Looking for Loot in All the Wrong Places

“He’s in here!” Jax heard Nat shout from the bedroom behind him. ‘Emperor’ Pilts Swastel had vanished as they’d attacked his pint-sized bodyguard, Jabbyr, but Nat, using his Red Mantis mask, had apparently found him. Jax had been coming back to help with Jabbyr, but he’d just seen him take Tomas out with three swings of his oversized battleaxe. Gee … maybe the Emperor was the bigger threat. Yeah, that’s it – I need to take out the Emperor first. Hoping that Jabbyr hadn’t noticed him, he reversed direction and headed back to the bedroom.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t see anything to swing at. Nat was yelling, and pointing wildly, so Jax headed for where he was pointing. As he slid past Nat, something gashed his arm, and he swung back blindly, and was pleased to feel his blade strike something soft. But an instant later, an almost solid wall of discordant sound blasted from the spot he’d struck, sending both him and Nat flying backwards to slam into the far wall.

Back in the Emperor’s trophy room, it was almost too crowded to move. Tomas was down and unconscious, with Jabbyr standing over him. Wren rushed to try to help him, but realized that any attempt to heal Tomas would not only open her up to a deadly riposte from Jabbyr, but would like leave Tomas barely conscious – and an easy target. Instead she slammed her mace down onto Jabbyr’s exposed back. Erin rushed at Jabbyr from the other side, driving the point of her sword into his side. Salvator Scream was true to his name – he screamed like a girl and ran back into the bedroom, wriggling under the bed for safety.

Shadow had slammed the door to the hallway shut when the action had started. Now he heard pounding feet in the hallway, and felt a heavy body slam into the closed door. He managed to hold it shut for now, but there must have been a couple of dozen of Pilts’ thugs outside, and knew he couldn’t hold it indefinitely. Looking up in desperation, he saw Laori give him a wink from across the room. “Open the door,” she said with a coy smile. Hoping she knew what she was doing, he fired off a Scorching Ray at Jabbyr, then pulled the door open (hiding behind it as he did so).

The hall was crammed with angry thugs, ready to pour into the room. With a laugh, Laori cast a spell, and a Blade Barrier appeared, extending through the length of the narrow hallway and continuing out the door and across the balcony outside. Three of the thugs were instantly shredded. One managed to make it three steps towards the exit before he was diced into tiny bits. Outside, the mob of thugs running full speed suddenly found themselves facing a wall of flashing, swirling blades, and a geyser of thug puree spraying out of the hallway. The two leading thugs barely managed to avoid being forced into the blades by their buddies running up from behind, and the others screeched to a stop in the face of the deadly barrier.

Laori had headed off any reinforcements for now, but it was still touch and go inside. Jabbyr whirled with an incoherent scream and swung his axe at Erin, chopping through her armor like it was tinfoil. Wren tapped Erin with her Wand of Cure Serious Wounds, hoping to delay the inevitable. Erin hit Jabbyr again, but she was dealing only a fraction of the damage that the little executioner was dishing out. She felt movement behind her and heard Shadow muttering, then saw a pair of fiery rays flash past her, engulfing Jabbyr in a fountain of flames. He roared in fury and pain one last time, then collapsed in a smoking heap.

In the bedroom, Nat shook his head to clear it after being slammed back into the wall. His Mantis mask was still in place, and he could see the Emperor reaching for a rod on his belt. Nat opened his mouth, and Pilts was hit with an Ear Piercing Scream that left him momentarily dazed. “Get him!” Nat shouted to Jax, pointing at where the Emperor was swaying on his feet. Jax charged, swinging blindly at the spot where (he thought) Nat was pointing, but his blade found nothing but nothing. Nat fired a pair of Empowered Scorching Rays that hit the Emperor and the wall behind him like a blast furnace, but somehow Pilts was still on his feet. Jax swung again, almost spinning himself in a full circle as his blow failed to connect with his unseen target. Nat saw Pilts blink his eyes as he regained his senses, then the Emperor muttered a few words and vanished. “God damn it!” Nat cursed, stamping his foot. “He Dimension Door’d out of here!”

