerie light. It moved slowly but steadily towards them as the younger elves joined the fusilade, but ignored the damage in its relentless hunger. A whispered word of power from Alnitak was the only thing to drive it back momentarily, giving the party the chance to pelt it into submission. The mouther expired, leaking bilious clear fluid from its wounds. It had melted much of the room and hallway, and while the doughy effect ended with the creature, whatever items had been near it were ruined.

After searching through the first floor, the party located a kitchen that had been visibly subject to days of neglect. Flies covered foul-smelling messes of several meals stacked on a worktable in the middle of the room, and the congealed remnants of what might have been stew was moldering in a pot over the cold fireplace. The pantry had some good foodstuffs, as well as a trapdoor to the wine cellar.

Left with only one avenue forward, the group descended.

The faint aroma of grapes filled the cellar air. It appeared to mostly be left over from the past, however, since the three wine racks were empty. Four large wine casks stood against the west wall, a fine layer of dust covering each of them.

Remembering the note from before, Alnitak examined the second cask from the left. It sounded hollow. He raised his sword to smash it, but Spindle grabbed him. “Wait!” he said. “I feel a draft from behind it.” He heaved the cask out of the way with Stasha’s assistance, revealing an ironbound door. It wouldn’t move, but there was no lock to be seen. Sorcery was at work.

Pondering for a moment, Spindle plucked the silver locket from the butler out of his bag of holding, held it up to the door, and opened it. “وœ๘ ذשھ๒,” said the locket, and the door opened.

The next room was filled with quiet murmurs. Four wooden pews faced a stone statue in the middle of the torchlit chamber. The statue had a roughly bipedal shape, something like a human, but it was carved to look like it was coming undone, like a frayed rope. Its form was covered with mouths and outstretched tongues.

Standing before the statue were four purple-cloaked figures, their faces hidden by cowls. They were writing on pieces of paper and muttering to each other, oblivious to the opening of the door or Spindle’s presence. To Alnitak’s learned eye, they appeared to be taking notes on how the eldritch energies were affecting the mansion and this space, carefully observing the statue in particular.

“I have an idea,” said Chaster, and he ran back up the stairs. To the horror of the rest of the party, he returned draped in the battered corpse of the mouther. It left a trail of fluids behind him as he moved forward into the room ahead, heedless of the looks of dismay on his companions’ faces. “Whub-whub-whub,” he said, in imitation of the mouther’s murmurs and ululations as he tried to move in the same disturbing manner the beast had displayed.

I’m nailing this, Chaster thought, as he utterly failed in his attempt at camouflage.

The cultists barely took notice, sparing the capering cleric only a glance or two. Their focus was utterly on their work. One of them gave a small sigh, as though this were just one of many oddities that had attempted to distract them over recent days. They were here to study the greater mysteries of the world beyond the Realms, and not to consort with corpse-carrying madmen.

Nonplussed, the party cautiously crept by, searching the room across the way while the cultists pointedly ignored them. They found a grim harvest in the adjacent storage room: four severed heads and three bodies, neatly stacked. One of them was the head of Elra Lionheart, the apparition that greeted them when they arrived at this place. The party had found Team Aleph.

Deciding that there was nothing to be done for them for now, the group turned to the final way forward: a seat of carved stairs going down deeper into the earth.

The staircase led to a roughly circular cave, empty and unlit. Opposite the stairs, through a twelve-foot-wide archway, they could see a similar cavern lit by purple light emanating from four large crystals jutting from the floor. All of the crystals flickered in concert with the chanting that echoed through the caves.

The chants came from a sallow, dark-robed figure who stood near the edge of a circle of arcane runes inscribed on the floor. The figure recited an eldritch passage from a book, then carefully set the book atop a wooden crate near the back wall. As the party watched, the figure turned toward the circle, wherein knelt a headless body in plate armor. A sluglike creature had attached itself to the body’s neck, almost like a makeshift head. The slug’s form was covered with mouths and eyes that opened and closed in and out of existence.

This was Markos Delphi. And he was bringing something terrible into this world.

As he spotted the party, Markos whirled to regard them with contempt, and then drew an intricate dagger from his pocket. He stabbed it into his own hand, and a ripple of purple surged across his body, encasing it in translucent armor that faded from view after a moment. Chaster and Spindle charged into the fray immediately, wielding a spear and knives, respectively, while Alnitak kept his distance, casting spells to try to keep Markos occupied.

