No 1 Detective Hobbit Agency - The Creampuff Catnappering Caper

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: The name of the adventure
GM: Terry
Season: Autumn 820 wk
Night: Someday
Level: Medium

Party

• Ishamael - played by Ross (Scribe)
• Marco - played by Mike

Employer

Olo Knotwise, a kindly old hobbit from the Brastor Township branch of the No. 1 Hobbits' Detective Agency, has lost his cat Cream Puff and is very concerned about its well being. He would like a party to find and return Cream Puff to him.

Sessions

1. 26/1/2020 08:15 - 12:00
2. 2/2/2020 08:30 - 11:30
3. 8/3/2020 08:15 - 11:15
4. 15/3/2020 08:20 - 10:50
5. 22/3/2020 08:20 - 11:00
6. 29/3/2020 09:30 - 12:30
7. 5/4/2020 10:30 - 13:00
8. 12/4/2020 09:15 - 13:15
9. 26/4/2020 10:00 - 13:30
10. 3/5/2020 09:15 - 13:15

Scribe Notes

Blah blah blah

Operations Notes:

Classified: Senior detectives only. Not for discussion outside agency.

Summer 820WK

Beltane

Recruited by Shapphire late on the evening of the Guild meeting. Taken to a cloud, just out Seagate. Marco turns up, with three other hobbits.

1 Meadow

Wake up in a bed in Brastor. Have a breakfast in some inn in Brastor. Taken to a three story building with a red capsicum flag. Head up some outside stairs to an upper floor. Greated by by Olu Knotwise. Not hired to find out what is happening with the new chef at the Fight and Fuck, Uthgar Basha, rumoured to have come from Ranke.

Collect some Waters of Strength, Waters of Healing, tailored boots, incendary devices and lightbolt boomsticks. Get a dozen restoratives (Rank 9).

Sign Guild Contract, with Ishamael party leader and scribe, and no military scientist.

Fly east to Emmitsburg and collect a barrel of Old Swampy then fly back to Seagate. Speak to Randolf William Perrindale, who owned Ishamael a favour. Spend several hours eating food and playing cards.

Heading back into New Seagate and visit S Mart. Organise to get any messages from Perrindale and arrange to visit the docks and speak to Ameda Windspine.

Head to Old Seagate and get a room at the Grey Swan. Organise to have some barrels smuggled onto a boat then stealth out in the early hours. Break in building on corner of Harlots Way and find the upper room is warded with Sleep. We get a drunk to trigger the ward but it doesn’t go off so we enter. It looks like it probably a hideout for the hobbits. We cross over the alley via the roof and get a lay of the area. Ishamael secures a rope to a chimney so that it can be thrown over the town wall in case of escape. We return to the inn, making sure we don’t leave any trace.

2 Meadow

After a late breakfast look for places on Bluegate Street and find a doss house near Blue Lane. Rent a room for the next month at 3sp a night. Find Ameda in the dockmaster’s office around noon. Head to her office in Lower Temple Road.

Ameda cannot provide direct assistance but after some questioning she provides us a list of ships of dubious providence.

1. The Black Rose
2. The Swan
3. The Seacastle (crew of 15)

The Seacastle is coming in a week but hasn’t listed a return schedule yet. Discover Mr Solcum is the main person for suggling and has a reputation for violence as well as corruption.

Fly to Huggler’s Ferry to meet up with Sabastian Silverfoot. One of the local guard, Evens, escorts up to the Mayor’s townhouse. Get the cold shoulder from the wife so head to the pub, The Huggler’s Arms, for the evening.

Organise the delivery of beer as part of the Wytchwaters Brewery new range of summer ales Wheatsheafs with Sabastian.

3 Meadow

Meet Riptide at the local dock in Emmitsburg and delivery 24 barrels of beer for delivery to Old Seagate. Ride to Charity to see Helen and Polly and the tree. Helen is not at home so visit the tree, which looks healthy. Ride on to Polly’s cave, who is at home.

