No 1 Hobbits Detective Agency: River Watch

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Summary

GM Terry
Session: Autumn 821
Location Brastor
Level Yes

Party:

• Billy Rubin
• Jaycey
• Pierre the Halfling
• Marco

Employer:
Olo, head of the No. 1 Hobbits' Detective Agency

Mission:

Summary

Task 1

Look into the thieves that are operating at Brastor landing. There have been thefts from rich merchants. Pick pockets that have evaded the watch. Identify who they are. The watch has caught someone but by the time they were caught they had nothing incriminating on them, how they were able to move the evidence so fast is a mystery. They may be a gang from Sanctuary related to the shrivers.

Task 2

Shows map of Brastor. The goblins near Bezonville have started attacking travellers and demanding food. What is driving the goblins to attack the travellers around Bezonville The goblins aren’t killing anyone yet. We are asked not to start killing goblins. They are demanding food first and then taking valuables, why?

The HDA can supply the following magical traps:

• Lightning Bolt and Black fire rods

• Enhanced grenados

Guild stuff

• Billy becomes Scribe

• Marco becomes Party Leader

• The party receive Greaters from Aaron.

• Jaycey loans Billy an Amulet of Luck and the HDA loans Billy a set of Amulets

Watches in the Inn

• Marco and Pierre first watch

• Billy and Jaycey second watch

Marco provides the following:

• Strength of Stone 18 pts Endurance

• Armour of Earth Rk 14 +30 Def +1 Armour

• Marco provides lesser enchantments

Week 1 Summary

We staked out the docks, spotted the gang of thieves, tailed them to their lair then handed the details over to local law enforcement.

Week 2

Fixing Goblin Lunch

• Phillip - the goblin leader.
  
• Wrong and Craxis - Phillip's body guards
  

• Jaycey makes us heroes
  
• Marco makes Pierre able to track
• Marco gives the thieves +19% chance of trap detection
  
• Marco puts Blending on the party
  

• Billy has the Dragon box and two Large Methane Grenados #1
  
• Pierre has a Large Methane #2 and Large Grenado #3
  
• Marco has a Large Methane #2 and Large Grenado #3
  
• Vigor has Large Methane #1 and Large Methane #2
  

Details

Night One - The Cream Bun Entree

Most of the party have had dealings with the HDA and we have been invited to a meeting at the Red Wolf Inn by Junior Detective Vigor Silentfoot.

In a private room at the RWI Olo Knotwise arrives to brief us. He informs us that the HDA is still at Pumpkin alert level because of the shriver incident in the last few months. There are a couple of issues that he wants us to investigate. These appear to be random issues but they could be related to the shrivers from Sanctuary.

Task 1 Look into the thieves that are operating at Brastor landing. There have been thefts from rich merchants. Pick pockets that have evaded the watch. Identify who they are. The watch has caught someone but by the time they were caught they had nothing incriminating on them, how they were able to move the evidence so fast is a mystery. They may be a gang from Sanctuary related to the shrivers.

Task 2 Shows map of Brastor. The goblins near Bezonville have started attacking travellers and demanding food. What is driving the goblins to attack the travellers around Bezonville The goblins aren’t killing anyone yet. We are asked not to start killing goblins. They are demanding food first and then taking valuables, why?

The HDA can supply the following magical traps:

• Lightning Bolt and Black fire rods
• Enhanced grenados

Guild stuff

• Billy becomes Scribe because he is too slow and couldn’t dodge it.
• Marco becomes Party Leader because he is the tallest and is the easiest to make look regal and commanding by the party Illusionists.

We head back to Seagate to get greaters from Aaron. Jaycey loans Billy an Amulet of Luck and the HDA loans Billy a set of Amulets

Vigor wants to look like a human so we make him a real man (eleven year old human). We fill him with beer. The night is still young and the beer and cream buns are flowing. Vigor gets drunk really quick and has a nap in the corner while we plot and scheme.

Jaycey volunteers as bait because she is a spy and thief and as a courtesan can walk right.

We set watches in the Inn

• Marco and Pierre first watch
• Billy and Jaycey second watch
• Vigor dodges watch duty

Marco provides:

• Strength of Stone overnight 18 pts Endurance
• Armour of Earth Rk 14 +30 Def +1 Armour
• Marco provides lesser enchantments

After breakfast we disguise ourselves as a band of dwarves with Marco as the token human. Party language becomes dwarven.

We head off around 9:30 and we walk from Brastor town to Brastor landing. We are there by 10:00 and wander around the docks for an hour. The thieves are looking for marks and ways to escape in case we are rumbled. It's a busy dock and market and nothing appears out of order. Most people appear sensible and those with money are surrounded by flunkies or thugs.

