Tag: murder

Surveillance and the Police

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

The guardhouse at the gate to the mansion is empty. We knock politely before Nat picks the lock, at Lt. Col Dalish’s orders. We then follow his orders to approach the house, knock again, and then pick that lock, too. The house is empty. We look around and find the kitchen and banquest hall, and then the study where it happened. There are clear signs of the murder, so we spread out and search around. One of the windows is cloudy, with the smell of bourbon. Gross! He was murdered in his wing-back chair by the fireplace. There hs been no effort to clean the place, but it looks like his body didn’t rest here long before being discovered and removed.

Dalish finds holes in the walls that no one else can see. They each contain a single smooth, dark stone. Remy cannot see the hole, nor the apparent illusion covering it. Must be that spell they found first year that covers magic. It takes him a moment to find all three, but when he does, they are all surrounded by Divination magic. Nat sits down with them to identify what they are. They’re crystal balls, but they’re linked, and they record about a month. Just like in that lab where we found our friend trapped in a bottle.

She sets them up to replay the murder over the entire room, scanning through until she finds the right night. We all stand back by the door to watch.

A dark room, dying embers in the fireplace, lightning crashing outside. Wiest stands at the window, breathing burbon fumes onto the surface. He pours himself another drink, and then goes back to watching. The Black Knight suddenly appears behind him. Dalish wants to stop and go back, but I insist we watch it through first. Wiest notices, but keeps on sipping.

It’s been a long time, Sir Knight.

17 years.

Can I offer you a drink?

No Declan, this is not a personal visit. You know why I’m here.

Yes, of course.

He brings up the lights and the Red Knight is standing right in front of us by the door. I did no jump, I don’t care what Marybeth says. He is blocking the doorway, and simply waves at Wiest.

I have to know. Why do you persist? You were there, you witnessed our sins. You could have stopped us.

Rictus killed the king!

Yes, but why? The King is dead.

The King is Dead. I am not. Would you prefer to stand or sit?

Wiest starts casting a spell, but the Red Knight makes a move which ends his spell before it begins. The Black Knight pushes him into the chair.

Can’t blame a man for trying. The King would have made slaes of us all. We did what we had to do.

The Black Knight kills him in one smooth strike through his chest and the chair.

The King is Dead. Long live the King. Come, we must leave quickly.

And they do.

We go back over it again, more slowly, and picking out details as we can. They have no marking on their armor, but his sword has the royal insignia and the knight’s code engraved on it. He could have been a royal guard or a member of the family. Our official history lessons say that they were all killed with the King or driven away. Looking closely, we notice Aranea watch the whole event from the fireplace. Neither of the knights look at her, so it’s hard to tell if they knew.

Nat scans back through the two weeks before the death. She is spying on him several times in the week prior to his death. He doesn’t have many guests, but Alleria does visit him once. They only converse in small talk, though. Perhaps they were messaging as we do. We skip ahead to after his death. Two hours after the knights leave, a servant discovered his body. Thirty minutes after that, the room is swarming with mages. Aranea checks in from the fire a few times while the mages are around, but no one notices then either. Thirty minutes after the first mages, Prime Illusionist Pyrus arrives. He takes some blood, investigtes the wound, and authorizes removal of the body. The next day, around noon, Diedre arrives in haggard condition. She investigates and casts some spells, but leaves after ninety frustrating minutes.

We need to go see if there are any royalist histories left. Maybe in that library were the tree grew. First, though, let’s check the rest of the house. We find a few magic things, some armor, a mirror, and a ring. There’s some arguement about stealing from a dead Prime, or more specifically, from that dead Prime’s very angry daughter. Nat identifies the mirror as being able to trap souls. Remy says the armor is of a Royal family or their personal guard. Right, whatever, let’s go!

Should we tell Rictus? Why? He’s a jerk and he already knows the Black Knight did it. What about Alleria? We could ask what they talked about. We head for her office at the Tower of Justice, but the door is closed and the office empty. Nat goes in anyway, and gets the note she left her. She’s addressed this one to HeyHey and says she is busy, and can’t help, but we should be sure to attend the deliberative.

We head back across to the city. We head back to my house on the way to everywhere else. Philomena is waiting there and is pretty annoyed at Klyce, who explains he was just trying to protect her. While they talk, I head up to check on Gerald and warn him about spies in the fireplace. It’s kinda fun to scare him, but he really is trying to help. When I come back down, we head out to see Inspector Poissant. Only he’s not an inspector anymore. He’s been promoted to Chief of Police and he’s down at headquarters now. Oh, okay. That’s almost all the way back to the Petals… Not today.

