When the man is safely handled by Zander and Davor, Vivian crouches next to the madman and asks him
So, who are you? What is your name?
The madman ignores Vivian's query, continuing his ranting. "The 'small woman' sent ye, didn't she? ?!"
I don't know what small woman you refer to, honestly. I'd like to help you, that's all. I'd like to hear your tale.Could you please tell us your story? We mean you no harm. You are safe.
Diplomacy to calm him down
Vivian's words seem to calm the madman enough that his words regain a sense of coherency. "The bird & the small woman. The small woman & the bird. She sent the bird. The same bird..." He seems to drift off for a moment, before once more noticing all of you.
" were here!"
" came again! The unquiet dead, like excrement for flies, it drew them. He was lucky, they only killed him." Tears begin to roll slowly down his cheeks as his head falls, heavy, to his chest. "Antraeus..."
"My love, she named me Antraeus. If only they had killed her as they did him..."
Professor Rokannon frowns as he notices something on the madman.
"There is something..." He speaks softly, as if fearing he would frighten something away.
"The faintest aura of Conjuration." He kneels down and closely examines the madman's left hand.
Davor's hesitant to say anything that might rile up the madman a second time, but the man's mention of something drawing the unquiet dead piques his interest, especially if the they he's mentioning is actually the Whispering Way.
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Professor, though his hands are as caked in dirt as the rest of him, you notice he wears a finely crafted ring on that hand.
"They sent them! The small woman & her bird! But I was ready for them this time! Too tricksy by half! I caught it! Where it would rest of a time, at the fountain! Killed it I did!"
" does it still haunt me so?!" His expression, surprisingly manages to be even more distraught with the last plea.
"Young man," Professor Rokannon addresses the madman straight, "Where did you get this ring? Who gave it to you?"
Though his exact age is impossible to tell, you suspect the madman to be closer to your years than any one else present, Professor Rokannon. You also note after further examination that his clothes, while presently worn & filthy, were once of fine cut & craftsmanship. He looks at you but though his mouth moves, little more then gasping breath comes out.
"This ring might be influencing him. Let's see if he feels differently with it off." Professor Rokannon says before removing the mans ring.
Do you still intend to try taking it from him?
"Hm, no. The power is too minor to do that. I suppose there is nothing for it but to turn him over to the local law." Professor Rokannon stands up again.
Meanwhile, Vivian whispers to Kendra
"Fountains?.. Well, there is the Fountain before the memorial...
Granted, that one was easy to miss this morning, what with all the blood spilled about the statue itself."
"As to a 'small woman'...
There are at least two Halfling families living in Ravengro...
Perhaps he meant one of them? But, if he did witness members of the Whispering Way, they are likely long gone by now, unless you are suggesting some of Ravengro's citizens are cultists?.."
If that is the case & if this madman has somehow run afoul of them, perhaps there is a reason.
"How long ago were they here?" Davor asks the madman. "Where did you see them? We won't let them get away with what they did to him or to your love. We can help you avenge her if you can give us more information."
Davor hopes his words won't send the man into another frenzy and perhaps he can make some headway by appealing to the lunatic's devotion to his lost love.
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"They wanted her knowledge...
She hid it well, even I didn't know...
I was a fool..." He stares off into some unthinking distance, silent for so long you fear he might have faded into some mental fugue. "They bound us, fed us...
things...
foul, spidery things. Said the spiders would find the knowledge in her...
They !!"
"Oh my love..." Weeping once more, he falls silent, his chin resting on his chest. "They left me...
Said I wasn't right, said they'd come back & see if it took later..."
"They kept that promise, before the Winter...
Said the time was approaching, said the 'Olde Gaoler' would serve them well..."
"First they sent the bird, spying, always spying...
When they left, I thought...
But then the bird came back, talking with the small woman in the town...
So I hunted it." At that, his eyes shine with a kind of savage pride. "It would sit, at the fountain, until the small woman came to it, then they would go off."
"I snuck up to it, grabbed it, !.."
"I hid it in the drain, where she wouldn't find it. They know, that I was on to them this time!"
