"We're already here," Pythia remarks as she continues into the house. "It's fate, Percival!" she assures him.
"But...why would..." Percival looks mildly troubled.
Kael looks at the other man. "Percival, if it's an injured animal, it could be dangerous to others, or need to be put out of its misery. It likely wouldn't have retreated to the house if it could go elsewhere. Besides, things don't add up and seeing what caused the creature's injury may provide a clue."
There's almost no way that we're getting out of this without something trying to eat us, but we have to know...
Chaetris stares, disbelieving, at Percival. "But what if there is some surviving member of Alastor's family in there with it? We have to go look."
Pythia nods knowingly and loops her arm through Percival's, leading him into the house. "Don't fight fate, Percival." She remarks serenely. "You won't win."
She smiles as if that were some sort of deep secret of the universe. Then she lets go of his arm, readies her morningstar and continues into the building.
"Well, I suppose I have always wanted to fight a five hundred pound killing machine," Percival isn't being sarcastic, and grins. "Let's do it."
Sure, what's one more bad decision, right?
"I have never experienced that particular desire." Cerise said dryly as she followed the others into the house.
As you creep into the building, making an ineffectual effort to avoid pools of blood and gory bits, the breathing up ahead sounds closer in the quiet. It has a wheezing, huffing quality to it. When you round the corner inside the house, the first thing you notice is a whole severed human arm lying on the bloody floor. Before you can react to it, there is a loud, elongated grunt from further in the building followed by heavy footsteps accompanied by the rapid, repeated rush of air.
Rushing headlong at you is a massive, blood-covered, terrible creature. It must be ten feet tall and half as wide, it's bottom half made up of heavy, fur-covered legs and paws. The top half is a feathered monstrosity, as if an owl decided it didn't want to fly around anymore and instead it wanted to murder people. The thing is absolutely caked with blood.
The monster swings its feathered claw wildly at Pythia, almost without regard for whether it hits or not.
You don't know why, but you get the feeling that the creature is extremely angry.
"Mother of songs... what is that thing?" Kael's question is rhetorical, but he's generally curious. His curiosity turns to decisive action once Pythia is attacked, however. He lets Percival take a moment to take a stab without getting in the other man's way, then strides forward. Dirge sings from through the air with a low mournful whistle while the morningstar packs a much meatier punch.
His twin attacks slice and crack simultaneously as he whirls into range, inside of the reach of the strange murder-owl. Heedless of the danger, something about the gristly scene seems to waken something dangerous within the half-orc guiding his blows to vital organs. In seconds Kael drenches the creature a shower of blood as he hamstrings with Dirge and bashes the thing's beak in with his morningstar!
Percival tightens his grip on his spear when he sees the severed arm on the floor. His knuckles turn white as the massive wall of gore and terror charges forward, and he gives a hard thrust with the full weight of his body, grunting slightly. He swings the spear out of the way of Kael, raising it without hesitation and preparing for another swing.
Pythia's eyes roll up into her head as visions of the future overtake her. Her lips move, mouthing soundless prophecies and warnings. By the time the visions fade, blending back into reality, it's too late. The massive beast has already attacked her, and she's unharmed.
Fate.
Pythia steps forward, easily avoiding the flailing arms of the massive beast without thought. She winds up and swings her morningstar with all her might, smashing it into the beast's side.
Chaetris slips around Percival looking for a clear shot. "Whatever it is, it's decided that people taste good." She lets her nocked arrow fly.
Cerise let out a small, undignified yelp and took an involuntary step back as the monster roared into sight.
The creature is savaged by Kael and takes minor wounds from Pythia and Chaetris, but is somehow still standing. Percival misses and Cerise tries to get off a spell, but isn't able to get a clear angle on it.
With a high-pitched roar, the creature lashes out at Kael in retaliation, catching him with a claw and pulling him close.
