The party investigates Helmholtz and Parja's disappearances. They find that Miss Miller's girls defeated Parja's and Woodhouse & Herschel's bills in the Great Council with their feminine wiles; that the girls similarly defeated the Anti-Banqueting Bill that Helmholtz wrote to circumvent them; and that enraged, Helmholtz and the others went to Miss Miller's Tuesday night salon to confront her. The party finds Parja dead in Miss Miller's Mooncalf apartment, and fights butchers cutting up Parja's body.
Their investigation of Phyla House and Lolani presumably resolved, the party turned to Helmholtz's disappearance, which Melina had mentioned in game 3. They returned to the Great Council Hall to talk with Melina again, and she showed them Helmholtz's calendar from the last few days again.
Melina told them again that she last saw Helmholtz, and the Admiralty Secretary Parja, at the Tuesday morning Board meeting. The party focused on the other Tuesday meetings - the 11:00 with "Parja, Woodhouse & Herschel, et al." and the 4:00 at the Great Council Chamber. Melina said she didn't know what the 11:00 meeting was about, but said that Woodhouse and Herschel imported silk from the Caliphate. They had a warehouse near the Braddock docks, and Melina gave them the address.
They went to Woodhouse and Herschel's warehouse, where they met Woodhouse and Herschel's bookkeeper, Walker. Walker said that W&H weren't in, and hadn't been in since Tuesday. The party asked if Walker was worried, and Walker said he hadn't been worried until the party asked. He said W&H were affluent bachelors who enjoyed the nightlife, and they didn't come into work every day.
Regarding W&H's meeting with Helmholtz and Parja, Walker told them:
They went back to the Great Council Hall for more on the Anti-Banqueting Bill. They asked Melina if she'd been into Helmholtz's office, and she said that she'd gone in to get Helmholtz's calendar, but hadn't searched it. The party searched Helmholtz's office and did find some notes about the Anti-Banqueting Bill and the 11:00 meeting, but not much else.
One of Parja's offices was in the Great Council Hall where they were, and they went there. They met Parja's assistant Singleton, who said Parja hadn't been in for two days. Singleton said that wasn't unusual because Parja's main office was at the Admiralty building in the Shipyards.
They asked to search Parja's office, and Singleton said there was sensitive information there, and suggested that he try to answer their questions first. Although (in my view) Singleton was eager to cooperate, the party took his suggestion as resistance, with Scott writing in his notes that Singleton "declines to allow us into Parja’s office." Gwyneth used the Ring of Greater Pulchritude on Singleton, instantly charming him. Singleton told her:
While Gwyneth and Singleton talked, Roland indignantly went to Melina and told her that the party wanted complete freedom in their investigation, and that Singleton was interfering. Melina directed Singleton to let the party into Parja's office. They went in but didn't search it - instead Roland made a point of just spending half an hour in Parja's chair.
They asked why Miss Miller would meddle with the different bills. Singleton speculated that she might have been simply paid, or that Miss Miller might have killed the bills to buy favors from other factions. (Although now that I'm writing this, I'm thinking Miss Miller might run a protection racket where she kills your bills if you don't pay her.)
They decided to talk with Downey, and Melina gave them the address of his house on the Great Council Square. They went there, and found the house was an upscale marble-facade home. A man there told them that Downey hadn't been there since he left for the Great Council vote on Tuesday afternoon. The man said that Downey was in good spirits when he left, and also that he was a regular at Miss Miller's Tuesday evening salon.
The party went to the Mooncalf to find Miss Miller. They went in the southeast door, into the Mooncalf's pipe room. The pipe room's walls and ceiling were all covered with racks full of elaborate pipes. The Pipe Warden Owen welcomed them and asked if they wanted to sit and smoke, and if they had a pipe or wanted to buy one. The players mostly dismissed Owen's suggestion, but Karen decided that Gwyneth would have been a regular there, and Owen got her pipe down from the rack for her. I believe we described it as a long mahogany pipe.
Encouraged by Gwyneth, Roland also decided to try a pipe. Owen offered to sell him a new pipe, or a used pipe from an old customer who didn't come in anymore. Roland chose a used pipe, and Owen sold him Zephyr's Pipe for 10 gp.