Seeing that Markos was continuing to chant and build a connection with the unborn monster that was forming in front of him, Chaster slapped the symbol of his god Silvanus on his shield, and the clang of metal became hollow and potent. His silence spell cut off Markos chanting, and the enraged cultist whirled on the cleric in fury. Markos lashed out at Chaster, and lunged towards him with his dagger. He buried his dagger in Chaster’s shoulder, cursing inaudibly as his attack was greeted with a surge of retributive electricity.

For his part, Spindle snatched up the book — it was indeed The Celestial Codex! — from the wooden crate, then wheeled around and began stabbing at Markos’ back. Aided by distractions from Alnitak, he and Chaster slashed the cultist repeatedly. Markos slumped to the floor, blood pouring from his wounds.

Stasha slid to the side of the room and began pounding one of the crystals with blasts of coruscating electrical power. He hammered away repeatedly on one of the crystals with his eldritch power until it shattered, exploding into hundreds of dull purple chunks.

The remaining crystals, however, pulsed with power as the squirming otherworldly slug reached out a pseudopod and touched Markos. The warlock gasped a shuddering breath and his wounds closed; he heaved himself back up, his face dark with hatred.

“The crystals!” Stasha shouted, snatching up one of the broken chunks from the ground and gesturing at the others. Spindle obligingly whirled and buried one of his blades into a crystal to the hilt. It split apart with a crack, and the energies within subsided.

Markos raised his hand to Spindle and twisted it, and pulses of invisible power surged from him. They narrowly missed the rogue — perhaps Markos was still finding his footing, but he’d find it soon.

Dropping his spear to the ground with a soundless clatter, Chaster released his hold on silence, and the sudden din was all the louder for the end of the magic. Markos raised his voice in a blasphemous chant and fragments of crystal splintered free as Spindle withdrew his dagger. The frozen limbs of the corpse stirred.

Chaster would have none of it. “I am the storm!” he shouted. He clapped his hands together. The thunderous clank of his gauntlets resounded like the fierce wrath of Silvanus, detonating the space around him as shatter swept over that half of the room.

The two remaining crystals exploded apart, the sluglike fragment of the ancient evil wwa crushed into a wet smear, and Markos collapsed, his head near-pulped by the concussion.

The room quieted. The presence of Krokulmar receded. The danger was past.

After the confrontation in the hidden grotto, the party returned to the upper floors of the mansion. They found a group of disgruntled but nonviolent cultists, as well as a penitent former nothic named Zala. She explained that Markos had been corrupted by his research, and that she had helped him interpret the stolen Codex to contact Krokulmar. She had been rewarded for that with a cruel transformation, and she knew now that she had been foolish.

Zala ushered the cultists away, driving them off with the obliging assistance of a group of bloodied adventurers who were willing to stand nearby and look intimidating. She volunteered to look after the mansion for the moment while contacting a cadet branch of the Delphis to come take possession. If the party sensed that she might hope to retain some position and perhaps even continue her illicit research, they opted not to notice. For her part, Zala was helpfully blind to the group’s thorough search for useful valuables that might remain in the Delphi Mansion. Sometimes everyone just reaches an understanding.

The party liberated a carter’s wagon and hitched their horses to it, and loaded up the corpses of Team Aleph. The cold winter air would keep them fresh, which was fortunate, since they had a long journey north ahead of them. They had a rendezvous in Mirabar. It was time to meet with the Rashemi.

Mirabar was a small, dense city with steeply sloping walls. It was famous for its mineral and gem exports, and the dwarven majority who ruled its halls were fierce in their watchfulness. In the winter, they used screw-pumps to redirect water from the nearby river to elevated cisterns and then onto the city walls. By the middle of Hammer, the walls were covered by incredibly thick and slippery sheets of ice.

A brisk young dwarven man was waiting at the gates for the party’s cart, and after a quick exchange of coin, the guards waved the cart through without inspection. The dwarf directed the group to a third-floor apartment in a tenement in the north of the city, and kept an eye on their cart as they ascended to the cramped, gray rooms.

