• Closed • The Logging Consortium Heist (2)

Tio leads a heist to steal from the Logging Consortium

118th of Ashan 720

Darbyton is a well established little village, most of the inhabitants are quick to point out that they were the first proper settlement in Scalvoris history. Although primarily focused on logging, enough hunting and trapping goes on to largely fulfil their own food needs and almost every home regularly grows bean sprouts to help make sure nutritional needs are met. Between that and spruce tips and the like, very little is imported, which fits in with the nature of the people who live here.

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Tio Silver
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The Logging Consortium Heist (2)

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The Logging Consortium, Darbyton.
118th Ashan, 720
Part 1 - 2

The moon rode high across the night’s sky, spilling silver light across the village of Darbyton. Most of the villagers were asleep in their beds, and those few who remained up so late at night paid little attention to the horse-drawn goods wagon that came up from the road leading to Egilrun and turned down into Felltree Run. It wasn’t an unusual sight; after all delivery carts headed down that road to the Logging Consortium on a daily basis. Perhaps if anyone had looked closer they might have noticed that something was wrong with the wagon: it didn’t contain any cargo.

Five people were in the wagon, all garbed in dark clothing. James sat at the front driving the wagon, his face concealed by the hood of the dark brown cloak he kept well wrapped around himself. Sat beside him in the passenger's seat was Cobra; her usually brown hair dyed jet black, and her distinct tattoos covered by a long-sleeved black shirt. As the ones dressed the least suspiciously it had been their job to sit where they could be seen, so that nobody looked closer into the wagon and spotted the others.

Tio, Morgana and Kyari were crouched inside the wagon itself, all dressed head-to-toe in plain black, tight fitting robes; the kind you would expect a stereotypical assassins to wear. There were no loose sleeves or exposed parts of the body except for the eyes; everything was designed to keep the wearer’s identity completely hidden and offer them freedom of movement. Tio also had a coil of rope wrapped around one shoulder, the same shade of black to prevent it drawing unwanted eyes. It was the perfect gear for a thief except for one downside: it was completely obvious that anyone dressed like this was planning something illegal.

When they’d gone far enough down Felltree Run that they were out of sight of the rest of Darbyton James steered the wagon off road towards a nearby thicket and parked the wagon behind it. It wouldn’t hide the wagon from anyone actively searching for it, but at this time of night the visibility was just dark enough that anyone else casually passing along the road probably wouldn’t spot it by accident. Tio, Morgana, Kyari and Cobra got out without a word, whilst James stayed behind and offered them a silent wave of goodbye.


“This is the plan.” Tio whispered, gesturing to the map laid out on the table in the middle of them. “The Logging Consortium’s influence over Darbyton is considerable, so the first thing we need to consider is an escape route. Fortunately there is a road, the Felltree Run, that leads right up to the office.” He pointed to a thicket at one side of the road. “We will approach by wagon, the same kind that usually brings supplies to the people living in the company's housing district, and hide it behind this thicket here. It’s far away enough that we shouldn’t encounter any guards, but close enough for us to retreat to on foot. From there we can take the roads back to Almund, and hide the wagon in a stable I own.”

“If the wagon is found it’ll cut off our only means of escape.” James pointed out.

“True, which is why you’ll be waiting behind to guard it. It’s your job to make sure our transport isn’t stolen, and to have it prepared to leave the moment we get back.”

“So then the rest of us will walk along the road right up to the main office?” Cobra asked.

Tio shook his head. “No, ideally we don’t want anyone to see us. The guards will be suspicious of people turning up at the dead of night and going straight to the main office. It’s obvious that the office wouldn’t be open so late.”

“Then why go at night at all?”

“That would be because of my curse.” Kyari replied, a faint frown gracing her brow. “I was cursed by Faldrun, and am painfully burnt by the light of the sun.”

“That’s one reason, but also because I don’t know what the layout of the third floor is like or where the ledger is kept.” Tio explained. “I can’t say for sure how long it will take to find, and so I can’t risk going there during the hours the office is open. Anyone could walk in at any time. Only at night, when the office is deserted, will we have the time we need to find the ledger. To that end instead of taking the main road we’ll loop around and approach from the side.”

“Which side? The warehouses to the left, or the houses to the right?” James asked.

“The right side. The warehouses will have guards, whereas the houses will only have the odd patrol and a few lumberjacks awake at night to sneak past.”



The four of them crept low through the undergrowth, silently approaching the line of buildings that marked the border of the housing district. A few of the windows still had beams of light peeking out from behind their curtains, suggesting that the people who lived inside weren’t asleep yet, but for the most part the abundance of cover provided an unbroken line of shadows for them to sneak through.

