Previously

• On a fairly normal camp stop, not far from Daggerford:
• Pliny and Aegar continued their nightly playing of cards and attempts at infiltration and information gathering of the Cult.
  • The Cultists had generally been cold to the rest of the caravan, not mingling often, and refusing several requests from travelers for passage. They had warmed up to the party a bit over the passing days.
• That evening, one of the guards cornered Zoyana while she was off getting water.
• She recognized him as one of the guards (Detris, though she didn’t remember it) from the Cult wagon that they saved from the hobgoblins before the Troll Claws.
• She had seen him squinting at them from the shadows for a while, especially Aegar and Pliny.
• The guard leaned up against a tree, “Your friends are bad news.”
  • Zoyana: “Oh really? Why?”
  • Detris: “You should probably find a new spot sleep tonight.”
  • Zoyana: “Why?”
  • Detris: “I don’t know how you got tied up with them, but I do appreciate you saving us. Tonight might be a good night to sleep somewhere else.”
  • Zoyana did not miss a beat: “Are you offering?”
  • He took a moment to look around to see if anyone was watching or if she was being serious: “If you’d be interested… I sure would.”
  • Zoyana repled, “Let’s do this.” And then shifted into her best La Femme Nikita impression (Insight 22). She learned:
    • First, he hasn’t told anybody about his plans or warning her.
    • Second, he recognized Aegar and Pliny: Aegar as the one who bested Langedarosa back in Greenest and Pliny as his friend up on the wall shouting about the fight.
      • He was one of the mercenaries that watched as they were carting away the last of the spoils.
    • Finally, he was planning to get his friends to do a little ambush tonight.
• The session ended with Zoyana alone with Detris, considering whether to murder the man who was just there doing his job.

This session

• Zoyana (Deception 17), told Detris, “I need to go get something I forgot, you’re going to like it.” Which allowed her to return close enough to the caravan to telepathically reach out to Fang and procure wine and poison from her tent.
• Zoyana telepathically told Fang “I need you to go invisible. I’m going to take care of this guy. I need you to be quiet, for now. I need you to help me because I’m going to sneak some poison into the drink of this dude that I’m walking away with. Because he’s bad bad bad.”
  • Zoyana: _“So what I need you to do is when I when we’re sitting down to have a drink of wine.
  • Fang: “Uh huh”
  • Zoyana: “Fang I need you to be quiet. I need you to like go off and make a distraction so he’ll pay attention to you while I do that. Tell me ‘Okay’.”
  • Fang: “So I’ll jump out and go ‘Boo!’”
  • Zoyana: “No. Away. You’re being sneaky.”
  • Fang: “Oh ok ok. I can be sneaky.”
  • Zoyana: “And you’ll be sneaky, but loud enough that he wants to see what you’re doing.”
  • Fang: “Ok ok.”
• Zoyana returned with a small jug of wine and a pouch of something “special”, “I can’t believe those fuckers would do something like that. Actually, I lied. That Aegar guy, he’s kind of weird. I can see him wanting to do something like that.”
• They took a short hike to a nice, secluded spot out of ear- and eyeshot from the camp across a small stream.
  • Zoyana confirmed her assessment of Detris (Insight 21): he was creepy as fuck. He was clearly balancing the fact that he wanted to go murder Aegar and Pliny with the feeling of “this has never happened to me, but it seems to be happening right now, and so I’m gonna go do this because, however important that is, it can wait till tomorrow.”
• Zoyana handed Detris the wine jug, and as they started to drink, she messaged Fang, “Now, buddy.”
• There was an awkward delay.
• Zoyana: “Now.”
• More awkward delay.
• Then a little past the first line of trees, they saw the top of one of the mature pine trees sway, fall, and land with a loud Boom.
  • And then, out of the bushes came a giant grizzly bear with a rabbit in his mouth.
  • It stopped when it saw them and stared.
  • It snuffed and shook the rabbit, then turned and loped away.
• While watching that happen, Zoyana had poured a vial of poison into Detris’ wine (Slight of Hand 21 after Advantage).

Killing Detris

• Detris drank from his wine cup. A few minutes later he started coughing. A few minutes after that, he was dead.
• Zoyana poked and prodded the body. Listened for breath, flicked various body parts, and otherwise confirmed the death.
• Zoyana cleaned the scene of any obvious signs of malfeasance, including washing out and storing her poison vial, the wine cups, and the wine, and stashed everything back in her tent.

