Investigate Cliffshadow Murders

The little Mikumwes halfling was an unnatural shade of blue.  Glesni tried not to stare at her on the other end of the Freelancers Tavern, and pay attention to the conversation at the large table where she sat next to the Wild elf Quelenna.  But Glesni was unfamiliar with halflings, and wondered if this was a thing they did.  Perhaps Quelenna knew; she'd ask later.

Mia had been holding forth about family to Ondar.  The short human woman had long black hair, and nice blue clothes.  She'd acquired a shield, but still had split knuckles.  Glesni was as unimpressed as Ana, but somehow Mia bothered Ana, who announced she'd acquired a familiar, a red-tailed hawk.

That got the interest of everyone at the table, and to the discomfiture of the wait staff, she summoned it.  That was a red-tailed hawk, alright.  Tai's eyes narrowed speculatively, on how the Maker gnome was holding the hawk without glove &  jesses.

The others pressed Ana for the hawk's name.  At first she refused to say, but then she admitted, "Hawkie."

Then she dismissed the familiar, and the entire table headed up to Arnari's office:  Ana and Tai, with Ondar following, then Mia, and the two elves behind.

As they entered Arnari's office, she looked everyone up and down coolly, assessing them.  She glanced at her papers as they sat down, then said, "I have five possible missions."

• House Liona wants gryphon eggs… those of you with less experience afield might need to be careful.
• House Aldous wants hippogryph eggs.
• Find the kobold stronghold that has been harassing Orderly Stones Monastery.  Do not assault it; if they have these resources, they might be too much for you.
• A swatch of multiple murders has happened across Cliffshadow; several families in their homes.  Mayor Kaiea is trying to keep is quiet

Ondar interrupted, "Cassowary is not quiet."

Glesni asked, "Is there a relationship between the families?"  Arnari shrugged, "dunno."

Quelenna asked, "was it all in one night?"  Arnari replied, "No; was spread out over multiple days."  She paused, and nobody asked anything else, so she continued.

• Academy of Magic has been having troubles with weird magical shit.  Familiars are getting eaten, spell books getting gnawed on, spell components, especially for students, have been destroyed.

That got some raised eyebrows, that Academy of Magic had some "magical shit" that they could not handle.  After a moment of consideration, Glesni ventured, "Maybe Orderly Stones should cool off."

Her statement prompted Ana to say, "Either Academy of Magic – I know people there – or the murders; I have a problem with Nature," which kicked off a discussion.

Tai:  most interested in murders.
Quelenna:  also murders, or magic.
Tai:  how much?
Arnari:  150gp each, for now.
Ondar:  ...paid by Mayor.
Arnari:  Kaiea.
Glesni:  does that fee depend on level of discretion?
Arnari:  that's a requirement.  Don't want to have people freak out.
Glesni:  as soon as Ondar appears, people will freak out!
Tai:  are any families halfling?  <indicates self and Ondar> ...we can't really go into house.
Arnari:  the magic investigations are 200gp each.
Glesni:  what does "eat" a familiar imply?  If cannot be summoned anymore?
Ana:  it can still be summoned.
Mia:  more interested in murders.
Glesni:  taking the murders is what responsible persons would do.
<the conversation descended into an argument about familiars, and Ana's new acquisition.>
Tai:  you need a hood and jesses.
Quelenna:  if you don't like Nature, why do you have a bird?!
Ana <stiffly>:  Hawkie is my one exception.
Mia:  it won't poop on her.
Ana:  Hawkie is a celestial hawk.
Glesni:  what is a celestial hawk?
Mia:  one that won't poop on her!
Ondar:  that implies angels don't poop.

The conversation was going nowhere, so Arnari sent them all to go talk to the Mayor of Cliffshadow.  Perhaps she was feeling mortified at the idea of this discussion regarding the elimination habits of familiars happening in front of the Dean of the Academy of Magic.

The Mayor's office in Cliffshadow is in a set of buildings to the west of Pegasus Square.  The building façade is decorated in mosaic depicting a panoramic scene of Duquesne prosperity, with fields and cattle and pegasi and airships worked in small, colourful tiles.

