The water laps against the keelboat's hull as it slowly navigates Vigil's harbor, maneuvering to its designated mooring point. It's been the better part of a week moving upriver from Vellumis, and Silvia still isn't sure how much of a difference she made. As the mercantile heart of Lastwall the city is even larger than Vigil, and its merchant guilds exert a great deal of influence, with comparatively light military presence--they're all needed further north, closer to Belkzen and haunted Virlych.
Without the benefits of Garret's silver tongue and Captain Sunstone's rank, it had been a struggle to get the ear of the city's council, much less getting the to take her seriously. The paladin had been made to cool her heels at the local temple of Iomedae, where (eventually) a priest was made available to take her testimony and magically test it for falsehoods. When no lies are detected, Silvia was called upon to provide her testimony to some sub-committee, which dithered and debated and eventually decided to dispatch a factfinding mission to Roslar's Coffer, and send Silvia on her way to Vigil where the Watcher Lord's could be petitioned directly. Provided with a sealed case containing a letter of introduction and the committee's findings, Silvia was made to swear an oath to leave the case unsealed then provided passage on a small merchant boat headed upriver. That was five days ago.
The journey itself was blessedly uneventful, the crew mostly staying out of Silvia's way--though the boat's mouser took a shine to her, napping in the paladin's lap when it wasn't prowling the stacks of goods under their oilcloth covers. Much of the cargo carried a strange odor, and it doesn't take much cajoling to get the boat crew talking about bulk orders of strange and difficult-to-acquire alchemical supplies.
These thoughts are set aside though, as upon the dock are waiting six burly men and a woman. The former are dressed like stevedores, but their stance at attention makes them seem more like soldiers. The woman is tall with reddish-brown hair and the faint lines of a scar tracing along her right jaw and neck. She's sharply turned out in the uniform of a high-ranking Watchknight aide, and the moment the keelboat reaches the dock she's already directing her subordinates to retrieve the alchemical supplies.
Smiling at the praise, Garret rushes over to the grappled enemy spellcaster and finds a strip of cloth to gag him so he can’t speak any verbal spell components. He calls out to the guard, ”Any of you fine officers want to be the first to clap manacles on the caster behind the arson?”
Reflecting on the journey to Vellumis and her efforts to warn its leadership of the threat posed by this new weapon, Silvia had one recurring thought: What a waste of time. While she had waited for the bureaucrats to show a modicum of civic duty or even self-preservation, she was sure the allies she'd left behind must have gotten somewhere. Hopefully, she'd run into them again soon, and they could catch her up.
Silvia gives her feline traveling companion one last scritch behind a tattered ear before stepping down the gangplank. She's careful to stay out of the way of the soldiers-turned-stevedores, but heads straight for their commander, plants her feet and snaps off a well practiced salute.
"Silvia Macatus, with an urgent message for the Lord-Watcher from the city of Vellumis, ma'am. I don't mean to interfere with your duties here, but it is vitally important he receive this information as soon as possible."
Ketra keeps a firm foot on the feather-cloaked man as she looks him over more carefully and plucks any obvious looking spell component pouches off his person. "I think we're going to find out a lot from this one." She comments to Garret as he gags the fellow. "Or the authorities will. Too much of a coincidence in where and when he decided to burn things down."
Rosalind pours water on the hot metal door, a hiss and sizzle of steam filling the room. As she starts to wrench at the warped metal she hears a muffled voice inside. "No, stay away! HELP! Someone help! With a metallic groan the door gives way and reveals a short set stairs down into a supply & sleeping room. A burly young dwarf is pressed back against the far wall, his wide eyes stark against a smoke-blackened face. "Well I'll be!" he manages, then coughs.
Meanwhile, a pair of Watchknights peel off from the bucket brigade to come help Ketra and Garret with the struggling old man, and within moments he's hog-tied with a pair of manacles crossed from wrist to ankle. As the chains the old man's struggles cease.
"Probably better this way, really. Safer in your cells than on the streets. I'm getting too old for this."
Silvia's report is met with a deep inhale, the officer's nostril's flaring but she suppresses the sigh before it can escape. "The Watcher Lord's attention is quite in demand of late, even by the usual standards. I'm flattered that you think I might have his ear--I should like to be so lucky. Unfortunately he is absent from the city, so you'll have make do. Elsewhere. I've my own duties to attend to." She turns and opens her mouth to bark orders at the men unloading crates from the keelboat, but pauses and slowly turns back towards Silva, expression slightly puzzled.