Getting “help”

• Zoyana put on her best crying-face, and ran to the camp to find Aegar and Pliny, and burst out of the forest saying, “Oh my god, oh my god, I was just walking through the forest and that guy, you remember that guy that we saved from the hobgoblins, I just came across him like he’s really sick, I think that something’s wrong with him.”, playing up the melodrama for the Cultists playing cards with her party.
• The group en-masse followed her to the spot.
  • Zoyana mental-messaged Aegar and Pliny, telling them what had happened.
  • Pliny questioned out loud, “You flicked a dead dude’s dick?”
• When they came upon the body, Aegar attempted to Lay on Hands, putting on a big show on just about trying to help him.
  • Some of the cultists seemed visibly surprised at the magic, but the magic didn’t seem to do anything.
  • In fact, the Lay on Hands neutralized any remaining poison and covered Zoyana’s tracks.
• Pliny pulled out his lute and played a traditional song of mourning.
• Enom turned to Zoyana: “What? What happened?”
  • Zoyana (Deception 15): “I went for a walk him. He said he didn’t want to play games with you guys tonight. And then all of a sudden, he just like started coughing. I tried to give him water, I tried to help him, nothing helped and he and he just like fell over.”
  • Pliny: “I heard there’s a cold going around in the last town we were in. People coming down with something bad.”
  • Enom (Insight 13) looked at her funny then nodded and turned to the others: “Check for berries. Check for poison. Is there anything around here that could cause this?”
  • Aegar (Investigation dirty 1) did not find any berries or incriminating evidence.
• After some searching, the group was at a loss, and gave up. They packed up the body and carried it to Álvaro’s wagon.
  • Aegar offered his services to perform a religious ceremony or burial rites and Pliny supported with an offer of song.
  • As they walked away, Zoyana loudly told Pliny: “God, all I was trying to do is get some ass. How many times has this happened to you Pliny, where you’re trying to get ass and then someone like dies on you?”

Funeral Rites

• Not long after, Álvaro’s crew obtained a pine box from another member of the caravan, Lasfelro, and asked Aegar to perform rites.
  • They were planning to take Detris’ body to Daggerford and make arrangements to return his body to his family.
• Lasfelro had come to be known as Lasfelro the Silent to most of the caravan, due to his tendency to keep to himself and speak rarely.
  • 
  • He was carrying a cart full of dirt and old roots with a tarp-covered box at the front.
  • He was an eccentric human that spoke slowly and rarely, and usually while hand-washing as a soothing behavior, but then occasionally broke out into melodious songs or told unexpected jokes.
  • He had a nasally voice, but when he broke out into song, he filled the air with a fine tenor that lifted spirits, only to return after to an air of melancholy.
  • When he told jokes, they were funny, but as soon as the punchline landed, he beat his audience to silence.
  • Álvaro’s crew helping him build the makeshift coffin out of materials from his cart.
    • Lasfelro hadn’t seemed to be traveling with the rest of the presumed-Cultists, but the party noticed a conspicuous proficiency with the building of coffins.
• Aegar took the hour to cast Ceremony and perform the Funeral Rite, protecting Detris’ body from rising as undead, while the rest of the crew participated and watched.
  • Aegar (Insight 17) noticed Lasfelro start to get twitchy as the Rite was being performed, his eyes showing obvious discomfort.
  • Lasfelro quietly and nonchalantly started to back away, while trying to hide the fact that the Ceremony was making him uncomfortable.
• At the tail-end of the Ceremony, Aegar opened his awareness with his Divine Sense, reaching out to sense any undead or desecration. Lasfelro himself did not set off any alarms, but his cart, just at the edge of Aegar’s senses, radiated desecration.
• Aegar finished the Ceremony, then updated Pliny and Zoyana: “Do not be alarmed but, I used my Divine Sense on Lasfelro and while he himself checked out, there is something that has been desecrated inside of his wagon. Inside of the dirt.”
  • Zoyana: “What does that mean?”
  • Aegar: “There is something evil inside of the dirt. I think it would be prudent, for us to check his cart perhaps, when he is not looking or is otherwise distracted.”

Investigating Lasfelro

• The party concocted a complicated plan to send Fang and Zoyana to investigate while the others distracted Lasfelro.
  • Pliny (Persuasion 23 with Aegar’s help) cajoled Lasfelro into singing over the body.
• Zoyana wildshaped into a spider.
• She found a serviceable, pretty nice wagon, made of thick wood, well oiled and maintained to protect it from the elements. The back 2/3 cargo space of the cart was full of dirt and old roots.
• Looking closer, Zoyana (Investigation 20) realized that the first third of the cart, which held Lasfelro’s living supplies, included a 3-walled box that held a stone statue of a gargoyle. The gargoyle statue was connected to the wagon via a silver chain. The gargoyle wasn’t obvious except from directly behind the cart.
• She also noticed a number of books and journals that were of really nicely bound leather. + Other than the statue of a gargoyle, the nice books, and the useless-looking cargo, Zoyana couldn’t find anything interesting or suspicious in the wagon.
• Zoyana-spider returned and telepathically updated the team with her findings.
• Aegar meandered by the wagon, and saw the same things as Zoyana.
• Pliny found a moment alone, and cast Magic Mouth on the gargoyle, saying “Lay your coins in this box here, or your afterlife in this dirt is near.”

