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Comments
A. Fuck sewers. Also, I expect that the guardsmen would wear armour and getting through grates and stuff is troublesome in it. Escaping down the grate doesn't corroborate our previous experience here -- that is, that our quarry escaped soundlessly, or at least quietly enough for the sound to be lost. For my money, the door's our best bet.
[A]
B. We're not wearing armor, so we can cover something the guards can't.
Damned if I know. I feel like I'd go take a look at the door first.
You open the door and step inside.
It opens into a neat corridor, with several doorways dotting the space. At the far end of the corridor was a staircase, leading up to a second story.
You casually step to the side and allow the guardsmen to step in in front of you. Ari heads them in, directing them towards rooms to search. You note that she isn't leaving anyone alone, always pairing them up with another guardsman, and heading into a room with the fifth guardsman herself.
"Come on, Lien," you murmur, and head upstairs. The guardsmen have downstairs covered.
There is nobody up here, either. You feel slightly nervous- what if Feila had not, indeed, disappeared in here, and this was just someone's house with no connection to the events?
You head into the room closest to the stairs, while Lien heads further up, into one of the upstairs bedrooms.
The room you are in is a study. The walls are lined with bookcases, and there is a heavy desk situated in the middle of the room. That alleviates one concern, at least; very few legitimate businessmen earn enough to be able to afford luxuries such as enough books to fill a single bookcase, let alone enough to cover walls.
It's a simple matter to light the brazier on the desk and search through the drawers.
They're littered with pieces of paper, but you can't seem to draw any useful information from it. It's littered with notations, letters and numbers laid out in straight rows.
You gather the sheafs of paper into a neat pile and carry them out, extinguishing the brazier on your way.
Lien isn't having any luck, you find when you enter the bedroom he is in. The drawers are full of clothing (you snicker when Lien drops one overly large pair of men's underpants in disgust), but otherwise, the room is empty but for the bed, which does not even have any bedding on it.
You'll leave the rest to the guardsmen, who have more of an idea of what to look for. In the meantime, you want to show these papers to Ari.
You head downstairs, and find she is in the kitchen. You head over to her and show her the papers.
"Can you make any sense of these?" you ask her quietly. She takes one off you and examines it, before frowning.
"I cannot," she says slowly. "There is a pattern, but I can't decode what it means. Where did you find this?"
"I found it upstairs, in a study," you tell her. "These papers were scattered in the desk in there."
She nods slowly. "I'll send my men to check it out," she says, then ducks out of the kitchen.
You spend some time in the kitchen (it is a rather large kitchen, with a very nice knife collection) as you wait. Eventually, Ari heads back down, and shakes her head.
"We didn't find anything else," she frowns. "Are you sure this is is where she headed?"
[A] Yep, you're sure. You should all head back to Rory's office, and give him these papers.
No. She may have disappeared down the grate into the sewers, instead. You'll head down there with Lien, Ari and the guardsmen, and send two guardsmen back to Rory with the papers.
[C] Something else. (Please specify what.)
And if any of you can figure out what the paper means, congratulations, and please feel free to share.
[A]
is exactly I wanted to do even before I read the descriptions, funnily enough.
B for now.
BUT. The papers relate to (presumably, thieves') jobs. There are dates, as well as "job successful" and "job failed." So let's remember that for later.
Not sure what the other columns are yet, but I'll be thinking about it.
When we get a chance, I'd like a sense of the layout of the city. I have a suspicion related to the first column and locations. The third, then...might be the person who pulled the job.
Also also, we should look at the last page when we get a chance. It might be easier to figure out.
OKAY. There are two possible ways to divide the entries in the first column. With the first example, it could either be the initials F.T., and then G1 as some kind of other identifier (job type and number, or a map coordinate, or something).
Or. It could be F.T.G, with the number 1 to indicate something else.
BUT based on how the periods are arranged, I'm assuming the former.
Now, one of the guards we're investigating, who seems fairly suspicious, is one Feila Tachsten, or F.T.
How about that.
Okay, elsewhere in the chart, we have this:
The numbers skipping like that would appear to indicate that is isn't a job type/number deal.
Ari frowns at you. You shrug- how were you supposed to know which way she disappeared?
Ari sighs and turns around. You're a little relieved; you were afraid she might be upset enough at possibly disturbing someone's house to confront you about it. Although now that you think about it, that probably doesn't speak well of her credentials as a guardsman.
You head back upstairs to grab Lien.
