Session 16 — The Butcher's Buyers, and the Death of Ashlyn

Session Recap

Picking up at 10 PM on the same long day, the party follows the Investigatorium detective Malcolm Locke — narrating his own process Columbo-style — through the South Wall alleys to a black-market drop-off point, the meeting they were chasing since the Tannery butcher's lead in Session 15. There they ambush a body-handoff: the bigoted Tannery butcher has come to buy a fresh corpse from a roving gang of young human-supremacist killers ("Anthropocentrists"), who have just murdered a young catfolk commoner on his way home from work. Locke deputizes the party so the killing is lawful, and a brutal two-hour combat erupts. Silithane Charms the butcher out of the fight, the gang's hateful old leader Rickard reveals himself as a homebrew anti-everything paladin, and the party grinds through a swarm of tough, gun-toting thugs while a breakfast-stall waitress and the near-useless Locke (chucking bricks) cling to the edges.

The session's gut-punch: Rickard smites Ashlyn for 87 radiant damage, cleaving her in two — but because she had Soulbound herself to him, her death-blow drags him to the afterlife as well. Both die, halved, in the same instant. The party wins, the captured gang is hauled off (the waitress quietly knifing two of them herself), and the fleeing butcher is run down at the last second — Thalia webs him to a wall before he can wheel the catfolk corpse away, taking him alive as a lead. Thalia and Magra rush the two halves of Ashlyn by guard-cart to the Gwyndinas Colosseum Bloodworks, where a stuttering arena cleric casts a one-hour Raise Dead ritual — free, because Ashlyn died in the line of duty as a deputized guard. Her first death is safe; she returns with shaky legs, a few days of recovery, and a slightly mismatched shadow as a souvenir of the other side.

Key Events

• The stakeout: Malcolm Locke leads the party through the dead-of-night South Wall alleys, muttering his investigative process aloud. Perception checks reveal a gang of ~5 already in the alley, a second gang that has killed tonight and is bringing a body, a parked cart, a barmaid tidying up, and that nearly all the voices are young, angry human men who grew up in pre-Reclamation Orathos and slipped through the wall posing as harmless.
• The handoff is the crime: the meeting is the Tannery butcher (from Session 15) coming to collect his next body from the kill-gang. Locke offers to stand as a lawful witness so the party can intervene without it being murder.
• First contact: Lash steals the lead thug's "well, well, well" line; the old armored leader (Rickard) tries to lure her close "to see her ink"; Ashlyn is told to "walk another road" and refuses. The leader threatens to skin her, and combat begins.
• Silithane charms the butcher: Silithane, disguised in a cat costume, Charms the butcher (who already likes him) — keeping the man confused and non-committal for the whole fight, refusing to "pick a side."
• Rickard the anti-human paladin: the elderly leader wields a longsword and a tome, smiting in pillars of light ("By the will of the one true god, the human emperor"). He's a homebrew paladin whose subclass is built around destroying non-humans from the sky — he hates everything that isn't human equally, and doesn't even care that Ashlyn is a vampire. His radiant smites crack cobblestones, shatter windows, and shake nearby houses.
• Ashlyn's Soulbind gambit: Ashlyn Soulbinds Rickard (nat-1 save) so his hits rebound onto him, then casts Bane on three thugs. She's smitten to the ground, chugs a blood bag on a coin-flip to revive at 1 HP, bites a fleeing thug, and keeps standing — every wound she takes also bleeds Rickard.
• The double death: after a first 42-radiant smite cracked the cobblestones beneath her, Rickard lands a critical smite for 87 radiant on the low-health Ashlyn — over double her 56 HP maximum — instantly killing her and cleaving her into two halves. The Soulbind transfers it back; Rickard is also cut in twain and dies. Ashlyn's "last stand" is two middle fingers held up at the sky.
• Mopping up the gang: Draak intimidates one thug into surrender (nat-20), Magra shoots daggers out of a thug's hands Wild-West style, Silithane holds the line with Booming Blade and Shadow Blade and a Shield reaction that deflects black-powder bullets (AC 22), and Lash knocks out three non-lethally. Town militia arrive in ~30 seconds and help finish the fight.
• The waitress's justice: a breakfast-stall waitress, saved by Silithane from a thug trying to force himself on her, later knifes the man in the throat while Silithane distracts the guard — and, during another distraction, knifes a second captured gang member too. She returns home, having righted the wrong "in the only way she can."
• The butcher is taken alive: the Charmed butcher, confused by the massacre, tries to wheel off the cart with the dead catfolk body to leave no physical evidence — but Thalia catches him mid-flight with an Ensnaring Strike, packaging him unconscious and webbed to the alley wall "Spider-Man style." The GM had flagged him as "the main villain of the encounter walking away"; his capture preserves both the body and a live lead into the body-buying scheme.
• Looting the scene: with Locke distracting guards, Lash makes off with Rickard's longsword (carried behind her like a tail), and later his spellbook / book of hateful hymns, plus a gang bandana and a kitchen knife. The bodies are searched; the dead young catfolk commoner (off-orange skin, early 20s) is left whole for his family to bury.
• The post-mortem Identify — a bitter irony: an Identify cast on the dead leader confirms his name as Rickard Frey (the GM's invention) and reveals the punchline of his life: he was 132 years old and himself an orc — the very kind of non-human his "human emperor" creed existed to exterminate. Whether his gang ever knew is unknown. His longsword's attunement is fading and will break once he can no longer be revived or someone else attunes.
• Raising Ashlyn: Thalia and Magra ride the guard-cart with Ashlyn's two halves to the arena underworks (the Bloodworks). A stuttering night-shift cleric casts a 1-hour Raise Dead ritual (chalk circle, gemstone components, candles), paid for by the City Guard because Ashlyn died in the line of duty. Thalia and Magra each "argue" Ashlyn's soul back. As her first death, it cannot fail; she returns whole, no scar.
• The cost of dying: Ashlyn rolls on a resurrection-quirk table and chooses a permanently slightly-mismatched shadow over nothing. She's at -4 to checks for ~4-5 days of recovery; the party (improbably) promises to keep her out of trouble. No arena tomorrow.
• End of the long day: the party heads back to the Clapton's Hammer at ~3 AM to sleep. They earned the fourth pip (milestone). Malcolm Locke invites them to his house tomorrow for his wife's pot roast — and to sign their leaving-papers.

