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"Aw, that's just nasty talk, penny. I never heard anything but that Elara was practically a living saint. But yeah, the orphanage is totally haunted anyway. I mean, I never got to go spend the night there, Ma and Da caught me when I tried to sneak off for it, but Chimey Norris told me they saw goblin ghosts carrying around the scalps of the kids that used to be there!" He frowns, as though he's just now starting to question this after all these years. "Of course, he was making fun of me and calling me a scaredy cat for not going with them. On account of Ma and Da catching me. He always was doing that, the little jerk, picking on me. 'Til I got bigger and knocked him over the head a few times. And then he just kind of avoided me. So... um... yeah, he may have been lying about the goblin ghosts." He pulls the scrap of paper out of the bundle Ralla handed him. "Anyway, if we go check that out, the Sheriff wanted us to just let him know we're headed out of town. I think he wanted to hear from us quietly, y'know, in case the parents make a big fuss."
With a clear, if unpleasant, direction Elowen is able to find the footprints of five children. One of who you can assume to be Savram Vade, who's father you have not seen looking for his son. But he has been seen as loving father.
A little ways from town Sir Pounce is keeping the scent and Elowen can verify the kids went this way just a few hours ago. With a sinking feeling Jenkin and Penelope know the orphanage is where the kids went last night. But they haven't returned. And with its being hilly fields they would be spotted returning but none of you see any of the children.
Some of these little 2 legs gave excellent tummy rubs! They must be preserved! They are almost honoary 4 legs like the occassionally 4 legs whom I have as a cohort!
Sir Pounce seems were energetic about saving the kids!
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The blackened husk of the orphanage lies atop the hill. Charred timbers are strewn among piles of caked ash and the only edifice left standing is a soot-stained stone arch. A small stuffed doll lies below the arch, her face seared off and her patchwork dress spilling dirty stuffing. Beside her, a troop of half-melted tin soldiers stand in formation, their bodies twisted and deformed by the blaze that claimed their owner’s life.
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Before leaving town, Jenkin scribbles a quick note down on a scrap of paper: going to check old orphanage. best to keep parents away, I think. He hands the note off to Rose, reasoning that the honest, stick-in-the-mud kind of kid is exactly the type he can trust with mail delivery. "In about an hour, track down the Sheriff and give this to him. Try to not let anyone he's with see you do it, especially if that assh... er, asshociate of his, Kreed, is with him."
Keepin' it clean for the kiddos.
At the orphanage, he tries to avoid staring at the rather grim remnants of the fire. They're unsettling now, though he imagines if he'd actually made it out here to take the dare when he was a kid he'd have thought they were cool. "Hey... there's something under the rubble, here. Looks like..." He shifts a little debris to reveal the faint outline of a hatch, hard to see because it's the same color as the soot-stained floor surrounding it. "Huh. Trap door? Maybe that was how they down to the cellar? Looks like it's locked shut... but melted. No keyhole to pick." He reaches down and tries to lift the trapdoor by hand.
"Okay, well, locks don't fit, beefy thews don't break it... but I still have my Door-Knocker..." he says, pulling out the gleaming magic handaxe. "Any objection to hacking it in?"
Odelai's hair snakes into the cracks in the door, and she tries to help Jenkin yank the door open.
Pounce fails to aid Jenkin, but Svetlana is succesfull!
Penelope shakes her head to Jenkin's question about minding opening the cellar. "If it was melted by the fire, they should not be in there though" she does not join in with the attempts to break it open, instead wanders close looking for tracks from the kids.
The burnt wood creaks and it could be the trap door or the lock that breaks. But the wood around here, the darkwood, is well known for its strength. And it proves so again as the metal rips away.
The stench of rot and stale air belches forth from this rank cellar. A chipped, blood-stained oaken table rests against one wall, with all manner of blades and barbed instruments laid out on it. A single pair of rusted shackles is bolted into the opposite wall, whose bricks are stained in a bloody account of pain and cruelty. The robed corpse of a woman on the floor is the source of the reeking stench of decay
Odelai looks around the grisly scene. ”So… we have a scene of torture, silver daggers, bite marks… and a lot of wolfsbane. It seems a werewolf or something like it turned the tables on this woman.” She holds her breath against the decay and searches the corpse.