Jokesters

• The next day, Lasfelro approached the party: “Someone is a jokester in this caravan. My statue is talking. I appreciate the coins, but someone. cast a spell on it.”
• The party feigned ignorance:
  • Pliny: “Can you show us what you’re talking about? We don’t have a statue.”
  • Aegar: “What’s that, Lasfelro?”
• Lasfelro: “My… my gargoyle statue. You have been in this caravan for how many weeks? You didn’t notice that I have a gargoyle with me?”
• Lasfelro showed them back to his cart, “Olgath, come say hi.”
  • As they approached, the stone statue started moving.
• Aegar grabbed his sword.
• The gargoyle climbed up onto the dirt and leaned forward, squatting down on all fours with its wings back and just looked at him.
• Aegar again cast Divine Sense, and the gargoyle did not set off his senses. But he did get a strong feeling of desecration coming off of the dirt in the wagon.
  • He turned to their new acquaintance and began politely interrogating: “Lasfelro, I can’t help but notice that your wagon is filled with dirt. Is that very profitable?”
  • Lasfelro: “No.”
  • Aegar: “Why would you be moving it such a long way”
  • Lasfelro: “For… for the garden. At the estate.”
  • Aegar: “Is there not dirt there that is closer?”
  • Lasfelro held up and looked at his thumb, “You don’t have a green thumb, do you?”
    • Aegar held up his blue thumb, “I do not. Mine is blue.”
    • Aegar (Insight 10) got the sense that Lasfelro’s replies were honest, though he was clearly hiding something. The green thumb reply was obviously a kind of “mind your own business” response.
  • Lasfelro: “Master Marcel’s estate will look much better when the roses are properly… fertilized.”
• Pliny recognized that there were some coins spread about the dirt, likely in response to his Magic Mouth trick, and sent his Unseen Servant to collect 4 coppers.

Confrontation

• Aegar: “Lasfelro, I am going to be honest with you. There is something within your dirt that is unholy. And, with your permission, I would like to check it.”
• Lasfelro: “I think that would be a very bad idea.”
• Aegar: “Do you know what is inside the dirt? I am concerned about the safety of the care of him.”
• Lasfelro: “Everyone’s fine. It’s dirt and dust.”
• Aegar (Insight 22) got the distinct impression that Lasfelro was lying. Aegar replied, “It would help to put my mind at ease…”
• Lasfelro grabbed a handful of the dirt: “It’s dirt.”
• Aegar: “Would you allow me to check the rest?”
• Lasfelro: “You’re going to turn? No… You can’t go messing with my stuff. It’s a pile of dirt. If you check it, you will be unloading my dirt and adding all of the dirt around here, as you won’t put it back. Because anybody who wants to unload a card dirt is not can want to reload the cart after.”
• Aegar: “I merely wish to dig a hole. I will shuffle around the dirt and be very careful not to mix it and…”
• Lasfelro: “I’m afraid that that won’t be a possibility. I can’t. No, would not like that. And I can’t ask the gargoyle to stand down in that way. Only Master Marcel could do that.”
• Aegar: “The gargoyle protects what’s in the dirt?”
• DM: “He’s a servant of Master Marcel as well. And he’s been assigned to protect Master Marcel’s goods…”
• The party decided to “keep an eye on that motherfucker because he’s creepy as fuck,” but otherwise not push the issue.

House of the Grangles

• Out of a sense of stubbornness, Zoyana felt the need to confirm.
  • She turned to Aegar, “I think I need to find the house where I ended up with the Grangles so that I can leave that part of my life behind.”
  • Aegar: “Well, if you would like some help, we are here.”
  • Zoyana: “Well, you’ll go with me, of course.”
• Zoyana navigated their way through the town and down the alley that ran West from the Trade of Tools. On the Southern side of the alley, about the middle point between the Shrine of Tymora and The Decorated Man on a map, they stopped at a tan building.
• Inside, they saw a family of humans.
• They waited a few moments. Zoyana felt no nostalgia there. It was a place that she had been before, but whatever that thing was that she was searching for, there was no spark from the building.
• Trusting in her feelings, Zoyana recommitted to following the pull north and the path the Looting Luters were on.