Percival continues his assault, trying to swing his glaive down on the owlbear's head. Unfortunately, the blade gets stuck in the sagging ceiling, Percival desperately pushing and not realizing what's happening until too late.
Pythia shuffles over slightly and swings her morningstar at the owlbear.
With what seems to becoming a trend, Kael finds himself staring down death in a way that, a couple days prior, he wouldn't have even considered existed. In this case, it's being savaged by a murder-bear. Trapped in a tight owlbear-hug, he yells out, muffled by the fur and feathers that are smothering him: "Mrpphah- ah! I could probably use little help? Also I think it's defending its baby back there..."
Unable to bring his morningstar to bear he plunges Dirge into the side of the thing.
While Percival and Pythia fail to penetrate the creature's tough skin, Dirge slides easily into its chest. The creature flails for another moment and tries weakly to bite Kael's head off before shuddering and slumping to the floor, its claws still hooked into Kael's armor.
Once the situation quiets down a bit, it's easy for you to see the tiny owlbear cub crouched in the back corner of the room, watching with wide eyes.
The severed arm still sits on the floor nearby as well, and at closer inspection, you see that the blood caked on it has filtered around a unique brand that looks like a strange '7' or a capital 'Z'.
Kael finds himself under a mound of fur with claws, half buried by the thing's carcass. He slowly extracts himself from the carnage and wipes his blade of rage-bear-blood. The half-orc looks around and adds, "Percival, remind me about this next time we're about to walk into certain death. I still think that we'll walk into the certain death regardless, but at least you deserve an 'I told you so."
"The men at the militia told stories about how one of them found an owlbear cub. It was cute at first, but he never could quite train it all the way; he ended up selling it as a guard-animal to someone in Greyhawk. As much as I'd love to take on training it... something tells me we aren't going to have the time to do that. We also really can't just leave it loose..." He gestures to the rage-bear corpse that tried to kill him. "What do you think?"
Percival pants breathlessly, adrenaline and vigor still pumping through his veins. "I thought that went quite well, actually. Let's do it again next time we find something dangerous." He scratches his head, "I guess I can think of some ways that could've gone wrong, but it didn't."
Percival looks at the poor and defenceless animal, all alone without it's guardian. "We should definitely kill it. It's sad to kill something, but I think you're right, and I'd rather not see any more dismembered limbs than I have to.
Speaking of which, there's a half orc in town who's got the same brand as is on that arm on their face." It's unusual for Percival to be so casual about something that must have led to great suffering, but the thrill of fighting for your life and surviving can make even the most grisly sight easier to see. "I wonder if it's his arm, or if he put the mark on it by force. This is very mysterious."
Pythia wanders right over to the strange symbol on the arm and examines it. As the others talk she nods along, barely listening. She pulls out her papers and begins comparing the brand on the arm to her notes.
Suddenly she notices the owl bear baby.
"Ooh!" she exclaims. "Hello, there!"
Papers momentarily forgotten, she crawls towards it.
"Wait!" she exclaims suddenly. "You want to kill the poor thing? Why? He's parentless. We're childless! It's destiny!"
"There, there. You're alright, aren't you?" Pythia coos at the owl bear baby. "Are you going to be my new friend?"
The baby owlbear stares wide-eyed at Pythia and makes a tiny little "hoo" sound, but doesn't otherwise move.
You can't help but feel like its hopeful expression is saying, more human-flesh to eat? Though, the cat-sized creature is so small, it could hardly be dangerous, right?
"No, no, little death-browl, no more eating people! You need to learn to eat tasty things, like squirrels, and rats, and domesticated cattle!"
Pythia pulls out some dried meat from her rations, smears it in some blood from the dismembered limbs and tosses it to the owlbear. "Not fresh enough for you, I know, but give it a try!"
The baby owlbear happily devours the rations without even the slightest hesitation, quickly returning its big-eyed gaze back to Pythia with a questioning, "hoo?"
