Perplexed by their meeting with Lord Duskfallow, the party discussed their next move in the comfortable private dining room after the vampire departed. To their surprise, a familiar face emerged through the door. Who but Zain should reappear, a ghost returned to the material.

Zain disclosed that two agents had come to him with an interesting proposal, and told him to meet at the very room the party was now in. It seemed, perhaps, that Duskfallow had orchestrated the rejoining of Zain to the group.

Still unsure if they should accept Zain back into the group, the party decided to go to Tergid’s estate to scout out the vault and see what they might learn about the majordomo, Coover. Zain tagged along, technically not invited.

Inside the estate, Coover set them up with rooms for the evening, and after some mild bribery (12% of the recovered loot from the vault, which would set him up with a nice nest egg with which he could propose to Grisha Smelty) agreed to show them the vault and do his best to help them rob it.

Coover showed them a secret door in the courtyard which led down a staircase. At the bottom, guards protected the vault. Coover offered to distract those guards long enough for them to get into the vault, but distracting the guards on the way out would be up to them, as well as figuring out an escape from the estate before being descended upon by dozens of guards. They were also on their own figuring out how to open the vault, as Coover had never seen it opened.

With the obstacles laid out before them, Zain decided it was high time to tell the party that he had a possible avenue to get some assistance in their heist. During his time away from the party, he had already familiarized himself with Daros, and to a lesser extent, the remaining criminal element of Daros.

From a friend, he learned that part of Duskfallow’s success in ridding the city of crime he owed to the organization of crime into a more undetectable configuration. Duskfallow had invited the Purple Handle to the city, the continent’s preeminent criminal organization. The master thieves robbed the rich, leaving no trace of their activities, and trying their best for their victims never to notice their missing wealth. Duskfallow allowed the Purple Handle to operate in Daros, robbing nobles on the sly and paying a tax to the mayor.

Zain organized a meeting between an emissary of the Purple Handle and the party. But with some time to kill before the meeting, Beorn and Tenli got to work scouting out the vault.

Tenli, perceptive as ever, noticed a sewer grate in the courtyard outside the vault. She lifted the grate and found, surprisingly, a sewer. Utilizing her feminine wiles, Tenli convinced Zain to earn his place back in the group by delving into the muck of the sewer to see where it led. Zain attempted to climb the walls and avoid wading through shit, only to have a poop fall directly on his head and knock him off the wall. At the end of the tunnel, he found a barred outlet into a small pond somewhere in the city, outside the estate. He managed to form a hole through the bars just large enough to allow the biggest of their party, Sven, to pass through.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Meanwhile, Beorn shapeshifted into one of his favorite forms, a mouse. He skittled down the stairs to the vault to inspect what awaited them. He found four guards sitting around a table in front of a vast vault door. In the center of the vault door, a fork-shaped keyhole. Without much more to see, Beorn started back up the stairs. But before exiting, noticed a mousehole in the wall.

Beorn peeked his head in to find a lady mouse. While some might assume the natural chemistry might lead to some questionable acts, Beorn did not find the mouse attractive, seeing as he was a man transformed into a mouse, and therefore not attracted to mice. Despite the lack of sex, Beorn did get some great information out of the eyelash-batting lady mouse. He learned that the key to the vault was a fork held by the fat man - assumedly, Tergid Vexman, and that Tergid visited the vault regularly, taking out paintings and the like.

The party reconvened with their new information, and went out to meet the Purple Handle. After a lot of talk and not much new information, Sven grew tired of the negotiations and drew his warhammer to attempt bashing the Purple Handle heads. Zain felt his imprudent, and stopped the warhammer from finding its mark. Still, the Purple Handle agents fled into the night.

The party therefore went back to their quarters, got some sleep, and awaited the morning to enact their plan.

With Tergid’s first meal of the day, the party sent Beorn up the dumbwaiter as a monkey. They had poisoned the breakfast meal, so by the time Beorn entered the room in the high tower, Vexman and his taste-tester were fast asleep. Beorn took a little monkey knife and monkey stabbed their necks until both were unequivocally dead. He then took Tergid’s fork and a pile of documents written in some strange language, and slid down the rope to rejoin the party.

They then made haste to the vault. As promised, Coover had distracted the guards at the bottom of the stairs.

Beorn fit the fork to the keyhole, and a swirl of iron spaghetti came undone around the vault door, which swung open and blasted them with cool, musty air. Inside, they found a dark labyrinth. Using her every ounce of her meager wisdom, Tenli came up with a great idea. They marked the right side of the walls enclosing them with Vexman’s blood (which still coated Beorn) so as not to lose their way.

Deeper into the labyrinth they delved. They found shambling corpses of Vexman ancestors, which they dispatched with ease. They defeated a fierce gargoyle, which ejected a diamond which Sven pocketed with the blessing of the party. And now, we delve deeper into the darkness.