Ash is pleased to see Ben and Ess back, and all the coin and gear they brought back too!

She offers, “Hmmm, well maybe there’s no rush to decide. They don’t know we’ve already dealt with half of this. Let’s think on it for a bit maybe? I can ask my contacts how much they’d pay.... “.

”But regardless of the money, it MIGHT be worth buying a bit of ‘good favour’ with the town, by handing the stuff in? If we’re going to be here for a while... It might not hurt too much to be ‘town heroes’ for a while. Could that be worth more than gold? Hmmmm....”. ((undecided/conflicted too!)).

"More if we turn it elsewhere, but it means traveling to do that, making contacts carefully enough, negotiating... or a few hundred now for a couple day's work. Not sure we'll be able to beat that hourly rate."

"Very little is worth more gold except the prospect of more gold Ash! I would like to see this as an investment but I'm struggling. 200 is better than an elbow to the face... I can forge some documents of authority for this haul but the travel isn't appealing. Some point I do need to get up to Helm again though."

He looks to the skeleton door and grumbles,

"What I know I don't want is needing to feed and care for the four prisoners for a couple of weeks."

He pulls out the fresh food and presents it to Kay.

"Speaking of which, never had your cooking! Let's see if you can cook as well as you punch things. We can discuss it over dinner."

Quietly, Ash says, “Hmm... If we hand the goods in, we can also probably offload the prisoners at the same time. It might be the cleanest way to tie up all the lose ends...”.

"I mean, never going to get the cost of the goods back by returning them to the owner as the reward, but we also aren't guaranteed that we'll get full price wherever we offload it if we take it somewhere... Might be lucky to get half the value."

"Absolutely, I'll get started on dinner, if you didn't see it on the way in, Ash can show you the hole we dug for the others."

((He'll also take Ben and Ess aside and bring them up to speed with what he and Ash had discussed regarding Willard.))

"Well, if we are just going to call it even at 200 gold I say we keep some stuff. Unlike Ess I don't plan on putting down roots here. With this," he pats the bag of holding, "we can keep a bit without it weighing us down. A couple of bolts of silk and a few casks of brandy. Seems reasonable."

Ben compliments the duo on their digging and says,

"Not sold on bringing anyone new on. Willard tried to shoot you Kay. He doesn't strike me as our strongest choice. That Grax fellow seemed a solid sort before his face became less so."

It’s clear that Ash if pretty flexible either way, and happy to entertain all options. It seems like it’s something she’s pretty well practiced in, weighing the options.

She adds... “Personally, I’d rather free the prisoners than kill them... but I’d rather turn them in than free them. So turning them in probably gets my vote... ... but that’s probably hard to do unless we also hand over some of the goods”.

”But I like the idea of handing in SOME of the goods in and keeping the rest. I think that could work!”, she says, nodding and smiling at Ben’s idea.

She puts on her best innocent voice: “That’s all we found, and we weren’t about to hang around in that hells-hole of a house!”.

”And we can then still go after the boat too, if we want to... unless we find a job in the meantime with better odds”.

"Well, they are offering some money for taking the boat as well. Maybe we can negotiate that up with them. 400 gold for that level of risk is ridiculous."

"Hmmm... well, heck bros I mean I agree what they're offering is peanuts compared to what we could get elsewhere. Well I won't loose any sleep over a few casks and bolts missing from the town so you take whatever you think is best. Or whatever that there bag can hold. ha ha ha ha! (normal laugh). "But yeah bros like dudes as long as the end result doesn't get us, well, me in hot water with the town council and the town itself, then heck I'm up for whatever you guys and Ash thinks best! You guys have always been the brains with this operation right?"

"oh.... but let's not kill 'em. let 'em go or turn 'em in."

"The hole's not big enough for more bodies anyway. hahahaha!" 

He knows we could just dig the hole bigger and it'd probably be him that does it, but he doesn't want to kill the remaining survivors (the women, Willard and Sanbalet)

"Agreed about their boat. That sounds dangerous bros for 400gp."

(lol he calls it a boat.)

"Not keen on killing them either Ess. So are we in general agreement then? We pick a few items from what they've taken but turn the rest over, along with them, for the reward?"

"I think we need them to keep things quiet about is turning the crew in. If they've got an inside person in town, they might be able to get word to the ship."

