The Night Heron

While the rest of the party prepped to travel with Clem to the Moonstone Mask, Abel noticed that the Glug the Goblin was not in his usual corner and saw the hides Glug used to record his spells stuffed under his cot.

 Abel tells his brother to go without him; he volunteers to find Glug.

 He asked around the barracks and got a possible clue from the gate guard, who didn’t see the goblin but saw a Guardsman leaving the barracks who claimed to be ill and had their face covered and an odd-shaped bundle over their shoulder.

 Not Good. Who would want to kidnap Glug?

 Abel reports his findings to Captain Anders, who orders him to continue the pursuit. She promises to round up more of the guard to help.

 Abel begins to try and track the Guardsman with the covered face through the street and catches a lucky break with a flower vendor, who claims to have seen such a guard attempting to control a writhing bag, having to hit it against her cart, then claiming that they were carrying rats.

 A beggar sitting nearby confirms this and hands Abel a short staff with a decomposing goblin head, Glugs staff. They both mention that the incident happened less than ten minutes before Abel showed up and gave him directions.

 Heading on this path leads to a sizeable tented market in front of the city docks. The area is full of people who haven’t seen the guard Abel is looking for or a squirming sack.

 Abel fears the worst, that he missed the goblin, and decides to head back to the flower girl and beggar, only to find them gone. Not good!

 Upon serious examination, He finds the cart in a nearby alley and sees that a nearby grate leading below street level is ajar.

 Moving with feline stealth, he can make out voices echoing in the distance and begins to follow. He hears a whispered conversation between the beggar, the flower girl, and a third person. The beggar and the girl are arguing with the third person about money, and they start to get louder the more they talk until Abel hears a splash and shouts that the goblin has gotten loose! Abel rushes into the tunnel, firing his crossbow at the first person he sees. He hits Beggar John dead center in the chest. He closes the distance between himself and the flower girl, who takes a hit from the butt of the heavy crossbow to the temple, and her body folds to the ground.

 The third person looks at the scene, throws powder at a patch of dry stone, creating billowing smoke in the sewer tunnel, and disappears.

 Intending on the pursuit, Abel pauses when he hears a muffled cry for help from the sewer water. He barely makes out the shape of a water-logged sack, moaning that he can’t swim in this thing. He pulls the sac free of the water and cuts it open. The sewer sludge has soaked the goblin in its foul smell, and neither see nor hear the third person. They exit the sewer.

 The smell coming from the goblin attracts all sorts of attention on the street, and a contingent of guards led by Captain Anders finds them after a short amount of time. Glug explains that he was drugged unconscious and put in a sack but woke when a pickpocket attempted to take the bag off of the guard with the covered face. This commotion and the slight rip in the bag showed him that he didn’t recognize the guard who had kidnapped him. He couldn’t stop himself from sneezing and then was bashed against the flower girl’s cart, overturning it and dazing him. He didn’t catch much of the conversation, only that the three people were working a job together, the fake guard was their leader, and the other two, Beggar John and Daff, both addressed the third one as Night Heron. He heard mention of the artifact, a Hall, and Lord Sour. He did hear that they were supposed to take the artifact from him and, if he didn’t have it on him, torture him until he revealed something worth hearing. And, he heard Daff and Beggar Jon ridicule Night Heron for failing to steal the artifact before now.

 Glug thinks this Heron wore bulky clothing and pitched their voice oddly as part of a disguise.

 The two are escorted to the barracks, unceremoniously dunked in soapy bath water, and scrubbed until that stink is gone, just in time to see their companions return from the mask.