Nymm 9th, 1005

The party went back to work after their leave. At the briefing, Cpt. Dunsmith announced that Duke Kovacs had left Teryk to seek an audience with the King in the capital. He introduced Col. Ruslan Dubnov as the duke's replacement during his absence. Charli recognized the colonel as he has replaced her father a few times in Vulyar, and was known to be very harsh and unfair in his judgments, systematically imposing the most severe punishment available to those he convicted of crimes. Dubnov ordered the troops to bring all felony arrests directly to him in the Duke's chambers for summary judgment.

Captain Dunsmith congratulated the party on their discovery of the plot against House Kovacs, and announced the end of their probaionary period; they were given a backup stone and allowed to patrol without a supervisor present. The party elected Charli to be the team leader.

During their evening patrol, the party was approached by a woman who said she had been robbed of her purse by a purple tiefling: the thief had cut the strap off with a knife. The woman managed to nick the pursesnatcher with her hat pin, but he fled down an alley towards the Kingstown slums.

Matias wild shaped into a dire wolf to smell the faint blood trail, which led the party towards a burnt-out condemned hovel. They didn't find the tiefling inside, but found a first-aid kit he had used to patch himself up, and a hidden safe containing stacks of gold, ration cards and stolen IDs. The soldiers decided to stake the hovel out until the tiefling came back. Instead of the tiefling, they caught a dwarf and a khoravar unlocking the door to the hideout. They intercepted them and quickly placed them under arrest as they tried to flee. Another thief, a human, came in next and was quickly dealt with. Charli and Zigz used the tried-and-true technique of "good cop, bad cop" to question the detained thieves. The khoravar, Aksel, eventually blurted out that there were three more to their gang, for a total of six, and that they all met there for the night before curfew. The remaining three pursesnatchers, including the purple tiefling, arrived at the same time. They tried to flee when they saw the soldiers in their hideout, but were captured without much difficulty. The party took their prisoners to Castle Teryk to face the colonel's judgment.

When he realized the soldiers were bringing him to the castle instead of the garrison jail, Aksel panicked and started begging the soldiers not to charge him with a felony, as he had already been convicted of two and would face a mandatory death sentence for a third. He offered the party information about a bigger fish in exchange for reduced charges. The dwarf, Thorvald, screamed at him to shut his mouth, but Zigz and Charli took him aside to talk in private. Aksel revealed that he had been caught in a protection racket in prison and was forced to steal to repay his debt. His boss, a female half-orc nicknamed "One-Eye", would pick up the loot on Nymm 11th and take it to the gang leader, only known as "Red Crow". Zigz took Aksel to the garrison for a simple curfew violation while the rest of the party took the rest of the thieves to Col. Dubnov for summary judgment. The thieves were sentenced to five to fifteen years in prison for their crimes.