There have always been a few hulks moored on the river in Braddock - an asylum hulk called the Stiles and two prison hulks, the Mothernaked and the Pell-Mell. People on the street are saying that the Pell-Mell was torn loose from its moorings in the wild storm last night, and the river carried it away. No one knows where the Pell-Mell is.
The party was in Kasskar's room at the Mooncalf one night talking again about money and plans, when there was a knock at the door.
There's a small, elderly, meticulously dressed man at the door, and he asks if you're Mr. Kasskar. Then straightening his glasses on his nose, he says:
"It's very nice to meet you and your associates, Mr. Kasskar. I'm Mr. Ruprecht, of the accounting firm Garlington, Helmin, and Gibb. You might know that Garlington, Helmin, and Gibb is a venerable firm, having served Hollin almost since the inception of the Anhault Charter Company."
"One service we provide for our, shall we say, financially secure clients is automatic bill payment. Instead of our clients taking their precious time to pay their creditors in person each month, Garlington, Helmin, and Gibb pays the creditors from the client's account. It's a small courtesy, but it's a service that distinguishes our firm from many others in Hollin."
"For many, many years we've payed the Mooncalf each month for the rent of your neighbor one room over, Mr. Ishild. In fact, small talking a few days ago, my associates and I realized that we've been paying Mr. Ishild's rent as long as any of us has worked for the firm, which is a long time indeed. Curious, we looked through our records and found that Garlington, Helmin, and Gibb has been paying Mr. Ishild's rent to the Mooncalf for" - here Mr. Ruprecht pauses to look at his paperwork, then he continues, saying - "four hundred thirteen years and four months. Gentlemen, you can imagine how embarrassed our firm is by the continuing oversight."
Then he smiles, saying "Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Kasskar, but I'm sure that you've probably never met or even seen a Mr. Ishild next door. Is that correct?"
"Well then, to the business at hand. Our records indicate that Garlington, Helmin, and Gibb is also the custodian of Mr. Ishild's estate. So, I've been asked to survey and reclaim any items at the Mooncalf that may have belonged to him. However, neither we nor the Mooncalf have a key to Mr. Ishild's room, and the gentleman tending the bar downstairs informs me that conveniently you are a - shall we say - lock-smith. Also, that you may be able to appraise items we find inside."
Kasskar agreed to act as "lock-smith" and appraiser, and the party went to the next room. On the way, Mr. Ruprecht paused and said:
"By the way Mr. Kasskar, are you the Kasskar who's family was killed in the Shambles fire 6 years ago or so? You know our firm also insured some of the businesses that were destroyed in the fire and paid several claims because ultimately the fire was ruled...accidental." Mr. Ruprecht laughs grimly and makes air quotes, repeating, "accidental." If Kasskar presses, Mr. Reprecht tells him he believes the Shambles was burned because businesses there would not pay protection.
Once at Mr. Ishild's door, Kasskar succeeded in picking the lock.
When Kasskar and Mr. Ruprecht open the door, a cloud of dust comes out - thick like the gray dust on the inside of a vacuum bag. From the light coming in from outside, you can see that the room is a small foyer, only about 5 feet by 5 feet, with a few delicate-looking pieces of furniture, and the furniture and floor are all covered with about an inch of the thick gray dust. It must have been a very long time since anyone came in here.
The door on the other side of the foyer is unlocked, but there's some object on the other side of it, and Mr. Ruprecht has to bash it a few times with the door to push it aside and get through. The light from outside doesn't reach into the next room. If you light a lantern or torch in there, the thick dust in the air keeps the light from extending very far to light the room. Further, the room has many linen shrouds hanging from the ceiling, that span the width of the room, which you have to push aside to get around.
As the party gets near the rear of the apartment, they think they see a dim light shining behind the several remaining shrouds....a shadowy figure passes in front of it, then the attack begins.
The party was attacked by the lich Ishild, who had these stats. In addition, Ishild animated the object that Mr. Ruprecht had bashed with the door - a skeleton (stats) - and the shrouds (stats).
The party beat Ishild, the shrouds, and the skeleton, and found some interesting items in his room.
Looking around after the fight, the party finds a small table with a lit lamp on it - the dim light they originally saw through the shrouds. They find some work papers on the table with elaborate math on them - it seems that Ishild was working on math? Looking further they find that some of the walls are lined with bookshelves with about 100 crudely bound volumes of similar handwritten math in them.
Kasskar also notices that there's a safe with a niche door like the one he saw at the Oracle, only this one has three hand holes, not two. There are a few - 2 - gold pieces on top of the safe. There's also an upside-down glass - the size and shape of a beer pint glass - bouncing around a little like something's inside trying to get out. If the characters look more closely, they think they can make out a little being inside, frantically flying around trying to get their attention.
Looking more closely at the little something flying around inside the upside-down beer glass, Aeris saw that it was a flying, Tinkerbell-like fairy. Although he tried to talk with it, it continued to fly frantic, tight circles inside the glass, or knocked on the side of the glass, wanting to get out. When Aeris lifted the glass, the fairy instantly flew out from under the glass and to the room's open door, then looking back at the party one last time, flew off.
