"'Z'wat'she said," Broccan replies softly, not looing Venelle in the eye. "She didn't say more'bou'twhy. Jus' thas wha' she want'd."
"It's what she said. She didn't say more about why. Just that's what she wanted."
Venelle clenches her fists. "Why would she... why would she want to go back there? To them? She hated it there." She whirls on Kata. "Kata, you know--"
Venelle seems to rein herself in. She rubs her eyes and sighs. "Uhh. Okay. If that's what she wants. Do you know where to go?"
Once they have gotten a ways from Allustan’s, Briar suddenly stops and presses her palm into her forehead. ”Shite, I seem to have forgotten my handkerchief at Allustan’s. I’ll catch up with ya later.”
She is lying about forgetting something.
She makes her way back to Allustan’s and curtsies when he answers the door. ”Greetin’s again. I wanted to speak with you privately about somethin’, as you seem the kinda smart enough person to know about this kinda thing. It relates to our little expedition.”
Venelle nods politely, clearly not paying much attention.
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”Have you ever heard of an organization with bird-themed divisions? Say one part is ravens, another is hawks, another eagles—that sort a’ thing. There were some people—bodies really—down there with bird markings. The bird’s behavior gave me the impression they might be part of a group. Of the sort I mentioned.” She gives him a kind, conspiratorial smile. ”It all seems rather hush-hush, and I suspect this Seeker may be connected if it’s a real org, so I want to keep this quiet. Even from the others, if you don’t mind.”
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Kata reaches a steady hand out and places it, a brief, comforting calming moment, resting like a blanket on Venelle's arm. It was a practiced gesture, one done dozens of times in the years that Kata had worked for the church, but each time it was done, it was also genuine. She nods. "I do know. She loved you more than anyone in this town, Venelle, and her home -- yes, she hated it there. I can't imagine why her spirit wants to return... but it does, and we must honor it."
"I'm afraid I don't know where to go. Caith was never keen on me seeing that side of her life."
Kata nods, happy that Briar remembered her handerkerchief.
Edrukk is focused on keeping up with the tallfolk and how the new armor rides on his stout frame and doesn't acknowledge Briar's departure.
Venelle looks at long at Kata, her eyes welling with uncountable regrets. She leans back against the counter. "Well, I... uhh, I do know where it is. I can take you, if you need me to, or I can give you directions." She coughs. "Any way I can help. I can't believe you went in there for her. You're braver than I was."
** spoiler omitted **
Kata nods, happy that Briar remembered her handerkerchief.
Alaïs is happy to fade mostly into the background while Kata and the others who knew Caith at all offer better comfort than she could hope to. When Venelle seems to brace herself for a decision, though, not wishing to cause the bowyer unnecessary heartache, she reiterates, gently, “It’s your choice. On the one hand, it might help that Kata’s here and can be with you to say a few words, but … I know we’ve surprised you with this and it might be … a lot to take in at once.”
Especially if there was bad blood between Venelle and the rest of Caith’s family, and while Alaïs has her own ideas about what she thinks she would choose in such a situation – though admittedly she doesn’t know the details – she wouldn’t want to push.
** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **
”I don’t think it’s unrelated. We found ‘em in the cairn after all, right? And if there’re more of ‘em, they might know more about it. As for why I suspect…well, we saw one of ‘em had a tattoo of a bird. Ed asked Seeker if that was her. She said it was the wrong kind a’ bird, bein’ not a magpie like her. I made a joke about there’s some big bird-division organization and she gave me the sharpest look. I know how to read a face, Mr. Allustan, and I hit somethin’ there. So then I get ta thinkin’, and I remember that there was a murder back at our old employer recently and one a’ the girls said the guy had a raven tattoo.” She throws up an apologetic shrug. ”I know I’m just a poor workin’ girl, and I ain’t had any proper schoolin’, but I gots meself a pretty good nose for trouble, and I know how to fit pieces together.”
"C'mon, lass. Ye c'n give yer respects t' a brave soul."