"Do I...know you?" Her eyebrows pull together as she studies the paladin intently, but before Silvia can answer a ripple of movement and alarmed babble draws your attention. The various workers and passers-by are pointing to a rising plume of smoke visible of the rooftops. In a large and densely build city like Vigil, fire is deadly serious matter. "S#$@," the officer mutters when she sees the smoke, then turns to urge her subordinates back to work.
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"Well I'll be!"
"Are you Rolf? I'm Rosalind. We're here to get you out. Follow me!"
"Ah, our presumed arsonist," Rosalind narrows her eyes at the bound and gagged man. "I am inquisitor Sunstone. Please excuse me for a moment while I help the Watch undo your damage. But I promise you, when I am done, you are going to tell us everything. If not, our further introductions are going to be excruciatingly unpleasant and lengthy."
She turns to a nearby guard. "Send a message to the War College. Have them prepare a room fit for interrogating a magic user with the usual countermeasures against teleportation and the like. Say the order comes from Captain Sunstone and that it has the highest urgency. Precentor Veliu will know what it is about." She looks around for the blacksmith. "And Brunna, please come with us too. We need your testimony as well. This was likely an attack aimed at you specifically."
Garret watches the prisoner carefully, sorting through any of the arcane items that may have been stripped from him for clues.
To Rosalind, he adds, ”He made mention of it being safer to be imprisoned than out on the streets with the coming events, so he definitely knows something of what is planned against us.”
Ketra leans over to talk to the old man now tied up. The impression she gets from his few reactions is that he's not the ringleader behind anything. So she interjects with "Rosalind can be pretty strict and pretty serious. You sound like you really don't mind some jail time, so maybe you also won't mind explaining why you did a horrible thing like this? Especially why you picked this poor dwarf's business." She doesn't ungag him to let him answer, but she figures that further threats might or might not be counterproductive and an alternative offer might get him talking later.
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The old man nods affably and begins speaking, gesturing as best he can with his hands manacled behind his back and his words completely unintelligible through the gag. The Watchknights share an angry look at his antics but clearly intend to defer to your group.
You...you know this f*+#in' guy! His name is Dondun Daradon and you worked with him in your previous life. Eccentric, expensive to hire but really useful. He's not really the cultist type though, he wouldn't be working with the Whispering Way...would he?
With only a second of hesitation, the dwarf nods and moves towards Rosalind, accepting a hand to help him out of the cellar. "ROLF!" Brunna cries, surging forward to give the younger dwarf a crushing hug. He awkwardly pats her back and tries to comfort the older smith. Satisfied that the worst danger is past, Rosalind uses her magic to fill the bucket-brigades buckets, and within minutes the flames are doused and the neighboring buildings soaked down as well, just in case.
As the officer blows off Silvia's report, the paladin's eyes flash with irritation, puzzlement, and then alarm as she registers what the smoke cloud signifies. Turning her back on the ship and the less-than-helpful officer, Silvia takes off down the pier and heads for the fire at a quick job.
Arriving on the scene only to learn her help is not required, Silvia is quite relieved the damage wasn't worse, but still finds herself a bit annoyed at how useless she feels. With a deep sigh, she drops her pack to the ground next to a wall and sits, head leaning against the sto9ck of her rifle as she tries to figure out her next step.
"I guess we need to take him someplace secure to chat, huh?" Ketra looks to Rosa for guidance. Then, looking across the scene as she dwells on what might've led to this attack upon the very dwarf they'd been aiming to visit, she notices a familiar face. Unexpected, given the plans only a few weeks ago, but a pleasure to see nevertheless.
"Oh, OI!" She gives a hearty shout and waves to Silvia "Hey!"
Note wanting to leave the prisoner too far away, she waits for Silvia to come over and then says "How'd you get here? Why? Don't tell me... something went wrong?"
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Once the fire is under control, Rosalind eventually rejoins the group and their bound prisoner, still dusting off all the ash and soot from her uniform and armor as she arrives. The sight of the paladin manages to bring a smile to her face despite how much danger the city was in. "Silvia! Good to see you again. How did warning the surrounding townships go?" she asks as she waits for any sort of return word from the Academy, where she assumed the interrogation of the -to her- presumed Whispering Way agent would take place.