Tai, Ondar, Glesni, and Mia looked at the mosaic with interest as they entered the building.  Once inside, they asked about meeting with the Mayor, but only mentioned they were from Freelancers Guild and not any other reason.  They were quickly shown to his assistant, who told the Freelancers they were expected, and immediately showed them into Kaiea's office.

The office was quite spacious, and the surprisingly young Fire sagani waited for them to take seats on his very comfortable chairs.  Kaiea had grey skin, fiery red hair, and bright orange eyes.  He was wearing a grey robe that set off his colouration nicely and had a shoulder-height staff.  The heavy square links of the Mayoral chain of office draped in front of his shoulders.

Kaiea knew why they were there, and once the Freelancers had settled and the door was closed, he started into explanations:  he could not tell if the murders were increasing, and did not know when they started.  They'd started getting reported about two primes before the Fulcrum Holiday.

Mia:  where are they taking place?
Kaiea:  most have been in Guildstrom, but one was set in the Trade District.
Glesni:  any regularity to… <hesitated>
Ondar:  …timing?
Kaiea:  don't think so.  There have been 4 incidences.
Ondar:  has anyone used magical means to determine what happened?  Like, speak with dead?
Kaiea <frowning slightly>:  stabbed to death in sleep.
Ondar:  Ondar knows stabbed people do not die immediately, unless person is nuts.  Which is it?
Tai:  poison?
Quelenna:  stabbed in front or in back?

Kaiea got up and went to his door, and sent his assistant.  They returned with someone the Freelancers couldn't quite see, and talked briefly.  Then he sat back down.

Kaiea:  seems to be a mix.  Some were pillow, plus a sliced throat, and also some are stabbed, like, ten times.
<silence>
Mia:  are the families connected at all?  Or the property?
Kaiea:  three families:  dwarves, half-elf, and humans, all in Guildstrom… don't seem connected.  Nobody is trying to buy their property, and they don't know each other.
Glesni:  is the murder weapon the same, or … ?
Kaiea:  seems to be knives, but, like, the cooking knife from the kitchen.
Ondar:  so murder weapons are local.

The Mayor's office had a map of Cliffshadow on the wall, but it was much more ornate than the one in Arnari's office.  Ondar asked if there was a map available, that he could put pins in.  The Mayor lifted an eyebrow, and sent his assistant to retrieve a map and some pins.  Ondar then put pins in the map at the location of the families that had been murdered.  They all stared at it.  There was no pattern.

Tai:  does there look like a ritual component to the murders…?  <delicately> with slashes, and cut.
Kaiea:  trusted clerics saw no indication of such.
Glesni <looked at map>:  what about the family in the Trade District?
Kaiea:  humans; still no connection.
<Glesni glanced at Ondar and rubbed her left shoulder, thinking about The Goose.>
Glesni:  how many people exactly?   What was the date again?
Kaiea:  2nd Kenostag Tumultuous …  here is the latest report.

The report said:

Glesni's eyes widened as she read it and tried to imagine the reaction in Cloudworks, were such a tragedy to have happened there.  She handed it without speaking to Ana, who looked at it and handed it to Tai.

Ana:  I assume the sites were checked for magical residue and there wasn't any?
Kaiea:  correct.
Ana:  were these all merchants and crafts people?  What were their occupations?
Kaiea:  I'm not sure about the family in the Trade District.  In Guildstrom, the dwarves were leatherworkers, the half-elves were book binders, and the humans were blacksmiths.
Glesni:  was anything stolen?
Kaiea:  nothing obvious appeared to be stolen.
Ondar:  Ondar bets the original was the real one, and the others are coverups.
Glesni:  do we know anyone less than upstanding who might have heard rumours?
Mia:  should we check out the house?
Ana:  also, their places of work.
Kaiea:  in Guildstrom, they have house above their shop.
Tai:  religious affiliation?
Kaiea:  nothing special
Glesni:  I suggest we check backwards.
Ana:  none of these were … unusually tan, right?
Quelenna:  always a good question!!
Kaiea:  none are affiliated with the Daystar heresy.
Mia <impatiently>:  let's just go look.