Venelle hesitates, glancing at Kata's hand, then at the group. "Uhh. Okay, I'll come with. Makes things easier. It's a slow business day anyways. Just let me get some things." She seems to be recovering herself a little and gives Kata a familiar smile, the sort of casual smile she used to be able to spare so freely when Kata and Caith would come by looking for baked treats. "Kata, mind the shop for me? It'll just be a moment."
She goes into the back room.
"... ah. I see." The wizard's brow furrows. "Was the tattoo on this adventurer also of a raven? Perhaps they were Pharasmans." He goes and begins running his fingertips over the books on the shelf. "I know they are fond of birds. Or was that Jasidians? Ah, I fear you will have me well outmatched when it comes to religious matters. But I will look into it."
He pauses. "I heard about that murder. It must have been quite difficult for all of you. Perhaps you might do well to speak with whoever it was keeping him... ah, company at the time." He is suddenly very interested in a particular book's spine. "His murder may be worth looking into; if there is an organization, whoever was responsible might be in terrible danger. Assuming it was not his own organization that sought his death. Whichever girl witnessed it... she, too, might be in danger." He turns to look at Briar. "And if you are looking into the bloody business of people who deal with aberrations like Seeker, you might be, too. I'm quite sure I need not tell you to be wary."
"Umm, I can watch the shop," Rosella offers. "I know you don't know me, but I swear I won't steal anything, and I'll do my damnedest to make sure no one else does either." She looks at Kata with a sad smile, then back to Venelle. "Kata was Caith's friend, and this business with her bones and restless spirit can't have been easy for her. Unless I've missed my guess, I figure she wants to be there when Caith is put to rest. I didn't know Caith, and I'm not a local, so I doubt the ghost would care if I was there or not."
"Rosella is a fine person, honest and kind, and the most accomplished archer of our little group. She'd do a fine job watching your shop, Venelle, if you'd like to accompany us to see Caith put to rest."
Venelle smiles politely at Rosella. "Oh, uhh, thank you! I really appreciate it. Any friend of Kata's is a friend of mine. Anyways, I'll be right back--"
About ten minutes later, she reemerges. She's equipped rather more like the party now, clad in leather armor with a masterfully-crafted composite longbow slung over her shoulder.
Briar shrugs at the bird comment. ”I’m a follower a’ the Lady in the Room, so afraid I can’t say much about Pharasmins and their favorite birds.”
She quietly glances aside as the conversation turns to the murder. ”Oh I was with him. I’m a hardy girl, so I’m not too shaken up about it anymore.” She tries to hide that she is shaken up as best as she can. ”I’ll keep an eye on my back. I always do.”
She gets ready to head back out to meet up with the others. ”I would appreciate it if you don’t tell the others about this. Just say I was here looking for a handkerchief and couldn’t find it. If this is that dangerous, I’d rather not get them involved.”
Allustan arches one bushy eyebrow. He seems to think all of this over for a long while. "Very well. It is not my secret to tell, so I will lie if I am asked." He clearly isn't especially happy about this. "But while it may not be my place to say, I feel I should warn you: , When dealing with an organization that keeps its secrets this close, the only habit more often fatal than indiscretion is over-secrecy." He tips his head. "Good day, Ms. Vervain. Come back anytime."
Kata's stomach growls, the elegist suddenly painfully aware that they haven't eaten in quite some time. Still, it seemed wrong to put off a remembrance ceremony for some dinner. She smiles at Venelle, and holds her arm out, asking for accompanyment on the walk.
"I'm glad you're coming. I'm sure Caith is glad as well."
The party--plus Venelle--rejoins with Briar and bids farewell to Rosella. Venelle stammers through an introduction to Briar, and the party sets out for the Land farmstead. It is a long walk. They've been walking a lot lately.
It is raining as Venelle leads the party through the Cairn Hills, and the sky is beginning to darken by the time they reach the Land Family Graveyard.
A copse of immense deklo trees shades a small, quiet clearing, about ten minutes east of Diamond Lake. Crumbling walls and a seemingly abandoned farmhouse stand vigil atop a small bluff overlooking the clearing, the sad ruins of what must once have been the Land farmhouse. It doesn't look like anyone has lived here in years.