In the bedroom, things have degenerated into chaos. You're not quite sure how Lien managed to cover most of the floor in mattress stuffing, but he did.
He is sitting on the edge of the bed, frowning as he taps a knife against his knee. You don't recognize the knife.
Lien lifts his head up as you approach, turning to you. He looks sheepishly at the floor. "I found a knife," he says, holding it up for your inspection. "It was under the mattress."
The knife was simple, but sharp. The blade looks to be made out of steel, and there were no engravings or anything.
"So you tore up the room?" you ask dryly, raising your brow.
"I thought there might be something inside the mattress," he defends himself. "There wasn't, but there might have been!"
You shake your head and chuckle a little. "Come on," you say. "We need to go back outside."
Lien nods and follows you as you turn and head outside.
Outside, Feila has assembled her guardsmen. You turn to two of them and pass them the sheafs of paper you had collected.
"Would you please take these back to Rory?" you ask them politely.
They trade a glance between them, then one turns back to you. "Okay," he agrees, then passes the paper to his friend and sets off. You wish you could send more guardsmen with them, just in case, but you don't have enough to go around.
You turn back to Ari, who is kneeling in front of the grate. Her arms are straining with the effort of lifting it.
She does eventually manage it, but there's a horrible squealing noise as she does so.
She turns to you. "Are you ready?" she asks.
You nod. "Let's go."
The guardsmen climb in first. They're dressed in heavier armour- stiff leathers and iron chain, for the most part- and will put the most stress on the ladder.
The ladder holds, so you feel relatively safe heading down there. Lien follows you, wrinkling his nose at the smell.
The smell is strong, you note, but not near as strong as it should be. You only wish you had a torch, but a torch would likely cause the pent-up gases in here to explode.
Ari starts heading further in. The light doesn't penetrate very far into the tunnels; soon, the tunnels will be pitch-black.
You don't have to progress that far into the tunnel before you come across a new tunnel. Ari hesitates, then sends two guardsmen down it.
You stop her before you can move any further. Something's strange about the tunnel.
And- yes, you see. Stone dust and chips litter the sides of the tunnel, brushed up against the sides.
[A] Continue on and investigate. New tunnels being dug out? That can't be good.
No. Head back to Rory and have him send more guards- many more guards- back in your place. You won't get the first-hand experience of the new tunnels, but it'll probably be safer.
[C] Something else. (Please specify what.)
Let's go with B. I think trained combatants in large numbers would be better at that than we would, and I really want to investigate stuff related to that code.
A. We have guards with us, so I think we can handle this.
I agree that we will probably survive whatever is in the tunnel.
But why do we need to be there? The guards can arrest people just fine, and are probably better in a fight than we are, and we have actual investigating we could be doing with regard to the code.
[Resorting to a tie-breaker, rollermine on #ijbm decided on B.]
"Please wait," you call to Ari, who is looking impatient. "Something strange is happening here."
Ari looks put out for a second, before she heads over to you. "What have you found?" she asks.
You gesture at the dust and stone chips littering the floor. "This tunnel appears to have been recently altered," you tell her. "I can't tell if the tunnel was newly added, but at the very least, the tunnel has been made larger."
Ari looks consideringly at the tunnel. "Wouldn't there be much more dust and chips if that was the case?" she asks doubtfully. You shrug.
"We're in a sewer," you point out. "An absurdly large one, too. The smell isn't nearly as overpowering as it should be, considering the amount of waste that should be flowing down. There's marks in a tunnel indicating that it was recently carved, dust and stone chips litter the floor, and really, we're in a sewer. It wouldn't be that hard to dispose of large amounts of dust and stone chips by simply throwing them down the sewer lines and letting the liquid in the sewers take it away."
"But the sewers are fairly close to the surface," Ari objects. "If people were excavating the tunnels down here, surely someone would have heard something."
"Maybe," you concede. "There would be ways around that, though- a relatively unskilled glamour mage or ritualist could completely silence any noise from down here, for one."
Ari bites her lip. It's clear she hadn't thought of that- most glamour mages and ritualists stay the hell out of crime, in order to not besmirch the name of their occupation, so a lot of guardsmen in major cities don't consider them as soon as something odd crops up. "That does make sense," she says reluctantly.
You nod. "I think we need to go back to Rory," you tell her. "If there's enough people down here to be able to significantly excavate tunnels, I think we might need more than six bodies. And I don't particularly want to have to deal with my shoulder getting infected."
