Excuse me sir, I'd like a soup #PlausibleDeniability - August 20, 2021

 - Osiris finds a motheaten, threadbare non-religious outfit in the back of her closet

- Theophania casts a lot of Mending cantrips to get it to be less hole-filled

- O takes a random knife and chops 24" off the skirt of the dress to make it "more current"

- T then has to spend at least another 15 minutes Mending the edges so they don't look so ragged.

- O and T head to the boarding house to get the other three friends

- The five then head to the Groundswallow General Store

- Her mother Nellie is behind the counter when they come in

- Nellie and Eldon get introduced to everyone (except Osiris because they already know her) 

- Rusty gets some stuff and recommendation for other places to get the stuff they don't have

- There's no flute in the odds 'n' ends box for Lyrielle

- Rusty buys things from Thomas Smith the blacksmith 

- O also buys a dagger from him

- They hang out for the afternoon, then head to the Black Dog after dinner

- It's a rundown place with a placard with a ominously badly drawn picture of a black dog over the door

- They walk in and it is remarkably empty. There's only one guy sitting in the back corner.

- The bartender is a large man who looks like he may have some orc blood in his ancestry

- They walk over to the bar and T gets an ale, and while she's sipping it slowly she notices the one guy in the corner whose eating soup gets up and says something to the bartender then heads out the back door

- Lyrielle sneaks through the door after the guy and she finds herself in a stairwell leading down

- She carefully heads down to the landing where the stairs turn and she sees a big open room with a much nicer bar, but there's a guy waiting at the bottom who sees her and asks her how the soup was, but "it needed salt" was apparently not the correct answer and some more muscle shows up to grab her

- They grab her and she shouts "Get off me!"

- O and T hear, and T runs over to the door, throws it open, and yells "Lyrielle, did you find the bathroom? What's going on?"

- The bartender tries to block the way, but T get by him. Rusty says to the bartender blocking him "Excuse me, sir, I'd like the soup. Now move." Rusty shoves him easily out of the way

- Raiàn Misty Steps past the bartender

- Osiris moves through the door and then closes it behind her and locks it then heads down the stairs

- They are met at the bottom of the stairs by a group of thugs who size them up

- Raiàn immediately says "We're just looking for Jimmy and the Black Bloods."

- There is an immediate uproar from her friends.

- After several minutes of discussion they are allowed to stay for the evening with the entry fee of 1 GP each and their names and some of their hair

- Lindella hires the staff according to one of the security

- Julius Morrison is the man they were talking to at the bottom of the stairs

- The person who was hiding his face from Osiris in the corner is Jack who is a junior acolyte at the Temple

- They manage to lightly blackmail Jack into telling them which table Jimmy is at, at least, which narrows it down to five men, two of whom have dark hair

- Osiris gets Rusty and walks over to the table that was indicated by Jack

- She immediately pointed at one of the two dark haired men carefully watching faces says, "So you're Jimmy?"

- He excuses himself from the table and Lyrielle sits down

- Jimmy and Osiris and Rusty go to another table in the corner then Theophania joins them after she gets back from the privy

- He is not particularly surprised about how Wally died, and won't tell them who Wally owed money to either

- Rusty tries to intimidate him very unsuccessfully, so then he buys him a drink in apology

- Raiàn manages to bribe the bartender for information and will be met at a certain address tomorrow at noon to hear more

- Osiris casts See Invisibility and notices there is a hidden door near the table where Jimmy was playing cards before he was interrupted.

- Rusty says that he was hired to protect these chuckle heads and thinks it's a lost cause so could he see Lindella about a job and get instructed to come back tomorrow since she's not in tonight

- 150 XP ea. for 1,850 XP total ea.

Bodies and Bits and Barrels #Dehandicated - August 6, 2021

- Theophania sends Rusty to go get Osiris from the temple and then start examining Wally's body

- It looks like his hands were cut off with a sharp bladed weapon, but other than that it looks like he drowned

- Then she starts talking to Calvin

- He last saw Wally late last week cleaning up in the brewery

- Wally's always had money troubles and he liked to gamble, but lately he'd seemed better

- He and Wally had argued a good bit lately because he hadn't been bringing back all the barrels he'd been sent to get and once he even brought back another brewery's (Beerden something?) barrels

- Wally had also been taking too many freebie beers "for his friends"

- T theorizes that he was stealing the beer and selling it on the side to help solve his money problems

- T gets Wally's address from Calvin so she can go talk to his wife, Urimila

- Around this time Osiris and Rusty and Raiàn and Lyrielle all show up since O and Ru stopped and got them on the way

- The only friend of Wally's that Calvin ever saw was this human named Jimmy (very tall, dark hair, fairly fit)

- They send Seraphina to go get Urimila

- They find Walter's hands in a different vat of beer

- Theophania meet Seraphina and Urimila in the other room

- Urimila is a small gnomish woman who gets very frantic at T's piecemeal explanation of what happened to Wally

- Osiris eventually comes to rescue T by leading Urimila to Wally's remains

- Urimila cries over his body for a bit while they give her some space

- She's pretty sure that somebody had something over on him because he enjoyed drinking and gambling, so they frequently 

- He did his drinking and gambling at the Black Dog

- She thought he had finally started winning because they had some money for about the last six month, which was when he first met Jimmy, which is also about how long the trouble with the missing beer and barrels has been going on 

- Urimila agrees to let them investigate Wally's murder because she knows the Guard won't do much if anything, and Osiris walks her out

- Calvin gives them two barrels with beer and one empty one for Walter's body to deliver to the Temple discretely

- Osiris clears with Philip (head of the Rites night shift) that she's going to store Wally's body for a few days under the Gentle Repose ritual

- She also clears that she's going to be investigating his death for the widow who doesn't want to go to the police at the moment

- 300 XP ea for a total of 1,700 total ea.