It is about 6 am. It is still dark outside, but PCs got their night of rest. Lor hears a knock the door, so she answers. It is Izzy. He says Grub has fallen asleep during his watch, and he has come to warn the PCs. He tells Lor that he is an investigator from Las Verisa who have come to check out Gerard. He's been eavesdropping and gathering info all night, and he learned that Gerard and his men are planning to draw out Avina to the back and kidnap her. Izzy suggests that the PCs follow Avina out and confront the ex-convicts. Izzy individually warns each PC, except Avina. Lor goes to the window and notices that it is still drizzling. She hears someone coming up the stairs. Grub gets woken up by the sound, and notices Lor standing at the windowsill. He tells her to get back inside her room, and Lor does.
Gerard comes up the stairway, knocks on Avina's room, and lets her know that the authorities have arrived, and they have a couple of questions for her. Avina follows Gerard out, along with Grub. PCs then exit their rooms and follow them. Outside, there are no authorities. Instead, Avina ran into the group of ex-convict staff wielding weapons. Gerard tells them to not to overdo it, and steps inside. Avina prepares to fight, and is glad to see her party stumble out of the stairway and join her in combat. No Two opens with glitterdust to blind two ex-cons, while Kat rushes forward to chop one of the staff's head off. The staff were overpowered quickly, and the last surviving member, Grub, throws down his weapons and surrenders. Then, they hear a scream come from inside the inn. Avina tries to get in, but found the door locked. She shoots at the lock, but it holds. Lor gets the lock open with a natural 20, and they rush inside. They found Gerard, lying in a pool of blood, with his legs cut off. Standing over him, is Izzy, holding the two legs still wearing boots. Izzy taunts, "I'll be sure to get these boots to their rightful owner,
Marion
." And he vanishes. No Two cast detect magic to realize that Izzy has turned invisible, and casts glitterdust to reveal him, but it was too late. He has already gotten away, but everyone in the room got their mouthful of glitter.Gerard's body begins to shift and change into a body of a young changeling girl. Kel comes in to stabilize her, and she wakes up. She looks around and begins to cry. She explained that her name is Marion, and she has two older siblings, Halle and Gray. They are not siblings by blood, but as changelings, they had a rough past, and they decided to look out for one another. One day, Gray got hurt badly while they were being chased by an angry mob. His lungs were damaged, and they couldn't afford a doctor, so Halle asked an infamous pirate, Tuhin, for help. Tuhin had found an artifact earlier, called the Oceanic Heart. It allows the user to survive without breathing, and Tuhin has been using it to explore the sea beds. Tuhin agrees, on the condition that Halle and Gray work for him.
Tuhin's been meaning to make a raid on Las Verisa's rich warehouses for awhile, but its dock guards are strong and well-trained. He decided that he needed a diversion, and gave that task to Halle. Halle gathered information on the city's denizens, and realized that the Lunagards were away on a faraway business trip, and their only daughter, Avina, was gone to a boarding school. Halle pretended to be Avina and took over the Lunagard finances, and used the cash to begin fueling her plans. She used part of the Lunagard money to set up an inn in the Bessel Woods, and sent her younger sister Marion there in charge. She wanted to keep an eye out in case real Avina decided to return, and she wanted to keep Marion out of harm's way away from the city. When Marion realized that real Avina has returned, she tried to rough her up and detain her in the basement of the inn, but the PCs proved to be too strong, and her men were defeated. While she was distracted watching the fight, Izzy snuck up behind her and put her down, then cut off her legs, along with the boots. Marion's plans have been blown to bits, and she lost her legs. She wanted to keep real Avina away from the city to prevent Halle's plans from getting ruined, but she failed.
Marion asks Avina if she would stay away from the city anyways, but Avina refuses. Then, Marion asks the PCs to get her to a friend of hers in the city. His name is Pinay, and he runs a curio shop. He is a trustworthy person, if somewhat paranoid. Marion believes that he will be able to get her mechanical legs and help her. PCs agreed. PCs also went ahead and looted the body of the rich merchant upstairs. Avina leaves the inn in care of Grub, and the party heads into the city of Las Verisa.
