The party visits Miss Miller's salon. They meet Brandy Cranston and Ulrike to break Carter Cranston out of Hobnail Prison, and sneak in through the Brock House Monument and the underground cisterns. Inside the prison though, they find the guards and prisoners dazed, mumbling about "the ocean." Dazed secret police Inquisitors and prisoners attack the party and psychically feed on their minds, but the party defeats them.
Kiltak got an inspiration point and an "I REGRET NOTHING" pin for his attempted attack on Ishild in Game 5.
In Game 5, Brandy asked Elgis to help her break her uncle Carter out of Hobnail Prison, and Elgis asked Brandy what was in it for him. Now I said that Gwen Allenbrand's Gemfire Amulet had been taken from her when she was imprisoned, and was still in Durer's safe inside the prison. So, Elgis could recover the amulet. Elgis agreed.
In Game 5, Rob told us that Barnaby had "more grey hair than he should." I asked if Barnaby had a beard, and Rob said yes. Rob said that since Barnaby had been a hermit, he didn't have a barber in Hollin. Rob also told us that Barnaby was right-handed.
Rob's backstory for Barnaby said that Barnaby "Follows the God Gradska but not willingly," but during Game 5 Rob told us that Barnaby was "Dragged into this by a wonderful god." I asked Rob to clarify Barnaby's attitude toward Gradska, and he reiterated that Barnaby "was present because he had to be."
I asked the players if they would like to get e-mails from me about things that their characters knew but the other characters didn't, or whether we'd rather have those things be open secrets discussed at the table. The players said they were OK with e-mails.
In Game 4, Helmholtz told the party that a previous Master of Revels, Ella, was missing. In Game 5, Miss Miller's girl Velvet told Virgil that Miss Miller and Ella were in the same tontine. So, the party went to Miss Miller's Thursday night salon to ask her about Ella, and about the other missing Masters of Revels.
The salon was in Miss Miller's own lavish apartment on the top floor of the Mooncalf. She welcomed the party at the door, particularly welcoming Elgis back to the salon. Elgis and his exiled girlfriend Gwen Allenbrand had met at Miss Miller's salon, and Miss Miller said that she was sorry to hear everything about Gwen, and that she'd really enjoyed having Gwen at the salon.
Miss Miller also pointed out everyone else at the salon that night. The people they already knew included:
Miss Miller also pointed out a few people they hadn't met:
We briefly discussed how charged that mix of people was. Elgis and Garth were obviously at odds, but also, Holly had called the trial that removed Garth from the Board and secret police.
Miss Miller then introduced the speaker for the night, Annie:
Miss Miller tells the crowd that the salon is to please and edify the attendees, maybe with poetry and song, or just discussion.
Today she is pleased to introduce Annie, a mathematician from the Quaternion Society, who's kindly agreed to discuss her fascinating work with them.
Annie thanks Miss Miller for the invitation. Annie says the Quaternion Society's work usually focuses on Admiralty problems - ballistics, cartography, navigation, and the like, and the Society only survives because of the Admiralty's support. For instance, the Admiralty recently gave the Society its old Morningstar Observatory in the Shipyards, as a workspace and guildhall. (Annie and the Admiralty Secretary Parja nod to each other.)
However, Annie says she's recently been working through some more fundamental problems. The Society mathematician Manfred Unger disappeared 17 years ago. But before he disappeared, Manfred developed a precise new mathematical language, and she's used his new language to uncover two issues.
First, Annie says that mathematicians have long believed that some "paradoxes" written in English only seem to be paradoxes because English is imprecise. For example:
You might hope to explain away these paradoxes...because English. But when these paradoxes are translated into Manfred's new language - a strict logical language - they still appear to be true paradoxes. So Annie is studying that.
A second interesting problem also seems to arise from Manfred's new mathematical language: some statements are true, but can never be proven true.
Annie says she's unsure about this result. She's planning to visit the ancient Steam Reasoning Guild building, dig through whatever old journals are still there, and see if the guild knew anything about this.
When Annie finished, Parja had some business he wanted to discuss.
After the discussion with Annie winds down, Parja stands up. Parja nods to Annie and says, "Thank you Miss Annie, the Admiralty appreciates your work. However, I would also like to discuss some business tonight."