Venelle stops in her tracks. Five grave markers stand in the clearing, each with a four-petaled flower motif beside a different name: Anders, Bemissa, Coldaran, Gertia, and Caith.
Open pits yawn from before all five markers. Piles of fresh dirt and a pair of abandoned shovels suggest that the excavation took place recently--certainly within the week.
During this time, many deaths on the outskirts went unreported, the bodies quietly buried by healers or good samaritan travelers.
"This is bad..." Kata murmurs, moving towards the graves, her purple cloak soaked through, her hair matted with rain. "I had no idea they'd all..."
The elegist stops, a shiver crawling up her back, one hand raised and pointed at the four-petaled flower motif adorning each grave. "When the plague came through, what, nine years ago? Eight? A lot of folks put that flower on the graves of those that died."
Kata's voice darkens, spite practically spitting from the woman into the rain. "Those damnned mine managers wanted everyone back to work, remember? So many died..."
Pulling a shovel from the ground, Kata turns, her voice cracking. "Why would someone dig them up?"
Edrukk scratches up under his beard, staring at the headstones, ”If’n Ah got th’ lass ‘ere ‘n m’ pack, who’d they bury ‘neath ‘er stone, there?”
Alaïs is generally curious enough that she has an unfortunate tendency to not only look but often to be the sort of person who can be tempted to spend an exorbitant amount on a new hobby that she quickly tires of, but she can be surprisingly physical. She quite likes a bit of walking, or, for that matter, a lot of walking. She’s considerably less keen on having to deal with unnatural, slimy monsters on her explorations, but running about, even in rain, doesn’t lower her spirits. She pulls the hood of her cloak up, though.
When another ruined farmhouse emerges through the wet, she frowns, though Kata’s explanation makes sense of why no squatters have claimed it and patched it up. More ominously, the open graves are rather a surprise, and her frown returns, along with a muffled Elven curse as she gets closer to peer down into them and read the corresponding names. In this rain…
She does her best to look for tracks, though she normally does this general sort of thing with hawks and hounds, and, more importantly, people who know how to tell what the animals are getting at. (See previously, about dilettantism.)
Edrukk scratches up under his beard, staring at the headstones, ”If’n Ah got th’ lass ‘ere ‘n m’ pack, who’d they bury ‘neath ‘er stone, there?”
“Maybe whoever did this didn’t know that she couldn’t have been buried here,” Alaïs says quietly, before turning to Kata and Venelle. “Could someone have just bought this place and decided to move the Lands to the cemetery?”
It sounds unlikely and uncommonly mean-spirited given how small the plot of graves is, but it’s more optimistic than the alternative she has to consider, and her voice hardens. “Or are there resurrectionists on the loose?”
"Can'I take'eh look't that?" Broccan asks Kata, gesturing towards the shovel.
Assuming she hands it over, he examines it for markings to see if it is the property of any of the local Mine Bosses.
"Can I take a look at that?"
Broccan also looks around the area of the grace for any footprints remnants from the excavation that might be a clue as to who stole the corpses of Caith's family.
Venelle swallows, looking similarly stunned. She bends to help Broccan inspect the scene.
"It's been raining a lot," she says weakly, "but it looks like there were a few people here. Maybe four or more? But I can't, uhh, find any sign of who."
Broccan doesn't see anything exceptional about the shovels--they aren't marked in any way.
“Maybe whoever did this didn’t know that she couldn’t have been buried here,” Alaïs says quietly, before turning to Kata and Venelle. “Could someone have just bought this place and decided to move the Lands to the cemetery?”
"... no. Uhh, I mean, I can't imagine." She looks between the graves and the abandoned building. "Why would anyone want this old place?"
Broccan approaches the farmhouse, and tries assess its condition, and whether it could still be inhabitable.
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Edrukk stands in the rain, staring at the open graves. As the others walk up to the old house, he rumbles to himself quietly, "Don' know why ye wanted t' be by these that ye dinna like in life, lass. Didja know they'd been stolen? D'ye know where they 'r taken? Tell me 'n we'll be fer makin' 't right."
