Games, all sorts

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After trussing up all of the guys who survived the battle at the Inn, the constables showed up and the survivors were interrogated. We determined they were taking orders from one Mr Larkis, of whom none of us had heard but apparently should have, at least those in some circles think.

Trent's bird returned and informed us that the guy who ran away escaped to a particular in called Dragoth's Hunt Club, so Grey announced that we should go check this place out tonite. I elected to go with him, as well as Trent. Boyce stayed to guard Hilda for the rest of the night.

When we got there, I tried the back door, through which the knave (Robert, but pronounced all Frenchy-like) apparently entered, but alas it was locked. So then Grey and I went to the front door and knocked. Eventually someone came down and told us to wait until morning unless it was the city guard knocking. So we went and acquired some city guardsmen to give us some weight to get the guy to open the door and talk to us now.

He did. Dragoth that is. He didn't seem to know anything about what was going on with this attack on our Inn. We got the ball rolling on this thing and agreed with Dragoth to come back the next afternoon, giving time for the cook guy to show up who was suspect in being in cahoots with the knave, Robert, and then Boyce would be with us and could replay events that transpired here that night.

When we returned, it was determined that Robert came by and got some key from the Inn's cook, Jean-Pierre, and then left quickly. Jean-Pierre eventually confessed, and I could tell that Dragoth felt betrayed by the man's actions. Because of this mental reaction, I was pretty sure Dragoth had nothing to do with this plot.

We discussed the ordeal further with Dragoth and it was agreed that he would give us his full cooperation if we would leave the law out of it where he and his business were concerned. We said we'd get back to him on that later in the day after we talked to our boss, Bagram.

After discussing it with Bagram and Philip, we decided to take a payment from Dragoth to leave him and his establishment out of our investigation while we looked into Mr Larkis's business, Larkis being a common patron of Dragoth's establishment. Dragoth gave us full support to do whatever we wanted to to Larkis, as long as he and his business remained under the law's radar.

That night we headed to Dragoth's place to meet Larkis and try to figure out from him what was going on. Boyce spoke to him while the rest of us sat at a table and I read his surface thoughts from a distance. We all managed to get him plastered and he was a bit loose-lipped while Boyce managed to screw him out of a bunch of money.

He let slip that he has a particular customer that very specifically wants young well-to-do girls with red hair. It wasn't stated like that to him, but he (Larkis) figured out the connection. He would be presented with a list of names of girls he was supposed to “acquire”, and then he would acquire them. I saw a mental picture of the guy he referred to, who appeared to be of brown hair, blue eyes, male, in his 30s, relatively tall, well-to-do. Will have to figure out who this guy is later, but first….

… Larkis let slip that a shipment of 10 girls just went out last week, and that he still had two he was currently holding. Well. This would have to be remedied.

Anyway, Larkis stumbled home, making a date to meet Boyce back here the next night to try to win some of his money back. We headed home to make plans about how we would attack this current issue of rescuing the girls being held.

The next day Grey and I headed to the Town Records Archive and looked up Larkis's official holdings. He had 3 warehouses, 1 mansion in town, and 1 countryish vacation home. What seemed logical was to head to the docks district and start nosing around. I voted for immediate departure, because I wanted no chance that we would be too late in springing the girls, even if it was a more dangerous prospect during the day.

We picked one warehouse randomly, and apparently it happened to be the correct one. Trent and Boyce snuck inside while Grey and I hung around outside. The boys inside managed to find a secret area in the back of the warehouse, and Boyce came out to let us know. So, Grey and I headed to that location and Grey bent a hole into the wall.

Boyce went in first, and utterly obliterated the one guard that was posted to watch the two waifs. However, Boyce was not good enough to dispatch the guy before he could shout and alert the guards within the warehouse to our presence. So, I stayed inside the secret room and worked on freeing the girls while Boyce and Grey went back into the warehouse proper in order to help Trent take care of the guards who were quickly rushing toward us.

About the time I finished unshackling the girls, the fighting sounds ceased and the boys came back in through the room tunnel and we all headed out of there as quickly as we could.

The girls turned out to be Jan Rallisa, the 24 year old red-headed daughter of a local merchant prince, and Sina Falric, the 16 year old red-headed daughter of a local judge. We decided to deliver the two girls back to Judge Falric since he obviously had some political weight within the city, so maybe he could help further our investigation into Larkis and his mysterious employer some.

He was very very grateful to have his daughter back, and was understanding about how we couldn't give him all of the “official” information we had about what was going on because we still had some yet to uncover; we didn't want our covers blown yet while working with Larkis to find out who wanted all the redheaded chicks. He was okay with that, and even offered to deputize us for two weeks in order to aid our investigation. He tasked us with finding solid evidence incriminating Larkis so that Alestia could prosecute him, and while that was all well and good and yet another task on our list of things to do, the most important thing was finding out who he was working for.

So we set out that night to head back to Dragoth's Inn to have Boyce “Boyo” talk to Larkis again but… Larkis didn't show up. He was always there from 7pm - 10pm to gamble and whore it up, but he didn't show up tonite. Presumably to do damage control on his two missing chickies. So anyway, we decided to sneak into Larkis's house tonite and try to find some incriminating documentation that could be used to blackmail Larkis into giving up his employer; afterall, he seemed the type to try and save his own skin.

It was decided that I would dress up like one of the whores from Dragoth's place to get into Larkis's mansion. And easy as pie, I got in through the front door (he must do this whoring thing a lot), and the guys snuck inside in the meanwhile. I was told to go wait in the library by Larkis's butler because Larkis was out somewhere, and would be another hour before getting home.

While sitting in the library, bored, I divined 3 hiding places in the mansion: one in the library, one in the kitchen, and one in an upstairs bedroom. The library one turned out to be some family jewels. Boo. The one in the kitchen was some dubious property deeds which, while interesting, was not what we were specifically looking for. So it was the hiding place upstairs that ended up being the one we needed.

It turned out to be some book-thing with a fireball-ish spell cast on it that if anyone but Larkis opened it, it would go off. Grey dispelled that I am told and they looked it over, saw it was what was needed, and then Boyce did his “generate sympathy” thing on it so that we could find it later when we returned in an official capacity. We did find out from it where the girls were being transported to, though: Kalin's Pass in the Samprin Hills.

And then, we left.

The next day, we planned to come by and acquire the evidence as the deputized constables, grab Larkis himself, and would attempt to get the information we needed out of him in order to find out who this “John Doe” employer guy was, the person who was so interested in red-headed rich girls.