Continuing in Hobnail Prison, the party finds the secret police - Alisandre, Durer, Guilder/Lars, and the globster - interrogating Christopher Cotton. The globster feeds on Geoffraie and Marina's minds but the party defeats them. The Black Rose assassin Lavinia suggests that with Guilder/Lars dead, the party take over the Hobnails in disguise. The Company chairperson Melina says the Master of Revels Helmholtz is missing. The Company Stakeholders and Kasskar prepare the party for Phyla House's vampires.
We raised Geoffraie's History, Medicine, and Religion skills to +3, +4, and +3, so that he would own those skills inside the party.
Karen missed the first half of the game but Scott ran Gwyneth for the first half, using her as a healer in the fight.
At the end of Game 2, the party had explored all the rooms in the east tower's basement level 1. Now Geoffraie led them up the spiral stair there to the tower's first level, into the actual above-ground tower.
The tower had 15' stone walls, and its interior was 70' wide. The wall had five cannon embrasures, which had been bricked up, and some long-neglected cannons had been pushed out of the way, against one side of the tower. They also saw a chain with giant 18" links, which had been Hobnail's boom chain when it was a boom tower protecting Hollin. They saw a giant winch for managing the chain, and the tower's wall had two portals for running the chain across the river to the north and south towers, which were also bricked up. They also saw some combat practice dummies.
However, they heard the screams of someone being tortured on the level above them, and they hurried up the spiral stair. There on the tower's second level, they saw Durer, the secret police chief; Guilder, the secret police Spy master; and Alisandre, the secret police Inquisitor chief. The three were crowded around a screaming man tied down on a gurney, who matched the description of Christopher Cotton.
But even more alarming, a twenty-foot high glass water 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 2
Hobnail Prison, east tower level 2, oblique
The secret police immediately attacked, and the globster turned its malice from Christopher to the party, hitting Geoffraie and Marina with psychic Mind Feed attacks. Geoffraie made his Wisdom saves against them, but Marina repeatedly failed hers and suffered the full effects; Gwyneth healed her each time with Cure Light Wounds. Alisandre also had a Mind Feed attack, which she trained on Hughe.
The party fought back, targeting the secret police first. Geoffraie responded to Alisandre with his battleaxe; combining his Fighter Extra Attack and Action Surge, he got in four attacks on the first round and took her down. Fred described the four attacks as, "A blur of speed: whack, whack, thank you ma'am," and "getting the party on equal footing with the attackers." Marina took down Guidler in the second round, and she finished Durer in the third round with a critical, which Tracy described as: "I stab him in the throat and twist it, almost but not taking his head off. Boom wags his tail, such a great day."
With the secret police down, they turned their attention to the globster, which continued to attack Geoffraie. Geoffraie, Hughe, and Marina took turns attacking the globster's glass case with their weapons, scoring automatic maximum damage each time, and a widening crack grew across the case. Marina ultimately broke the case open with two shots from her bow, and the water burst out, spilling the globster and broken glass out across the tower's floor. The party felt a psychic shock from the globster's death throes, but the battle was won.
Roland had looked out for Christopher during the fight, first using Invisible Mage Hand to free his constraints, and then pushing his gurney to safety away from the globster's exploding tank. Now the party examined Christopher and found that he had four levels of Exhaustion, but that his injuries were psychological and he could walk under his own power.
They also searched the scene and found Alisandre's ring, which Hughe claimed.
Alisandre's Ring of Perspicacity
An unadorned gold ring that gives +2 to Insight checks, and allows the bearer to cast Detect Thoughts one time between long rests.
They also took a short rest and healed their damage by rolling hit dice, and with further healing from (I think) Gwyneth.
As the party finished their short rest, a woman with a black rose in her lapel came up the spiral stair, followed by ten or twelve others. In Game 2, the party had deduced that the "Black Rose" were the secret police assassins, and that Lavinia was their chief.
Lavinia was able to recognize some of the party members and called them out by name. There was a tense exchange but Lavinia said that the party's fight with Durer, Guilder, and Alisandre wasn't her business, and that as far as she was concerned, they were free to go.
She did say though that the party had some secret police property - the three disguise kits they'd taken from Guilder's office. Lavinia said that Gwyneth, Hughe, and Roland's ability with disguise kits, and the ability to disguise themselves magically, could be useful in replacing Guilder in his role as the Hobnail chief Lars. They rolled Insight and confirmed that Lavinia was trying to recruit them to take over the Hobnails. I believe that Roland responded with open hostility, but that Gwyneth found the idea tantalizing. Lavinia didn't give up, and said she would contact them again.
They left the prison.
The party discussed where to take Christopher and what to tell him. They decided to take him to a neutral location to recover - not Cotton House manor or a hospital - and settled on Roland's office/apartment on Market Street in Braddock. They also decided to be completely candid with Christopher and tell him everything they knew about his capture.
