The Caravan - Chronological order of Events
A quick and dirty summary of everything the party encountered.
The Godfall
A horrible sound, like the shriek of a fiend from the lower planes reverberates through your skull and you wake up slowly, blinking your eyes, feeling worse than you have ever felt in your life. Your entire body aches, your head especially. Your body is burned in many places and caked with blood; you have no idea if it’s your own.
You have almost no energy, your limbs feel heavy but you slowly sit up to take stock of your surroundings. A two-headed goat is nibbling on your footwear and you notice a furrow in the earth coming up to where you are lying, your body must have slid along the ground at some force.
As you get your bearings you see two covered wagons, both overturned, items spilling out, the draft horses dead on the gorse. You see more bodies lying around, condors are picking away at the entrails of some of them and the horses. More of those strange goats are milling about, eating anything laying around.
The characters wake up, more dead than alive, amidst a scene of carnage on the heath, somewhere in the Godfall. No one has any memory of the last seven days or so but of more pressing matter is a huge dust storm, a Felak, coming their way.
They quickly gather their packs, and a few extra, the previous owners are in no state to complain about it. Close by is a small cave entrance that leads to, what they hope, is safety. With the storm hot on their heals they crawl into the Godfall Caverns.
Back to the surface
The portal deposits everyone on a hill in a landscape that looks a lot like the Godfall. A road in the distance and an encounter with Will-o'-Wisps and skeletons eventually leads to a small hamlet called Norak, where they learn they are three days from Banak.
It turns out the village is in some need of a judge so they are quite pleased to see Filibert in his Pholtan tabard. Two days ago a dwarven woman came to town and stabbed the local carpenter, trying to kill him. He defended himself, blinding her in one eye, and now both have been held under lock and key. She claims that the carpenter killed her brother when he was in Banak, less than a week ago. The carpenter denies this though he does concede he was in the same dive bar as the brother, who was found strangled in an alley next to it.
Filibert decides, after a plea from the local sergeant, that due to a complete lack of evidence they will take the sister to Banak and try and find out what really happened before convicting anyone of anything. A halfling Imbar farmer tries to get a case to have his money returned but is found to be clearly lying about events.
Banak
The walls of the city come in to view long before you arrive at the gate. The guards ask for the reason of your visit but other than that you have no trouble entering the city. Once inside you immediately feel warmer as the wind has lessened considerably. You walk down Forgraic Avenue and come to Civic Square, dominated by the facade of the government building, the Palace of the Dukes of Lordraerra.
A market is held here most days and hawkers are yelling at any prospective buyers about the quality of their wares. It is quite busy but most people don’t seem to be in any haste. Dwarves are definitely the most common but you see quite a few humans, a good number of halflings and half-orcs and a few gnomes. There’s a half-elf at one of the stalls (“clean your knife easily with my miracle cloth!”) and you see what must be a tiefling exit from Thovir Auction House.
The party members take rooms at the All Home Inn, where it turns out Filibert left without settling his accounts. Everyone has places to go and things to buy and jobs to look for. It doesn't take long before the following is on their plate:
- The brother murder case.
- The Companions of Elric have asked to discreetly get rid of a bookkeeping teacher, Ingra Skobet, they recently hired at Assuagion Academy.
- An old warehouse owner friend has asked Odrik to look into the wife (Centak Sointu Duldren) of his son Kargrim, he suspects her of abusing him.
- Two engineers have gone missing underground at Water Worx.
- There is also, of course, the matter of the destroyed caravan they woke up amongst.
Wet Work
Two engineers have gone missing at Water Worx and the party is asked to investigate. They find two bodies, one has the other's dagger in the back, and the other seems to have been hit in the head by one of the buckets on the elevator. Our friends decide to investigate and when Izzy gets close to the water basin, a serpentine shape made of nothing but water rises up and drags her into the basin, under the surface.
Destroying the basin seems to be quickest way to uncover the entity that is completely invisible in water. Once all water has flowed out the creature explodes in a spray of liquid, but not after having almost drowned Izzy and Boldrek.
Odrik goes to see Kargrim and eventually manages to get out of him that he has been involved in a fight club with friends from work. He offers him some lessons with an old Bruised colleague which he accepts, as long as his father won't find out about any of this. In the evening Quadok Gunnar Balmung turns up at Odrik's room. He has heard that Odrik has been investigating Kargim's wife and he wants any info he might have on her, he'll even pay for anything Odrik might find in the future.
The fact they are all still missing a week of events from their memory and have no idea what happened to the caravan or even why they were on it, is a good reason to go by the temple of Pholtus and Abjura Dolana. The Pholtans can't shed much light; even a prayer to their god doesn't reveal much beyond a 'keep investigating'.
The abjurers don't quite know, yet, what caused the memory loss but note that there are similarities with Shathûr magic, which makes little sense. However, when the party tells them about their underground adventures the interest level goes through the roof and more senior people are called in, including someone who might be the Magister, though he wasn't carrying a staff.
After hearing the entire story, the Abjura Dolana people make it very clear that the party should not tell anyone about what they found; having this information fall into the hands of Tipatshimun (there are quite a few members at Dubanôn), the Kasarian Embassy, or basically anyone, would be terrible for the world. They even go so far as to hire the party on retainer instead of making them pay for the consult.
