Artimus, Kazola, Melek Valentooth, and Vesper head to Hobnail Prison to rescue Vesper's brother Christopher. In the Cisterns, Hollin's old storm drain network, they meet the Rat Queen Millicent, who says she is the rightful Gradskan royal heir and claims Vesper's fealty. In the Prison, they discover the Globster has infected the secret police and prisoners with its viral consciousness. They kill the Globster, the chief inquisitor Alisandre, and two tontine subscribers: the secret police chief Durer and the spy master Guilder, who is also the Hobnail gang leader Lars.
We clarified who'd taken what items from a previous game, the Wunderfauna Arkiv. Kazola had taken Mamba's Brood Staff, but Karen had said she was put off by it, and she turned it over to Vesper. Kazola had Hiral's Copper Ring and Nick said that Melek had taken Hiral's Clay Necklace.
In The Master of Revels Game 1, the Master of Revels Helmholtz had given Vesper his Brief History of the Anhault Charter Company. But Artimus had the highest History skill in the party, so Vesper turned it over to him, further raising his History by 1.
Lou played Quinton Smith in Game 1 but couldn't join this game, and Nick joined this game playing Melek. Nick and Buck (Artimus) hadn't played Hollin together before, so the players all introduced their characters.
The party was in Lolani's apartment in the Moonwell under Phyla House manor, where they'd killed Lolani at the end of Game 1. They searched the apartment and found Lolani's Amulet of Protection from Sigrid, which Vesper claimed.
Lolani's Amulet of Protection From Sigrid
They were ready to leave, but worried that their fight with Lolani might have attracted others in the Moonwell. They listened at the door and did hear people assembling outside, but they didn't have any other escape, and they didn't hear anything explicitly angry, so they went out.
Outside the apartment, the Moonwell spiral was filling with residents who'd come out of their rooms to check things out, including a crowd around Lolani's door. One woman introduced herself as Gunita, until now Lolani's second-in-command. She said that the party's fight with Lolani was Lolani's business, not Phyla House's, and they could go. The party also recognized a second woman there - Tamara Marshall, who they'd defeated in the Mooncalf defending Burgess. Tamara saw that Kazola carried her scimitar of Waking Nightmares, and said that they'd won it fairly, and wished them peace. The party left, exiting the Moonwell and Phyla House manor.
On the street outside the manor, they saw Melek Valentooth, their fellow party member from the Wunderfauna Arkiv, exploring his new hometown. Vesper hailed Melek and said he was the exact person he was looking for, and Melek joined them.
They also saw a second man leaning against a lampost nearby. The man hailed Vesper, and introduced himself as Ulrike, from the Hobnail street gang. Ulrike said that Vesper's brother Christopher and the Hobnail boss Lars were both tontine subscribers. He argued that Vesper and Ulrike could help each other by killing Lars together, which would eliminate one tontine subscriber for Chistopher and Vesper, and make room for Ulrike to move up in the Hobnails organization.
Ulrike said that Lars had long run the Hobnails gang out of Hobnail Prison, thus the gang's name; that Hobnail Prison was actually the secret police prison; and that when Vesper accused Christpher of witchcraft (at the end of the Far Shore), the secret police had taken Christopher there. Ulrike said that the secret police chief Durer was also a tontine subscriber, so they might also catch Durer at the prison.
They decided to go to the prison, and the players discussed how to get in. I showed them a map of the prison's exterior, east of Dunham, a sight that they would know as Hollinders.
Hobnail Prison
Ulrike told them that the Cisterns, Hollin's underground storm drain network, serviced Hobnail Prison's north tower, and that he sometimes used them to sneak in to meet with Lars. Ulrike suggested they take the Cisterns, and the party agreed to meet him the next morning to go. But the players were suspicious that Ulrike and Lars might be secret police themselves, and went that night without him.
The Cisterns also supplied fountains around Hollin - in the market square by the Mooncalf, by Foundling Gate in the City of the Dead, in the Great Council Square in Dunham, and in a more secluded square in the Shipyards - and they could enter at one of those. They chose the Shipyards fountain for the seclusion and because it was closer to the prison. They waited until they saw a street urchin going in the fountain's rear service door, and tailgated in.
They went down a stair there and found themselves in the Cisterns, in cistern 5.
