"I just got here before the meeting, so I guess I'll need to head back to the tavern." Dr. McKnuckles says.
He will head over to the tavern and drink until sleeping in the street sounds and feels okay. Or rent a room. whichever would be cheaper.
Wil will clean Daniel and settle him in the barn and feed the little ratlings before going to bed in the inn.
"How much for a room Gregor?"
Gregor smiles, "Depends what ye'd be seeking fer accommodations? Normally floor space in the attic to pass out is 4 copper, sure we can wave that. If ye'd like to split a room with another, it'll be 6 silver each. And if ye'd be thinking bout a private room, 1 gold."
Wil smiles. "A free bed in the cellar will do me just fine. Goodnight then."
Wil then goes upstairs to bed.
Each of you find your place to sleep, paying whatever version of room you took, and you all sleep through the uneventful night.
When you wake up you find that the common room is filled with very confused people. No one seems to recognize each other even though the four of you clearly recognize all of these people as the townsfolk you knew when you left to take care of the ratling problem.
They are all speaking and behaving normally, albeit in a stressed manner considering that they cannot recognize anyone no matter how hard they try.
Wil yawns and stretches as he's woken by the rising sun peeking through the attic. Rubbing his eyes, his first thought is...food. Hungey.
Scratching his back as he stumbles out of his bedroll, Wil begins his daily ritual of cleaning his weapons and meditation. There are some habits from his past that still lingers.
Heading downstairs, Wil was looking forward to some pancakes or waffles. He nods at a few of the folks he recognized from yesterday as he plops down at the bar counter.
"Gregor! You there? Me hungey. Waffles." Wil manages to eloquently blurt out.
The Doctor will find himself in the tavern, looking confused too, but for entirely different reasons than the commoners.
"This is a rare chance." He can be heard muttering to himself. "I've never seen this many people suddenly unable to recognize faces... Or have I?! I don't recognize any of these people! Could I have been affected too?"
He proceeds to quietly panic to himself, which may or may not be concerning considering his size and strength.
Gregor stumbles downstairs later than anticipated. At the sight of the large, confused crowd, he smiles. Another day, another round of business... He quickly gets to work pouring ale and wine, whilst calling back orders to the kitchen behind. As his companions from the night before begin to collect at the bar, he begins to inquire what they have learned from the townsfolk this morning.
"Doctor, I doubt you have been affected, not a wisened professional such as yourself. Seems only us were kept from this harm, perhaps the assailant attacked while we were defeating the foul ratfolk?!"
"Oh good! I remember you, Gregor!" Fisty says with a broad smile. "I am not affected. Good."
He looks around, scratching his chin. "This is a real puzzle though... Not sure if I can fix this in just one adjustment."
One of the patrons clearly recognizes a bird that is speaking, "Oh thank the Gods! I can recognize some things. Wait, you said, 'What's wrong?' you recognize people?! You're not affected!! We can't recognize anyone, no one in town can. We know someone is talking to us, and we can recognize their voice, but we can't recognize each others faces. It's awful! Some of us are worse off than others. Old Mel, he came into the tavern this morning, and I was standing next to the door. He thought I was a coat rack and tried to put his hat on my head until I started talking! Gave him quite a start, I did."
"I can figure out that I'm lookin' at a face, but I don't know who it is. Like that person over there," he looks over at Dr. McKnuckles, "There's a small nose. Big ears stickin' out. Great big mouth. I can describe it all, but if I stop lookin' at individual parts I don't know who it is! Who are you? Are you my neighbor Anna?"
"Yeah, when he yelped and started talking. It was his voice. I suppose someone could have been pretending to be him, faking his voice, but I don't know why anyone would do that."
Wil listens in on the conversation confused. "Wait, so no one but us recognizes anyone's face? What can cause this?"
He racks his brain in the hopes that he might've heard or read anything about this.
Wil feels like what might do something like this is just on the tip of his tongue, but can't quite place it. Might be a spell that's been cast? Something akin to confusion? The more he thinks about it, the more it just feel like the whole town being struck with this at the same time is some mighty bad luck...that's it! Luck! Wil is fairly certain a hag is doing this, but he can't quite remember what kind messes with luck.
