It was about midnight on Icemonth the 29th and the group was trying to infiltrate the supposed safehouse of Virdrid, the gnome monastic who had taken the contract from Hraetrek’s Guild to stop and kill off Dogger’s crèche. As it was now, Connal and Dizzy were inside, Asher was going to use the chimney, and Odie and Gryg were going back down the rope ladder to join Thon who was at the ground floor.
Connal was walking around, getting a feel for the various doors and possible ways to the front, Asher had joined Dizzy just past the living room, and Thon (after the other 2 had made it down the ladder) had the last two wait at the back of the building while he went to the front to check out the door there. It was possible to pick your way through the missing boards, but the lock seemed off as if the tumblers had been changed out at some point – and the two boards bracketing the largest area to climb through each had a long hard piece of iron on the inside of them along the edge’s where they would face one another. “Gotta be a trap,” he muttered, deciding to rejoin the other two and maybe find another way in. Back?
The group inside decided to head towards the back of the building, Dizzy feeling a faint chill and slight breeze. Was there an open window? There did find a mud room, 15’ square, and there was a door back there that opened up to the back alley. Connal approached and as he went to lift the door to enter, the floor broke away beneath him and he fell 20’, just missing the wooden sharpened spars set up at the bottom. And seeing at least 4 others in the pit who had fallen in in the past and died here. “You ok?”: Dizzy asked, before using his poor silk rope and sending it down to Connal – he and Asher then working on hoisting the Monk back up.
From outside, the group faintly heard all of this from the alley, and Gryg used his body like a plow, shoving garbage and wet snow aside. We all rejoined each other, shared what’s gone on, and then looked around. Some of the doors were thinner and cheaper looking, leading us to better identify which were closets. And the closet in the mud room had a dozen 1”x3”x6’ lengths of wood and a half dozen flagstones that looked similar to those in the mudroom. Obviously to recover the pit. We took two and left the area, looking around. We found a set of stairs and decided to climb them up. We checked them over with the spars of wood and then checked the top landing a few times.
Three doors up here, all look like they had been yanked a few times off their top hinge. We climbed up there and listened about, Odie spotting a 4th door to the south and west. Once it was cleared (the ground had many long scratches in them as if someone had gone into the room at a run at some point), she checked it out – seeing it was narrow, and had a single lever in it. Weird. She asked, was given the ok to pull it, and yanked it down.
Opening a number of small holes in the ceiling over the stairs and dropping 30 or 40 spears straight down – of which a number of them hit Asher who was still on the stairs! He cursed and moaned, yanking them out of his now battered armor – and we noted that it had made some noise. And the north door in this landing had noises behind it – along with the faint telltale scent of burnt cinnamon and hot sand.
Kobolds.
We suspected at least 15…more? One of the other doors had opened to a closet – but it was 10’ tall and shelves going all the way up. Connal went to go up and check it out and the rest of the group high tailed it to the room with the lever for now. There was a lever at the top of the closet, than when pulled slid one of the shelves out and closed off the closet at 7’ high, leaving Connal in a 3’ tall area – and a secret door opened up to the next room – mirroring this one only larger (5’ x 10’ instead of 5 x 5). He crawled into it and pulled a similar lever, shutting the secret door and opening the floor/ceiling below him. He climbed down and at the door there, he noted that it was designed to see through various long cracks set up.
And he counted well over 30 kobolds now. Over 50 even. They were preparing themselves, wrapping towels around a few of them, weapons prepped. A half dozen candles lighting the area. But the sight of a scabrous rat – 6’ tall had the monk shaking his head and climbing back up the closet. He worked his way through again to the other side, lever once more, and then down. He then went to the room with the party and told them it’s time. Time to go. We go now. Now, Now, now.
We moved it. High tailing it down the steps, Thon stopping long enough to douse a step or landing with a flask of oil to slow any pursuers down if we were lucky. Connal briefed us on the sheer number of kobolds we had to face and we moved down to the main floor, heard OTHER kobolds somewhere below us (caught between them) before we went out to the alley and then ran off, heading back for home and considering ourselves lucky.
"Well,” Asher said once we were home at 1 in the morning, “You all know what that was.”
“Horrible, we know,” the group agreed.
We talked about maybe letting the watch know of the kobolds, and we still had to meet with Virdrid at some point. But we needed to rest and the party crashed.
The next day we finished what food was left in the house and decided to split up – half of us were going to go to the Trade gate and meet the woodcutters and provisioners up there, arranging to get enough food stuff and wood for us for the next few weeks. A few others were going to go to the Ecclesiastic Grounds and see if we could use a meeting room there to arrange a meeting with Virdrid. We set up a time (12 to 4 on the 30th) and Dizzy wrote a note concerning talk and holy symbol and meet – giving the place and time (room 5) – and then brought it to the safe house, and left it there.
We did gather 40 days of wood, many pounds of foods and spices and it was about 11 AM when we were done for now and discussing what our next steps and actions were.
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