The Case of the Missing Cat
Introduction
Crucible, a city on the rise, or so they say. One day some of that prosperity might make its way in to your coffers, but until then, it’s washing dishes for a place on the bar room floor at night and odd jobs for meals.Mercenary work is harder than you had thought, and hungry work too as your stomach likes to remind you from time to time.
You take stock of your jobs:
- The Acadamae will always pay for objects recovered from Crater, the deeper the better.
- Caravans going to the Grass Colonies will pay good coin for a 3 week tour of duty. Surviving the beast men attacks is the trick for that one.
- There are a few warehouses here in Gateway and in Docks that will pay for guards who can fight, look the other way, and keep their mouth shut.
- Or you can listen to what this old woman is saying, did she just say 30 gold?
“And that’s when I realized that I couldn’t let my son find out his little mittens escaped. So I got my purse and got ready to offer a reward. 30 gold pieces to the people that can find his little mittens.”
She lays a sold and heavy coin on the table. 1 pure gold piece, minted before the revolution, even just that would pay for food, drink and a real room here at Hearth away from Home for a week.
Your stomach growls again and your shoulders ache recalling the makeshift bed you constructed from a bench, a barstool and too much ale a few nights ago. It’s not glamorous work, but it will pay the bills.
Part I - The Pitch
The old woman is Edna vi’Tite. Her son Galen vi’Tite is a Sergeant of some repute. You have heard the name before, but not much else.
Her Story
“Just this morning I was headed to Galen’s room to tidy up. He leaves so early to get to work you see.”
She pauses and looks down at the table. Thinking.
“I just love my son so much. And he always has so much on his mind with work. So I started cleaning and must have lost track of the time. When I looked up I realized I left the door open and his little mittens escaped. He’s such a little adorable thing I don’t think he’ll last long on the streets. I tried calling for him but nothing. So I came here right away. Everyone says if you need someone to find a missing person this is the place to do it.”
She smiles and puts 3 coins on the counter.
“And I have rest for you once you find him. Won’t you help me please?”
DC 12 Insight
Embarrassed she elaborates.
“I didn’t just clean his room. You see when I entered his room I saw he had some harlot from the night before. Well naturally I was astonished! I must have gone in to a rage because next thing I know that disgusting girl is fleeing the estate, tacky dress in hand with me shaking my fist and telling her that my son won’t be needing her or her kind again. Absolutely disgusting how those women prey on my son. I know he’s a famous soldier, but that does not mean you can seduce him to try and get to his money.”
With this she seems to have a look of anger on her face. She pauses and composes herself.
“But I digress. In my rage it seems I left every door in the house open and mittens just snuck right out. I don’t want my son finding out that I learned about his indiscretions, so I would appreciate if you all kept this between us. How does 10 more gold sound?”
She places two more on the table and smiles again
“the rest of these waiting for you if you can find the cat before my son is due home”
DC 20 Insight
She’s hiding even more “Ok, fine. She snaps. I might have done more than just yell at the girl. I hit her. Are you happy now? She’s just some whore from Slums I’m sure. Let her run to the guard. I’m a noble and she’s gutter trash.”
DC 25 Insight
Will show she’s hiding even more Exasperated she finally says
“Look, I didn’t want to have to resort to this. But if you can just do this simple task for me, I’ll ask my son about finding you more consistent work. You look like you need it.”
“And I don’t need to remind you that as a vi’Tite my word holds much more sway than yours ever will. You do this discreetly and quickly I’ll get you your gold and connections. But know if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone I will ruin you in this Town. Every noble family has their secrets and I am going to be keeping mine.”
Part II - The Hunt
Following her directions you arrive behind what can best be described as an estate right in the middle of Crucible. You look at the skyline to where Rhelara’s Tower used to loom over the city before the revolution. She would have been able to watch every noble in the city from her tower. No wonder they all cowed to her whims. You knock on the door as instructed and a female dwarf wearing an apron answers the door. This is Tasha, the head servant of the vi’Tite family.
“Miss Edna says I was to be expecting you, right this way to Galens room if ya please.”
She leads you through lavishly decorated corridors before finally arriving in a room the size of the tavern at Hearth away from Home. A four poster bed sits in one corner with a dresser and full length mirror. You see many signs of someone spending a lot of time in this room. Though with its size, that’s not too astonishing. You see a desk with many books on it, a journal open in the center. There seem to be training dummies, showing sign of much use as well as a mannequin that looks to hold armor while its not being used.
“Miss Edna says you’re to be allowed in any part of the house excepting her room while looking for mittens. Just call or ring the bell if ya need me, I can hear it anywhere in the house.” She says gesturing to a small silver bell on a table near the door.
Investigating the room
No Check:
There is cat hair everywhere as well as a reasonable cat tree set up that seems to span the whole room. This cat was well loved.
Galen has been keeping a daily journal, the last entry is dated for yesterday, it seems he writes them in the evening before bed.
DC 14 Perception
This “harlot” seems to have left some of her clothes behind. You can see a cardigan peeking out of the bottom dresser drawer. Looking the drawer you can just see several changes of woman’s clothing inside. Some of it seems to have been laundered recently.
One of the rugs seems to have been moved awkwardly and rather recently, lifting it up you can see some dark stains on the wood, still wet. Obviously blood, and not a trivial amount of it either.
DC 14 Investigation
You notice on the cat tree several deep indents and looking more closely you can see blood speckled inside them. It looks like someone grabbed on to this hard, and then was yanked away so hard that it cut their hands.