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"One time, when my old keeper - the bad one - brought one of his lady friends home for dinner, they started to play cards, and whenever one of them lost, they'd molt some clothing. He was very good at cards, and she kept losing, and had molted almost everything when suddenly she wanted to try gambling with him a different way: She bet him that she couldn't bite her own eye. The arrogant dummy agreed because he figured that was impossible...but then she took her own eye out of its socket and, well, put it in her maw and bit it. Gently. It became kind of ugly-shiny-gray for a second, and then she put it back in. She won that bet, but said she didn't want anything from him for it...but then they started playing cards again, and after that, *cluck*, interlude, he lost every game...and then he was totally plucked, but she insisted they keep playing, and he was STILL losing, so she made him peel big bits of his skin off until, well, he'd had enough of THAT and they fought to the death. My keeper won, of course, but not easily; she knew some magic, too - and was VERY strong. I had mixed feelings about all that. My bad keeper was bad...but she might very well have been worse."
Wil ponders aloud about the bad luck and the bit about the hag. Xavante, with his tale, shows that he is well versed in Hags. There is a Flue Hag mucking about nearby.
"Flue Hag?" exclaims Wil incredulously. "What in the darn blazes is that?"
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"Their natural habitats are the cities of fire and stone and metal, like this one (although this is sparse habitat for their preferences); if there's a flue hag here, she's probably always been here. They can look like any anthropoid folk they want, but what they really look like is something like if you took an old Human female, stretched her out like clay until she was twice as tall and little more than half as stout, burned off all her hair, then burned her some more until her skin was nothing but parched black coal - except for her teeth, which are big and red-hot, like the tips of hearth-pokers. The only part of them that anyone would think is pretty is their talons, which they have at the end of all four limbs, and even those are kind of short and shriveled for their size - but they can still hurt. Like I said, they're strong - not as strong as Fisty, or as a great ape, and a few of the folks I saw at the dock might be stronger than they are, but stronger than most anybody else their size. More than that, though, they're really *cluck* quick and limber - even the clumsiest of their kind could be circus acrobats. They can also burp up big clouds of smoke and ash - it won't kill you, but it's not good for you, and they don't mind it themselves, and other hags don't mind it either, and they'll use it to keep tearing you apart and eating you alive, so watch out for it. Of course, their most dangerous power is, for want of a better term, bad luck - get too close to them, and everything will just start going wrong. The good news, though, is that it doesn't always happen, and it doesn't last forever. Their curse, like all curses, is a disease of the soul, so powerful souls don't get cursed so easily. It's like standing near a stinky rotting corpse - you might not get sick, and if you don't, then you might become resistant, but keeping a distance is the best way to be sure. The other thing to worry about is if there's a coven, not just one - the more their are, the stronger their curse gets."
Xavante looks across the room of bewildered people.
"As a matter of fact, I don't think a single flue hag could possibly do all this with just her birthright powers. Their curse is mainly for bringing down prey, really. This is...so much more."
A man in the corner, sitting alone at a table drinking a beer, "Yeah, I heard about something like this before back in..."
The patron who recognized Xavante earlier in the discussion interrupts the new man, "Who are you? I don't recognize your voice!" as he stares vaguely in the direction of the person he is addressing.
The man sighs in frustration at being interrupted, "I'm Jonah, I'm from Austerberg, passing through on my way south." Austerberg is large city you all recognize that is roughly a quarter-day ride from the town you're in.
"As I was saying, back in Austerberg, there was some folks talking about strokes of bad luck happening in pockets of the city. Stuff like everyone on one block got a nose bleed that didn't stop for 14 days. The south side dock workers all got the Clap in one night. Hmm. Come to think of it, that might not have been related. Anyway, the Michaelses, their whole family lost all of their teeth in one giant sneeze..." he pauses, then says to himself, "Poor Delilah, she was only 11, just got all her grown up teeth in."
He then goes back to addressing the room, "Well, see, the authorities started investigating and I heard after a couple weeks they found what was causing the problem. I overheard in a tavern that it was some kind of creature, and they ran it out of town. Sounds kind of like the one you described talking bird," just now registering that he's talking to a bird. He goes silent for a few seconds, then slides his beer away from himself to the other side of the table. He turns to the rest of the room, "The folks there, they said it wasn't a normal creature. Something about it was different, never did hear more about it, though. Now I got this bad luck, not sure what I'm supposed to do. How am I gonna recognize my family down south?!" He absent-mindedly grabs the beer again and continues drinking it.
"I will help if I can. Taking out the cause of this illness might make a therapeutic recovery a possibility." Dr. McKnuckles admits, scratching his misshapen chin. "I'm in to help. That is, if we can find her..."