Penelope comes back over, holding her nose tight, Her face turns ashen at the sight "If the kids came here..." she doesn't finish the sentence, but follows Odelai down, her bow with an arrow at the ready.
Empty night!
Svetlana makes some conclusions and grabs one of the masterwork silver daggers, handing the other to Jenkin
If its Lycanthropes here yikes..
"Yes, whatever tore into her neck is likely what killed her." Elowen says, confirming Odelai's assessment. "Given the protective materials, someone was definitely worried about facing a lycanthrope."
She shifts her grip on her staff, preparing to defend herself if needed.
Penelope comes back over, holding her nose tight, Her face turns ashen at the sight "If the kids came here..." she doesn't finish the sentence, but follows Odelai down, her bow with an arrow at the ready.
"No, I think you were right the first time..." Jenkin says, as soothingly as he can. "There's no way they got in through that trapdoor and then sealed it behind them. Of course, I don't know how she got down here either..." He takes the silver dagger from Svetlana, nodding at her as he slips in in his belt.
Odelai hunches over the body. "So, is this Elara? If so, then the tale dovetails with the rumors. She is running an orphanage. One or more of her kids are werewolves. She 'tortures' them - according to rumors. And looking at this room, which seems built for torture, it seems believable. Or maybe she is trying to cure them. Whatever the truth, something with teeth gets the upper hand, kills her, leaves her in this room... and then the orphanage burns down. The fire had to happen fast on the heels of her death... otherwise someone would notice the headmistress going missing. So maybe the killer set the fire and escaped, hoping the fire would cover the evidence."
Maybe, I mean, I have some obvious biases, and am a lot less powerful then an actual lycanthrope, but if that lycanthrope is capable of reason we should, in my view, talk before we strike.
She pauses
Note, I am a fanglord, the only way I can spread something akin to my condition is well, if I get kinky, pregnant, and give birth then my child may or may not inherit it.
She pauses again
Some Yadwiga supposedly experimented with massive blood transfusions to have more of my kind, we see perfectly in the dark and are pretty good troops, more so if you are an evil organization of witches that loves casting darkness and cackling maniacally, but as far as I know this does not work.
"That's horrible, Svetlana. Glad you didn't have to personally deal with that." He looks over at the corpse again. "Well, if there's a werewolf or something and it wants to talk, I'm fine with that. But after ten years, it might be gone or else it's really well-hidden in the Hollow or aroundabouts. Is that wolvesbane still useable? To... bane a wolf, or whatever it does?"
If it comes to battle, Sir Pounce can only contract...
Supposedly there is a form of Lycanthrophy that makes an animal shift into a human on a full moon. Its extremely rare. My own nature perhaps increases my resistance to other forms of Lycanthrophy, or perhaps I have greater chances of maintaining control, but to the best of my knowledge I am as susceptible as the rest of you.
Penelope's previous rant about No One in the village investigating even with Screams coming from here seems to want to bubble out of her, but she keeps her lips in a tight line for the rest of the discussion.
At the end, she says a small prayer to her god, feeling in some small way that her and her deity of family failed these orphans. "We should concentrate on the missing children." her tone saddened but determined. As she heads back out through the trap door, she promises herself that she won't fail the kids of the present as they did the kids of the past. Hopefully.
"The wolfsbane should still be effective." Elowen replies, collecting the dried plants.
Moving carefully though the burnt husk and there do not seem to be an fresh child sized footprints. Moving out in a ring and of course children who think they are going to be heroes make a little camp right on the edge of the Darkmoon Woods. Following the cluster of footprints to a little camp with a burnt out fire. Three blankets and a dirty hunk of bread are scattered among chaotic footprints. There are strange prints, small and clawed with three toes.
Thats blood, not a lot but there are dribbles of blood. Looking beyond the blood are drag marks. The children did not come home because something took them before they had the chance.
Odelai hisses at the prints. While she didn't retain the racial animus of her people, she knew the source. "Kobolds have them. And kobolds never travel alone."
"They're watching us right now." Elowen whispers to her companions. "Crouched down in the woods, maybe 30ft away."