Have tea with Polly to let her know what we are up to and request her to ask around to see if any local fairy folk have gone missing in the recent past.

Return to Helen’s place and find her still away. Stay in Charity overnight and arrange for the horses to be returned to Emmitsburg. We catch up with Helen and her cats and see says she will put out of the word of possible missing fairy folks.

Fly down to Brastor and speak to Olo. Let him know what we are up to and arranged to each get illusiony aura to disguise our colleges. Arranged for the 5th of Meadow.

4 Meadow

Travel up to Old Seagate on Riptide’s boat with the beer.

5 Meadow

Spend the day looks at possible escape routes and the general layout of Old Seagate. Purchase cloths for a disguise.

6 Meadow

Got to Ameda’s office around lunch time and get an illusary disguise of a salty seadog. The illuary aura as a non pacted, non spell caster, no spy dockworker.

Spend afternoon making beer deliveries, including Night Market, a dire pub so cheap only the drunks go there. The final delivery in evening to the Fight and Fuck. Intersected in the alley by a couple of orcs and are escorted to the back door of the pub.

There is a heavy second door which is wooden with iron banding, which is on rollers. Enter a warehouse type area, with wooden floor and walls. There is one room made of brick. We take the barrels down some stairs into a cellar, which has stone walls and an earthen floor.

At some point the cellar has been extended under the pub from the adjacent building. There is a ladder going up to a hatch in what we think is the pub. There are some meats there which are beef and pork.

Spend of hours gambling, and get lucky, so get the orcs drunk. Call it a night after several hours and leave around midnight. Pass an orc getting a good kicking but don’t see it at all.

Get accosted in the alley by one of the players and a couple of his mates but a good strike causes them to retreat after an exchange of unpleasantries.

Return the warehouse with the hand cart. Get told which warehouse the goods are likely to get delivered to so we head down and pay them a visit. There is a group of guards between the docks and the warehouse so Marco controls the dog.

After quite a lot of effort we manage to get up to roof of the warehouse, having fallen twice. There is a walkway around the edge of the of roof. Find a hatch and manage to pick the lock. There is a ward with a sleep spell with a triggering condition of greater than Rank 2 Thief. Macro goes in and looks around.

Inside the buiding has three stories. The top floor has a number of smaller rooms. Marco opens one of the window shutters and I climb down and enter. Head down to the first floor down some stairs. Macro hears the sound of a dog, which we think is on the ground floor.

Fortunately the dog is just as the base of stairs so Marco controls it before it can attack. The dog reports it is the only creature in the building. On the first floor is a mess room and two locked rooms. I fail to spot the trap and get poisoned but manage to open the door. The room is storage space for semi valuable good small goods.

The second locked is an office. It is an internal room and cannot see any wards. Look through the ledger but cannot find any future shipments for the Seacastle but cannot find any notes. Find some entries for the Swan but none for the Black Rose. Find the safe in a wooden cabinet but cannot open it. Manage to bind the dog on the way out and then depart. Return to the inn and rest.

7 Meadow

Spend the day of the docks spying the activity. Check out the where the guards are located and watch where the Watch patrol. Check the warehouse and spot a couple of people on the doors. Go back at the habourmaster who confirms the Seacastle is expected to be arriving tomorrow afternoon. Bind the guard’s dog by the alley between the warehouse and the docks.

8 Meadow

Spend afternoon fishing, without any luck. With Walking Unseen we stealth into the warehouse while it still open and wait out while the goods are unpacked. One of the boxes is taken upstairs to the strongroom. After everybody has left we go to the first floor and find the box. Inside is some salemi and under that is a smaller box. In that box are six live mice, which are skin-changed (Rank 7). They also have a Petit Mort spell (Rank 10). We summon some replacement mice and bind them to flee when box is opened.

