20. A Song of Sixpence

Sing a Song of Sixpence, A bag full of Rye, Four and twenty Naughty Boys, Baked in a Pye.

Encounters

Treasure

Summary

While taking a few days of downtime to rest up and do some shopping, the party arranged for workers to install an office for the tavern as well as some much needed lavatories (although it remains to be seen who will empty them).

With the situation with the false maps (mostly) cleared up, the party decided to follow up on the lead with the butcher in the Field Ward. They perused the place posing as customers, keeping him occupied as Veldrin checked out the rest of the building. Unlocking the door to his storeroom, Veldrin discovered a pile of frozen corpses under a tarp on the floor. The rest of the building seemed to have been converted into a ramshackle apartment building.

Upstairs Veldrin found the old millstone and a group of rooms. Most were empty other than junk and debris from caved in ceilings and nesting pigeons, but one room had a shiny new lock installed. After picking the lock, Veldrin found a well kept bedroom with a king sized bed and armoire. The armoire had a few sets of clothes along with a heavy crossbow and bolts. Veldrin pocketed the bolts and continued searching the floor.

The floor in a neighboring room ended up being weak and collapsing, sending Veldrin back to the ground floor. The room he landed in ended up being a closet in one of the apartments. Outside he found a group of squatters surprised and somewhat frightened by Veldrin dropping in. He questioned them a bit about their involvement, but they didn’t seem to know anything about the butcher’s ill gotten wares. They said they’d do various chores for him in exchange for a free room - they seemed a likely source for the bodies in the freezer.

The party gathered up outside of the shop to discuss what Veldrin had found and decide what their next steps were. They decided that the butcher didn’t deserve any sympathy and went in to subdue him for questioning. He put up a fight, with his large cleaver and fire breath, but the party overwhelmed him and brought him to his knees.

When Veldrin planted a knife to his throat, he was finally willing to talk. He told the party that he’d already sent of his shipment of meat, along with the Stone to a shop in a Trades Ward alley called Cuttle’s Meat Pies. A Guild of Butcher’s agent named Justyn Rassk had delivered it for him. Veldrin ended the interrogation by sliding his knife into the butcher’s throat while Hamidal went outside to shake off the sight of the pile of bodies he’d seen through Gozrien’s eyes.

The party chased off all of the squatters, giving them each a gold dragon and telling them not to return. Footsteps stayed behind to shoot an arrow into the building with a note attached, written in blood, that said “MURDERER! CANNIBAL! MONSTER! BEWARE!”

Cuttle’s Meat Pies wasn’t hard to track down. Past the small entry chamber was a small meat shop with a portly middle-aged human woman working the till. When asked about Justyn Rassk she said that he would often deliver her meats, but not so much in the winter when it was more scarce. To her surprise, he’d shown up with a cart full of meat for her, which she could hardly refuse. She was doing brisk business in pies, with folks excited to have one her famous pies in the lean winter months. She didn’t think there was anything strange or off about Justyn himself, and seemed to have no knowledge of what she was putting into her pies. Trying not to think too hard about what was in the pie he held, Hamidal offered to buy all of the pies she’d made with the “meat” from Justyn. She was only too happy to be able to sell all of her wares and be able to close up early. Since they were so nice to her, she warned to take the east exit from the alley, as she thought ill of her neighbors to the west and didn’t want them trying to steal from the party or otherwise cause them any harm.

Taking that as a sign, the party decided to check out these neighbors, but as they moved up the alley they were set upon by a group of bugbears that were hiding down a side passage. Meanwhile, a young human woman was seen scrambling up onto the roof of Cuttle’s shop and taking off across the rooftops. Veldrin decided to give chase to the woman while the rest of the party dealt with the bugbears. It turned out there were more of the bugbears hiding in the alley than they’d first expected and things got a little hairy with only Aradaine, Footsteps, and Hamidal to fight them, but they eventually took them down.

Veldrin, meanwhile, chased the woman, taking swipes at her as they jumped from rooftop to rooftop. After a particularly wounding blow, she jumped down from a roof and ducked into a large building. Veldrin immediately gave chase and found himself in the large open lobby of a theater. The theater manager, aghast at them running, bleeding, through his theater with weapons drawn, gave chase as well, shouting at them as they ran towards the theater itself. Veldrin was able to catch up with the woman and knock her unconscious, throwing her over his shoulder and leaving before the manager could call the guard or otherwise raise the alarm. Veldrin could hear the commotion starting behind him as he snuck back towards the party. He was upset by the fact that no one had raised any alarm in the alley where they were beating down a group of bugbears, but the light skinned theater manager was all over the dark skinned fellow hitting the lady in the theater - such is life in the city.

And so Veldrin returned to the party with his captive, and found them wounded, standing over the corpses of the bugbears that had attacked them…