A cursory check around the tavern by Gregor would find that the owner of the tavern is just sitting in the kitchen on a stool, dumbfounded at what is going on. She's not necessarily catatonic, but she's close. It definitely explains the lack of breakfast food. It doesn't take much looking around to see that everyone is handling this is vastly different ways. This includes the man you all see through the window running down the middle of the street screaming. He's not screaming anything in particular, just the type you'd hear from someone who has snapped. Or the woman who casually strolls by shortly after him holding a basket of flowers seemingly unaffected entirely.
"Where would a flue hag most likely hide?
Wil casts detect magic knowing the hag could alter self hoping to find the magical aura.
Wil doesn't notice anything magical in his vicinity
"I'll go look down the chimneys." Dr. McKnuckles offers. "These houses are..." He looks out the window at one of the roofs and swallows. "You know what, I think Xavante would be better for that."
I will keep detect magic up as we explore the town.
Sure that people are functioning alright despite the loss of awareness, Gregor returns to his companions. "So how do we find this thing? Xavante, are they known to layer in certain places?"
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Xavante's head whips 180 degrees about to give Gregor the same intense, beady stare he'd previously been pointing in the other direction, cranes his neck out until his beak is millimeters away from Gregor's nose and Gregor can smell his warm, savory-sweet parrot-breath, and softly says, *Lair.* L-A-I-R. *Lair.*
That attended to, Xavante returns to his former posture and looking out the window. "They're called 'FLUE' hags because that's where they most often roost - attics and basements, too. They're strongly nocturnal. It's not like the sun turns them to ash or anything (after all, they're mostly ash as is in their natural state), but from what I know, they hunt at night, and are keen to retreat come the dawn...so, if we're going to look for them by day, that's when we search the attics, basements, and chimneys andyoudamnwellbetterallberightthereontheroofordownintheparlorifyouexpectmet oplaychimneysweep, OR we could hunt them at night when they'll be out and about, which could actually have its own advantages - it might be easier than hunting them out in their day-roosts, although the advantage of doing that is that we'd catch them alone. Probably."
"I'll be there for you, Xavante!" Fisty offers, smiling. "So do we want to make day calls or go on a night visit?"
Wil shrugs.
"Why not both? Let's check some obvious places right now. If we don't find anything, we can continue the search tonight."
A cursory glance around town would tell you that the greater majority of places here don't have basements. Only larger establishments that would need it for storage will have them. The tavern of course would be one, the town hall, and the granary are likely candidates. You'll have to check with individual homes to know for sure on those, but just a look at foundations tells you that it would be a rare home that has a basement if any of them have one at all. Attics are a little more common, and most homes will have one. The town only has about 20 or so houses, but a rough estimate you would make would say about 75% have some kind of attic. You only see 6 chimneys in the town.
Wil will move towards the granary on Daniel as he slowly scans the houses, especially focused on chimneys and rooftops.
As he gets closer to the granary, he will circle the structure, searching the ground as well as focusing detect magic towards the granary itself, hoping it can penetrate the walls.
Depending on what he finds, he'll use the lessons he's learned to try and identify.
Wil doesn't catch any magical signatures. He does notice what seems like some drag marks heading out the back door toward the right side from the door. It seems to him highly likely that the drag marks could easily be from a bag of wheat. This only stands out because it doesn't appear to be a high traffic door. However, the dragging stops several feet away getting lost in what becomes a higher traffic area that is much harder to pick out a specific trail to follow.
Wil stops detecting magic and casts guidance on himself, hoping to try and pick up the trail. If not, then he will return to the others to report what he saw.
Unfortunately, you're still having a hard time finding what to follow in the mess of traffic.
"Uhh.. Whatcha lookin for?"
-Posted with Wayfinder
Wil explains what he found by the granary to Fisty and the others.
"I don't know if it means anything yet but I feel it requires additional inspection."
"huh. Okay. I'll take a look." he says.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Fisty pretty easily notices the drag marks at the back of the granary, but also looses it in the mess of footprints where Wil lost the trail.
"Nope. Obviously whatver was here exploded into a swarm of feet that stomped around everywhere, obscuring the evidence. Hey... that one looks like mine." Fisty realizes that he's still not too terribly bright and shuts up.
Gregor stumbles out of the back of the Corner Inn, shaking his head a bit. Seeing his friends in the alley behind the granary, he warily hurries over to join them. "By the gods, my head is hurting. Got into a bit too much of the grog, my apologies. We still searching for the flue hag?"
Noticing the footprints the others are staring at, he gives it a look as well.
Dr. McKnuckles blinks at the dirt, concerned. "Wait, wasn't someone among us supposed to find the clue that leads us to the villain?" he asks, scratching his head.