...He had no idea what it was he was facing. He was not sure he wanted to get involved with the fiery silhouette that plagued the halfling. Slowly he tried to lurk away, but Baris caught him. Radim froze for a second, slinking into the door frame. Radim stared at him blankly, his mouth set in a thin frown. "I..." A pause as he furrows his brow, trying to think of what to say. Reaching out to actually help people, to get involved in their lives... that was not the way of things in Ustalav. He did not know what exactly to say. "What do they say?"
Several hours pass with no activity. Just when you're starting to think that you are out of luck for the night, you hear some labored footsteps. You can make out the silhouette of a figure making its way in the direction of the shrine. Then suddenly, without warning, it changes course.
Tev and Alyssa - You can make out a man that you recognize from your first day there that Alyssa identified as Gibs Hephenus, the leader of the mob that interfered with the funeral. He's carrying what appears to be a waterskin in one hand and a razor in the other. Before he moves off of his present course he takes a quick look in your direction.
Tev stays still unless it looks like Gibs sees them. Then, all he does is a small, nonthreatening wave.
Alyssa passed the hours in silence as the three of them waited in the darkness. When the figure appeared and made its erratic journey toward them she carefully ensured that her hands were not tangled in the folds of her cloak so that she could raise them and cast a spell if need be. After a few tense moments she saw Tev wave to the figure. She remained firmly in place, trying to stay as still as the statue they were guarding.
Quietly, once Gibs had turned away from them, Tev whispered to the others, "I saw that one lurking around the streets on the night we first got here. I don't know what he's about. Think one of us should follow him?"
But... This was Ustalav, and Ustalav was a cursed place. Even the smallest of children knew it. He was not entirely sure, but perhaps the voices had something to do with Harrowstone. He could not place the blame entirely upon it if Baris had been hearing voices before, but... It was certainly too convenient to ignore.
"Not enough answers," Radim mumbled to himself. There never was. But something told him that Harrowstone should be investigated sooner rather than later. He could only hope that Tuoni could survive if it was a trap sprung by the elf and the tiefling....
Gibs seems to pay no attention to you as you follow him. You're not sure of the direction he's going since you're still relatively new to the town. Gib's pace seems odd, however. Not too fast, not too slow, but a bit clunky.
You all notice Kendra standing off a bit in the hall, tears in her eyes with a hand over her mouth, covering a bit of a smile. "This may be the sweetest thing I've ever seen." Walking over to Baris, she leans down, "Is there anything that you need, dear? Perhaps you have a favorite meal or something that I can prepare?" As she says this she reaches out and strokes Baris's head while he is in the embrace of Janasen.
His expression darkened slightly at Janasen's words of comfort. "Provided they don't kill us first..." he muttered, though it was loud enough for the others to hear.
It couldn't be helped. She hoped that the others may still catch the culprit since they stayed with the statue. After following Gibs a ways farther, Alyssa softly spoke.
"Excuse me sir, are you alright?"
Alyssa was shocked when Gibs turned on her and attacked, and she had reflexively raised her hand to shield herself. She gripped her left hand into a fist to try and stop the blood from the cut across the side of her wrist even as she raised her other hand in what would appear to Gibs to be a non threatening gesture of being unarmed but in actuality was meant to prepare to cast a spell.
She tried to reason with him. "I don't want to hurt you, Gibs." she raised her voice in a commanding tone, both in the hopes of snapping him out of it as well as maybe alerting her friends to the situation. "Of whose escape do you speak, and what woman?"
Gibs ignores your comment, swinging his razor at you again and connecting, not quite as hard but enough to draw blood. You do detect that he is being controlled, but by what you don't know.
You hear a scream from the direction that Alyssa went following Gibs.
Kendra smiles a big smile at Janasen. "Well of course, I'll get on it right away." With a flash Kendra is in the kitchen, making some delicious food.
"Don't kill him. He's being controlled by something." Alyssa said as she raised her hand and cast mage hand on a nearby stone. It steadily rose into the air behind her assailant with the intentions of causing unfatal but sufficient damage to bring him down without killing him.
"I need your color spray, Tev." she said as she gave a shake of her head to try and dispel the fuzziness starting to build there. Her arm felt cold and she knew she as beginning to lose a dangerous amount of blood. If Gibs wasn't stopped soon and attacked her again she would run the risk of blacking out.
We have roasted chicken, garlic bread, mead, milk, boiled eggs, steamed broccoli and carrots.
