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Post by Dustin on Jan 8, 2013 2:39:17 GMT -7
((This is so cheesy it could only be written at 2:00 AM))
(Prelude)
Two days past I woke in my bath,
and enjoyed a light morning repast
A friendly lass pirate
Found something to smile at
and brought out a fellow named Willem.
"An actress I seek," said he,
"In Sandpoint, out to the east,
For your lovely blue scales,
Your delicate tail,
All the patrons would swoon to see!"
"Now wait there," shouted a lady
"She's to be my amphibious baby!
My friend Cassiel
Searches heaven and hell
For a mermaid as lovely as she!"
"Which theater to first shall you try?"
"The closer of two then," said I.
Ol' willem, he mourned,
poor fellow felt scorned,
but still I went off to Triodea.
Starry Triodea!
Cassiel Ilyodea!
His walk was studded with abalone
His manner was dripping with acrimony.
His playwright he fired
No new one was hired
He had no act to perform (but tears!)
So I swam all the day,
With the porpoises played,
and rested amongst clams through the night.
Lovely journey by sea
To the theater out east
And I did not encounter a fight.
I flopped up the sand into Sandpoint
And wandered into the Fish Hag Joint
The barkeep poured rum
He showed me his gums
And told me the way to the theater.
Drak Drachus is a happier man,
I hope he is less of a ham.
He offered me berth
'til I prove my worth
And now I shall dwell in the theater
Soon a star I may be,
if my rivals' jealousy
does not lead me to an early grave.
But if adventures call,
I'll flop out from this hall,
and see what grand stories await.
For I came up to the dry
to see what I'd spy
and adventure I'll not be denied!
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Post by Dustin on Jan 16, 2013 1:23:05 GMT -7
A lovely late autumn song and dance
At bright merry festival a maiden pranced
Enovys of Desna in fluttering clouds
Danced through the square and among the crowd
Over the town began to float
The growing sound of sour notes
"Eating babies we do love,
Fighting dogs and stabbing fish.
We hate olive branch and dove,
We will make you our next dish!"
On and on like a drunk man maudlin
On and on went the song of the goblins
A pallid man, A lady dark, both hidden from the sun
A maiden dancing on a lark, her hair in a crimson bun
A horseless knight with shaven pate, a doctor with face of stone
We chased the pests back through the gate, and drove goblins from our home
Yet during the battle we let past a vandal
Stealing the corpus of our poor late priest
What dark minded scoundrel, in human sized sandal
Could rob from a tomb and ruin a feast?
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Post by Dustin on Jan 28, 2013 4:22:07 GMT -7
After the festival
It seems the sight of fish
Would cause our diva swoon!
And I would be remiss
Not to give up my room
So off to the Dragon went I
To find a room for rent
The friendly young tavernkeep cried,
"For you I won't charge a cent!"
"You helped to fight off the goblins,
Those mouths on those tiny green legs.
That puts you a step above common,
At least for the next seven days."
Those goblins we'd fought, a lesson we'd taught,
and even though town guards fought too,
We six had been brave, the town we helped save,
The town showed us true gratitude.
That festival, that crucible,
it brought us six together.
If friends we could be, I'm sure we would see,
so many storms we could weather.
Into the woods we went seeking boar
On holiday with Foxglove the clown,
Into the beasts flank some valiant spear tore,
And Ash carried it back to the town.
One more
O alas! Dark hunger still slept,
Beneath the floor.
Watch your back! One villain still crept
Behind the door.
An attack! Your poor widow wept,
There was one more!
Poor young boy, with haunted dreams
Poor old mutt, they ignored his screams
Poor cat, in shadows it cowered.
Poor father, his visage devoured
Lost Ameiko
The tamer of dragons, the server of flagons,
The diamond that stayed in the sand.
You fought with your father, why are you so bothered
How did it get so out of hand?
Ameiko
Caught in your father's wrath
Ameiko
What slithers from your past?
Ameiko
Have you gone to the house of glass?
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Post by Dustin on Feb 1, 2013 12:09:55 GMT -7
((Switch to narrative style))
Ameiko Kaijitsu, the owner of the Rusty Dragon where I've been staying recently, disappeared a couple of days ago. A note from her brother told her to meet him at their family's glassworks to discuss whether their father was involved in treachery against the town by siding with goblins and letting them come into the town from secret tunnels under the glassworks. We went into the glassworks the same day to search for her, and we found goblins, just like we were worried we would! But, we also found Lonjiku Kaijitsu's corpse, so we're pretty sure her dad wasn't actually working with the goblins.
