S4: In a Pinch

Participants

 * Cuddlemuddle
 * Aurora Evelyn Lucia
 * Doris Fern

Summary
With Pirjo hard at work trying to gather information regarding Goober’s untimely death, there had been a bit of a lull in jobs for the Witch Pinchers. With Goober’s replacement with Puzuzu, there was now a vacancy that needed to be filled in terms of mattress collection and scrounging for money. The Witch Pinchers had taken on Doris Fern as an intern charged with all of the most mundane responsibilities that Goober had looked after. Aurora had taken up a managerial role within the organization, mostly spending her time bossing Doris around and otherwise trying to keep track of everything. While everyone else was out, the two of them were approached by a sleazy looking Halfling with a kilt of sorts who introduced himself as Cuddlemuddle. Seeing that they were a little down on business, he offered a business proposition to them. “Loin clothes are in, baby,” he grinned as he displayed his considerable wares from inside of his kilt pouch. After sniffing for a moment, Doris looked uncomfortable before asking in a hushed tone as to whether these were fresh or used loin clothes, to which Cuddlemuddle delightedly replied that they were, in fact, used loin clothes. Aurora looked disgusted and then looked even more disgusted upon recognizing her loin clothes inside the pouch. She snatched them from Cuddlemuddle and scowled at him, declaring that they would absolutely never have anything to do with him or his revolting business.

Behind them an abrupt cough could be heard from the front entrance to the Mattress Wholesale. In the doorway was a regally dressed man with a long cape and a pencil mustache who was tapping his foot impatiently. Jumping right down to business, he reintroduced himself as Sebastapol, the landlord for the warehouse they were operating business out of and had come to remind them that the rent of 100 gold pieces was well overdue. When her protests were met with a threat to involve the law in settling their dispute, Aurora decided to switch tracks and subtly sidled up to the man to cast charm person on him. Not wanting to push her luck with her spell when he seemed to resist her suggesting that he waive the rent entirely, she merely convinced the man to give them an extension and a discount. He was in no position to argue, given his state and was set on his way as he loosely limped away absent-mindedly.

Cuddlemuddle waggled his eyebrows at the two of them, suggesting that given their circumstances; maybe his business proposition wasn’t so bad after all. With some encouragement from Doris, who was also eager to make some coin of his own, Aurora sighed and rubbed her eyebrows, agreeing to take on Cuddlemuddle as a business partner if he swore to never steal any of the Witch Pincher’s loin clothes. Cuddlemuddle smiled and said that he didn’t steal from friends. Aurora rolled her eyes and ordered Doris to make some room in the Warehouse for Cuddle’s operations. Not wanting to move anything around by hand, Doris opted to instead clear away a large group of mattresses through the use of fireballs. The obnoxiously loud spell drew the attention of a pair of guards who marched in and demanded to know what was going on. Cuddlemuddle hid himself away, while Doris nervously and uncomfortably answered some questions, casually mentioning that they were a mattress wholesale and loin cloth selling business. When the more local guard, Sly, began to become suspicious upon the mention of loin clothes Aurora tried to play off Doris’s actions as him just having a screw loose. Sly said that he had heard of many loin cloth related thefts in the area and recommended that they report anything to them if suspicious activity happened regarding their loin clothes.

After some quick scheming, and some disgusted sighs from Aurora, it was decided that the three of them would steal some loin clothes from a local morgue. Doris had the brilliant idea of heading outside and aggressively confronting the first person he encountered to learn of the nearest morgue, a line of questioning which would assuredly not draw attention to themselves. Especially when the first person found was a little girl who ran away with fear in her eyes. Unwilling to reassess his strategy, Doris turned to next person he could find, which was an enormous shirtless bodybuilder. When the large man raised an eyebrow at the line of questioning, Doris mentioned that he was dying and the man softened, explaining that the nearest place was Wilson’s Morgue a few blocks away. He also offered Doris his condolences and hoped that he could find solace in his last few days, before wandering off to do bodybuilder things.

Hiding out in an alleyway beside Wilson’s, the three of them came up with a simple plan; Doris and Aurora would distract and Cuddle would do what he did best. Doris cast a spell of invisibility on Cuddle, giving him the cover he would need to do what he needed to do. Doris and Aurora strolled into the reception area, which had a pile of corpses queued up on either side of the room and were greeted coldly by the secretary who bluntly asked them what they needed without looking up from her paperwork. After explaining that they wanted to do a funeral service for their friend Goober, the secretary sighed, put down her pen and explained that services like that were incredibly uncommon in these parts and that it was probably outside of the budget they were looking at. Cuddlemuddle tried to tiptoe past but snagged himself on one of the corpses on the side of the wall and while struggling, one of his loin clothes leaked out of his pouch, which drew the secretary’s attention. Doris reacted quickly as Cuddle continued trying to sneak past by casting a spell to snuff out all of the lights in the room. His subsequent explanations of him having Spell Tourettes weren’t accepted by the secretary who curtly told them to leave immediately. Not wanting to make a scene, the two of them left and were forced to trust that Cuddle would get the job done.

In the back room, Cuddle found a shelf-based system not unlike a row of bookshelves at a library, except with corpses draped over lines that extended into the back of the room, apparently sorted alphabetically via the Deadey Decimal System. Lurking around for some particularly lucrative loin clothes, Cuddle suddenly heard the voice of an incredibly old man who pleaded with him to help as the old man had been mistakenly checked in and trapped beneath some bodies. When Cuddle ignored him, he started shouting louder, drawing over a cloaked man with a glowing pair of eyes. Cuddle hid himself at the back of the room, so that when the old man protested that there was someone else in the room, the cloaked man simply shrugged and assumed the old man was delusional and carried him off. Now alone, Cuddle began to get to work, collecting all of the loin clothes that he could salvage.

Doris, not wanting to abandon his newfound business partner, decided to return to the front reception area of the morgue, aiming to create a distraction. Casting invisibility on himself, he assumed he might be able to frighten the secretary into believing there were ghosts. The secretary immediately intuited that Doris had simply returned when the door opened on its own and he tried to lift a corpse into the air to give the impression of a haunting. The secretary lost her temper and moved to the door, calling for guards on the street to come and deal with him. She was quickly met by Sly and Leroy who promised to look into the matter with seriousness when she mentioned that a horse headed individual had been bothering her.

A considerable amount of time had passed when the cloaked figure returned and moved with purpose towards the row that the Halfling was doing his work in. Moving quickly, the thief found a secret passageway at the back of the room and with some swift sleight of hand, managed to quietly open the door and enter without drawing any attention. Inside he found a sketchy looking lab with corpses hanging on the wall. Looking to try to find a way out, he tried to stack some of the lab desks on top of each other to reach some grates leading to the roof, but accidentally knocked over some equipment while doing so, starting a violent chemical fire. Throwing caution to the wind, Cuddle decided to just book it past the cloaked figure and the secretary. The secretary shouted obscenities after Cuddle when he raced past and told her that there was a fire in the back. The cloaked figure, now revealed to be Wilson himself, made to make chase after the thief until the secretary mentioned that there might be a fire in the back, forcing him to let Cuddle go.

Wanting to unload their wares as soon as possible given all of the heat on their tail, Cuddle mentioned that he had a former business partner/ex boyfriend in the Maul that would probably buy the loin clothes off of him. They were warmly received at the restaurant/pub known as the Rusty Butthole and managed to sell them to the owner, Rusty, while him and his naked chefs made food.

Spoils

 * Sixty gold