The ferocity with which the creature ate the ration conjures images of her blood-caked mother before she died just moments ago.
"Well aren't you just like your mama!" Pythia remarks happily. She tosses the baby some more rations, this time without the added blood. "Want some more?"
"You know, I bet I've seen you before!" Pythia remarks. She crawls over to her papers and begins flipping through them, oblivious to the carnage and gore all around her. She seems to be looking for some sign about the baby owlbear in her notes.
Cerise watched the exchange between the tiny monster and it's new surrogate mother. A lot of conflicting emotions ran through her head and she nearly voiced a few of them, but after a few moments of silence, she simply sighed and smiled, leaving Pythia to her new pet and getting back to work.
She pulled on a pair of thin gloves and started the gristly work of organizing the remains in the owlbear refuse.
"Feels like being back at the temple. Whenever anyone would bring in an excavation that involved mass graves, it was the archivists that had the unenviable job of trying to puzzle everyone together properly."
Stunned that Kael was able to bring down the ferocious beast so quickly, Chaetris simply stands and stares for a moment. The arrow nocked never flies and slowly she lets the tension off the string.
Looking quickly around the room, her attention focuses on the brand on the dismembered arm. Vesst! Wait no, he's dead. Didn't Smenk get his mine? "That half-orc didn't get that mark by choice Percival. Old Garavin Vesst used to brand his 'employees' just because he could. Smenk drove him out of business years ago. The owner of this arm, and that half-orc, must have worked for him. Maybe that half-orc could tell us if anyone has gone missing."
She watches silently as Pythia befriends the cublet. "I don't think I can bring myself to harm the little guy now. We just made it an orphan." The sadness plain on her face. "We need to give it a better life. The Bronzewood Lodge might know someone who can care for it."
Bending down, she begins assisting Cerise in sorting through the remains. "In the meantime, we have some somber work before us. I've been known to be good at puzzles."
As Cerise and Chaetris begin sorting through the remains in here, it becomes clear that the only human bones are the ones attached to the severed arm on the floor. It's mostly animal remains. With the time spent at it, it seems like the animal remains are older than the human ones.
You find minor evidence here and there of other remains of probably the same human(an errant ear or stray hair) that give you the distinct impression that the rest of that human is likely in the owlbear's stomach right now.
While Pythia is shuffling through her notes, the baby owlbear finishes the second ration and promptly waddles up to her, closing its eyes and nuzzling into her side.
After a moment, its breathing becomes slow and even. Apparently owlbears, even baby ones, sleep standing up.
Kael raises a brow at the antics of the baby owlbear. "Ah, cute little baby murderous thing." Looking around at the party, he shrugs. "I really don't think we should kill it if we can avoid it. Besides, it's worth at least a thousand gold if we sell it to the right buyer... I don't know about you all, but there's a lot we could buy or accomplish with that kind of money. Besides, taking it back or trying to sell it would be a good cover for coming back to the town and buying more supplies."
Pythia smiles softly and wraps an arm around the owlbear as it cuddles up to her and goes to sleep. She continues to shuffle through her papers, comparing her scribblings to the patterns in the owlbears feathers.
"Leave me some of that gore, please." Pythia asks. "Baby Browl will be hungry when he wakes up."
Cerise was not about to let the owlbear cub eat the severed arm. Respect for the daed was something she took very seriously.
She looked around for other fresh meat but only found the mother owlbear. That too seemed wrong. She reached a sort of compromise in her mind and sighed.
"I was going to have to do this at some point anyway... if any of you are squeamish, now would be the time to go outside."
She proceeded to open the owlbear carcass and retreive the contents of the stomach. Then she began the disgusting process of sorting through the mess, pulling out as many bones, teeth as she could find as well as any other recognizable and intact parts. Anything that might identify the person, such as large scraps of clothing, jewelry, or skin with tattoos or recognizable scars went into a seperate pile. She also set aside a sizable pile of meat, figuring that if it had already been eaten once it wouldn't really be any more disrespectful to the dead than it already was.
