After giving inquiring glances to the rest of the group and getting negative shakes of the head, she turns back to Jaliera and hands her both scrolls. "Here. It seems no one else is interested, and as I said, I have this Staff. Why don't you take them?"
A thought occurs to her as she hands the scrolls to Jaliera, and she turns back to Iarno. "Where is your spellbook, mage? It must be hidden somewhere. Give it up."
"Ah, humans. Grasping everything and thinking that of everyone else."
He glossed over the distinction of purebred stock and planetouched for the time being.
"Fortunately, I am not human. You can rest assured I will not pay the slightest heed to bribes, coercions, inducements or hush money. However, you know your chances. Is there a next of kin to whom you would bequeath the book should the worst happen?"
"Just contact the Lord's Alliance. I am here on a mission for them and they'll know what to do. They might even offer a reward for my rescue if I am returned alive."
[Just out of curiosity, Nep, you said of the desk, "There are various papers and notes stacked neatly there. After leafing through them, he comes upon one letter that is interesting."
Without needing to detail what's on the papers, I'm assuming they aren't the business accounts that Chandan's looking for?]
Chandan
With this room explored, it is time to push boldly onto the next. Chandan examines the door in the west wall, with an admittedly unpracticed eye. Then he shrugs and opens it.
"Well, giving us everything we ask for, regardless, would be in your best interest. And be assured, if you cooperate we will let you go. So, where is the spellbook?"
DM The notes that were found in Iarno's chambers were mostly written orders to apothecaries and alchemists in nearby settlements for materials for his workshop and notes back from them. You are easily able to deduce that he's been conducting magical experiments and no, there's little evidence that would implicate him in any wrong-doing except for the one note provided. So far there is little evidence to contradict him. You've killed every other person that might be a witness to testify against him.
Iarno
"More thievery. I suppose that I should resign myself to losing all of my worldly possessions to you. If you promise to hand me over to less brutal authorities, I will hand it over. Otherwise you would have to rip this place apart to find it and even then it is not a guarantee. I have another copy back in Neverwinter."
Mosk He is being guarded closely by Kriv and whispers to him, "Do not trust the wizard. He lies. I will take you to Cragmaw. He cannot. I also have more secrets. He has none."
ooc: sorry guys, I'm on vacation and haven't had much time to post.
He listened impassively to Mosk, and heard Iarno's dissembling. Looking directly at the wizard, he raised his voice to be heard by both, and gauging his reaction, spake,
"You raise some interesting points, Mosk. Iarno is certainly being uncooperative in his demeanour. Tell me: What exactly would the Black Spider do to him?"
Cold, reptilian eyes bored into Iarno as the words of the Bugbear echoed. He said nothing further at this point, just letting the wizard feel the weight of the fate which currently only the goodwill of the party kept from him.
Goodwill his attempts at bargaining were eroding by the moment...
Iarno glares hopelessly as Chandan pulls the iron handle to open the wooden door and sees what appears to be a wizard's workshop. A large worktable is set up with alembics, retorts, distillation coils and other alchemical devices, all of it stewing and bubbling away. Bookshelves are crowded with sheaves of parchment and strange-looking tomes.
His faces screws up as he takes in the room. A villain's secret laboratory. Chandan can only pray that this isn't where the captives ended their days.
"Free to carry out your experiments away from prying eyes." He says to Iarno, not waiting for an answer.
No, the wizard is for the Lord's Alliance to deal with. Sildar might understand his former friend's motives more, Chandan can't begin to guess at them.
Chandan stays close to Kallista. Firstly because she actually might know what she's doing, and second, if she does, then she might need someone to watch her back while she does whatever needs doing.
The old monk will be most interested in the papers. Any information on the Redbrands' operation.
DM Chandan and Kallista start searching the lab and what they find are notes and books are scattered all around this room. They are texts on alchemy. Someone trained in Arcana may give me a roll for more details.
Among the books is one that seems of interest, particularly because the group is searching for Gundren. It's written in Dwarvish. Chandan can read that languange and can tell right away that it's the journal of an adventurer named Urmon and it describes the history of the Lost Mine of Phandelver and something called the "Forge of Spells". See attachment
In addition, Urmon records that a magic mace named Lightbringer was commissioned by priests of Lathandar, the god of dawn, from the mages working with the gnomes and dwarves of the Phandelver's Pact. The mace was lost when the Wave Echo Cave and it's mine disappeared from history.
Most of the materials in this room have little or now value but there are three small bottles that contain unusual material that might fetch some gold from an apothecary or alchemist. I'll take another Arcana roll for those.
Iarno simply watches while the group search. At times he cautions you to be careful. He's not worried about you getting hurt. He's concerned about the state of his lab.
She wanders about the room, examining the bubbling beakers and the vials of ingredients she comes across. Looking at the books and tomes with interest she is focused on the magical aspect of their contents and leaves any mundane materials for Chandan to look over.
Kallista Arcana Rolls Zeim rolled d20+2,d20+2 and got 18, 20
Kallista readily determines that the wizard has been working on invisibility potions. There are traces of materials and components that she has heard are used in the crafting of such. It does not appear that Iarno has had much success as of yet.
The materials in the three glass bottles are a silvery liquid (mercury), a light and opaque liquid (dragon bile) and a dark powder (nightshade). She determines that each bottle could fetch 25 gp from an apothecary or alchemist.
There is no sign of Iarno's spell book in this room. If he hid it here, it's not to be found.
At least they have a more background on the Lost Mine of Phandelver, and Gundren's fate. But of the Redbrands' captives, their apparent slave ring, nothing.
They are the Disappeared.
Chandan is frustrated and sober. In fact, he's frustratingly sober. It's amazing to think that the wizard could dedicate so much time to bottles and brews and not distill a single decent thing to drink.
Either way, the old monk turns to Iarno and shakes his head disapprovingly.
"It is for Sildar to question you now." He says, before speaking to his companions.
"We have done what we can for the victims. We should return this villain to Sildar for questioning. A shame we can't wait for the answers.
"But we must use this bugbear while we can. Wave Echo Cave and Gundren, our next goal, yes?"
"Turning Iarno over to Sildar, yes", he replies to Chandan. "But Mosk only said he could lead us to Cragmaw, not Wave Echo. We'll need to find that ourselves. As for Gundren", she shrugs, "we can hope he is at Cragmaw as we've heard."
She turns to Kriv and nods at his comment, then looks at the worktable and finds a piece of parchment and a drawing stick. Quickly sketching the sections of the complex they've explored, she looks at Iarno then points at a large blank area in the lower right. "What is here?"
†Restricted forums can only be accessed by DreamLyrics members of the age of 18 years or older. Access which is granted by the Behind Closed Doors Procedure. ™DreamLyrics Play-by-Post. DreamLyrics Play-by-Post does not own copyright on DreamLyrics texts or graphics, except trademarked DreamLyrics logos and logotypes. The works contained in DreamLyrics are copyrighted (automatically, under the Berne Convention) by the original authors and may be available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. (See Copyrights for details.) Privacy Policy
