1 Soul Bound
1.1 Finding her Feet
1.1.5 An Inscrutable Mastermind
1.1.5.19 Market mayhem
She led them through to a very clean white tiled room which contained a body on a waist high slab, and benches and shelves full of tools and potions along the walls. It looked like a cross between a carpenter’s workshop and a morgue.
Ruffiana: “This is the body of Adelchis Beccadelli, head of the Beccadelli line that owns five trading ships running between Torello and ports North along the coast as far as the unclaimed lands. He won’t be appearing at the Sanctum. He was assassinated. He’s the third such victim in the last two months. All connected with shipping.”
Bulgaria: “How does an assassin prevent respawning?”
Ruffiana: “It can be done in a number of ways, from trapping the spirit in an object to persuading a rogue priest to neutralise Cov’s pendant. But in this case, the method used was to paralyse him then inject a fast acting disease directly into his internal organs. Dying of disease counts as a natural cause, the same as old age.”
Wellington: {Note: items that grant immunity to disease should sell very well at auction.}
Kafana: {Rest assured, if I ever manage to make some, they’ll be heading to Basso, not to line our own pockets.}
Wellington: {It was just a thought.}
Kafana: {It is something we hear all too frequently back in arlife. “If I don’t do it, somebody else will, so better I get the profit than they do.”}
Wellington: {That’s the free market for you. If you give the items away free in Basso, you can be sure that the next day some noble will visit and offer them a price that’s one tenth their true value, but more than an individual down there sees in a year. And the day after that, the items will be on sale in Mercato at 20% over their true value. Isn’t it better that we make that money? If we give half the money we make to causes in Basso that can’t be taken away from them, they’ll be better off than if we’d given them the items.}
Tomsk: {So let’s come up with a third option. Discuss it in The Burrow?}
Alderney: “Ruffiana, is there any evidence on who the assassin is?”
Ruffiana: “Trained assassins all belong to an organisation known as the Lily, a sort of guild. They can be captured but, if pressed hard to say anything about it, they tend to explode. Messily. We have a few messages from their leader that are signed "The White Lily", and nobody gets assassinated in Torello without their permission, so it's claimed. But beyond that, it's a dead end. The real question is who is paying for these assassinations.”
Bulgaria: “What do these shippers have in common besides being shippers? Who benefits the most from those three in particular being put out of action, rather than three of their peers?
Ruffiana: “Difficult to tell. Each death impacted the markets in commodities and company shares. To tell who profited, you’d need to know what trading positions people were holding at the time, and that isn’t public knowledge. Many deals, at least between traditionalists, are private transactions rather than done via bids in the open market. Then you’ve got the growing trend for trading in futures, so someone might have shorted the price on something. Or have done it to harm a rivals wealth or reputations. Or it might be something else entirely, like trying to drive investors away from share trading and towards investing in property redevelopment. Tarot cards are not very good at this sort of thing. Too many numbers.”
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Kafana: “Ruffiana, are you telling us everything? We might be willing to help, but I have a prejudice against being an unwitting cat’s paw.”
Ruffiana looked at Bulgaria, sourly. “Priestess of Cov? You had to bring her here, didn’t you? Nobody else dares be this blunt.”
Tomsk: “Don’t blame it on Cov. She’s always been like this.”
Kafana pouted and considered stomping on Tomsk’s foot but decided against it. He was wearing heavy armour, and would just think it was cute of her.
Ruffiana, turned serious. “It’s Gideon. I don’t know his exact scheme, but I know he is out to destroy Torello, and that this is part of it. Aid me in this, and you’ll be heading straight into a storm. Gideon does Bel’s will. He always has.”
The stone glowed so green, it bathed the room.
[Quest accepted. “Market Mayhem - discover who’s behind the market manipulations. Difficulty level E.]
Bulgaria: “While we’re here, there’s another body we should all look at.” He produced the half chewed body belonging to an adventurer “We found this in a nest of ghouls between the graveyard and the city.”
Ruffiana examined it closely.
Ruffiana: “A questing spirit, but she wasn’t killed just by the ghouls. She was stabbed from behind with some sort of long thin knife. Probably a stiletto, triangular blade, wielded in the left hand.” She waved a hand, casting some sort of magic. “Yes, the blade was poisoned. Paralysis, but not the same as the one used by the assassin. I think this was torture. She was paralysed and left to be slowly eaten alive by the ghouls, limb by limb. Have you checked the clothing yet?”
Bulgaria shook his head, and he and Tomsk undertook to strip the body. Tomsk found a belt pouch and spread the contents on a side bench. Next to it, Bulgaria placed a flute that had been snapped in two. Kafana felt tears come to her eyes at the sight of the flute; she checked the pendant:
“Her name is Igraine.”
She took the pieces, determined to return them to their rightful owner, if she possibly could.
Wellington picked up a piece of parchment and read it out aloud:
Nevermere,
This is your only warning. Stay clear of the quest to escort Pierrot, or you’ll be sorry.
The Immortals
Bungo: {Oh, hey, I recognise those names. Nevermere and The Immortals are both big guilds in Divine Mountain. Nevermere are ok. They’re all about getting deeply into character. They run a lot of roleplaying events. I once went to a feast they organised for a wedding between two of their characters. It was pretty awesome. The Immortals are another story. Nasty bunch of power gamers with no sense of humour. They do things like find quests with unique rewards, then send teams through it again and again to farm it. They prevent other players doing the quest, to jack up the price they get for selling the drop on auction. We don’t want to get involved in this.}
Alderney shook her head. {We might not get a choice. I’ve noticed that a lot of the NPCs in Torello that are key to our chain quest have names connected with the Commedia dell'Arte.}
Bungo: {What’s that?}
Bulgaria: {It was a form of entertainment that was popular in Europe about 400 years ago. It’s where we get ‘Punch and Judy’ shows from, and lots of other stuff.}
Tomsk nodded his head in agreement.
Alderney: {The point being, guess which name also appears on that list?}
{Pierrot.} said Bungo, wretchedly.