A Tithe Too Large to Pay

The next session began with everyone still standing inside the reliquary's trap. The sentries wanted payment. The rival looters wanted to see whether My Alchemical Romance would die first. The party tried, briefly, to make the room into something other than a fight. Jonah called out to the sentries and asked what tithe was owed. The answer was obscene: two thousand gold, calculated from the cathedral goods the constructs believed had been stolen. It was not negotiation so much as accounting with blades attached. The same corrupted logic that had priced relics and sold shame now counted the party's bodies against the property they carried. Everyone took positions while the room decided what kind of violence it wanted. Ash found a defensive perch. Dhaz slipped near the boxes. Morgan offered a sheath, then escalated in the way Morgan does and summoned Granny Handjobs. Maine tried to convince the rival looters to help, but they held back, content to watch from the south and the catwalks. The reliquary had become a courtroom for thieves. No one had brought enough gold.