Purpose Creche abruptly comes to a halt when Toby catches the flying construct and slides a bit on the floor. Hearing Sil'tchaak, he walks to the edge of the stairs and addresses him.
"Smash it? Too much we might learn."
He then turns, walks to Toby, and crouches down in front of the clockwork spy. He leans in, his face no more than an inch from it.
This is less a creature and more a device, programmed for a specific purpose. You know that it can record audio into a gemstone embedded in its body, but it would require a Disable Device check to remove the gemstone or find out what it was programmed to do. Failure would likely trigger its self-destruct ability.
While Toby and Purpose examine the tiny construct, Silt and Cedar search the rest of the building. Again, the inside is coated in a thin layer of dust. The makeshift offices have simple wooden tables, chairs, and writing equipment including stationery, ink, and quills. One office has a locked wooden coffer, but the wooden furniture isn't thick enough to block an aura of faint universal magic.
Purpose Creche taps the clockwork spy.
"Look here, Toby. Inside this thing are records of its function, as well as what it's observed. That could be the key to understanding what happened to the colony." His head shakes in a quick, tiny back-and-forth. "But if we're not careful when extracting it, the device will self-destruct. I know I don't have the skill to do so safely."
Purpose Creche sets his pack on the dusty floor and quickly pulls out a ball of twine. He offers it to Toby. "Could you tie it up? One of the crew should be able to help us, and we can't let it fly off before we get to the ship."
"It's a thing? Like, not a critter? Huh, guess that explains why I couldn't really smell it" Toby says, wrapping twine around the mechanical mite .
"Did you say it's recording us?" He holds it up in front of his face, then waves. "Hello in there, whoever you are! I'm Toby. This is Purpose!" he adds, turning the eye toward his friend. He waves it around like a camcorder, often turning it back on himself. When he loawa interest after a few moments, he stuffs the twine-wrapped creature into a side pocket of his backpack, which he then fastens shut.
Purpose Creche holds up a hand in greeting when Toby turns the clockwork spy's attention towards him. The raised appendage and the rougarou's activities are indistinct reflections in the eyeband's dark iron.
Silt pulls a piton out of his bag and tries to force open the lock. …Cedar may, perhaps, wonder why a fish would have mountain-climbing gear.
A lidless yellow eye focuses Cedar. When our colony friends arrive, should we tell them some strange creature broke this lock?
Inside are multiple journals and logbooks. The logbooks record various types of events, such as the sea journey to Ancorato, daily work details for construction and farming, a master tool inventory, records of the daily weather, and so on. This information is mostly pedestrian in nature, but might serve as the basis of a future almanac. All of the books date back to approximately 1 month ago, whereupon the entries become sporadic and stop altogether a week later. This is where that charter normally would have been stored.
One logbook detects as magical. This aura originates from two invisible arcane marks inscribed on the inside of the back cover. The arcane marks are normal words and spell “plum tree.” On careful examination, it is missing three to four pages after the last entry, as evidenced by a razor-sharp incision along the binding where the pages were carefully cut out.
Purpose Creche stands with Silt and Cedar when they rifle the safe. He takes the log books. "Records could help us rebuild, or determine the colonist's fate if we cannot find them."
When Cedar finds and reads the marks, he points outside to the grounds. "There is a fruit tree in the settlement." He looks up at Toby. "We've found two round clues today."
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Started by the sudden appearance of Purpose and Toby, Cedar says, “You took the words right out of my mouth. Someone in the colony, Arkley perhaps, was keeping things secret from the rest of the settlers. But what, and why, I’ve no idea... We should definitely investigate this plum tree. And maybe have a little snack too? Is it lunch time?”
"Hiding something. I hadn't thought of that. But why, indeed." Purpose Creche bobs his head, sinking it a few inches into his coat. "As for food, well. But time to process could be helpful."
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"Yes, lunch! And a new tree to climb!"
You make your way over to the colony's only fruit tree, which stands proudly next to one of the five vegetable patches. As you search the area carefully, you notice a spot on the ground where the earth had been disturbed. Assuming that someone digs there, you find a small, flat leather pouch, something like a wallet. There is a note inside .
Upon extracting and reading the note, Purpose Creche immediately digs out the colonist's records to look for the dates of recent or upcoming quarter moons. He offers the missive to the others.
"You should all read this. Cedar, you're an employee of the Bountiful Venture Company—do you recognize any of these names? Dulin, Rayland, Eliza, Una?" He speaks without looking up from the pages he's flipping.
"Aw man, just a weird wallet thing." Toby says, wiping dirt off his hands. "I was hoping for buried treasure!"