Sitting at a table of rough pine was a stout woman of middling years, dressed in studded leather armor and wrapped in a thick cloak. The dark skin of her face was elaborately tattooed in a geometric design of bright blue, and she watched the party with eyes as cutting as blades. One hand rested on a closed book. With the other, she wordlessly offered Stasha a small, golden key.

Chapter Four: Prisoner 13

The Rashemi is cold and thickly accented as she addresses the party.

“I am the Rashemi. I have maps of Revel’s End for you, as well as some notes from the Helmsguard, the crew that produced the map. We will talk before you meet with Varrin.”

The crew had many questions for the Rashemi, but though she was perfectly willing to hold forth on the injustices of society and even frankly admitted the inequities of their situation, she was not very forthcoming with details about the Vault or herself. She thanked them for bringing Team Aleph all this way, and consented (after considerable pressure) to arranging for care for their mounts. She delivered them their new Broom of Flying. And eventually, she fetched their employer for the mission, Varrin Axebreaker.

Varrin was a dwarf of advancing age but obvious vigor. His braided hair and beard were black with streaks of gray, and he wore a loose, comfortable robe over a steel breastplate. He settled uneasily into a seat, while the Rashemi sat in the corner, slouched, and folded her hands over her belly.

“Thank you for hearing me out. My name is Varrin, and I have a proposition for you. My clan has located wealth stolen from us many years ago, but it’s sealed in a vault that’s magically locked. If you can recover the key—whatever it is—you’ll gain the undying gratitude of Clan Axebreaker. And I’ll cut you in for a percentage of the recovered treasure, of course.

“The catch here is the person who knows how to open the vault is rotting away in the prison of Revel’s End. She’s proved uncooperative with my people in the past, but a few months ago I discovered the vault where she hid what she stole from us. I need you to question her and learn how to open the vault. How you do that is up to you; if you need to spring her from the prison in exchange for this information, please do so. We care more about recovering the money that will give a future to our clan. I can provide you with a way into the prison, and I have learned a good number of details as to how it works, so I can answer questions you might have.”

Varrin discussed security features of the prison, how it operated, and what he knew about Prisoner 13. He reluctantly disclosed her name, but emphasized that only the warden knew the names of any of the prisoners in Revel’s End. Everyone else just went by their prisoner number.

The dwarven leader was able to get them into the prison as new guards or cooks, and to offer them transportation — but the crew were going to need to find a way to get the information (or the prisoner herself) out by themselves.

The Rashemi retrieved a faceted sapphire the size of a small orange and places it on the table. She waved her hand over the gem, and a glowing blue image of a building floor plan appeared in the air above it. She tapped the gem, and the image vanished. The sapphire split into sections, and she passed one fragment to each of the crew. The fragment grew warm in their hand, melted as though it had been only ice, then vanished, leaving a warm, tingling sensation behind. “Think about the map of Revel’s End, and you’ll be able to see it,” she said.

Before departing, the Rashemi asks the crew if they have a name they want to go by — a title for their team.

“Judging by the track records of those teams, I’m not sure we want to do the same thing,” wisecracked Alnitak, laughing.

Spindle concurred. “We’re just the Nameless,” he said.

And so the Nameless they were.

It was an uneventful trip to the “pirate city” of Luskan, but it was achingly cold. The Nameless had gotten some cold-weather gear before they left Mirabar (as well as, oddly, a side of caribou for Alnitak), but the icy wind seemed to gnaw at even the slightest exposed skin. The city seemed nearly deserted in the harsh winter weather, but that may have been what helped them find rapid lodging with Niels.

Niels Sovereign-Save was an obese dwarf who works as a brewer and innkeeper here in the city of Luskan. During the months when the city is ice-locked, he is glad that there are not so many pirates around, but unhappy that their gold isn’t around, either. So he was quite happy to see the Nameless and to offer them warm rooms and tall glasses of spiced mead. He was quick with gossip about the occasional prisoner transport or Lord’s Alliance counselor who pass through Luskan, as well as warnings about the depredations of the wolf packs that have been harassing the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, but during any conversation, he never seemed to quite reach his point.

As it turns out, his advice about the wolves was well-taken. The crew was on the alert as they traveled further north the next day, taking great care as they marched overland across snowy hills and plains. It was no surprise when Spindle saw wolves at work: three huge direwolves, tearing apart the corpse of some great antlered beast.

