It's all about the money

As I’m just about to start sticking it to feeler face, Erson decides he’s had enough, turns into a cockroach, and scuttles away leaving me alone with Mr Ugly. Time to start dipping into my bag of tricks.

So first I roll right between his legs and as he tries to work out where I’ve gone I spring up and lunge at him but he steps aside at just the wrong moment. I can hear a couple of the others yelling at me to just run away, but it doesn’t seem like a good idea to leave squid face unoccupied as he seems to have plenty nasty tricks of his own.

Durthen shows up and we begin to pick on him but then there’s this screaming sound in my head. I try to ignore it and get in a good kidney shot, but then it happens again and it’s so loud I can’t think about anything except the pain.

By the time the screaming fades away it’s all over. The two halves of Squiddly Diddly make me think Durthen had a hand in his demise.

Now comes the fun part. Oh look, an altar that has (kick) a hidden compartment in it with a bunch of platinum and a couple of sweet-looking diamonds. Next we move on to the office and look, a (click) unlocked drawer with the cult’s ledger book, and (tap, tap, tap) another compartment with more “liquid assets”.

We also find a bunch of potions but later when we’re examining them we discover that they’re poisonous, but Malakar is able to fix that.

I paid Oby to enhance my Bracers a bit more—the poor guy needs cash to get some book he’s been lusting after, and apparently once he gets that we’ll be able to cash in those spell books we nabbed from the necromancer. I think a couple of the others also got him to do some work for them.

Malakar pores over the ledger and manages to find out where the poisonous potions are coming from, and we decide that’s the best place to go next. He also interrogates the spirit of Anna Basc but she doesn’t know anything new.

We make one quick pass by the alchemist’s place during the day, and then decide to just rifle the place by night. Getting in the front door is no challenge, but as we make our way through the shopfront a bunch of vials fly at us. One goes flying over my head, but the others aren’t so lucky and I have to actually bundle Oby into my bottomless bag because he’s incapacitated. I’m just glad I have the area silenced because the way the others are looking I’m pretty sure they would have been moaning enough to attract unwanted attention. Time for Plan C.

Back at the inn we scratch our heads to come up with a Plan C, while Malakar works on fixing up all the guys that seem to have turned into wet noodles of weakness. Soon we have a Plan C, which sounds like what someone proposed for Plan A, which was that Livia goes in and tries to get a meeting with the guy and then we find out what he knows.

Sounds easy enough, and Oby and I wait outside where we can easily get to the room where the others are waiting for the alchemist to show up. I was so proud of my guys—they were going all “no harm, no foul” until the guy asked for money to stop him turning us in to the authorities, and then they went psycho on him. Hahahahahaha.

Now I must say I was surprised at how well prepared this guy was, but I guess if you’re naughty it helps to have defences. So before long the statue decorating the room is in the fight, as is the rug. I hear some swearing as someone hits the alchemist, and his skin goes all tough and hard, and then he goes all fuzzy around the edges as well. Oby and I start to move up to the balcony to join up with the others, but then the whole balcony area is surrounded by some invisible barrier.

Oby makes a few gestures and the barrier disappears again, and then he turns the alchemist into a tortoise. Meanwhile Malakar has done that wall of knives thing and shredded the rug. And most everything else in the room—I can barely see anything.

Then the alchemist is an alchemist again, but his skin has also returned to normal, his outline has stopped being all fuzzy, and he gives up. His statue stops fighting as well, so now we have no reason to keep fighting. In theory it will be easier to get information from him while he’s still alive, but that implies a certain competence we have thus far completely failed to demonstrate.