Harvester of Sorrows - part 1

Level 0 adventure in the city of Crossings

PREQUEL

The group, with the exception of Sumaya, had met previously when they witnessed a mugging in an alley of Grievings and noticed that once the victim had been stabbed and thrown into the canal and the muggers had left, a shiny ring lay in the mud on the side of the street.
As they all were witnesses they discussed what to do with this object and unanimously decided that the person floating face down in the sewage didn't need it anymore and that - as they say - finders-keepers. However, no one trusted anyone else to keep hold of it, as it was clearly worth a few gold crowns, and after some discussion they found that they all had a trustworthy acquaintance in common: Father Gregory, a good old priest of the One God who tended to the poor of Grievings from his shrine of the Sorrowful Martyrs, up south towards the Mercy Hill asylum.
They asked the good priest to look after it for them while they waited for things to calm down, and it was a good decision because in the following days they heard that someone (not a Nazgul) had been making discrete inquiries about the ring in the streets of the district.

Sumaya

A couple of days before the memorable case of the Harvester took place, Father Gregory had sent a young girl called Sumaya to the group asking to take care of her and to meet him again two nights later. The girl told them about herself: a few days earlier a cloaked figure with a stovepipe hat had jumped the wall of the walled garden of her house in Redemption, near the Grain Bridge to Grievings, stunned her father, grabbed him, and left with him thrown over the shoulder.
Terrified, she ran to Father Gregory at his shrine and he took her to the Blessed Twins orphanage in Canal Street and told her that he'd try to find her dad. However, a couple of nights later, he removed her in great hurry from the orphanage and sent her to the care of the group saying that she had to keep out of sight and that he'd be back soon.

THE HARVESTER OF SORROWS

Father Gregory disappears

It's now the evening when Father Gregory asked the group to meet at the Cathedral in the district of Redemption and to bring the young girl, and the group wait and wait, but he doesn't show up. They decide to look for him at his shrine and start walking towards Grievings. 

As they approach the poor district the gravel that had been thrown on the muddy streets to make walking easier disappears and lit street lights are few and far between. They climb up the tortuous alleys in the direction of the shrine, making their way among makeshift bedding lining the tall, decrepit houses and the still forms of rough sleepers - many refugees have recently arrived from the South following the unrest in the Empire. Huddled shapes in recessed doorways look at them pass by with flat, hostile stares, and the few passers-by have the hurried step of people alone at night in a dangerous part of town. 

The shrine itself is a squat and triangular stone building in the middle of a Y fork in the street. It has a front door on the narrow side surmounted by a wooden symbol of the One God, the ouroboros (a snake eating its tail), it has two windows of stained glass on the side walls and a small fenced garden at the back. Looking around the group notice that the nearest street light - which is not lit - has been broken very recently, because the fragments of glass and the rock lying near it are not yet covered in dirt and soot like the rest of the ground. 

The front door is closed, but they manage to unlock it. They see a large room with a stone altar and statue and several pews. One of the pews is fallen to one side next to the left window, which is slightly ajar. A door at the back is also ajar and they hear some noises and see light move around, like a lantern held by someone. 

Will steps forward to see if it's Father Gregory and finds a cloaked man with a scar on his face and a pencil moustache, who was doing something with the lock of a desk and turns around in surprise to see the goblin studying him from the doorway. The room is clearly the priest's quarters, as in addition to the desk it has a simple bed and some pegs on the wall where a symbol of the One God and some garments are hanging. There is a door to the back, barred with a wood plank.

For a moment the two stare at each other, then there's a silent blue flash from the desk lock and a strong chemical smell. Will is momentarily blinded and the man rushes to the back door and removes the wood plank, letting it fall to the floor. 

Sumaya and Aethelfrieda run to the back of the house to block the intruder, while the dwarf takes a great interest to the interior of the shrine and its imagery and architecture. He notices that the base of the statue, the body and the head are three separate parts; that the window was opened by melting the metal of the latch somehow; and that there is no trace of secret passages anywhere. Brass climbs up to the ceiling and observes from there. 

Aethelfrieda tries to hit the man who's now rushing outside, but her club misses him by inches and to her horror an iron knife appears in his hand and he stabs the child, who'd just run up in front of him. 

It's only a glancing wound, but a startling transformation takes place when the iron hits the child; suddenly her shape changes to a rough human form of sticks and dirt, with green glowing orbs sunk deep in place of her eyes. The man stumbles back a step, his jaw slack, then witnesses something even worse, as the shape now takes human form again and he sees in front of him an exact copy of himself, although dressed in different clothes. Athelfrieda and the changeling press the advantage and soon the intruder is passed out on the ground. 

In the meantime Will looks at the contents of the desk and finds a healing potion, an incantation and a sketched note.

He recognises the moon and bars as one of the symbols that appear on small metal plaques near the gated entrances to the sewers. They're quite ancient (like the sewers themselves) and must have been a coding system for the gates created by the people who built them. Each gate has a different symbol. He doesn't know what the other sketch is. 

Brass and Simmouri hear a female voice call "Father Gregory! Is that you?" and see from the front door of the shrine a woman approaching - short hair, sword at her side, simple clothing. They introduce themselves as friends of the priest and explain that they came looking for him but didn't find him. They somehow manage to look trustworthy enough for the woman not to question their presence in the shrine at this time of night (Simmouri is, after all, a very personable and surprisingly clean young dwarf) and she explains that she's Sergeant Alyse of the Militia. The priest had approached her a few days ago about people disappearing from the streets at night in the last week or so. He told her that he'd heard at the Fallen Soldier tavern that an old beggar, Cassius, had seen something, and that he planned to speak with him. She'd looked into the disappearances and found that they seemed to take place in the alleys between Canal Street and the burnt down tenement beside the Fallen Soldier, in the most run down part of Grievings - with one exception: the disappearance of a wealthy man from his garden in Redemption, Sir Tiberius (Sumaya's dad) and of his young daughter. She mentions that some gentry have called at the militia station offering rewards for information about the whereabouts of these two. 

Unfortunately nobody talks to cops around here and that's the extent of her findings. Then to her surprise she'd been told to stop looking into the case because she was needed elsewhere and moved to patrolling the Gavel district - apparently on orders coming straight from the Council. Constable Gnat, a young and inexperienced militia goblin, is now in charge of Grievings patrols. 

Simmouri and Sergeant Alyse head back together to Old Town and Will offers to wait for Father Gregory at the shrine (and enjoy a nap in his bed), while Brass, Sumaya and Aethelfrieda plan to have a word with the intruder (currently bound, gagged, and dragged behind a shrub) before heading to the Fallen Soldier.