04. Conium maculatum

Post date: Sep 27, 2012 2:45:38 PM

((Anders, Andreas, Henrik, Lars))

After some debate on what to do now, the group decided that heading for the safe house was probably for the best. Unfortunately, on arriving at the temple of Shelyn they saw that a large earth elemental was doing it's level best to level the temple, ordered about by a rather familiar large raven... The raven ordered the elemental to attack them and then took off. After the elemental had been put down and the unconscious priest had been brought back to consciousness he healed them all before showing them to the safe house, which, unfortunately, didn't seem very safe at all as it's door had been torn off and Ukshakka had been kidnapped. They found a Tengu feather and a dart poisoned with blue whinnis poison.

After spending the night in the (hastily repaired) safe house the priest brought them breakfast he had purchased from a street vendor. Unfortunately (popular word today :) the food was poisoned... Hiro and Spivey were seriously injured and the priest died. The locals were outraged at this, but as the characters were clearly heroes after yesterday's eventes they weren't blamed.

Needing not only the negative levels the draugr had given some of the party members but also the effects of the poison removed the party headed for the Desna temple. On the way there the raven struck again, this time boldly snatching Spivey just outside the temple. At the temple they used up the favor with Desna they had been granted (as well as a scroll of Restoration), purchased the casting of several Lesser Restoration and bought every potion the temple had.

Again they debated what to do, but this time the 'magical helmet' Hiro had found on the funeral ship spoke up, introducing itself as Helgarval (actually a Cassisian angel), settled onto Illtyr's head and explained that it used to be the familiar of a powerful good wizard who had died a few years back, and it had apparently been forgotten by the celestial powers. Trying to get noticed again it had decided to perform good deeds, one of which was to figure out what was going on with the Oni of the Five Storms, the Frozen Shadows and the Rimerunner's Guild. It had smuggled itself onto ship without realizing it was to become a funeral ship, but been trapped on it. It told them what it knew about the Rimerunner's Guild (it gave them the name of the leader, her chief advisor/mage Goti Runecaster that has a bloodfeather raven familiar, told them the guild was a front for the Frozen Shadows thief's guild, etc.

They decided to try to find and take out Goti and the raven, but noone they asked knew more than that he was a powerful figure in the Rimerunner's Guild. On the way to the guild they were attacked by some Tian street thugs that were quickly put down, two survivors fled.

They staked out the guild house for a while and noticed that there's a fair amount of foot traffic in and out of the house (wealthily dressed nobles mostly), that it was well built, that apart from it's guards there is also a fair amount of city guards nearby (at least during the day), it's in a rich neighbourhood. They tried sending a messenger to the HOME of Goti, but he headed for the guild, and left the letter there. They also tried to fool a few magic dealers into telling them where to find Goti, but failed (they didn't know, and saw through their ruses.)

We ended the session as they were debating what to do next.