The Man in the Box

After returning to The Penthouse, the party is visited by a doumir named Lorkhan. He tells them how he unknowingly absorbed Ketojan's soul, something only seers can do. While trying to figure out why Ketojan decided to travel with them, John senses Ketojan's aura emitting from Lorkhan. Lorkhan is then invited to stay for the night. In the morning, the party finds an empty hideout and breakfast served. They plan on how to transport the box to Great Oak. Their meal is interrupted by Marla, who reminds them about their debt. After a short back and forth, she tells them that Silis Worel has already arranged transport by ship to the outskirts of Oeble for them and the package. She offers them to do a job she planned in order to pay for the transport. The party accepts.

The party surveils the building of Klein in the central Oeble Underways and takes all the necessary precautions for infiltrating the building in order to extract the shipment of Makka and brought to this run-down house. A high-elf by the name of Lino was the supposed leader of the Makkaheads stationed in Klein. In the evening, the party makes their way to the rooftop of the building and inflitrates it through the 2nd-story window. They encounter two Makkaheads and one ogre-like human on the upper floor. After dealing with them, the rest of the Makka-heads from downstairs rush up the stairs to get rid of the infiltrators, but they are easily dealt with by the party. They hear a negotiation offer from below and rush down the stairs. However, as soon as they started running down, they hear a mechanism opening and closing, finding only an empty 1st floor.

While looking for where Lino disappeared, Weneon finds a female elf body and her newborn corpse behind the wooden wall underneath the stairs. After an hour of searching for a mechanism to open a secret door they are certain exists, Mycha suggests to Kilijan and Lorkhan to simultaneously use shocking grasp to manipulate the mechanism inside the stone pillar. They succeed, and a highly sophisticated trapdoor opens up, leading the party into the basement. There, they are greeted by projectiles from turrets, which harm some of them. They see Lino sitting on the shipment of Makka with a remote device ready at hand to continue shooting. Mycha, however, manages to talk him out of it. Lino accepts and presses the button on the remote to reveal that he was out of ammo anyway. The party starts packing up the cargo into their bags, while Lino silently observes them and writes something into his small leather-bound notepad. He learns from the party about the body underneath the stairs, and starts shaking uncontrollably, revealing that his sister disappeared a while ago. Lino then starts walking towards the exit of the basement. The party is contacted by Marla, who instructs them to grab the Marla Rings she gave them earlier. They are shocked by a pulse, and Marla reveals to them that they are now connected to the teleportation circle in the Penthouse. They hear Lino humming a song, upstairs, from beneath the staircase where his sister was hidden, but decide not to engage and leave him be. After returning to the Penthouse, Andre and Silis immediately start organizing the loot and preparing it for shipment. Marla reminds the party that the transport will arrive in an hour or two, and that there are more jobs like this one if they are looking for extra ways to make money. Their conversation is suddenly interrupted by a dull knock coming from inside the box. They soon realize that a living creature is inside the box. Furthermore, the creature appears to be intelligent, as it successfully communicates with them by answering yes and no questions. The party members debate whether to open the box. They are swayed by Marla, Silis, and Andre to do it here, rather than dealing with it in the streets during the transport. Weneon starts to open the box slowly and sees a man with a bloodied eye hitting his head on the inside wall of the box. The man then falls out of the box and the party sees a naked old human male with dimensional shackles around his hand and feet. His mouth sawn shut with adamantium wires. His entire body covered in scars. Before they could say anything, the man launches head-first towards the floor as if his intention were to kill himself. As he falls unconscious before them, the party sees a strange leave pattern tattooed on his back and a sentence written in common underneath it: "Do not open. Property of Omihi."