We head over to the Bronx to look for the library. Only, it’s been demolished, and tenaments are being built on the site. The foreman said mages helped remove things and burnt a lot of it. Frustrated, and in disagreement about going to see Poissant now, we head over to get Philomena’s parents. They aren’t terribly thrilled with the idea, but they pack a bunch of luggage and allow us to escort them away. Her mother is looking much better these days, so there’s that at least. The boys pick up some newspapers on the way, and find a bunch of strange stories of abductions and cults warring in the streets. Once we get everyone settled and clean sheets in a private room for Philomena’s parents, we take watches and sleep for the night.

We are all very happy to wake up in the morning unmolested. So happy, we barely argue about heading down to the Police Headquarters to see Chief Poissant. Using Dalish’s military authority, we ask to see him and are passed from receptionist to receptionist until we get to his office. We sit to wait for him, and he arrives a short while later with several officers in tow. He is quite happy to see us, and we offer him congratulations, and he thanks us for helping him get where is is today. He invites us in, dismissing the officers who had come with him.

We ask him if he’s seen the inverted Dawnmother symbol, but he hasn’t. Dalish explains the cult and Marybeth asks after missing persons cases. He says it’s been two months of homeless people disappearing right off the street. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and no clues to who is doing it, and no bodies turning up dead. Nat explains the vision she had of the cult sacrificing people and their bodies turning to smoke. We ask about the new church in Brooklyn, but he says the Tree Area polices themselves. After couple messages, we decide to show him Marybeth’s brother. He hasn’t seen him, but asks if we can find out where he is supposed to be through our military connections. So, we know where to start looking.

I ask him about the knights. He is staying well and clear, especially after Diedre came and threatened them to send her any reports they might have. He wants nothing to do with our lot. Then he offers us drinks, just as the wall explodes behind him.

Two demons with claws for hands, and three boney devils come storming in from outside in the middle of broad daylight. Oh Dawnmother! This is getting out of hand! We immediately get Poisson out of the room. I whip up a storm outside, and the boys to their best to keep the lights on. Eventually we put them all down. But the office is a disaster, and the attacks are now public.

Death and Harvest

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

The castle begins shifting back almost as soon as Lord Tepish and Stephen leave. Several of the group go on a mad dash to see what can be salvaged before it all disappears. They return with weapons, armor, money, and a couple floating stones. This seems wrong, I wonder if the castle will reappear whever he’s going without these things. I wonder if he will be upset with us. Perhaps I won’t ask for my boon right away.

We all take a well-earned rest and in the morning, we begin to plan the recovery of mine and town. Dalish thinks he knows what Stephen was on to with Great Grandpa Skull. Klyce plots up ways to cover the hole I apparently made in the mine roof. And the rest of us head into town.

I help with setting up for the Harvest Festival, especially making the Green Witch for this year. Making a quick stop by the seamstress to pay her more for her trouble, and ask she make me matching masks and a black velvet one to cover my hideous face. Nat goes to the grieving families and recruits the dead, or performs the funeral for them. Remy helps with organizing and rebuilding destroyed homes and buildings. Gerhardt stays up at the castle, working to refine mana through his alchemy.

Three days before Harvest Eve, townsfolk find Nat and bring her to the Green Witch. Someone has stuffed a dead body inside with a dagger in her chest! There’s a note on it, that Nat sends HeyHey to go look at for her. “Break the Bones” Nat tries to calm the crowd, assuring them we’ll find who did this and bring them to justice. Some of the crowd wonder about cancelling the festival, but We Can’t Do That!

Offerings to the Green Witch cannot be removed. I offer to stay with the body and the Green Witch until the festival, to keep anyone from adding more. Nat casts a gentle repose on the girl, and Klyce stays nearby, guarding as well. I sit and pray, first to the Dawnmother, but only recieve a sense of anticipation in response. The Green Witch is even less responsive to my pleas.

The all return to the Green Witch with no good information. No one saw anything except a woman in a cloak moving around at night. The girl simply got out of bed, got dressed and walked out. Nat offers to try asking the gods more forcefully than I can, and goes into a trance. When she awakens, she says they were vague as always.

They told her Natalie Rathbone is responsible, could it be an ancestor? Conflice when we go below to Old Town is inevitable, but victory is not. It is not how we can survive, but whether we will. It may or may not be connected to the ritual we intend to perform. And the safety of her people is uncertain.

