Unexpected Assets

Ironwrought is roped into a favor by one Derek Goodson, director of Flint’s jail, the Goodson Estuarial Reformatory. Mr. Goodson perceives Ironwrought as some sort of priest, so in order to interview the instigator of Boilerplate ‘s death, the oracle must agree to give a sermon at the private floating prison at a later date. Despite his reluctant acquiescence to the director’s terms, Ironwrought can only deduce that the jailed factory man has nothing to do with any ongoing conspiracy against Flint’s gearmen.

However, while at the docks, the mystic technologist does learn of a recent off-shore hijacking of a merchant vessel named the Dancing Darfellan. The boat was carrying Yerasol battlefield salvage including gearman remains. Ironwrought decides to bring this information to his teammates before investigating further.

Meanwhile, after Stover Delft explains what Archaelus has gotten himself into, he has a personal mission for Kincaid. He wants the good Doctor to determine what manner of creature is “Sticks” Kynosoura, the junior deputy who persists in a catatonic state on the department roof. With Coil for backup and syringe in hand, Kincaid cautiously approaches Kynosoura. To the Wolves’ surprise, he awakens! Sticks appears little worse for wear considering his two week vigil and exposure to the elements, but expresses remorse that he inadvertently hurt the custodian sent to check on him a few days back. The psionic allows the Doctor to examine his blood. Despite him having vague memories of a human life spent in Drakr, Kinkaid quickly determines that Sticks is not human—and only barely humanoid!

After a not inconsiderable time spent finding their footing, the leaderless trio agree to return to Holismith Square in Steamside to check on old Tinrivets and Nickelflanks, the gearman cop they assigned to watch him. There, before the weathered monument to the god of the forge, Ironwrought catches up to rest of the team—and the serious danger to Flint’s inorganic populace becomes apparent.

Steamers Under Siege

Nickelflanks reports that a city official by the name of Sam Trevithick came by in the evening to examine Tinrivets, ostensibly to see if the old priest was still alive. The official had papers identifying him as belonging to Flint Citizen Services and he had a burly half-orc lout with him. Nickelflanks’s description of Trevithick matches that of technologist Sam Edison given the Wolves by the artificer Blag Doring. As the gearman officer was given no one particular to look out for, he allowed Trevithick to proceed unimpeded.

After prying for specifics concerning the RHC‘s case, Nickelflanks reports also that the Flint Police discovered a gearman murdered in his apartment last evening, a scourer named Leadboots. Another gearman was reported missing this morning, a lamplighter named Halftank. These were the other two gearmen besides Tinrivets who had their medical records stolen from Doring’s repair shop. Nickelflanks mentions another gearman, a transient and “flare-shotty” (magnesium addict) named Searingvalves who vanished from the docks some time ago. The mechanical cop is sad to admit that his own department hasn’t exactly made these matters high priority.

The Wolves respond that they don’t exactly see things like typical Risuri.

The investigator’s next stop is Leadboots’s nearby apartment. There, they discover the gearman had a taste for gaudy art. Also, the police just left him lying there dead, as Sticks puts it, “like an old couch.” The gearman had his back cut and pried open like a tin of sausages. Ironwrought determines that the steamer’s egoboard has been removed, but the cog array was only partially dislodged. From this, the oracle decides that the crime was interrupted. Dr. Kinkaid looks at the wound itself, determines the assailant used two adamantine blades, and was a skilled knife-fighter more deft than strong. The window is also open, which is unusual in gearman quarters on account that they don’t need “fresh air.” Kincaid, an adept tracker, notices two faint sets of footprints upon the mud-slicked cobblestone outside Leadboots’s window. A size 9 and a size 16.

The Wolves proceed to interview Leadboots’s gearmen neighbors. One named Bronzebonny says that she was drawn to the old scourer’s flat by a commotion. When she opened the unlocked door, she saw a burly grey-skinned man wriggling out the window, and poor Leadboots dead. Bronzebonny adds that when the police finally arrived, they seemed uninterested in her statement. The Wolves assure the gearmaiden that, unlike the cops, they are taking her neighbor’s death seriously, and the killer will be brought to justice.

The investigators’ next stop is Bosum Strand and the docks district. There, the Wolves follow up on Ironwrought’s lead concerning the hijacked merchant ship. The Dancing Darfellan’s captain, one Mary Sky-Kendal, is found waiting on her vessel’s repairs and drinking her troubles away in a seedy dive called the Salted Auk. After some prying, the surly mariner reveals that the hijackers approached in a whaleboat encrusted in fluorescent blue-green algae. Dr. Kincaid once again proves his versatility by recalling that such algae only thrives in sea caves. Unfortunately, hundreds of caves, many hidden, speckle the miles of coast around Flint. Captain Sky-Kendal describes the lead hijacker as a thin man with a cape, flowing brown locks, a mustachio, and flashy rings on fast hands—just as the “Sams” described by Nickelflanks and Doring!

