Three days have passed since your last adventure. You are together again because you have received a letter from Captain Daermod. This time the cleric Prius is with him and his normal calm demeanour has been replaced by an angry excitement. The captain explains that there is a cockatrice loose in the city. Several people have already been injured by the beast. Then Daermod says there is also someone in the city who may know about the cockatrice. At this point Prius breaks into the conversation, “Of course that witch knows! She brought this beast on us as a curse!” 
“Look Prius, we don’t know. We don’t know. Andrea has helped us before.”
“That witch is a witch! She consorts with demons and the dead, she is evil and she brought this trouble. There is no doubting this.”
“We don’t know how the cockatrice got here but it needs to go, it is hurting people. Andrea may or may not have something to do with it but you don’t want to upset her. She can be extremely dangerous. The good news is I can pay you in an official capacity our organization is still secret but this particular mission is on the books. The watch won’t do pest control and I am able to hire you officially for the job. So any resources you need you can speak with Gibolt Fearlock and he will offer you a discount on anything you need.”

The first thing the heroes decided to do is find the witch, Andrea that Prius and Daermod mentioned. She is in a tavern you have all frequented called the Dancing Horse.

“You enter the tavern and find it emptier than usual. The few that are patronizing the place are quiet and oddly subdued. The barkeep looks at you quickly with a nervous glance then immediately looks down at the floor. As you scan the room you see an old woman sitting by herself, at her feet is the biggest black cat you have ever seen. It is easily larger than any dog you have ever seen. The woman looks at you, picks up her beer and chugs it down slamming the glass back down on the table. A skitish barmaid grabs the glass and quickly replaces it with another.”

Andrea has a bad attitude and drinks like a fish. When you ask about the cockatrice loose in the city she says that it isn’t hers because she hasn’t paid for it yet. Implying that she is in town to buy the bird but that something must have happened during transport. She doesn’t give you much more information than that.

After leaving Andrea at the Dancing Horse. The Adventurers head over to the hospital where several dockworkers who were in charge of transporting the cockatrice are recovering. They lead you to the shop of Martin, a dealer of strange and exotic animals. At the shop you find that Martin is there and has been turned to stone. You search through the shop and see that he was scheduled to receive the cockatrice and talk meet with Andrea today. You also find a Quasit trapped in a magic cage who tries to barter with you for it’s freedom. The real break in the mystery however is when Tamzin speaks with an exotic purple tiger. The tiger tells Tamzin that Martin had actually captured the cockatrice in a net and brought it back to the shop but that it had escaped again and turned Martin to stone! After communicating this the tiger is freed and it bolts into the city, hopefully making it’s way into the wild.

Varin takes the quasit back to the headquarters before the party heads to the docks again. After searching around some more the adventurers find a cage for their quarry and then the cockatrice itself enjoying some corn that had spilled into one of the ally ways. The heroes think their mission is all but over when another group of would be pest controllers enter the scene. The other group fights the cockatrice into submission with Varin’s help before they are frightened off when Tamzin and Ashtara intimidate them by threatening them with death.

Now the cockatrice is captured and returned safely to Martin’s shop. Andrea pays the party their $1000 gold but warns them that their actions with other people may have negative consequences. The adventurers then go back to Captain Daermod and receive payment from him as well.

I did not proofread any of this. Please let me know if there is anything missing or incorrect.

Our heroes begin their adventure after seeing an advertisement posted by Captain Daermod of the city watch. The advertisement is vague but still tempting enough to draw in the four adventurers that attend the small meeting hosted by Daermod and his second in command Ana Voladea.

The Captain explains his plight, that the city watch is far too restricted in it’s ability to do anything about any major crimes. Sure they stop plenty of petty thieves and crooks but the watch is not allowed to leave the city, they are restricted from investigating any business activity where the business is owned by a member of the merchants guild and the guardsmen themselves are under contracts which allow them to refuse to do anything that they themselves deem to dangerous. Essentially the watch is useless. Daermod, however is a man of action and believes it is his responsibility to bring justice to this city at any cost. This is where our heroes come in. Daermod has found a way to secretly funnel extra money from the government to pay for his own secret task force that will bring real justice to T’Essar.

Captain Daermod assigns as the first mission of his secret task force the responsibility of clearing out the first level of the undercity, a vast knot interconnected catacombs, dungeons and passageways of any vermin, goblins or other monsters that the adventurers come across. He makes it clear that he is testing the metal of his new recruits with this mission, to see what they are capable of and how they handle real danger.

Pray the rogue, Ashtara the ranger, Varin the gunslinger and Tamzin the witch venture fourth into the unmapped maze of tunnels that is the undercity of T’Essar. Before long they find a grated opening to the surface where illegal dumping of alchemical agents by one of the cities potion merchants is causing bizzare mutations to the creatures below. The heroes face their first battle against aberrant rats, with horrible mutations and whose bites cause random effects that one might experience if drinking unlabeled potions without first learning of their contents. The horrible mutant rats are soon dispatched but the adventuring party knows that the killing of the rats is only the beginning for now they must learn who has been illegally dumping the alchemical components.

After more exploring of the maze below T’Essar barely avoiding many traps the heroes come across what appears to be a new goblin cult. While the leaders of this cult are not present, there is clear evidence that this new religion is far too organized for goblins and that there must be something bigger going on. Seven goblins are slain while obtaining this knowledge.