The most recent murder had been the Rathammers in the Trade District, and the Mayor gave the Freelancers some vague directions to the residence, which would have been totally sufficient for anyone who had lived in Cliffshadow for any length of time.  He produced a keyring, which had the key to the Rathammer's apartments, and handed it to Glesni, who accepted it gravely.

The Daystar was shining in the early afternoon when the Freelancers emerged from the Mayor's office and headed southwest from Pegasus Square.  Ondar towered over them all, a longsword on his back and a scimitar on his belt; 5'3" Mia was again distracted by his physique, and pestering him.

They entered the Trade District, heading towards the tenements, but this was a part of town away from Freelancers Tavern.  The reasonable sounding directions from the Mayor suddenly made very little sense to the Freelancers who had come to Duquesne from other skyliths.  Ana, however, was unfazed.  "I have deep knowledge of cities," the Maker gnome assured the others, as she confidently led the group past The Black Flagon dive bar.

A quarter of an hour later, Glesni frowned as Ana led them past The Black Flagon a second time, and started tracking their path more carefully, comparing it to what Mayor Kaiea had said.  She was unused to frequenting these parts of cities but was sure she could get them to their destination.

Meanwhile, Ana led the others past a couple of gross alleys full of trash; Ondar and Mia, absorbed in conversation, did not notice.  They rounded a corner and hit a dead end, facing a swarm of rats, well-fed from the trash and reacting poorly to being disturbed.  The Freelancers  turned to leave only to find more rats between them and the alley entrance.

Ondar strode to the back of the alley, drawing his weapons.  The longsword was inadequate for rats, and whiffed; but he struck with the vicious scimitar, slaying some of the rats.  Fiery shackles sprang up around the rats, burning them, but they didn't do much to hold the rats in place.  Ondar moved back toward the alley entrance, ignoring the rats behind him trying to bite him.

• Quelenna whipped out her fans, and with a flourish attacked the rat swarm closer to the entrance, completely missing.  Embarrassed, she attacked them with flurry of blows, to much greater effect, reducing their numbers.
• Glesni drew an arrow, then used it as a piercing arrow to good effect on the rats Quelenna had been attacking.
• Ana hit the rats in the back of the alley with a firebolt, exclaiming "Fucking nature got me lost!"
• The rats next to Quelenna swarmed onto her, but she dodged and weaved and they failed to bite her.
• The rats in the end of the alley swarmed on Tai, biting him repeatedly.  Tai did not react well to it, and felt very ick.
• Unsure what else to do, Tai breathed the cold of a Silver dragon on the rats in his space.  The cold killed them all, but it was also cold enough to give Tai a bit of frostbite as well.  He fell into a rage, drawing his greataxe and moving next to Quelenna.  The greataxe started glowing greenish.
• Mia moved up to Quelenna and tried to use her longsword on the rats.  She ended up slashing Quelenna as much as the rats.

"Quelenna, hold still!" Ondar commanded.  Quelenna, not wishing to be bit by rats, said, "Sure?" and then Ondar used his longsword and vicious scimitar on the rats in her space, with the same result as Mia, slicing Quelenna as much as he sliced the rats.

• Quelenna moved fast, and killed the rest of the rats.

Tai was definitely not looking his normal silvery self.  "Can we go see a cleric?" he asked plaintively.  "I don't feel so good."  Quelenna, bleeding from multiple places, said "Sure!"

Glesni asked darkly, "Do we know how to get to a cleric?"  Quelenna said, "Yes," and pointed; the Church of Ua was visible to the southeast over the buildings.  The Freelancers headed there.

By the time they'd gotten to the Church of Ua, Tai was definitely wobbly on his feet.  The acolytes saw the Freelancers, and especially Tai and Quelenna, and one went to fetch a cleric, and the other explained the Church would be happy to heal for a donation:  100gp for cure disease, 50g for healing wounds.  Thus Tai and Quelenna were healed, and the Freelancers rested for an hour in the soothing Church.

