The City of Greyhawk, known as a haven for thieves and cutthroats as well as a center of culture and industry, has seen its share of scandal. From anonymous knifings of young nobles “slumming it” in the wrong part of town to outright war between its guilds of thieves and beggars, Greyhawk is no stranger to the type of violence most would prefer to keep covered up. 26 years ago, however, a noble of the city was implicated in a series of crimes so horrendous that news of the foul event spread as far as Ratik, confirming provincial wisdom that the city of Greyhawk was good for two things alone: corruption and death.
The scandal began with the disappearance of eight children, scions of nobles and wealthy merchants who inhabited the High and Garden Quarters of Greyhawk, a haven of culture and wealth separated from the “filth” of the Slum and Thieves Quarters by two walls and the bulk of New Town. Suspicion immediately fell upon the Thieves Guild, triggering press gangs of hired “vigilance committee” members (working at the behest of the families of the abducted) poking their noses south of Black Gate, in Old City, the haunt of thieves and the deathly impoverished. As might be suspected, these searches and accusations led to violence and the destruction of property, and what had begun as an affair of the well-to-do soon spread through Old and New city alike, affecting the lives of both the rich and poor.
The searches turned up nothing, and after two weeks, even the watch threw up their hands in frustration. Then, the criminal behind the abductions made himself known in a hideously violent act of confession. Merchants traveling east on High Street from the High Market to the Duke’s Gate noticed it first. The waters of the Millstream, the thin creek that runs throughout nearly the entire city, ran red with blood. Tracing the blooded river north, investigators came upon an iron gate set against a steep hill, atop which stood the lordly manor of Sir Bluto, knight bachelor of the City of Greyhawk. The millstream, according to city records, emerged from the ground in a natural cave beyond the grate. The key to the grate, according to those same records, was held in trust by none other than the knightly Sir Bluto himself.
By the time investigators pried open the grate, Sir Bluto had wandered into the Garden Quarter watch station, where he confessed to his grisly crime. Though imprisoned, he soon escaped his captors. Some say he fled across the Nyr Dyv with a band of renegade Rhennee bargemen. Adventurers' reports more than a decade later placed him within the storied edifice known as White Plume Mountain. He has never been brought to justice. Before fleeing Greyhawk, however, Sir Bluto had left a farewell present, of sorts.
The investigators discovered that the caves below Sir Bluto’s estate had been refined, most likely by some longdead tenant. Ancient wooden doors and walls divided the caves into a number of different chambers. One of these chambers clearly had been used as a holding pen for the children, as it stank of sweat and filth. A thin, dark flight of stairs led from the caves to the house above, allowing the passage from the world of the city to the underworld without risk of being seen.
And an underworld it was. Near the center of the cavern, where the stream bubbled up from a natural spring, investigators discovered the naked, mutilated bodies of the eight missing children, which had been hanged from barbed chains from the cavern’s ceiling, their lifeblood draining from the quasi-mystical symbols carved into their flesh to the flowing water beneath them.
Conventional (though, after the fact, fiercely covered-up) wisdom suggested that the vile Sir Bluto had worshipped fiends in this hidden sanctum, and that the eight dangling corpses had been the culmination of his devotion to his infernal masters. The official story was that Bluto was a madman which, of course, he must have been. The people, with the help and urging of the government, put the killings behind them, for the most part remembering them only by the sobriquet they had picked up thanks to the lurid image first espied by the merchants on High Street: The River of Blood murders.
Sir Bluto’s home, within the shadow of the Guild of Wizardry, has remained vacant all these years. The key to the grate, ever since the day the bodies were removed from the caves, has been in the care of the city watch.
Veralian Took and his Cohorts
Three weeks ago, a stranger to the City of Greyhawk arrived under cover of darkness, and made his way to the home of the infamous Sir Bluto. This man, a mercenary by the name of Veralian Took, had been hired by unknown agents to set up residence in the house, investigate the entirety for some hint as to what Sir Bluto had been up to, and report back to his contact at some location to be named later. For the industrious Took, breaking into the home had been easy. Clearing thirty some years of dust and debris, however, had taken more time. Much longer, in fact, than he had originally accounted for.
