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You can't actually see the water wheels from outside the building. You'd have to swim underneath the mill to access the wheels from the outside.
There's another door down the stairs on the other side of the building. That door is also locked.
As you approach the mill, the rumblings water wheels get louder and the air becomes more misty. The boardwalk leads to the entrance of building, a pair of wooden doors. There doesn't seem to be anyone else outside. The doors are locked.
The elf stops moving and immediately turns his head. He makes eye contact with you, and for a long moment, watches you with narrowed eyes, as if contemplating something, then heads back inside. Lym:
There was magic. Praxim:
There was evil.
Early in your stakeout, an elf emerges from a mill. He wears expensive clothing with flashy colors.
There are other mills and warehouses around. Other than the occasional guard passing by, there doesn't seem to be anyone around. During the day, it would be hard to avoid standing out, but at night, you could probably stay undetected leering from behind one of the other building.
Sometimes the auras move, sometimes they don't. The strong one is 'strong' and in the upper southeast corner of the building.
Praxim:
You detect a dozen and one faint auras scattered throughout the building, and one strong aura near one of the top corners. Lym:
You detect roughly a dozen and a half faint auras, most necromancy.
The mill is built over Yondabakari River, sitting on top of massive wooden pilings driven into the riverbed below. A wooden boardwalk wraps around the northern rim of the building, and a flight of stairs leads down to a door on the east side just above water level. The churning of four large water wheels under the mill fills the air with sound and mist. There are no visible windows.
You learn that there's sometimes activity at the Seven's Sawmill late at night, when every other business in the area is dark and silent.
The Brothers of the Seven are a group of wealthy Magnimarians that collectively own the Seven's Sawmill. Reactions to your inquiries range from conspiracy theories of the organization having secret control the Magnimar government, and possibly much of Varisia, to dismissive hand-waving of the organizing as nothing more than exclusive social group. No one seems to be able to tell you anything more detailed than that. The sawmill is one of several located on Kyver's Islet in the southern part of the city, at the mouth of the Yondabakari River. The island is given over almost completely to lumbermills, shipwrights, and noisy workshops best situated away from homes and quieter areas.
There's a library, with hundreds of mundane books littering the floor. None of them seem particularly relevant. You don't find anything else in the house.
Searching the house, you come across the mantle of a fireplace in the study. The mantle is decorated with two roaring lion heads at either end, and you notice that thy match the lion on the bronze key you found in Aldern's laboratory. Examining further, you see the left lion has a keyhole in it. Unlocking the secret cache, you find 200 platinum pieces, as well as a shallow wooden case containing legal papers pertaining to the townhouse and a deed to Foxglove Manor. The deed indicates that the Foxgloves financed only two-thirds of the manor. The rest was financed by a group called the "Brothers of the Seven". The deed also bears an unusual clause that states that after one hundred years, ownership of the manor and the lands within a mile "around and below" reverts to the Brothers. Under the case is a thin black ledger. Several purchases recorded near the end of the ledger catch your attention: nearly a dozen entries labeled "Iesha's Trip to Absalom", each indicating that Aldern was paying someone refered to as "B.7" 200 gold pieces a week for her trip, dropping off payment every Oathday at midnight at a placed called "The Seven's Sawmill".
Everyone stays at the house and waits. Roughly a minute and a half later, the bat returns. Lym:
Your bat reports back to you. The leopard vanished from the plane almost immediately after the bat started flying after them, but the creature you were fighting continued to flee toward the city's limit eastward. Frightened pedestrians ran out of its way during its run, and eventually, several guards started chasing it. The creature escaped them, however, leaving the city.
Crawling out the window leads to a fenced yard with an open gate. Tomaru lags behind the others. Praxim:
You see the leopard continue to chase the aberration through the gate and out into the streets. The fence temporarily hinders your ability to see which direction they went, though the sounds of screams and shouts should be enough to point you in the right direction.