Zephyr’s Pipe
The Pipe Warden Owen claims:
+1 WIS to the owner. (The owner is not required to equip or carry the pipe.)
As the party was sitting down so Gwyneth and Roland could smoke, Manfred Unger came into the room, the Quaternion Society mathematician they'd rescued from the Moonwell in the last game. Manfred was thrilled to see his rescuers and thanked them many times and profusely. Manfred also introduced the woman he was with, Annie, another Quaternion Society mathematician. Manfred was wearing new clothes, and he said that Annie had given him a little money for the clothes and to get started in life. But Manfred said he hadn't yet found his barber in his shop yet, and he still had his long hair and beard from the Moonwell. The party rolled Insight to see if Annie was on the up-and-up and decided she was benign.
Gwyneth and Roland finished smoking and the party moved to the Mooncalf's bar room. There they saw the Mooncalf regular, Velvet, who Roland met briefly game 1. Suspecting that Velvet was one of Miss Miller's Toffers gang, Gwyneth took Velvet aside to talk woman-to-woman, and to suggest that Gwyneth do some mercenary work for the Toffers. However, Velvet looked between Gwyneth and (I think) Geoffraie, and told Gwyneth:
Miss Gwyneth, for the small consideration of just a few gold pieces a month, my organization and I can ensure that the...undeserving skanks of this town don't steal your very fine man.
But, Gwyneth told Velvet plainly that she didn't need help hanging onto her man. However, she did give Velvet five gold to keep Gwyneth apprised of any news, and specifically asked if Velvet had seen Helmholtz. Velvet said that Helmholtz usually came to Miss Miller's salon on Tuesday evenings, that he had come this past Tuesday, along with Parja, Downey, Woodhouse & Herschel. But then, when Gwyneth tried to question Velvet further, she gave an evasive excuse and moved on.
Roland talked with Vincent, the waiter/sommelier who Roland had asked about Ella's poisoned chili sauce in Game 1. Roland started to ask Vincent about some of the tontine disappearances, and it quickly became clear that Vincent knew all about the disappearances. Vincent also knew that Durer, Guilder/Lars, and Alisandre had died in Hobnail Prison a couple of days ago, and seemed to insinuate that he and the party were partners in the tontine killings. I reminded the players of the secret police communique from game 2, that (I think) they had overlooked:
Durer: Vincent reports that Ella had an unfortunate poisoning incident this weekend and died. --Lavinia
Roland asked about Miss Miller and Vincent said that her apartment was number 6 on the top floor of the Mooncalf. The party went there.
Roland listened at the door and heard two voices. He silently unlocked the door and opened it, and saw Velvet and another girl in D. Roland strode in, and the girls screamed for help. A third girl and a hulking man, dressed in a bloody butcher's apron, ran in from C to help them.
They fought. Gwyneth, Hughe, and Geoffraie concentrated on the butcher, while Roland fought and intimidated the girls. Gwyneth finished the butcher at the beginning of the second round, then kicked down the door to C, and found another butcher and girl coming from B to join the fight. They took down the second butcher in the third round, with Gwyneth critting and Hughe finishing him with a sneak attack. Roland tied up Velvet.
They searched the apartment, and they found two bodies in B, partially wrapped up. The first was the Admiralty Secretary Parja, and they found Parja's ceremonial dagger on him. They didn't recognize the second body, but it had a handwritten lab notebook with some notes about coking coal and gunpowder, and they concluded the body might be Downey. Some of the lab notebook seemed to be written in nonsense characters, but they quickly realized the lines were written backwards, mirror writing style.
Here are Scott's notes for this game.
The Anti-Banqueting Bill was a real thing in medieval Venice: "From the 1490s through the 1530s, the Council of Ten and other Venetian authorities enacted sumptuary laws. In 1506, the Ten enacted an anti-banqueting law, seeking to prevent ambitious noblemen from engaging in vote buying by hosting lavish dinner parties at the compaginie della calza (exclusive social societies). The law specifically prohibited women other than the wives of members from attending such dinners."