Encounter: Warehouse Confrontation

Warehouse Confrontation, by Rob Torno

by Kirk Duplessis

Level: Medium Hard

Magic: Medium

Keywords: Dark, Multi-Level

Terrain: Indoors, Standard, Difficult

Treasure: Moderate

Background

The Desire has designed a new tactic for taking down her entrenched, aristocratic enemies: using an investigator and a black market banker, she tracks down and purchases the target’s debts and cashes them in all at once, resulting not only in the financial destruction of her enemy, but also humiliating them amongst their peers.

Her newest target, Chancellor Marquis, is smarter than usual and has noticed that his debts are being systematically bought from the original lenders.  He has hired the party to find out who is behind it and determine their intentions.

The players have traced the hostile activities back to The Desire; they have also determined the time (tonight) and place (a giant warehouse near the docks) of her final meeting with the banker where she will be finalizing her purchase of the target’s debt.  The players have passed this information along to Marquis and intend to intercept The Desire and partners at the warehouse.

To make matters worse, Chancellor Marquis has become paranoid and doesn’t trust the players; he has dispatched a crew of assassins to follow the players to the rendezvous and kill everyone involved.

Getting into the Warehouse

There are three ways into the warehouse, any of which could be used as a skill-based obstacle for the players to overcome.

1. Getting in through the doors: The most obvious entry points are the large doors at each end of the structure.  During the day, both sets of doors are wide open, and a player might try to sneak or bluff their way in. If the party is trying to break in after sundown, these doors are chained, locked and barred.
2. Walking in through the secret door: Careful examination reveals a secret door in the south wall of the warehouse; this door is unknown to everyone except the banker and his bodyguards, and is locked from the inside.
3. Sneaking in through the sewer: There is a large sewage outlet on the dock side of the warehouse, which runs directly under the paved section of the warehouse floor.  The 5-foot diameter pipe is well maintained; any party members taking this route will be very stinky,  providing a target for any creatures with a sharpened sense of smell.

Once the characters have gained access to the warehouse, read the following:

This building is absolutely cavernous. A wide, stone-paved thoroughfare runs the 200 foot length of the warehouse. The dim lighting obscures many features, but you can sense the large stacks of materials around you, rising as high as 15 feet.  A catwalk overhangs the scene, suspended 20 ft up, whilst a huge crane, supported by enormous crossbeams, hulks silently in the darkness.

Environmental Effects

The internal lighting is dim; characters with normal vision can see clearly for 10 feet. Characters with the ability to see in the dark take no penalties.

There are many opportunities to affect the terrain of the combat.  Hidden among the crates are a number of useful items that can be used by PCs or NPCs, including things such as crates of glue, boxes of nails, barrels of oil, etc.  The location of these items is noted on the map (see below); people must pass within 20 feet of the item to notice them – it then takes a moment to open the crate.

An example of the types of items available to the players include a crate of glue, small barrel of oil, rope, a toolbox, or possibly even a random box of potions or elixirs.

Tactics

As the encounter begins The Desire is meeting with her banker in his office in the northwest corner of the building.  Both have brought guards to the meeting, more as a matter of course than need, but both are very cautious people.  They have been working together for some time, and have established a reasonable level of trust between themselves, enough so that their guards are comfortable playing a game of cards outside the office on a number of crates.

All six guards (4 for The Desire, 2 for the banker) are seasoned veterans; their employers both pay top dollar for security.  Though relaxed, they are alert, and as soon as they become aware of a problem, they will raise the alarm by shouting loudly, which will be easily heard in the roofless office space. The guards they should comfortably survive the 2 rounds of combat necessary for The Desire to arrive and assess the situation.

After a few rounds, once the two groups are heavily engaged, is when the assassins arrive.  Ideally, two harass the party from behind, drawing them to the center of the building, while another takes potshots at The Desire or the banker’s group from the catwalk; the fourth man is sitting in the crane on the third floor.

Once people are in range (see dashed circle, Map 3), he will start dropping random things on them 1/round; each type of crate does a certain amount of damage and causes a secondary effect.  See table below:

Remember to keep the encounter goals in mind:

• The PCs want to capture someone in the know, whether it is the banker or The Desire.
• The assassins wants to capture someone in the know, and kill everyone else
• The banker wants to get away
• The Desire wants to leave, but not without ensuring the security of her position, i.e. the security of the banker. If the combat is going poorly, she will turn on him.

The expectation is that the banker and his guards will eventually make a break for the secret door in the south wall, kicking off a chase through the twisted channels of the warehouse.

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THE WAREHOUSE CONFRONTATION ENCOUNTER MAP
by Paul King

Warehouse Confrontation by Nevermet Press is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.nevermetpress.com/contact.