The fireball outside the Goblin’s Mug drew a crowd, among them a certain gnome from the private investigative service two doors down. Pubert Pubert, tailored suit-wearing, chain-smoking, partial-limping, cane-wielding, crossbow-shooting, bowler-hatted gnome inquisitive. Me, until, you know, I die again.
I was drawn to investigate the fireball and the handful of bodies it had produced, which is how I met the rest of the party. The only bodies of note were a Zhentarim goon and a gnome. The gnome had been carrying something which had been pilfered by another individual, whom Parvus tried to track down at the time and Airina and I looked for later, both to no avail. The other notable individual involved was a strange, puppet-like person that had been seen on the roofs, the originator of the fireball according to witnesses. They, too, were nowhere to be found.
After the city watch showed up, tromped all over my crime scene, interrogated all my witnesses, and stole all my evidence, I was properly introduced to the others and explained that I intended to continue investigating, to which only Airina was not hesitant to assist me (which is when we searched for the missing pilferer). Shortly after I returned to my shop for the evening, Renaer showed up at the Goblin’s Mug and explained that the dead gnome was his father’s agent, who had been planning on contacting the party to help him transport an important item (presumably the item that was stolen from him). Renaer asked the party to look into it, starting with finding the puppet-man while he tried to find the pilferer, and insisted that they have me accompany them.
When Renaer showed up at my door to explain the same information, I greeted him as an old friend, since we’ve known each other a while. We bantered, but of course I accepted his request to help the party, even though they were so reluctant about investigating.
The following morning, I accompanied the party to the temple of Gond, a craftsman god, where I was aware of puppet-like people existing. We spotted one on the roof (called Nim, as we found out), and after we interrogated them with the help of a priest, learned that Nim was not allowed to leave the temple, but in their loneliness, they had built a new puppet-construct-person. This one had proven less than stable, and was probably our fireballer. Nim provided us with a device that would detect a construct like them within 500 feet, and we returned to the scene of the fireball to see if we could pick up a trail.
Luckily, we did, and followed the signal to the house of some nobles. I tried to talk my way inside, but couldn’t quite manage it, so we decided to stake out the house to see if the construct would come back out. However, after a couple of days, Renaer showed up and explained that the pilferer was last seen inside the house as well, so it was imperative that we get inside. He told us that he could have the carriage doors around the back unlocked for us, to go in at night, so we agreed, our plan to sneak in later the same evening.
We reached the carriage doors in the wee hours of the morning and found them unlocked, as expected. We entered, but as we crept through the barn, my ridiculously high passive perception (seriously, 25) picked up the sounds of fighting coming from the main house. Taking the lead, I sneaked out across the grounds to try to get to the closest door.
Not very well, unfortunately – I am a clever, intuitive, perceptive rogue, not a sneaky rogue. I was about halfway between buildings when I simultaneously spotted and was spotted by a trio of Shadows, literally evil shadow creatures. At that moment, we rolled perfect, and, quite frankly, perfectly insane initiative rolls (for real, I got a natural 20, the other three all got natural 1’s).
I acted first, shooting one with my crossbow (with another natural 20, no less – I’m worried about how kind the dice were to me in this session overall, to be honest) before ducking around behind the wall. The three Shadows then came at me, but could only get to me, without being able to attack on the same turn. Then Mercenary, Parvus and Airina come charging out of the stable and made short work of them (two paladins and a cleric versus undead, what do you expect?). Because of those insane initiative rolls, the Shadows didn’t even put a scratch on us.
We entered the main house via the kitchens, where we found the dead bodies of several servants. In the dining room, we found the aftermath of a melee, with the bodies of house guardsmen and Zhentarim goons about the place, as well as a pair of Zhentarim goons standing over them. We attacked, and took them out relatively quickly. We could still hear the sounds of fighting coming from upstairs, so as soon as we had finished the combat…
…we ended the session. For various reasons, a couple of us couldn’t play for much longer, so we figured it was a good place to finish. It’s killing me, because I want to know what we’ll find upstairs, but better this than if we had had to call it halfway through a combat.
Though shorter than usual, it was a great session, not least for me because playing Pubert is turning out to be a lot of fun. He’s a sharp little gnome, in more ways than one, and I’m super excited to be playing a rogue again, albeit of a different type. It took a long time for him to coalesce in my mind, however. I started thinking of new character options right after King’s death on Saturday, before the session was even over, but Pubert didn’t exist as he is now until about 6pm on Friday, when all the pieces suddenly fell into place. I might write a whole post about his creation, actually, because it was such a long process to find him.
Like I said, I’m very excited for our next session, to see what we’ll find upstairs. Touch wood, the luck I’ve had with my dice thus far will continue as well. But I guess we shall see what the future has in store.