Pliny and the Dexter

• Senator Timothy Dexter pulled Pliny aside: “Hey. So this is your last chance boy. You want to get in on some of the silk action? A fine investment. Can turn quite a profit. Your choice.”
• Pliny: “Timothy, that’s something I’v been thinking pretty heavily about. I am interested. I was playing cards last night, though, and I realized they I might have another chance of making some money here. And so, can I have till lunch?”
• Senator: “Yeah, let me get back to you. Yeah.”
• Pliny: “Thank you, Tim. Remind me, what’s your offer?”
• Senator: “If you tickle the earth with a hoe, she laughs with a harvest.”
• Pliny, flabbergasted: “I’ll tell you what Timothy. If I do join business with you, I want part of my investment to be that we we get that etched right on the front of our product. But what is your offer? What is your final offer, so I know what I’m looking at here.”
• Senator: “It 1,500 gold for 10% of the profits.”
• Pliny: “How much have you made so far?”
• Senator: “Pft. Zero.”
• Pliny: “10% of nothing is nothing.”
• Senator: “We haven’t sold anything yet, boy. Like a gardener I believe what goes down must come up.”
• Pliny: “I used that one before too my friend. But we’ll see. I’ll see you at lunch. If I remember this town right, I believe that there’s a River Shining Tavern we can meet at.”
• Senator: “Excellent.”

Aegar hunting magic items

Pliny in The Eye of Newt

• Pliny also visited The Eye of Newt.
• After some haggling back and forth, Pliny decided to sell his Deck of Illusions, pocketing 3,060 gp.

Another chance to invest

• Timothy Dexter saw Pliny as he headed for the River Shining Tavern, and joined him.
• Pliny: “Hey Timothy, how you doing buddy?”
• Timothy Dexter*: “I’m doing great. So what did you decide? You gonna capitalize this investment, or am I doing it all on my own?”
• Pliny: “You know, I think that you’re going to do it on your own. But I would be happy to help sell it for you. Do you have an offer on that end?”
• Timothy Dexter*: “I may take you up on that, but that’s not a today thing.”
• Pliny: “Alright, Timothy I understand. Why don’t you go get us an ale and we’ll catch up soon.”

Silks return

• The party saw Timothy Dexter at breakfast, as happy as a clam.
  • He turned to Pliny: “I’m telling you my boy, you made a mistake. Those clerics, they work wonders. Those farmers… they are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.”
  • Pliny: “What were your profits, sir?”
  • Timothy*: “Oh, I haven’t sold anything yet.”
  • Pliny: “Huh.”
  • DM: “But this was a mighty fine stay here in Daggerford.”
• When they started packing up, they noticed that the cart of silks was back with the other wagons.

Caravans are dangerous

• The party weren’t party to what happened to the body of Detris, but it appeared that his death was just accepted as a crazy accident. The kind of thing that happens on the road, and the caravan route is dangerous.

Travelers

• As the party were gathering to leave, they noticed the usual tradeoff of wagons (a couple leaving, though none joining at this stop), with two notable exceptions:

Phlan

• Pliny was in his room.
• Aegar was at a doorstep.
• Zoyana was in her hammock, on a tree.
• They looked behind themselves, and each saw a magic circle open.
  • And a skeleton arise.
• Aegar, still getting his bearings, swung his first blow wildly.
  • Then brought Lady Constance to bare, squishing it like it was nothing.
  • From all around, Aegar heard Ragvala: “Amazing! Simply amazing!”
• Pliny wasted no time with Earthquakes or rapiers. He leveled his crossbow and knocked an arm off.
  • The skeleton swung back with its short sword, but Pliny danced away from the blow.
• Zoyana’s skeleton rose and swung, missing the halfling.
  • Zoyana jumped out of her tree with her scimitar and crashed down on its head, splitting the skull. But the magical light remained in its eyes.
• Pliny pulled his rapier and said, “You missed me motherfucker, but I can get you,” as he skewered it in the eye.
  • From all around, Pliny heard Ragvala: “Amazing! Simply amazing!”
• Zoyana’s skeleton, its skull split open in a “V”, flailed wildly with its short sword.
  • Zoyana cast Geas on it.
    • She felt a weird resonance, but (Charisma Save 16) the feeling faded before she could get a sense of it.
    • As the skeleton froze, Zoyana heard Ragvala chuckle: “Amazing! Simply amazing!”
• And the scene went white.