Murder Most Foul

The days after Trinia’s botched execution were chaotic. The enraged Queen raised the royal bounty to 5000 Gold Sails for the capture of the King’s murderer, and the princely sum brought out hordes of new bounty hunters scouring the city for the missing artist. In addition to the typical assassins, mercenaries, and hopeful common citizens, some new figures joined the hunt: women clad in full plate armor, their faces hidden behind full-face helms, who claimed to be acting in the name of the Queen.

A little over a week later, the royal heralds announced that the Queen would make a major announcement the following day in the same square in which the execution (nearly) took place. The party gathered with a crowd of other citizens, as the Queen appeared again on the balcony high above. Today, she wore a bright scarlet gown. To her right was the same figure clad in elaborate plate mail with full face helm as was at her side at the execution. To her left was a pinched-faced woman: the Head Arbiter, Zenobia Zenderholm. Behind her were a half dozen other female warriors, all clad in full plate similar to the woman at the Queen’s side, their faces hidden from view. Scarlet plumes waved atop their helms.

“My subjects!” the Queen began, her voice carrying easily across the crowded square. “As you know, my sympathies for your recent suffering knows no bounds. Many of you have lost loved ones, as have I, and many more have lost property and wealth. The forces charged with preserving order in our beloved city have not upheld their duties. The Knights of the Nail cravenly deserted the city in its time of greatest need. Many members of the Korvosan Guard and the Sable Company have fought valiantly, but others have deserted their posts, or worse, become part of the rioting mobs.

“As your ruler, it is my highest duty to protect you, and your families, and your homes. In the coming days, I will be taking significant measures to ensure that the sort of violence that recently engulfed our city never occurs again. As the first of those measures, I have created a new Royal Guard, known as the Gray Maidens. I have placed my own personal bodyguard, Sabina Merrin, at their command.” The armored figure on her right turned and bowed to the Queen. “Effective today, I have given over the Longacre Building to serve as the headquarters for the Gray Maidens. Head Arbiter Zenderholm will assist them in settling into their new quarters.” The thin-faced arbiter bowed slightly, a smug look on her face.

“Please know, my loyal subjects, that everything I do is with the best interests of our beloved city, and with you, as its residents, in my heart. May the grace of the gods go with you.” With that, she turned, her silk gown billowing behind her, and returned into the castle, flanked by the Gray Maidens.

Among the crowd listening to the proclamation was Field Marshal Cressida Kroft. She caught the party’s eye, and nodded for them to follow her. She did not speak during the long walk back to Citadel Volshyenek, simply shaking her head at any attempt to question her. On the way back, the party noticed that the Korvosan Guards they passed were sporting new crimson cloaks, as was the Field Marshal; they appeared identical in color to the plumes worn by the Gray Maidens, and were the same color as the gown worn by the Queen.

Once she’d reached the privacy of her office, Cressida threw the cloak over the back of a chair and dropped into it with a sigh that was both exhausted and exasperated.

“I wanted to give you a heads-up,” she began, with a worried expression on her face. “You heard the Queen’s announcement, and as she said, it’s likely the first of many. I’ve gotten advance word that Queen Ileosa intends to restructure some elements of the city’s military organizations. No one seems to know anything for certain, but the rumors are flying that she plans to disband some, or even all, of the existing civil defense organizations. I certainly understand her frustration, but the way things have been going of late, I fear that her inexperience may lead to some disastrous decisions. And the way she handled the whole Trinia Sabor situation, well …” Her voice trailed off, leaving her concerns unspoken.

“I think someone’s holding a dagger to the Queen’s throat,” Wren snapped, surprising everyone. “She’s being manipulated by those around her, forced or persuaded into making these decisions.”

“I think it’s that Zenderholm woman,” Nat muttered.

“How the Queen makes her decisions is above my pay grade,” Kroft said wearily. “What it means, though, is my ability to finance freelancers like yourselves is likely going to be diminished as the new leadership realigns and restructures the Korvosan Guard. Hell, there may not even be a Korvosan Guard going forward, and if there is, there’s no guarantee I’ll be commanding it. Right now, I just need to keep  my head down and not make waves, and try to stay at my post as long as I can to protect and represent the men and women of the Guard.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you should no longer consider yourselves official agents of the Korvosan Guard. I hope you’ll continue to fight for Korvosa and her people, and I’ll give you whatever aid I can. But the day may soon come when the power of the Korvosan Guard may not be enough to protect those who serve the city.”

