War for the Crown Gameplay Part 1

Rolling her eyes, Josie replies, "Look, if you'd like to waste time on your own spell that you put on Corey, be my guest. But if there's nothing else, let's move, yeah?"

The group moves upstairs. Two metal pipes ascend through the northwest and southwest corners of this room. A viewing window overlooks the warehouse floor to the west. An oak desk occupies the eastern side of the chamber, backed by an intimidating chair. An open door the south reveals an unused and empty storage closet, while the northern door exits to a flight of stairs. Inspection of the room shows two things: one, there's a lock on the desk. Two, there's a hidden door built into the northern pipe that leads downstairs.

They decide to check the pipe first. The fake pipe tunnel leads down into an excavated cavern, a door from which hangs ajar, but looks like it's meant to seal in tight to the wall and conceal its presence if closed. The door leads into a simple tiled hallway. ”There’s a trip wire by that door,” Adelaide comments, bringing it to attention before going to disengage it. ”Ah, I see. If triggered, it would have connected to that pane above and shot something rather nasty down. Don’t think I care to find out specifically what.”

Moving forwards, the group finds a common room full of rotten and half-eaten food sitting around everywhere, from which a soft weeping sound is heard from the western tunnel, which leads into a long table occupying the center of a dining room, surrounded by chairs. Maps of Taldor’s many prefectures cover the walls here. At the head of the table sits a little girl, no older than 6, with mousy brown hair, knees clutched up to her chest. She looks up when Adelaide approaches, eyes teary. "Have you seen my daddy?" she asks in a quivering, shaky voice. "He was working upstairs, but he said he'd come down and play with me in five minutes and he's not here."

”I’m not sure,” Adelaide answers with a sympathetic smile and a deliberately loud voice. ”Can you tell me more about your daddy?”

"He um... he's got some black hair right over his lip in a moose-tash, his eyes are like, really bright blue, his hair's darker than mine and usually kinda dirty. He's reaalllly tall too. Like, bigger than you lady!" the young girl describes, stretching her arm way above her head to describe him.

The party moves in at Adelaide's signal, just in time for Corey to hear the description. His entire body goes suddenly white, because the face the little girl describes has been engraved on the inside of his eyelids for the last several minutes: the man he killed. He stumbles suddenly, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, completely robbed of his ability to speak.

As Josie walks in, she notices something off about the girl's face. A small, secret smile the girl seems to be hiding. Just a little twitch at the corner of her lip, but it's enough to confirm Josie's suspicions about this whole situation. The archer's eyes narrow, and she quickly fires at arrow at the child as she calls out, "She's full of shit, I can see her smirk." As the arrow strikes its target, Josie's eyes widen and she shouts, "Oh fuck, it's some kind of freaky spider bitch!"

The little girl's glamour fades, revealing, as Josie put it, a freaky spider bitch. Before anyone can really react, it jumps on Adelaide, rending her flesh with its claws. Adelaide is able to defend herself while Momo heals her, and from there, despite the freaky spider bitch releasing a burst of glitter that temporarily blinds most of the party, Corey and Josie are able to take her down.

After checking out several empty bedrooms, the next tiny room contains three more of the assassins. These drop smokesticks, which are extremely annoying. After trying in vain to fight in the smoke, most of the group loops back around to the other entrance to this room,while Corey follows the enemies through the front. He's stabbed repeatedly, but stalls long enough for the rest to arrive, and they finally dispatch the bad guys.

The next room has a halfling and another assassin, and Corey and Josie take them out in approximately 2.3 seconds.

Following that fight, the group explores the nearby room and collects a number of valuable mechanical and alchemical items. Moving westward, they next find that the room here gives way to an open cavern beyond. Six sets of manacles, evenly spaced along the western cave wall, dangle down to the dirt floor. All but one set hang empty, while the final set secures the body of a beaten and bruised woman - Martella Lotheed. She appears conscious, but dazed and exhausted, and tiny little cuts are visible all over her body. In front of her stands a grinning Wyssilka, still in her jester's makeup and outfit, tossing a knife back and forth in her hand, catching the blade and the hilt with equal ease. Flanking her are a trio of her violet clad cultists.

The halfling eyes the group and cocks an eyebrow at Corey. "Oh, good to see you all! And this was just getting boring too, I'm almost ready to kill her, you know! I thought she might have some information to extract, and I'm sure she still does, but I've never seen someone so resistant to being tortured! Well, what could I expect, from Princess Eutropia's personal spymaster and all, of course she's more than meets the eye. Did you see that room of poisons she has? How devious!" Wyssilka giggles childishly and claps her hands, shifting from one foot to the other.