The group heads up to the castle to rest, drink orange juice, and divy up what is left of our mana. Klyce and I continue standing guard through the night, but it’s no use. The next morning, three more dead bodies are found, not in the Green Witch, but around town. There is even bloody graffiti saying Break the Bones. People are even more upset, convinced the festival is cursed. I try to convince them that the Green Witch will bless them if they just carry on. The festival is not cursed, and we will prove it, if they just wait a little longer.

Nat and Remy come back from the three murder scenes and fill us all in. One looks like a ghost did him in, white hair and terrified expression. One had his throat ripped or blasted out in the street. Another is just dead, not a mark, except for lingering necromancy, on him. Nat also tells us she had a dream of her and Stephen at the Festival, and then him stuffing her into the Green Witch as it was set ablaze. We’re fairly sure, now, that the one behind all this is the one burned all those years ago, come back for revenge.

Klyce and I take a daytime nap while the rest of the group researches the Rathbone family line. They don’t manage to find many records of that time, even ripped out pages in the family library. In the early evening, we go with Nat into town to talk to her people, encourage them, and let them know we are going to help. We break up into groups to patrol the town. Klyce and I stay up all night while the others take shifts. Dalish stays by the Green Witch since he still cannot walk.

In the night, I come across a young man wandering in a daze. I wake him up and help him back home, after taking a knife from his hands. Not long after, HeyHey comes flying up and I follow him off to find Mummy Dalish, Nat and a badly bleeding child. The boy has apparently bitten his own thumb off when MD took away his bucket of paint. I heal his thumb back on, but it looks a little funny, and Nat takes him home.

Come morning, we all have breakfast and a short rest before gathering up everything we need, and heading down to Old Town. Klyce makes quick work of the blockage he had put in place, and quickly morphs into a giant scorpian once we get inside. The boys throw up light and we walk into a darkness even more opressive than last time.

In the center of town, we toss up more light and spread out to allow Dalish to work. He has to repair the ritual circle before we can do anything else. Klyce’s scorpian body is helpful in clearing the space. Nat and Gerhardt help him redraw damaged sections. Remy and I offer magical guidance in making the necessary alterations. It takes some hours, but the circle is ready in plenty of time.

As it grows darker, and dusk settles outside, the time has come. Dalish and Nat will perform the ritual while the rest of us must protect them at all costs. Angry, restless voices whisper all around us. Nat appears to be arguing with herself, but I’m too far away to hear what is going on. Then a ghostly outline dives into Nat’s body, and a smoky blackness coalesces into an inky, large humanoid form.

Trees, Worms, and Murder

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

Turns out the Major is a divination mage. That’s a bit less worrying then. Between him and Nat, we find our first tree, first of five they say. I go with everyone, but stay well away from the fighting. Klyce has changed his mind about killing in this case. They are infected, and already going to die, if we don’t kill a few people, everyone in the burrough will die a much worse death. I… can’t. I won’t. So, I stay back, ready with a levitate or fly if we need it.

With Nat’s location spells, we have already found the second tree within range of the first, so we head onward. It’s in a hotel basement nearby. We circle the building from nearby roofs, and see a loading dock to the lower level. It is guarded by 8 men, with more around the other sides of the building. What if we go our old route, through the sewers? We’ve gotten pretty used to them by now. So we head down.

Nat leads us back to the hotel, and the closest pipe is choked with brambles. Klyce turns to mist and floats his way through. When he comes back, he stays mist and we have a bit of a game of pantomime. Until he gets through to me to message him. The tunnel opens up into the basement, and the foundations are nearly destroyed. We decide to cast silence and burn our way through. Gerhardt casts a circle of protection and Klyce floats back through again. He will keep an eye out and we commence.

I keep messaging him, and soon he says that people are gathering at the far end of the tunnel. He also says a wizard has arrived, but he’s not sure where. Once we get line of sight on them, the others begin firebombing them. When the people are gone, they start firebombing the tree. But worms start dropping and burrowing into the earth. I cast fly on Maribeth and Nat, but stay in the circle myself. I have nothing to attack a tree with.

They keep burning it down, but the wizard does not appear. Dalish comes charging back my way and into the circle. He grabs his ear as he enters and I see green goo oozing out. I tighten my grip on the staff, but he says it’s gone now. Gerhardt comes running, too, but he bounces off the circle. Dalish and I try to push and pull him through, but nothing. Nat comes flying and full speed and barrels him through. Green ooze trickles out of his ear, and I nearly take a swing.