We make our exit onto the roof and let the mice down on a rope. Head over to see Ameda. Sapphire is there and she calls in a bunch of people turn up, including a dwarven healer, a young hobbit. They remove the skin changes and there are six hobbit children, are wearing identical clothing, like some sort of uniform.

After a while Olo turns up and we return to the warehouse. After an hour finally figure out the paperwork and it is damning as the name of of chef [Uthgar Basha] is on the order. Take a copy of everything and show the box and paperwork to a wandering Wizard’s Eye. Leave and return to Ameda’s property.

9 Meadow

Head back to the inn and rest up until the afternoon. Meet Saphire for a late breakfast. We then head to the building on the corner of Flea and Wish Streets. There is a large basement in the building an a tunnel under the road and extended basement of the Fight and Fuck.

There is a bloodhound there and a well constructed scaffording, with some critical re-inforced sections marked out.

Use Crystal of Vision to check cellar is unoccupied and then we tunnel out the remaining few feet of ground. It is about 20 feet from the platform to the floor of the cellar. Find a nest of mice but nothing else. Find a hidden cupboard but it is only filled with bottles of good alcohol. Select a few of the better samples and hide it by where we tunnelled in.

Got seven asleep minds about the back stairs but only one briefly above the the trapdoor. One person moving about on the ground floor. Go up and open door. There is a single orc peeling potatoes so sap him and make it look like he got drunk and passed out.

There are two exits from this room into the pub. We take the door and that leads into the kitchen. Find the chef carving up a dead hobbit so I poison him then sap him. Collect the hobbit body and Marco takes it back down to the cellar. Use a Water of Healing to stop the chef from actually dying on us.

Loot spice cupboard and escape down back into the cellar. Cast tunnelling and transport everything down into the mine. Marco almosts drops the bottles but manages not to. After torturing the chef we think there are no more sentients in the inn so we kill him.

I weaken the support structures and move the greek fire into position. The area is cleared so Marco casts Smoking Magma. Several minutes after leaving the building and clearing the area to the end of Flea Street. After about ten minutes the pub collapses into the earth in smoke, dust and fire.

Head back to our lodgings, clear out our stuff and then make our way to Ameda’s office. Olu is upstairs and we have a drink. Head out to the Fly By Night north of Seagate and rest.

The hobbits are coming from Ponto Boffin’s Orphanage in Sanctuary. There is a human called the Hump (because they have a hunchback) who was the in-between.

Fly up the coast in the late afternoon but the weather sets in after a couple of hours so we land at Kitty Hawk. We stay in the local inn the Redfoot at four silver pennies for the night, including breakfast.

10 Meadow

Weather isn’t too bad so fly off in the morning and land a mile or so outside of Sanctuary. I counterspell the wings before we walk in. Find an inn after a long search. It is called the Red Owl. We rent a single room with board for 10 silver pennies per day.

11 Meadow

Start a search for orphanage by going to the local bakery. First one is a dwarven place run by Ritz. Directed to the “Hot Bun”, a hobbit barkery. Directed to the Merchant’s quarters. Talk to patrons in the Flaming Rabbit who directs us to Morrow’s office.

Morrow is bald and wears shocking red clothing. There is a dwarf there with a large axe. We are taken into a very nice office. In the Maze is an inn called Sly’s Place, apparently run by a mage. A nearby pub called the Running Fox is reasonable but doesn’t do good cider. Morrow recommends the Golden Trout for cider, as it fairly up market.

Head to the Trout and head up to the first floor balcony. The place is moderately busy. Buy some drinks and pass the time. Keep an eye out of the local watch, but don’t see any Hellhounds.

The orphanage is standalone two storied building with a walled back yard. We can hear noise from the yard. There is a door into the yard at the back and a main door at the front.

Look for an unoccupied building that overlooks either the front or back door but discover every is actually occupied, even if it doesn’t looks like it.