The players discussed how as a lich, Ishild should have a phylactery where he would reappear after being killed, and that typically the phylactery would be a box with ribbons of paper with spells written on them. But, not seeing it, they concluded that Ishild had hidden the phylactery in a safe place.
The party then turned to the safe. The safe's niche door lock was like the one they'd seen at Gramercy books in Game 10, which had two holes. There, if you put your arm into a hole and turned the handle inside, a mechanism inside gently clamped onto your arm, trapping it. Pulling on a lever with your other arm opened the safe and released your first arm - if you'd chosen the correct hole. If you'd chosen the wrong hole, pulling the lever wracked your trapped arm, severely injuring you, and left the door locked.
The lock in front of them now had three holes instead of two. Examining it, the party deduced that like the two-hole version, putting your arm into a hole and turning the handle inside trapped your arm. But with the three-hole lock, turning the handle also closed one of the remaining holes - an incorrect one. At this point, your could unturn the handle, take your arm out of the first hole, and choose the remaining still-open hole instead. Discussing the mechanism, the party concluded wrongly that the originally chosen hole and the remaining open hole were equally likely to be correct, with Aeris arguing this strongly.
The party paid for their wrong reasoning, with the safe injuring both Kasskar and Beowolf. Already injured, Beowolf stepped up for a third try and succeeded in opening the safe. Afterwards the party grudgingly accepted the correct odds - the originally chosen hole has a one-in-three chance of being correct, while the remaining open hole has a two-in-three chance.
Inside the safe they found:
With Mr. Ruprecht's business concluded, Kasskar turned to the lead Mr. Ruprecht had given him on the Shambles fire being an arson. He got some new information by revisiting an old contact, the butcher Geiss.
It's been about six years since the fire in the Shambles, but after Kasskar reintroduces himself, Geiss remembers him and seems happy to see someone from the past. Geiss asks Kasskar what he's been up to. Where is he living? What does he think of the Pell-Mell floating away?
When Kasskar mentions the Shambles fire, Geiss kind of looks at the ground and says, "Well, Kasskar, the Shambles fire was an accident." But if Kasskar presses, he'll tell the real story.
He says the Coopers' Union had extorted protection money from businesses in the Shambles for a long time, when the Hobnails moved to take over the Shambles and started demanding that the stalls pay protection to them instead. The Hobnails said they were taking over the whole city. They said they were working to protect people like the Shambles businessmen from the press gangs and take Hollin back from the Admiralty, and businessmen supporting the Coopers' Union prevented the Hobnails from focusing on the press gangs. All of this was coming from a Hobnail at Hobnail prison, Horst.
The businesses didn't know what to do. Some started to pay the Hobnails, and others continued to pay the Coopers' Union. Of course, the Hobnails and the Coopers' Union were both unsatisfied, and they ratcheted up the pressure on the businessmen.
One night while this was happening, several of us were meeting at the room of one of the other butchers, Barlow, arguing about what to do. Actually Barlow's room was over at the Mooncalf. We were having a very heated conversation, when there was a knock at the door. It was Auld, one of Horst's Hobnail enforcers who'd be coming around to put the heat on Barlow.
Well, Auld looked formidable, like he didn't take shit from anyone. But as he and Barlow talked, the thought just kind of came into my head that I butcher animals bigger than this guy all the time. Taking him out could be just like working on an animal. As I was thinking this, my distracted gaze fell on the others, and it seemed like they were thinking the same thing.
So, we circled around him, but Auld stood tall and stiffened up to fight us all at the same time. A bull never fought me as hard as that guy fought us, but he was alone and there were five of us. We beat him unconscious, then took him outside through the crowded Mooncalf common room, and threw him the street.
The next day, I was in the Shambles working when the normal covered wagon from the renderers came to deliver oil and lard. As usual I climbed in to unload the oil. The inside of the wagon was filled with barrels of oil, but the inside of the canvas covering had also been slathered all over with lard, oil, and who knows what else. The smell of it was all in my nostrils when I turned around to go out, and there was this guy Auld - throwing a lit torch into the wagon with me.
Well, the whole thing exploded. I was lucky to get away with kind of moderate burns, but it sparked the huge Shambles fire and a lot of people died.
After that, I realized that you couldn't just treat these guys like animals - animals don't kill your family, they don't burn off your skin. So, I didn't tell anyone what had happened and started to pay the Hobnails. Around the same time the Coopers' Union stopped coming around also. Maybe they were beaten with similar attacks.
So, the fire was partially my fault, Kasskar. I'm really sorry about your family.
Kasskar asked around about Auld, and he heard from the Coopers' Union member Irmgard that Auld had been in Heath Prison for about a year.
Four days after the party beat Ishild, Ishild reappeared at his phylactery - the +1 AC silver ring that Beowolf claimed. Beowolf was working the floor at the Winter Wolf, his parent's weapon shop, when Ishild reappeared. Beowolf beat him down a second time.
"Mothernaked" just means "bare naked." But I still found the name creepy, so I changed the prison ship's name to the Intractable in Game 20.