The goblins were frolicking around a glassblowing workshop with a furnace, tossing glass on the ground to watch it break. There are quite enough pointy things on the ground as it stands, goblins! You don't need to put more down there! Try crawling around for a day and see how many rocks you run over. Luckily for me, my scales are not only lovely but also quite durable.
Where was I? Oh, yes, goblins were smashing glass. We broke into the room and prepared to smash the goblins that were smashing glass, but who should burst onto the scene but Ameiko's brother Tsuto! He pulled out a bow, but rather than shooting at goblins, he shot at Ash! I stunned him with some voice magic, and though it was a hard battle, the group of us took down all the goblins and Tsuto.
Tsuto seems like kind of a jerk. He's had a hard life, apparently, being an illegiitmate son or something, but that's no excuse for shamelessly selling out his town to goblins. Not only that, but he killed his dad and several glassblowers and seemed to think he'd done a pretty good deed in doing so. According to his journal, he is deeply in love with a half-celestial woman who is intent on becoming half-demon instead of half-celestial. His journal mentioned that he didn't think her new demon hand was very pretty, and he drew a picture of what he hoped she looked like when she finished her transformation. (Frustratingly, his picture was not very detailed concerning what land-dwellers have between their legs. With all the vague jokes and crude snickers I hear, there has to be SOMETHING interesting there. Maybe it's demons that have nothing?)
Somehow the woman started this transformation by burning the bones of her father, the late priest, and I guess the guy who passed on celestial blood to her. The journal said she did this at the "Thistletop" shrine, which is a goblin hideout, according to that elf scout woman that Xenvia works with. ( I wonder if they're half sisters? Or is one of them the boss of the other?) He also seemed concerned about how many Thistletop goblins died in the battle, so if we're lucky, that means they're staying with those goblins and we can find the woman at the Thisteltop hideout. At the very least, there should be some clue there.
Ash tried to hold Tsuto up to the furnace to threaten him into talking, but he was pretty resolute about not being afraid of us, and really didn't tell us anything that his hournal didn't already say. He really wanted us to kill him, but not burn his body, because he was pretty sure that someone would raise him from the dead later. I wonder if the daughter of the old priest is powerful enough to do that, and if she loves him enough to do it? If she raised him with the power of Lamashtu, would he look the same? He's like a faithful barnacle that's so sure that she would help him. It will be interesting to see if she's as nice as he thinks she is.
We argued about what to do with Tsuto - let him go and see if we can track him back to his girlfriend's hideout, kill him, turn him over to the guards, or so on. I figured we should kill him, because he's so blatantly unrepentant for all the bad things he's done, and isn't even pretending that he made a mistake or wouldn't do it again. We turned him over to the guards instead, and they said that he'll probably be in jail for a while, get sent to Magnimar, and then get executed there. I guess if they're sure they can hold him, it might be best for him to have some time to think about what he's done in case he does want to repent later. I was probably being too hasty about voting to kill him. I should have checked to see if he was ensorcelled, but I kind of think he's only under the "captivated by your beauty, fair maiden" kind of enchantment.
We found Ameiko tied up in a closet, and we let her go and let her take her brother in to the deputy guards. She owns the glassworks now, which is kind of too bad because she sounded like she wasn't even very interested in owning the Rusty Dragon, which sounds like way more fun than the glassworks. Still, she's a nice lady and I'll bet she'd make a good glassworks owner if she wanted to give it a try.
We ventured into the tunnels beneath the glassworks, and though they supposedly had been used to smuggle things in the past (Naughty Lonjiku Kaijitsu! What illegal things were you dealing in?), they didn't seem to get a lot of use in the modern day. Instead of finding out where the tunnels go, we came upon ancient Thassilonian ruins, with a statue of someone called a Runelord of Wrath. She had a very expensive polearm that we sold later. There were also weird, disgusting two-legged monsters in the ruins with poisonous bites and their own polearms. We fought one in a tunnel, and thought it was just a strange subterranean creature, but when two more ambushed Ash as she explored a prison-looking room, we began to wonder if they might have been associated with the ruins somehow. The next chamber we came to had three stone doors, behind each of which was a different kind of deformed skeleton. If I was the one coming up witht he story of these ruins for a song, I'd have said that these Runelords made creepy monsters with magic, and that the creatures we had fought were the ancient, pallid descendants of those creepy monsters that never knew the sun.