All was quiet save for the whistling hum of Laori’s Blade Barrier. “We’ve got about a minute and a half before that goes down,”  she said, pointing to the hallway, then went into the bedroom to help Scream out from under the bed. As she entered the room, her mouth dropped open in awe. It wasn’t from the room’s funishings; although rich and extravagant at first glance, a second look showed them to be mildewed and threadbare. What stopped her in her tracks were the three paintings on the walls. All three had dark, disturbing subjects, but their artistry was undeniable, and all bore the same signature in the bottom corner: Salvator Scream. The first depicted a portrait of a thin humanoid wearing shadows as he stood framed by a dolmen of great size. The figure’s brilliant blue eyes were the only true points of color in the piece, and they seemed to almost glow with anger. “That’s Zon-Kuthon, stepping through the portal into ancient Nidal for the first time,” Laori whispered.

The second showed a rugged mountain range above a desert under a harsh blue sky. In the foreground, a quartet of Vudrani tusked camels ridden by N’darr tribespeople  raced across dunes that, upon closer examination, consisted of tiny skulls. “I know this image,” Laori continued, her voice still an awed whisper. “It’s an image from Umbral Leaves.” Nat shuddered; Umbral Leaves was the unholy text of Zon-Kuthon.

Laori turned to the third painting. It was perhaps the most disturbing; it depicted a handsome man in the process of peeling away the flesh of his arms as if he were taking off a pair of gloves. Underneath, his arms were muscular and covered with glittering blue scales. The man’s expression was one of delight, yet his eyes were empty pits of blackness. Half seen in the shadows beyond him were thousands of humans impaled on towering wooden poles erected in the shadow of an indistinct shape looming on the horizon — perhaps a castle, maybe a mountain. “Is that another image of Zon-Kuthon?” Nat asked, but Laori shook her head. “No, that’s …” She paused. “I don’t know who or what that is,” she said at last. She tore herself away from the paintings and turned to Nat, the look in her eyes almost one of desperation. “We can’t leave these paintings! I have to have them – I’ll pay you for them, but we can’t leave them behind!”

Back in the trophy room, Wren was doling out healing, trying to get Tomas back into some semblance of fighting trim. Erin knelt by Jabbyr and pulled off the leather executioner’s hood that covered his head. Jabbyr was a gnome, but horribly disfigured: one eye had been burned out and his tongue was gone. She shook her head, wondering what sad story lay behind the poor gnome and his fanatical devotion to Pilts Swastel.

“Tick tock,” Laori said as she stepped back into the room. She pointed to the flashing blades in the hallway. “Those are about to disappear.” Jax turned to Scream, who they’d drug out from under the bed. “Is there another way out of here?” he asked. The artist shook his head. “No. The only way out is back out onto the Emperor’s throne room.” He paused. “Well, there is a place in the back where the roof and part of the wall are collapsed,” he pointed to the northeast corner of the building, “but that’s back in the choker’s nest.”

“Chokers?” Jax asked. “How many?” Scream shook his head. “I don’t know. A bunch? Pilts feeds them the bodies of his victims, after he cuts off their heads.”

Whichever way they wanted to go, they would have to pass through the hallway that was now filed with magical blades. The group quickly gathered and readied for action. Erin nodded to Laori, and the cleric snapped her fingers, dismissing the Blade Barrier. Erin dashed into the hallway and rushed to the door to the balcony; her plan was to block the path so that the thugs could only enter one at a time, while Tomas stood several feet back, bow ready. Squinting back into the bright sunlight, she saw the mob of the Emperor’s henchmen, milling about uncertainly, surprised by the Blade Barrier’s sudden disappearance. But across the way, on the rooftop where the Blood Pig spectators sat, she saw a disheveled figure in robes and a bent crown: Pilts Swastel! “The Emperor’s out here!” she called back and she sliced at the nearest thug.

