Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Part 3: Gangland | Starter Kit - Advanced D&D

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Despite the danger, the Inquisitors search for leads in the Thieves’ Quarter, where family connections and old-fashioned street smarts prove invaluable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We have to follow it. I can talk to rats. Big worm, with worms on face. That's what we're looking for. Welcome back to your starter kit. I'm David Nett, your dungeon master for this D&D adventure. When interacting with non-player characters in Dungeons & Dragons, we mostly role play, speaking as our characters.

But sometimes you need to force the interaction to get something you want. And that's where the character's social skills come in. We find ourselves in your police precinct. police precinct. You've spent the last few hours since Smiles left to the office, drawing more clues on the board, diagramming things, talking to each other. Do we think that there was only one carrion caller, maybe that there were two? Why are these two guilds or two gangs found together in the same place? During this time of kind of conversation and theorizing, your brains are working, but your bodies are resting. So I'm going to call this period a short rest. Now there are two

kinds of rests in the game. We have short rest and long rest. A long rest is, eight hours of rest and sleep. And when you take a long rest, you get all of your hit points back, you get all of your spells back. Basically, it's a kind of a reset for your character more or less. A short rest has somewhat different parameters around it. During a short rest, some of your powers might come back. Your wild-shaped power, for instance, your martial powers. Those things come back with just a short rest. But the other thing is you can do some healing during a short rest. Your body is resting and recovering just like it would be from any exertion that you make. And so you can spend some of your hit dice and you can recover some hit points.

Not probably all of them if you've taken terrible damage, but you can heal a little bit. I don't think anybody took damage last time except for, yeah, except for igneous. I took, yeah, I took about five points of damage last time. Okay, so you're rested a little bit now. Do you want to do some healing during this short rest, some self-healing? I mean, I do want to do some healing. We do have, I have healing word as one of my spells. So healing word is a spell that you can cast.

you know, spells are resource limited. You can cast it during combat. People have fallen or if they take a lot of damage. If you want to cast those spells now, you can, but if you want to hold on to them, in case something else happens and you need them, you might use this personally. Yeah.

In case, a carrying crawler smashes through the police station. Just in a case. Don't give an idea. This point anyone of us could be a carrier. You're right. You don't know. We could be infected. Oh, no. Oh, that's bad.

So, yeah, I think I'll... Hey. This is bad. This is... Let's heal you. Let's heal. Let's feel. So the way that this works then is you're going to find your hit dice and that's kind of

in the center of your sheet, down below your hit points and it should say 5D8 for you. That means your fifth level, so you have five. And a D8, that's the hit die that you roll as a druid. Some people will have D6s, some people will have D10s, you have a D8. Got it. So you can roll up to five of those. You can do them one of the time, see how many points you're getting back and you can choose to stop whenever you want to. So how many hit points are you down?

I'm down about five, so... Okay, so let's roll that first D8. I'm going to roll on D8. and got a three. Now you can add your constitution bonus to this. Yeah, but I don't have a constitution bonus. Okay, so that's three hit points you get back. Three points back.

You spend one hit dice. You're going to mark that down where you've got your hit dice, and you're going to add three hit points back to your... Now, you can only ever heal back to your maximum. So the place where you started the game is the highest. You can go when you get a new level, you can get more hit points, but you can only ever heal back to that maximum you started with today. How do you get hit dice back?

How do you replenish that? So when you take a long rest, you're going to get some of your hit dice back. Hit dice are a little bit different from your hit points. you would get all your hit points back after you've slept eight hours. But for hit dice, you're only going to get up to half of those back. So you spent one now. You can get your level five, so you would get half rounded down. So you'll get two of those back.

You could get up to two of those back in a long rest. The one that you've spent, you definitely would get it back. Right. So if you want to spend another one, you can get... We'll spend another one because I'll be able to get that back. All right? Four. That's good.

So that brings me... Great. So it brings you back to where you have? Cool. Right back up. So you're fully healthy. Just from sitting around talking about all this stuff, your body has healed itself. After a few hours of conversing and theorizing, the door to the precinct opens.