Pythia doesn't leave the room and, in fact, seems quite oblivious to the whole scene. She flips through her notes obsessively, paying little to no regard to Cerise emptying an owlbear's stomach contents all over the floor, and Chaetris sorting through body parts and bones.
Percival watches on, "Guess we won't kill it, then. Who knows what we'll do in a year's time...who knows anything about a year from now." He leans against the wall for a moment while Cerise, Chaetris, and Pythia get to work.
"Kael, did you say a thousand gold?" Percival looks at the little baby again, slightly confused.
"Come on then, let's go take a look upstairs, maybe we can find some more clues as to what went on here."
"Yeah. A thousand gold to the right buyer. It's funny to think how such a small and dangerous thing could be worth more money than I would have earned in a lifetime of militia-work."
He nods to Percival, and goes to explore the rest of the house.
As Cerise and Chaetris begin to dissect the mother, it becomes clear that the human in its stomach hasn't been there long. A relatively short and light-skinned male, it's definitely the same person that the detached arm belongs to. You're able to determine that he was lean and brown-haired as well.
The rest of the remains you can find are animal in nature. It seems like your only real lead is the tattoo on the severed arm.
Having laid out the body parts Chaetris stands and rubs her hands on a cleaner bit of owlbear fur. "So, one body. Was it dumped here by the graverobbers, or was he one of them? Maybe they came up here and found mama, then left one man fewer." She looks out through a hole in the wall, down at the Land family plot. "So, do we follow the wheelbarrow track and see where it leads, or do we go into town and visit the Feral Dog in search of our branded half-orc?"
"Okay," Percival says, looking over the upper floor, "looks like we should head back down."
Percival waits for the others to finish. "Wheelbarrow tracks sound better to me, I'd rather not leave till we've investigated everything."
If no one objects, he then follows Kael to the wheelbarrow track, helping him examine the ground around it for other sets of tracks.
When Cerise was finished she stood up and brushed her hands together like she was just getting the dust off them. Gore started dissolving to nothingness. Within a few moments she was clean and properly tidy once again.
"The dead can wait." she said. "We can collect the body for proper burial once our investigation is finished."
As you begin to talk about leaving the house, the baby owlbear wakes and looks at all of you with wide eyes, watching as if it's trying to comprehend the discussion. After a moment, it gets bored and snacks on some pre-digested food nearby. Once it has had its fill, it wobbles back over to Pythia and stands near her watching the rest of you. Anytime she moves at all, the owlbear shifts the same way. It's instinctual and almost dutiful.
Pythia smiles down at her new child, then looks at the others. "Lead the way," she tells them. "We'll follow along."
You head back down to the Land Family Graveyard, four open graves beside one recently filled, and follow the one-wheeled path marked by the wheelbarrow. The light rain and grey skies make the muddy walk rather dreary and before long, the track leads you to the road. Well traveled, the road is hard-packed and despite the rain, the trail becomes nearly impossible to follow. One thing is clear, though. The wheelbarrow turned onto the road toward Diamond Lake. With no other real leads, you begin the depressing trek back to town.
The baby owlbear follows Pythia like a dutiful child, occasionally hooting when it gets hungry. Fortunately, Pythia has plenty of food on hand for it and it hasn't got insistent or troublesome about it... yet.
15 Patchwall – 595 CY – Starday – Early Afternoon
Starday is the beginning of the work-week and as such, the town of Diamond Lake is fairly quiet. There are a few people moping around town in the dreary weather, but most of the place seems rather like a ghost town. Nobody really pays attention to you.
Walking into town, Pythia smiles. Then suddenly, she frowns.
"Well, I guess I need to go apologize to my boss and see if I'm fired." she remarks. With a shrugs she admits, "I only had the one day off. Purple Prose probably thinks I'm dead, or that I've forgotten what day it is again!"