Spindle had been scouting ahead on their new Broom of Flying, and he had a clever plan to handle the problem. “I still have the harness for the Immoveable Rod,” he noted. “I can fly in relays, carrying us past the wolves.”

Chaster was too heavy, unfortunately. A sturdy fellow already, his metal armor and weapons made him such a burden for the broom that he wouldn’t be able to ride with the rest of the party. “Take me first,” he said. “If the wolves attack, I can defend myself until you arrive.”

This plan seemed like a good one, even though Spindle and Chaster saw that the wolves were no longer visible when they flew over the scarlet splotch where they’d been at play. Spindle dropped Chaster down into the crunchy snow of a hilltop, where there’d be good visibility, and brought the broom around at top speed to head back for the other two.

Unfortunately, the wolves arrived for Alnitak and Stasha first.

One white-furred wolf approached them from the base of the hillside they occupied, while two others loomed from above. The white-furred wolf was more aggressive, growling and stalking towards them. Alnitak cast an illusion to invoke several duplicates of himself, but the animals were not deterred. Stasha fired a blast of magical energy towards it, but missed, even as the other two lunged from above.

Almost at the same time, three things happened:

Alnitak ripped the caribou off the side of his pack and hurled it past the two beasts attacking him, and they wheeled to pounce on it.

Stasha called upon something dark within himself, and his face distorted and hollowed like a ghoulish parody, driving away the white wolf with another blast of energy.

And Spindle arrived, swooping down from the sky, the leather harness dangling from his broom.

The two spellcasters seized the straps and were yanked into the air, legs kicking. Alnitak’s duplicates flailed in the emptiness next to him and Stasha as the trio rose into the air, and the wolves snapped fecklessly at their heels. They were safe.

In the small town of Bremen, a sizeable contingent of guards and a few hireling cooks arrived for their posting, trickling in ahead of the Midwinter departure of The Jolly Pelican. Joining them were Mink (Spindle), Pops (Stasha), Tak (Alnitak), and Plower Haven (Chaster). Mink and Pops had been assigned to Revel’s End as guards for unspecified wrongs that they were not inclined to share, and Tak and Plower accepted a contract to work as cooks.

The Jolly Pelican was an agile caravel, with a single mast and a lateen sail. It had a forecastle for a small amount of tightly-packed goods and two dozen hammocks, and a sterncastle for a surly crew of five and the ship’s supplies. An iron cage was bolted to the deck for the prisoner being transported. The journey, the passengers were told, would not be pleasant. Their choice was between the unbelievably bitter cold of the exposed deck or the cramped, smelly confines of the forecastle. No expense could be spared for a better ship or magical spells to ease the three-day trip – not for the likes of them, anyway. They and their future “coworkers” were a motley bunch, sent for a posting at Revel’s End through some combination of bad luck or ill humor. The Lords’ Alliance wasn’t going to pay extra just to keep them (or a prisoner) comfortable.

Over the day of waiting, Alnitak, in his guise as Tak, played music idly, while the others kept to themselves (even as they listened for information here or there). Then, the next day, they were all ushered onto the ship. It was a miserable experience, spent mostly freezing in the sub-zero temperatures, but it was hardest on Spindle — a self-described “city boy” who ultimately just wasn’t happy on the sea. He got almost no rest the entire three-day voyage, and as the ship inched through a mess of floating ice near the end, the poor elf was exhausted beyond bearing.

Perched on a high cliff overlooking the Sea of Moving Ice was the bleak stone fortress, Revel’s End, carved from a gigantic, blade-shaped rock. A central tower loomed above the rest of the fortress, and light leaked from its arrow slits. Four smaller towers rose from the outermost corners of the fortress, and guards could be seen atop them.

As the ship made fast, the sailors sent the new crew into a wooden box strapped to a framework at the base of the cliff. It creaked and shuddered as it rose into the air, thick ropes pulling it upwards along the thousand-foot cliff. An elevator, and another way of ensuring that no one could ever escape or break into the prison… who would ever dare a thousand-foot climb, battered all the while by screaming winds of ice?