They succeed in ending the tree, and Klyce has me come in for some controlled mop up. I do my best to save the hotel, but there is so much fire and damage already, I’m not sure it did any good. We all take a moment to rest and plan, before we get moving again. We head back up to the rooftops to avoid the crowds, searching for the next tree.

Everyone is tired, though, and not as careful. It isn’t long before gunshots ring out from other rooves. Everyone gets shot and we jump off the roof, featherfalling to the ground, and head for the sewers again. Nat moves the earth we bled on to lead them away and we find a building on the outskirts to rest in. While Klyce and Nat, who didn’t get shot, head out to find the next tree, Remy tends to our wounds. He manages to remove my and Maribeth’s bullets before passing out himself. Dalish does some magic which pops Remy’s bullet right out of him, and Gerhardt finishes patching us all up.

Maribeth messages me. To save the necklace if the worms take her. Of course, I think my levitate will work for that. I tell her that I’ll try to keep her flying so they can’t get her. She calls me sister. I… sister… My ears buzz and I cannot think.

The others return and report. The next tree is inside a jail. We debate for a moment, this one last tree and then we rest. We only have one more day, better to do three today and two tomorrow, just in case they take more time because of our attacks today. We can do one more, we have to. We head back into the sewers and towards the jail.

There is a thick iron grate blocking passage in and out of the jail. Makes sense, no one in or out. Klyce studies it for a bit, and decides to shape the rock it is built into instead of messing with the iron itself. We slip through and eventually come to a very large door. Klyce gaseous forms his way through. He come back fairly quickly because he cannot see. Dalish gives him darkvision and he returns. It takes some time, and some vague answers to my messages, but eventually, he finds a key and lets us in.

There is a pile of mangled bodies here, outside one of the cells. It is pretty horrific, and I’m glad we haven’t managed to have lunch today. We pass them by and eventually, start seeing the tips of roots down through the walls and ceiling. The tree must be up in the courtyard. We sneak up into the main building until we find a vantage on the yard.

There is a frenzy of activity here. Fifty or sixty people milling about the tree. We’re too far away for Gerhardt’s banishment spell. We can’t go out there, we have to sneak around to another window. Carefully, carefully, we make our way. It seems like everyone is out there rather than inside the building. Gerhardt will cast, and if it works, we will run. We must protect him for the minute the spell takes to finish.

He casts, the tree disappears, and everyone in the courtyard goes mad! We Run! We run back down to the basement, to the cells. But then we met men with six men holding guns. Nonononono! Nat casts stinking cloud over them and I cast fly on Gerhardt so he can go wherever he needs to go to be safe until his spell finishes. Bullets fly out of the fog. I throw myself in front of Nat, while Klyce and Remy go charging in. There is shooting and spell flinging and I can hear Remy’s sword clanging. The fog isn’t stopping them, so Nat drops it.

Nonononono! Too many bullets, my friends are getting hurt. Maribeth is shot again. Klyce is hurt bad! I look around and see some rocks on the ground. I pick one up and take aim. It’s just a key, it’s just Sanctum. I send it flying with magic and one of the gunmen drops. I pick up another rock. Another gunman falls. Whatever it takes, whatever it takes. We run. There are more dead down by the door, but we don’t have time to care. We run. Whatever it takes, whatever it takes. They are talking, but I don’t hear. Whatever it takes…

Butchers and Blood in South Brooklyn

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

Klyce, Maribeth, and Dalish round the rest of us up for a trip to South Brooklyn to check out the Butcher shop our murder victim bought all the meat and blood at. Eustace says Tim is his best customer, buys about that much every couple of months for the last year and a half. He says Tim seemed fine last time he saw him, just a couple days ago for that order.

Next we head to the bank on “Tim’s” checks. Remy heads in and asks for the manager. Alice doesn’t work here, but the manager recognizes Artimeous’ name, but tries to push us off to the hall of records. Remy is insistent and eventually gets the manager to tell him how often Artimeous gets paid and for how long, that same year and a half.

We take a break to get some lunch and ask the Xingese waiter if he can knows anyone who can translate the note we found. He offers to take a look, but when we show him, says it is too old and he can’t decipher it. He gives us directions down to nearby dojo and says there’s a man who might be able to help. We ask after Tim, and he says he eats here often, and even brings friends around, and speaks the local language very well.