Nat elbowed past Tomas, and ran to a spot behind Erin; looking over her shoulder, he could see the Emperor on the rooftop. Not hesitating, he exploded a Fireball on top of the Emperor, catching not only him, but a number of the curious onlookers who had stuck around to watch this new variant on their normal entertainment. From his spot back in the hallway, Tomas couldn’t see what Erin and Nat could; the Emperor was higher up on his roof, and the doorway blocked Tomas’s line of sight. Cursing, Tomas pushed past Nat and Erin, taking a hit from one of the thugs who were moving in to resume the fight. Undeterred, Tomas shifted to a spot in the corner of the balcony, and sent an arrow flying across to the opposite rooftop. It sank deep into the Emperor’s chest. He clutched at it weakly, then fell face forward, rolling down the roof and onto a walkway that connected to the balcony.

The thugs nearest the door charged at Erin and Tomas, surrounding them, while others began to push in from behind. Wren conjured a Spiritual Weapon, but it did little to distract the attackers. Shadow conjured a Flaming Sphere that appeared at the feet of the thug in front of Erin, scorching him badly. As he tried to dance away from the flames, Erin slashed him across the belly with her sword. Nat cast Haste, assuming his friends would need as much edge as he could give them against the mob.

“The Emperor’s dead!” came a shout from one of the thugs near the back. “Let’s get out of here!” After seeing what Laori’s Blade Barrier had done to the Emperor’s personal guard, they probably would have scattered sooner, had Pilts not suddenly appeared and ordered them to stay and fight. With the threat of his vengeance no longer hanging over them, they had no desire to die for his cause, and they began to flee. Tomas, surrounded by better-armed foes, stuck his jaw out defiantly. “Throw down your weapons and surrender!” he commanded, and the two in front of him did just that, as the rest of their buddies ran for the hills.

Now that they truly felt they weren’t in danger of imminent attack, the group began to relax a bit. Erin stepped out onto the balcony, and looked up at the Emperor’s ‘Tall Knife’ for a moment, then began to hack at the guillotine with her sword. “No sense leaving this for the Queen to get her hands on,” she muttered as she worked to reduce the device to kindling.

As Erin worked, Jax explored more of the building. He found Scream’s cell, little more than a pallet of dirty straw with an easel and a half-finished painting. Even to his untrained eye, this painting lacked something that the ones in Pilts’ bedroom had. He found two more storerooms, one of which had a stack of nearly a dozen more paintings of Scream’s. He brought these back to Laori; initially her eyes lit up with excitement, but as she went through them, her expression changed to one of disappointment. “These are … bad. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they weren’t even by the same artist.” Disgusted and disappointed, she left them lying on the floor.

Nat had been following Jax around, casting Detect Magic everywhere. He’d helped make sure they stripped all the good stuff off of both Jabbyr and Pilts’ bodies, and he’d found a magical ring tucked away in a pile of old theater props in one of the storerooms. “Come on – it’s time to get moving,” Wren said impatiently, but Nat hadn’t checked everywhere yet – he still had one room to go. “That’s where Scream said the chokers live!” Wren warned as he approached the closed door at the end of the hall, but Nat just shushed her with a finger to his lips. He could sense magic on the other side of the door, so he quietly pushed it open.

It was a large, empty chamber, perhaps once a storage room. One corner of the building had collapsed entirely, leaving a void looking out over the sodden skyline of Old Korvosa. Nat’s spell was pointing up into the rafters in the opposite corner of the room, but it was too dark and shadowy up there to make out anything. Hoping for a better view, he cast Dancing Lights to illuminate the space. Sure enough, his lights revealed something – a small dark-skinned creature with impossibly long, rubbery arms.