The Cisterns
The urchin they'd followed in was ahead, to the north, but stopped near the intersection at 4 to watch them, and other children also appeared there to watch. They party caught up with them, and Kazola asked who they were - they said they were Emma, Amelia, and Ian. Kazola asked if they lived there and if there were any adults there, and they said that the Rat Queen Millicent and Klaus the Dicke were there; they clarified that "the Dicke" meant "the Fat." Kazola asked why Klaus was so fat, and Emma said it was genetic.
They asked how many children lived in the Cisterns; Ian said seven but Emma clarified that there were hundreds. Melek gave them 100 gold pieces to split between all the children, asking that they put in a good word for them with any adults in the Cisterns. The urchins were overjoyed at their good fortune and ran ahead to share it with the others.
The followed Emma, Amelia, and Ian east to the Grand Cistern (7), where a huge crowd of children were assembling to see the strangers who'd given them the gold. In the middle of the cistern, there was an island or mound of found objects and junk. Four high-backed chairs stood on it, and four people were nearby - an elderly woman, a middle-aged woman, a fat man, and a young boy.
The party asked Emma to introduce them. But as Emma crossed to the island on a plank, a giant tentacle exploded out of the water, grabbed her, and pulled her underwater. The other children ran screaming in every direction, while the four on the island ran to the water's edge and desperately shouted Emma's name.
The party acted. Artimus cast Water Walk on the party and Emma, which brought Emma to the surface immediately, but she was still grappled by the tentacle. They attacked with Artimus's Guiding Bolt, Kazola's scimitar of Waking Nightmares, Melek's Booming Blade, and Vesper's Shatter. In the second round, two more tentacles appeared to attack; one grabbed Klaus and tried unsuccessfully to batter the party with him.
They forced the tentacles to release Emma and Klaus, and Artimus cast Spare the Dying on Emma. By round 4 they'd driven the creature off, with Vesper maximizing his Shatter damage with Destructive Wrath and Kazola scoring three criticals with her scimitar.
After the fight, the elderly woman bowed low to them and thanked them for saving Emma. She introduced herself as Millicent, the middle-aged woman as Helga, the man as Klaus, and the boy as Lord Huggins. Millicent and the party talked briefy about the attack; Millicent called the monster "the lurker" and said they were resigned to paying the occasional lurker "tax." The party asked why the lurker attacked, and Millicent said it coveted shiny things, and Nick observed that they'd just given each child gold.
The party introduced themselves as Artimus, Kazola, and Melek, and Vesper Cotton, and there was a murmur when Vesper introduced himself. Millicent said she had many ears in Hollin - nodding to the children - and that they were known to her, and that she had very much wanted to meet Vesper. She said she wasn't surprised to see Vesper travel with a fellow healer Artimus, but was surprised to see him travel with a brazen warlock and (she seemed to say with disdain) a smith.
The party dug in on why Millicent wanted to meet Vesper and slowly extracted her story. Millicent claimed to be the Gradskan heir, and therefore the rightful queen of Hollin, and therefore as Hollin nobles, Vesper, Christopher, and Cotton House owed her their allegiance.
Millicent said that she wasn't asking for Cotton House's fealty for nothing, but brought valuable information to the table. For instance, she said she'd discovered a replacement for saltpeter in making gunpowder, and that this replacement was only plentiful in one place - the long-neglected Cotton family estate outside of Hollin. She said with this new gunpowder recipe Cotton House could become the Admiralty's new gunpowder supplier, creating a lucrative monopoly that would replace Phyla House's current monopoly. She warned however, that Phyla House would not go down without a fight.
More broadly, Millicent said that she was building a coalition to reestablish her house (Gradska House) as the royal rulers of Hollin by overthrowing Anhault Charter Company. She said this could be accomplished with force, but more likely if she and her supporters could accumulate 50.1% of the Company's stock. So, a successful Cotton House would be an important ally.
Artimus asked for proof that Millicent was the royal heir, and she indeed produced a family tree on a large chart showing her lineage. Artimus rolled high on a History check to verify the chart, and couldn't find anything wrong with it, but also didn't know all the ancestors on it. Millicent said that the Coven was the Gradskan church, and that the Coven denied her legitimacy and hunted her, saying that her ancestors were not Gradskans but fairy changelings. Millicent admitted to having some fairy blood, but from her non-Gradskan ancestors.