The next shift has actually already come in. So the day shift, talking to you a little bit about your case. They're waiting to catch some cases. A couple of them get sent out right away. But about three hours into your investigation, smiles, opens the door and comes back in. And she's, as you always see her, you saw her leave three hours ago to go catch a little bit of rest. She comes back in, you see no difference in her. She looks, her glasses are down on her nose, and she's a little disheveled.

And she walks over to the board and looks at the things that you've drawn on since she last saw you and looked at each of you and says, excellent, excellent. I feel refreshed. How are you? Fantastic, fantastic. And then she looks at you and says, so tell me, tell me what's going on. Tell me what you've got. We went to investigate the reports of dead bodies that young crimson cloak. So it's Tam. His name was Tam. There were a number of bodies. There were two guards killed outside, seven inside,

torn apart in strange ways. Some stabbed, some with limbs missing. So the ones inside were guards as well? The ones inside were of two different thieving gangs. Oh, wow. Okay. The three rivers and the harpies. I've not heard of the rivers. They're apparently new.

New gang. Interesting. The harpies, of course, I know. Yes. But the rivers I hadn't heard of. Go on. Checking out other rooms, we found. another thief and in giving chase, he was apprehended,

and then a carrion crawler crawled out of his mouth. Oh my, yeah. And attacked us, we struck back, he fled, we gave chase, he ran down a sewer, we pursued, and there we lost him. Wow, wow, that is quite an incident. You've had a night. Yeah. We have.

Don't forget the rats. And then Ignes spoke to some rats. We talked to some rats. We had a nice chat with some rats. They told us they had never seen the carrion crawler before, but that they had seen humans like us, what a rats really know, head in the direction from which we came. Interesting, interesting.

So some humans had come through the sewers up to the mansion potentially. Captain, have you ever heard of a carrion crawler coming out of somebody like that before? I should say not. Do you believe that this creature inhabited the boy? Did the boy transform into this creature? Could you tell? It came out from him. It seemed to tear him apart.

He also seemed apologetic, so perhaps it had something to do with something he did, maybe invited the creature inside him or something. Interesting, certainly that's interesting. Yes, he definitely said, I'm sorry. Were there any leavings of the boy on the ground after the carrion crawler exited his body? Human confetti.

Not a great way to put it, yeah, yeah. So you guys actually, when you went back to the crime scene, you found clothes on the ground where the carrying crawler came out, but nothing else. Yeah. So what do you think? Why were these two thieves gangs here together? We deduced either they're working together

or they both found out the flagstaffes were out of town, arrived simultaneously, and attacked each other. That would be unfortunate. Yeah. Both scenarios actually. The guard bodies were stabbed. They were not harmed by the carrying crawler. So it would seem.

Attacked from behind a planned move. And one of the harpies had lock picks. So someone did break in. So they did, most likely the harpies broke in. Although if they were all murdered, which we don't know if any got away. We don't. It could have been isolated incidents.

Did you find any bloody footprints coming down the stairs or anything leaving the house? No. No, no. The blood trail ended at the servants' quarters where. Where we found the boy who. So if someone got over there. they didn't go on foot.

Well, thieves are naturally sneaky, so I'm not ruling that out. It's very, very well observed, well observed. Thank you, Suntk, thank you. I'm gonna take that and hold it. Fire you up all day. I think we might have to head to the thieves quarter tonight and questions and people.

Certainly, I mean, that seems like a good course of action, yes, but why wait till tonight? You're absolutely right, Captain. The day is young, the sun is shining. We're so fresh. We're fresh, and ready to pursue? Yep. So I guess the question is, do we?

go straight up and ask questions or do we try to go undercover? I look like under cover. So Captain Smiles, she says that you know as you know the Harpies are the premier gang in the Thieves Quarter. Their leader, Geralt, is a notorious figure. I mean and you guys all know you've heard of Geralt. Maybe except for you Narlaq you haven't had a lot of time because I am out of this world. Exactly. But everybody else has heard of Geralt. You know the leader of the Harpies, the Harpies are the sort of main main gang. There's lots of smaller gangs in the Thieves quarter, however, but the harpies are the top dogs. Absolutely. So she says that, you know, the leader, the leader Geralt is not

unknown to us. He may be a font of information. If you do encounter him, be wary. He is a slippery character. But I trust you to go and ask around, ask your questions. You know that we are not especially welcome in the Thieves quarter. Right. Does he careful? Geralt ever respond to favors or money perhaps for information? He is the head of a thieves guild. I would imagine that might be a good way to approach him. Should we go perhaps not in our uniforms? I think that wise.