Tim seems quite the odd man about town here, so after lunch, we split up and canvas the area, looking for anyone else he might have known. We manage to find a grocery store he frequents, furthering our idea that he must have an apartment nearby, but no real leads on where.

Gathering back up at the dojo, we head in to Lu Bai’s Martial Arts. There’s an older man teaching about ten kids our age and he tries to shoo us out. We ask if we could just wait for him, and he reluctantly leaves the kids to come see what we want. We tell him we’ve been pointed his way for translation help, and he says he will in exchange for Klyce’s help in a demonstration. Klyce agrees, and gets thrown to the ground in front of the class.

Sending the kids to spar with each other, he takes us to another room. Remy explains why we have come, and he takes a look. He says the script is in an ancient form, but the characters are unfamiliar to him. He suggests we visit an antique dealer a few blocks away. When Remy asks if he knows anyone who would leave such a note attached to a dagger in a murder victim, he says that the Triad does is not so sloppy to leave writing behind.

We head over to the shop and start browsing the wares. The shopkeep approaches and welcomes us, and Remy explains that Lu Bai send us over for help with some ancient script. She takes the paper and after a moment, walks over to a shiny old bronze statue. She holds the paper up to it, as though to a mirror and begins reading aloud. Only Remy with his spell up can understand her, but soon we all get the gist as a thunderous explosion fills the shop.

What the heck???

She explains that it was a prayer to the Gods of Thunder and Vengeance that the person slain burn in the fires of the thousand hells and woe to those who interfere. Sure…. that makes sense… Who would do something like that? Who could? She says that it could be the Children of Lightning, the woojen or something. I ask if these gods have temples here, but she says no. She doesn’t know Tim, but she could maybe get us books about the Children and their gods in about a week or so. We apologize for the explosion, but while unhappy, she mostly just shoos us out.

Enough excitement for one day, we head home, stopping by the bank for Maribeth. In the morning, Dalish and Gerhardt get up early to hit the room of forms and the Hall of Records while the rest of us sleep in, greet the sunrise, or train. Then, while they’re still filling out forms and finding records, the rest of us head out to Brooklyn again to start checking out apartment buildings for anyone that knew Tim.

Plenty of folk have seen him around, but no one claims to be his neighbor. After a short while, Remy recieves word from Gerhardt that there’s been another murder. This one in South Brooklyn and Inspector Poissant is already there. We head on over and it’s on the outer edge of Xingtown. Poissant tells us that it’s Gregory Killcannon, and he was found in his chair with a knife in his chest. A knife just like Tim’s. No forced entry here, either, the maid just found him when she came to clean. We look around and only come up with some spare mana and a Transmuter’s spellook. Maribeth manages to find some of Tim’s hair in the bathroom and a Journal under Greg’s mattress. The rest of us talk to the neighbors, but they don’t have much to say. Greg kept to himself. Would stay home for days on end, then be gone for days.

We head out to lunch at a different place, and Maribeth fills us in on the journal. Greg was excited about his new job. He said Klein was Brilliant, had vision, passion and a worthwhile goal. There were drawings of the planet with cris-crossing lines, and a section view too, with different layers labeled with heat, pressure and mana concentration. But then something happened, and he started using words like morally unconscionable and no goal is worht the sacrifice of human dignity. That’s about the time he sent word to Tim about going public.

Maybe Klein got mad and killed them both. Who is Klein? Where do they all work? It has to be around here, but we have no leads. We have to go see what Dalish and Gerhardt have dug up and Maribeth needs to go to her bank again, so we all head back to the Petals. There’s some arguing over our next steps. Remy wants to go be bait, but Klyce says the murders have been up close, personal, and in their own homes. Remy asks Dalish to speak to Rictus about the names we’ve gathered that night and we all head to rest. Remy wants to hang out in the hot tub we’ve made in our mansion, but it takes him a minute to figure out why I won’t join him. Boys! I do try to give him a bit of a lesson in fae, but we’re both a bit tired.

In the morning, we gather up while Dalish and Gerhardt go look into more records and figure out where Klein works. Once we get the address, we run nearly all the way there. The door isn’t locked on this old warehouse outside of Xingtown, so we walk on in. The walls are clean white and the floor is tiled. There’s a front desk, but no one is at it. The desk has the usual stuff, but none of it seems to see any use. We head through another door and find a large lab.