Everyone exchanged worried looks. Then Kroft looked up sheepishly. “Having said that … I do have one last request for you, before I have to cut you loose. There was a murder last night, and I need someone to investigate. Most of my men are beat cops – they keep the peace, break up fights, chase down shoplifters, crack heads that need cracking, that sort of thing, but they’re not detectives. My lead investigator, Captain Destrange, disappeared during the riots – I fear he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In any event, I don’t have anyone else I trust to handle a murder investigation. Can you help?”

“Maybe it would help if we had badges?” Shadow asked one final time.

“Would you like one of our new cloaks?” Kroft asked disgustedly, tossing her new scarlet cloak at Shadow, who let it fall to the floor. “All the Guards in the city have to wear them, to show our loyalty to the Queen. As if a piece of cloth means anything!”

Sensing Kroft was in no mood for banter, the party quickly agreed to help out. She gave them an address in North Point. “I’ve got a couple of officers securing the scene – they can give you the details when you get there.”

The address was a neatly kept two-story house in the Five Corners neighborhood. A pair of Korvosan Guards stood watch outside the front door, and nodded in recognition when the party arrived. “Nasty business,” said one, and the other nodded. “Looks like a burglary gone bad. The fella that lived here was …” he refers to a small notebook, “… Horatio Plumbottom. He had a fancy jewelry shop over in the Heights, ‘The Diamond Sea’. He and his wife were beaten to death, and the place turned upside down. Looks like someone thought he kept the good stuff here at home, and killed him and his wife trying to find it.” He nodded to a young halfling sitting on the front stoop, his head in his hands and his face a mask of shock. “Their son found the bodies this morning, after his dad didn’t turn up at the shop.”

The group couldn’t hide their shock – they knew Horatio Plumbottom! He was the jeweler who had made Ileosa’s brooch, and they’d met him after they’d found it at Lamm’s. They’d visited the man several times since, to sell various trinkets they’d accumulated in their adventures, and while they couldn’t call the man a friend, he was certainly a pleasant acquaintance.

“I’m going to look for any tracks on the outside,” Tomas declared, and set off around the side of the house. “We already canvassed the neighbors,” one of the officers called after him. “No one saw or heard anything out of the ordinary last night.”

The others turned to look at Plumbottom’s son, still rocking gently back and forth on the front step. Finally Shadow sat down beside the man. “I’m very sorry about your parents,” he said gently. “What can you tell us that might be helpful?”

The halfling took at halting breath. “I’m Arthur Plumbottom. I keep the books over at the Galloping Ghost, and I was there at work when Ellia came by and said she was worried about my dad. She works the counter at Pop’s shop, but she said he hadn’t come in to the shop for a few days. That’s not like him, so I came over to see if he was sick, and that’s when I found …” He broke down.

“When was the last time you saw your father?” Shadow asked after Arthur had managed to compose himself.

“I haven’t really talked to him much since the riots settled down. We’re not on the best terms. He wanted me to take over the business, but I’m terrible at doing fine work like that, and don’t really want the stress of running a business. I’m perfectly happy working for someone else, but that wasn’t what my dad wanted for me.”

“Did your father keep any of his work here at home?” Wren asked.

“No! Never!” Arthur insisted. “That’s why he spent all that money on those magical protections at the shop, and then after he was robbed, he was paying some gnome to build a fancy safe at the shop for him. Some of the other jewelers in town keep their stuff at the Bank of Abadar, but Pop said carrying the stuff to and from your shop is when you’re most likely to get robbed.”

They asked other questions – any enemies, any unusual behavior lately, that sort of thing – but learned nothing else of interest. Finally they realized they were putting off what needed to be done: examining the crime scene. Taking a deep breath, they moved on.

The door and front windows of the home were slightly rounded, a nod to the owners’ halfling heritage. Inside, the first floor had a main hall running the length of the house. To the right of the hall were a parlor and dining room, and the hall ended in a kitchen. Most of the furniture was human-sized, but with a few pieces sized for halflings. The place was a mess – furniture turned over, cushions slashed, books pulled off shelves. Crocks of flour and rice were shattered on the kitchen floor. “Looks like they were searching for something, and couldn’t find it,” Jax said, stating the obvious.