The last room we ventured into contained some kind of hunchbacked creature that might have been a goblin once, or maybe it just looked like it because ti was so weird and deformed. It had three arms, which is at least one more arm than I'm used to seeing on land dwelling creatures, and each of them held a weapon. He capered about a room, on the floor of which were wooden planks. We could hear moaning (like, zombie moaning) coming from under the planks. The creature attacked us on sight, spitting acid and attacking with all three weapons at once, but we managed to defeat it, narrowly. Vehran was injured in the battle, and neither Zeldana nor Ash were confident they could fix him up with anything faster than bandages, so bandages it was. We took him back out of the tunnels and rested a couple of days.
During those days of rest, I bought this book so I can write down what adventures I go on. I doubt I'll ever read the book again - just writing it down helps me remember - but I'll try to keep putting it into watertight bags so it won't get all smudged, anyway. I do miss the kelp-made paper and octopus ink we used back in Tol Bathys.
Oh, I almost forgot. Apparently, Vehran had some sort of naughty encounter with the general store owner's daughter. He claims that Vehran took advantage of her, but Vehran's story is almost exactly the opposite. Vehran says she lured him in there to throw him on a spare cot and do certain things to him, or with him, or whatever. Maybe Vehran's not enchanted by beauty like Tsuto is, but certainly some girls are enchanted by his! It's nice not being the only one getting awkward advances - though I'm not sure I'd ever lock Mr. Foxglove in a basement. I tried to tease him about having 'dark desires' but Zeldana didn't like the idea of landwalkers being naked together being a 'dark' thing. To be honest, there are only two things I know for sure about landwalkers making love:
1) It's one of the two things that they take off their clothes for (the other being bathing).
2) They hate telling anyone about it who doesn't already know. This makes sure the details are well kept secrets from children and mermaids. "This is a kid friendly show, so cover those up, Coral!" That's what Madame Kara used to say.
Is this one too crass compared to the others?
Vehran and the Lady of Sandpoint
Into town came an ivory adonis
Tall and dark with a gaze like cold rain
Turned the head of a poor maiden honest
And from staring she could not abstain
Gold eyes, he had, like a wolf
His spearhead glistened in the moonlight
Sharp fangs, he had, like a wolf
His boots, dark leather, fit his calves tight
His gaze had the hunger of a wolf
And her heart was set ablaze each night
With long hair, the color of a gold wren
The faithful daughter of a man who kept a store
She'd shunned the flowers and the gifts of so many men
But his beauty she could not ignore
"Won't you come, oh sweet lad, to my cellar,
I've got trouble and I need your strong arms,"
"I will come if you pay," he did tell her,
Never thinking she might bring him harm
But her celler held no monster nor rat
As she stripped, he looked about confused
She pressed her breast to his back
With a sigh, he saw through the ruse.
"This is lust, not danger here, young lady.
It's my blade that's for sale, not my ass
I can't love you, even if you pay me.
I did not come here to lie with you, lass."
Suddenly from above came a roar
"What are you doing in my cellar
Get away from my daughter, you man whore!
She's too young to be with a feller!"
Down the stair came tumbling the shopkeep
His strong arms swinging at the man
Under fists and up the stairs did Vehran retreat
He locked them both down there, and off he ran.
No lady's thigh, no lock of hair, no sweet eyes or dimpled cheek
Could ever stir love in that man's heart
Nor strong young man, supple thews, boyish gaze or smile meek
He just prefers to keep himself in the dark
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Post by Dustin on Feb 5, 2013 17:53:28 GMT -7
Dear Numina,
If you're reading this, it probably means that your forces have overrun us. I am writing this in the Thistletop cathedral where you burnt somebody's bones one time. It's quite a nice cathedral, considering it was probably goblin made, and I'm very impressed with the accomadations you all have here!