Before Nat could react, another of the Choker Brutes dropped down out of the rafters right in front of him. It lashed out and one of its tentacle-like arms wrapped around Nat’s throat. Nat choked out a strangled scream, then managed to cast Shocking Grasp on the creature. Tomas, already halfway out the door, spun around and saw something wrapped around Nat’s throat. He ran forward until he could see the thing attacking Nat, then feathered it with an arrow. Shadow stepped out of the trophy room and blasted the choker with a volley of Magic Missiles, and it dropped away, dead.

But more of the creatures began to boil out of the room. They ran across the walls and the ceiling like cockroaches. One scrabbled over Nat’s head to drop down to attack Tomas while two more went after Nat, and Nat ended up with another tentacle around his neck. Still more could be seen dropping out of the rafters inside the room. “How many of these things are there?” Tomas screamed as he backed away to give himself room to fire.

The building’s layout was working against the party. They were bottled up in the narrow hallway, far away from where Nat was surrounded, but their enemies had no trouble scampering along the walls or ceiling to get in among them. Laori began casting a spell while Wren summoned another Spiritual Weapon that appeared back in the choker’s room to harass those in the back; one turned and began futilely trying to attack the magical weapon. Jax smacked one with a Force Missile. Nat, surrounded by creatures intent on squeezing the life out of him, decided it was better to be anywhere but here; he managed to cast Dimension Door and retreated to the Emperor’s bedroom, leaving everyone else to clean up the mess he’d created.

When Tomas stepped back, it left Shadow at the front of the line facing an angry choker brute, so he quickly incinerated it with Scorching Rays and retreated into the trophy room. But two of the other chokers gave chase, dashing along the ceiling and walls after him. Wren slammed her mace into one as it ran by, killing it, but the other reached Shadow, and hit him with a rubbery arm that then wrapped around his chest. Wren followed it, trying to beat it off Shadow with her mace. Nat, hearing that the action was getting dangerously close to his new hiding place, stepped to the door of the bedroom and hit it with Scorching Rays. Shadow decided that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and wrapped his own hands around the choker’s throat, then delivered a Shocking Grasp that sent it flying away from him.

Back in the hallway, Tomas was finally bringing his bow to bear; one of the chokers died from his arrows and another was badly wounded. Laori’s summoning spell completed, and a pair of Shadows appeared in the room the chokers had emerged from, draining the strength away from the one left in there. She tried to push her way past the lead choker, to be able to flank it with Wren, but it shoved her aside with a bruising blow. Laughing off the pain, she unlimbered her spiked chain, and crushed the thing’s skull.

Erin appeared in the doorway, sweating from the exertion of dismantling the guillotine. “Everything OK in here?” Tomas just glared at her. “Let’s get out of here!” he said gruffly. Nat tried to protest, pointing back towards the chokers’ nest: “But I’m telling you – there’s still some magic back there!” But Wren was having none of it, and wrapped her fist in the collar of Nat’s tunic, bodily dragging him out of the building.

They decided to retreat to Salvator Scream’s home. Unlike their journey this morning, none of the Emperor’s thugs appeared to dog their path. When they were finally inside, Wren turned to Scream. “We have a few questions for you.”

Scream was still terrified. “I’m not telling you anything unless you promise to get me out of Korvosa! Even with Pilts dead, it’s not safe for me here!” Laori put her arm around the artist. “I can take you anywhere you want to go – you have my word.” Erin eyed her suspiciously; Laori seemed sincere, but there was something more going on here, and the fact that Laori was a cleric of Zon-Kuthon didn’t make her any easier to trust.

But Salvator didn’t seem to have the same concern, and Laori’s promise to get him out of Korvosa helped him relax just a little. Jax opened the questioning: “We’re looking for Vencarlo Orsini – do you know where he is?”

Scream seemed surprised. “Orsini? No, I don’t. The last time I saw him, he was at his academy, but I haven’t seen him since I was kidnapped.”