At the top, a one-eyed elf with a scraggly beard gestured them in from the cold. He waited until the elevator had brought everyone up, and then led the new guards further inside. Briskly, he marched down the hall and into a large hexagonal space. Cells lined the walls of this space, with a room studded with numerous arrow slits in the center. The Nameless who were posing as guards, Spindle and Stasha, heard a few prisoners hoot at them in derision, contrasting with others calling out friendly greetings, but the sergeant didn’t slow as he leads them into a central room. This hexagonal room was the base of the prison’s central tower. A spiral staircase rose to the tower’s upper levels. Several guards watched through the arrow slits, observing the cells, while one sat at a metal desk and console with a myriad of switches and dials and a brass tube with a funnel-like flare.

The sergeant continued up the central staircase. A door in the spiral staircase led into a large room filled with wooden bunk beds. There were arrow slits in the north, west, and south walls. Footlockers and armor racks accompanied each bed. The spiral stairs continued up past the door.

“All right, you lot,” said the gruff elf. “I’m Sergeant Bruga. I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t care. You’re here to keep an eye on the worst bunch of ruffians on this side of Faerun, and don’t forget about it. Because them that’s in the cells, they won’t ever forget. Some’s here for a long time, and they might be of the sort who don’t care about tacking on another tenyear. What’s a tenyear to an elf or a dwarf, eh?

“No magic, first off. There’s always some arse who learned a spell at their uncle’s knee, and they think it makes them king shit. But it ain’t the thing here. You don’t have to worry much about the prisoners unless they’re on duty, cause them cells is antimagicked. But no magic from you. Anyone sees any magic, from a prisoner or a guard or whatever the fuck but the warden or cleric, and you report it. There’ll be silver for you, if it’s true.

“Next, don’t talk to the prisoners. They’s not your friends. They talk to you too much, you give them the stick. They ask your name, you give them the stick They tell you their name, you give them the stick. You’re each getting a list of prisoners by number, and you only ever call them by number.

“Twenty-five on for each shift, three shifts a day. You won’t get called in off your schedule that much, unless there’s an alert. If you hear a horn and the lights all turn red, then head to the armory and get yourself kitted with something heavy.

“All right, then. You’ll have the next twelve hours to get suited up, look around a bit, find a bunk and a trunk, and get some sleep. In the morning, some of you will go on-duty. Any questions?”

There were few questions, and the new guards were all issued uniforms of coarse broadcloth and chainmail cuirasses, as well as lead-tipped bludgeons. Their uniforms bore the symbol of the Lords’ Alliance (a crown on a red field).

Sergeant Bruga took a moment to speak kindly to Stasha, assuring him that he would be duly respectful of the elder guard’s years, and that he wouldn’t be on outside patrol. It was a pleasant surprise, even if it was shortly followed by a nasty confrontation as Spindle sat down on a bunk.

“That’s my bunk!” snarled an ill-favored human fellow, sauntering up to the elf with two companions.

Spindle looked around, and leaned over to pop open the trunk at the foot of the bed. “Your stuff isn’t here.”

“I keep it under the bed, maybe,” snarled the human. “Or whatever. Fuck you. Get off my bunk.”

Spindle went back and forth with the rude veteran guard for a bit, but finally decided that it was pointless to fight over a bunk that was the same as every other bunk. He shrugged and found a new spot.

“Sorry about Twisty,” said a friendly female voice. An orc was cleaning her mail, sitting on a trunk as she scrubbed at it with a scouring cloth. “He doesn’t know how to act.”

“Yeah, what’s his problem?” asked Spindle.

The orc just chuckled and shrugged. “His problem is he’s here, I guess.”

She introduced herself as Legha — “Lae,” to her new friend — and said not to worry about the grumpy human. No one was in Revel’s End because they were an angel, whether in the cells or out.

The cooks, on the other hand, were brought to the kitchens by a timid little man. The kitchen was large, flanked by three side rooms on one side and the mess hall on the other. The largest room has seven pallets on the floor, with large gunny-sacks piled against the wall for your possessions. The little male human, who introduced himself as “Mousie,” said that this is where they’d sleep or rest when not cooking breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Prisoners do most of the cleaning, he warned, but they shouldn’t make a mess on purpose, or they might regret it.

It’s good pay here, Mousie told them, but there’s a reason that none of the cooks from the last stint all opted to take the Jolly Pelican out of Revel’s End. “One of them got knifed.”

