[07e04] A Thief and a Killer

Callie Rockwell, Ghensh Faass, Bec Galere and Freki Sarin are present for the auction.
Freki remembers following Dominic Tremere to the Conservatory as he stormed out of the room (the same way Cal did/remembers from session 20). Freki overheard a conversation between Tremere and the lich.
Ghensh overheard Sartus trying to hire Orbach over a game of dragonchess. “We’ve heard you have a talent for obtaining unique items; we seek a bothersome item that currently vexes our people; the elven treasury could more than adequately compensate you for your time and effort.” Invictus immediately appeared and tried to hire Orbach instead. “I’ll pay double, should you instead obtain said item for me, its rightful owner.” Sartus raised an eyebrow, giving Invictus an irritated look. Orbach declined, saying he cannot find missing objects—only obtain them when their location is already known to him. Sartus persisted: “We heard a rumor that you already obtained this item once before—does that not make it more feasible in this case?” Orbach glanced askance at Tremere. “I don’t know what you mean.” But Tremere looked pissed and stomped out of the room. Orbach, sarcastically to Sartus: “Thanks for that,” and he went into the foyer.
The lich led the party to the body. On the way, the party was joined by the other guests:
- Timor Invictus escorted the party the entire way.
- Priscilla Stormcloud was in the Study, and accompanied them from the start.
- Tybalt Nightbreeze emerged from the Dining Room into the Parlor.
- As the party emerged into the foyer, Sartus Morningdew was there, and complained of having to kill at least a dozen of the skulls singlehandedly. He seemed mystically winded.
- Bram the Blithe had not been seen since he left to purportedly take a dump after his big speech.
- Alex Orbach emerged onto the balcony from the 2nd floor Preservatory door, and joined the procession from there, after claiming to have battled skulls in the Preservatory.
The party arrived at the crime scene: Invictus’s “Hall of Victory,” the hallway on the 2nd floor leading to the library. The victim was Dominic Tremere, still wearing his Periapt of Health. His heart was cut out in an apparently hasty fashion, with a supernaturally sharp knife. There was surprisingly little blood.
The southern door was slightly ajar. The party investigated the room beyond, and found it to be a torture chamber. On the south side, rather than a wall, there was a pit, which was full of a writhing mass of zombies, 15 feet down. Ghensh flew around under the torture chamber, above the zombie, just out of their clutches, searching for clues, but did not find much.
The door to the north led to the library.
Investigating the body itself, it was clear to the investigators that the scene must have been cleaned up somehow.
The pirate returned from outside. The party heard the front door slam, and him tromp up the stairs. His arms were scratched up, from—he claimed—wrestling a tree into submission so that he could shit on it.
Callie connected the dots of Alex Orbach being the one who stole the Necronomicon. She believed that whoever had done that is the same person who stole her family heirloom. She confronted Orbach demanding that he empty his pockets. When pressured by everyone else, he reluctantly produced magic chalk of his own design which was “quantum linked.”
- Orbach expressed scorn that he was kicked out of the wizard college, due to his invention being “too dangerous.” It somehow harnesses the Flux to quantumly link objects.
- He did not, however, produce the Puzzlebox.
Callie cast speak with dead on the corpse. Tremere’s body bolted upright in a puppetlike semblance of life. He fingered Orbach as his murderer. Callie was considering her next question, when the spell started to unravel for reasons unknown…