Sanduro and Zsofia follow Rosalind out to join the rest of the group. When the druid sees Sylvia walking over he breaks out into a grin and waves.
“Hey, Sylvia! You’re back! That’s great, we can really use your help figuring out…” Something distracts him and he looks over at the phantom, who is leering at the old man with a nasty grin.
The phantom leans over the prisoner and flicks his nose with an ectoplasmic finger. “Dondun! Dondun Daradon! Well, I do declare! I certainly did not expect to see you here, of all places, surrounded by god-bothering paladins! Especially on such an IMPORTANT day!”
She taps his shackles and shakes her head, lowering her voice so the Watchknights won’t be able to hear. “Such a predicament you’re in, too! If only there were something I could do to help…” Zsofia’s eyes widen as though she has just been struck by an idea. “I know! Let’s have a little chat about who hired you to do this very nasty job - kind of beneath you, though, isn’t it? - and why, and I’ll create a diversion to let you slip away. If you’re information is really good, I’ll make sure you get a nice long head start before all the people with the pointy swords start chasing you.”
The old man--Dondun Daradon, apparently--starts visibly when the ghostly Zsofia confronts him, his eyes widening in shock as he tries to ask a question through his gag. His gaze flickers from the phantom to the rest of the group, insouciant attitude now replaced by confusion and uncertainty. He glances back to Zsofia and gives his manacles a little shake.
"Ih frrt hu errhd?" he mumbles.
"Hey if you know this guy, all the better. Let's get somewhere where we can talk." Ketra waves Silvia over to join the group as they proceed.
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“I know! Let’s have a little chat about who hired you to do this very nasty job - kind of beneath you, though, isn’t it? - and why, and I’ll create a diversion to let you slip away. If you’re information is really good, I’ll make sure you get a nice long head start before all the people with the pointy swords start chasing you.”
Rosalind frowns at the extended whispering going on between the man and Zsofia. She doesn't catch everything, but most of it, and her seemingly genuine offer of letting him escape doesn't sit well with her. "Yes, we will certainly have words - later, in a less public setting." She emphasizes. "His crimes are currently arson, multiple accounts of attempted murder and attemped magical enslavement of another humanoid. Of course, those are just the ones we know for sure. We can add suspected membership of the Whispering Way to that and almost confirmed involvement in a much more sinister scheme."
She pierces the man with a stone-cold glare. "Let me be frank. I cannot even begin to describe how much trouble you are in. This is beyond simple prison sentence territory. I suspect that when the inquisition is done with you, you will face the gallows, if not worse. So you'd better think very carefully on what you are going to tell us and why we should care to speak on your behalf."
She then orders the watchmen restraining him to pick him up and follow them to the war college.
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Rolf reassures Brunna that he's alright and is okay enough to oversee the last of the fire-fighting and start salvaging what he can of the shop. Though reluctant to let her nephew out of her sight, Brunna agrees to come with you to the War College.
Dondun Daradon's muffled protests are ignored by everyone as the two Watchknights pick him up and carry him behind you. The crowd, seeing the culprit captured, sent up a cheer in your honor and part to ease your way with no prompting.
You reach the top of the hill and are ushered by War College guards to a different building, down a flight of stairs to a set of windowless rooms. Precentor Heliu joins you just as Dondun Daradun is manacled to a large chair, his hands pinned flat to the arms with tightly wrapped cloth, unable to move.
"And you say this one was summoning elementals, to destroy Brunna's Shieldworks? That is...not good. If they're acting this blatantly we might have less time than we'd hoped. Miss Sootbeard, if you'd accompany me, I'd like to conduct your debriefing in person." As she ushers the wide-eyed dwarven smith out of the room, Heliu glances over her shoulder at the rest of you.
"I want you to find out everything he knows. If he proves recalcitrant, we'll have mages and priests available at the Sancta Iomedaea."
She shuts the door behind her, leaving your group alone in the room with the restrained Dondun Daradun, humming softly to himself.