Combat & Encounters

• The South Wall alley ambush — the session's single long combat (~2 hours of play, ~48 in-world seconds). The party + a deputizing Malcolm Locke vs. the Tannery butcher (Charmed out by Silithane), the gang leader Rickard (an elderly homebrew human-supremacist paladin with radiant smites, ~level appropriate "boss"), and a kill-squad of level-4 human-supremacist thugs (40–84 HP each, daggers, single-shot black-powder firearms they discard after firing). A waitress and town militia joined as allies.
• Casualty: Ashlyn killed — cut in two by Rickard's 87-damage crit smite, which her Soulbind also killed him with. Raised the same night.
• Outcome: the entire gang captured, killed, or surrendered; Rickard dead (and post-mortem revealed as a 132-year-old orc); the butcher captured alive by Thalia's Ensnaring Strike, the catfolk body recovered as evidence. Locke survived a thug's gut-stab (death saves) and "leveled up" by throwing bricks.

NPCs & Factions

• Malcolm Locke — the Investigatorium detective takes the party into the field for the first time, narrating his process like a TV detective, deputizing them, and acting as a lawful witness. Out of his depth in a fight (2 HP, "level 0"), he throws bricks ineffectually, gets stabbed and nearly bleeds out, and afterward shakily blames himself for breaking procedure. Invites the party home for pot roast and to sign their leaving-papers.
• Rickard Frey — one-scene villain, but worth a note: the elderly, plate-armored leader of the Anthropocentrists human-supremacist kill-gang; a homebrew paladin of "the one true god, the human emperor" whose subclass smites non-humans from the sky. Hates everything non-human equally (even unbothered by vampirism). His crit smite killed Ashlyn; her Soulbind killed him in return. A post-mortem Identify named him Rickard Frey and revealed he was 132 and an orc himself — the final irony of a man who built his life around exterminating non-humans. Dead. Notably, Malcolm Locke had never seen this man at one of these body-handoffs before — a possible new player in the body trade. Kept to the session note as a dead one-scene NPC.
• The Tannery butcher — the bigoted black-market beastfolk-blood-and-leather seller from Session 15, here revealed to buy freshly-killed non-human bodies from roving supremacist gangs. Silithane Charmed him out of the fight; he tried to wheel the corpse away in the chaos but was run down and captured alive by Thalia — now a held lead for interrogation about his blood/body supply chain.
• The breakfast-stall waitress — a commoner waitress accosted by the gang; saved from a rapist by Silithane, she repays the party by personally knifing two captured gang members. One-scene, but a memorable beat.
• The Anthropocentrists — the human-supremacist gang: young men raised in pre-Reclamation Orathos who slipped through the wall posing as harmless, then resumed murdering non-humans (especially catfolk) and selling the bodies to the butcher. They worship "the human emperor" — the God-Emperor who slew the gods — as justification for their hatred. Marked by red bandanas and stained-glass-style supremacist tattoos. Most captured; under Rivalon's wartime justice, some are to be executed, some branded for Firebrand conscription to the front line, some sent to the prison system for possible rehabilitation.
• The arena Bloodworks cleric — the stuttering, coffee-wrecked night-shift cleric at the Gwyndinas Colosseum underworks who resurrected Ashlyn via a 1-hour Raise Dead ritual. One-scene resource. (Not to be confused with The Urina, the Port Quaybay sewer arena — though Thalia cited The Urina as proof an arena could raise the dead.)