Return to the inn and rest up before leaving, Unseen, around 11pm at night. We are ambushed by four crossbow man who fire apon us from the rooftop of a two story building. They are not that good and we flee to the orphanage. We leap the wall into the yard at the back.

Break into the building via first floor window. Spend three quarters of an hour searching the records in the office. Find a secret panel in the desk but it just booze. Match up and find the entries for the six missing children. We quietly leave and return to the inn, avoiding a fight on the way.

12 Meadow

Fly back to Seagate via Kittyhawk.

13 Meadow

Return to Ameda’s office, let her know what we were up to and then rune portal down the Brastor into a basement in a building near the Detective Agency’s main office.

The childrens’ story is an ex orphan called Baxtor who tricked them into fleeing into the night, and were subsequently jumped and kidnapped. The other three are from Sanctuary but didn’t talk much.

Get description of Baxtor, a young man with oranage hair. The children where carried for about 10 minutes to a place somewhere not in the maze. Olu decides to send a team of detectives bolster the office in Sanctuary and commence investigations, the party will followup a month later.

16 Heat

Return to Olu in Brastor. Plan to meet in the village of Umtark, which is about ten miles south of Sanctuary. Get Rank 14 Greater Enchantment and then fly up to Kittyhawk. Use crystal to observe area around Umtark.

17 Heat

Land near a forest but it takes most of the day to find a good place for a camp, about half a mile in. There is a clearing about 10 minutes away which is reasonable to land in. It is about three miles from Umtark. We make sure we can find the landing spot from the air and make sure our camp site is not too observable.

18 Heat

Head into Umtark around mid morning. There is the local inn called the Red Fox. Kill time eating bread and cheese, drinking a decent pint. Met by Sapphire, who has a cloak with an illusion on it, making her look like a small human child.

We walk along the road into Sanctuary. There are a few things to action.

1. Rig the cards and dice in a gambling den.
2. Hit the bag man.
3. Trash a bolt hold.
4. Do some breaking and entering.
5. Wack some patrols and watchers.

Wander into Sanctuary and find a cheap inn called the Fat Cat. Book at room for two weeks and pay 40 silver pennies. The room is facing onto the street. A dwarf follows us and feints a fall as we are entering the inn, dropping a small blue crystal into my pocket.

Get a brush-up by a Ramm Rinkenstein. Get hair and beard trimmed, purchase some aftershave.

Visit a tailor, an elven artiste, and buy some kitch outfits with medallions and rings. Get a slashed gaudy cloak. Pay 248 silver pennies for it all. Marco gets some plain but reasonable cloths.

We hit nightspots, drinking and gambling. Get passed a leather pouch with some rigged cards and dice. The place is the Wrecked Ship, near the docks, and has the den downstairs.

Find a mouthy dwarf so after some drink he kicks off and during the fight switch the card decks and drop the dice. Get accosted on the way back but I tell them to piss off. Get back to the inn and have some post drinking food and sleep.

19 Heat

Wake up at midday and find a note saying “Meet you for dinner. S” so go back to sleep for a few more hours then head down to docks. Spend a few hours wondering around and notice a patrol of eight reasonable armed and armoured guards.

Meet by Glarid Flintguard, Morrow Rumble’s muscle, at the inn. We are taken to another inn called the Bloody Bull. We meet Sapphire there so says we are going to meet Moruth, self proclaimed king of Downwind.

We eat then head out of the back door and are taken by a hay wagon out of the city and we cast some spells away from the low mana area. We are meeting an orc called Wurth, who will be our escort. As we enter the area we are accosted by a gang of youths but Marco shots one with a crossbow so they withdraw.

Downwind is a poverty ridden slum and after a while are taken to Moruth where I do a couple ring fights to prove our capability. Sapphine and Moruth talk behind a curtain while we spread out to cover the room.

There a human near Moruth who is a Wiccan and has a Rank 10 Hellfire invested ring. His highest ranked spell is Hellfire. One of the losers shoots me with a crossbow so I leap over and endurance hit him.

