Chapter 1: A Friend in Need

Stitches finds the genasi and leads him over to the chest. Pulling an arrow from his quiver, he holds it like a wand and points a few times at the chest and pillar. "Say, I could use your help," comes Volo's voice from his beak.

Now that the initial excitement has died down Butler leans against the wall where the goblins are situated and keeps an eye on them whilst the rest of the party finish scouting round the hideout.

The four goblins look upon Alastriona with awe, awaiting her command.

After using the wand, Vatra reveals a faint glow between the body if the chest and it's hinged lid. It smells of abjuration magic.

When the wand glows, Stitches jumps back, waiting for something bad to happen. When nothing does, he approaches carefully and peers at the chest, scratching his head. After a moment, he runs off back up the hall and grabs one of the goblin prisoners by the arm. He looks up at Alastriona and motions with his head back the way he came, then leads the goblin by the hand back to room with the pillar.

He points at the chest. "Darling, get that for me, will you?" he says in Prince's voice.

Alastriona follows, curiosity in her eyes.

As she enters the room with the pillar, she looks between Stitches, the goblin, and the chest. With a shrug, she goes to open the chest.

The chosen goblin, Zwei, is hesitant to open the chest and is relieved when Alastriona takes on the job. She watches with admiration as Alastriona opens the lid smoothly. The spell triggers, and a loud ringing fills the halls of this dungeon for a dozen heartbeats.

Looking inside the chest, Alastriona sees a rack of poisonous darts set in a sophisticated firing mechanism. Thankfully they remain in their rack due to Stitches' skills.

At the bottom of the chest is are three silver trade bars worth 100gp each and cloth bag with a note attached. Breaking the wax seal, the note reads:
The unbroken seal implies that the note was likely never sent.

Inside the cloth bag is the head of human male with a huge, golden nose ring; an ornate but broken locket; and a dead flying snake impaled with a black-fletched arrow, the same kind the Xanathar's Kenku used. Strapped to the snake's body is a small message case which contains the following missive:

Alastriona covers her ears as the ringing hammers throughout the room. When silence returns, she looks inside the chest to recover the items. She doesn't blink an eye at the dismembered head, only wrapping it back up with solemn gravitas after she takes the locket. She confiscates the notes and trade bars, and leaves only the poison dart trap inside the chest.

She looks between Zwei and Stitches silently, then tilts her head towards the rest of the party as an indication they should return. Without looking back, Alastriona walks over to Xelia and Prince, and hands over the two notes.

As everyone looks over the note, Alastriona steps back to inspect the locket.

Butler keeps leaning against the wall as the rest of the search goes on, idly fiddling with the eye like bauble he picked up off the floor. After a while he turns to regard Floon "You doing ok with all this? We should be heading out of here soon I think"

Stitches pulls his cloak down tightly over his head as the alarm begins to ring, but when nothing explodes he peeks into the chest. When Alastriona pulls out the trade bars, he capers with joy, hopping from one taloned foot to the other. He grabs one of the silver bars and is almost toppled by its weight, so he gingerly shoves it back into the bag.

He jumps with a start when the paladin pulls the head from another sack, though he eventually pokes it with a single claw to make sure it's dead. After examining the insides of the chest for any irregularities, he carefully removes the rack of darts and rolls them in a cloth for later.

On the way back to join the others who are reading the notes, he pauses by one of the cells, which is mysteriously bare, steps in, and takes a look around.

Alastriona easily carries both trade bars and severed head in their respective bags, using her strength to bear the added weight. Having turned over the notes to the party leaders, she spends her times looking over and inspecting the broken locket.

The eye-like bauble is now broken in two, but it still gives Butler a bit of a shock. Is there still some remnant magic within? Floon responds to Butler's query cheerfully. "Yeah, I'm okay, thanks for asking! My name's Floon by the way. Floon Blagmaar. So, um, who are you guys? Are you, like, Force Grey agents? You don't look like the Watch, anyway."

Meanwhile, Stitches obtains 5 darts from the trapped chest. The mechanism brushes poison over the darts' tips as the lid is opened, which is drip-fed from a half-full vial of poison, so the darts will only be poisonous for another 10 minutes or so. However, it is easy enough to remove the vial of poison, which contains 3 more uses. Taking off your Goggles of Night, you can see the poison is a sickly green-yellow hue.

Stitches also discovers a loose flagstone in Q8. Prying it loose, he finds a rough-hewn tunnel below that looks like it's been cut through the bedrock with pick-axes and braced with timbers. It goes on a way north and abruptly ends directly below another loose flagstone that presumably leads into a different room.

Also, Alastriona examines the locket. It is fairly large and decorated in gold with lapis lazuli inlays. Within lies a torn picture of a beautiful young noblewoman, and behind it is a secret compartment that has been forced open, big enough to store a marble. When Floon sees the locket, Floon chirps up. "Oh hey! My locket! You found it! It was a gift from someone very special to me."

Alastriona looks at Floon quizzically, her eyes full of wariness as the nobleman seems to be speaking directly to her. Following his gaze to the locket in her hand, Alastriona takes a few awkward seconds in silence, as though piecing together Floon's interest and body language.

Finally, she holds out the locket to Floon to turn it over.

After removing the first flagstone, Stitches calls out, "The access tunnel is down by the..." in an Orcish accent. Since the original thought was left unfinished, his voice also trails off. Without waiting for a response, he begins exploring, moving down the tunnel until he comes to the next flagstone. He pushes it carefully, hoping to move it quietly to see what lies behind it.

Butler watches the exchange between Floon and Alastriona with a faint smile on his face. "No, we're not Force Grey and we're definitely not the Watch. Consider us friends of a friend....that friend being Volo"

"That ringing was no doubt meant to alert someone. We better make ourselves scarce."

"If this is your locket, Floon, then you know what was hidden in the secret compartment? This Eye?"

Stitches lifts the heavy flagstone from below and spies a clean, unoccupied cellar full of extensive brewing supplies and equipment, several barrels of ale, and a set of stairs the lead upward to a door. The barrels are labelled as different kinds of beer by the Peabody company, including a familiar "Peabody Session Ale" label.Floon is relieved to hear Butler mention Volo's name and praises his friend. Upon seeing the locket, he exclaims "Renaer! Did you find him? Is he okay?" He goes on to explain that the locket was a gift from Renaer and the woman in the picture is Renaer's deceased mother. He claims to have had no idea about the secret compartment or any Eye. "I wouldn't be surprised if Renaer had no idea either! He's spent his much of his life trying to untangle himself from his father's schemes but he can't ever seem to get free of him."

Butler nods "Renaer's fine, think he'll be glad to know you're ok too." he turns to Prince "Agreed, I'm going to head and keep an eye on the way out of here, will shout up if anyone is trying to sneak up on us."

Alastriona gives the locket back to Floon without question or comment.

She turns to the four goblins, gives them a once-over, then tips her head in a Follow Me gesture. She walks after Butler, heading for the main tunnel by way of the not-so-secret door to take the passage east and back to where the party encountered the gazer.

"Looks like we're done poking around. Let's away! Back to the surface with its broken promises and shattered dreams!"

After waiting a moment at the top of the stairs to listen carefully, Stitches' curiosity gets the best of him. He cracks open the door quietly and peeks through to see if he is, as he suspects, in the basement of the Skewered Dragon.