Yeah. I think blending in as best we can is probably wisest. When my brother frequents the thieves den, he goes in disguise. So it's an interesting, it's interesting to say that because there's a handful of things that would go along with going incognito into the Thieves. thieves quarters. And the first would be the armor and weapons that you carry are not what regular

people carry. While it is a rough city and the thieves quarter especially rough, you'll see lots of daggers and maybe short swords and things there, staves certainly in clubs, magical long swords of fine make, shields, chain mail armor. Those are things you don't see very often outside of the city guard traipsing through the streets. It's not that it's illegal to wear those things. It's just not something you encounter. I mean, couldn't you hide chain mail under a... Chain mills, yeah, chain mail is a little bit easier. Somebody might detect it, but like a full suit of chain mail is hard to hide. Same with the shield and the sword.

Now, you've got magical armor that looks like clothing when you want it to, so it's easy for you to hide your armor. That's my armor of glamour, right? Yeah, that's your armor of glamour. That looks like, you can make it look like regular street clothes whenever you want to. And some of you don't wear really any armor at all. Your ring mail's pretty bulky. That's something you might want to leave behind.

So if you decided, if you wanted to go incognito, you have to think about what weapons am I carrying, what armor am I wearing as I go about this? knowing that the more weapons and armor you carry, you're going to get different reactions from people. So if you guys are heading to the Thieves Quarter, I'll start with you, and you're like, are you bringing your armor? Are you bringing your weapons?

My idea was that I would wear a cloak covering my strange head. Face has. I barely have a nose and I'm green running. Now, it's a huge city in this kind of magical realm. So while people probably haven't seen Gith in general, you look away from a lot of weird things in the street. There's lots of half-works and things like that. So, you know, seeing someone with a strange face

is not totally uncommon. But the big hood is probably a good idea. Are you going to wear your ringmail? Would that be pretty obvious, even if I had a big cloak on? Yeah, it's bulky. It's a couple of layers of, like, cloth and leather with metal rings on it. So, your ringmail, I think it gives you armor class 15. It says that beside your ring mail on your sheet down in your equipment.

Does it say armor class 15, 14? Oh, sorry, on your sheet there, the ring mail is actually... 14. Oh, because I do have a cloak of protection. You got cloak of protection. So you take the ring mail off, your armor class is gonna drop down to 10 plus one with your cloak of protection.

So just mark that somewhere that when you don't have your ring mail, your armor class is 11. And as far as weapons go, you've got your staff. You've got daggers and things, those are all easily concealed. Do you have anything that you're gonna leave behind? I mean, it's just a... An old man and a staff. Okay, fair.

So Denise, you've got your armor transforms into street clothes. That's easy to conceal. The longbow, which is decidedly not easy to conceal. conceal. However, seeing people with a bow on the street is not unheard of. It's just a little bit dicey. You could find a smaller range weapon if you wanted to, like a crossbow that you could conceal, but a long bow is your jam. So do you take that bow with you? I do, because I've, you know, I worked in that area. If you unstring that bow and just sort of carry it on your back, not like it's a weapon at ready, but like it's just something that you're carrying,

that's usually how you went about in the thieves quarter. It means that if you need to use it, you're gonna have to take an action to string it before it'll be ready for use. Okay. Now your short swords, your two short swords that you carry, those might be conspicuous. It's your call whether you wanna carry them. You've also got two daggers.

I'll just, I'll leave the short swords and I'll take the daggers. So just make a note that you're leaving the short swords behind. Around to Raviel, now you can, your weapon. Oh yeah, poof, you're gone. Because you're a warlock and you're a pact of the blade, you can dismiss your weapon to a different dimension and call it back to you when you need to.

