Tobar smacks the gillman with his crossbow and Gideon shoots him with an arrow, leaving him badly wounded. Terana falls back down the tunnel and recovers her glaive.
The wihsaak shrieks as Weyve's flaming sphere scorches it. The oracle steps away and wards himself against evil.
The gillman attacks Tobar with trident and sword, while the wihsaak pursues Weyve and lashes out with its claws. Both of them miss!
Terana hurries over to her cousin, her glaive glowing with power.
Gideon fires another arrow at the gillman, hoping to put an end to this enemy so they can all focus on the wihsaak.
WHACK! Tobar slams the butt of his crossbow into the gillman once more.
After Gideon shoots the remaining gillman, Tobar cracks his skull with his crossbow, and he falls limply to the ground. Meanwhile, Terana smites the wihsaak, her glaives tearing into the fiend's carapace.
Weyve steps back further and calls on the flaming sphere to attack the Wihsaak again. He then waves the wand, but no sphere appears!
"Come on, burn you miserable bug!"
The wihsaak is a bit too slow, Weyve's flaming sphere singeing its wings.
The monster angrily hisses as it flies a few feet away from the flames. It beats its wings to create a maddening droning noise that numbs your minds!
Trying to shake the droning noise from her ears Terana moves forward and slashes at the beast again with her glaive!
Tobar rushes to return to the fray, helping by lashing out at the creature to distract it while Terana makes her swing.
Weyve look around the room disoriented, as if he has never seen the place before. Then he looks down at the wand in his hand. Mystified, he turns it over for a moment, and then suddenly jabs it in his eye!
"Agh! Dammit... what?" he shakes his head as if trying to wake up.
Gideon, much like Weyve, suddenly looks around, terribly disoriented; he attempts to take a step, but ends up tripping himself up on his shortbow, the sturdy weapon planting into his gut as he falls!
While Gideon and Weyve succumb to confusion, Terana and Tobar steel their resolve. The crossbowman rushes over to assist the paladin as she smites the wihsaak once more.
Badly wounded, the fiend chitters angrily. Its shrill voice shrieks in your mind. "You may have defeated my favorite playthings, but this isn't over yet!" Greasy darkness seems to envelop it, and it vanishes, teleporting away.
"Come back coward!" Terana yells, brandishing her glaive.
"... huh. I thought it was a summoned minion. Guess it was the other 'way round."
Blinking slowly as he comes out of the state of confusion, Gideon picks himself up and looks at the others. "So...we won, right? Geez, we've had way too many of these 'skin-of-our-teeth' victories. Just once I'd like to fight a single monkey goblin or something, y'know what I mean?" Gideon asks, searching the bodies of the slain gillmen.
"This priestess has some nice armor, Weyve. Seems like something you might like, seeing as how she doesn't need it any more. C'mere a second, lemme give you some healing, too. You're all tapped out, right?" he asks his friend, casting a minor spell of healing twice.
"Hopefully that'll patch you up until we get back home. Geez, we can't get there soon enough...hey wait, do you guys think the bug-thing was the same creature we saw back in Bonetown? The one that Tobar saw for a split-second before it vanished? It left that same inky-black, greasy smoke, didn't it?"
"Either way, it seems a shame for Bonetown to just sit there, unused. It's probably a great place for a settlement, seeing as one used to be there. Talmandor's Bounty is pretty well established, though...anyone think the locathah might be interested in the site?"
"...You're all tapped out, right?" he asks his friend, casting a minor spell of healing twice.
"I'm afraid so... but save one of those for Oorka."
"I think perhaps we should hide out here and rest, and then tomorrow I can use most of my magic for healing. I'd rather save those potions for emergencies. Then we take it easy and head out fuilly restored on the following day."
"Either way, it seems a shame for Bonetown to just sit there, unused. It's probably a great place for a settlement, seeing as one used to be there. Talmandor's Bounty is pretty well established, though...anyone think the locathah might be interested in the site?"
"If that Wihsaak is haunting the area then it might not be a great idea to move colonists in just yet."
Oorka groans as she regains consciousness. "Wh-what happened? Did we win?" she asks groggily.
Helping Oorka to her feet, Gideon couldn't help but chuckle a bit. "Fortunately, we did. By the skin of our teeth, but I guess...anything you can walk away from is a win. Still...I wouldn't mind a few less calls this close." he answers. "How are you feeling? Do you need any more healing?"
"I ache all over. But I think I'll be okay as long as we don't run into anymore evil gillmen today."
"I think that's a hope we all can express. Let's gather up all the loot head for the nearest friendly place we can. And pray we don't run into anything else that wants to kill us on the way."