The Freelancers graciously thanked the acolytes at the Church of Ua and took their leave.  They were barely out the door before Mia and Ana started squabbling over the directions.  However Ana prevailed, and they finally located the building in which the Rathammers had lived.

The residence was upstairs in the rundown, but tidy building.  Before she unlocked it Glesni dutifully checked the door for scratches that might mean someone picked the lock.  Unfortunately she had no idea what would indicate that, and she saw nothing really anyhow.

The inside of the residence was not really that great.  With two bedrooms and 6 children, about the most charitable thing that could be said was that the mother had tried to keep things clean.  As they peered in, Tai saw the blood on the floor of the main room.  It was unclear to him if the blood was from the initial murders, or was tracked around by the Guard.

Mia checked one of the bedrooms; it was obviously the girls' room.  One bed was clearly the mother's; all the beds were bloodstained, and she noticed drops of blood on the walls.

Ana checked the other bedroom, the boys' room.  It only had two beds; the eldest had his own and the younger siblings had shared a bed.  She thought they were just killed; none of the gruesomeness that had been reported by the Mayor.  She started a ritual cast of detect magic.

Tai checked the knives in the kitchen; one was obviously missing.  Glesni checked the windows, but it seemed like they were locked.  Ondar, watching them, looked for patterns in the bloodstains.

"The youngest girl was not in bed when she died," he told the other quietly, pointing out the patterns to the other Freelancers, "the others were.  This one was stabbed a lot."  He pointed out the 12-year-old's bed.

Quelenna frowned the frown of an elf trying to assess human motivation.  "Are they trying to prevent the youngest from reaching maturity?"  She looked around to see any evidence one way or the other, but saw nothing.  Ondar shrugged. "It is consistent with killing the oldest-to-youngest," he declared.

Ana's detect magic lit up nothing beyond what the Freelancers themselves had; Glesni felt there was nothing further to gain at this place.  "Should we go to the next one?" she asked, and Mia was startled.  "I thought this was the only one!" she exclaimed.

The next place to check was the Dragonflingers, which had been blacksmiths in Guildstrom.  The Freelancers took half an hour to lock up and walk there, and came to a freestanding smithy above which was the residence.  The smithy was eerily dark and silent.

Glesni again checked the lock for scratches and whatnot before opening it with the key, and this time wasfar more confident that the pristine faceplate had not been messed with.

Once the door was open, the Freelancers mounted the stairs to the residence, a more pleasant situation than the Rathammers had enjoyed:  a living room, kitchen/dining area, and four separate bedrooms.  Mia headed into the smallest bedroom, clearly that of the young son, and was taken aback by the amount of blood on the bed and the floor.  "Ondar!  Yer better at blood than me!" she called out.

Ondar came and looked around, and compared what he saw with his memory of the other room.  His eyes narrowed as he considered the view in front of his eyes, and in the eyes of his memory.  He realized from the state of the room there might be a missing stuffie?  In any case, a missing favorite toy.  Thinking back, it might have been true at the Rathammers'.

Ana went into the teenaged girl's room, and looked around.  The room was rather orderly… Ana paused in surprise as she looked behind the door.  Looking down at her, affixed to the back of the door, was Tahu… or rather, a rather spicy drawing of him, shirtless and considerably burlier than the tall Wind sagani was in real life, posing as champion of the Freelancer competition a year before.  "Oh, my," Ana murmured, and the others also looked.  Quelenna's eyes widened.

The evidence in the room indicated the girl had gotten her throat slashed after a pillow had been used on her face.  Tai checked the grandfather's room, and there were the same indications, pillow and throat slash.

Quelenna checked the kitchen/dining area, and didn't really learn anything, but noticed a missing knife.  Glesni checked the windows, but it seemed they were fine.  She ended up in the parents' room, and from what she could tell, they were killed the same as the grandfather and the teenaged daughter, although there was a bit more of a struggle, since both were in the same bed.

Ana, still bemused from the girl's room, said quietly, "We did not ask, for commonality between the children."  Tai asked, "Would they be in school?"  The Freelancers contemplated his question, and all realized none of them knew a thing about early education in Cliffshadow.