So I will not take any. weapons. Okay. Just the flail in another dimension near you. Just the flail on another dimension that you're going to have to look real hard to find. And then I also have, this was a lucky invocation that I chose armor of shadows. I can cast mage armor at will whenever and it lasts for eight hours which will bring my armor class to 15 with my chain shirt at 17 but I will take the hit just to become super incognito.

Okay, so you take the change shirt off and cast mage armor now to the last eight hours. Yep. Great. So make sure you mark down your armor class now at the new armor class with the major armor. And it says it's 13 plus my decks modifier, so that makes it 15. Now, igneous, you don't have much. You've got leather armor. But that says under your robe's just fine. A lot of people in the quarter are going to have leather armor. And you've got a staff. A staff, a sickle in my sling, so I'm just going to bring it off. So everything is pretty low key for you. So you're going to be just like you are. Blender right in.

Now, Leona, you've got the problem. You're wearing full chain mail normally. You've got a big shield. I'm going to take my dagger with me. Okay. I'm going to take the weapons of my strength, dexterity, constitution, and challenge its wisdom and curriculum. There. So your armor class now, you take your chain mail off and you leave your shield behind,

your armor class will drop down to 10, plus your dexterity bonus. So your dexterity is a 14. You have plus two there, right? So your armor class is temporarily 12. Okay, so stripped of your gaudy armor taking away your cloaks at the end. Very attractive armor.

You're stylish but very visible armor. And you head down to the Thieves Quarter incognito. So let's move our miniatures down into the Thieves Quarter. So the Thieves Quarter's at the southern end of the city, right over there. We're just going to mark them there so that we know... Six quarters, exactly. The Free City of Greyhawk grew kind of organically. There was a lot of city planning in the beginning, so indeed there are six quarters.

This is called the... part of the city called the Old City, and it consists of... the thieves quarters and then also the slum quarters. So it used to be nice, but then other parts got gentrified and they moved down. Other parts were gentrified, that they built a wall between the old city and the newer city, and then another wall. So you head down to the thieves quarter, incognito as much as you can be. What are you guys going to try to do? Who are you going to try to talk to?

Try to find Garrett. Oh, do we... Gerald. Wait, sergeant, through your brother, is there a way to call forth a thief or to summon them in a meeting place and speak to them secretly. Can I ask my brother if he has any good connections? You happen to know your brother's on duty today. And he does, his patrol is the thieves quarter.

He's your younger brother and he's pretty low on the totem pole for the city guard now. And so he's probably on due. You want to try to find him? Yeah, let's talk to my brother. So you guys head into the thieves corridor you wander around a bit, ask a couple of guards that you see and they point you to your brother.

What's your brother's name? You have a thought? You want me to pull one out, it could either way. I'm like, Bob. It can be Bob. That's fine. Bobby is your little brother or Bob. Yeah, my little brother Bobby.

Bobby, all right? Bobby Amelcrown. A couple of the City Watch, they're able to point you. A couple of them, they're very impressed by you being there. Clearly they know Bobby, they've heard about you. So you ask around, but everybody's pretty impressed with you. They're polite. They give you a lot of help, and they direct you.

You manage to find Bobby. He's actually with his partner, and her name is Sarah, and they're sitting at lunch. So they're in their crimson cloak, your red cloak with black lining. They both have spears and short swords. short sorts. The spears leaned up against the wall, short shorts at the waist, and they're having lunch at a little cafe by the time that you get down there. It's like it's lunch time at this point. Well, some of us are working. How's your lunch, Bobby? He looks up kind of his mouth full of food and puts it down. Oh, oh, Leona. What are you doing down here?

Do you even heard anything about last night? Last night? What happened last night? There was a series of murders at a wealthy house in the other quarter. His partner, Sarah, leans back, and says, holy cow! And Bobby, you... Bobby kind of looks around, and you can see there's some patrons here at the, at the cafe, people milling about on the street. Nobody's paying much attention to you. You are blending in pretty well.

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Thief Guild members. Harpies and rivers. When you say rivers, he like pauses for a second. Are you sure rivers? They have the tattoo. They're a nothing game. Did they kill harpies? We're not sure who killed who.