"As far as Bonetown goes, we can tell the locathah about the grease-bug when we tell them about Bonetown. Just seems a shame to let the local go to waste when it's been inhabited before. Who knows, maybe cricket-head will be wary of going back since we kicked its butt this time when we weren't even prepped for it. Granted, it nearly kicked ours first, but...still. It was the one that ran away from us."
You decide to camp out in the gillmen's cave. Barricading the entrance, you settle in for a well-deserved rest. Fortunately, the night passes without incident, and you wake up feeling refreshed. What's more, you feel like the experiences of the past few weeks have strengthened your resolve, and you feel more confident in your own abilities. You are more prepared to face the dangers to come.
Deciding to head back to town, you stop in at Sheskadrann to let the strix know Oorka is doing okay, then you continue on to Talmandor's Bounty. It's a two day journey all told.
When you arrive, word of the attempted abduction of tailor Kereda Harper by people wearing sackcloth masks quickly reaches you. Kereda was nearly kidnapped the day after you last left Talmandor's Bounty. His description of the event implicates two masked humanoids with burlap sacks tied over their heads. The door was barred, but the kidnappers quietly crept through the windows during the night and nearly beat Kereda unconscious. He was able to escape and alert the guards, but the attackers had fled by the time the soldiers arrived.
Kereda and many of the other colonists place the blame on other local inhabitants, such as locathahs, while others still believe that Kereda is making up the entire event to drum up support for the construction of the town wall (Kereda was a vocal supporter of Andvara Jeclair’s hunger strike).
Terana insists on examining the scene herself, despite it being many days past the incident.
"I don't like this." She confides to the rest of the group. "If he is telling the truth then there are people in the settlement working against us. You said that an aboleth tried to turn the settlements leaders. What if this is a second attempt at that? Using dominated settlers to stir up trouble?"
She takes to using detect evil almost constantly around the village, hoping to ferret out whether anyone is, in fact, under an aboleth's control.
Terana doesn't detect any evil auras from anybody in the village.
Gideon releases a sigh, shaking his head. "Why does it seem like this stuff always happens the moment we leave town?" he says aloud, more to himself than to anyone present. "If it is some kind of aboleth plot, I doubt anyone in town would kick off any evil sensors. They themselves wouldn't be evil, after all; just their mind is controlled by one who is. At least that seems like that's how it would work...I suppose I'm honestly not sure."
"Regarding the attempted kidnapping, did anyone see the two as they fled? Even if it was just getting a glimpse enough to estimate their height could be helpful. Was there any noise in the struggle? A grunt or anything? Any sound made that could determine if they were male or female?"
Kereda was the only one who saw the humanoids, and he was too concerned with the beating he was receiving to get a good look at them. But he says they were tall and strong.
"Can you show us which direction they fled in? Maybe we can find a trail of some kind."
Kereda shakes his head. "Sorry, Gideon. I ran off to get help, and they were gone by the time I got back."
It's been over a week, and there's been a lot of foot traffic in the colony. Without magical aid, it would be very difficult to find a trail.
"Hmm. Well...I doubt there's a lot we are able to do about it at this point...I'm glad that you were able to fight them off at least, Kereda. I'm glad that you're alright."
"We have to do something about this." Terana insists, "Call me paranoid but this sounds much too much like someone has infiltrated the colony, like you said that corrupted woman was meant to. Could we lay a trap of some sort? We let slip that we found something important and one of goes off conveniently 'alone' to be ambushed?"
She looks slightly crestfallen, "This probably isn't a good idea. I'm not good at this sort of thing."
"Oh, I definitely agree with you that something weird is going on at the colony. These sporadic attacks that seem to leave people unharmed...I don't know if the hag is behind them or not, but it's the best lead that we have at present, so I think it's the one we need to deal with first. We can kill two birds with one stone by exploring that observatory too, since that's where the Pathfinder trail led." Gideon says, then huffs out a breath, standing and thinking for a few minutes.
"I know it's not gonna be of any help right now, but...I'm gonna be a proposal to Ramona. Or a series of them, really. Let me know what you guys think. First: Until this mystery is solved, no one stays by themselves. No fewer than two people to a cabin, though I'd honestly prefer three, and one person always on watch. Second: Block the doors so that no one can enter the home that way. Force them to have to come through a window if they want to get in. Heck, even board up the windows from the inside to make double sure. Third, keep a light on all night long so that, if something DOES manage to get in, the watchman can instantly alert others in the room."
"It's just...worrisome that this always happens when we're gone. We need to put as many security measures in place as we can to see that it doesn't happen this time."
"Is it worth us pretending to leave?" Terana asks. "If things always happen when we're away then perhaps we need to seem to be away..."
"Hmm...it might be...but at the same time, that's really only treating a symptom of the problem, it seems to me. First, we aren't guaranteed to be there in time to catch an attacker, even if we are here. Second, by delaying and hanging out here, we might actually only be giving the hag at the observatory even more time to carry out whatever her plans might be. And while we don't know for certain if the hag is even responsible for what happened to the first colony or for what's been going on here, right now she's kind of our best guess."