"How long are we going to be in town? Just a few hours? Or until tomorrow?" she asks curiously.
Looking down at the owlbear she smiles. "Well, come along, then, dear! To the whorehouse!"
As the strange couple walk away, Pythia can be heard giving the little owlbear advice. "Now, no biting, dear. They don't like that! Unless someone asks..."
She heads down the Company Road, oblivious and uninterested in the fine houses she passes by, and then turns onto the Vein. Passing by the Captain's Blade and the Spinning Giant she strides right up to the Midnight Salute and wanders in, intent on speaking with Purple Prose.
As the group of you head into town, it's hard to miss the large compound that makes up the Dourstone Mine just outside it. The toughs on patrol eye you warily and you can see a few more manning the gate up off the main road a bit.
Just past the road up the hill to Neff Manor, the road forks. The left path takes a more direct route between Neff Manor and Tilgast's into town, but Pythia takes the long way around as it's much quicker to her specific destination.
The fact that a weapon's shop, a tavern and a whorehouse are grouped together just down the hill from the garrison is certainly no coincidence. While the Midnight Salute isn't as glamorous as The Veiled Cooridor, it has the definite air of a place whose proprietress cares about her business. Tidy and pleasant-smelling, the entryway has a definite pragmatic feel beneath the flowery-purple decorations. Unlike The Veiled Cooridor, this place can easily process a line of guardsman in mere minutes.
As the group of you head into town, it's hard to miss the large compound that makes up the Dourstone Mine just outside it. The toughs on patrol eye you warily and you can see a few more manning the gate up off the main road a bit.
Just past the road up the hill to Neff Manor, the road forks. The left path takes a more direct route between Neff Manor and Tilgast's into town, but Pythia takes the long way around as it's much quicker to her specific destination.
The fact that a weapon shop, a tavern and a whorehouse are grouped together just down the hill from the garrison is certainly no coincidence. While the Midnight Salute isn't as glamorous as The Veiled Cooridor, it has the definite air of a place whose proprietress cares about her business. Tidy and pleasant-smelling, the entryway has a definite pragmatic feel beneath the flowery-purple decorations. Unlike The Veiled Cooridor, this place can easily process a line of guardsman in mere minutes.
"Pythia, want some company down at the Midnight Salute?" Percival suddenly chuckles to himself, realizing that there are multiple ways in which his statement can be interpreted. "Uh...I mean...would you prefer to speak to your boss alone?"
Behind the desk in the foyer sits the exotic and mysterious Purple Prose. With dark hair and stern features, the elf carries an aloof air of command. It's almost as if she's in charge by accident. But it's no accident.
When Pythia and Percival walk in, Purple Prose is writing tidily in a logbook with casual efficiency. As usual, she has the uncanny ability to know who is in her presence without looking. You've wondered if she might be prophetic too. It's certainly possible.
"Pythia dear, Constance had to cover your shift again last night." Her tone is only mildly scolding. She's never one to seem outwardly upset. The elegant elf raises her big-dark eyes from her writing to look at you, sparing only the barest second for Pythia before scanning between Percival and the owlbear. Her voice is calm and even, as if she's asking about the weather. "Ms. Sterang, what did I tell you about bringing animals in here?"
Purple Prose has her big eyes trained directly on Percival when she says this. But she must be talking about the owlbear... right?
Pythia smiles, "Good morning, Madame Prose! Did she? Oh, Constance is a dear."
To Percival she adds, "Very eager. You should pay her a visit if I'm not to your tastes."
At Prose's scolding Pythia looks at Percival, and then the owl bear. "Oh, him?" she remarks."I'm afraid he needs to be by my side. Quite vicious, you know. Too dangerous to leave alone. We'll be off in a moment. Just making sure you know I'm not dead."
Pythia laughs, as if this is a normal thing to tell a person.
"I'll be in for work tonight, Ma'am, but I'm afraid I will need to take a few days off afterwards."