Nodding firmly to himself, he looks up. These are no longer graves, sacred for what they hold. They are merely holes now.
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Venelle swallows, looking similarly stunned. She bends to help Broccan inspect the scene.
"It's been raining a lot," she says weakly, "but it looks like there were a few people here. Maybe four or more? But I can't, uhh, find any sign of who."
Broccan doesn't see anything exceptional about the shovels--they aren't marked in any way.
“Maybe whoever did this didn’t know that she couldn’t have been buried here,” Alaïs says quietly, before turning to Kata and Venelle. “Could someone have just bought this place and decided to move the Lands to the cemetery?”"... no. Uhh, I mean, I can't imagine." She looks between the graves and the abandoned building. "Why would anyone want this old place?"
The weather is rotten for tracking, at least for a certain novice noblewoman, but Alaïs stubbornly keeps her eyes open for anything she might have missed, on her way to the ruined house.
“Oh, well, it was just a thought. The plague would make sense of things, but I would have thought someone would have moved in, rather than the place lying empty until it fell apart entirely. Even if it needed some work at first,” she’s obviously trying to keep her tone casual, but Alaïs’ words start getting a bit clipped and her accent stronger as her train of thought gets darker as she tries to puzzle things out.
“Come on, sister. We often know more than we think, if we take the time to set it out so we actually see it.” She can almost hear her oldest brother’s annoyingly patient and relentlessly logical, wizardy voice.
“I hate to ask, but are the doctors in town reputable?” Even as she asks, it occurs to her that after almost ten years, there might not be much left to interest an anatomist. And that means… It scarcely bears thinking of, and she’s almost afraid of speaking it aloud, as if into existence.
Even if they weren’t interested in whole bodies, how did they get them out of here? And why throw the shovels away? Unless… they got them from the house? In that case, maybe there are some clues left inside.
The dilapidated Land farmstead consists of a crumbled wall and a sagging, unsafe house with broken windows and a sagging roof. The rough, early winters of late have not been kind to it.
Venelle CR 3 (Bowyer/Fletcher)
Female human ranger 3
NG Medium humanoid
Init +6
Senses Perception +5
Languages Common, Elven, Halfling
AC 15, touch 12, flat-footed 13
hp 17 (3 HD)
[b]Fort +3, Ref +5, Will +0
Spd 30 ft.
Melee short sword +4 melee (1d6+1/19–20)
Ranged mwk composite longbow +6 ranged (1d8+2/x3) or mwk composite longbow +4/+4 ranged (1d8+2/x3)
Base Atk +3; CMB +4
Atk Options Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot
Combat Gear potion of cat’s grace, sleep arrows (3)
Abilities Str 13, Dex 15, Con 10, Int 14, Wis 8, Cha 12
SQ wild empathy +4, favored terrain (mountain/hills)
Feats Endurance, Improved Initiative, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Fire, Track
Skills Craft (bowmaking) +8, Perception +5, Stealth +8, Survival +5
Possessions combat gear plus short sword, masterwork composite longbow (+1) with 25 +1 arrows, masterwork studded leather
armor, 60 gp
Alaïs takes her time sauntering up to the farmhouse: with Venelle’s help about how to pick out the rapidly softening edges of the resurrectionists’ tracks from the wet ground here, she’s able to extrapolate more readily from the degrading evidence.
“Seems right to me,” she says tersely, head bent down and hand pointing. “Four sets of heavy boots came out here…”
“No, wait. There were five people here, and…” She revises her estimate of how tall they’re likely to be downwards, and then she pauses to unlimber her short bow from over her shoulder.
Glancing towards the farmhouse, Alaïs says quietly, “… only four of them left, and it was in a hurry.”
She draws an arrow too, and nocks it, padding closer to line herself up with one of the broken windows and trying to look into the ruin. Past fallen rafters and other rubble, she thinks she can just about see through to a matching window on the other side.
And then she raises her voice sharply and calls out, loud, “We know you’re in there! Come out slow, and let’s not have any trouble!”
