Session Two:
Contingency Plan
The Pit Master
With a knocked-out yuan-ti thief in their custody, our heroes find themselves face-to-face with a new enemy, as a snake writhing on the ground suddenly morphs into a yuan-ti pit master. Battle continues!
The yuan-ti uses its writhing snakes-for-arms to attempt to lull the party to sleep, but only Mark and his owl familiar, Slag, are affected. As Annalyn advances to attack, her spectral steed nudges Mark back to consciousness as Gwyn casts witch bolt and starts chipping away at the yuan-ti's health.
The yuan-ti attempts to hold Annalyn but she shrugs off the effects. In response, she notices the yuan-ti's snakes-for-arms suddenly begin looking around ... as if seeking backup. The yuan-ti uses a last ditch suggestion, making Annalyn give him the lead box containing Finder's Fee. Annalyn complies, and then, the spell ended, she cuts the damn thing's head right off.
Mark goes to inspect the dead yuan-ti's body, finding nothing but some really cool tattoos. As people continue to gawk at the scene (though from a greater distance now), Annalyn, concerned about potential reinforcements, hoists the unconscious yuan-ti thief up and onto her spectral horse. When he lands, however, he belches, somewhat loudly, and Annalyn suddenly smells sulfur. She looks back at the yuan-ti, noticing that he has ballooned to twice his size. And that's the last thing she remembers.
Triage & Hintz
Waking up in a triage tent, Mark notices the hustle and bustle of nurses and priests rushing in and out. Six cots are in the tent, each with an injured person—including his two party members, who are still unconscious. Numerous other injured people lie on the cobblestone ground. The air smells of smoke and sulfur.
A human man sits on a foldout stool, eating a sandwich. He introduces himself as Constable Hintz and, as Annalyn and Gwyn awake, explains that the yuan-ti they were trying to catch had a contingency plan bomb inside of him which blew up half of the city block, killing and injuring hundreds. The party was saved by Archmagi Rellias, an elf who shielded them from the blast with a wall of force. Why? Hintz is not entirely sure, but knows that the party's prior actions in the city have got them on the Princep's radar.
Annalyn rifles through her belongings—Finder's Fee is not among them. Hintz doesn't have it, and doesn't know who does.
Hintz suggests that the party meet him tomorrow morning at Council House, the government administrative center of Highhaven, to discuss a plan to ferret out the yuan-ti situation in the city. He notes that the yuan-ti, originally from the swamps of the south, were forced out of their homeland when Bellerost was founded centuries ago, and that they and the humans have been fighting ever since. But the yuan-ti have never ventured this far north, and snatching Finder's Fee means that they are desperate to find something.
The party breaks up to head to their respective homes. As they leave the tent, the finally see the wreckage—buildings destroyed, a divot in the Broadway left by the explosion. It is clear that the downpour prevented a massive fire, at least.
Annalyn spends time tending to the wounded before she leaves. Both she and Gwyn request their library hirelings to do research; Annalyn on the yuan-ti themselves, and Gwyn on the origins and aspects of Finder's Fee. Mark, meanwhile, ventures home to his slouchy, druggie friends, mentally contemplating what kind of wild shape would best keep his profile low.
Tuesday, 2nd of September, 1040
In the morning, the party arrives at Council House, where they meet with Constable Hintz in his small office loaded with paperwork. He is eating raspberry-filled beignet pastries and the party helps him wolf them down. He doesn't have much to offer as an update, though there is one breakthrough: the yuan-ti pit master's head was recovered and is intact enough to possibly use speak with dead to communicate with it.
Hintz explains that the Princeps and the Constabulary want a low profile on this mission, so they are hiring the party to find out as much as possible on their behalf. Hintz plays poker with two people who are able to cast speak with dead—Magi Gellen and Minder Locke—and asks the party to persuade them to help, because he “owes them a lot of money.” Gwyn has heard of Magi Gellen before, as he is a halfling and has been seen at halfling functions. Annalyn, meanwhile, has heard of Minder Locke, though she knows that Locke is a cleric and thus hasn't directly met her.
Hintz also rewards the party with 300gp, the amount that Arbale was going to give them for retrieving Finder's Fee. The party then leaves, heading to the Arcaneum, the great wizard library and academy in Highhaven. There, they are taken by a meticulously detailed clay golem to Magi Gellen's chambers.