Glass topped cages on long tables. A blackboard full of sketches and equations. The illusion of a globe with the same line of mana. Over in the corner is a blond woman, rummaging around. Alice? Yes, hi! Where’s Harden Klein? Well, he just left to go to your office, Malakan died last night. We told him to stay here, but he went home. Alice sends a message to get Klein to come back, and Klyce and Maribeth get Malakan’s address and head out to meet with Poissant. The rest of us ask Alice about what’s going on here, and what specialities everyone has. She called out to someone named Francine to join us, and then the lights went out.

Cannibal Murder Cults… I mean… Gentlemen’s Clubs

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

I woke up when the fighting was all over. I remember being grabbed by the Black Knight. I remember Klyce climbing up the building nearby. Then, Nothing. I woke up to Nat standing over us all, fresh as the day she got to school. We’re in Remy’s hotel room, even. Not lying on the street in pools of our own blood. So glad Nat found us, that could have been really, really bad. What if the red-capped creepers had found us first??

We immediately start asking her about the drawings. She didn’t see them in her hurry to leave the infirmary and find us, but they were all part of her dreams. She asked which ones had happened, and we told her all about the man in the sewer who tried to kill us all. We ask for more details on what she saw, but it’s all a bit hazy and she’s not sure which have happened and which are going to happen. She really wants to go after her brother in the south again, but we have to take care of the murders going on first.

Nat mentions that the women who were eating the man were surrounded by men in masks, like from her other drawing. I think real hard, and have a vague memory of my own father wearing a mask like it. Late at night, when he would come home loudly drunk. I never asked him where he’d been, you just don’t ask things like that.

But, if he’s been wherever this is happening, we have to find out where it is. The others talk about asking him, or following him. But we have no idea if he’s even going anymore, and I have zero desire to talk to him. Hey Dad, are you involved in a cannibal murder cult? Could you tell me where? Um…. NO, Thank You. Maribeth mentions her grandfather had a similar mask, too, and maybe we could search his office. Klyce mentions that we could also ask Philomena about her father’s activities, seeing as how they had weird creatures living below them.

We all end up back at school in the morning, and we let Klyce do the talking. Philomena isn’t terribly happy about our implications about her father, but she lets it go on account of all the dead. She says there are lots of gentlemens clubs, and they all tend to wear masks for anonymity. She’s sure her dad is a member of one of them. She tells us that they are in the better parts of town, generally not advertised, but they tend to have a mark on the building somewhere.

We go round in circles talking about our plan and their plans. Why now? Are they building up to something? Nat says the darkness is increasing. They were trying to open gates in the rituals we stopped. The symbol is a fertility rite, are they trying to make more? We decide to look at the other sites from the night before. Remy decides to get all dressed up in his adult body and see if he can score an invite to a club or two in the nice areas adjacent to the dumping grounds.

Heading out to talk to our cop allies, they tell us there were four body dumps last night. One was not on our list of possibles. The cops say they don’t have trouble with fancy gentlemen in this part of town. All the sites are bloody messes, as we expected. At the freshest site, we head down into the sewers to look for the redcaps. They turn out to be quite a ways down and away from the bodies, but I can feel their hunger again.

With some light tossing and slow spells, we draw two of them out and end them. I can sense more nearby and call out to them. They talk to me, for once, actually answering, unlike the rest we have fought. They are hungry, but not working with the humans. They just want food. I ask why they don’t leave, and they say they can’t, it’s not time yet. They won’t tell me what that means, or about the war. I ask how to make peace with their people, and they say they must be fed. Klyce won’t attack them if they aren’t attacking us, so I tell them we’ll leave. If they start killing people, though, I tell them, we’ll be back.

We head back to sleep, and in the morning, when Remy arrives, he looks like death. Before he can fill us in, Dalish arrives as well. He tells us about his lessons with Rictus the night before. The tub of Garian goo, when fed to a non-mage, gives them the ability to cast magic. He’s not sure if it’s permanent or temporary. We discuss whether Rictus is looking to make Loyal Soldiers, or Suicide Squads.

Remy gets up the nerve to tell us about his night. There was drinking, partying, and then a circle of of men, where three fae women devoured several men before their eyes. Dalish wonders if there are multiple clubs like this, all feeding people to the fae. Dear gods, if they exist, I hope not!

Okay, so the horror show of our lives continues, but what do we do now??? Maybe we can get the knights to help us, they like fighting against magic. Maybe we can find the creatures before the next ritual? Should we try protection spells? Someone thinks there’s a banishment spell? Oh man, this is going to be terrible!

(authors note: sorry, I ran out of time last week to get this typed up.)