Broccan draws his shortsword and steps forward towards what was the door of the hut. Stopping just outside it and to one side. He nods to the others, indicating to cover him, as he is about to step inside.
"Perhaps this is why Caith wanted us here?" Kata whispers, and then gives the others a nod and circles to the opposite side of Broccan, along the farmhouse's crumbling west wall. The elegist pulls her cloakhood back to get a better view of things. Her the muddy ground pulls at Kata's boots; the rain drips, cold and discomfiting, from her brow.
Edrukk brings up the rear. Seeing preparations for battle, he readies his shield and double-times forward to be a bulwark for the softer targets.
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As Briar and Venelle follow after, and Kata circles around, Alais peers through the window.
Then a pair of wild, pale eyes appear in the window.
At first, you take the cadaver for a bear--but bears don't have claws like that. Its head is more like that of some hideous, malformed raptor bird, and mixed in with its mangy fur are... are those feathers?
You hear a tremendous crash and a horrific, unnatural roar come from the side of the house. You have to crane your neck to see what has happened.
There is a sudden tremendous crash from the south wall. The party looks to see Alais stumbling back as a great, wretched beast squeezes through the remains of the window. It is snarling, frothing-mad, and many in the party initially take it for a diseased bear.
But as it makes it through and rears up, towering over the elf, there is too much... wrong with it. Bears don't have greasy, unkempt feathers riddling their fur like lost arrows. Bears don't have hooked raptor beaks, wing-like forelegs with talon-claws nearly as long Alais's forearm. Its eyes are white and wild, its beak foaming. It is as though one of the horrible mutated fish of Diamond Lake got a jumpstart on evolution and decided its only desire was to cause pain to others--and perhaps, judging by its ferocious, bloody injuries, itself.
At the sound of the crashing and ruckus from the other end of the house, Broccan rushes right the corner and into a raging mound of feather and fur.
Edrukk has a bit more information than Broccan, if only from the miner's reaction as he comes around the side of the house.
Moving to interpose himself between whatever bit hairy eat-me has made its presence known and any of his friends, the dwarf slides through behind Broccan as he readies his waraxe and presents his shield to the over-sized furry bird.
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Kata's mouth opens and closes, opens and closes again, as she tries to make sense of what lies in the window. Did the grave robbers get attacked by these things, that were sheltering at the Land home? She barely has time to process anything when there's a crash from the south - Another one? Gripping her spear, Kata rushes around the corner and almost smacks into another of the beasts, this one quite alive, and raging. Hefting her spear, Kata's eyes briefly lock with Broccan across the way, and a poem about courage springs from her lips.
"if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock."
Alaïs stumbles back, arms raised against the shards of glass that explode out around the mass that presses itself through the window, before she has so much as a chance to identify what mad thing’s stare she’s met.
Taking a hasty step back, she feels a root of the tree a bit to the left behind her, and turns that way to use it to duck behind if she has to. First, though, as the others rush in, she whips off an arrow, charging it with a spark of her magic.
Trying to find her mark in retreat, without risking hitting Edrukk or Broccan, all while straining her energies, defeats Alaïs' efforts. Resignedly, she lets her bow drop and reaches for her shield.
Alais's arrow sticks shallowly in the monstrosity's side, but it's a needle in a pincushion, just another source of rage for the beast.
Nothing in the west window.
The monstrous corpse is gone.
”Shite! The hells is that?”
Briar rushes up, drawing her dagger as she moves. She is shocked at her instinct, but she does not have the time to dwell on it.
Briar's dagger glances off of the creature's rough hide, earning only feathers.
Venelle races around the party, drawing her bow and nocking an arrow as she seeks a clear shot at the monstrosity.
The beast snarls and spits as it lashes out at Edrukk with its horrid talons. The stalwart dwarf fends off the worst of the blows bravely, but the savagery of the creature is inescapable, and he is brutally mauled and grabbed in a ferocious bearhug.
Discretion stabs unerringly for a pressure point, eliciting a shriek of agonizing--but nonlethal--pain from the beast. It looks brutally hurt, but far from downed.