I was back in Sosanopa, once again having dinner with some other adepts when we heard a scream from the back of the inn. As we moved to investigate one question went through my mind "What is wrong with this town?". I would come back to that question several times in the next couple of days.
For the records my companions were:
- A'horangi Ha'hana Syrtis, a t'skrang Monk and Bodyguard
- Bloodbeat Syrtis, a t'skrang Nethermancer
- Vralino Hammer-Shield
A'horangi, with their usual unfailing politeness, asked the innkeeper if we could exit through the back. Behind the inn were the stables where we found the stable hand comforting one of the wait staff. They pointed us to the tack room, where the decapitated and gutted remains of a dwarf rested on a bench.
A'horangi examined the corpse. The dwarf looked to be wearing good quality clothing but most of the jewellery had been removed, there was no sign of altercation and several organ had been removed.
Meanwhile Vralino and I worked to calm the two employees, who were able to identify the victim as Brojn Thews, a local wool merchant whose workshop was just outside town.
By this point a crowd had gathered and several guards arrived so we passed on what information we could while asking the crowd if anyone had seen anything, but all we got was someone mentioning that an obsidiman traveller had been found dead a couple of days earlier.
Bloodbeat decided to use their nethermantic arts to experience the death, a power that from what I could see was just as unpleasant to use as the description suggests. All Bloodbeat was able to gather was that the dwarf had been knocked out by a couple of namegivers using the showels stored in the tack room.
We decided to go check the workshop, where we found two apprentices who were not keen to discuss matters in during the night. The others went back to town to rest, while I parked Isidoros by the workshop and had Teh keep an eye out. In the morning I tried to talk to the apprentices who didn't seem to be hiding anything. I decided to withhold the news of their master death out of some misguided suspicions but in retrospect it would have probably been better to let the children know before they found out in the market.
We instead proceeded to investigate master Thews' house, which proved unenlightening other than the fact he was selling wool to elves from the north. We hired a boat to go check the delivery location, but found nothing of interest, however chatting with the boatman revealed that two fishermen (human and t'skrang) had gone missing in the last week.
What. Was. Wrong. With. Sosanopa?
At this point I went to the captain of the guard and demanded a full list of people that had died or diappeared recently and lo and behold, there was also a missing troll hunter and an orc farmer burnt in their own hut.
What. Was. Wrong. With. Sosanopa?
At this point we started suspecting some kind of ritual that required parts from each namegiver race and discussed putting all the elves and windlings in town under watch.
But before doing that we went to check out the farm, where digging into the ashes we found a ribcage that looked like the corpse had been beheaded before cremation. Bloodbeat once again experienced the death and reported seeing four human like figures and two things that may have been windlings with tails, which immediately made me thinks of changelings and the terrible stories I've head about them.
We decided to examine the other building in the farm, starting from the barn. As we approached we noticed something was inside, so Vralino asked us to wait so they could reattune a matrix. Shocking no one within a couple of minute of hanging near the door, whatever was inside started trying to mess with us, so we charged in to fight a few cultists and two changelings.
The fight was quite brutal with Vralino being taken out while protecting Bloodbeat. Following the trail of the cultists we managed to find their main ritual and put a stop to it.
As we left Vralino seemed to be in a weird mood and mentioned something about not having heard from their parent, Jarock Hammer-Shield, in a while.
[...]
As I wandered by Skyreader Island I heard rumors that Vralino had gone on an expedition to track down Jarock and had come back dragging their corpse and an enormous head. Nib, Redsun, Mazor, and Mal had also been lost. I decided to steer Isidoros towards Trayckid to try and being what little comfort I could to Vralino, we've both seen too much death already.Statistics:Posted by sigfriedmcwild — Sun Nov 08, 2020 11:41 pm
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