That strange fruit is not potato, but safe to eat if you want to, for some reason. The pouch with boring words was put there weeks ago, even though it looks new.
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As Cedar reads the note a pall falls across his mismatched eyes.
"Even here? They turned against each other? So, it's as I suspected. But why?"
Cedar gestures toward the pouch. "It looks like they changed the drop point weeks ago, but no one came for it. Perhaps they're still holed up somewhere, waiting for us to arrive?"
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Cedar pulls out the charter and looks it over.
"Let's see... So, Dulin Levin was a farmer. We saw his family's farm earlier. Una Hendrake was a craftswoman. I believe it was her spellbook we found in Rayland's house. It had the Hendrake arcane mark at least. We also saw a tool house earlier too. Maybe Una worked out of there. Eliza Haniver is also listed here as a farmer. And Barnabus...?" He scans the charter.
"Where should we go next?" he asks without lifting his eyes from the list of names. "Toby, you get enough climbing in?"
Purpose Creche shuts his book and returns it to his pack. Looking around, he points to the cottage to the east.
"That's Levin's. If he's in the note, then we should check his home. You could rest a time, though. I don't think we're in a rush."
Toby looks up with a guilty look on his face, plum juice dribbling down his chin from the entire fruit in his mouth. "What? Oh, sure. Let's go do more exploring!"
As you travel from the plum tree to the Levin cottage, you realize that a strange set of starfish-shaped tracks leads from the town (House A7) to here.
The cottage itself looks fairly normal, with a thatched roof, a single entrane with a working door, and a few shuttered windows. The surrounding crops look overgrown.
Purpose Creche pockets a plum before leaving the tree. "Lyra might find this interesting."
Upon finding the tracks, the wyrwood crouches next to them, shifting torso and neck to view their starlike shape from many angles. "Its passage is also more recent. Perhaps a week." He looks to Sil'tchaak. "Silt, you seem to know much about the sea. Have you seen a creature that would leave such tracks?"
You see no traps on the door itself, which is unlocked. As Silt enters, he spots a floorboard warped at an odd angle, that probably squeaks.
The interior resembles the other buildings you've explored, but unlike the others, it is in complete disarray. Chairs and tables are flipped over, blankets are torn to shreds, and half-eaten corn and melons lay rotting on the floor. You see a main interior and doors leading to two bedrooms.
There was a creature in the last house, and now there are tracks leading to this one. Toby, is assuming there's another creature , and even though the last one didn't smell like anything, he sniffs the air frequently to search for hidden creatures.
This time, you find the building full of interesting smells. The rotting produce in the current room threatens to overwhelm your senses, but you keep sniffing. The larger bedroom (the one closer to the bottom of the map) has two strong odors. The first is fairly mundane: alcohol. The second is very strange. It smells like dampness and decay and things you’ve never smelled before. There are faint traces of this smell all over the front room, and you suspect that it’s the creature.
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Toby sniffs the air in a circle around his location, then steps back out into the hallway and wildly pantomimes toward the bedroom, pointing to his nose.
When Toby pantomimes, Purpose Creche unbuttons the top portion of his coat. He reaches in and, with a soft click, detaches a wooden shield from his chest. He holds it in his left hand, the long splinter in his right, and strains his senses for sources of Toby's agitation.
Silt draws his club, pats the jar containing Llyu-Llyu, snd moves up to open the door.
Purpose Creche looks at the others' weapons. Tight quarters. He switches his splinter for a long dagger with a hooked end, grips it tightly, and nods at Sil'tchaak.
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Sil'tchaak pauses to glance around the room one more time, wondering why everyone's fixated on looking at rotten fruit.
However, he's a little lost in his own thoughts… years ago, a massive bank of sediment plumed up from the abyssal plain, dimming the water and sickening the reefs of Silt's home. He implicitly understood that this mysterious event was not a natural occurence, and lived for months with an unnerving feeling of wrongness tugging at his guts. Finally, the coral became colorful again, the waters a more natural shade of blue — the tides had cleansed themselves.
Suddenly conscious that he has been feeling that same sense of wrongness ever since disembarking the Peregrine, Silt wonders who or what will right this wrong before opening the door.
Just before you open the door, you hear the distinct sound of the window shutters in the room opening.
Silt opens the door and prepares to rush in!
Silt throws open the door just in time to hear a loud "thump" by the open window .
Two barrels of ale sit in this room. One has nearly been drained of its contents, but the other remains sealed.
Silt will run up to the window (are we in initiative)? Does he see anything?