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Zsofia tries cracking her knuckles, but as with every other attempt since she died, there is no satisfyingly intimidating noise. Anyone who knew her when she was still alive, however, would recognize the characteristic gesture. The phantom scowls for a moment, then grins at Dondun again.
“So, Dondy, you thought I was dead? Whatever gave you that idea? I would definitely like the answer to that question, but as I was saying before, you screwed up big time.” She jabs a finger in Rosa’s direction. “That one is the kind of god-botherer that scares the piss out of the other god-botherers. If I were you, I’d start answering questions until we run out of them. Which might take a while. You can start with why you thought I was dead, then the questions I asked at the scene of your little incident.”
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She jabs a finger in Rosa’s direction. “That one is the kind of god-botherer that scares the piss out of the other god-botherers."
Rosalind just stands there - menacingly.
She waits for him to answer the plethora of questions raised about Zsofia's background, but eventually cuts in with her inquiery on the bigger picture. "I believe I made my stance on the matter quite clear earlier. You are in very dire straights in regards to your criminal actions and how they will likely be punished. You have exactly one chance to give us your version of what happened - what possibly could have possesed you to commit these acts of betrayal against the people of this nation. Do not waste our time."
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As the gag is removed from his mouth, the old man makes a show of smacking his mouth and making dissatisfied sounds, moistening his lips with his tongue. He seems to have recovered from his earlier shock at seeing Zsofia, eventually favoring the phantom with an expression of exaggerated pity.
"Why did I think you were dead, my dear Zsofia? Well...generally because you were always a brash and unsubtle brute in a line of work that hardly rewards such proclivities--but specifically it had something to do you with you vanishing barely a week ahead of our last little caper. It didn't help that our mutual employer had a replacement ready in suspiciously short order, and when you never showed up in the years since it only cemented my suspicions. To see you now, in the company of necromancers! What would your mother think?"
You think he's guessing about the necromancer claim--he seems to realize Zsofia isn't an illusion or disguise, but phantoms are rare enough that even a mage of his evident skill isn't aware that's what Zsofia is.
You can also tell he's spooked. He's trying to put on a savvy, unbothered front but he's scared of something and you don't think it's just your group.
He harumphs and wiggles his arms, giving the vague impression of gesticulations with his hands he can't actually perform. "And you're right of course, today's nasty business was hardly my cup of tea--not that I even like tea, of course, wretched stuff, but the idiom is what it is. What was I saying? Oh! Yes, the arson. Ugh, ugly stuff--hardly in keeping with the Three E's, but what was I to do? It was her or me, and if I may be so bold you lot did a splendid job of capturing me, well done indeed! If these new fellows are hell-bent on tying up loose ends poor old Dondun Daradun is as loose as they come, no denying it. I fancy my odds of keeping my wrinkled old hide intact much better in one of your cells than they would be out and about on the mean streets of Vigil. Remind me, what are the sentence guidelines for a spot of vandalism these days?"
”I expect arson with a person trapped inside the building counts as attempted murder, so I don’t like your chances,” says Garret, who has been quiet up until now.
”Of course, if we learn just why the streets are about to get so dangerous—and anything else relevant about your employer—there is a chance that summary execution may be taken off the table,” he adds.
“Necromancers?” Sanduro mouths the question silently to Ketra and shrugs.
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Zsofia glares at Dondun. “What would my mother say? What would my mother say? She’d probably say ‘Thank Cayden’s overflowing cup that at least my darling daughter isn’t about to be thrown into prison - or executed - for anything as demeaning as arson for hire!’ She’d probably say, ‘Who was this supposed replacement, as though my talented and ruthless offspring could ever be replaced on a job, and which employer are you talking about, exactly? Because my daughter’s many talents were in such demand that she probably worked for a lot of people and how could I, her mother, possibly keep track of them all?’”
The phantom pauses for a second, looks around at the others, and refocuses herself. “Ahem. My mother would probably also suggest in the nicest possible terms that you give my new friends - and really, do they look like necromancers to you? - the whereabouts of your current employer. Also the who-abouts and the why-abouts, while you’re at it! My mother, apparently, would want you to spill everything you know, without making any assumptions about what I may or may not have told my new friends myself. Because this is a test! Of your truthfulness! If you contradict anything I’ve already told them about you - which, as far as you know, could be lots of things! - they’ll know you’re lying, because they all completely trust every word that comes out of my mouth! So start talking! And leave my mother out of it!”