There was also a carrion crawler. Whoa, whoa, whoa. A carrion crawler? One of the thieves became a carrion crawler, or it was living inside it. He sort of sits back and Sarah snickers a little bit and he looks at Sarah and gives her a glance. We saw it with our own eyes. And he says, look, he says to Sarah, look, if this were anyone, I agree with you. If this were anyone other than Leona, I would think that they're having a joke at our expense.

But Leona doesn't even have a sense of humor, much less a joke. How can I help? Well, we're hoping to get into the thieves quarter and talk to some people. Sure, anything that I can do. I mean, anybody I can connect you with, who are you looking to talk to, Some of the rivers. They'll be harder to find. There just aren't many of them. We'd like to start with Gerald. Possible.

You want to talk to the head of the harpies. In disguise. Okay, we can, I guess we can try. Bobby, have you heard of the harpies working with other gangs? Is that a thing? The harpies don't so much work with other gangs as if there's somebody that they want, they will consume another gang or drive them out of existence. That's definitely happened. They're the top dog down here.

The rivers, that whole gang is much. maybe a year old. They're, I mean, they're small time. Do you know how many of them there are? Of the rivers? A few dozen, maybe as many as 50, not very many. So they just lost a noticeable number of men. It seems that that's the case, yes. I'm not sure I can get you all the way to Geralt, but I have a contact that might be able to help you. Is that, I mean, that's the best that I can do. We'll take it. Okay. On the corner, and he kind of points down the street there, there's a little pond shop. The proprietor of the pawn shop, his name is Aldus.

He's one of my connections. I can go with you here or send you on your own. Either way is fine. Aldus knows lots of people here in the quarter, and he might be able to get you actually a meeting with Gerald potentially. He worked with the Harpies a lot, a lot of the goods that the Harpies steal move through Aldus.

Does he like you? What's not to like? I think at best we go from here incognito, not be seen with any crimson cloaks. Yeah. I understand, that's fair, but obviously. Okay. He says, yeah, so anything else I can do,

you can come find me. If you need help, do you guys need extra muscle on this mission? We have Leona, private. Fair, he says fair. Are you Eraviel? That's right. I've heard about you too. Have you?

Yes. The word is you're a fearsome fighter. That's exactly correct. I am glad that how the hell did you know that? Tell her more. Well, he says, I mean, you've broken up, you know, gangs down here before we've been in that position. When you were a member of the crimson cloaks, you were one of our best. That's what the teachers say.

Of course, you left us for the nerd squad, but while you were with us. I often refer to us as that as well. Yes, I was the reason that Norlock joined up actually watching me fight some bandits in these quarters, as we, as you know the story. you're the one who killed, what is it, 40 bandits? That's what I heard. At minimum 40. He laughs and Sarah laughs a little bit too and he says, yes, I have heard that story.

Yes, as you know, bandits often travel in groups of 40. They were brigands. There's a difference. It's a good laugh with you. You got a good rapport. He's a cute kid. You know, just throwing that out there.

I'm a good family. I don't know what your proclivities are, but, you know, he seems enamored of you. Yeah. I'm of that for Clivity. So yeah, I grab his hand and I say, may you be well and may you soon enter the realm of the nerd squad, and I just give him a wink and release, and I float away.

He moves his hand, and he seems pretty happy with himself. You and I just kind of whap him on the back of him. That definitely brings him down a notch again. I'd say, thanks, Bobby. So you guys head out of the shop. Do you go straight to the pawn shop that he pointed you to? Yeah, I think let's go talk about it. Okay, so you head on the street to the pawn shop.

It's a pretty seedy pawn shop. It's actually a pretty big building on the corner, but it's run down. You push through the door, there's a little bell that dings, and you can see there's everything in here from cheap junk to slightly more expensive to, you know, costume jewelry. There's some rusty weapons for sale. Again, it's not illegal to have a sword or anything in the city. They're just expensive. The stuff that you see here is you would expect it to fall apart the first time you smacked somebody, but maybe that's better for you if people are buying this.

if people are buying these kinds of weapons. Yes. And behind the desk, there's a sort of a shriveled, older man hunched over, looking at a couple of pieces of jewelry through a little eyeglass. And I say, are you all this? He looks up a little bit? Uh, yeah, who's asking?

