(TFT) murders in Cliportage

["Patrick Keleher" <patkeleher@hotmail.com>]

    Dramatis Personae:
    (Equipment listed is what the NPC will have on him for day to day 
business about the city.  Each owns more, but is unlikely to carry his other 
equipment about with him under ordinary circumstance.  Where skills have 
prerequisite skills the prerequisites are assumed and not listed.)

    Uchna F'm  ST:13  DX:15  IQ:12
    Skills:  Unarmed combat II, Acrobatics, Thief, Silent Movement
    Equipment:  Knife.

    Bathorihut:  ST:16  DX:12  IQ:13
    Skills:  Sword, Veteran, Charisma, Master thief.
    Equipment:  Broadsword, knife, leather armor.

    Itrairom  ST:11  DX:15  IQ:15
    Skills:  Detection on lies, Literacy, Assess value, Master thief, 
Stratagist, Disguise.
    Equipment:  Knife.

    Baha, the Limbless  ST:10  DX:10  IQ:18
    Skills:  Alertness, Business sense, Spying, Charisma, Assess value, 
Captain, Master thief.

    Lautier Theophileson  ST:10  DX:11  IQ:13
    Skills:  Sex appeal, Literacy, Diplomacy, Fencing, Courtly graces, 
Assess value, Business sense.
    Equipment:  Cutlass, main-gauche, knife.

    The killings have continued.
    One day, passing a narrow maintenance tunnel, one of the adventurers 
hears a soft muffled, "... no... no..."  At first the others doubt his ears, 
but after a few steps the group turns back to investigate.  They discern a 
dark cloaked man pressing against a young woman, forcing her to the ground.  
A knife glints in his hand.  If the adventurers run the 30 to 40 yards to 
the struggling couple quietly enough they may arrive in time to prevent her 
murder.  If they raise alarm first the woman will surely die before help 
arrives.  The rapist is Uchna F'm; he will look to escape rather than fight 
the adventurers.
    The Theophilesons have had an agent surreptitiously follow our heroes 
ever since the adventurers' inquiries about Gaute Theophileson; if they do 
not save the victim he will sieze the opportunity to blame them for her 
death.  They may find themselves arrested, or, nastier, the gathering crowd 
of local residents may be inflamed against them.  Whether the woman is saved 
or not, the murderer, an obvious professional criminal, will be after the 
adventurers for their being potential witnesses against him.
    The rape murders are part of a cold calculated plot.  Bathorihut, a 
claimant for boss of the Maker Brothers, has planned the murders in intent 
to stir sentiments of outrage in Cliportage's citizens; once the city is 
sufficiently aggitated he will plant evidence against his main rival, 
Itrairom, and leave the rest to the public.
    Itrairom's center of operations is The Pit, a sex and gambling club in 
Old Portage.  In appearance The Pit is an abandoned barn or warehouse.  At 
one end inside The Pit is a pit surrounded by bleachers; gladiatoral fights 
and live sex acts are staged in this pit.  Itrairom has captured Larirawe, 
Bathorihut's beloved, and plans to toss her into the pit to a gang of 
neanderthals in rut as a display to the rest of the brotherhood that his 
power is greater than Bathorihut's.
    A third player for head of the Maker Brothers is Baha the Limbless.  
Called the Queen of the Beggars, Baha is a multiple amputee who started out 
as a merchant captain.  During an ocean voyage she lost her legs to a 
devilfish, a horned shark-like denizen of Cidri's oceans.  She then fell on 
hard times.  Her second career as a thief and pick-pocket began.  The one 
time she was captured and brought to trial her hands were taken as 
punishment.  The judge who sentenced her died within 24 hours.  Baha is 
currently accompanied by a muscular sasquatch.  The sasquatch serves as her 
arms and legs and is an unobtrusive guard while she quietly directs her 
loyal followers (from her corner in the market, in her guise as a begger).
    Current head of the Theophileson clan, Lautier Theophileson has been 
spooked by the similarity of the current murders to those of twenty years 
before.  By strange parallel what Bathorihut plans for Itrairom is exactly 
what Lautier did to his elder brother Gaute -- Lautier himself committed the 
murders twenty years ago, and he then planted the evidence which led to his 
brother's execution.
    Other thoughts about Cliportage:
    --  The source of the Theophilesons' wealth is in the neanderthal slave 
trade.  During the past decades this wealth has been augmented as result of 
investments in the development of uses for the methane gas given off during 
the decomposition of feces.  Currently methane is used as a power source for 
light and heat for the interior corridors and chambers of Cliportage.
    --  The claustrophobia of the tunnels provides a perfect opportunity to 
use that article from TSG#37, on The Alien for tft.  Let's see...  A goblin 
trader has a strange leathery egg-shaped object gathering dust in the back 
shelves of his shop, "... would make a great footstool, or pillow!..."
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