BellRow Troubleshooters

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After paying the group Felelle explains he wants the BRT to track down and kill a serial killer being called the Mad Hatter and retrieve his mask. The gobber lists a series of known victims of the killer by occupation and location. Excepting the last one, killed just a block away from the Ruby Glass, he doesn’t have the names. All the rest were murdered on Hospice. The latest victim was Sylvia Grains, a furs merchant. All the victims suffered numerous cuts before being hung for display in prominent locations. The gobber is willing to pay 50 royals a piece for the recovery of the mask and disposal of the Mad Hatter. He stresses the mask is what is most important and that it is dangerous. Felelle believes it is what made the otherwise peaceful man into a killer. The killer’s workshop is called Brail’s Mask Emporium and is located on Bellow’s Island. Felelle agrees to meet the group again later that evening to answer any further questions.

The day is spent sleeping and investigating. Opifera speaks with Ano and puts him to work gathering information while she goes off to meet with his most promising contact. From him she gets a list of each murder victim. Upon returning to the guildhouse she passes Toad and sends him out to the Octopus Den to ask around about Lelac’s murder. Toad ‘poses’ quite successfully as a customer at the upscale brothel and meets with a courtesan named Miranda. She tells him all she knows about the murder…

• an ogrun and a trenchcoated woman were seen entering but not leaving the Octopus Den right before Lelac was found dead. Another courtesan named Gillian saw them, she works the night shift and is expensive
• there is a back exit just outside of the room Lelac was found in
• Lelac often spends time alone in that room smoking opium and often does business there
• two city watch arrived to investigate as well as a trollkin she believed was unconnected to the watch
  

Toad returns to the guildhouse to find everyone awake. He is briefly introduced to the recent recruit Natalia Kalishnikov, a down on her luck Urgolian sharpshooter, and to the deadly, but dark Fabrizio. Turns out Apu knows Jillian, the courtesan from the Octopus Den, and is eager to interview her for the good of the investigation but the troope’s plans are interupted by a knock on the door. The gobber Fellelle is let in and answers a few more questions. He is annoyed at the lack of progress made so far. Meanwhile upstairs Apu lies in hiding casting a spell to search the gobber’s mind.

• the maskmaker is named Bartley Degrada and he worked for Brail’s Mask Imporium
• he will look for a blue scarf tied to the guildhouse railing when the group has the mask
• he tells them that many want the mask but they will retrieve it for him
• Fellelle refuses, even under semi-veiled threat, to reveal much more about his employer
• from a few subtle hints Opifera believes Fellelle represents a cult of the forgotten Gods, cruel, inhumane insanities from before the age of men
  

Felelle is not gone long when a large trollkin invites himself into the guildhouse. He introduces himself as a bounty hunter with a contract from the city watch. He has been unable to catch the Mad Hatter and wants to engage the group to work his contract. He provides references on the city watch and offers to pay the group more than the gobber. The guildmembers consider and then accepts his offer and it is worked out that he will take an apartment outside of the BRT guildhouse and watch for the colored scarf signaling Felelle to pick up the mask.

Later that night Opifera, Apu, Haugin, Natalia, and Toad set out to Bellows to investigate the Mad Hatter’s old workshop in Brail’s Mask Emporium. Paying the galleon to cross to the small craftsmens’ island the group finds the building on one of the main streets. It is surrounded by a tall stone wall with several doors. Scaling the wall and slipping inside the group begins to look around while trying unsuccessfully to avoid the lanterned guardsman moving from room to room. The guardsman, turns out, is a friend of Apu’s and is quite cooperative. He answers questions and gets answers to his own but chastises the group for sneaking in instead of stopping by announced at a more reasonable hour. He tells them that the Emporium is owned by Madame Klivson. The same Madame Klivson that was supposedly Lelac’s client and was wife to the executed High Captain.

Searching Degrada’s workshop they find a series of sketches of the same mask, maps of the city, and Degrada’s work log. Fabrizio manages to open Degrada’s safe and finds a journal and a pouch. Unseen by anyone he pockets the pouch. The journal, he hands to Toad who scoops up the all the papers. Downstairs Natalia spots a figure creeping into the building and gives chase. The creeper turns out to be the Mad Hatter, Bartley Degrada himself and the whole group runs after him, some more directly, and hence effectively, than others. Natalia reaches him first and shoots and stabs him in the legs multiple times. Degrada runs on, moving with an inhuman vigor. He makes it as far as the top of the wall before he is stabbed, grabbed and drug back to the ground. He rips his mask off and reveals that the mask seems to have melded with his skin becoming a part of him. The BRT renders him unconscious and binds him and carefully stows the mask wrapped in an old cloth. Apu pays his friend, the security guard a handful of royals and appologizes for the disturbance they have caused. The guard nods thankfully and tells him the money should easily cover the mess and pay for replacement windows. “Windows?” someone asks. “We’d better get going before we attract anymore attention” urges Toad.