Kind of looks around at you. You're looking to sell that bow? Not yet, but we are looking to buy. Excellent. We hear that some big score happened last night, actually, in the high-yed. quarter. We're just wondering if maybe that came through here. So right now this is a, I'm going to have you roll an interaction check with him. You're using deception right now, right? You're

trying to, you're talking to him, but you're lying a little bit about why you're here. To see if he's convinced, because he's a wily old coot, we're going to use one of your three social skills. You have three main social skills that you can use to push conversations to the next level, extract information, find things out. They are persuasion. And that's basically you're going to try to tell somebody, help have somebody do something that is in their character that they might have done anyway, but you want to persuade them to do it. You've got deception, which is what you're doing, which is you're trying to convince someone of a story that's not true, and then you've got intimidate, which is, I'm going

to make you do something I want to do because I'm bigger and stronger than you and I might hurt you. In this case, you're deceiving him. So let's make a deception role, and in response, he's going to make an insight check to see if he thinks you're lying. Okay. I have a plus three on deception. Excellent.

It's a failure. It's a one. Well, you see your old natural one. So as you're telling this lie, so normally when you're doing a social interaction, you wouldn't know whether you failed or not. People are going to react to you, and they might know you're lying but not tell you. In this case, Shywin doesn't know that she's been caught, but as you guys listen to Shywin kind of stumble through this tale of a score last night, it's dripping with this, I just made this up right now.

No, no, not that. This is what happened. And you can see all this, he's pretty skeptical. And he says, that's very interesting. I don't traffic with the kinds of people that make scores, as you say. So I certainly wouldn't have anything to sell you that isn't entirely legally obtained and completely above board. Listen, I'm Bobby's sister, and you're going to tell me everything you know. Are you trying to intimidate him? I am.

Because I have a really high intimidation about it. Nice. All right. So you're going to try to roll it and intimidate, and he's going to make a willpower save against it. Sorry, a wisdom save against it. So roll your intimidate. I rolled a 16 plus another 6. 22.

All right, so you push Shaiwin out of the way, just kind of leaning over the counter, a little flexing the muscles in your neck and your shoulders right there. Keep in mind, I'm tall. Very tall, much taller than this. I like, act so afraid right now. I'm like, oh my, she's never like this.

You said, tell me Bobby Sister. I'm Bobby Sister, and you're gonna tell me everything you know. Just from the motion of you moving forward, his immediate reaction is just to cow back from you. You've used this tactic before, you know how well it works. And he says, oh, Bobby's sister,

why didn't you say so? There's no need to lie. We're all friends, Bobby's sister. Oh, that's a relief actually. I was worried you guys were gonna steal something. This one here should not let her talk first. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. But he says, Bobby, Bobby's my friend.

We're close. Bobby and I, we're close. What, whatever I can do for you? Who doesn't love Bobby? Everybody loves Bobby, obviously. What can I do for you? And he, as he talks, he has this, like, piece of paper that has some numbers kind of scrawled on it,

and he sort of slides it across the counter toward you. Just a piece of parchment with some numbers on it. You look at it, you're not sure exactly what it's for. This number has been written on it and crossed out. He slides it across. What can I do for you? How can I help Bobby's sister? What is this? It's just a piece of paper.

I don't know what you're talking about. This is... What are the numbers on this piece of paper? Oh, he says, that's just me doing figures when I'm appraising jewelry or anything that should come in. Nothing to be worried about. Is there anything here for sale? I can take off your hands in exchange for some of this information?

He says, oh, I wouldn't dream of, well, okay. And he turns over and he takes the piece of jewelry that he was looking at, plunks it down in front of you. It's gold-ish. and has some little scroll work and writing on it. It's not terrible if you wanted to get a gift for your niece or something or, you know, a friend that you had just met and weren't particularly fond of.

Or Bobby. Well, thank you for Bobby. Yeah, how much do you want for that? This is, well, it doesn't look like much. It's got a hard to find gold. I would say a silver piece should be fair. So, yeah, you have money down there, down by your equipment. You've got some money listed.