Later, Filibert heads up the investigation of the murder of the brother. He speaks with the three friends who were drinking with the victim on the night of the murder. They all have interesting things to say and he learns which of them wore anything brown that particular night, possibly matching the brown bit of wool they found in the alley.
Boldrek finds a man who loiters along the street a lot and pays him to find more evidence or information. Eventually it pays off as the man manages to find a witness who noticed the side door in the alley open and heard a woman's voice and a man's voice speaking as he walked past.
The morning after the night before
Izzy wakes up, naked, in a bed in a ratty inn room next to a, also naked, dwarven woman. At first she doesn't remember much about last night, all the empty khel bottles might have something to do with that. She had gone to a tavern to meet the bookkeeping teacher and see what she could do to remove her from the board as asked but it looks like the tables had turned.
The dwarven woman is none other but the burgomeister; Jessra Throndor, and they are at a room at the Come and Go Inn, the cheapest lodgings in town. Their clothes and other belongings are nowhere to be found and eventually Izzy wraps the thin sheets around herself and goes to her own inn for some clothes and money before going to the burgomeister's home to collect some clothes for her. Jessra makes it home without too many people having seen her at the inn and Izzy eventually finds their clothes in the alley next to the inn. She decides to return the job to the Companions.
Filibert is contacted by the House of Light. Head of the church, Immar Chessar, asks for a favor; to administer last rights to a man called Ressic Kren and bring a small wooden horse toy back from his house. When asked he tells the paladin that the less he knows about the why, the better for everyone involved. The horse is specifically there for him to take, it won't be theft. When Filibert gets to the expensive home he finds priests of at least six other religions there. He delivers the last rights to the dying man and then takes the toy when no one is looking and returns it to Immar.
Odrik is on his way through town when a dwarven woman with green eyes asks him if he is, indeed, Odrik. She says she heard about his tavern stories of underground adventures and wants to know more. They step into the alley and there an 8' tall creature that looks like a hulking orangutan with a gruesome, drooping visage and tusks jutting from its jaw steps from behind a stack of crates when called by the woman.
She casts a spell on Odrik when he wants to run for it and the fighter can't move at all and looks on in fright as the creature grabs his head with its large hand. The woman then uses a spell to probe Odrik's thoughts as she asks questions about the statues they encountered. Our friend has other ideas and manages to throw his hand-axe at the woman and it connects solidly. Then he even manages to wrestle free from the grasp of the fiendish ape and runs as fast as his short legs can carry him. Neither the woman nor the creature pursue.
Afterwards Odrik tries to find out who the woman was and thanks to her green eyes, very uncommon in dwarves, he learns that she is likely Ilma Kratoc, lector of Conjuring at Dubanôn and a Tipatshimun member.
Boldrek is also out and about when he sees a human man in his thirties, wearing stained clothes and a leather apron, running through the intersection ahead of him. There are shouts from at least two voices: “Stop!” “Get him!”,”Don’t let him get away!” The barbarian takes his time to assess the situation and sees that the pursuers are a dwarven man and woman, judging by their dress and weapons, likely mercenaries or something of the kind. Our friend trips the male dwarf and makes him think it was an accident, helping him back up and trying to get some information, but the dwarf whose nose is even more broken now just runs on after he quarry.
Boldrek is in no hurry and leisurely makes his way in the direction of the chase, finding cabbages all over the street and helping the greengrocer get them all back in their crates, even getting a tasty Otteun apple for his assistance. Next he finds two men with a large painting that now has a human shaped hole in the middle of it. Then a tavern where the man apparently ran inside and then jumped through the window on the other side. His stroll ends when he hears sobbing and finds the man in a courtyard, his kneecaps having been well and truly destroyed.
He lifts the man up without any effort and decides to bring him to the nearest temple even though the man, who introduces himself as Milo Shrim, doesn't want to go as he has no money. It turns out that Milo is something of an inventor, or so he claims, and he borrowed money from a loanshark, Sinikka Dalmor, so he could get a new workshop to work on a new invention that would allow him to easily pay her back. Unfortunately his new invention hasn't quite progressed to a saleable state and now Ms. Dalmor wants 10 gold pieces.
At the temple of Kismet Boldrek pays for the healing, which isn't cheap, 25 gp for a cure wounds spell! When he learns that Milo wasn't able to really sell any of his previous inventions (a bone scraper, a candle snuffer, an automated porridge maker, detachable pockets) he suggests that he should look for a partner who is good at sales. Milo is impressed at this advice and thanks him for everything when they get to his rather cluttered workshop.
There's even more to do today and the party finds out something new about the doomed caravan. At a wheelwright and supply store they find out they haven't been the only ones asking after the caravan; "funny, one of them tieflings was asking the same thing." So it looks like the Kasarian Embassy is looking into this as well... They also learn that, yes, a dwarf did order some things from here for two wagons, including wheels that work well on the heath. The wheelwright doesn't really remember much of significance about the buyer, it's been a while.
Bronzed
The next day the party is out on the street when they hear the unmistakable sounds of battle coming from around the corner. When they make their way there they see an older dwarven woman in bronze armor and a little halfling girl of about six years old being attacked from all sides. The woman wears a full face helmet (grey hair spilling from it) and splint armor, and wields a warhammer and shield, all made of bronze. Odrik recognizes her; it's Ghalea Thovir, something of a celebrity around here and he has actually met her before. She started out as an adventurer but quickly shifted to close protection, selling her services to those who need to go to dangerous places and want someone to look out for them.