Back to the HDA and HDA junior detective Vigor under the illusion of a dwarf completely fails to introduce us. We trigger all the shapeshifter wards in the room and have to face down the axe wielding portal guardian before he remembers the password.

We portal back to the guild and are met by Theo Steelspine. We are crippled with no fatigue till after a quick snack. We buy greaters and healing potions. Then buy cream buns and iron bread in Seagate. Theo Steelspine greets us at the guild and we portal back to Brastor. Crippled from the lost fatigue for the second time today we start plotting and scheming over the cream buns, beer and iron loaf required to recover the fatigue.

Plot idea of the moment is Jaycey dresses up to look ostentatiously rich with Marco in tiger form on a silver chain. Hopefully they look stupidly wealthy and act as bait to the pick pockets. The tiger may be too much of a deterrent to a pick-pocket so the illusionists are treating it as a work in progress.

Night Two - The Amuse-boche

We go from Tiger, to Panda, to Elk, to horse in the planning...

We visit Captain Hammerson at the Brastor guard he will provide the shipping schedules from the harbour master to the HDA to bring to the RWI.

Watching the wharf we see The Grace to Glory being unloaded. The load is being protected by a big 6.3’ mace wielding thug.

The Zartan is unloading people. They appear to be middle class with normal possessions.

• Cream bun eating hobbits try to disguise as dwarves while they stake out the eastern docks.
  
• Billy is in the alley in the middle so he doesn’t have to run far.
  
• Pierre is circling in overwatch in hawk form.
  
• Marco stakes out the western docks.
  

A large transaction appears to take place between the captain of the The Grace to Glory and a merchant, a youth breaks cover and starts running. Billy turns into a swan and tracks him. Pierre as a hawk tracks the swan, Jaycey as a hobbit high on sugar disguised as a dwarf follows them both...

The youth bolts to the back door of the Rolling Wagon Inn. Turns out the kid was late for work, no chefs were harmed in this investigation. A quick dead goblin later (that’s Brastor for lager) and Billy is back to the dock. The stake out continues. We have been supremely distracted. As the day passes we watch a few vagrant thieves with appalling technique and nothing more significant.

Back at the Red Wolf Inn there is a satchel from Captain Hammerson addressed to Marco. The vessels due are:

• The Flaming Dawn large cargo vessel from Seagate due in three days.

• The Swift Sparrow from West carrying upper class passengers due in a week.

• The Bold Whale, a cargo vessel from Seagate due in two weeks.

There's a problem at the inn, we can’t remember who we were disguised as when we checked in last time. Pro tip we will check in as the same dwarves tomorrow as yesterday. It's a bit tricky for the hobbits to keep up.

Pierre confirms that he can turn water into beer, even after six beers. Vigor the slacker gets into a drinking game with a dwarf. Wins with assistance of the party illusionist then falls asleep in the corner and doesn’t sit watch again that night.

We stake out the wharf for a few more days, checking out the alleys and hidey holes around the docks and pace ourselves at the Red Wolf Inn for the next few nights.

On Frysday we spy moves afoot on the dock...

Night Three - First Main Course

Pierre spots some clean, well dressed sailors who have obviously never been out in the weather. They are dressed like sailors, acting like sailors and clearly aren’t sailors. They are lurking with intent. One is playing with a rope and we discuss where their deep pockets may be lurking. We will call them Rope and Sailorboy.

The boat is about 30 minutes from the pier and Pierre takes flight to observe from above. In the meantime Billy has noticed that the wharf is made of exquisitely well crafted, quality mountain stone...

The Flaming Dawn docks and starts unloading the cargo. An elf in expensive silks arrives at the dock and talks to the captain while things are being unloaded. He is only carrying a small dagger. While they are in conversion the ever vigilant Jaycey notices sign language between Rope and Sailorboy however we have no idea what was said

Time passes as the vessel unloads and Sailorboy leaves the dock and goes to an inn a few minutes away, 10 minutes later he's back. The load is being taken off the ship and put on wagons and the wagons are leaving the dock as they are loaded. Its a fairly routine day on the docks so far. There is a solitary dwarven guard on the vessel with a big axe and bad attitude.

Rope has seen something down the dock and sends a message Sailorboy once again we can’t read it and we can't figure out what he noticed.

Rope casually moves over to a wagon and brings out his purse. He fumbles it and drops coins on the street around the wagons. The urchins in the area swoop on the coins like a flock of starving seagulls.

At the same time a dwarf bumped into the elf chatting with the captain. The two start shouting at each other blaming the other for their inherent clumsiness and the altercation gets extremely heated before the dwarf stalk's off Jaycey started following him then spyed another human who brushed past the elf during the altercation. As this human walks off Jaycee notices him passing something to another elf.