Nodding, Ari heads back to the guardsman standing to the side to inform him. You look over at Lien, who nods, confirming that he'd heard what you said.
You lean against the tunnel wall, waiting for the other guardsman to come back.
---
They do eventually come back, and you all head back to Rory's office to report in to him.
Rory is pensive for a moment when you finish telling him what you learned. You wait for him to speak.
"Are you sure?" he asks eventually.
You shake your head. "I'm not sure at all," you admit. "It could simply be a case of animals scratching at the walls and chunks of stone falling off, and Feila could have ducked into the house to check on those papers. I doubt it, however."
Rory nods reluctantly. "I can't take the chance that you may have missed something," he sighs, looking down at the papers on his desk. "Ari, would you please gather up more guardsmen- a sizeable force, but one small enough to be able to walk around in the sewers you saw- and investigate further?"
Ari salutes him. "Yes!" she snaps, before turning and heading out.
You sit on the chair nearby, looking at the papers. They're the papers you had gathered from the house- dozens of sheets, spread out over his desk.
"Have you found anything yet?" you ask, pulling one of them over to you.
He shakes his head, frustrated. "It's fairly obvious that the third row refers to dates," he says. "But I can't make sense of the rest."
Lyara looks up from the corner, where she is poring over a small book. "I am trying to find any correlation between the dates and crimes committed, but it is slow progress," she admits. "It could take some time."
You nod, and search through the mess of papers on his desk until you find the page you had looked at earlier.
Rory pushes a book over with it. "This book covers from April to June last year," he says tiredly. "It has a listing of recorded crimes."
You flip through the book, searching for crimes committed in mid-April.
Ap. 13: Baker's stall robbed. Lost several items, inc. bread, pastries. Owner of stall name Greig Tasten, loc. Merchant's District.
Ap. 13: Local found dead. Pockets picked clean. Vic. name unknown. Body found in slums.
Ap. 13: Noble pickpocketed. Approx. 50 marks stolen. Recompense sought.
Ap. 14: Gorcer's stall robbed. Apprehended perpetrators (local urchins, reprimanded and let off, name. Reaston and Uven Lelens). Lost items recovered.
Ap. 14: Merchant pickpocketed. Approx. 10 marks stolen. Recompense sought.
Ap. 14: Noble's house robbed. Lost several items of approx. value 20,000 marks. Recompense sought.
Ap. 14: Baker's stall robbed. Lost several items, inc. pastries and pies. Owner of stall name Feret Yustilen, loc. Merchant's District.
Ap. 14: Merchant pickpocketed. Approx. 9 marks stolen. recompense sought.
[A] Sit down and help them figure out the code. (Please note: This option will mean you should try to figure out the code.)
Go and have something to eat. You're still tired, and not thinking too straight.
[C] Thank Rory for his time, and head back to the inn. You need to track down that assassin.
[D] Thank Rory for his time, and head back to the residential district. You want to track down the assassin who killed Osten.
[E] Something else. (Please specify what.)
A! Puzzle puzzle puzzle!
For reference's sake, the entry for the 14th of April goes like so:
So I suggest we at first discount the crimes on the 13th of April and try to make sense of things from there. If we get more votes for A, of course.
[D]
I'm poor at puzzles, so I'll pick [C].
edit: however, one of the columns might refer to a type of crime.
Okay, "J.S." pretty obviously means "job successful."
So of these:
We can eliminate the first.
Thus, we're matching one of these:
Up to this:
If the rest of you don't think I'm being too presumptuous, I'm going to cut out the pickpocketings there. They're relatively minor, and not the sort of thing you write in your ledger of major crimes. Thus:
Right, now we're sort of getting somewhere. The second one can probably be scratched out too, honestly, but it sort of vaguely could be our entry, so I don't want to ENTIRELY rule it out just yet.
But...we're not getting very far, without knowing more details on these two crimes.
Thus, I propose that we [E] ask Rory for details on these two crimes before continuing with the puzzle-solving. (my vote is still basically a vote for A though, so don't interpret that as throwing away the win >.>)
Also.
The letters available for the third column are:
Could "B" be "Burglary?"
A point of clarification: Voting [A] means that I am expecting everyone who votes [A] (and anyone else who wishes to help) to work on sorting the code out.
If you require further information, then that is an entirely separate post, and I would request that you then vote [E] Request X information from Rory, or something, as a vote for [A] is still a vote for [A]. I will then stick the [A] option in again, but for the purposes of the current vote, requiring new information would be an [E] option.
So...anyone? >.>