The Mended Wing smelled of pipe smoke and lake fish the night a hooded man slid into the seat across from Rask, Franco, and Dr. Destructo and named a price for their curiosity. A collector needed something retrieved from a vault in the marsh town of Bogside, he said. A rival crew had taken the job three days prior and simply never came back. It was the kind of offer that should have sent sensible people running. Instead, it bought a dusk meeting in Haven's east quarter.
While the arrangements were made, Chimmy the monkey proved his worth by lifting coin from a dozing fisherman's purse without waking him, even skimming a copper from a tip jar for good measure. Jet the raven watched the whole performance with what could only be described as professional approval, and something like an understanding passed between bird and monkey that neither species had any business having.
The meeting itself took place in a private room called The Closed Eye, where a collector named Crowfoot laid out the truth of the matter. A woman named Vesna Koss kept a living vault on her estate in Bogside, and inside it was a reliquary he wanted very badly. The crew before them, a lockbreaker, a sellsword, a hedge mage, and a scout, had cased the estate for two days before striking at midnight. The vault had made a sound Crowfoot called 'hollowing.' None of the four had been seen since. He offered 2,500 gold for success, half paid on the spot, and a floating feather that hovered near his shoulder pulsed gold when Jet drew close to it, the first time it had done so in seventeen years. Crowfoot said nothing about what that meant. Neither did the feather.
With coin in hand, the party outfitted themselves at The Northern Star, a shop run by a woman who didn't ask questions and didn't need to. Studded leather for Rask and Franco, tools for cracking locks and disguising faces, rope, rations, healing potions, and a small custom leather harness for Chimmy all found their way into packs, nearly two hundred gold spent against whatever waited in the Mire. One night's rest at the tavern, and in the morning they were on the river road, walking southeast toward a marsh that had already swallowed one crew whole.
Rask's woodcraft shaved days off the journey, and the road passed easier than expected. They camped the first night beneath the trees, Jet and Chimmy sharing watch and, in the process, sealing their strange alliance over the bribe of a single copper coin. Come morning, Franco warmed the air with an inspiring tune on his lute while Dr. Destructo went through a series of stretches before wrapping himself in a shimmer of protective magic. Then, rested, armed, and no wiser than the crew that came before them, the three of them stepped off the road and into the Mire.