Blood slaves for Careorraent

In this post, I will continue the adventures of the heroes in the city of Ralsand as part of the Rothen Campaign. Someone that is familiar with my previous posts will note a slight change in the way I write the story. I have added a little color to the party members. Hopefully this change will make the text more interesting to read while keeping it useful for anyone wanting to use the ideas in it as part of their campaigns.

Francenn was pleased to hear that the heroes were able to get the information about the diary. He did not care about the cost of that information and that his "cousin" had become a fugitive from the vampires because of it. In a positive frame of mind, Francenn proceeded to tell the heroes a contact of his from the Ralsand Thieves guild would help them with the infiltration in the Careorraent keep.

The party was told to wait for the contact at the lobby near the entrance. During the time of their wait, Cedric, the cleric, started to talk in hushed tones about how disgusted he was with Francenn. The cleric pointed out the wizard had absolutely no principles whatsoever. He listed the deal with the Lich, the use of the thieves guild and the vampire houses in Ralsand as prove of his failing character.

Rei, the sorceress, reminded him how he had treated the party at first, talking down to them just because they weren't nobles. Even though now he seemed to have stopped with that, the anger she felt towards him was still very much there.

The party was not sure how they would go about changing that situation, but they were going to find out the wizard's weaknesses and maybe one day remove him from the mayor's house.

After a short time, the contact came to speak with the heroes. The party explained to him what was needed and the contact said he would meet them at their inn with more information in a few hours.

Rei takes a quick nap at the inn

True to his word, the contact met the party two hours later and shared the information he had. The thief said the Careorraent keep was located in a small island off the main ports of Ralsand. Having a keep in such an odd location provided for good security, so the party would need a good plan in order to get entrance to it.

The thief went on to say, the guild had such a plan, but the party would have to act immediately if they were to take advantage of it.

The heroes told him, the expense of another battle, after having fought an inn full of vampires, was going to be very high.

The contact informed them the reason they needed to move now, was because the vampire lord, master of the keep, was out of town for the day, coming back soon after dark. He explained to them that without the master there, entrance to the keep would be much easier.

He also reminded the party, the sorceress could use scrolls, while the fighter and the cleric could always buy more potions if they needed. The opportunity to get easy entrance to the keep was worth that extra expense.

Once the party agreed to it, the thief explained the plan, which as he put it involved a bit of understanding from the sorceress. At that, Rei started to pay closer attention to the whole deal.

The thief said the Careorraent house was known to buy "blood slaves" from a slaver in town. That slaver was always looking for beautiful girls, paying double if they were virgins, triple if they had magical blood.

The contact than suggested using Rei as bait for the slaver. The slaver would bring her to the keep by boat immediately to get paid as soon as possible. The rest of the party would then pose as assistants to the slaver to help him with the boat and with the prisoner.

Rei was not very pleased with this idea. Being blindfolded, tied up and gagged wasn't something she would be looking forward to, but that was the only plan offered to the party at the time.

The thief continued to the next part of the plan which involved getting the crew that usually made the trips to the keep to have some sort of mishap. But that would be provided by the thieves guild, paid for by Francenn.

The contact said, everything would go down in about one hour, so the party had to be ready by then.

To ease Rei's fears, Cedric assured her that if they were for some reason unable to be her escorts, they would not allow her to be taken to the keep in the first place. That assurance made Rei more cooperative with the whole plan.

The party made some last minute purchases in town, then headed to the area where there were supposed to meet the slaver that supplied the Careorraent vampire house with blood slaves.