Shackled City: Chapter 5

From AJS.COM

This information is intended for players in a specific campaign, and might contian spoilers for players in other instances of the Adventure Path.

Session 1

First month

The party has some time to recover and relax. News begins to filter in about the tax situation getting out of hand, with more guards patrolling the streets with tax collectors, and the name of Alex Tercival comes up repeatedly.

Day 1

As events pick up speed, Jenya Urikas of the church of St. Cuthbert requests that the party attend and upcoming taxation protest to see if her childhood friend Alex is there.

At the demonstration, Maavu Arlintal speaks to the crowd and is quite persuasive. He tells them that Alex Tercival has issued a challenge to the captain of the guard, being of a noble bloodline), and that challenge has, illegally, been kept secret and gone unanswered. They're ready to oppose the tax collectors when someone attacks a guard and incites the crowd to do the same. A riot quickly breaks out! The party quell the riot and defend Maavu when he is attacked by an elemental creature of air that one of them recognizes as a breathdrinker (assassins from the elemental plane of air). The man who started the riot seems to have slunk off into the shadows by the end of it, causing the players to wonder about his motivations.

After the riot, Maavu is quick to distance himself from the party, but invites them to meet him later. The meeting, it turns out, is his opportunity to invite them to meet others and help get to the bottom of recent events. They are told to go to an inn in Redgorge and issue a certain pass phrase. Maavu is concerned that there's more to this than meets the eye. He also says that Alex Tercival will be at the meeting.

The next day a crier announced that all had been pardoned in connection with the riot, except for Maavu, who had been sentenced to death in absentia, and was to be turned in to authorities should he be encountered.

Before leaving town, the party consults again with Jenya, and is directed to Tygot Mispas of Tygot's Old Things for more information on Alex's recent whereabouts, as he is the person to whom Alex has been selling the treasure from his forays into the surrounding countryside. From Tygot, the party purchases a relic which Alex brought in. It features an odd design on the front with six-armed humanoid creatures building some sort of structure, and on the back, a crudely carved map. Spells cast by the party indicate that it has something to do with Alex's fate.