20060824
Worth the Price of Admission
01.22 - 01.23.1562 Founder's Reckoning
Lord Arum Reild obtains reagents for Horace's bomb making attempt. Reild leaves in his coach to draw off watchers, indicating that there will probably still be some people watching the front of the house AND the "secret" exit. The "secret" exit isn't much of a secret and it lets out in a haberdasher's shoppe beyond the ineffectual walls of Reild's estate.
Sedge leaves with Reild, intending to seek out a gravedigger before midnight. Reild changes carriages at least once, then hops off in a shady part of town, giving Sedge the use of the carriage and trustworthy driver for the evening. He directs them to Spider Gates cemetary, where the gravedigger lives.
Sedge breaks into the gravedigger's cottage but he isn't home. He heads for the nearest tavern where he FINDS THE GRAVEDIGGER! The man's name is A'dan, though nobody uses his name anymore. Everyone just calls him gravedigger or something. He looks like an older, weathered version of Sedge. He's missing an eye. He lets Sedge buy him a drink then tells him that their meeting is foreordained and that tonight is his DOOM (A'dan's, not Sedge's). He once visited a fortune-teller who told him three things, "You must always give something of yourself to the pit", "To find what is lost, you must become lost", and "When you meet your match, that night you will meet your Doom". He then tells a rambling story about getting lost in the Sand Sea and losing his eye to ravens, which he then cast into a bottomless well, bringing him lifelong good fortune.
He agrees to help the group find the presumed secret tunnel out of (into) Lord Shaid's manor which they speculate might come out in the nearby High Gates Cemetary. A'dan has keys.
They agree to meet at midnight, then Sedge leaves out the back door because some city guards are coming in through the front.
Everybody meets back up. Sedge, Horace, and Eriola go to Lord Shaid's. Xandessa and Ali go to the Witch-hunters' headquarters, dressed as witch-hunters.
Xandessa and Ali case the joint, and wait for the distractionary boom. Meanwhile, Sedge, Horace, and Eriola head to High Gates Cemetary with bombs. They meet with A'dan and begin searching for the secret tunnel. A'dan unlocks a crypt and is surprised by the guards inside. A'dan is struck down. Sedge rushes over and kills the guards very very quickly and brutally with an assist from Eriola and Horace. A'dan rouses just long enough to say "Sedge, be wary, you only have one lie left!" in a spooky voice before succumbing to his wounds and dying.
They sneak in through the passageway. The door is locked, with a bell pull to summon a guard. They manage to get through quietly, into a cellar. There is one guard sleeping in a chair with a guard dog. Eriola befriends the dog and names him "Lucky". Sedge chops the sleeping guard's head off. Horace finds a sub-basement with a sealed iron door rusted shut. They also find a mechanically driven dumbwaiter device large enough for a person (or several bombs). Sedge lays A'dan on a beir of explosives and they light the fuse, send the lift up, and vacate the premises.
BOOM!
After the explosion, it still takes a quarter hour before there is enough of a response to pull the majority of Witch-hunters away from the headquarters. Those remaining behind are on high alert. The patrol the building in squads. Xandessa and Ali sneak in through the church annex and find the dungeons. Xandessa guards the door while Ali unlocks the door and sneaks down.
Ali fights a HUGE torturer with no tongue (He seems immune to pain). She wins. Finds three prisoners. One of them is Jackal, one is a slender man, and one is a delicate woman. all have been tortured, beaten, and generally abused.
Xandessa is challenged by a patrol with "Water Turns the Wheel". She hesitates, then quickly contacts Ali through the Slave collar to ask if she can find the correct response. Ali asks Jackal, who can't speak, but who is able to gesture well enough to convey "The Wheel Turns the World". Xandessa answers correctly. The patrol stwants to know where her partner is. She suggests that her partner left to use the facilities. She is reprimanded. Her "partner" is reprimanded in absentia and two more guards are left to guard the door with her.
Ali moves to free the prisoners, but Jackal indicates that the slender man may be a plant, left behind to gain the trust (and useful information) of the other prisoners. So she only brings the girl. Jackal has broken hands and a badly broken leg, but with splinting he is able to move under his own power. The girl has to be dragged by Ali.
When Ali reaches the top of the stairs and Xandessa says that the coast is otherwise clear, Ali opens the door from behind while Xandessa stabs both guards simultaneously, driving them backwards into the dungeons. The two women quickly kill both guards and sneak back out the way they went in. Ali kills a priest on the way out because he's there, and they jump into the carriage that the other three party members have brought back across town.