We killed your friend the Quasit undernearth Sandpoint where she was using a Somethingwell to summon Sin Spawn (How well did you know that Quasit? I thought Quasits were familiars, but she seemed like the wizard, not the familiar!). There are a lot of boring dusty ruins down there, but also one really interesting room: a chamber in which people float through the air! I'm accustomed to floating in water, but we saw a number of useful magic items and some trash floating around in mid-air. If someone cleaned the room up, it might be a nice place to sleep. I know you landwalkers are used to being on beds, but sleeping while floating can be quite pleasant if you give it a chance.
Your boyfriend (Is he your boyfriend? Your scholar wizard has a crush on him!) Tsuto had a journal that mentioned you and your plan, and had a drawing of you. Well, I guess it wasn't a drawing of you, unless you've turned into a winged demon girl. It was more like a drawing of you as a winged demon girl with no clothes on. Anyway, he thinks you're very pretty (except your demon hand). You might consider releasing him from jail if you take over Sandpoint with a goblin raid. His diary said you had done things at Thistletop, so we asked the Ranger, Shally, how to find it. So, here we are, in Thistletop, fighting scary flying dogs!
Why did the goblins capture a warhorse and drag it through the brambles all the way to here? Also, why did they board up their supply closet and put a treasure chest behind the toilet? Goblins are very strange. I'd love to hear how you got them to work for you - they seem to like eating most other people. Is it because you're a priestess of Lamashtu?
Your Pal Archenemy,
~Coral
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Post by Dustin on Feb 17, 2013 19:35:47 GMT -7
Dear Adventure Journal,
I am stuck here in Thistletop alll night. Is this what they call a sleepover? I think Vehran is talking to a ghost, everyone else is taking notes and journals too, so I thought I should write down a quick summary of my adventure thus far.
Having discovered that the mastermind behind the goblin attacks against Sandpoint was none other than an embittered Aasimar named Nualia, we journeyed together to the goblin hideout of Thistletop on a small island overlook the sea. It's a big old fortress, full of goblins and dogs and warhorses and poisonous tentacles. In these halls, we have enounctered many foes, one friend, and at least one person who has been both!
The top floor of Thistletop seemed like a goblin castle, where we found a warhorse hidden in a closet, some dogs in a courtyard, and a treasure cehst hidden in the bathroom. Moving down, we came to the second floor, where we encountered a wizardess named - Lialiie Laili Lilly. She asked us who we were, and I tried to trick her into thinking we were friends of Tsuto's, but she seemed suspicious, and Morvius Krupt decided to beat her up and take her things. Since she hadn't really done anything mean before we beat her up (she was just studying some Thassilonian writings), we took her useful things and some of her money and left her unconscious but otherwise moderately healthy. The plan was that she would come to later with her life, but without anything she could use to hurt us.
Exploring further, we fought a bunch of flying fear dogs in a cathedral, explored a torture dungeon, talked to some goblin housewives, and met a man named Oric. He was part of Nualia's team, but wasn't really all that interested in rallying goblins for Lamashtu, so I offered him 500 gold to help us fight Nualia, and he seemed to think that was a great bargain. He's pretty nice, but rough around the edges, and rough around the face, and just generally kind of rough. He carried me about for a while and helped kill a poisonous octopus that almost killed Zeldana. It turns out he was in love with Lila, but she's in love with Tsuto, who is in love with Nualia (she's dead, but that's spoiling the ending). It's kind of a tragic triangle... Square? Line? It's a sad thing that none of these people can find love with each other. Lots of adventurers don't seem to be very interested in love. I guess they love adventure. We went back to where Lilliannie was and offered to give her some of her things back if she'd help us.
Eventually we went to the bottom of the fortress's subterranean section, where we found more ruins full of people with glaives. These glaives, though, got swung at anyone who walked in between the statues! I wish I could make statues that moved on their own, but I'd use them to carry me around instead of hurting Zeldana. Between Zeldana, Xenvia, Ash, and pretty much everyone else too, we eventually managed to get past those evil statues, and then we fought Nualia and another flying terrordog! Thanks to a nice magic scroll I got from that Quasit, I was able to roll a burning ball into her, and with everyone's cooperation we eventually defeated her and the dog - just in time for an evil bugbear to start hunting Xenvia! We surrounded him, and with the help of our hired friend (and our coerced friend), we surrounded him. He tried to surrender, but he got killed instead.
Alas! During the battle, Zeldana was mortally injured by the floating terrordog. Luckily, Tsuto's earlier bluster about Nualia being able to bring him back to life turned out to be true: we found a divine scroll on her body that could raise a dead person to life. We used that on Zeldana, and she's alive again - just kind of grumpy. It's pretty understandable for dying to make a person grumpy.