The suspects are:

• Sailors - Rope and Sailorboy
  
• Male Human
  
• Male Dwarf
  
• Female Elf
  

Billy follows the Dwarf
Marco Follows the Human
Jaycee follows the Elf and Pierre follows Jaycee

The dwarf goes into the Broken Wagon. Billy and the dwarf have a few beers. Share some ancestry and have a good time then the dwarf tries and fails to pick Billy's pocket and scuttles off quickly. Billy follows at a discreet distance.

Marco takes off after the human. His stealth isn’t useful on a busy market but he keeps the target in sight. His target does a lot of walking random streets as through he suspects he's being tailed. The target goes into bakery and Marco hides. Then Marco goes Unseen and continues to follow the target through the streets of Brastor Landing. Unfortunately Joe Public didn't see Marco and walked into him by accident, the target didn’t appear to notice and after a while he goes into Phenos carpenters shop.

Jaycey the master spy and thief tracks the female elf. But the elf knows she is being tailed and is being very evasive. Jaycey pops into an alley as a female dwarf and comes out as a stout male halfling, surprising the drunk dwarf in the alley. Jaycey enters the Burnt Pegasus Inn just as the elf is talking to the tavern keeper then leaving through the back door.

In the mean time Pierre has completely failed to find an empty alley to land and change back to dwarf in. However he is in the alley that the elven lady comes out on and is able to pick up the chase.

Jaycey goes out the front door and tries to find an alley to the road behind the Burnt Pegasus. She pays some urchins a few silver and they give her some bogus directions then scarper.

Both Pierre and Marco meet up a few doors down from the Phenos Carpentry shop. Pierre studies it and can’t see anything unusual. They make cabinets, beds, frames etc. Nothing suspicious about it. A good secure building that is weather tight with good storm shutters.

Marco goes into the Smashed Pumpkin to watch the carpenters store from the balcony with a glass of cider and a meat platter. Billy sees Marco on the balcony and goes to meet him. Pierre arrives and is fed meat from the platter while Marco goes to find Jaycey. That afternoon the party settles into the Smashed Pumpkin to stake out the Phenos Carpenters. There are a few comings and goings, Pierre follows the three humans from the Carpenters to the Kings Ears, but they were only having dinner and returned afterwards.

Marco reports to Captain Hammerstein that there was a theft this morning and we have tracked the culprits to the Phenos Carpenters. Captain brings out a scroll and asks for details. We are asked to go back to the guardhouse tomorrow to provide pictures of the culprits. The illusionists have a lot of fun making facsimiles of the perps which makes it very easy for the town guard to identify them.

Turns out the carpentry shop is a known front and that night the Brastor Guard kick in the front door to Phenos carpentry and round up the thieves.

We go on a pub crawl Reapsday night of all the pubs that we have found in Brastor. Vigors breath is only mildly flammable half way through the night. Once again Vigor has evades sitting watch due to early intoxication.

On Sunday we laugh and sing and dance and get to Bezonville really fast. Vigor arranges rooms at the tavern and we get both of them. They have a lot of fish and wheat beer in Bezoonville and not too much else.

We book a town meeting at the inn on Duesday. We pay two gold to finance the party, and suspect we just doubled the local economy.

Then we go and have a picnic on the river bank...


Night Four - The Palate Cleanser

While we were enjoying our picnic by the river dressed as pilgrims, nine goblins surrounded us and negotiated hard for our lunch. At one point the goblins started asking religious questions which got awkward because we aren’t a very religious group. Our plan to act like bait worked, with crossbows trained on us we had the goblins right where we needed them. Turns out they are hungry because a troll has taken over their village and turned 12 goblins to the dark side. Driving the law abiding goblins into the wilderness. This troll also has a pixie in a cage around his neck that casts unknown magic.

We left the remains of our lunch and agreed to pay the bounty of a barrel of wine for the right to send out some hardened adventurers tomorrow. The goblins geas Billy to ensure this happens.

We head back to the Golden Ox. Once again we have gone into the pub in the wrong costume and sit down as pilgrims to lunch. Over lunch Pierre heavily tipped the waitress for second lunch and the beers and the food kept on coming. This caused a problem. Pilgrim Pierre opened the tab and we have to get the “Pilgrims” to leave and be replaced by the "Party" before the town meeting without losing the balance of the tab. Billy and Marco both notice that their armor is more form fitting than it used to be.

The plan is trolls don't like fire so Vigor, AKA bait, is summoned from Brastor Landing with Enhanced Genado’s.

The inn has been cooking all day, as has the bakery and there has been a cow on the spit in preparation for the town meeting. That night there is a huge street party and Pierre is in his element and is happily carousing with the locals, Marco has people for that and gets into an indepth conversation about the gestation cycles of cows with several farmers.