”Oh, is this a test of loyalty?” Adelaide asks, raising an eyebrow. ”I seem to recall finding much poison like that on your people, actually, but truthfully, working with poison doesn’t bother me in the abstract.”

"No, no," Wyssilka waves her hand dismissively. "I'm sure you all know how the game is played. Besides, I don't exactly have the moral high ground here, do I?" she laughs again, as though that thought doesn't bother her in the least.

Corey grimaces and braces his glaive. "Wyz, Ah ain't sure a much that's goin' on here, but Ah'm gonna give ya one chance, and one chance only. Let Lady Martella go an' have a talk with us willin'ly. We beat everyone ya put in front of us, we'll beat you too, ya know it." His stare becomes hard. "Ah thought you were a friend. Prove ta me it wasn't just a sham."

"Oh, you naive child, it absolutely was a sham," Wyssilka grins back. "You seem like a good kid, but you are tangled up in it all now and you're going to die because of it. All because one arrogant noblewoman," she kicks Martella for emphasis, earning a grunt of pain from her, "needed to use some unknown faces in her political game. I'm glad she did though! Now Thamir Gixx will reward me for killing a few would-be do-gooders before you even have a chance to prove yourselves."

As Wyssilka continues her monologue, Josie rolls her eyes and fires an arrow, tired of listening to people prattle on about absolutely nothing. It catches the halfling in the arm, and the archer smirks a bit. Annoyed, Wyssilka begins utilizing a myriad of magic, overlapping herself with an image as well as harassing Josie with a circular spectral dagger. The fight goes okay until one of the underlings decides to pull out another smokestick, and immediately makes everything more messy. Josie slowly steps away from the dagger and picks off anyone who steps out of the smoke while Sarina puts an unseen threat to sleep. Momo follows closely behind, clearing up quickly accumulating wounds. Adelaide and Corey manage the melee, with Adelaide doing the managing and Corey blindly swinging into the smoke. His strategy eventually pays off and Wyssilka slumps to the ground like a mostly unseen sack of potatoes. With only one more enemy to take care of, Adelaide swings and hits, but the thug stays on his feet, if only barely. Josie takes aim carefully and fires. She scores a direct hit, penetrating the beater's skull via his eye socket, killing him instantly. As the fight draws to a close, Josie turns away from the corpse, her face pale and knuckles white.

"Oh thank Aroden, wherever he is, that you all got the tail end of my last message," Martella sighs in relief, relaxing in her manacles. "Is Princess Eutropia okay? And Gloriana? What about all the children?" As soon as her own safety is assured, Martella immediately turns her questions to others.

"My aunt is fine at last check, we stayed at her residence," Adelaide answers, rummaging Wyz's fallen form and finding a key made of the same material as Martella's manacles. She goes to unlock. "The princess has been located, and that's where my aunt said she was going next. The children, I don't think there's been word."

Martella rubs her wrists and ankles as soon as she's free from those bindings, rotating her arms and legs. "Hrm," she frowns in concern at the thought. "Hopefully people like Lord Kastner and Baron Okerra saw to their safety. But knowing that we have Eutropia and Gloriana reassures me. With those two and you all we still should have enough to hold this gods damned country together."

”We can worry about that when you’re not held together with twine and bandages,” Momo responds, pulsing healing magic into the older woman. ”Feel any better?”

”Yes, thank you,” Martella smiles and nods, straightening up. ”Do you all have a safe place to go? As you can see my safehouse is... compromised.”

”My aunt’s residence,” Adelaide repeats, standing up from Wyz.

”Perfect. Just give me a minute, I’m going to have to craft some evidence to make sure these bastards never get out of prison. They were too smart to leave anything tying them to the Senate attack, let’s fix that,” Martella explains, heading into her office room.

Adelaide nods, seemingly lost in thought as she paces. A thought occurs to her needing more immediate attention, however. ”Does anyone think it would be worth trying to question Wyz?” she asks. ”Given her devotion, she’s likely to be a tougher case to crack than that fellow yesterday, but...”

"She's parta the same order as them halflings we fought back in the archives," Corey grunts. "Ah'm guessin' she ain't gonna be any better ta talk to than they was."

”I know, and the one we spoke to yesterday did tell us some things in the end,” Adelaide answers, sighing. ”Like that we’d be seeing Wyz at all. Remember?”

"Ah s'pose," Corey shrugs, looking down at Wyz's prone form. "Ah don't think it could hurt, at least.

With that agreement, the group ties Wyssilka up and rouses her. She doesn't say a word, just staring dead ahead, her face impassive.