The top one is copper piece. So right, yeah, right there. So this right here, this is your copper pieces. You've got four, you've got silver pieces below that. Oh, that's what those are. Oh, well, CPSP, oh, I got lots of, I mean I have one. Oh, yeah, he says one silver piece. I'm also rich.

Of course. Tall, tough, rich. You can have a silver piece. Okay, so you take a silver piece, you put it on the paper. I put it on the paper and then I slide it slowly back to him the same way he did. He just kind of gently lays his hand over it, pushes the junky piece of jewelry to you, and he pockets the silver. He says, I will help you in any way I can. You are, I'm at your service.

Have you heard anything about what happened last night? He kind of looks around the room at you guys, and you can see him figuring in his brain what and how much he should tell you. But then he looks back at the silver at his hand, and he says, some nasty business up in the garden quarter, I heard. We were there. We saw it. Oh, I'm terribly sorry.

I heard there were bodies, somebody said a dozen. Seven. More or less. Okay. Wait, are we getting information from you, or are you getting information from us? I apologize. I did hear what happened in the quarter. You're right, you're right. I did hear what happened up in the garden quarter. What I know is that many bodies fell. A dozen I heard, you say seven, but I heard it from a member of a certain organization that said that a lot of the men were his own. I'm not sure how many or whom, but this person in this organization said that it was quite a loss for them. They were quite angry.

Are you talking about Geralt? Geralt. I'm flattered that you think that I know Geralt. No, certainly. It wasn't Gerald. Is that who you're looking for? You want to talk to Gerald? We would love to talk to Gerald. Who are you talking about? Well, his name is Toby. He's one of Geralt's favorites. He's a friend of mine. Just casual acquaintances, of course. I wouldn't do any business with them. I would never do that. Of course not. But I can, Toby, I can definitely talk to Toby and get you a meeting with Gerald. I can absolutely do that for you. Now, Toby, sometimes down on his luck, he's often, it's often expensive for me to get him to do things for me. So I might need some additional resources in order to get Toby to set up a meeting with Geralt.

But I'm quite certain I can make it happen. Let me just take out another silver piece and slide it across the table. He looks at it, makes a little frown. Oh, man. I pull out a gold piece. Ah, yes. He takes them both quickly before you can take them back. I was gonna say take the silver back.

It's okay, guys, I'm rich. I believe I can arrange this. Give me three hours and meet me back here. I will arrange the meeting with Geraldton and tell you where it would take place. Is that acceptable? That is, and Sergeant, if I may be so bold, there were, as you say, two guilds involved.

Should a rivers come up to you, We might be interested in speaking with them as well. He says the rivers were involved as well. I find that hard to believe. Why so hard to believe? Well, whether they were or not involved, we would like to speak to them. All right, well, I mean, they're a nothing gang.

They're barely, I would barely call them an organization, frankly. Do you know any of them? No, I, you know, my, my friendship with Toby and his friends means I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't transact with the rivers. Do you know, where we could find any of the rivers. Like, do they have a, where's their hideout?

He said, I don't even know that they have one, honestly. There is a small gang. You know, however, while I am not deeply involved in that world, like I said, I have friends, but I don't run in those worlds. Geralt would certainly be able to tell you this. Okay. He says, meet me back here in three hours.

I will take care of this for you. All right. Okay, you guys leave the shop. Kind of wander around, kind of looking around a little bit. As you move around the area, you actually see the harpy mark on the walls a fair bit in this district. You don't see any river's marks here

as you're kind of circling out. You spend a few hours wandering around. Couple times you cross Bobby's path and you catch his eye. He nods at you like, did it work? Did it work? Yeah, thumbs up? I surreptitious to give him a thumbs up

and look away because he's blowing my cup. Yes. And I throw him a wink. Oh, you know. Yes. Punches the air a little bit and goes about his business. The few hours pass and you come back to the shop when you open the door, Aldous is sort of pacing back and forth behind the counter.

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We'll be so happy all this has come through for you. An extraordinary way. My friend Toby was very gracious. Thank you for that gold piece. We got him. I got you that meeting with Gerald. I've never even met Gerald. You're the first people that I know that he was willing to talk to.