They also realized that the Mayor had not said a thing about the Guard having talked to the neighbours.  They decided Ana, Tai, Mia, and Glesni would go, while Ondar and Quelenna would stay in the residence and try to put things together.

The neighbours did not know much about what happened, and the Freelancers did not press, keeping in mind the Mayoral admonition to stay discreet; but they had noticed the 6-year-old son had started acting strange a little recently.

Tai talked to a 9-year-old little boy who had been pals with the late Dragonflinger son, and the child opened up to the Silver dragonborn with the purple eyes.

"He got a new best friend," the little boy explained.  "A stuffed T-Rex, with a big bitey head, a red body and yellow head."  The child sighed.  "Then he started getting mean, and I couldn't be friends."  The child told Tai his friend would kick mud at him, and push him into the puddles, always meaner.

Tai nodded gravely.  "Do you know where he got it?" he asked.  The little boy answered, "He said the new best friend picked him!  The new-best-friend toy was mean.  Now he is gone, and I feel bad."  Tai said he was sorry, and let the child be.

When Tai told the others, they felt they were onto something.  "Should we go back to the other?" Ana asked, and they all agreed.

Since they knew the way, it did not take long for the Freelancers to return to the Rathammers', and they fanned out to talk to neighbours in their building and the next.  They found a 7-year-old girl who had been thick as thieves with the little girl.  They had often set up to have tea in the corner of the building.

She told them they were previous best friends.  The 8-year-old had a new best friend, a rag doll, made of faded black & blue cloth, clearly washed many times before sewn into a toy.  It was vaguely T-Rex shaped.  After getting her new best friend, she'd pushed the other little girl down the stairs.

Okay Then.  The Freelancers withdrew.  Ana considered the magic that could make this happen, and while not knowing it herself, could easily imagine how a person could imbue a stuffed toy.  Glesni considered what she knew of such things historically, but had never heard of an enchanted stuffed animal.

The group concluded that "The toy goes to a vulnerable child and induces them to kill their family," which Glesni found ridiculous on its face.  "No," she said vehemently, "the child is the most violently slain; they are not doing it to themselves!"

Quelenna interjected, "Is it possible that the toy is persuading the child to let someone in?"  Ondar pointed out, "The toy has been taken."

Faced with internal dissension, the Freelancers headed back to Guildstrom, to the Grassails', so they could talk to the neighbours.  They checked the shop and the apartments above, first; the same horriffic murder pattern had played out, with the young daughter the most violently slain.

They started talking to the neighbours, but Glesni had been moved by the events of the day, and the others struggled to keep her from just blurting what happened to recruit like-minded persons to support her conclusion.  They did find out the Grassail's 9-year-old daughter had recently gotten a new toy, with a less faded, dark black body, and a thin blueish head.  It had no arms or wings.

"Are these toys getting more defined over time?" Quelenna mused.  The others compared notes, but no, there was overlap between the time frames described by all the neighbours.

Tai again found the child's former best friend.  "She found the toy by the side of the road," the child assured him.  "Where side of road?" Tai asked.  "Half a block that way," the kid pointed, "around the corner."

For completeness' sake, the Freelancers walked to an older section of Guildstrom, to where the Anvilknees had lived.  The pattern repeated, but this time the toy in question had a faded purple body, with a greenish head.  Two legs, lumpy body.

Glesni remained unconvinced; the death of the child who had the doll remained unsolved to her.  But a new debate surfaced:  Ondar did not want to take their discoveries to the Mayor.  He felt that Kaiea could not be trusted, because otherwise he'd warn the residents of Cliffshadow of the danger.  The others overruled Ondar, and the Freelancers returned to his office, as the Daystar was sinking below the skylith to the west.

The Mayor was very interested in their findings, and paid out 150gp as the fee for the Freelancers work.  He told them he'd ask Arnari to set up a mission to find the origin of these dolls.

As she handed back the keys, Glesni asked him, "What about people who have the toys, now?"  Kaiea told them, "We'll put the Guard on that; but I want Freelancers to discover the origin."

• Mia → lvl 3, Path of the Ancestral Guardian!