Zsofia folds her arms and grins triumphantly, convinced her unassailable logic will win the day.
"Three E's?" Ketra hovers to the side, letting the stricter, more no-nonsense members of the party speak first. But she can't help openly voice the question.
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The inquisitor raises an eyebrow over the mage's rather flamboyant tone. "Garret is correct. You summoned a large fire elemental to burn the Smithy, taking that large parts of the city are made of wooden structures for granted. When the first one failed, you summoned another one from this scroll, which you then instructed to attack us. Only to then try dominating Ketra, explicitely telling her to kill the Smith. These are all facts. This isn't simple vandalism. You have at least seven accounts of attempted murder on your name, in addition to your complete disregard for the potential collateral damage done to the city and citizens. So I very much suggest you drop your flippant attitude."
She observes the man a bit longer as her allies ask various questions, with Zsofia apparently trying to trick him, though she somewhat doubted it would work, given her tone. "He's afraid of something or someone other than us and is putting up a front to hide it. He isn't bad at lying, I'll admit. But not good enough either," she shares with her allies as the interrogation continues.
An idea hit her then. So he thought at least one of them was a necromancer that had raised Zsofia, hm? "That said, we can probably drop the act of none of us practicing necromancy. He knows too much and with how dangerous he is, no one is going to care what we do to him to get the information. If he doesn't talk, I suggest we just kill him and take the answers from his soul. Just before we turn what is left of that and his body into another puppet. I'm sure Quietus could vouch for how nice that feels."
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"...attempted murder...at least seven counts..."
"Seven?!" Dondun howls in outrage. "That's absurd, the most you could get me for is two! The smith I'll admit to, yes yes, and the apprentice also being a dwarf was regrettable--elementals think we all look alike, did you know that? But the rest of you jumped into danger of your own volition and Zsofia is already dead besides! The business with telling the young lady to stab the dwarf doesn't count either, since that's just trying to kill the smith again." He nods his head towards Ketra and smiles weakly. "A thousand pardons, miss. Nothing personal."
"Three E's?"
Dondun beams, the gaps in his teeth displayed prominently. "Oh yes indeed! The watchwords of my profession, the North Star of my income, and the muse of my magic! The Three E's--Tricker-y, Forger-y, and Larcen-y!" He giggles at his own joke.
A look a genuine puzzlement comes over Dondun's face as Zsofia berates him. "You don't remember... Oh Zsofia, how much did they take from you?" he asks with a surprising note of sadness. Sighing, he suddenly looks not just old and dirty but very, very tired.
"Three years ago the Wise Crows contacted me, and presumably you too, about a big job--the biggest any of us had every pulled and a payout to match. Our employer was supposedly an Ustalavan count; nonsense of course, but his gold was real enough and he paid half up front. We were going to steal the Shattered Shield of Arnisant, if you can believe it. My job was to craft false enchantments around the duplicate shield Zsofia acquired from the smith. It took a while for me to realize how deep we were in above our heads. Count Gildais...I don't know what he is, but he isn't human. He never met us except heavily shrouded in illusion, and I tried my best to hide my suspicions. I think...I think maybe you started to suspect something too, Zsofia. I should have warned you." He hangs his head, unwilling to meet any of your eyes.
You get a sudden flash of memory, hazy and incomplete:
An icy vice around your throat, an impossibly strong grip you can't break, your vision growing dark and blurry. You kick feebly while a pair of glowing ice-blue eyes watch impassively as the life is choked out of you.
"Just over a week before the heist was to go down, you stopped coming to the planning meetings, and were promptly replaced by an associate of the Count's. Usandra...a priestess of the Pallid Princess, or I'll eat my boots. Grim company for our employer to be keeping, hmm? I thought for sure we were all going to be disposed of; the night the Shield was stolen I was ready to run, but the Count gave us our pay and vanished--no ambush, nothing of the sort. I spent two years looking over my shoulder, expecting a knife between my shoulder blades...when it never came, I started to hope that perhaps Gildais had forgotten about me, but if he has it seems others have not. The Wise Crows cornered me two days ago, said that someone associated with the Count was in the city, demanding we clean up loose ends. They seemed frightened, and said I could help them or die first. They had a list of targets: the smith, the former Reliquary Guard captain, the soldier who nearly caught them. Probably me too, once it was all done." Dondun shrugs weakly. "So here I am, too cowardly to refuse murder to save my own skin."