The gossip is for the last nine months the goblins have been raiding. They used to live in the hills and leave people alone. Wagons in the pass were mostly unmolested and only a bit of petty thievery. Nine months ago it changed and there has been more killing of livestock and holding up small groups of travelers. Any time groups have fought back the goblins have retreated. There are a variety of opinions. Farmers who have lost livestock want them gone, the others want them to just run away back into the hills. No one really wants to go fighting goblins.

There are always rumors' of monsters in the woods but nothing too serious. There are rumours of undead, possibly a hangover from the dark circle and there is also a bird horse in the hills that hasn’t been seen for several years. It has a ghost rider and is seen as a good omen because it was a good harvest the year that it was seen. There are shrines to the bird horse in the town. On the whole the hunters and farmers don’t go into the forest because there are bad things there but Bezonville is a pretty safe town.

Late in the evening Vigor arrives. Pierre arranges some “strong” drinks for Vigor so he can catch up. Pierre talks about the magic trolls at the party and Vigor talks about the enhanced grenados he’s bought.

A farmer has a holy stone with holy writings on it that fell from the sky. Pierre the master merchant negotiated the purchase of the stone for 12 gold. When he saw it he realised that it was a prayer to Michael and negotiates back down to a few silver for the viewing and lets the farmer keep the stone. Billy the mighty merchant takes up the negotiation and buys the holy stone of writings for 10 gold getting a better price than Pierre would have. It's a bargain. Vigor wakes up with it wrapped around his neck.

Vigor moves on to whisky and has a little nap under the table. He skips out of watch again tonight.

Next morning we buy a cask of wine for the goblins, instead of having Pierre the illusionist create a special one, and divvy up the grenados. Comment from Jaycey while we are divvying up the grenados “It is good to only have one suicidal hobbit”. Marco and Billy are trying to figure out who she’s referring too.

• Billy has the Dragon box and two Large Methane Grenados #1
  
• Pierre has a Large Methane #2 and Large Grenado #3
  
• Marco has a Large Methane #2 and Large Grenado #3
  
• Vigor has Large Methane #1 and Large Methane #2
  

Jaycey says she can’t throw a grenado to save her life. Interesting choice of words.

We present the bounty for the troll to the goblin Philip who comes out to negotiate. He is accompanied by Wrong and Craxis his bodyguards and we get more information. The troll has been taking villagers into the cave and most of them don’t come out again. The ones that do come out as followers have white eyes. The troll and the goblin minions are hunting the goblins. The white eyes are scary to fight and keep fighting even when they have their arms cut off. The troll goes hunting and menacing every one.

The goblin Phillip draws a map in the dirt with a stick and the party make preparations.

• Jaycey makes us heroes
  
• Marco makes Pierre able to track and gives the thieves +19% chance of trap detection
  
• Marco puts Blending on the party
  

We traipsed through the woods into the hills toward the goblin camp. With the palisade around the goblin village in sight Billy went into overwatch with the crossbow while the rest of the party started to sneak forward.

As they approach Pierre notices ...

People and Places

People

Junior Detective Vigor Silentfoot
Olo Knotwise - Head of the No. 1 Hobbits' Detective Agency
Captain Hammerson - Head of the Brastor Guard

Places

Brastor Landing

• Red Wolf Inn - an inn in Brastor Town where the party are staying. It's a few miles north of Brastor Landing
  
• Rolling Wagon Inn - an inn at Brastor Landing a quick sprint from the docks.
  
• Broken Wagon Inn - an inn at Brastor Landing Billy and the dwarf have a few beers. Share some ancestry and have a good time.
  
• Burnt Pegasus Inn - a nice middle class merchants inn. The owner is very friendly with the elven thief.
  
• Smashed Pumpkin Inn - a great place to watch the carpenters store from the balcony with a glass of cider and a meat platter.
  
• Phenos Carpenters - The carpentry shop that was the base of operations for the thieves.
  

Bezonville

• The Golden Ox - The Bezonville inn and the main shop in Bezonville.
  

Calendar

Summer 821wk: Meadow
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	Beltane Full Moon		1		2		3		4		5		6
	7		8		9		10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18		19		20
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28	Full Moon	29		30		1		2		3		4
Summer 821wk: Heat
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	5		6		7		8		9		10		11
	12		13		14	Midsummer Eve (Faerie Day)	15	Solstice	16		17		18
	19		20		21		22		23		24		25
	26	Full Moon	27		28		29		30		1		2
Summer 821wk: Breeze
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	3	Day of Death	4		5		6		7		8		9
	10		11		12		13		14		15		16
	17		18		19		20		21		22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30