The door opens, revealing a 10 x 10 ft room with another door on the opposite end. The leopard busts through the window and chases its target.
The creature runs into the next room and everyone pursues it. It forces itself through a window, reforming its body so that it's thin enough to escape through the wooden planks that board the window. There's a door next to the window leading out in the same direction.
Round 3 Praxim cuts into the aberration with his sword, blood spraying from the wound. It avoids the leopards onslaught and flees down the hallway.
Round 2 Praxim continues to hit air with his sword. The leopard appears and tears into the creature, injuring it gravely, and the injured monster flails around desperately and ineffectively at Praxim. The other monster turns to the cat pounds on it with its arms (9 dmg). Rhianni fires with her wand, and more missiles hit their mark, this time causing enough damage to drop the first of the two monsters.
Round 1 Praxim moves ahead and attacks, his swing going wide, while Tomaru begins casting. The faceless creatures attempt to bash Praxim with their tendril-like appendages, but fail. Lym's magic hits the closer of the two creatures, leaving a good sized contusion on its chest. Rhianni tells her humorous story. The punchline seems to have gone over their heads, because they don't seem affected.
The door to the right of the house entrance opens, and two creatures appear...creatures with featureless humanoid shapes and hairless, scaly flesh. Their boneless arms reach out, long stretching fingers writhing and twisting as they attack. Initiative: Tomaru/Praxim, monsters, Rhianni/Lym
"The Foxgloves should be here soon. Why don't you stay for dinner?" The entrance area is a 5 X 10 foot space. In front of you are stairs leading up. To the right is a door, and to the left is a wall. Praxim:
You don't sense anything.
The large iron key fits into the front door. As you enter, you here someone call out, "Hello? Who's there?"
The house is located in the Grand Arch neighborhood of the Naos district, and you find out that it was boarded up one night not too long ago. You find the house in a nondescript location, and there are many people walking around the streets in this area, as well as an occasional guard. You see boards nailed over the windows of the ground floor of the three-story building.
You found some keys in Aldern's lab.
During the rest of the day in Magnimar, you learn a few things about the city. The area of the city on top of the cliff is known as the Summit. Below the cliff is known as the Shore. A third area under the ruined bridge, where sunlight doesn't reach, is called the Shadow. Along the northern border of Keystone district, The Deadeye Lodge, a small sturdy wooden structure that stands out in the urban surroundings, makes up the city's church of Erastil. On the opposite side of the district, a ring-shaped structure known as the Cynosure Tower serves as a shrine to Desna. There is no temple of Nethys, but a school of wizardry, the Stone of Seers, resides in this district. You also hear rumors and news of disturbingly familiar events...stories of merchants, politicians, crooked guards, and moneylenders showing up dead, their bodies mutilated, faces missing, and seven-pointed stars carved into their chests.
Exploration of the city reveals a rather pretentious display of architecture, gardens, and sculptures, and there seems to be a monument of some sort around every corner. It's also quite clear that the areas on top of the cliff are of the wealthier sort, with many manors among the homes here, and avenues made of marble. Beacon's Point is filled with warehouses and simple brothels and taverns. On the edge of the district, building are sturdy structures of stone and wood. The further into the district you travel, the more closely packed and poorly maintained the buildings come, until reaching the slums at the core. You find a tavern with a sign simply labeled "The Pig". The tattered building itself seems to have been condemned at some point, but inside activity is present. It reeks like that of a slaughterhouse, and that may be at least partially attributed to the butcher-stained clothing of some of its patrons. The copious leaks and drafty walls of this establishment seem to do little-to-nothing to alleviate the odor. On the bar are jars of strips of some sort of animal flesh pickled in a blood-colored brine.
Inns and taverns can be found all over, but mostly on Keystone street of the Keystone district. You're directed to the fortress-like temple of Iomedae in the Naos district. The guard doesn't seem to have an agenda.
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