User blog comment:Stormwell/Thresh Street Runners/@comment-3525200-20140915221329

What Shall We Do With A Drunken Rat...

Session Twelve, Death of a Draper Part II

This week featured the return of Nick after his summer break, but still no Tay for a few more weeks and Gareth had to pull out last minute due to a migraine.

Lucian Gilmore (Adam) Agnew Uptil (Tori) Joshua H. Headlam (Nick)

For Nick's benefit we had a recap of what he'd missed whilst he'd been away over the summer and brought him up to speed, especially with regards to the current case. They also reviewed their case notes and set out to try and uncover more information, Agnew heading to an old contact of his whilst Joshua went out to try and find out what the word on the street was regarding Mortimer Hat.

Agnew's contact was Mammy Switherton, an old dear with a fondness for fondants who ran the night house where Agnew grew up. Turned that Mr Hat didn't really have any business partners who frequented Switherton's house, even fewer patrons that spoke of him. Though he is very old, the workers at his mill didn't enjoy a decent working environment and the man himself didn't been seen in public for some time. This was all that Mammy Switherton could say, so Agnew headed back to the office.

Joshua had bit more luck walking the streets and working the grapevine in the muck and grime of Dunwall's criminal underbelly. Whilst he couldn't get much from his sources he did come to the attention of a couple of members of the Hatters gang who were curious as to why he was asking after the 'Greezer'. After some fast talking Joshua managed to convinve the two Hatters that he wanted to join their ranks and was quite skilful, so the Hatters tasked him with breaking into the whiskey distillery owned by the Bottle Street Gang and 'throw a spanner in the works' by stealing the main value. Joshua accepted the job, took a detour back to Thresh Street and explained to the others what had happened.

The trio of Runners hatched out a plan, scouted out the area round Bottle Street and found a disused warehouse that they could use to gain access to the skylight of the distillery. That night they went back, picked the lock of the warehouse and shortly afterwards discovered why it was disused; ''Rats! Hundreds of the damn buggers!''

They didn't linger and made haste to through the warehouse and then onto the roof of the distillery, looking through the skylight they spotted a high level gantry that they could use as well as four thugs patrolling the ground floor. Lucian climbed down onto the gantry and stealthy made his way along, finding a toolbox that he raided before locating the main value. However one of the thugs noticed that something was moving around up on the gantry, so Agnew used Summon Ally in the form of a rat swarm to deal with the observant thug and cause a distraction. Lucian then opened the value wide open before screwing the sprocket for Joshua to give to the Hatters as proof of having done the deed. Another hasty trip back through the rat infested warehouse and the Runners went home for the night.

Next morning the broadsheets were all about a flood of whiskey in the Distillery District, a flood that had most certainly effected the local rat population. Though with no word from Mr Hat, the Runners elected to check the tax records at the Chamber of Commerce and use the Imperial Seals gifted to them by the Empress to full effect. They found that the late Mr Tisdale's records matched with the ledger he kept in his shop, including the 'services rendered' payments to Mr Hat. Mortimer Hat's own records noted payments from all of the merchants of Draper's Ward as 'community upkeep', also that he paid a little extra coin to the city's coffers in his taxes and he had an extra large staff of 'supervisors' at his mill.

It was evening time when they got back to Thresh Street and Joshua opted to head for his meeting in Draper's Ward, it was agreed that the other two would follow a while later and keep an eye on him in case things went wrong. However after Joshua had departed a carriage arrived at the Thresh Street office with summons for the Runners from Mortimer Hat...