The Wolves are curious about how the hijackers might have gained information on the Darfellan and its cargo, so they visit the port excise office. There, the head customs official, an ex-naval admiral named Leonard Ashbey, reports that it was indeed a member of his own staff, working under an assumed name, who tipped off the hijackers. The gentleman has since vanished.

Steamside Stakeout

After learning that there is in fact nobody named Sam Trevithick working at City Hall, the heroes decide their only recourse is to use Tinrivets as bait. They know that the senile old steamer is being targeted by this “Sam” fellow who will likely come for his crystals and cogs in the night. They take positions on the perimeter of Holismith Square—Dr. Kincaid vanishes into a weedy brush next to the dilapidated Church of Torag’s stairs, Ironwrought and Severus Coil nestle in an abandoned storefront, while Sticks takes an unassuming position near one of four large stone anvils decorating the square.

Soon after dusk, there are only the deputies and three gearmen in the vicinity—Tinrivets and two Steamside locals playing chess on one of the stone anvils. A donkey-pulled coal cart arrives on the scene, the three men dressed as coal peddlers are clearly “Sam” and his half-orc bruisers. The Wolves wait patiently as the criminals trick the chess players into disabling themselves with quicksilver-laced coke, offered to them as a free sample. When the thin mustachioed man draws blades and approaches Tinrivets, the team break cover. The criminals seem annoyed. Unwilling to put off the taking of Tinrivets one more night, they decide to fight the deputies.

Sam, who says they might as well call him The Butcher, bounds toward Dr. Kincaid. The alchemist quaffs a liquid mutating him into a hulking strongman. Meanwhile, Sticks sets upon the half-orcs, who laugh at the psychic’s skeletal physique while drawing cudgels to beat him with. They stop laughing when one feels his brain pierced by Sticks’s mental assault. Just then, Coil leaps out of the window of the abandoned bridal shop in a hail of broken glass, shooting toward the half-orc thugs. Ironwrought steps out behind him.

Kincaid and the Butcher trade barbs and injuries, and the martial collegiate finds himself impressed with his knife-wielding foe’s technique. The lithesome rogue wonders aloud why anyone, much less Royal Constables, would care about the “clunkers.” The bruisers dish out a mortal thrashing to Ironwrought after the techno-oracle bashes one of them in the head with a warhammer. Ignoring the gearman gunslinger who has yet to hit them, the half-orcs close in on Sticks. The skinny psionic resists their blows, but the orc-bloods lock him up in a painful wrestling hold that hinders Stick’s mental abilities. Coil, now wielding Ironwrought’s broadsword, charges the Butcher and impales him from behind, coming within a hair of running through both the killer and the Doctor.

Sticks breaks free from the grip of the half-orc bruisers and kayos one of them with a mental thrust. The other thug, seeing both his partners down, throws himself on an unconscious Ironwrought. The orc-blood tries to bargain for his escape by threatening to break the mystic’s neck. Sticks gambles on being able to drop the thug with a surprise mental attack before he can carry out his threat. However, Dr. Kincaid, acting on a hunch, manages to distract the half-orc with some sensuous body language! Coil puts a bullet between the bruiser’s lusting eyes.

Questions and Conscience

The junior deputies, specifically Coil and Kincaid, search the gear of the fallen foes. Coil struggles with his desire to keep the Butcher’s adamantine knives, but ultimately decides that their real value is as evidence that can put the gearman killer away. Kincaid, however, blatantly takes the Butcher’s finely crafted chain shirt. The investigators see that the silver ring Doring mentioned is a cat’s head, and the Butcher carries a platinum token depicting a pouncing cat.

At headquarters, Severus Coil takes charge of the first round of the Butcher’s interrogations. Ultimately, Coil finds out little from the exceptionally proud and cocky killer. The Butcher says that he’s a big shot in an organization known as the Flashmob and brags that his boss, the Jade Cheetah, will spring him before the night’s through. Knowing that Coil was a feared criminal once upon a time, the Butcher manages to get under the gearman’s skin. Coil loses it and breaks the killer’s hand before bashing his unconscious body against the walls of the interrogation cell over and over. Though Sticks is nonplussed, Ironwrought is disgusted by the gearman’s violence.

Coil brings the criminal’s affects to evidence, where Quartermaster Landry Jenkins identifies the token as being for the Cat’s Lair Casino, a swanky club on the North Shore. The Butcher is administered to by an RHC nurse and returned to his cell, where Kincaid and Ironwrought visit him. Kinkaid and the Butcher exchange respectful small talk, as if the Doctor admires the gangster. When the half-orc causes a ruckus in his own cell about being hungry, Kincaid threatens to shoot him. This is the last straw for Ironwrought.

The conscientious mystic leaves notice of his resignation on the desk of Stover Delft.