"Four hundred for the ship job, but also the ships ours to loot, scupper, sell, or sail, right? THAT'S where the value of that job lies. The 400 is just honey to sweeten it."

"Did you ever get a clear answer on how many people there are on a boat, excuse me, ship that size? 10 plus some few hands? How many people would we need to sail it at a minimum? If there is any loot on the ship I would expect the city would want that back for the 400 gold. Sailing it is beyond our current team and I have no plans on becoming a sailor, but perhaps selling it...Hmm. How much would one of those go for you think?"

"Oh, and how long would it take to sail that little boat back to town?"

Quote from KleinDungeons >>

 

 Korrik, he'd say that the name of the vessel, Sea Ghost, is painted on both sides of the prow. It has a length of nearly 90 feet, a beam of 26 feet, a draft of 8 feet, and stands 9 feet above the waterline to the top of its main deck rails and 17 feet above the waterline to the top of both its forecastle and poop deck. A jolly boat is lashed upside down on the main deck. Normal doors are 6 feet high, 4 feet wide, and of stout wood construction. This would be in between the good cop/bad cop questioning and would come out much smoother. hahaha!

- He'd say there's the captain 'Snake Eyes', his 3 officers, 7 crew, and sometimes any number of lizardfolk depending on the amount of weapons needed to be loaded on/off. He doesn't see the captain or officers rarely or if at all, so no more info about them. Oh, he said one of them is a wizard. 

 

 

 

"He said it would be the captain, three officers, seven crew, plus some number of lizardfolk... so I think we'd need to split them up, or pick them off to get the job done. They've at least one caster."

This might be retro, but Ess would've asked/threatened Sanbalet about the mariner's armor. "HEY. YOU. What's with that hobgoblins' armor? Why is it different than the other bunch of goons? Fits me real well, don't it?!" 

Intimidation: 20

Sanbalet tells Ess that he'll be able to 'swim better'.

"Cool."

"I mean that sounds like a good a plan as any. Maybe tonight we relax a bit after we're done with the bodies and really get into one of those casks of booze! Heck we surely deserve it! Then we roll into town tomorrow morning with these punks and the goods that we're returning. I imagine we'll have to make up some story as to why we were even at the house to begin with." he smiles at Ben.

"Maybe dicckwad here can give us more details about the ship too after the Marshswamp authorities question him. Did you see that captain? I imagine he'll get any info he wants out of these punks."

"If we wait til morning, we're needing to feed and water these lot, give them bathroom time, and all that. How about we have dinner, get the bodies taken care of, then haul these four back to town. I'd rather them out of our hands sooner than later. Longer we  hold them, more chance there is of one of them getting loose, or a friend showing up, or the like. If we don't think we have the room or the time to load all the goods, we come back tomorrow and do that, minus whatever we want to stash in the bag, of course? Do we care about the constables knowing about this base? We have any plans on using it ourselves besides running a game on the ship? If we don't care, we could get a couple on loan to help with the loading tomorrow."

Ben runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head.

"No, not going to be a baby sitter to these people. They go in tonight. We grab three casks of brandy and a bolt of silk for our trouble and return the rest along with them. We should have enough room in the carriage and the magic bag combined to get everything and everyone back tonight."

He looks around the place on the question about telling the guards,

"This place is a dump. They can know all about it but if we are going to try and trick their Sea Ghost they need to leave it alone. We need to flash some lights or something? We still have that lantern and paper with the code?"

To Ess,

"So far as a story goes, we asked around town for odd things going on, which we did. We saw the lights last night and heard the voices here but after we learned about the smugglers we put two and two together and got the jump on them, which we did. Doesn't need to more complicated than that. Compared to the real story of what actually happened it is much more believable. Honestly, why did we think that poster was real? Enough that we left Neverwinter? That story is much more difficult to swallow."

Ash is happy with the plan.

She would also suggest trying to negotiate half the gold up front for the boat, the rest on completion. We have precedent for great work, very reliable, etc. To demand that we get to keep the boat as part of our terms for taking on the job. We get them to list any lost/stolen goods, and anything else found is ours to keep (as per maritime law? lol) And they may even want to ‘help’ with the operation, with gear, boats, and guards. “We can only ask!...”, she says, with a shrug and a cheeky grin!