As a second example of what she brought to the table, Millicent also said that she had valuable information about their recent friend Modalye Grellen, which she would reveal in due time. Modalye was Nick's character from the Far Shore, and Nick gave the other players a brief refresher on Modalye's misadventures at the end of that adventure.
Vesper accepted Millicent's claims and offer easily. Millicent suggested that when they'd freed Christpher from the prison, they return through the Cisterns and talk with her again.
The party finished talking with Millicent and headed east for the prison again. They went east to cistern 8 and took stairs there to the basement of the prison's north tower.
Hobnail Prison, north tower basement
They arrived at the star - a neglected utility closet - and discussed what to do first. Ulrike had said that Lars was in the north tower and they hypothesized that as a celebrity inmate, he would be in the tower upstairs, but they decided to check the cells to the west first.
Most of the cell doors were open and the cells empty, but three cells had small groups of two or three people huddled together around a person laying on the ground. Looking more closely, they could see that the groups included both prisoners and secret police. They approached one group and roused the person on the ground. He looked deeply into their eyes and said:
I was in the water, and it was cold.
And another in the group said:
Yes, it was cold...the water was ocean.
The players speculated that the strange comments could be about the lurker they'd beaten in the Cisterns.
They decided to find Christopher, and went down the south tunnel, which led to the east tower basement.
Hobnail Prison, east tower basement level 2
They came in through the northwest tunnel and approached room 5 from the west. In the short hall west of 5, a man was laying on the ground in a pile of stone debris. An ad hoc brick wall had been blocking the hallway, but had been blasted apart, and they found a cannon on the other side. They roused the man and he said:
I woke up in the sea. No...I was born in the sea. The sea was full of life, so much life, and I journeyed and I learned.
The players started to think that the people had been affected by something besides the lurker. They continued on, and between 5 and 6, they found more people laying in the rubble of a second brick wall. The people said:
I learned from the creatures there, and I fed. I fed...and grew strong. After an age, Company fisherman caught me in their…mesh of ropes and pulled me out of the water.
They arrived in 6 and continued to the east wing. They found a masons' workshop, an electrical workshop, and a forge in 9, 8, and 10. They found three giant chain links discarded in the corner of the forge, each about eighteen inches long. They discerned that these links would have been for a boom chain that stretched across the river to protect Hollin from attacking ships, and that Hobnail Prison had once been boom towers.
They continued to 13, which also seemed to be a forge or gunpowder lab, but even with Guidance and advantage from working together, they struggled on the skill rolls to understand what the room was. Ultimately Kazola gave Artimus an inspiration point to re-roll, and he succeeded, and realized that the room was for making underwater mines.
They backtracked to 6, which seemed to be an administration or floor officer's room. They searched for records, particularly news about Christopher, and found that Christopher had been taken for interrogation two days before. They also found notes that said:
Vesper Cotton told us Christopher Cotton was "consorting with witches," but we're still working to extract Christopher's confession. Christopher has a surprisingly strong will, but our new friend will break him. — Alisandre
And:
Vesper Cotton has been associating with one Kazola, daughter and smith in a family that has long smithed for Cotton House. Given smiths' dark arts and associations, we should monitor her and investigate her family's history. — Guilder
Alarmed, Karen asked what "smiths' dark arts and associations" would be. On a History roll, Artimus told Kazola that because they worked with fire and smoke, extracted metal from stone, and crafted items far beyond the ability of normal people, they were often associated with devilry.
They went north to 3 and then 1, where they saw three secret police and a prisoner bent over another prisoner strapped down on a stretcher cart. At the same time, another secret policeman and another prisoner came into the room behind them.
The secret police and prisoners attacked, scoring 32 damage on Kazola in the first round. Vesper used Mamba's Brood Staff on them, creating a stinkbug cloud that poisoned one of them. Artimus fired up Spirit Guardians, and Melek pushed an attacker into the Guardians with his Eldritch Blast. Soon Vesper's Thunderwave and Artimus's Sacred Flame finished the attackers, and they both cast Healing Word on Kazola.
The prisoner strapped down on the cart told them:
The mesh of ropes was...a net. They took me to Gregor the Naturalist. Gregor studied me. Gregor had a strong mind, he resisted me.
They looked briefly in the south wing, where they found prison cells and a few more blown-down brick walls. They asked a prisoner there about Christopher, and the prisoner said Christopher was taken for interrogation two days ago, but he didn't know where.