Sanduro thinks back to the note Rosalind reconstructed from shreds in Quietus’s study. Has it really been two weeks? How long have we been wandering since the explosion?
“What about ‘Y’? Tell us what you know about them.”
While he waits for an answer, he reaches out to Zsofia on their telepathic channel.
Z? You OK? Did what he said he remind you of anything?
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An icy vice around your throat, an impossibly strong grip you can’t break, your vision growing dark and blurry. You kick feebly while a pair of glowing ice-blue eyes watch impassively as the life is choked out of you.
Zsofia’s eyes widen in shock at the memory. She sits down suddenly on the floor and slumps against the wall, looking like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
After a moment, she answers Sanduro aloud, so everyone can hear.
“No, I don’t think I am. Dondun’s right: Gildais isn’t human. Or maybe it’s someone who works for Gildais, but I don’t think so. How could something that strong be controlled?” The phantom rubs her neck and winces at imagined hands wrapped around it. “So strong. He choked me, just lifted me by the neck and strangled me like he was wringing out a wet cloth. No more effort than that, and no more important to him. And his hands were so cold…”
At Dondun's apology for trying to mind control her, Ketra responds with a sour grimace "Sure. Might not have been personal, but it was a cruel thought you had there. Really cruel. Some would say evil."
She listens intently as he explains the outline of the plan to the group, including some particulars that line up uncomfortably well with what the group already learned and give credence to his babbling. Afterward she says "You're going to tell us about all these associates of yours in more detail, right? What they can do, where we can find them, how you contacted them? Oh and what they look like, in detail. After all, if they're coming for you then putting us on their trail only makes things better for you, right?" She rubs her thumb against her nose in thought "Is that your version of the shield then, on display?"
Dondun shrugs at Ketra's questions. "Whatever their other faults, the Wise Crows were careful professionals. Masked and cloaked, the lot of them, even at the planning meetings. I'm not even sure how many of them there are--more than four but less than eight, I'd wager--and their leader was a gnome or halfling woman. The rest humanlike in height and build. Given their caution I would guess they're local to Vigil, but that is a sadly a guess." He clicks his tongue a few times, thoughtfully. "They didn't assign me the smithy by accident, I wager. The others two would certainly be easier--the former captain is an old man, and the younger soldier is out of the city. They might be dead already, sad to say."
"Is that your version of the shield then, on display?"
Dondun allows himself a pleased smile. "I would imagine so, as the fallout of discovering my duplicate would be difficult to keep under wraps. Trickery, forgery, mmm mmm mmm. Took me four months to get the auras just so but I did rather well, if I say so myself." He catches himself and coughs lightly, expression turning remorseful. "Of course I should never have taken the job, I see that now. It was wrong of me to help embarrass the Knights of Ozem even if some--not me, mind you, but some!--say they might deserve it a bit."
Ketra considers, pulse quickening at the imminent risk to the other two targets, but also forcing herself to admit that a few minutes here or there wouldn't make a difference. She looks to the others "The part about the Shield, well, it's the confirmation we were hoping wasn't true." She pokes her head out of the room to convey the info for the Precentor to pass on. After returning back she asks "So, what do you know about where it went? Whose hands it went into? The real Shield, that is."
She drills Dondun for any other names and locations associated with the Wise Crows, meeting places, associates and the like. She has a strange suspicion based on Quietus' note that the Crows were just a cog in the wheel, and the core adherents of the Whispering Way would be in the process of taking them out shortly. Which meant finding the Crows would hopscotch the investigation toward Gildais.
She also asks "Usandra... you know anything else about her? Something we might be able to use to track her down?"
"Oh, OI!" She gives a hearty shout and waves to Silvia "Hey!"
Not wanting to leave the prisoner too far away, she waits for Silvia to come over and then says "How'd you get here? Why? Don't tell me... something went wrong?"
Silvia's face lights up in recognition of her friend's voice, and she all but runs over to greet the lot of them. Her grin falters a bit at Ketra's question, but she shrugs it off.