DC 14 Nature|Survival
There is a large cat urine stain. Smelling it however it smells off. This was released in fear, in an effort to fend off some predator.
DC 14 Survival
Looking at the floor there seem to be a large wide swath, as if a large cloth covered object was dragged, likely a body.
DC 14 History
Looking at the décor, you realize that the rug covering the bloodstain is not from this room, whatever rug used to be here, if any, is missing.
A DC 18 survival check or two successful DC 14 survival checks before three failures is enough to determine where the body was dragged to. Following the tracks leads them to Edna’s door. If they were successful they are not surprised when the doors burst open and the Capturing Force is there. If they failed, check for surprise assuming the cultists have a 13 for their stealth check.
As the party comes to realize something more sinister went down they might try to leave. Edna however has all the doors in the house locked. Most doors are hard to open however, requiring a DC 20 thieves’ tools or DC 18 strength check to pick or break respectively. After one failure they can hear footsteps coming down the hallway. After two failures the Capturing Force is here, and you can simply run that encounter.
If the party successfully leaves, an elven gardener will find them with a message from Tasha. She seems to be worried about how angry Edna is, and is growing worried about what exactly happened to Ruth. She begs the party to return to manor to search.
When the party comes back progress to Part III. However in this case the party is entering the secret chamber to rescue Ruth, Mittens, and now Tasha. Some of the capturing force is converted in to zombies for the final encounter.
The Capturing Force
If the party tries to leave, tries to follow the place where the body went off to, or otherwise takes a long time, Edna will try and capture the PCs to finish her dark ritual. Edna (Cult Leader) will be there with 2 X PC Cultists. They will spend the first round trying to grapple and tie up player characters. Edna will attempt hold person, first on any female party, then on any PC who looks the most threatening. One everyone is subdued, they will put bags over their head. If any cultist dies, they will switch to attacking the PCs, to try and subdue them faster, not caring if any damage happens. When a PC goes down they will attempt to stabilize them after a round.
If they are successful in defeating all the cultists, a look around the room will reveal a false wall in the closet that leads down to the lower chamber. In this case if any cultists died, the ritual completes as they are ready to leave the chamber, once they reach the threshold of the hallway. If they managed to subdue every cultists without killing any, then award them a bonus 400 xp each in addition to XP as if they defeated the ritual encounter.
Part III - Ritual
The PCs wake bound and gagged (DC 10 dexterity, sleight of hand to spit out). They are tied in a chain-gang style with a young lady who appears to be beaten and scratched. Inside a cage on the ground is a terrified looking cat with bloody paws. They should be given the effects of a short rest, as it has been ~2 hours.
They are in a dimly lit chamber. They are in the back end of a cul-de-sac roughly 20 feet in radius. It leads to a narrow four foot wide passage way that goes for 40 feet with torches at the base of stairs that go up steeply.
As the party awakes they can hear grumbling as many cultists head down the passageway and begin to leave. Once they are gone Edna cackles “Hahaha, they didn’t actually have to leave, but the three of us did all the real work for this ritual, why should they get to share in our newfound fortune?” She laughs a wicked laugh and the other two join in. Then they begin chanting.
The girl is of course Ruth and the cat is Mittens. She can tell the party, once someone helps her with her gag, That Edna waited for Galen to leave before storming in to the room with two cultists and attacked her. Edna got a few blows in before allowing the others to subdue her. Once the attack started Mittens leapt to Ruth’s defense and Edna, enraged beat the cat and decided to add it to her ritual. Mostly out of spite, as Ruth + the PCs are more than enough to complete the instructions she was given.
Ruth thinks Edna read Galens journal and learned about his plan to renounce his noble title and elope with her.
The party should have little trouble escaping, Edna not understanding that mercenaries are more dangerous than young women only took the PCs largest weapons. Any daggers or small things would still be on them. Not only that but they left all the rest of the weapons in a pile a mere 5 feet away. They didn’t even properly remove any arcane foci, though they did make sure to remove holy symbols, the instructions on those were clear.
The party should be able to surprise their captors. The three cultists have disadvantage on perception because of their focus on the ritual.
If the PCs dawdle too long (1 hour of in game time) the ritual completes, have the Night Demon emerge from Edna’s corpse and the cultists are too terrified to act.
Part IV - Demon
No matter how the ritual completes it spawns a Night Demon (Use shadow mastiff stats). The altar they were performing the ritual on has a small collection of candles shedding light in a 5ft radius, and dim light for 10 feet beyond that. Once the demon spawns all the lights go out leaving the area pitch black.
Part V - Aftermath
With the demon defeated or never summoned the party can take their time investigating. They key thing they find is the ritual instructions. A quick DC 13 investigation check or 10 minutes of careful study reveal that this is, in effect, a form letter. The reasons for the ritual and the results seem to have been printed on this after the ritual instructions were printed on here. Madlibs style. This claims to be a ritual to bring great fortune on you and your progeny.
There are still some cultists out there (Probably) and who knows how they will react to this news
Someone is giving crazy people rituals to perform for their own dark end. This is exactly why no one likes mages. But who is it, and what else have they done? More importantly who will pay you to stop it.
Galen and Ruth will eventually marry and Galen take over his family estate with some reservation. He can become a primary quest giver for the PCs if they want to investigate this matter further. He might also open up to them about his time in the grass colonies now that they have undergone something horrifying too.