Having received the message from Artus to meet him at the forum by the docks to exchange even more gold for information on the location of the wands the party proceeds to take a vote to kill Artus fast, kill Artus slowly, or to call upon the power of their cleric's good deity to kill Artus fast then slowly. At no point does the party review the note for the indication to come alone, because of course this is an ambush and also kill Artus. They venture down toward the forum and realize that this is not the best part of town to be walking around after a guy gets stabbed in front of them. Elenor loots the body. Loskid tries to heal the guy and inform him he had been robbed while the party is standing right there with his stuff. The crisis is adverted as Loskid decides to heal just enough to stabilize and defer befriending the random street thug until later.
Entering the forum with no attempt to be remotely stealthy, the party does not see Artus. The meeting time passes. Elenor and Lelenia start sneaking around to check out the random people in the forum. Hilde is on edge and starts shining a lantern at the rafters, finding bats. Loskid decides to check things out by detecting magic. Working on the assumption that the main threat in the room will be the people who show up as the most magical and are acting the most suspicious he finds the party. A couple times. Random dwarf practicing a speech might have a potion or something. Loskid stops detecting magic. Meanwhile Elenor finds a woman waiting in the forum with harlequin style makeup. She pickpockets the random woman who is totally not part of the thieves guild. Loskid decides to heal to consciousness the stabbed thief from earlier, but defers from alerting him the party took his stuff. The thief runs off into the night. Concluding that maybe Artus is waiting for someone from the party to be there alone, Elenor volunteers to wait. The thief she pick-pocketed from earlier turns invisible and steals from her. Elenor is unhappy from this turn of events.
The party heads back to the inn where Artus works and found he skipped town. Searching his room does not turn any leads. The party realizes that waking his neighbors at 2 in the morning to ask where he went may not be the most effective way to find him. They call it a night.
The next day the party sets off gathering information and whatnot. Hilde is unsuccessful at finding anything on Triel. In the middle of this, Melgarin is approached by a street urchin courier with a note from Artus indicating the price of his information is now 700 gold and to come alone. Based on the previous nights experience coming alone seems like the only option. Melgarin indicates he has no intention to pay Artus more than 300. Hilde invites herself as backup, being quite insistent there is a street noodle stand nearby in the warehouses within reasonable range to come to Melgarin's aid. The rest of the party decides to risk food poisoning as well and join Hilde at the noodle stand. Arriving at the meeting place at the forum, Melgarin is approached by Artus. Artus, upon being told he could have 300 gold and must accompany the party, informs Melgarin the new price is 1100 gold and starts to walk away. Melgarin pulls his sword and shouts “To Arms Huzzah!”. Artus takes off running. Alerted by the to arms cry, the rest of the party starts running toward the meeting spot. D&D cardio ensues as Artus quickly outruns Melgarin but is caught up to by an expeditiously retreating Hilde. Hilde blinds Artus, greases him, and after some flailing lands a punch. Artus gives up and offers the 500 gold price for information. Hilde takes a moment to think it over and decides this could only go more sideways if she tries to beat the info out of Artus and goes ahead and pays him. Artus provides Triel's location and informs Hilde that Triel is now part of a cult. He then wanders into the night.
Armed with a crudely drawn map, showing Triel is in ruins somewhere in the forests to the north of the city the party prepares for a weeks long expedition into the wilderness, prepared to chart a part to these undiscovered ruins. Lelenia takes a look and realizes that the ruins are roughly 5 minutes away hidden under a bush. The party heads to the ruins and heads down a lava tunnel to a cavern lake with a slightly melted looking ruin in the middle. The water is a drop and a less than ideal color for swimming but thankfully the current inhabitants set up a gondola lift system. Entering one of the connecting stations for the gondola, they are surprised by a random guy. He does not believe the party when they say Triel sent them. The party doesn't attempt to keep maintaining the bluff and asks the guy to show them how the gondola lift works. He then locks the gondola controls and throws away the key to it instead. A fight ensues that he quickly loses. Entering the next room, his partner is easier to convince to cooperative.
The party transports themselves to the ruin beachhead. Fully assembled they head to the connecting gondola building to secure it and immediately triggering a trap collapsing a wall. As the sounds of falling masonry surely couldn't have alerted any guards, they proceed to a enter into one of the towers into the ruins. After entering the first room, a kill box is formed as arrows rain down from above, and spikes shoot up from the ground. This ends up splitting up the party with Lelenia and Hilde going back out the door and the rest pushing forward to the next room. Lelenia and Hilde go back to a door that was passed by the party earlier in order to try to meet up with the rest of the party. They both learn very quickly that rooms with a false floor are very annoying. After a short mini battle, Lelenia uses her rope to help get Hilde out of the pit. The rest of the party find themselves in a bigger battle try to meet up with Lelenia and Hilde. After quickly dispatching some of the foes and catching up with the missing members of the party, a few decide to find out more about this false bottom floor everyone is raving about. Hilde has had enough of the pit after being knocked into it a second time and decides to summon a giant centipede. The centipede is so big that half of the centipede is in the pit, while the top half is above the false bottom floor. The centipede is understandably confused and starts lashing out at the remaining “bad guys” in the room. Hilde and Melgarin that were in the pit grab some centipede butt and climb out. Loskid arrives to help but also falls victim to the false bottom floor. He grabs some centipede butt as well. With everyone out of the pit, Hilde and Loskid end up back outside of the room facing 3 arrow men that came out of the earlier kill box while Elanor, Lelenia and Melgarin regroup and move forward. Lelenia stumbles upon Triel in what can only be described as an Oh Shit moment. Lelenia draws Triel into a bigger room where her flanking buddy is awaiting to take her down. By now, Hilde and Loskid join the fight after dispatching 2 of the 3 arrow men as Lelenia, Melgarin and Elanor take Triel down. They loot Triel's body only to find 3 of the 8 wands they are looking for.
Shackled City Home
Last time: Session 20
Next time: Session 22