Don’t talk to the prisoners, and don’t wander the prison too much. Be friendly with the guards during meals, since you’ll fraternize with them in the mess hall, but rendezvous aren’t a good idea.

“No work tonight,” he said, tremulously. “I’ll wake you for breakfast prep.”

There were no angry confrontations among the new help, unlike in the barracks. The other new cooks were three dwarven sisters who pretended to be triplets (Bryony, Antigone, and Hephestia), and young human Trevor, and none of them were interested in trouble. Everyone accepted their shift orders from Mousie and went to bed, exhausted from the trip.

Chaster, true to his saint-or-smash bipolar approach to the world, began carefully organizing the kitchen. Mousie told him that he didn’t need to work so hard, but Chaster brushed him off and diligently rearranged the serving dishes and chafers to be much easier to reach. Mousie was duly impressed.

He was much less impressed with Alnitak, who became ill after the second meal service of the day. Mousie sent him to the hospital, not knowing that the bard had swallowed some emetic to very effectively make themselves violently ill.

Alnitak was tended to by Billy, a cleric of Ilmater. The elf didn’t know whether or not Billy really needed to massage and smell his feet quite so much in order to cure nausea, but the cleric seemed to know well enough what he was about.

Chaster, Spindle, and Stasha had a quick moment to talk, afterwards. They didn’t have a plan yet, but their infiltration had gone smoothly. Everyone had a place and was settling into their new jobs. They had nine days before the hidden ship waiting offshore would leave them behind. Now they just needed to get the key.

The next day, the growing tedium of their routine positions was broken up by a high alert. A klaxon began loudly sounding throughout the entire facility, the lights went red, and the guards — asleep or awake — all mustered to the armory en masse to get heavier weapons. The spectator hovered, eerie and silent and staring, while a grumpy Lae explained to the new guards that this wasn’t anything to worry about. Alerts happened regularly whenever there was a fight or outsiders were spotted approaching the prison.

In the hospital, Alnitak witnessed Billy barricading the door, which he explained was routine during these alerts, while in the kitchen, two of the other cooks hid behind Chaster.

It was ultimately an uneventful moment, and Spindle and Stasha found out the cause: prisoners #230 and #216 were discovered trying to cut prisoner #104, apparently hoping for a future reward. Their only reward was being beaten nearly to death, guards dragging their limp bodies away to the hospital afterwards.

Billy’s attentions to Alnitak’s feet were noticed by one of these guards, who angrily denounced the cleric for his repeated predations; the cleric agreed to pay three weeks of his pay to keep the guard quiet. When Warden Marta Marthannis came to visit the two miscreant prisoners, later, she too had some pointed questions for Billy. A soft-faced human woman of middling age, she wore a red robe with golden trim. A keyring with seven tiny keys tinkled on her hip.

“Billy,” said the warden, scrutinizing the cleric. “Just wanted to check on these. You’re behaving well?”

The cleric nodded, sweating, but the warden had turned her attentions to the prisoners. “I think it’ll be an additional year for each of you, after the Council of Absolution has a chance to discuss it. Trying to skin someone?” She listened patiently to their protests, but seemed unsympathetic when she departed a few minutes later.

Alnitak, feigning unconsciousness, paid careful attention.

“I’m thinking,” he said, sitting up after the kind warden departed, “that I shouldn’t work with food for a few days. Since I’ve been so ill.”

“Um,” said Billy, nervously. “I think I understand. You need bed rest.”

“No,” replied the bard, lightly. “I can get up and do things. Just not my job.”

“Um.”

“I don’t want to have to talk to the warden about anything, so in a little while, I’ll just go, but medically I won’t be able to do my job.”

“Um, okay… but you’re going to stay for a little bit yet, right? And so you don’t need to put your boots back on yet.”

“Sure,” said Alnitak with an easy smile, lying back on the bed.

That morning, Stasha and Spindle were assigned tower duty. “I’m not going to assign you to an exterior patrol,” Sergeant Bruga reassured the elder elf, “but you’ll be okay up on a tower for half a shift, right? Put on your warm-weather gear. There’s extra in the armory if you need it.”