As they approached one corner Tio held up a hand in a silent signal to halt as the sound of boots crunching on grass came up ahead. A flicker of torchlight came into view, betraying that a patrol was coming around the house they were currently sneaking round the back of.

Thinking fast, Tio gestured for the others to follow him and hurried over to the walls of the house. Like all the houses here it was only a small thing, a single story cabin really, and the roof was low enough to reach if he stood on his tiptoes. He knelt down next to it and cupped his hands together, giving the others a boost to help them clamber onto the roof, then held his arms out for Kyari and Cobra to pull him up behind them.

The second they were on the roof they laid down on their stomachs, keeping as flat as possible as the patrol came into view. While the patrol would have easily spotted them in the daylight, their black clothes blended in with the dark perfectly. Since the guards weren’t actively searching for anyone none of them thought to look up. The patrol passed by completely unawares, and once their torchlight had faded away completely the four thieves slipped back down from the roof and resumed their journey.

After a good few minutes of sneaking around the main office came into view ahead. Two guards stood posted by the front door, and the lights coming out from the windows suggested that more were inside. Tio nodded to Cobra, who nodded once and split off from the group. The rest of them continued to creep around the perimeter until they were across from the right side of the building. Tio checked the coast was clear and then dashed out from the housing district, quickly crossing the ground between the houses and the main office with the others hot on his heels. When they reached the main office they pressed themselves right up against the side of the building and shuffled along until they reached the corner leading to the front of the building.

With painful slowness Tio peered around the corner. No one had spotted them during their dash, and the guards standing by at the doors were facing forwards, meaning that they couldn’t see them out of their peripheral vision.


“Gettin’ to the office is all well an’ good, but how do we actually get inside undetected? The Loggin’ Consortium would keep guards by their office right?” Cobra asked. “We could break in through a window maybe? Nah, that’d be too loud.”

“We’ll give them a distraction; something that’ll draw the guards away from the front door for a moment.” Tio replied. “We’ll only need a few trills to slip in.”



“Oi Dave, what’s that?”

One of the guards nudged the other and pointed over to a nearby house, from where an orange light was steadily growing brighter. They tensed as the first plumes of fire began to rise into the sky. Cobra had done her job perfectly.

“Shit! FIRE!” The other called, racing forwards to help put it out while the first followed along behind him. A few seconds later half a dozen other guards also poured out of the office to lend their aid as well. The entire housing district was made of wood after all, and if the fire got out of control there was no telling how far it would spread. They had no choice but to help put it out immediately or else the damage would be terrible. And the moment their backs were turned Tio and Kyari shot around the corner and into the front door, whilst Morgana turned back and headed around to the back of the building.

The foyer of the main office was a beautiful place, filled with intricately carved sculptures and other works of wooden art, but Tio paid them no mind as he hurried up to the staircase to the second floor. He took the stairs two at a time, reaching the top and crouching behind one of the thick balusters at the top. Kyari did the same on the other side, and not a moment to soon, for a second later the doors swung open again as the guards returned to the building, muttering to each other about who they thought the damn idiot was that hadn't extinguished their cigar properly, and how they were going to kick their ass when they found them. Thankfully not of them came up the stairs, seeing no need to.


“It should be smooth sailing once you reach the second floor though.” James pondered, pointing to the floor plan. “There aren’t any traps up there. Guess it’d be kind of silly to put any there really, after all it's full of storage rooms. No sense putting anything where one of their own employees might accidentally set it off.”

Morgana shook her head. “Not all traps are meant to cause damage though.”

Tio leaned in further, his eyes dancing with sly amusement. “Have you ever been to a house with creaky floorboards? I bet you didn’t know this, but a lot of times builders make the floorboards creaky intentionally. It’s a kind of alarm system: if any burglars are sneaking around and step on one the sound will alert the residents. You can bet the Logging Consortium knows that, and that’d they know how to make the creakiest wood possible for just such a reason.”

James hummed thoughtfully. “I see. So walking around will alert the guards below to your presence. But if that’s the case short of making yourself weightless I don’t see how you could bypass them.”


Keeping their bodies low down so that their centre of gravity was nice and even, Tio and Kyari crept over to the first corridor. Tio went right up against the wall to the left, whilst Kyari did the same on the right. Up against the walls there was less room for the wood below their feet to move, and the creaking noises they made were as muffled as they could be.

Both of them extended their arms towards each other, placing their hands on the other’s shoulders and gradually leaning in so that they supported each other's weight, like two sides of a triangle. Their abdominal muscles began to protest at the strain, but both thieves ignored them as they slowly shuffled their feet up off the floor and on to the base of the walls themselves. Soon they were both standing on the walls, using the other’s weight as a crutch. It was a fairly tricky feat of acrobatics and required greater than average core strength, but thankfully both of them were up to the task. Now they could literally walk on the walls, bypassing the floor all together.

