Week 9: The Crow’s Nest

We flash back to 2 years after the Symposium of Wonders, when Vel and Aiden were running a job to steal some dusk moss from a smuggler. Aiden’s friend Keel had put him in touch with a street hood named Nellis, who knew of a guano ship called the Ohana that had a cache of dusk moss on board. They’d boarded the ship and were in the process of liberating the dusk moss from the storage compartment when they overheard voices from the captain’s quarters adjacent:

“The Suma fuckin’ Oro. We get our hands on that, we won’t be running bat shit around the damn ocean any more, that’s for sure. Bloody hell, Mannis, nicely done.”

Vel retrieved the dusk moss from the chest, along with a note:

Mannis: If you’re interested in our glittering friend, meet me at the Crow’s Nest on the 11th of Riverswell at 9 bells — come alone, wear a blue cloak and a gold ribbon in your hair to identify yourself.

The group were spotted, and dove overboard, fighting their way past a sea sentry lizard to make their escape.

The next morning they met with Nellis at Glow, turning over the dusk moss in exchange for maps of the Crow’s Nest and his help getting one of their current busboys too drunk to show up to work. Vel and Aiden waited for the busboy to return home after carousing, and drugged him with a heavy sleep potion (though the kid seemed to briefly realize that he’d been drugged and that someone was in his home).

The next day they were hired on as a busboy and a gardner for the restaurant, with Vel working outside as Aiden worked the inside. Aiden befriended the day dishwasher Barris, and learned that Broden worked the night shift (which Aiden needed to make the timing for the meeting work out). Much of the day shift was spent cleaning up the powdered sugar that the Nest’s beignets left everywhere, including when the head of security Dorren popped down around 5 bells to grab one in between busy shifts.

The pair bribed Broden to switch shifts, and bought a blue cloak and gold ribbon in preparation for the meeting.

There was a close call as they began to move: Seffalo, the chef, caught Vel trying to enter, but he was dressed in finery and pretended to be a guest. Seffalo had the hostess, Tora take Vel for a tour of the gardens as Aiden made his way to the 3rd floor. Aiden realized that he had no idea who he was meeting, and was surprised when Mannis showed up himself: Mannis also didn’t know who he was meeting with, and hadn’t remembered what to wear, and Aiden was able to convince the restaurant that he was a ruffian and have him removed.

Time slipped away, though: while they spotted 3 single individuals (a blonde man, a brown-haired elf, and a dark-haired woman) they were unable to establish which was their potential contact. Aiden met the woman — Ptomira — who took quite a shine to him, but seemed completely out of the loop. The blonde man left as the brown-haired elf went to the bar to begin flirting with other patrons.

The attempt to meet a failure, they decided to brute-force things: when Seffalo took dinner up to the owner, Jangaru, they knew there was a window of time when Dorren was with that pair rather than guarding the office. Timing the revolutions of the restaurant’s revolving terraces carefully, they lined up a 3-minute window when they could enter the office and leave (if they missed the window, it would be 45 minutes before they could leave again). Entering the office, there were a bank of security-deposit-type boxes on one wall, a desk with various paperwork, and stairs up to Jangaru’s quarters. 

Trying to figure out which boxes to open (and having only moments to open one or two), they noticed a layer of powedered sugar over several boxes that had been disturbed on three of them. The first of those they picked was empty. The second contained a note (top, a lock and a detailed enough description of its mechanism to assist in bypassing it).

By then, they heard guards approaching; a daring chase through the restaurant ensued, with Aiden nearly falling as they slipped out a gap in the rear fence which Vel (in his role as gardener/groundskeeper) had intentionally left unpatched. The pair made their way into the humid night air of the city.