He seemed, according to Toby, very eager to talk to you. I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, It's super for me. I'm really proud of it. What did you tell him about us? Nothing. I just said that there was a group of people here asking to see him that seemed to know a lot about the occurrences in the garden district last evening. And that was what seems to have gotten him. Good for me, right?

Yeah. He says there is a little shop, and he gives you the address of a little shop that's actually fairly close to the wall between the old city and the newer parts of the city. He says, behind this shop, there is a small building. That building is where Giralt will meet you. Now I'm to tell you that is not his home. That is not the Harpy's hideout. Do not think that that is so. He will, however, meet you there.

And he will meet you there now. Any Rivers activity? Again, not people that I talked to. And I was busy about your business. No worries. Sounds like we better get over there. You said a group of people. You didn't use numbers or anything like that?

I probably told him five. I'm not 100% sure there. The key was that he knows that you know about last night. Okay. All right. Let's go. Let's go.

You guys head over to this shop that he indicated. You kind of wind through the streets a little bit. Bobby's, it seems almost like Bobby's following you a little bit now. He crosses your path again. Another thumb. At this point, I just kind of like

go like this. He makes a little mad face and, you know, kind of slinks away with his partner. You find the shop. Indeed, there is a small building behind the shop. But you can go down to this kind of alleyway beside it, and there is a small building back behind the shop. There are also two pretty rough characters standing outside this building. You can see a little hint of a little bit of leather armor underneath cloaks, dark clothes.

One of them is carrying like a club, like a heavy cudgel. The other one's carrying a straight-up mace. So, you know, metal shaft, big heavy metal ball on the end. It's a couple of guys just hanging outside of a small door. And as you come, they don't do anything. They're sort of leaning up against their wall, but they... They're clocking you, they're watching you. What are you guys doing?

I've got to say something. Who's talking? What are you guys doing? Can we just walk past him and head towards the door? The door is right beside him. If you want to try, you can. Oh yeah, do it. Yeah, let's go through the door. You walk toward the door. As you step closer to the one with the May steps in front of the door and says,

what do you think you're doing? I'm here to see Gerald. Uh-huh. And who do we tell Gerald is coming? Who he's meeting. Yeah. Us. Aldous's friends. Are you trying to intimidate him, persuade him?

I guess I'll try to intimidate him. Uh, 25. You walk up and you say... We're here for our meeting? Yeah, meeting. Step out of the way. Out of the way. And he glances over your shoulder, Raviola,

and then makes eye contact with you and he says, all right, he's waiting for you inside. And he steps aside and he opens the door and ushers you in. It's a really small remote. inside and it looks like maybe a store room for a shop. It's, it's, it's, it's, um, it's, some boxes and barrels and crates. It's close, it's small.

Even getting all of you in here, it feels pretty crowded. At the other side of the room, leaning against some boxes is a tall, quite intimidating figure, tall, muscular, maybe six three, six four, wearing leather armor, but his arms are exposed in their huge muscular arms. His face, he's got kind of a broad jaw, prominent jaw, with little hints of teeth poking up above his lips, little fangs, and a square. The squashed nose the telltale signs of someone who is a half-orc. He leans against the boxes and he's tuckling a little bit.

It seems like he could hear through the walls the exchange that just happened. And he says, I'm quite impressed. Bairn is not usually so easily cowed. You are. Must be as intimidating as I have heard. It is great to meet you, Leona. He looks at the rest of you and says, I, of course, am Gerald. And that's where we're going to leave it for the day.

We'll see if you guys can find out what's going on here, what you can learn from Geraldt next time. And if you want to learn what Gerald has to offer about what's going on here in the Thiefs Quarter, you can find out as well next time on Starter Kit. Next time on Starter Kit. Perhaps we could make an exchange of information? Four men, none of them came back. You realize you're being followed. You spin around. Thank you for joining us.

Oh. Oh, boy. Where is Liam? And it's going to be an initiative for everybody. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's like Lowry, prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. So it's always

easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years. Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. See site for details. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time.

and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter?

Some lighter music here. Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries? The show that jumped started all of our love of true crime. I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host, I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries.

Baby, you will laugh, you will cry. You'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us, wherever you listen to your podcast.