The back door had been forced, its jamb splintered by a crowbar or similar object. The back yard was surrounded by a brick wall, and they met Tomas coming in from the back. “The back gate leading to the alley shows signs of forced entry. I didn’t see any tracks around the sides of the house, but there were tracks of several people around the gate, leading in and out.”

On the left of the main hall was a stairway leading to the second floor. Reluctantly, they climbed the stairs. Upstairs, they found a bedroom at the back of the house, a room obviously used as an office, and another bedroom at the front, overlooking the street. This front bedroom was a scene of horror. Two small bodies lay on the floor, one on either side of the bed. Both had been brutally beaten; Horatio Plumbottom’s elegantly waxed mustache was all that was recognizable on what was left of his face. All the upstairs furniture was sized for halflings, and like the first floor, all the rooms appeared to have been ransacked: featherbeds slashed, drawers emptied, etc.

“What do you think they were looking for?” Jax mused again, but the others were shaking their heads. They all shared the feeling that something was just not right. Some cushions were slashed, and some furniture overturned, but not others. All the books had been pulled off the bookshelves, but there were jade figurines and small, elegantly molded gold statuettes that were left in place, despite their obvious value. None of the rugs on the floors had been moved. “It’s almost as if someone was trying to make it look like they were searching for something when they really weren’t,” Wren muttered, and the others nodded in agreement.

Wren and Erin knelt beside the bodies, examining them carefully. Both had been savagely beaten, but Horatio’s body showed signs of other torture: each of his fingers had been broken, and his body was covered with deep burns, as if from a hot iron. Most of his other injuries seemed to have come from fists or a long narrow object, like an iron rod, while his wife’s wounds were from a broad cudgel-like object. The wife was wearing a blood-stained nightgown, but Horatio was naked save for his underwear.

“Do his wounds look older to you?” Erin asked Wren. “They do to me. The blood is dried and crusty, but the blood on his wife is still tacky.”

“What’s wrong with this picture?” asked Tomas, and the pair stood up to see what he meant. “Look at the blood,” he said. There was a large pool of blood on the floor of the bedroom, and the walls and ceiling were splattered with sprays of blood, but almost all the blood was on the wife’s side of the room; there was almost no blood around Horatio’s body.

Nat stood looking down at the dead halfling. A few weeks ago, the sight would have sent him fleeing from the room; now a mangled body seemed as common as a stray dog. “We should find someone who can Speak With Dead, to see if he can still tell us who did this.”

“Good luck with that,” Wren said, turning away from the bodies. “They cut out his tongue.”

The party spread out to search the house, to see if they could find anything the intruders hadn’t, or had left behind. Nat began casting Detect Magic, and immediately spotted something tucked into the headboard of the bed on Horatio’s side. It was a wand, placed where it could easily be reached at any hint of danger. He moved on to the office, and found Jax already searching the desk. “Nothing here,” Jax said, hurriedly leaving the room. Nat cast his spell anyway, and immediately zeroed in on an odd object lying on one of the bookshelves. It looked like some sort of musical instrument; it had a bulbous air reservoir below the mouthpiece, with two tubes extending from that, each pierced with a series of holes. He had no idea what it was, but since it was magical he took it with him. As he turned to go, he noticed a small cardboard box on the desk, bearing the logo of a local printing company. He opened it, and tears came to his eyes; inside were 100 newly printed business cards: Horatio Plumbottom – Goldsmith to the Queen.

The others’ search had turned up nothing new, and they decided it was time to move on to Plumbottom’s shop. As they walked, they turned over theories. “It looks like he was tortured and killed somewhere else, then the wife was killed to make it look like a burglary,” Jax speculated.

“Maybe they grabbed him on his way home from the shop,” Tomas suggested.

“She was already in bed when she was killed,” Wren countered. “She wasn’t waiting up for him, and she hadn’t reported him missing. Maybe he came home, then went out again, and got grabbed then.”

Erin shook her head. “I don’t think it happened like that. His injuries looked like they happened a lot longer before hers. And whoever tortured him – they weren’t in a hurry. They took their time.”

“But what were they after?” Jax said, coming back to the central question. “Why would they kill him like that?”