Garth stands up and says: "Two weeks ago, I wrote a Council bill banning Tharldon's iron in Hollin, to maintain Naumkaeg's iron monopoly. But someone - someone meaning the Gemfire Gang - caught wind of my bill and hired Miss Miller to defeat it. Miss Miller threw a banquet for the bill's supporters, where Miss Miller's girls sat on their laps and batted their eyelashes at them, and sweet-talked them into voting the bill down.
Some [he darts Elgis a fiery look] would miscast Naumkaeg's iron monopoly in Hollin as corruption. But Naumkaeg is still a large shareholder in the Company, and Naumkaeg didn't charter the Company just to have the Company undermine their interests.
The Admiralty Secretary Parja stands up. He says: "Last week Phyla House and I wrote a Council bill denying a patent for the gentleman scientist Downey, for his new gunpowder process. Downey's new process obsoletes Phyla House's existing gunpowder process, and the patent would allow Downey to raise gunpowder prices as high as he wants. He could bankrupt the Admiralty.
Downey caught wind of my bill, and hired Miss Miller to defeat it. Her girls put on a banquet for my backers, where they convinced them to change their votes with a few winks.
Garth stands up again and says, "We've discussed this with the new Master of Revels Helmholtz, and he agrees. Helmholtz, Parja, and I have written a Council bill barring women from banquets, except the wives of men in attendance. We'll bring this bill forward for a vote at the Council tomorrow afternoon, unless we receive assurances from Miss Miller this evening."
In response to Garth's demand, Miss Miller conspicuously did not offer any assurances. Instead, she coldly thanked everyone for attending and strode out.
Since Garth had given Elgis the evil eye, Fayne recapped Elgis's background with Garth and Gwen for the other players, here.
Virgil, and then Elgis and the larger party followed Miss Miller out. On the way, Elgis rudely shouldered Garth, and following Elgis's lead, Kiltak pretended to trip and knocked Garth down. Virgil used the distraction to pickpocket Garth with Advantage. He rolled a 17 and came away with Garth's wallet.
Out in the hallway, they buttonholed Miss Miller. and asked her about Ella, Livingston, and Kent, that they were missing. Miss Miller was surprised that they were missing, and Barnaby rolled 24 Insight to see if she was honest - she was.Elgis concluded that Miss Miller was not the one doing the killing, and asked Miss Miller who the other members of the tontine were. Miss Miller said that the tontine subscribers weren't privy to the subscriber list, but she said that the tontine was run by Garlington, Helmin, and Gibb bank - "Serving Braddock for 600 years." Perhaps they could ask about the tontine there. The players made a few brief comments about robbing the bank.
Virgil asked Miss Miller if he could buy her a drink at the Black Cabaret sometime, and what her favorite drink was. Miss Miller accepted Virgil's invitation, saying that the Cosmopolitan was her favorite drink.
The players asked who else was interesting to talk to there, and I suggested Annie. However, Elgis failed an INT check to know what to ask Annie. I said that Helga was actually there to talk to the party, and they had a discussion with her:
A middle-aged woman approaches Virgil. "Virgil the Valorious" I believe. She introduces herself as Helga, and says she runs the Foundling Gate orphanage.
Helga says the orphanage recently received a generous anonymous donation of 500 gold pieces. She says cash donations like that are more helpful than, say, food or clothing, since the orphanage can direct the money where it's needed most. For instance, she'll use that 500 gp to buy the orphans food and clothing, but also to repair the roof and buy coal ahead of the winter.
Helga says, of course, there are two things that children need more than cash:
Company stock has all the advantages of cash, but also pays dividends and lets the orphans vote in their own interest at the Great Council.
Helga has heard that Virgil is a, shall we say, "locksmith." Is that right? If so, maybe Virgil could help the orphans in a unique way.
She says that Ash Turner died recently. Ash owned a lot of Company stock, but he didn't take it with him when he died, and he didn't have any apparent children or relatives. I would like to think that, had Ash not died suddenly, he might have remembered our orphans in his estate planning.
She says that Virgil's party - Elgis, Hamza, and Kiltak - visited Ash's home after he died. It's possible they took Ash's stock certificates, but stock certificates aren't actually stock, and they don't establish stock ownership in themselves. They're actually pretty incidental - like a blue ribbon they give you when you buy stock.
What does establish stock ownership is the Company's stock transfer ledger. The ledger is kept in hundreds of volumes in the Company's Ledger House, near the Great Council Hall in Dunham.