Christopher stayed overnight at Roland's and recovered from one level of exhaustion. The next morning, a messenger came to Roland's. He asked the party to meet with the Company board chairperson Melina, at the Great Council Hall, as soon as possible. Roland said he would come in an hour.
In the meantime, the party reassembled at Roland's and they talked with Christopher. The party told Christopher that Vesper had accused him of witchcraft and turned him over to the secret police. Christoper was shocked that Vesper had sold him out, and shocked about the globster chaos at Hobnail Prison. Christopher asked to spend the rest of his recovery time at Roland's, and said he would take refuge with another ally in Hollin when he had recovered, not Vesper. However, I believe Christopher didn't say who this other ally was.
The party went to the Great Council Hall in Dunham to meet with Melina. Melina said that the calendar of Helmholtz, the Master of Revels, showed a meeting with Roland a few days ago. She asked if Roland had actually met with Helmholtz and what they discussed. Roland said they had met, and had discussed the possible disappearance of Ella, the previous Master of Revels.
Melina told the party that Helmholtz hadn't been seen much since then, and she was concerned that he was missing, particularly since Ella also seemed to be missing. She showed them Helmholtz's calendar.
It was Thursday, and she said that she'd seen Helmholtz at the Tuesday morning board meeting, but not on Wednesday morning, Wednesday afternoon, or Thursday morning. She said that the Admiralty Secretary Parja and the secret police chief Durer might also be missing. Roland said they were investigating some other disappearances and would look out for Helmholtz.
Roland also wanted to check up on Miss Miller, the Mooncalf owner, since she was a tontine subscriber and they didn't know anything about her. The subscriber list described her as "Miss Miller, Mooncalf tavern owner, Toffers gang leader," and they asked if they knew any Toffers. Working together, the party deduced that Velvet, the Mooncalf regular that Roland had met in Game 1, was a Toffer.
They went to the Mooncalf and saw their waiter/sommelier Vincent there. They told him they were concerned about Miss Miller, but Vincent told them that Miss Miller was formidable and could take care of herself. For instance, he said, Miss Miller and the Toffers had kept the Hobails out of the Mooncalf for decades.
They went to Cotton House manor to get the information about Phyla House that Vesper and Kazola had promised them. There, they told Vesper that they'd rescued Christopher and that he was recovering.
As they were talking, Kazola came in with the Company Stakeholders: the boss Grace, Sumner, and Woodruff. Roland showed them the Bat's Head Rapier, and Grace said that it belonged to Lolani Phyla's enforcer, Tamara Marshall. She explicitly confirmed that Phyla House were vampires, and said that Tamara hadn't died when she turned into a Moon Shadow, but would have returned to her coffin at the Phyla House manor and rematerialized there. Grace said that the party's cleric Hughe could prevent further rematerializations by desecrating the vampires' coffins. When the players asked how Hughe would do this, Keith correctly observed, "one man's blessing is another man's desecration."
They also told the party that Phyla House manor was at Quay and Drew, on the boundary between Braddock and the foreign quarter. They said that also a lot of people come and go from the manor, there doesn't seem to be anyone there if you go there.
The Stakeholders told the party they would want magical weapons to fight the vampires, and said that they and Kazola had just come from crafting two magic +1 bows, and four Shaft of Sigrid arrows. They gave Geoffraie and Marina one bow and two Shafts each; however, they didn't say what the Shaft of Sigrid arrows did.
The Stakeholders also said that the rogue trader Kasskar had actually fought Phyla House vampires on Hilde and could say more. Gwyneth and Roland had been to Kasskar's Mooncalf apartment before, during The Far Shore, and they led the party there.
Kasskar welcomed them and said Hilde vampires had the ability to instill fear. He also said that when he fought them seventeen years ago, the Hilde vampires had been suffering from a rabies epidemic, which gave them additional abilities. But he said Hollin Phyla House vampires weren't rabid.
Kasskar also told them that Phyla House's enemies on Hilde were the Inkeri barbarians; that Phyla House worshipped Vali, the god of night; while the Inkeri worshipped Sigrid, the god of day. He said Phyla House on Hilde was based at the north pole, since the sun didn't rise during the long winter there.
He also gave them a dagger he'd taken from the Hilde vampires. I believe that Marina claimed it.
Kasskar's silvered dagger
+2 dagger.
Before they left, they also noticed Kasskar apparently sniffing like he smelled something on them. I think that Karen suggested he might be "smelling" her necrotic weapon. I clarified that Kasskar was literally sniffing, but we didn't discuss this further.
We kind of forgot that Ulrike was with the party during the globster fight and then when party left the prison.
Here are Scott's notes from this game.