"Bureaucrats, more worried about their careers than doing their actual jobs. They promised to form a committee to talk about whether they should consider doing anything. Wish I had more to report, but that's all they would really commit to. I certainly hope you've had more luck here!"
She observes the interrogation, not wanting to interfere with Captain Sunstone when she was at work or, worse, wind up on the receiving end of the captain's ire. Instead, she focuses on simply trying to piece together what she can from the conversation itself. Asking more specific questions of her friends' investigations without her could wait until they were in a more private setting.
"More luck? More like mixed luck. I thought raising the alarm would get people moving, but they just shoved off the responsibility for investigating Gildais to, well, us!" She shakes her head "We're in over our heads, but maybe if we find and learn enough, the city's leaders will finally stop burying their heads in the sand."
"The real shield fragments went to Gildais, who else? That was the whole reason for the theft in the first place, and I haven't the foggiest notion what he did with them. As for, ah, 'Y' was it? I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific. I don't know anything more than what I'd told you, until two days ago I'd dared to hope all this was in the past and would stay there."
"And Usandra?"
She looks to the others and suggests "Considering what he told us, we shouldn't waste too much time in making sure the other two people who were involved in this are at least somewhat safe. And maybe we can even get their agreement to be bait for whoever else in the Crows comes by to check on them."
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His fears coming true, Garret asks a clarifying question, ”This counterfeit shield, does it have any other properties than mimicking the real shield? Any nasty traps or spell effects?”
"...Traps?" Dondun's bafflement seems completely genuine--whatever questions he anticipated that doesn't seem to be one of them. "Why would there be any--no one's even allowed to touch the things normally, what good would a trap do? I just was told to mimic the magical auras of the fragments, in case someone inspected them..." He trails off, giving you all a questioning look as though you might explain further.
"More luck? More like mixed luck. I thought raising the alarm would get people moving, but they just shoved off the responsibility for investigating Gildais to, well, us!" She shakes her head "We're in over our heads, but maybe if we find and learn enough, the city's leaders will finally stop burying their heads in the sand."
Silvia receives this news with what can best be described as indignant disbelief. "That...that's why we went for help in the first place!" She rubs at her temple with a gloved hand. "What is wrong with these people?"
Ketra shrugs helplessly as Silvia makes the same observation she's been struggling with. "I thought the strange logic in epic tales people would tell at the Sagely were just to make the stories more colorful. Wild decisions the characters made just to add drama. Turns out people in real life are somehow even more willing to hide from reality."
Relieved that the replica does not seem to be a necrotic bomb, Garret asks, ”In your time working on the shield auras, did you consider any ways to make the original while once more? Certainly there must be a reason it was taken other than to merely pull one over on the city.”
Dondun blinks at Garret in surprise, then bursts into a wheezing laugh. "Oho! I'm a damn fine wizard but I'm not Aroden! To go by the stories he was far beyond me even before he became a god. Nobody can reforge the shield, or it would've been done sometime in the past thousand years or whatever it was."
Silvia shifts from one foot to the other as the interrogation starts to wind down, ready to turn the man over and get on with their mission.
Having successfully distracted the man from his concern about the shield fragments being a bomb, Garret falls silent as well, ready to move on and find this Gildias chap.
Ketra crosses her arms as she considers what they've learned so far. After a minute or two of giving herself a headache, she pops outside to let whatever guards are on duty know that he was helpful and that the group would probably benefit from being able to talk to him again. She also checks in with Precentor Heliu to convey what they learned from Dondun and to request that the authorities keep an eye on the two parties with Crow targets on them.
She returns back several minutes later. "Alright, we should head out to find Doeswen. It'll take a while, but hopefully one of the contacts we made can get us a wagon or something. Venture Captain Evni seemed really like she'd be well connected. And with a group like the Pathfinders I'm sure they'd got ten dozen different hired transports at their beck and call." She grimaces "I just hope we're not too late for Doeswen. And we should prepare to be ready for trouble if we get to her at the wrong time."
"Understood," says Garret, "We should save the two other targets if possible, then take the fight to Gildais. If we can stop the crows before they gather in numbers, perhaps we can hold them to no more than an attempted murder."
"Finally," Silvia says, rattling the sling on her rifle. "I've been losing my mind being told to hurry up and wait. It's a relief to get to actually go do something."