Helga says again that she's thankful to the anonymous donor, and that the coal will keep the orphans warm through the winter. She also says that she'd also be thankful if "Ash Turner's estate" donated his stock to the orphans.
I believe that Virgil agreed to Helga's proposal or was open to it. Helga also looked around to check that no one else was listening, and also said:
By the way, Elgis's father Garth holds a lot of Company stock. I mean, a lot of Company stock. I mean, so much stock that Garth was actually on the Company board.
In the unfortunate event that Garth died - Ajana forbid - I imagine that Garth's estate might also give to the orphans. I mean, Ajana forbid anything should happen to Garth.
I believe that Barnaby said his god Gradska might not forbid Garth dying.
The party met up with Brandy Cranston and Ulrike to sneak into Hobnail Prison. When Brandy had first asked Elgis to help her break in in Game 5, the party discussed whether to side with the secret police or the Hobnails once they got inside. Barnaby had deduced then that Ulrike was actually going into the prison, not to help free Carter Cranston, but to kill his superior in the Hobnails, the Hobnail chief Lars. Elgis had said that his girlfriend Gwen was aligned with the Hobnails, so he would prefer to support Lars instead of Ulrike.
However, Virgil now used Persuasion to ask Ulrike why he wanted to kill Lars. He worked with Haden on the Persuasion, had Guidance from Barnaby, and used the Diplomat feat from the Necklace of the Cool Appraising Stare. He rolled a 28, and Ulrike confided that he wanted to kill Lars because Lars actually worked for the secret police, and the money from the Hobnail's protection racket actually funded the secret police.
The players had a long discussion between themselves, and seemed to ultimately decide (Christian's summary) to "rescue Carter, kill Lars, frame Garth, kill Durer, and take Garth's stock." They would use Garth's wallet to frame Garth and Durer for the break-in.
They discussed how to break in. Ulrike said that Hollin's underground cisterns serviced the prison, and he regularly used them to sneak in to get orders from Lars. Ulrike said they could get into the cisterns through the service doors of different fountains around town, but the most secluded ones were the fountain in the Shipyards, and the fountain in the Brock House Monument in the City of the Dead. Barnaby suggested the Brock House Monument fountain, and they went there.
Brock House Monument, ground floor
They entered from the street, into (1).
This room is an open-air courtyard with a large circular fountain in the center. The doors you came are in the west (Market Street) or north (Hedge Lane) corners of the courtyard.
The sides of the fountain are broken open (decayed), and just a trickle of water comes out of the nozzle - just enough to create a small puddle on the floor.
They lifted some of the flagstone tiles on the fountain's periphery, and discovered service stairs going down to the cisterns.
However, they also noticed three chapels in the wings, (2), (3), and (4). Barnaby went to (3), a chapel to Gradska:
This room has a high arch for a ceiling. There is an altar at the far wall of the room, with a male statuette as a centerpiece, with spent prayer candles around it.
Five chairs are loosely arranged around the altar. On a couple of the chairs, there are piles of beige dust, partially on the seat of the chair and partially on the ground around the chair, maybe about a gallon of dust in all.
Barnaby made a Perception roll to examine the beige dust, and found a few fingernails in it, which seemed to disgust Rob.
Virgil went to (2), a chapel to Ajana, which was similar to the chapel to Gradska:
This room has a high arch for a ceiling. There is an altar at the far wall of the room, with an androgynous statuette on top, with spent prayer candles cluttered around it.
Five chairs are loosely arranged around the altar.
Virgil noticed that the offerings on the altar included a very small container of Greencake. He took the Greencake, but left a gold piece in exchange as a sign of respect. He prayed for help and guidance, but noted "to hell with Ajana if Ajana doesn't help." He rolled only a 13 on Religion, and felt only neutral after praying.
I believe that Barnaby went to (4), a chapel remembering Holbein Brock:
This room contains a life-size statue and portrait of a dashing man - a ship's captain or maybe a pirate captain.
There are plaques on the statue and walls, and tapestries on the wall.
Examining the plaques and tapestries, they learned the story of Holbein Brock:
Holbein Brock was born in Hollin in 2882, during the reign of king Sturgis Whitman. He spent a difficult childhood around Braddock's docks and warehouses, but he grew into a hard man, and took control of Braddock's black markets when he was just 20.