"Free! Now free!" He pants, gasping as though all the air in his lungs had left with the tale, before shifting, listlessly into an almost blissful unconsciousness.
"Well..." Kendra coughs discretely as the Madman lapses into unconsciousness. "I...
suppose we should...
take him to Sheriff Caeller, or at least the Constabulary Office." She chews her lip slightly in unthinking nervousness.
Professor Rokannon sighs as he rubs his temples.
"His ramblings could mean so many different things. I cannot make sense of them all. At the very least we have some avenues of investigation to pursue that are reasonably clear. If we come up dry, we can try to interview him again."
He drew on his pipe again, letting the smoke dribble through his lips like a waterfall.
"I agree with Kendra. Let us take him to the Sheriff. Perhaps his name might be of use, I'm not sure he ever mentioned it."
Tamarie nods as she has been watching in the corner.
"Me an Davor will take him. Between the two of us, we should be able to keep him down"
"Or up," Davor mutters as he nudges the comatose lunatic with his boot. "Looks like he's worn himself out with all that struggling."
"Kendra, are you sure we can trust the Sheriff or the Constabulary Office with his safekeeping? He hasn't really broken any laws, as far as I can tell, and I'd hate to hand him over to them only to put him in a worse situation than he's already in. Of course, I don't really like the alternatives of setting him loose or babysitting him here either."
"In all the time I've lived here, I have never known Sheriff Caeller or his deputies to be lax in their duties." Kendra replies, blanching somewhat at the mention of keeping the madman in her home. "At the very least, I suspect they will place him a holding cell for the night."
Though he rouses somewhat at your handling, the madman does little to indicate he possesses the spark to hinder your efforts as you move him along, out of the Lorimorr house & along the lane toward the center of town.
As you clumsily move the three of you along, you notice the 'Ghost' has returned from across the bridge. Almost immediately after, you hear a frightened squeak from the 'ghost'.
"Awful late for you to be wandering around outdoors, isn't it?" Davor asks the 'ghost' after realizing it's just a young girl in a nightdress. He means for his words to come off kindly, as not to further frighten the girl.
Unsure of what to say to ease the girl's obvious fear and not entirely certain about what's causing her to look so terrified, a "Don't worry, we're not going to hurt you." is the best he can muster as he looks to Tamarie for help in the uncomfortable and awkward social interaction.
Tamarie shakes her head at Davor, while whispering "I'm not very good with children..." and shrugging.
"Hello, little girl.. How are you doing? You sure startled us with your.. ghostly appearance..
Is there somzthing you want to say?"
She looks at Davor, shrugs again and makes a sign to the goddess of luck.
Realizing Zander had addressed him, Professor Rokannon started and took his pipe from his mouth.
"What? Oh yes. Well I was thinking of the 'V' splashed on that memorial statue. Taking a trip to the town council records to see what may be gleaned from the records concurrent with the fire at Harrowstone."
He looks Zander in the eye.
"And as it appears that Harrowstone itself is haunted, we need to see about arming ourselves against such threats. Perhaps including recovering the cache Professor Lorrimor had in that empty tomb in the Restlands. Which may put us in conflict with Father Grimburrow, who is already skeptical of our presence here. Do we dare ask permission again? When we asked before, he didn't say one way or another. Should we assume he's turned a blind eye if we get them? Or did that mean permission denied?"
He shakes his head and sighs.
"I don't like our choices there, but... we HAVE to find out what the Whispering Way was after. To do that we HAVE to explore Harrowstone. To do that we HAVE to defeat the spirits that repelled Professor Lorrimor. To defeat the spirits..."
He shakes his head sadly.
Professor Rokannon looked up sharply.
"You know, I remember seeing a newssheet on the posting pole... What was it?"
He snaps his fingers.
"THAT was it. There was a notice of a child's missing pet crow. Do you think there is a connection with this phantom crow that was knocking on Kendra's window, and that the madman was raving about?"
We should check on Harrowstone tomorrow morning, just to explore the surroundings, even if we don't enter the prison itself yet. And we could always walk in the afternoon into the Restlands to bring some flowers over the professor Lorrimor's tomb, and offer him our toughts and prayers. If we somehow manage to find the cache too while walking... Only Pharasma can know what will happen then.