The party headed back to 6 and up the stairs, to the east tower's level 1 basement.
Hobnail Prison, east tower basement level 1
They went north to 2, which seemed to be a floor officer or assistant's room similar to 6 on level 2. They searched and found the note:
The Whipsaw tavern hosts illegal bare-knuckle boxing and betting in the basement. We're allowing them to continue as long as they pay the Hobnails half their take. — Guilder
The continued north to 1, which seemed to be an office in the front and personal quarters in the back. They again searched and found the notes:
Durer: Increasing numbers inside Hobnail are concerned about Alisandre and the effect her "new friend" is having on the Inquisitors. I'm at home, but I can come back to Hobnail if I'm needed. — Lavinia
Durer: Vincent reports that Ella had an unfortunate poisoning incident this weekend and died. — Lavinia
They went to 4, which they similarly found was an office and quarters. Here they found the note:
Alisandre: Burbage's tontine bought Volstead House's coca powder business, so I can take personal control of it by surviving the tontine. So as Lars, I've ordered the Hobnails not to interfere in Hollin's coca traffic. The two of us are going to be very wealthy. — Guilder
This note confirmed the party's suspicions that the secret police actually ran the Hobnails street gang, and Karen got an inspiration point for first suggesting it. The note also revealed that Lars was actually the secret police spy chief Guilder.
They went to 5, which was also an office/quarters. Here Artimus found a secret police disguise kit, and they found the note:
Guilder: Quinton Smith, a trade ambassador from the country of Tharldon, is in Hollin. We are working to locate Tharldon and infiltrate its government.
We've also connected Quinton to an "Artimus Gordon." Artimus is purportedly a hermit, but actually a master of disguise, so possibly a Tharldon spy working with Quinton. He is highly perceptive and reads people well, and has a weakness for worldly delights, which we should exploit to recruit him as a double agent. — Gower
In 6, another office/quarters, they found:
Lavinia: See that Ella, the previous Master of Revels, has an unfortunate accident this weekend. — Durer
Lavinia: I was in the water, and it was cold. There was life there, and I learned from it. I fed on it, and grew strong. One day, Company fisherman pulled me out of the water in…a net. They took me to Gregor the Naturalist and he studied me. Gregor had a strong mind and he resisted me. After a few days, secret police Inquisitors came and took me from Gregor, and took me to Hobnail Prison. — Alisandre
They went up the stairs, into the east tower's first level, into the actual tower. The tower interior was seventy feet wide, surrounded by a fifteen-foot stone wall. Seven embrasures (cannon portals) were equally spaced around the wall, but they'd been bricked up, and the cannons had been pushed to one side of the room.
They were alarmed to see the secret police chief Durer, the chief Inquisitor Alisandre, and the spy chief Guilder interrogating Christopher on a rack. But even more alarming, a twenty-foot high glass tank nearby contained a giant amorphous biomass - the globster. Although the globster had no discernable features, the party had the bad feeling that it was training all of its malevolence on Christopher.
Hobnail Prison, east tower level 1
The Globster, Durer, Alisandre, and Guilder breaking down Christopher
Cotton
The globster and secret police immediately attacked. The globster turned its Mind Feed on Kazola and Melek, hitting Kazola. Guilder attacked Vesper, just barely missing because Vesper was wearing Lolani's amulet; Vesper turned Mamba's Brood Staff on him, creating a stink bug swarm and saying "You will not take my brother!"
Melek ran to a cannon nearby and started to load it, which Nick described as (my notes) "I ran over as soon as I was up the stairs, started spinning the cannon around, grabbed a ball, into the barrel. Using the ramrod in the barrel first, desperately doing that while warding off the psionic attack, all the while talking to Grave [his halberd], using Grave as a ramrod."
The party had read that Alisandre was infected by the globster's consciousness, in the note in Lavinia's office. Now they saw Alisandre focus her mind on Kazola, who'd been weakened by the globster's attacks, but they didn't know exactly what she was doing, and they killed her.
The globster concentrated its Mind Feed on Melek and took him down in round 3, just as he was about to fire the cannon. Vesper had been trying to Shatter the globster's tank but now ran to the cannon, firing and blowing the tank apart.
The globster and the water inside washed onto the floor. The characters were hit by a psychic wave of the globster's anguish, which finished off Durer and Guilder. The players released Christopher from the rack and hurried to escape.