Holbein quickly grew the black markets into a thriving enterprise. But he was a victim of his own success - when the black markets started to eat into royal tax revenues, King Sturgis cracked down on them and exiled Holbein to the frozen wasteland of Hilde.
Through force of will though, Holbein came to lead his penal colony on Hilde, and actually built it into a booming shipyard. He had the shipyard build him his own ship, Misadventure, and Holbein and Misadventure attacked rival ships and settlements on Hilde. Citing his lucrative raids, he soon won a letter of marque from King Sturgis, who'd exiled him. He became Hollin's first privateer - a royally sanctioned pirate - and made a fortune for himself and for the crown, all while in exile.
When his sentence ended, Holbein returned to Hollin a hero, and became Sturgis's favorite and right-hand man. Using royal funds, Holbein built the first Shipyards east of Braddock, and the boom towers on the river east of town, which are now Hobnail Prison. When the boom towers foiled a Naumkeag invasion, Sturgis elevated Holbein to the nobility. Of course Holbein also discretely retook control of the black markets.
Tales say that Holbein became even more dashing as he grayed, and became King Sturgis's secret paramour, invented place values, and drove the snakes, masked wrestlers, and/or albinos out of Hollin.
While visiting the chapels, they also noticed, further south in (1), near the opening to (5):
On the ground in the courtyard, just outside the opening, a skeleton is sprawled out on its stomach.
A small box seemed to have spilled from the sprawled skeleton's hand, which they examined:
Holbein Brock's Arcane Compass
I suggested we give the Arcane Compass to Haden, but the players thought the skeleton had died from a misadventure robbing the monument, and didn't seem to want that to happen to them. Kiltak went into (5) and found:
In contrast to the open-air courtyard (1), this room has a high dome as a ceiling. In the center of the room, under the dome, there was a stone casket on a high platform. However, the platform and casket have been pushed over onto the floor. The casket lays open, and a skeleton has rolled out of the casket onto the floor. Two other skeletons lay on the floor between where you are, at the opening to the courtyard (1), and the casket.
The east and west walls of this room have four long banners from the ceiling to the floor, all showing a coat of arms. The north walls have two flags hanging from them - a jolly roger and a plain red flag.
Rob recognized the red flag as the pirate flag of "no quarter."
Kiltak put the one skeleton back into the casket, put the casket back on the platform, and left the Arcane Compass on top of the casket.
Although there was a stair down (8), they decided to move on to the cisterns and prison instead of exploring the monument more.
Before going down into the cisterns, the party used their various abilities to disguise themselves:
The Cisterns
They came down into (1), which had raised stone sidewalks surrounding the actual water of the cisterns. South down the tunnel, they could see several urchin-looking children who dispersed when the party appeared. Ulrike said they were Millicent the Rat Queen's kids, and Barnaby left 20 gold pieces for them.
They were headed for (8), and they went south to the intersection, then east to (4), at each stage seeing more children who dispersed as they approached.
(7) was a larger space with a vaulted ceiling, the Grand Cistern. The water of the Grand Cistern was filled with islands of found objects and junk, and at the south end they could see three high-backed thrones set up on the junk island. There were three people there - an old lady, a middle-aged portly man, and a child. The party asked Ulrike who they were, and if he'd ever seen them before. Ulrike told them that they were Millicent,and her family. He said they were sometimes there, and didn't bother him if he didn't bother them. They didn't bother Millicent, and continued around the north side of (7) to (8), but left 3 more gold pieces.
Grand Cistern
They went up the rusty stair in the cistern, into Hobnail Prison's north tower.
Hobnail Prison, north tower, basement
They climbed up into (1). They asked Ulrike where Lars and Carter Cranston would be, and Ulrike said Lars was normally in a cell here in (2), but all the cells in (2) were empty with the doors hanging open.
They (I think Virgil) listened for any activity, and (4) and (5) both had small groups of people quietly huddled around people laying on the ground.
Virgil went to talk to the group in (4); they seemed to be both prisoners and guards. Virgil spoke to the person laying on the ground, but the person just said:
I was in the water, and it was cold.
Virgil talked to one of the people standing there, but he only said:
Yes, it was cold...the water was the ocean.
And another said:
Yes, the ocean! I woke up (?) in the ocean? No, I was born in the ocean.