Tomorrow, we're either going to fight shadowmonsters and fill our pockets with cursed gold, or we're going to climb down into the ocean on a rope and swim away. Or we're going to fight the goblin king. Maybe all three?
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Post by Dustin on Feb 23, 2013 14:52:27 GMT -7
Dear Adventure Diary,
Last time, I told you that we were going to fight shadow monsters or fight the goblin king or take cursed gold.
Well, we did two of those things!
The shadow monsters were guarding a crypt of some kind, inside of which was a secret door that went through some tunnels and stairs to the ocean. I really don't understand the Thassillonian architects, but at least we found some treasure down there! A giant crab was living on its small horde of gold and jewels, and wearing an enormous golden helmet instead of a shell. It's very difficult to kill a crab wearing a giant helmet, but somehow we managed to defeat it, and claimed its treasure.
The pillar of coins turned out to not be real coins, but carvings of coins. I put some real coins in some slots that Xenvia pointed out, and the carving disappeared into the floor! Behind it we found a series of strange rooms. In one of them, a programmed illusion stuck on repeat tried to tell some people to stay in the Thassilonian city to die. At least, that's what Ash said it was saying - I don't understand Thassilonian. Behind another door was a strange surgery and embalming room, while behind a third was a door with a fire pit and some alcoves full of treasure. Oh yeah, it also had a giant wolf with a person's head - probably the whispering beast that Nualia and company were planning to use to help assault Sandpoint! I stunned it with some song magic and we swam ran away - it almost killed Oric and Morvius when it suddenly ambushed us. Luckily, we at least were able to get a magic ring from the man wolf's room: it makes a seven pointed star shield that helps protect the wearer.
Having explored the lowest depths of the place as much as we dared, we headed up to face the Goblin King. He had a lizard mount, but he didn't ride it anywhere for some reason. We were worried it would be a dangerous and difficult fight, but it seemed like the goblins' will was broken, so we took the king prisoner after a short skirmish. Before walking out the front door, Ash was smart enough to check up a guard tower to see if there were any goblins left in the fort - and she noticed a group of them outside, waiting for us to walk out the front gate! So, everyone climbed up on the tower and shot down at them with bows and things, and we had a chance to pretend we were defending a castle from a goblin siege (even though it was the goblins' castle).
Morvius found a warhorse named Shadowmist that the goblins had taken captive, and he rode home on that horse. We took the goblin king to the sheriff's place and turned him over to Sheriff Hemlock.
We argued a lot about whether we should give Laria her spellbook back, but I think we finally did. Vehran doesn't trust her, but I kind of feel bad for walking into her study, beating her unconscious, and taking all of her things. I'm not giving her scrolls back, though. Oric seemed a little down about the way things were turning out with her (he's in love with her), but he also seemed to be pretty accepting of how crazy she was about Tsuto. I don't think she's that bad a lady, so I hope she doesn't do anything stupid trying to help Tsuto out. He's not really worth it!
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Post by Dustin on Mar 3, 2013 21:50:05 GMT -7
Dear Adventure Diary,
During the week since we got all our treasure sold, I began my first big experiment in magic making: a shawl that turns my fins into feet! It took me about a week to make this shawl, and I'm glad the magic held up from day to day, because I don't really remember how I tied the spell together at all! It really is a shame to turn my lovely scales into human legs, but it's worth it to walk around the way humans do - especially since it's only temporary.
Oric wanted us to go back to Riddleport with him, which sounded like fun, but it turns out that he wants to go get his name cleared of a murder he did commit! He fell in love with a tiefling prostitute (I think he might have forgotten her name, or at least I don't remember him mentioning it), and tried to woo her with a love potion. It turned out the love potion wasn't real, and so he killed the alchemist who sold it to him! I told him that wooing a lady with a love potion was a bad thing to do, and killing an alchemist for selling him a bad potion is also a bad thing to do, and that we'd go to Riddleport and help him out once he had learned what true love means. Does love make humans crazy, or is that something local to Varisia?
Zeldana is a secret agent for someone now. I don't know much more about that, since it's secret and all, so I guess I can't write more about that for now.