After about a quarter of an hour the talks finish and we are escorted back to the edge of the slums, boomsticking another group of youths as we leave. We head back to the wagon and then in are taken back into the city and the Bloody Bull. Told to move to the Cooked Mongoose and then we head back.

I read the Night’s Sky and it tells me of danger in my very near future so decide to make an exit via on of the main gates. Bribe the guards on the gate and then lay low to observe the activity for an hour. Fly out to the campsite on wings.

20 Heat

Wake a few hours after dawn. We power up and head back into the city mid morning. We head to the Cooked Mongoose and book a room for five nights, paid in advance. Have a good stew for the midday dinner. Spend afternoon shopping for a new merchant’s outfit before camping the public bar.

Later in the afternoon the Vigor Silentfoot turns up and invites us a “party”, which may have some unruly guests. Eat a nice dinner to discuss the evening’s activities. Vigor turns up just after midnight with extra gear. Take a circuitous route then climb onto the roof of a nearby building.

We encounter more than expected, with four guards, a Mindmage and somebody unidentified. Will call it even with two dead on their side and some endurance injuries. We flee on wings with a body. Later find out these are the Hawkmasks.

He was there to meet with people from the Hump. It was to arrange for a truce. The Hump was going to offer intelligence on other gangs. Doesn’t know which gang it was about. It was to be about gang operations and objectives. Mostly in the south in the Hawk’s territory. Doesn’t know what kind of criminal activity this was going to be about. Loot the body and throw it into the swamp. Fly south an hour and stash the loot then back to out campsite. Rest and recover for the next few days.

24 Heat

Sapphire flies in late in the evening. Jubal is the leader of the Blue Hawks (aka Hawkmasks). Jubal had a run in with Tempus, a Hellhound, a few years ago and reportedly was killed but reappeared several years later.

There is a gang run by Bakarat the Toad and Sapphire wants to us steal a key from one of the lieutenant, Bartleby. The club is called the Hennessey’s in Sanctuary Uptown.

25 Heat

Pick up horses near Umtark and ride into Sanctuary and make our way to the Swan, a nice inn in Uptown. It is a pretty up market and pricy so enjoy the experience. Head out in the afternoon for a ride around Uptown and The Promise of Heaven, a large park. Spy out the lay of the land around Hennessey’s and decide any hit in the streets is going to be very tricky.

26 Heat

Visit Morrow Rumble in the morning to work on a cover to import grain. Speak to Saphire and arrange for Morrow to get membership of Hennessey’s.

3 Breeze

Spend the week watching Bartleby. He spends four days in his primary residence, where he visits Hennessey’s once, a villa in Uptown one day, one night in a merchant house on the docks, and one night on a house in Jeweler Street. Has two guards with him every time he been seen but never the same two people each day.

Settle up the bill and do a disappearing act at Morrow’s warehouse. The warehouse is detached with bound earth walls. The upper floor wooden with heavily barred windows. There are guards on the roof. Tried with crystal of vision but failed so assume building is Scry Shielded.

9 Breeze

Early morning around quarter to eight Bartleby leaves the warehouse and heads along the main road, which is what we hoped. Vigor sets off an grenado on a roof and tiles come raining down. The pick pocket attempt is successful but Marco couldn’t control the horses and they charge. Marco is thrown off the cart and the horses are taken down by the guards.

People

• Ameda Windspine - Dwarf working near the docks of Old Seagate.
• Mr Solcum - Smuggler on the docks.
• Geoffrey - Fly by Night operator in Seagate.
• Evens - A local guard in Huggler’s Ferry.
• Morrow Rumble - Hobbit contact in Sanctuary.
• Vigor Silentfoot - Junior detective - temporarily reassigned to Sanctuary
• Sapphire Gold - Senior detective - temporarily reassigned to Sanctuary