"Is it worth us pretending to leave?" Terana asks. "If things always happen when we're away then perhaps we need to seem to be away..."
Weyve nods. "That's what I was thinking," he says. "I can use invisibility on us once we get out of the town itself. Then we can circle back and find places we can observe from."
"If nothing happens, it simply means our theory is wrong. We could try this for a day or two and see what happens."
Tobar nods slowly. "I guess that seems reasonable. You're right, these things always happen while we're away. We gotta catch 'em in the act."
Terana and Oorka head north to meet with the locathah, placing an order for magic weapons to use in the upcoming fight against the sea hag Helekhterie. It will take a while for them to acquire the items, so in the meantime, you lurk around the outskirts of Talmandor's Bounty. Occasionally, you make forays into town while invisible, keeping an eye out for any strange happenings.
You do this for two days, but nothing seems to happen. Listening to the local gossip, it seems that Kereda Harper has now recanted his story about the abduction entirely and claims to have made up the attack in an attempt to garner support for the extension of the town wall. Other supporters of the wall believe that Governor Ramona may have put pressure on Kereda and that she may even have been complicit in the events that led to his attempted kidnapping. It would seem that a schism is starting to grow among the colonists, divided by those who support Ramona and those who are beginning to suspect her motives. The exasperated bard is trying her best to placate her detractors.
Gideon goes to see Ramona as soon as the local gossip reaches his ears, bringing the others with him, if they're willing. "This...seems very strange behavior for Kereda to me. He's not the kind of person to stir up trouble like this and I am concerned that there's something else going on here. I think we all should go and talk to him and try to find out what's going on. Would you be willing to come with us?"
"Has anyone else behaved strangely recently?" Terana adds. "It could be a sign that they have been dominated by a veiled master." She throws a sidelong glance at Weyve, trying to ask Can she be trusted? without actually saying so.
"He has been acting very oddly," Ramona agrees. "I'll come with you to talk to him."
She shrugs at Terana. "Besides half the citizens here rallying against me? The Bountiful Venture Company's screening process was supposed to prevent things like this, but you can never really predict how people are going to react in stressful situations. At any rate, ever since we brought back Eliza and Rayland, we've been checking periodically checking people for magical auras. If they were dominated, we'd be able to see the enchantment on them. This is something else."
"Then let's head over and see if we can't figure it out. All of us, we need to keep our eyes and ears peeled. Remember everything that's said, as much as you're able to. Even the tone it's said in might be important." Gideon advises.
When everyone is ready to head over to speak with Kereda again, Gideon leads the way, knocking on the door when they arrive. "Good day to you, Kereda! We were hoping we might could talk to you about that attack the other day again. I know it's been over a week now and you probably just want to forget about the whole thing, but I think we all would feel a lot safer if we could get everything figured out and put to bed, as the saying goes." he says with a smile.
Assuming they are allowed inside, he continues once they've entered, "And hey, I've also been meaning to ask you, is Medrinnah still apprenticing with you? I'm sure it was a shock to you when we walked in while she was fixing that shirt a while back and found out she'd stolen that coin purse. I hope she at least had to finish mending that before she started anything worse."
Weyve looks around the shop, and mutters a quick spell to himself.
"Right, the attack," Kereda says, looking a bit embarrassed. "Well, I don't know if you heard but... It, uh, didn't actually happen. I made it up. It was a stunt to get people to support the wall movement." He tries to avoid making eye contact with Ramona. "Sorry, governor, but we really need more safety measures here. Especially with our troubleshooters going off on missions across the island for days at a time. It always seems like something bad happens every time they leave."
The tailor seems relieved when conversation shifts to Medrinnah. "Yeah, she's still here, though she's none too happy about it. Her mother insists that she finish her apprenticeship. Says it will build character. She's been well-behaved since the purse incident, though. I haven't had any problems with her."
Gideon doesn't sense anything unusual about Kereda. Weyve's spell doesn't reveal any evil auras.
"Yeah, I heard about it...just that it's hard to believe. I didn't think you were the kind of person to try pulling something like that is all."
"We were actually going to go talk about some increased safety measures with Ramona after we talked to you."
"I dunno guys...looks and sounds like Kereda, but I'm just...I'm not convinced. I deliberately lied about what Medrinnah was fixing, it was a pair of pants. Maybe that's a really minor thing to have tried to catch him on, but...it's niggling at me, y'know? Or am I just being paranoid?"
Terana shakes her head. "I don't like it either. Too many people here are changing, a lot, and quickly. People don't just change like that, not overnight."
She looks at Ramona, "Maybe its just that we've been gone too long, you'd know better, but please - be careful."