Having met at the The Silent Maid at the bequest of Geroff Nisjal, a high placed member of the Thieves Guild in the Smoke Ward, our group of five, each for their own personal reasons, have taken the assignment to rid the Smoke Ward of one nefarious Beggar-King. Geroff has agreed to pay the party 1000gp total for their services. 200gp up front and the other 800gp for the head or proof of the Beggar King's demise.
Geroff - Apparently the Beggar King's men are out of hand. Even for the Beggar King underlings, not known for their discipline, their recent activities have been just random at best and suicidal at worst! Plus, there are too many reports to be ignored that something much more foul than just a lack of discipline is infesting the Beggar Kings dealings. For one, it is said Old Mother Zeb’oltha is now in his service, plus there are too many words to be ignored that the Beggar King has uncovered some kind of dark power to aid him. There is a dark cloud hanging over Smoke and even for a wretched place such as Smoke the citizens are on edge. Either way the time for the Beggar King has come to an end.
Basic known motivations:
Shadwin - Good for a big haul, how could he refuse. This is the big one!
Meera - Aleana has seemed to have taken an interest in the on goings of this Beggar King and something foul he might have uncovered. She has decided this would be a good mission for her young acolyte
Meera to investigate, but she won't be going alone.
Marius - Sent north to Punjar by his mentor Marketh to seek his fate with a scroll to deliver. Marketh seems to have offered
Marius' sword in to service for one Aleana of the Temple of Valdreth, apparently an old and trusted friend of Marketh. If Marketh trusts this Aleana, then
Marius will do the same, for now. His first assignment: Protect a young acolyte named
Meera in her investigation of some kind of foul doings in some miserable cesspool called the Smoke Ward.
Jeval - Another job, seems easy enough, but with Shadwin involved I have to be careful, but really what could possibly go wrong?
Fenrir - Finally, something with a payout that might be worth my time!
Rumors and Gathered Information:
Doing some investigating has come up with the following additional bits of information:
1.
Finris the Blind - "I hear tell the Beggar-King is looking to hire a few good swords to his cause. Must have a king’s ransom, for the purses he’s offering to mercenaries. ‘Course, what good is gold if you don’t live long enough to spend it?"
2.
Aleana- Stories hold that somewhere in the rat’s nest of tenements is a fountain dedicated to ancient evil gods. Dark, forbidding thing, where warlocks used to meet to work their wicked rites in days of yore. I hear by some of my sources the Beggar King has woken powers best left alone.
3.
Crazed Street Woman - ‘Ware the smoke lurking over the Beggar-King’s lair. I’ve seen it take a man and reduce him to nothing but bones and gristle in the time it took me to tell you as much! Stay low and stick to the cobbles and you should be safe, but avoid the slate-road at all costs!
4.
Geroff- I’ve heard tell that Old Mother Zeb’oltha herself answered the Beggar-King’s call for allies. Mother Zeb’oltha is a nasty one, a demonblooded black sorceress, who ain’t above using folks for spell components, if you get my drift. You’ll know her by the eunuch bodyguards she keeps, but by then it’s usually too late.
5.
Smoke Ward Street Folk - Truth of the matter is, the beggars are all dead. Their boss sacrificed his kin weeks ago; all to earn the patronage of some fell power. Don’t know if it worked, but it seems a beggar’s soul ought to be worth as much as any other.
6.
Maleek - Before the Beggar-King took hold, there was a band of slavers that worked out of the same dilapidated slums. The slavers shipped their vile cargo out of the ward via an underground channel. The old network of caves and tunnels should still exist. Wasn’t so long ago when the slavers preyed on us common folks, was it?
