*13 November, 847 IE - Reclaimer's Circle Stash, Crow's Foot* >[!quote] Introduction > It's nearly winter in Duskvol - not like the seasons change all that much. It's a cold night and the fog rolling in off the Void Sea is thick, combining with the coal and peat and dried dung smoke from the massive forges of Coalridge and uncountable little sparks of civilization to produce a miasma that clings to the ground and conceals the lower levels of the city. The lightning barrier across the canal from Six Towers illuminates the fog with the eerie, flickering glow of electroplasm. > > Across the bridge to the West is the oldest part of the city, Charterhall, with its wide roads and marble buildings housing the city's bureaucracy, the Bellweather Crematorium where the Spirit Wardens cremate Duskvol's dead in arcane fire to prevent ravenous spirits getting loose in the city, Charterhall University and its distinctive Sparkwright Tower rising out of the fog. The district is full of three-to-four-story brownstones, with the shops of alchemists and lawyers and scribes on the street level and apartments above. Near the old wall, whose ancient and blood-soaked runes was the city's only defense for centuries, in a brownstone that once contained a forge specializing in printing presses, sits the [[Ink & Anvil]]. > > A warm light spills out from the public house, along with the sounds of its patrons - students, artists, bureaucrats, agitators - laughing and yelling and debating. A middle-aged woman with hard eyes and a warm smile stands behind the massive iron plate that forms the bar and directs her staff to take care of this or that as her customers demand. Behind the bar, through the small, bustling kitchen, and into a storage room is a small door, hidden behind a facade of crates. Through that, a narrow stair down to a set of rooms - the air slightly damp here below the level of the canal. The smaller rooms are full of supplies of all sorts: weapons, tools, chemicals, clothes. The largest room isn't decorated so much as haphazardly filled with places to sit and stretch out, all in various states of disrepair. In the center of the room is a large table of brick and compressed plant fiber, surrounded with chairs. On it are a half dozen palm-sized lamps, glowing dimly with radiant algae, illuminating a collection of blocks and baubles assembled to form a map of a city street. A tip-off. A plan. A score. > > Further West across the river is Crow's Foot, a much poorer district. Every block claimed by one gang or another. Ramshackle buildings stacked one atop another for hundreds of years, forming a tangled maze of overhangs and under-roads and a dense population living their lives in every corner that can be claimed. Down the claustrophobic cobbled streets, through alleyways, and in a small courtyard formed by some building collapse decades before, sits a small antiquities shop. It has no windows, just a door and a hand-painted sign. Inside are bits and baubles from all over the Empire and beyond. Nothing terribly valuable, but potentially interesting or nostalgic to the right person, or the right rube who could be convinced of a false provenance. > > In the back of this shop, two burly thugs sit at a table. They're both slumped over unconscious, drooling onto the cards they had been playing some moments before. They had been set to guard a door, whose picked lock protected a set of stairs, that led down to a basement. This basement, lit by the soft radiant algae lamps of its occupants, is packed full of crates, chests, and shelves of more oddities. A group of scoundrels is quickly but methodically sifting through the goods, their frustration increasing. > > Finally, one of them straightens up and tosses a worthless oil lamp he had been examining back into a chest. > > "What a pile of trash!" [[Old Town Echoes|The Echoes]], having received a tip about a [[Reclaimer's Circle]] stash in Crow's Foot, finds themselves in the basement of an antique shop sifting through piles of junk. Most of The Circle's muscle was out at an event, leaving only two guards, which were easily disabled. [[Boo]] heads upstairs to keep an eye on the street, while the rest of the crew continue their search. They collect some assorted baubles worth barely a Coin on the street. During the search, [[Crow]] hears a voice in his head, drawing him to a chest in a corner of the room. He opens it to reveal a bronze statue of a woman, roughly 18 inches tall, and emanating a faint electroplasmic glow. The spirit in the statue doesn't introduce herself, but asks the party for help escaping. When asked "from the basement, or from the statue?" she responds, "let's start with one, then we can talk about the other". Expanding her voice to the whole crew, she informs them that she's willing to help them in exchange for freedom. As a token of good faith, she directs the crew to a fake-bottomed crate containing two large slabs of shreikslate - petrified wood from the deadlands that had been exposed to ghost storms over the centuries and holds extremely high value to certain alchemists and collectors. Boo sees a crowd of Reclaimer's Circle toughs descending on the antique shop and goes to warn the crew (pocketing a nearby bauble in passing). With no way out but the front door, there's a bit of a panic. The statue once again tells the crew that she can help, and suddenly the entire crew is able to see into the ghost field and perceive the shop and basement as it once was. This reveals a bricked-over arch that leads to an underground sluiceway. Boo leads the crew in attuning to the ghost field, and they are all able to pass through the arch-that-was out into the adjoining tunnel. "See?" says the statue, "I told you I could be helpful..." [[fvtt-log-Sun-Jan-11-2026|Chatlog]]