They reached The Diamond Sea. The shop’s front window, which had been broken and boarded over the last time they were here had been replaced, and there was a Closed sign on the front door. Inside, they were met by Plumbottom’s shopgirl, Ellia Sompson. “The Guardsmen told me to wait here to speak to the investigators,” she sniffled. Ellia was a beautiful blond of about 19, with a very large bosom prominently displayed in a low-cut dress. She noticed the men in the group eyeing her, and blushed. “Mr. Plumbottom always said it helped the male customers if they could see the merchandise well displayed,” she explained, covering her cleavage with one hand. Shadow immediately moved to her side to console her.

Ellia gave the party a quick tour. The front of the store was taken up by the counter and sales area. The back was divided into two rooms: a small office, and a larger workroom. The workroom walls were lined with workbenches, all built at halfling height. There was a low brick pedestal in the center of the room, its bricks discolored by heat. A relatively new-looking square excavation in the floor had been lined with stone. “We were robbed awhile back,” Ellia explained, “so Mr. Plumbottom hired a gnome to build a new safe back here. It’s not done yet, and I’m not sure what will happen to it now.” They got the gnome’s name, and resolved to question him later.

One wall of the workroom was lined with a row of wicker baskets, and they noticed that Ellia stayed well away from them. The fronts of each basket looked like they would open, but were closed with a clasp.

“What’s in these?” Nat asked, kneeling down to examine one more closely.

“Snakes!” Ellia shuddered. There was a sudden hiss from the basket in front of Nat, and he slid backwards on his butt. “Those are part of Mr. Plumbottom’s ‘security’ for the shop,” Ellia continued. “Every night he’d let them out in the front room, then put them back in the morning. I don’t know how he didn’t get bit!” Nat remembered the strange instrument he’d found in Plumbottom’s office, and began to put the pieces together.

Ellia told the party that her responsibilities were to staff the counter and wait on customers, while Plumbottom spent most of his time crafting new items in the back. “But lately, he hadn’t been in the shop much. He had a new commission, and he wasn’t working on it here. He took his furnace, and a bunch of his tools, but I don’t know where he took them. He wouldn’t say anything about it, but when I asked, he had this really happy look on his face. “Oh you’ll find out soon enough!” was all he’d say.

“Did he ever do work anywhere other than here in the shop?” Jax asked, and Ellia shook her head. “In all the time I’ve worked here, he’s never done that before.

“When did he get this new commission?” Wren asked.

“Oh, gosh … at least two weeks ago. Maybe more?”

“And when was the last time you saw him?”

Ellia thought. “He didn’t come in yesterday, and the day before was Abadar’s Sabbath, so we were closed. So I guess three days ago?”

Tomas and Erin exchanged looks. The window for when Plumbottom might have been taken had just opened wide up.

They combed through the records in the office but found nothing to give them any hint as to what this new commission might be or who it could be for. They spread out and canvassed neighboring shops; their owners all expressed shock at Plumbottom’s murder, but had no useful clues to contribute to the investigation.

“Where do you think he might have been working?” Jax asked when they reconvened at the shop. “Should we check other jewelers, or places where they do metal working?”

Tomas shook his head. “You saw his workshop – it’s nothing special. If he took his tools and his furnace, so he could melt precious metals, then he could be working anywhere.”

“I think he was doing something for the Queen,” Wren declared emphatically. “I think we should go to the Castle, and ask the guards if they’ve seen a halfling with a fancy mustache around the palace lately.”

All heads turned to stare at her. “And just what kind of a reception do you think we’d get if we just turn up at the Castle gates and start asking who’s been coming and going?” Shadow asked. “I mean, come on – I think I’m a pretty charming guy, but even I wouldn’t try that! Especially after our little kerfluffle at the execution – we don’t need that kind of attention.”

At that point, the party split up. Erin and Tomas went off to question the gnome who’d been building the safe, while the rest returned to the Plumbottom home (except for Shadow, who gallantly volunteered to escort Ellia home to ensure her safety). When they reconvened that evening at Zellara’s (except for Shadow, who didn’t return until late the next morning) they compared notes. No one had learned anything useful. A gloom settled over the group. They had done everything they could think of, but still had no idea who might have murdered Horatio Plumbottom, or why. What were they missing?

The PCs have earned 400 more XP, putting them at 9,260 with 10,000 required for Level 5. Start prepping your 5^th level characters, because you’ll get there soon.