That said, Vivian let the boys talk, and goes into the kitchen to prepare some meal
Profession: cook (untrained)
All at once, Davor puts the pieces together and realizes why the girl looks so terrified.
The paper on the posting pole referencing a missing pet crow, the lunatic's proud admission that he had killed the "small woman's" crow companion, the ghostly figure's trip to the fountain where the madman claimed to have captured the bird. But did the girl know this was the man responsible for her crow's disappearance? Did she even know it was dead? Unsure of how to broach the questions, Davor instead whispers to Tamarie while awaiting any semblance of a response from the frightened girl.
"I think this is the small woman whose crow he... you know."
At Davor's mention of 'small woman', the madman jerks to full, snarling wakefulness; contorting & twisting to free himself from your grasp.
Which he fails utterly to accomplish. However, the stress seems to have finally done him severe damage as you both hear a loud 'crack' followed by violent convulsions.
Though Tamarie's words succeed in calming the young girl from her fright, being spattered in the madman's bodily fluids quickly reversed her attitude. The two of you managed to shift out of the way as his spasms elicited the aforementioned 'rain-o-fluids', however he now seems to have collapsed completely.
"Umm, Tamarie, you should probably get the girl out of here and go get the others. I'm worried something very bad's about to come out of this dead man's chest." Davor says as he readies his greataxe for whatever might spring from the man's torso.
"On it!"
Tamarie will attempt to bring the girl to the house, to Vivian who has a way with people.
Tamarie, you find the girl is now almost clutching at you as the two of you hasten from the now convulsing corpse. Indeed, she alternates between desperately pulling at you as she all but runs in the direction of the house & blubbering in abject terror at your too-slow pace.
Nearly impacting against the house in your mutual haste, the young girls begins pounding on the door in her fear.
You hear Kendra's voice calling out within. "I'm coming, I'm comming, what is it?" As she attempts to throw open the door, an attempt slightly impeded by your standing in front of it. "Oh! Lireia, child, why are you up so late? What has happened?" Seeing the girl's sheer panic, Kendra turns her gaze to you, Tamarie, her brows furrowed in concern.
"She was.. Outside, looking like a ghost.
Please comfort her, let Vivan work her motherly instincts..."
She runs back to Davor, to check if he is still all right with the madman.
Davor offers up a prayer to Pharasma to welcome the tortured man's soul before his mind starts racing again. As he sees the skin on the madman's torso swell and wriggle, he remembers the man had mentioned something about being forced to eat "foul, spidery things" and sheathes his greataxe in favor of his morningstar, cursing himself for not carrying a torch or oil lamp to fight the swarm of foul, spidery things he's anticipating to spring forth from the corpse at any moment.
He backs away from the body a few strides and strains to hear whether the others are coming to help.
** Davor, Tamarie & any others who followed her. **
Fortunately, you weren't very far from the house when these matters began. Consequently, it is just as Tamarie is returning that something...
unseemly, vacates the now somewhat hollow seeming corpse...
Erupting from the belly you see something like a many-legged, softly quivering spiderey thing. A fanged maw drips wetly & too many eyes seem to cover it's surface. There is something decidedly...
wrong about the shape & composition of it's central body. You notice it seems to be mounted by a glistening, translucent sac containing a gelatinous, slightly more than fist sized, mass.
Professor Rokannon gapes at Tamarie and her hurried message for a moment, then he recovers, snatches up his staff and hurries after her.
Tamarie's face distorts as she sees it happen, and starts thinking about what this could be.
"What the frag? Kill it?!" she says, waiting for someone to confirm the idea.
>>
meanwhile, in Kendra's house, Vivian tries to soothe the little girl's fear..
Come on sweetie...I've heard your name is Lireia? It sounds beautiful...You're safe now. Nothing more to fear.
The young redhead tries to be as reassuring as possible, but without any knowledge about the cause of fear, it's hard to say the right words..
Sense motive roll
Diplomacy roll
Davor, expecting scores of tiny creatures to spill out from the man's torso, is as relieved as one can be when staring into the many eyes of the single, larger creature that emerged.