Locations

• The South Wall black market / drop-off alley — the rival market outside the Ceased Gate named under Suggestion last session. The actual meeting point is a dead-of-night alley by a breakfast stall, used by kill-gangs to hand off bodies to the butcher.
• The arena "Bloodworks" / Underworks — beneath the Gwyndinas Colosseum, the arena's medical/resurrection chamber. Normally a stitch-up table; here it serves as a Raise Dead table, with an on-hand cleric. Confirmed the arena can resurrect people on the spot (the option Thalia remembered The Urina having).

Loot, Items & Rewards

• Rickard's longsword — looted by Lash (an attuned magic longsword, taller than she is; identification pending). The dead man's attunement is fading and will break when he can no longer be revived or someone else attunes.
• Rickard's spellbook / book of hateful hymns — also taken by Lash; a human-supremacist tome.
• A gang bandana and a kitchen knife — small trophies Lash pocketed off the captured/dead.
• Free resurrection — Ashlyn's Raise Dead paid for by the City Guard (she died in the line of duty as a deputy); ~10-day window was moot, as she was raised within ~25 minutes.
• The fourth pip / milestone — the party now holds 4 pips.
• Magra handed out Heroic Inspiration (Encouraging Song) to Ashlyn and Thalia; Lash baked 4-temp-HP "death-save" cookies for the party.

Decisions & Open Threads

• Ashlyn has died once. First death is safe; future deaths get progressively less recoverable. She needs ~4-5 days of recovery and is sitting out arena fights. The party half-jokingly resolves to stay out of trouble for a few days (no one believes it).
• The butcher was captured alive — interrogate him. Thalia ran him down before he could wheel the catfolk body off, so both the corpse (physical evidence) and the buyer himself are in custody. He's the live thread into the body-trade supply chain: who he sells the skins/bodies to, and whether the supremacist kill-gangs are his only suppliers.
• A new, unknown player in the body trade: Locke had never seen Rickard at one of these handoffs — suggesting the supremacist kill-gangs are a recently-organized or newly-surfaced supplier, distinct from whatever Smiling Sam is. (No direct link to Smiling Sam was established; Ashlyn returning without screaming confirmed Rickard wasn't Sam.)
• Leaving-papers progress: Malcolm Locke's wife can sign the party's papers — invited to his home tomorrow. Relevant to Silithane's month-end Ponterford deadline.
• Carryover threads: the Smiling Sam case and top suspect Rhys Wengler the sangomancer beyond the wall; the Ponterford abductions job; the unfinished grief-demon basement seal at the Clapton's Hammer; the auricalcum Prehistoric Longsword and the Blue Top Docks smith; Magra's mother bound somewhere snowy; the Prince Lon letter; Scary Joe; Garruk the Red; ~165 gp of pirate goods to pawn; Ankley Island the sealed prison; Professor Wind Douglas's standing request for dhampir test subjects.

Memorable Moments

• The whole table "wiggling" on the alley map while Malcolm Locke cups his ear to listen — and Magra accidentally doing a full backflip.
• Lash flashing her silver-glittering blacksmith skin at the gang leader who demanded to see her "ink": "No, they're just shiny."
• Ashlyn reviving on a coin-flip blood bag — "I live, bitch." — standing back up after being smitten to the floor.
• The fatal irony: Rickard "too racist to figure out" that smiting the Soulbound Ashlyn was killing himself. "He was too racist, I guess." Both cleaved into two chunks in the same instant; Ashlyn dying with two middle fingers up at the sky.
• The post-mortem gut-punch of comedy: the Identify reveals the genocidal "human emperor" zealot was a 132-year-old orc the whole time — he'd been hunting his own kind.
• Ashlyn's afterlife, per Vale: just darkness, the lights going out — "It's over." / "Show's over."
• Thalia and Magra arguing Ashlyn's soul back: Thalia complaining how inconvenient it is that she's dead ("Get your ass up!"), Magra invoking the Blackwood name and the Veilwood family who need to see her worth — both, somehow, working.
• The stuttering cleric chanting for a full hour; Thalia force-feeding him a calming mint mid-protest ("I need to speak to cast!"); afterward rewarding Malcolm Locke with a mint too.
• Ashlyn waking in two pieces: "So I died." / "Yes, you did." / "Did I take him with me at least?" / "There's like nothing left." / "Good."
• The running gag of the GM's resurrection software literally exploding tokens instead of marking them "down," and rolling the weather table by accident mid-combat ("it starts hailing in the middle of the combat").
• Malcolm Locke throwing bricks so hard he cuts his own hand — and the GM awarding him a class level for it.
• The closing note: "We've so far done zero dungeons and zero dragons... whenever we turn one of those numbers into a 1, that'll be a big moment for us."