Summary – Part 2

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Hell's Rebels. Summary of the intelligence reports. Part two of four.

♪ Fanfare “Ave Barzillai”

Intelligence report of House Thrune. Classified. Part Two. Continued surveillance of those five elements calling themselves the Silver Ravens. A grand-sounding name. Grander than the reality.

Our last report established: Five agitators had become an organization. A hideout in the Wasp Nest beneath the Coffeehouse. A renegade order at their side. And a new base in their sights, the sealed Lucky Bones casino. His Excellency, Paracount Barzillai Thrune, ordered the reins tightened. At the time, the matter merited no more attention than that.

What follows is the report of a fall and winter full of betrayal. Within the gang. And against us.

A Traitor Among Traitors

First, the betrayal within their own ranks. Our faithful harrower Zella Zidlii had bound Element L with a spell and made him an informant. He had already left four reports on the gang for us. Thorough reports, incidentally. More thorough than those of some of our own people. The others saw through it and put him in chains until the spell wore off.

Then they hunted the Temple Hill Slasher. A limping clockmaker, Varl Wex, to whom our Zella had given a whispering blade, the kukri Balgorrah, that he might murder. They cornered him on the rooftops of Old Kintargo.

During the fight, Element Q killed two defenseless Queensmen. In cold blood. This nearly split the gang. The slip withdrew from their company. As predicted. A rift we will remember.

The Compass

But they mended the rift. They debated a code they called their compass. They agreed on only one sentence: When in doubt, choose life. A moral code. From people who had just murdered two Queensmen.

Then they formed an alliance with Cassius Sargaeta, captain of the Scourge of Belial, a galleon of our own navy. In payment, they freed a prisoner from the Aulorian estate, where his own father was holding him, and killed the three-headed hell hound Gorefangs. The freed prisoner was Marquel, brother of Element V. And Marquel, as we finally learned, is Poison Pen. That satirist whose verses the Paracount never deigned to answer.

Cassius had promised them six favors, one for each shard of a broken cup. With the first, they freed the tengu pirate Leejoy. Another mercenary for their cause. The list grows longer.

The Pastry Chef

Their new headquarters, the Lucky Bones, was no empty house. Its cellars housed the handmaidens of the infernal queen Mahathallah. Changeling witches who intended to sacrifice twins.

The elements broke in, overcame a faceless stalker and a bearded devil, and rescued the children. Then they unmasked the cult's leader. It was Luculla. The city's popular pastry chef. Beneath her eyepatch she concealed a hag's eye. She bled to death in her own temple chamber.

The agitators could not even control their own underworld. And yet they cleaned it up. One might almost have rewarded them for it.

Beneath the City

Deeper beneath the casino lay the old territory of the Gray Spiders thieves' guild. The elements looted it and found an encrypted pamphlet, the bound ghost of an old slip guildmistress, and the property deeds of a certain Molly Mayapple. A slip's papers. We attached no value to them.

Here our Zella Zidlii struck a second time. She overpowered Element L, cursed him, and took his blade. She, at least, did her duty.

Then the Paracount ventured a public appearance. From the opera house balcony, Barzillai Thrune intended to present the gang with gifts and thereby humiliate them. It failed. The rebels did not touch the gifts, and the rabble struck up a song. About a raven in flight.

♪ Refrain “Raven Fly”

His Grace withdrew. I report it only because I must report it.

In the flooded depths beneath the casino, they finally confronted a drowning devil, Shurshoggoth, and freed captive aquatic elves led by a certain Aava. They came from a distant village, Acisazi, and begged for help against an aboleth necromancer.

The Silver Council

Now the agitators began behaving like a government. They founded a council, the Silver Council, in Humbright House. A council. As if they had anything to deliberate.

From the teacher Mialari Docur, they heard of an old document. The infernal Kintargo Contract, an addendum to the pact with Cheliax, on which House Thrune's claim to rule supposedly rests. Jackdaw, founder of the old Ravens, was said to have seized it during the civil war. It supposedly stated that part of the pact had never applied in Kintargo. Legal nonsense, devised by two old rebel women. Nevertheless, this lead is to be pursued with the utmost vigor.

They sailed down the coast aboard the Scourge of Belial. They covered the final stretch to Acisazi on foot, along a hidden path by the cliffs.

The Village of Acisazi

The aboleth Menotheguro was a master of illusions. He appeared before them as a dying aquatic elf woman and hid behind phantasms. Only when Element C saw through the deception did he fall. And when Element G destroyed the heart rune of his ritual apparatus, the curse upon the village broke.

Acisazi was freed and pledged its aid to the Silver Ravens. And Element V learned that the village warden Nerrenn is his biological father. Sentimental family ties. Of no relevance to us.

Back in Kintargo, they won over their first noble. Baroness Belcara Jarvis joined them. A certain Canton Jhaltero demanded that they clear his goblin-infested quarry. They did. They slaughtered the goblins.

The City of Vyre

Their ambition now knew no bounds. They won over Archbaroness Eldonna Aulamaxa and the coarse Sendi Vashnarstill. Then they sailed to the City of Masks. To Vyre.

There they were received by an old acquaintance of Element L. Molly Mayapple, the very slip whose deeds they had found beneath the casino. For the return of her deeds, she paid in platinum and promised them every assistance. So this is how rebels buy friends. With other people's paper.

They courted one of Vyre's five queens. The Queen of Delights, Manticce Kaleekii. At a grotesque banquet in Cobweb Manor, under the eyes of flesh golems in servants' livery, Element C impressed the Queen the most with her etiquette. The Queen of Delights assured the agitators of her support.

A rebel gang dining with queens. Imagine that.

Assessment

Let us summarize. The gang has purged its own underworld, freed a distant village, founded a council, and forged alliances. With a captain of our own navy. With nobles. With a queen of Vyre.

The threat level of the Silver Ravens is to be raised once again. From serious to high.

May His Illustrious Excellency forgive us this unwelcome news. The files are to be updated. For the Queen. For House Thrune.