The party finds Karn's brother held prisoner at the Enfield Trading House. They discover that their old friend Mikal had psychic control of the Admiralty and Enfield House, but that mental trauma from Firestorm broke his control and his victims' minds. The lich Ishild reveals that he is the god of the Caliphate's Al-Batin noble house - Ord's lords. Ishild urges Ord to reclaim the Caliphate for the rightful noble houses.
In Game 32, Kasskar was approached by a young Hobnail Karn, whose brother had been kidnapped by an Admiralty press gang. Investigating, they'd been told that Karn's brother might be a prisoner at Enfield Yard, the Enfield smuggling family's complex. By making a DC 10 Streetwise check, Kasskar was able to remember that Enfield Yard was next to Gibb park, where Beowolf and the party had met the Inkeri in Game 19.
Going there, they found that Enfield Yard was laid out like the Begijnhof.
Going to Gibb Park and trying to find the entrance to Enfield Yard, the party finds that the yard is blocked off from Hollin by a ring of tall, narrow buildings packed right next to each other. Working around the circumference these buildings make, the party does find the way in - a long, dark lane with low warehouses on each side.
Going to the end of the lane, the party can see the yard. It's a large open space, surrounded by the tightly packed buildings you circled around when you were looking for the way in. The buildings are severely damaged from Firestorm, but you can see they were a mix of things - upscale residential townhomes, offices, workshops, and warehouses. The yard itself would have been mostly green grass before firestorm, but is now scorched black. The yard is laced with paved carriageways that go to many of the buildings. Near the yard entrance where the party is, there's a collection of carriages, covered wagons, and crates. One of the carriages and a few of the crates are floating lazily in the air. Rising behind the wagons, you can see a belltower in the middle of the yard, with a thuggish-looking man surveying the yard from the belltower's top level. Obviously, if this person saw the party, it would be convenient to sound an alarm using the bells and by shouting.It seems there are other people around - you can see people silhouetted in the windows of 1 or 2 other buildings, although they do not seem to be studying the yard.
The party made their way up the first cluster of wagons without being spotted by the tower guard. From there:
They can see a curious building on the far side of the yard - a three-story square-facade building with a large arched entrance. Unlike the other buildings, it is not charred by Firestorm, and in fact there seems to be patch of green, unburned grass that reaches out from the front of the building, in a perfect circle.
Keith commented that the perfect circle was the DM shining a flashlight right on the building, and the party went inside, easily entering through the arch. The building was similar to the Bargello, with this floorplan. On the first floor, they found a courtyard that was visible from windows above, and they avoided detection by staying under the arcades.
In one of the arcades, they passed a man having some kind of seizure, and searching the building, they found a few more. Going up to the third floor and coming back down to the second on the other side of the building, they were surprised to find that one of them was Mikal, their old party member. Initially Mikal didn't recognize the party and couldn't communicate with them, but Ord healed him by passing a DC 15 Heal check. After recovering for a few minutes, Mikal recognized the party and told them what was happening.
Until a few years ago, I lived with my father, who was an Enfield House smuggler. I wanted to become a smuggler like my father and strike it rich, so I studied his business faithfully. But when I was 13, Enfield House discovered that my father was skimming. They sent their enforcer, Orin, who killed my father and family as an example.
Orin was supposed to kill me too, and he found me at home. He cornered me there and as I realized in horror that there was no chance of escape, a frightened anger possessed me, and a shock wave burst out from me. It twisted Orin's body and face, and knocked him to the floor. His misshapen body flopped around on the floor like a bird flops on the ground after flying into a window. I ran past him, out the door.
I didn't know what I'd done, and I ran headlong through the streets, scared out of my wits. I found myself on the riverside next to the Hedgepeth, and its crew seemed busy preparing to launch. Without thinking, I crawled under the tarp of the Hedgepeth's rowboat and hid there until the ship left Hollin.
I stayed hidden there as long as I could. I had never sailed before, and I threw up a bunch of times in the rowboat, but I threw up as quietly as I could so I wouldn't be found. I endured cold and hunger too, but thirst got to me, and I passed out from the thirst repeatedly. Then once I woke up from passing out, and there was a bottle of water, some food, and a wool coat in the rowboat. Emil, the mate who did the night watch, had discovered me and taken pity on me.
Eventually Captain Krill found me, which is when I met all of you, and Krill wanted to hang me for stowing away. Burns, some of you, and I suspect Emil, convinced Krill not to hang me, and later even awarded me a three-hundred-and-thirty-third share of the voyage's proceeds. Pretty sweet!
But later, Burns accused Krill of witchcraft on the ship's cannondeck. Scared I might be a witch myself, I became desperate, and I tried to plant peaceful thoughts in Burns' mind. It didn't work. But soon you, Beowolf, and the others disappeared into Hilde's interior for 2 years, and I used those two years on the Hedgepeth to hone my powers to a fine point.