A cranky woman hired us to check her attic for ghosts, so we went to have a slumber party in her attic. It turned out there was some sort of ghost child with a fox skull for a head, and it stole Zeldana's voice! I'm lucky it didn't steal mine! I have a very special voice - not that Zeldana's voice isn't nice, but it's slightly less magic than mine. Or- maybe it isn't, actually - I'm not sure! She seems to prefer dancing to magic singing, in any case. Everyone surrounded the ghost and hit it with spears and swords and things, and defeated it, since we didn't know if we could put it some sort of peace or something. Vehran and Ash seemed to know something about it, and said neglected kids turn into these ghosts when they die. If we have time, we might check to see if anything can be discovered about the death of the child who became the ghost, but today we're busy with a trial!
Tsuto's trial is today, a magistrate is coming from Magnimar because we think Tsuto might try to escape while being transported - or Lyree might try to free him. I wonder what kind of person a Magnimarian magistrate is? Will they send Tsuto to an asylum or execute him? I think Vehran would prefer he get executed, and Morvius pretty much said outright that he'd prefer that. I think Zeldana doesn't like people dying, and Ash usually likes saving people more often than killing them. Xenvia hasn't said much about it, but I think she'd be pretty upset if he escaped.
I think someone's been taking my hairbrushes and cleaning up molted scales and such. I hope it's a secret admirer and not an evil wizard scrying on me! Then again, having met a few humans who do secret admiring, maybe it would be less complicated if it was an evil wizard.
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Post by Dustin on Mar 10, 2013 3:23:45 GMT -7
Dear Adventure Diary,
Tsuto's trial was a blast! I don't mean that it was fun - I just mean there was an explosion. Lyrie threw an explosion spell in a window after the defense attorney finished asking me how well I could see. The magistrate, who seemed really bored up until that moment, sentenced Tsuto to Death by Adventuring Party. Morvius struck a blow to Tsuto in an attempt to subdue him, but then Tsuto disabled Morvius instead. Lucky for us he was using nonlethal tactics, or we'd have to go on an adventure for another Dead Raising Scroll! Unfortunately for Tsuto, and even more unfortunately for Lyree, Vehran is actually secretly a vampire, and he drank their blood and killed them after we defeated them. Well, he drank Lyree's blood, anyway. He just stabbed Tsuto's unconscious, recently defenestrated form.
The parts of the trial before that were very strange. The prosecutor was pretty hung up on the idea that proving that Tsuto could make plans would prove that he wasn't crazy, while the defense wanted him to be sent to an asylum instead of being executed. It seemed like the defense might be after a shot at some kind of inheritance Tsuto might have, but it turned out he had a more complicated deal with Lyree, since he sent her a thunderstone signal once he'd put some kind of ring on Tsuto. That was when the fireball came through the window and fighting ensued.
Tsuto seemed like a guy who'd had a rough life, but he shouldn't have killed people over it. It's kind of a shame none of those people could stop being in love with each other long enough to realize how not-loveable the objects of their affections were. I mean, how many times do you have to hear your beloved say crazy things about turning into a monster woman before you start to re-evaluate your relationship? And how many times do you have to watch a guy swooning over a crazy monster lady before you start to wonder if he's really the one for you? As weird as it sounds, this death might have been the best way to give them a fresh start.
Speaking of crazy people in love, someone's been murdering people lately - three poor criminals in a barn south of town, and two young lovers in the sawmill here in town. There was a note found on the sawmill victims addressed to me - it said that I would come to love someone as much as "she" had, and that I should just join the pack - and there's only one creature I know of that can write letters AND travel in a pack: Weresharks, wretched creatures that can disguise themselves as regular sharks by day, but during the full moon turn into terrible half-shark half-human creatures! Between the "pack" line and the 7-pointed star someone said they saw on some of the victims, I think it's pretty clear that my stalker is a Wereshark Runelord. I'd like to speak with the local Runelord expert to see if he knows what kind of targets a wereshark Runelord would choose to put 7-pointed stars into so that we can try to guess who the next victim would be, but I'll have to argue that point to all my companions who'd rather go talk to a crazy guy at an asylum.
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Post by Dustin on Mar 24, 2013 11:13:51 GMT -7
Dear Adventuring Diary,
We went around town looking for the person murdering people and leaving me disturbing notes. Some people got killed in a sawmill, and some criminals also got killed somewhere else. I guess the ones that died in the sawmill were young lovers. One of the witnesses said they liked to meet there so that the sound of the saw would cover up the sounds they made - they must have laughed a lot, or sang really loud. Those poor people are dead now, though.