Alyssa
Gibs
Tuoni
Tev
Gibs made it clear that he wasn't about to listen. The way he had been acting made Tev lean toward agreeing with Alyssa that he must be under someone or something else's control. Tev hoped that control wouldn't render Gibs immune to the one good spell Tev had for this situation.
Positioning himself so the Color Spray would hit Gibs but not Alyssa, Tev uttered the magic words and flung his arm in the direction. "Zazz blammymatazz!"
_______________________________
"I am pretty sure I can hear you..." Baris comes over to whisper that to them in a playful tell tale voice. "Please continue, to whisper and have this conversation, I am interested in what you have to say, I will keep Kendra occupied." With that Baris goes back to Kendra winks at her and does a simple juggling trick, "boys always being so serious, nothing to worry about, just boy talk." Bluff check
As Tev casts his spell it appears to have no affect on Gibs in his crazed state. He continues to advance, focusing only on Alyssa.
Kendra either doesn’t hear what Radim said or is pretending not to hear, you can’t tell which one. She continues to make the meal that Baris described while you all are having your powwow.
"I know they're up to something... Think about it. The elf is constantly running off. He never listens to anything anyone says and loses his temper without any provication. He and the tiefling are always talking in their own language in front of us: why? What are they hiding? What are they saying that they can't trust us to overhear? And when the elf made that remark about bashing Baris' head in a few minutes ago... I-I think they might be trying to kill us all."
She quickly backed away from Gibs until she had put Tuoni between herself and the crazed lunatic.
Her hand, which she kept raised in order to sustain the Mage Hand spell, she brought down quickly. The rock followed her orders, falling in a similar fashion and aimed for the back of Gibs' head. Alyssa fervently prayed that it would only knock him unconscious rather than kill him.
If Gibs gave him an opening, he too was going to try to knock the man out rather than kill him.
27/34
The rock that Alyssa threw narrowly misses Gibs. Seeing that she needs to get away from him Alyssa glides past Gibs without giving him a chance to slice at her. Seemingly focused on Alyssa, Gibs goes for the one in between him and her, Tuoni. He swings the razor and it glances off of the armor that Tuoni refused to take off since his last scuffle.
Tuoni seeing no other way swings his longsword at Gibs, hoping to take him out. He lands a solid hit and draws blood from Gibs for the first time.
And Gibs takes the full hit of the spell, and he hits the ground, unconscious.
As she worked her mind was in a roiling turmoil of criticisms and vicious words, everything from "you could've gotten us all killed" to "you're such a weakling" and even "well so much for your plan of escaping, now you'll have to stay".
It wasn't until Gibs was fully secured that she realized she'd been repeatedly Whispering "Nobody died." and if the hot trails down her cheeks were any indication, her mask had cracked and she'd manifested an outward physical sign to how distraught she felt.
"Let's get him to the sheriff," said Tev. He looked first at Alyssa, "The Lorrimor House is on the way there, so Radim can heal your wounds, though it may take you," he turned his gaze to Tuoni, "to convince him to do it, since he doesn't seem to care much for her or me. We may also want to take the others with us to the jail, since the sheriff already met them and they can help corroborate our story."
Unfortunately, this meant that the stakeout had to be abandoned for now. If Gibs wasn't the vandal, Tev hoped they would be able to get back to the statue before whoever it was did show up.
Tuoni nods in agreement to talking to Radim. "I'll convince the cleric. Even if he does not like you he should not deny you treatment." Tuoni looks down and grabs the waterskin from Gibs hand. Tilting it slightly you see a dark, red syrupy fluid pouring out. "Blood!" Tuoni exclaims. "This waterskin is full of blood!". He holds it out so the both of you could examine it as well.
Thinking about the blood, he continued, "This may help us get to the bottom of this, but it doesn't help us prove our case to the sheriff," Tev frowned as he pondered the situation. "If he's still under their control when he comes to, it should be obvious enough, but if he snaps out of it, they're just going to ask us what why we did this to him. It's definitely going to take Janasen's smooth talking to help ensure that we don't become the suspects ourselves." Glancing down at the inert human, he sighed and got in position to help lift the body off the ground. "We'd better get moving."
You reach out with your senses and you feel a very strong compulsion enchantment on Gibs, altering his mind and his will. This would have to be a very powerful entity to be able to control Gibs night after night. You can't yet sense the source, but you have a feeling that Harrowstone is a part of this.