When the Hedgepeth finally got back to Hollin, I put the thought into Burns's mind to take me into his household, where I could safely work toward my revenge on Orin and Enfield House. In Burns' house, I slowly took psychic control of Burns and some other Admiralty big shots, then made my move on Enfield House. Over a few months I also took mental control of their leaders, planning to profit and get revenge.
It quickly became clear that controlling both Enfield's smugglers and the Admiralty that was suppose to fight them was a powerful combination. With the Admiralty's active cooperation, Enfield smugglers soon became more successful than Enfield's larger, legitimate operations had ever been. I started to think about doing something larger than just getting rich. I turned Enfield's smuggling operation to funneling food to the poor in Hollin's City of the Dead, and made plans to dismantle Enfield House's legitimate operations and funnel their wealth into the City of the Dead as well.
Everything was going gangbusters until about a week ago, when something horrible happened - I still don't know what. A wave of death and pain swept Braddock, and I exhausted all my power to protect this building. The blast bowled over the minds of the people I controlled like bowling pins, and I think they've been doing horrible things.
Mikal also told the party where Karn's brother was being held prisoner, and they freed him.
Mikal's psychic powers were now spent, and he'd no longer control Enfield House or the Admiralty. So, he asked the party to take some of the riches that Enfield House had accumulated under him and give them to a particular person in the City of the Dead, who'd redistribute them to the poor there. He said the money was kept in the safe in the patriarch Ludlum Enfield's room, and told them where it was in the house.
A false door in a narrow stairwell led to Ludlum's room. Going in, they found Mikal's twisted enemy Orin and a few thugs loitering over Ludlum's dead body. They had these stats, and the party soon defeated them.
Kasskar opened the safe, and found two gems inside, one large and one small. The large gem was possibly worth millions of gold pieces, and Kasskar later took it to the City of the Dead as Mikal had asked. Kasskar claimed the smaller gem, worth 200 gold pieces, for himself. He also found some potentially valuable documents listing people Enfield House was blackmailing.
While Kasskar was opening the safe, the rest of the party each found 3800 pieces of gems for themselves. The 3800 - 200 difference between the party's gems and Kasskar's gems was designed to even the distribution of treasure after Kasskar kept Horst's gold for himself in Game 31 :).
The party had fought Aeris, traveled to Kairos, and rediscovered Mikal, all without much of a break. With Orin defeated, they were able to get more rest.
We decided that Ord would stay at the Mooncalf in the room next to Kasskar's - the room where they'd fought the lich Ishild - and now he returned there to sleep. But part way through the night, Ord was gently woken by the smell of opium.
Opening his eyes and straining to see in the dark, Ord suddenly jerks out of bed with a start. The lich Ishild is sitting next to his bed, with an opium pipe set aside nearby. He's examining Ord's sword, Isra, turning it over in his hands.
Ishild says, "I like what you've done with my room, Ord. It's a lot cheerier in here than it was with my shrouds up. When you and your friends, umm, murdered me here the first time, I didn't realize it was going to be so good for this space." Ishild looks again at the sword Isra and says, "Isra has become a sword of Immortal Slaying. I believe it's gained that ability since I first felt its bite in this room. Obviously I have mixed feelings about that Ord. The two of us are going to have a complicated relationship."
Ishild hands Isra back to Ord, hilt first, and suddenly his sarcastic attitude disappears. Speaking earnestly and intensely, Ishild now says: "Over the last few days I've been very surprised to discover the real meaning of our previous meetings. Some people - like my quaint accountants at Garlington, Helmin, and Gibb - call me Ishild. But among the Ninety-Nine, I've always been called "Al-Batin," or rendered in Hollin's tongue, "the Hidden." So imagine my surprise in discovering that you are not just Ord, but also Talib Abd al-Batin - "Talib, Slave of the Hidden."
Ishild says, "What with recent events - largely precipitated by you and your friends - Krohn now actively hunts the Ninety-Nine. Being an unsightly lich, my own options in traveling and fighting Krohn are very limited. But Talib, you can travel to the Caliphate and confront Krohn. You must see that this is your destiny."
He continues, "The Caliphate is now engulfed in a full civil war between Krohn and the faux noble houses of the Ninety-Nine that Krohn himself put in power. I would argue strongly that your opportunity is to resurrect the real noble houses of the Ninety-Nine and rally them against Krohn. The real noble houses have powerful allies, now long forgotten, who can help. Further, as a Caliphate scholar and exile you have many potential connections of your own." He says hesitantly, "And I suppose we shouldn't forget your friends, Beowolf, Kasskar, and now Jaris."
"Ord, one more thing. If you travel back to the Caliphate and do this thing in the name of the Hidden...you might keep it on the down low that the Hidden has become an undead lich."
Ord agreed to accept Ishild's missions.