Everything likely would have gone as planned if not for Took’s associates. Though his human friends Garoth the Houndsman and Furtok the brute grew restless, always afraid that their trips to the High Market to gather provisions would raise suspicions, it was Took’s inhuman cohorts who caused the true problems. Traveling with Veralian Took was a band of xvarts, blue-skinned
goblinoids who he long ago picked up while adventuring in the Bandit Kingdoms. Xvarts have an affinity for rats, and so this particular band of xvarts saw Took, himself a wererat, as something of a messiah.
Veralian Took might occasionally change form into a rat, but he was no idiot. He knew that smuggling a band of xvarts into the city of Greyhawk would be difficult, and that keeping them there without them causing trouble would prove an even greater challenge. Within a week of gaining entry to Sir Bluto’s home, however, Took discovered the secret passage to the caves below. After befriending some particularly fierce rats who had inhabited the caves and exploring the cavern, the xvarts made the place their home. Veralian Took locked the door from cave to house, effectively trapping the xvarts between home and grate.
Though xvarts are by nature cavern dwellers, Took’s companions didn’t appreciate being cooped up under Sir Bluto’s house. Worst of all, Veralian Took was taking much longer than he had originally promised, and the xvarts were in serious danger of missing one of their high religious festivals, Raxivort’s Frolic. This most holy of weeks heralded the most sacred time in the xvart’s religious calendar, and Took’s optimism regarding the length of their stay in Greyhawk left the humanoids trapped in a foreign, human city with no females to speak of (xvart females play an important role in the Frolic ceremonies). Though underestimated by their humanoid kin, xvarts are notoriously crafty. Within days, while their human companions scavenged through Sir Bluto’s abode, the xvarts had managed to pry the bars of the safety grate apart just enough to allow passage to the High Quarter. If xvart females could not be found, humans would have to do.
A New River of Blood?
As yet, the xvarts have met with only marginal success. On their first foray to the world beyond the grate, they ventured south, along the millstream. Traveling under the cover of night, two xvarts made it as far south as the wall dividing the bulk of Greyhawk from the Old City. Under ordinary circumstances, the creatures would have been stopped by a thick metal gate at the wall, but this had been pried loose by thieves on some recent caper. Thus, the xvarts delved deeper into the worst neighborhood in the teeming city of Greyhawk, the so called Slum Quarter, where a man’s life is worth only so much as he carries in his pockets. Most often, this amounts to nothing.
And yet, in these darkened streets, some amount of innocence flourishes still, in the form of children too young to know that their path has been dictated for them since birth. Two such children, Erdan and Dena Pakiss, played on the banks of the Millstream that night. Even though, by the time it passed the south wall, the waters of the Millstream ran with the refuse of a metropolis, these children played. On the night in question, a horrible brand of filth made its way south with the current. The body of the young boy, Erdan, was discovered at dawn. Of
the girl, Dena, no sign remained.
Murders and abductions, even (or perhaps especially) of children, are not unusual in the Slum Quarter, where the most destitute of men bring with them the most despicable of vices. The names of the murdered and missing were entered into certain ledgers in a watch house already swarming with crimes demanding more immediate attention, and the matter, at least so far as city officials were concerned, was largely forgotten.
Five days later, however, an eight-year-old girl named Caran Meratan vanished while washing her family’s clothes in the Millstream near where Erdan Pakiss was found. Certain inquiries were made in the nearby neighborhoods. A Tenha street vagrant who (it was said) fancied children was beaten to death by an angry mob of Slum Quarter laborers. The man had claimed innocence to the last, and no trace of where the children might have been kept was discovered.
As yet, the city watch remains (at best) casually interested in the crimes. The superstitious folk of the Slum Quarter keep their children locked up at home, afraid that any of their neighbors might be the fiend responsible. Though the crimes are yet young, some in Old City have raised the specter of the River of Blood, noting the importance of the Millstream in both crimes. The situation is such that, with perhaps one or two more abductions, tensions in the Slum Quarter could grow to bursting.
Into this state of affairs comes a carriage of would-be adventurers, visiting the city of Greyhawk for what is likely the first time. Their trip is to be interrupted, however, by a little girl who will set them on two mysteries. The first will return another child to her mother. The second will span the entire Flanaess, and will define the newcomers’ adventuring careers.
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