telerib | The Great Experiment Begins

The Party:
Grath, young dwarven cleric of war
Rinwald, young human mage
Nicolette, strongly-built young human scholar with longsword
Elianne, young (?) halfling, new to the University, likes opening doors from the wrong side

The Shining Golden Plot Hook for the evening was this: in addition to previously scheduled carousing activities in New Babylon, the party was asked by one of the other doctors in Mascingard (Mascin Guard, Mascin Gard...whatever) to get a progress report from one Professor Montore. Montore, interested in the repetition of certain themes and symbols in different magical traditions, had taken some funds to New Babylon to learn about the local religions, including an agricultural god called Amudu. The school was rather interested to know what progress, if any, he was making, or if he'd gambled away all the money or something.

Initial carousing was put on hold to get the professor thing taken care of. The party, lead by Nicolette, a native, found the Temple of Amudu. Trying to ignore the illustrations of the miracle of life - things bursting out of other, rotting things, mostly - they approached a woman who was doing some sort of repair work to the building. Looking vaguely tired and distracted, she remembered Montore and said they'd talked. The conversation had drifted to magical cycles, and she'd recommended he drop by Rattle's, a gaming parlor with a curse. She couldn't quite remember if she'd warned him about the curse or not...

Rinwald heavily bribed the doorman at Rattle's, who gladly told them that he'd seen the old guy and had talked to him a little about the curse. The guy had gone in to look around, and ended up leaving with four troublemakers - probably with Vashti, he thought - who'd picked him out of the crowd. For future tips of that magnitude, he would be happy to keep an eye out for the four of them.

Rinwald then sent in Nicolette, who could gamble, to try and make back the gold piece he'd spent for the tip. She was doing all right, until the house spotted her cheating. They settled for taking all of Rinwald's seed money and running her off - the extra cash she might be carrying wasn't worth the risk of someone making noise during the fight.

Grath picked up some extra cash doing some healing at one of the fight pits, then tried and failed to increase it by gambling on the fights.

The next day...

Word came from Rattle's that the four guys were drinking at the open-air tavern across the street; the team would know them by the blue skull patches on their left shoulders. Rinwald charmed the guy he picked out as the leader, then the group went over for some conversation and drinks. Three of the ruffians were suspicious, but their leader told them to settle down, this guy was all right. After some small talk, conversation came around to Montore, and the short leader acknowledged that they'd beat up a guy of that description, taken his cash, and left him in an alley over there.

Excusing themselves to look for Montore, who "owed them money," the party tried the alleyway for clues.

There was lots of clue. Dried blood, a large puddle of it on the ground and spray on the walls. Bare bloody footprints, leading to the puddle.

Rinwald and Elianne reported to the nearest guardsmen, who had no knowledge of anything in the alley and were disinclined to follow up on such a vague but ominous residue. Grath and Nicolette followed the footprints.

They went for quite a ways, barefoot and bloody the whole time. Keeping to back alleys, they finally lost the trail at one of the main, trafficked roads into town - just across the street from the graveyard. The tombs were being nicely backlit by the setting sun...

Graveyard at night by themselves seemed like a spectacularly bad idea, so further investigation was put off until tomorrow. <insert more carousing here>

Getting up at the crack of three in the afternoon, the group returned to the graveyard. Grath, hopping up onto someone's mausoleum, spotted two new crypts - a big one, still having the tenant's name and accomplishments chiseled in, and one of the pauper's limestone caskets at the end of a great row of them. The lid to the limestone casket was askew, and Nicolette, squinting, thought that she could see dark red-brown smudges.

...and we called it there.