This time, we were hired by the dwarf Samphith Goldenbeard to steal a tiara belonging to his ancestor, a dwarven queen. Nevermind that he was right in the process of stealing it when his partner, the elf Nixylanna Vidorant, decided to abscond with the treasure, leaving the dwarf to be caught. Those damn white surface elves! What can you expect from them. We met the dwarf in a tavern but he gave us literally zero useful intel besides the location of Nixylanna's warehouse where the tiara is kept. Rumors also turned up nothing. Thus, we decided to scout out the place. After finding out that 6 guards are exchanged every 6 hours or so, we decided to get town guard uniforms, and knock on the front door, asking for the protection money we were owed. The guards did not want to entreat with us, so I shot the man in the doorway in the face, and we rushed in. We took the guy at gunpoint, and he lead us all through the facility, beginning to end.
But not before Grog the barbarian decided to open a safe with his crowbar, releasing a hold person spell trap.
While Thaldohr and myself were thus paralyzed, Grog and Silver fought two guards attacking from the adjacent room. Grog decided to close the door on them.
We moved through the facility, with me locking every door behind us. The guards rallied and started breaking down the doors.
We moved into a trap room with two fire spewing statues; Grog and Thaldohr broke them down. Then into an armory guarded by two animated armors, which we destroyed and looted some presumably precious weapons.
We moved through a room with holding pens; I decided to release a displacer beast, entice it not to attack me with a capybara, and lock the door behind me. The guards were not amused, but took two turns to kill the animal.
Next up, a library of some sort. We used the two turns mentioned above to loot everything looking the least bit valuable.
The last room on the ground floor was a spiked pit with an illusory bridge across. Thanks Silver for throwing a book into the illusion! Just as he was prepared to jump across, a shove from an invisible being pushed him into the pit. We fought the invisible elemental and killed it, then jumped across/walked across the walls/took the captive guard in the bag of holding.
On the floor above, we found ornate living quarters. We looted perfume, women's clothes and such. This Vidorant fellow looks to be popular with the ladies.
And then, into the safe rooms. I opened every safe, and we all rolled well on CON saves, so the poison gas had no effect. We looted a lot of gold. Across the corridor, a bunch of artefacts, including the diadem, were kept under glass domes. We took everything; alarms sounded, but at this point we didn't care.
By the time we finished looting, Vidorant had arrived and turned out to be a woman. The dwarf's briefing was totally useless indeed. She offered to negotiate, and offered us rewards and magic items in return for the diadem. That was obviously a no-go. I locked the office door, the guards shot at me, and combat was on. I gave us a free turn by enveloping the room in darkness; this allowed us to kill a guard and Vidorant as well. She ran into the corner, but Grog ran after her and beat her to death with a giant mace. Good riddance.
The remaining guards broke down the door, but I tanked them all, finally getting knocked out by their last attack.
I discovered a great hack after getting healed. By drinking a potion of etherealness and then shooting shadow bolts from the ethereal realm, I was invulnerable. I just used my movement to dance through the guards, but they ignored me and tried to gang up on Grog first, then Silver. They slowly died.
By the time they surrendered, it was already too late for them. Thaldor decided to execute them, at which point they reached for their weapons, and we cut them down. Including the poor fool who had surrendered in the first combat. Oh well.
I quickly ran through the mansion while still being ethereal, and discovered more treasure rooms. Once the effect wore off, we opened the safes, to find all sorts of documents, including one of interest to our quest giver.
The potion room contained a bucketload of acid vials; a couple broke and drenched me, but I recovered the rest.
Finally, I broke into the gem room, and immediately fell into a poisoned stake pit trap. Thaldor climbed down a rope to save me, but fell as well. Fortunately, we recovered and took everything that seemed of value. And then everything that didn't seem of value, just to be sure.
We went our merry way before the next shift of guards arrived. Our first stop was the Golden Vault safehouse for some r&r, and we counted the huge amount of gold and treasures we obtained.
The next day, we met our quest giver and handed over the diadem, in exchange for a hefty reward. Then blackmailed him into doubling the reward in exchange for the documents we obtained.
While not receiving the best possible rating for the mission, given the massacre we enacted, more than doubling our financial assets compensated nicely.
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