In tandem the both took small, deliberate steps forwards, making slow but silent progress along the corridor. Their abs began to burn from the strain, and for a moment Tio considered dropping the act of being a regular human and just floating across them. Alas everyone knew that Tio, the Devout, could float, and in order to keep his anonymity with his new gang he’d have to make do without that ability for now. Thankfully the corridor was straight not unduly long, and when they reached the end together they slowly brought each other down so that their weight was spread evenly across the surface of the floorboards, again minimising the noise. With one simple roll they arrived at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the third floor.


Kyari tapped a finger on the last section of the floorplan, which consisted of nothing more than a blank space. “And then we reach the third floor, which you don’t know the layout of.”

“Unfortunately so.” Tio sighed. “The only thing we can do at that point is improvise and hope we’re up to the task of handling whatever obstacles are in our way.”


Checking the floorboards of the staircase as they went up revealed that none of them were creaky. It seemed the foremen wanted their floor to be more ornate than secure, which made sense considering they were supposed to portray a sense of status to the rest of the company. Very soon the pair emerged on the third floor, which was little more than a short corridor with a number of doors leading to four offices.

The door at the end was marked with the name ‘Ms Sherapo’, and it was this one that Tio walked over to kneel in front of. Out of his pocket he took his lockpicking tools, stuck the tension wedge into one side and began prodding around at the lock’s inner mechanics with the pick. The lock was of better quality than you’d find in any old house, but wasn’t as complex as he’d been expecting. Still though to Tio’s embarrassment it took him multiple failures and a good ten minutes of tense silence before the door finally clicked open.

“Finally. A right quick fingers, aren't you?” Kyari breathed sarcastically.

“Sorry, I must have gotten rustier than I thought after so long.”

They pushed the door ajar and stepped into what was actually a rather down-to-earth office. Sure there were a number of masterfully carved woodworks and the odd flash of gold or bottle of expensive wine, but on the whole it was a fairly modest place for a wealthy business owner. The most expensive thing in the room was a big portrait of a young Cornel sitting with her father that overlooked the main desk.

“Huh. I was expecting it to be… flashier.” Tio whispered, a twinge of disappointment lacing his tone.

Kyari looked around, examining the more expensive items. “Well she is supposed to be a philanthropist, and a shrewd businesswoman. I suppose she’s not the kind of person to spend money on decorations if it could be put to more practical use.”

Tio moved over to the desk and began rummaging around through the draws, quickly finding a book bound in simple brown leather. He pulled it open to find pages upon pages of numbers: neatly categorised records of the companies business transactions.

“Nothing... Nothing... Nothing...” He muttered, a scowl deepening as he flicked through page after page. “There’s no record of any mysterious transactions here.”

“So what, the company is clean after all?” Kyari asked.

No. No it couldn’t be. He knew the Logging Consortium was connected to The Consortium, he’d seen it firsthand. Were they not being used for money laundering? But why wouldn’t they be when they were perfectly positioned to?

Then it came to him.

“This has all been too easy!” He hissed. “The perfect stairs, the simple lock, the ledger being exactly where you’d expect it: it’s all been too easy. It’s like Cornel wants this ledger to be found, which only makes sense-...”

“If that ledger is a fake.” Kyari finished. “Makes sense I suppose. She keeps a false ledger around that anyone could find, so that once people have it they stop looking for the real one.”

Tio nodded. “Which brings us to the question of where the real one is.” He looked around the room for anything that stood out, and his eyes immediately landed on the portrait. A portrait that seemed to be pushed slightly forwards from the wall by something behind it. “You don’t think…”

He reached out to touch the edge of the painting, but froze as a hand clamped down on his wrist. “Wait!” Hissed Kyari. “Come on, the old safe hidden behind the painting trick? You don’t see anything odd about that?”

Tio looked confused, and Kyari rolled her eyes and pushed him aside. “Hiding a safe behind a painting is a cliche in stories, and as such very few people actually do it. Even the most unimaginative burglar thinks to look behind the paintings these days. Now why do you think Cornel, who’s we’ve already figured out uses traps that involve misdirection, would use such a well known trick?”

She took a pen from the desk and wedged it between the frame of the painting and the wall. Then she backed up a few steps and took the fake ledger, aimed, and threw it at the pen. The book struck the pen at the right angle and force it to push the painting forwards, which swung open on a hinge just as Tio had expected. What he hadn’t expected was the cloud of white gas that puffed out from behind the painting, close enough to have hit him in the face had he been standing close enough to move the painting himself.