The alarm on Penelope's face is immediate and... alarming. She does not have much of a filter when it comes to masking. But she doesn't look at least and keeps her question low "Who? The kids?" she hopes it is them, but she knows that would be a small miracle given all the rest of the evidence.
"No. Most likely the kobolds that took them." Elowen whispers in reply
"We should probably catch 'em alive and question them." Jenkin says, while quietly scooping up his pet fox and tucking him inside his protective satchel. "Think that vine spell you have will do the trick?"
With a nod, Elowen crouches down, using her body and deceptive motions to try to disguise her spellcasting as she calls upon the forest to take hold of their observers.
There is the sound of quick moving plant matter and then a loud shriek, "What the hell? No!
There is the sound of someone struggling and the voice is young and feminine.
Svetlana runs at the noise
BLYAD She unceremoniusly curses as she gets entangled as well.
The young girl screams as Svetlana rushes towards her. Muscles and armor moving faster than it seems she should is a frightening sight to many and terrifying to a child. "No! No! No! Please! I don't wanna die!
Odelai follows more carefully into the woods, giving the area of roiling plant-life a wide berth. "No one is going to hurt you, child. We're here to help and trying to find the kids that were camping back there. We think some kobolds may have grabbed them. Have you seen anything?"
On hearing the child scream, Penelope rushes forward "Elowen, stop the vines!"
Looking around with wide eyes and not thrashing about in the vines, though she does keep gently tugging at them, "Happened last night. I hid rom the lizard people."
Seeing that the captured child isn't a threat, Elowen dismisses the spell, telling the vegetation to release the girl and thanking them for their aid.
"I'm sorry we scared you. I thought you may have been one of those same lizard people. Did you see what happened?"
"So there were six kids missing? And nobody in town noticed she was gone?" Jenkin's voice is low, only carrying to his friends, but unmistakably angry as hell.
Penelope kneels down, setting her bow on the ground. "Are you okay?" her voice calm and centered only on the little girl right now.
Nodding at Elowen while grabbing a ratty bag she had dropped, "Saw them coming this way so I followed them. They don't leave the town so they don't know what it's like out here." She does nod to Penelope but continues speaking, "Figured they were doing the dare so I was just keeping an eye on them."
Looking down, not meeting anyone's gaze, "Then the lizard people showed up and I hid. They fought but they are soft children so they got dragged off."
Continuing to stare at the ground and squeezing the bag, "Do you have food?."
Penelope's heart wants to hug the girl, but instead, she nods. Looking away, the half-elf slips off her pack and shifts things around to get to the rations she keeps around. "Nuts, berries, and some bread." She hands the entire sack over. "I promise a full warm meal at the temple with me and my guardian as well... for watching out for the others." she says the last part since she feels like 'payment' would sit better with the girl, despite the fact Penny would give the girl her own dinner every night for a year or more since it was right. "Did you see which direction they went?"
Odelai debated offering some of her gnome rations, but she was pretty sure it wasn't enough food to fill the girl's gnawing belly. "And did you see how many lizard people there were?"
Svetlana retracts her claws to not have the kid be panicked further, and seeks to assist in calming her down.
Unfortunately, as she retract her claws, withtout thinking she instead extends her fangs, which, together with her very clear cat eyes, probably looks more accidentally terrifying!
My 2 leg just has no idea about how to deal with bite sized 2 legs!
the situation is somewhat salvaged my the lure of Sir pounces soft, furry and inviting tummy and its innate attraction to kids.
It's a bit before she responds, tearing into the bread and barely chewing the large bites. But she looks around at each of you. Talking around the nuts and berries now that the bread is consumed, "Five of em. An I don't do temples."
The food was finished off quickly, "The lizards live in that building across the river. I can show you."
"Whether or not it's to the temple, we should get you back to town." Jenkin says, looking in the direction the girl is pointing and doubting the wisdom of bringing her along. "What's your name, anyway, kid?"
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Shacking her head, "Don't live in town so not goin there."
The name takes here a moment. She just stares at Jenkin and quietly mumbles, "Jeva"
"Is there a safe place you can stay while we go to get the other children?" Elowen asks softly.