Dan said they were talking like mermen or fishmen, but Virgil couldn't see any webbed feet or hands, or anything like that.
Elgis found the second group in (5), and the party went into that room. Kiltak talked with that group, and one said:
The ocean was full of life, so much life, and I journeyed and I learned.
Kiltak asked what he'd learned, and he said:
I learned from the creatures there, and I fed. I fed...and grew strong.
Barnaby did a Medicine check on one, and determined that the people weren't physically sick, but were deranged. Kiltak said that there was something "very, very wrong." They asked Ulrike and Brandy if they'd ever seen anything like this before, but neither had, it wasn't the normal situation in the prison. Virgil talked with one in this group, who said:
After an age, Company fisherman caught me in their...mesh of ropes and pulled me out of the water.
Kiltak suggested they could "learn" from the Rat Queen, but one just replied:
A net, it's called. The mesh of ropes was a net.
Haden took the keys from the guard and they put the different deranged people in different cells.
They went south, down the tunnel to the east tower basements, and arrived in the tunnel junction northwest of (5).
Hobnail Prison, east tower, second basement
In the tunnels east and west of (5), it seemed that there had been brick walls blocking the tunnel, but the walls had been blasted down. In both cases, the walls had been blasted down from the east.
They continued to (6), which appeared to be a desk officer's space. There was a desk there with a pigeonhole mail sorter, and they found three letters in it.
To Durer:
Our audit at the Ledger House found suspicious bursts of small stock sales, to nobodies or people we can't locate. We suspect these nobodies are buying up stock on behalf of someone who's hiding their holdings - the "Rat Queen," say. Joking aside though, it would be enough stock to give this "someone" substantial voting power in the Great Council.
-- Colfax
Durer:
Vincent reports that Ella had an unfortunate poisoning incident this weekend and died.
-- Lavinia
To: Guilder
The children were "Luna", "Flora", and "Violet." The neighbor was "Ash."
The parents - Luther Whitman, Zoe Shaw, and Yorvick Volstead - were the same ones excluded from the Board vote that removed Garth Lankshire.
From: Colfax
The party briefly discussed the note about the Ledger House. Barnaby pointed out that Helga had just asked Virgil to forge the ledgers at the Ledger House. Virgil wondered aloud why you would want to control the board, saying, "It can't just be for power." Kiltak suggested they "pull a Palpatine" to take power and "bring the corruption under control."
There was another blown-down brick wall between (6) and (3), and they went into (3), where they actually found a cannon. There were also some packets of gunpowder there, and Kiltak took one to try with his blunderbuss from Game 5. Mike said that Kiltak still needed someone to teach him how to use the blunderbuss, and I suggested that he now knew two leads about gunpowder from Miss Miller's salon - Phyla House and Downey the inventor.
Most of the party, including Brandy and Ulrike, went into (2), leaving Barnaby and Virgil in (3) as a rearguard. However the two were immediately attacked by dazed secret police Inquisators and prisoners, from (1) and (4). The Inquisators and prisoners had a dangerous psychic attack, which seemed to feed on their minds. Two of them focused on Kiltak, and Kiltak missed his WIS saves to minimize the damage, and was brought pretty low on hits. However, the party did defeat them.
They kept one alive for Kiltak to question, and he told them:
Yes, they pulled me up in a net. They took me to Gregor the naturalist.
There was some brief alarm when they heard Gregor's name. But the captive then hit Kiltak with the psychic attack again, and they killed him.
Barnaby used Prayer of healing to heal everyone for 17.
They briefly looked in 4, which was an interrogation room. They looked in 1, another interrogation room, with a live person strapped down on a gurney.
Here is an AI podcast recapping this game, from Google NotebookLM. It's helpful but does make one notable mistake, asserting that Greencake is a drug, but there's nothing in the campaign to suggest that Greencake is a drug.
The anti-banqueting bill that Garth, Parja, and Helmholtz threaten Miss Miller with was a real thing in medieval Venice: "From the 1490s through the 1530s, the Council of Ten and other Venetian authorities enacted sumptuary laws. In 1506, the Ten enacted an anti-banqueting law, seeking to prevent ambitious noblemen from engaging in vote buying by hosting lavish dinner parties at the compaginie della calza (exclusive social societies). The law specifically prohibited women other than the wives of members from attending such dinners."