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I went to the resident mage for spells and information. I bought lots of low level scrolls that may come in useful and found that the haunted island in the lake has not been visited for almost 150 years as everyone that goes there dies. My guess is that the way into the magical horde must be on the island.
Back at the Red Lion, Cronen has been busy fishing and is sharing his catch with the innkeeper. The rest of the part arrive in quick succession with Braylec looking guilty, Rosco looking overloaded, and Thanodel looking nissed as a pewt. It turns out that the job that they went on to distract a government official while the thieves guild snuck in and taught him a lesson went horribly wrong and now there is a 40,000 gp price on their heads for murder. If they weren’t my comrades that money would come in handy. Instead of getting in good rapport with the thieves guild we are now the focus of a manhunt by the city guards. Cronen goes see how his fish supper is getting on while I suggest to the group that we go to the island to hide out until we can move around town freely again but Cronen comes back and trashes that idea, telling everyone how dangerous the place is. He starts to force-feed the inebriated Thanodel some fish head soup to sober him up much to his disgust. It is decided that we follow Quilethe’s lead and go to the Jellied Eel at the harbour to gather some more information on the thieves’ guild. Thanodel stays behind, as he is still much the worse for wear and Jutiapa seems to think she is in enough trouble for one day.
The rest of us make our way to the inn on the quayside together except for Quilethe who takes a convoluted route to avoid being seen with our group. In the inn we all order our drinks and as I’m sipping mine I hear Sheylea say “Be careful, the drinks are poisoned” and then everything goes black.
I awaken in pain as and find myself next to Braylec and under a burning beam from the thatched roof. Water appears from nowhere and dowses the flames so Braylec hefts the beam away from us and literally throws me to safety through the back door. With everyone barely out the door the beer casks explode and warm beer rains down on everything for hundreds of yards. We follow Quilethe who missed all the excitement down under the inn to an underground water conduit between the quay and the open lake. It seems that Braylec took offence to being poisoned and in the fight that ensued the clientele shot the innkeeper to demonstrate that we couldn’t use him to stop the fight and there seems to have been a lieutenant of the thieves guild there that Cronen knocked unconscious so that we could interrogate him. Quilethe points out a light down the dark waterway but we all find boats and make our way to the relative safety of a nearby sandbar and awaken the pirate. He isn’t impressed with our combined intimidation techniques and even Quilethe prodding his genitals with the point of her sword and threatening to make him a eunuch doesn’t seem to impress him. I quickly kneel in front of him and change my mouth into a gaping maw of twisted pointy teeth and clamp down on his manhood long enough for him to squeak out the information we need. The head honcho Astarye has Pirate Joe dealing with the smuggling and Radu in charge of slaving. Radu is never seen or heard so if we want to get to him we will need to go back to that light that Quilethe saw by the inn, which is a magic door. Only those with neutral or evil alignment can pass.
We leave the bound pirate with a fish lunch that Cronen thoughtfully caught and make our way back to the quay. From there we get back to the Red Lion to find that Thanodel and Jutiapa have been violently taken into custody. Bralec immediately heads towards the town hall/gaol and is inside before we can follow. We all wait anxiously to see what he does.