“Poison. Frondead if I had to guess.” Kyari explained. “There’s probably a hidden switch somewhere that will disable it for Cornel before she opens it. Anyone else would be so taken by the idea of a hidden safe that they wouldn’t expect it to be booby trapped.”

“Damn, that’s sneaky. Thanks for the save.”

Behind the painting was a safe, and unlike the office door this one was seriously well made. There was no way Tio had the skill to break it open. Which of course meant the only option was unlocking it the normal way: by finding the passcode.

Examining the safe, Tio found that it needed four numbers to open. He began cycling through the obvious ones; 0000, 1234, and 2304: Cornel’s birth-trial. When none of them worked however he began searching around for any four numbers written down, but none of them presented themselves.

After about half a break of searching around but finding nothing, Tio’s eyes fell back to the portrait. He hadn’t noticed before but at the base of the picture there were three words: "strength and justice." It sounded like a motto, the sort you found written on a coat of arms. Perhaps it was a family motto? Why else would it have a place on a family portrait?

His thoughts turned to an item in his own pocket: the star tarot card that, by some odd magical effect, always returned undamaged to his person no matter where he left it. He’d received the card from the fortune teller Joelle, who had also given him the prophecy that had saved him from The Consortium arcs ago. Had there perhaps been a reason why she gave him a tarot card specifically? After all the major arcana each had a number representing them, and two of the arcana were named Strength and Justice. Their numbers were 8 and 11.

Approaching the safe again, Tio turned the locks to make the code 0811. There was a satisfying click as the locking mechanism gave way, and the door to the safe swung open.

“Bingo!” He grinned, reaching inside. There were only two items within. The first was a necklace: a simple little thing composed of a nut-sized black stone wrapped in a silver flower-shaped frame. The second was a book bound in black leather. Pocketing the necklace, Tio then cracked open the book to find another list of neatly categorised numbers. This was it! The ledger! Complete with records of some clearly dodgy dealing involving large sums of cash!

“We’ve got what we came for. Time to go.” He announced, heading over to the window at the back of the office. He opened it and breathed a sigh of relief as the cool night air flooded into the office, serving to calm him slightly after what had been a rather tense night so far, then looked down to the ground. Waiting around the back of the building was Morgana, keeping watch for any guards, who signalled up to him that the coast was clear.

Tio unwrapped the coil of rope from around his torso and wrapped it once around the heaviest item in the room; Cornel’s desk, then threw both ends of the rope down to Morgana. He stepped out onto the window ledge, Kyari at his side, and they both took one of the ropes. Then in unison they leaned back, took cautiously steps backwards, and began to abseil down the side of the wall. It took only a few seconds before they landed back on the solid ground, and Tio pulled on his end of the rope to unwrap the whole thing from around Cornel’s desk and bring it back to them.

“What took you so long? Did you get it?” Morgana asked.

“I did. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

They followed the same route they’d taken through the housing district back to the thicket, pulling off the same tricks as before to avoid the patrols. James and Cobra were waiting by the cart, and both looked at Tio expectantly.

“Before you ask yes, I got it. Now let’s go before something goes wrong.” Tio declared, hopping back into the wagon with Morgana and Kyani in tow. James and Cobra took the seat at the front, and with a crack of the reins the wagon pulled out of the thicket and headed back towards the road to Egilrun. Once again nobody paid any attention to the cart as it passed by them, and by the time the sun rose and the robbery was discovered Tio and his gang were long gone.
Last edited by Tio Silver on Sat Jun 06, 2020 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total. word count: 3868
Fast Facts
Noticeable quirks your character can see when threading with Tio.

Floats

Tio floats in the air, usually just a foot off the ground.

Explodeibur

Tio wears a scary looking gauntlet on his right hand that is clearly magical. It creates explosions.

Mercury

Tio has a masked alter ego who leads The Court of Miracles.

Enchanting Voice

Tio's voice has hypnotic properties.
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Doran
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Re: The Logging Consortium Heist (2)

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Tio:

Knowledge:
•Stealth x3
•Lockpicking x3

Loot:
•The Logging Consortium Business Ledger
•Cornel's Mysterious Necklace
Wealth: -
Injuries: -
Renown: 20, for a successful heist.
Magic XP: -
Skill Review: Appropriate to level.
Points: 10
- - -
Comments:This was a long solo, but it didn’t feel long at all because it was so entertaining. I find it interesting that Tio’s companions all have some sort of curse, but then again, he’s the Immortal of Curses!

I like how you occasionally switched back and forth between them conducting their heist and them preparing the heist. That worked really well in my opinion.

Enjoy your rewards!
word count: 104

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Ring of Reversal
Ring of Immunity
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