The tower was miserable for the pair. The wind was like a blade of ice right through their warmest gear, whipping past them as they hunched over the battlements thirty feet in the air. The wintry whiteness was unbroken except by the prison towers, the sharp spire of mountain behind it, and the vast Sea of Moving Ice stretching out beyond the cliff. Fortunately, postings outside were only for half a shift, and then they were set to duty in the panopticon.

The panopticon was the heart of the prison: a fortified room with a dozen arrow slits directly in the center of the cell block, where there was an easy view of all the cells at all times. Prisoners were under almost constant surveillance, except for when they left their cells to perform the many chores needed to keep the prison tidy.

The walls were hung with manacles, and a staircase led upstairs to the barracks and to the warden’s office. Loaded crossbows were kept ready, and a large console next to the staircase was covered in switches and buttons.

Spindle studied the console’s operation over the course of the shift, deducing what most of the buttons did. Each cell could be opened from here, and the lights adjusted. Some toggles remained a mystery, though, so he asked the guard manning the console about which one sounded the alarm.

“No, none of these,” replied the guard. “The warden can do that from anywhere. She does it magically.  If something happens, we send a runner to go tell her.  Usually she’s just upstairs in her office, though.”

“Huh,” said Spindle. “At my last posting, I was used to a big red button for that.”

“Where are you that had buttons?” asked the guard with scorn. “You just a giant fucking gnome?”

“I mean, you know, bells.”

“What bells are you talking about?  What?” The guard exaggerated his skepticism, waggling his eyebrows mockingly and laughing.  “Twisty was right about you.”

“I’m going to twist his nuts off,” said Spindle, frowning.

“Ooh boy, listen to this guy!” laughed the veteran.  “Spicy! Hey guys, you hear that?” They all laughed.

By the end of the shift, everyone had begun calling him “Spicy.”

“Korda,” came a voice from outside Prisoner 13’s cell.

The tightly muscled dwarven woman had been lying on her bunk, staring off into space, but on hearing her name, she swung her legs down and sat up. She had short red hair, and her bronze skin was covered in tattoos everywhere it was visible outside of her prison tunic. “Yes?” she said, her face a bit surprised but her voice steady.

Spindle, invisible thanks to Stasha’s Invisibility spell, said, “What if I had something to offer you about how to hurt someone you hate?”

“Are you one of those pathetic Axebreakers?” said 13, squinting out at the apparently empty space in front of her cell.

“No. But if you could hurt Varrin Axebreaker, wouldn’t you like to do that?”

“Hurt him like by taking all of his clan’s gold and then tricking him into putting me somewhere incredibly safe? Because that was basically my Tuesday,” said 13, smirking.

“Would you like to get out of here and hurt him more?” asked Spindle, uncertainly.

“No, I’m fine here, thanks,” said 13, stretching insolently. Her tattoos rippled over muscle. An excerpt from a poem in Dwarvish script on her neck and across her shoulder blades read, “Endless dreams entombed in stone,” and black and gray smoke and shadows coiled down her left arm, ending in runes on the fingers of her left hand. Similarly, purple and blue knotwork and runes run down her right arm, across the back of her right hand, and down the length of each finger.

“In fact,” she continued, “I guess that you must be invisible out there or something. You must work here, but you’re casting spells and sneaking around. That means you’re afraid of getting caught, and I could raise an alarm at any time. Or just report you later, and they’ll start hunting for you. There’s no place to go out there, so you’re stuck. So I think you better help me out with something I want.”

Spindle listened, alert and thoughtful.

“The warden has a ledger, probably in her office,” 13 said. “It contains all the names, crimes, and prisoner numbers of everyone ever incarcerated at Revel’s End. Bring me that list, and I’ll see to it that you get your key.”

She may have continued speaking threats or demands, but Spindle left her talking to the empty air. This complicated things.

Rising early that morning, Chaster had decided to establish a useful cover routine. He had impressed Mousie with his diligence — and the others with his stolid stoicism during the alert — and so he was easily able to get permission to go fishing regularly.

“There’s no rules about it,” said Mousie, shrugging. “But it’s cold out there and… hey, listen, you have your head on straight, so tell me… how do I strike you? I mean, I sometimes feel like I don’t even care anymore or… no, never mind, sorry. Yes, sure, go fish.”