Xenvia noticed that there were ghoul prints leading to the river. I have no idea how she can tell what kind of prints ghouls make, but I guess it had something to do with some smelly rotting flesh she saw. Unfortunately, tracking things through rivers is hard, since the current's a bit quick and always washes things down. We decided we probably couldn't chase them through the river, but I think Xenvia is keeping track on a map of what important destinations people might go to if they traveled along that river.
The group of criminals had been killed at a barn south of town, and three of them died - but their body guard escaped. He was apparently driven mad by whatever he saw, and now they keep him at a sanitorium. He sounded like he'd be hard to talk to, but he was also the only eye witness.
The crazy lighthouse scholar seemed really excited when we asked him to help with the investigation, but the only thing of much importance he told us is that the seven pointed star that the Runelords like is a symbol of seven virtues that later got turned into sins. I wrote them down, but I can't find the page right now. Anyway, someone realized that all the people who died had been greedy people (except for the lady who was in love with a greedy guy, but she didn't get a symbol carved on her). I think that so far, this is the only clue about who will be the next target.
We talked to some criminals and Lord Scarnetti for some reason, but I don't think we learned very much. Morvius was not very impressed by Lord Scarnetti, he seemed to think he should get paid more. All in all I don't think we learned anything except that Lord Scarnetti is pretty easily fooled.
Our last big place to investigate was a Sanitorium. That's where sanity goes when it's sick, I guess. A nice but very nervous gentleman met us at the door, and brought out the bodyguard who had escaped the murderers at the barn. This bodyguard was very confused and very ill, although Zeldana was nice enough to try to glamour him into looking normal. Ash said he was sick with Ghoul Fever. He told me that he had a message from his master, and that the sacrifices would stop if I joined the pack, and then he started acting a little violent. Xenvia and Vehran tried to subdue him, but he wasn't actually a very tough guy, so they accidentally killed him a little harder than they meant to, and he died. I think someone said that all the murder victims had been messed up so that no one could make them Speak with Dead, so maybe now this fellow might be the only dead that could be spoken to - but we might need to get his body burnt or something so it doesn't spread Ghoul Fever around. Maybe Ash will know.
After we beat him up, everyone else got pretty hard at the mousey guy who was running the Sanitorium. After all, someone had heard rumors about a necromancer using the place for experiments. The owner claimed that he was just being bullied by the necromancer downstairs, and we asked him to call the Necromancer. He was reluctant, so I used some mind magic to make him more friendly. I promised him that if he helped us out, we'd let him go, but after he helped us out, Morvius beat him up. I feel pretty bad about letting him get beat up after promising we'd help him, but Morvius is really fast about beating people up, I don't think I could really have stopped him. I don't want to just charm people and betray them, but I guess I didn't think to make sure my friends agreed with me before I made a promise.
We beat up the Necromancer, because he thought he was under attack, but we didn't kill him or anything - instead we asked him what he was doing, and he explained that he used the people who died at the Sanitorium for his necromancy experiments, and in exchange he bankrolled the owner's establishment. He claimed that the owner was the one who was doing creepy experiments on crazy people, and that he himself was only using the dead people. Some people argued what was moral to do, and then we took most of his things.
Upstairs, we also found a wererat (not a runelord, though), someone who thought I was his granddaughter, and a different crazy guy whose story I forget. There was also a secret door leading from a storage closet to an operating room - but both of those places had normal doors too, so we weren't sure why there was a secret door. The operating room was a creepy place where there were implements that seemed to Zeldana to be too excessive for regular brain surgery.
We took the owner of the Sanitorium back to Sandpoint, 'cause Morvius or Vehran or someone didn't like him and wanted to get him put in jail. Poor guy! I guess that invasive brain surgery made him really unpopular - everyone seemed more disturbed by that than by the necromancy.
Everyone's pretty sure that it's Foxglove who's doing these things, so we're planning on heading down to his manor soon to confront him. If he's not the one doing it, we'll at least get to explore a haunted manor! I didn't really take Foxglove for a Runelord or a ghoul or someone who had lost a loved one, but I guess you can never tell with some people. Or, maybe, he's someone else's ghoul servant?
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