“What about the Seneschal?” Jax asked. “Neolandus Kalepopolis – do you know where he is?”

Scream’s voice went up several pitches. “No! That’s ridiculous - why would I know someone like him? I don’t know him, and I don’t know where he is!” It was obvious to everyone that Scream was lying.

Wren held up the bloody scrap of the Seneschal’s uniform that Laori had found in Scream’s bedroom. “Then how do you explain this? This belonged to Neolandus, and we found it here in your house.”

The artist’s shoulders slumped and his head dropped; he had the air of someone who didn’t have the energy to keep up a pretense any longer. “Neolandus and I were … friends,” he said after a long pause. “We’d been close for years, but not in the public eye. I was a bit too scandalous for someone as upstanding as the Seneschal of Castle Korvosa. But we cared for each other even though we rarely got to spend time together. But on the morning after the King died, I found Neolandus on my doorstep, bloodied and poisoned. He was delirious, but managed to let me know he needed somewhere to hide. Of course I brought him in, and nursed him back to health.

“As he recovered, he confided in me that Queen Ileosa had murdered her husband, and that she’d entered into an alliance with the Red Mantis. They were the ones who tried to assassinate Neolandus, and his escape was as much luck as anything. Worse, Neolandus said there was something about Queen Ileosa that wasn’t quite right — that she’d changed recently. Grown ‘worse’ ... whatever that meant. He wouldn’t tell me more; he said the less I knew, the safer I’d be.

“But we knew he wouldn’t be safe with me forever. Our relationship wasn’t public, but it wasn’t entirely secret either. Sooner or later someone might come looking. Neolandus needed a safer place to hide, so I suggested the Arkonas. They’re patrons of mine, and if anyone could protect him from the Queen, it would be them. Neolandus grudgingly agreed, and so I took him to Arkona Palace late one night, shortly before the quarantine began. The Arkonas readily agreed to give him asylum, and I haven’t seen him since.

“Then, a little over a week ago, Vencarlo contacted me. He said he knew that Neolandus and I were friends (don’t ask me how – that man always seems to know everything!) and wanted to know if I’d heard from him. I told him I hadn’t, but he didn’t believe me. He kept pressuring me, and finally I told him what had happened. When he found out I’d taken Neolandus to the Arkonas, he was furious. He said they were criminals, and shouldn’t be trusted. He called me a fool, and threw me out. That night was when Pilts’ thugs showed up and kidnapped me, so I haven’t talked to Vencarlo since.”

The group exchanged looks; it sounded like they knew where they needed to go next. Wren changed the subject. “What about your paintings? Your new paintings aren’t as … good as your old ones. What changed?” Laori gazed at Scream intently, waiting for his answer.

“I don’t know,” the artist replied. “When I used to paint, it wasn’t me painting. There was someone else – something else. I was seeing through their eyes – not just seeing, but feeling, hearing. It’s like I was experiencing those scenes with them, and I was just holding the paintbrush. It was terrifying, but it was also magnificent, powerful. But then, a few weeks ago it just … stopped. I can still put brush to canvas, but there’s no inspiration, no power. It’s just gone.”

As Scream spoke, Tomas felt a roaring in his ears, and he had to lean against a table for support. Scream’s description of painting horrors that someone else was experiencing – the words could have been his brother’s. “When did this stop?” he asked softly. The artist thought for a moment. “I think it stopped about the time the plague started. A week or two before, maybe.”

They left Laori and Salvator in the artist’s bedroom. “So Scream took the Seneschal to the Arkonas for protection,” Jax said thoughtfully. “And Vencarlo knew he’d done that. So it’s probably a good bet that Vencarlo went to the Arkonas to check up on him. The question is, what happened to them?” He looked at the others. “I guess the only way to find out is to go ask the Arkonas.”

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The PCs earned 11,800 XP (I gave you XP credit for all the thugs who ran away), putting them at 56,743 and now at Level 9. They need 71,000 XP for Level 10.