Unfortunately, there was no gear, and the oddments around were so pathetic that not even the handy seaman could assemble them into something useful. He went down to the docks anyway with something that at least looked like a rod and line. And what was more, he shucked off his warm-weather gear right before ascending the creaking elevator to return inside, swaggering past the guards nonchalantly.

He found that Alnitak had returned, and was chatting up Hephastia. And what was more, the bard had a plan.

“I want to play some music during meals,” he said. “I’m excused from duty for five days for, um, reasons. But yeah, how about it, Mousie? I’m a bard by training, and that’s always been my dream.”

“I had a dream, once,” said Mousie, distantly. “I would be the executive chef at a big inn.”

“…right. And I believe in you.”

“I would be famous for my dumplings. But now, where’s my passion gone?”

“Well…”

“Sure,” said Mousie, staring off into space. “Yeah, it’s fine, um, but you have to check with the warden first.”

“Can we deliver her breakfast?” asked Alnitak, gesturing at Chaster.

“Sure,” Mousie said. “Do whatever. I have to think about some things. No, wait, I better get to prepping… Antigone, come help!”

After everything was ready, Chaster and Alnitak brought the councilors their breakfasts, including the warden.

“Hello,” said the human woman. Her chestnut-brown hair was in a firm bun. “I’m Warden Marthannis. You’re both new?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Alnitak, handing her a tray. “It’s been fine here so far. But I did have a request.”

“Ah, well, yes, the rumors are true. But you needn’t worry… the Council knows and everything is under control. I am very capable of doing my job,” said the warden, reassuringly.

Alnitak glibly moved right past that mysterious comment. “Of course. Well then, I also wanted to know if I might be able to play music during some meals. I’m a bard by training, and I’d love to be able to bring a little warmth to the guards and staff.”

“I see no problem with that,” said the warden. “You won’t receive any extra pay and you’ll still need to attend to your duties, but that sounds pleasant.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, and have a good morning,” said Alnitak, smiling… and making a mental note to check into the “rumors.”

Back in the kitchen, Alnitak tuned his lute, musing about what he’d learned: the warden routinely had long fits where she spoke only in dwarvish and sought drinks from a hidden cask in the kitchen. Odd.

Meanwhile, Chaster was set to peeling potatoes with Trevor. The young man had wet himself in panic yesterday during the alert, and he reddened with silent embarrassment as Chaster settled in with a peeler next to him.

They peeled potatoes together quietly for a while.

After some time, Chaster said in a low voice. “Trevor. I’ve seen boys like you before. Men like you before.”

Trevor paused in his peeling, stiffening where he sat but not looking over.

“Men who froze up when something happened, but then moved on to a new berth and made a discovery: a new person within themselves, waiting on that new ship.”

In a whisper, Trevor said, “They did?”

“They found that they could be the person they wanted to be. Everything else was past. Yesterday was another ship. Today, we’re here, headed for a new harbor.”

“…yes?”

Chaster turned to regard him with steady eyes, like a calm sea. “Trevor died yesterday.  You’re Trev now.”

“Yes,” said Trev in a hushed voice. “Trev.”

Alnitak’s music filled the room with swelling chords, and something rose within Trev to match.

That evening, the Nameless had time for a quick meeting (after an unpleasant encounter with Twisty in the meal line). Pops, Spicy, and the two cooks who were transforming the kitchen staff sat and chatted.

Alnitak gave doses of emetic to Stasha and Spindle, as they agreed that they needed to have another chat with 13. She had made a demand, but she’d need to escape if she got it (otherwise, where would she keep the book once she got it?). Maybe there was a solid deal to be made. The broom of flying would be their escape route, regardless — abetted by Chaster’s new fishing routine.

“Oh,” said Spindle brightly, “also there’s one more thing. Let’s mess up Twisty before we go.”

The next morning, Chaster went back down to the docks to try his luck fishing again. He carefully set down his pretend rod and tackle, and then leaned out over the bitterly cold water. He threw a handful of crumbled bacon into the water, and watched eels come to nip at it. Then he slammed his hands together, and a bloom of water imploded on itself under the surface.

It sounded like a muffled boom of thunder, but Chaster’s Thunderwave didn’t sound that different from the grind of one iceberg on another. He picked out several fat eels from those that floated to the surface, and then picked up his fishing gear and headed back to the prison.

They had seven days remaining.