12th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We go to the address we found yesterday. There are cultists here, which we take out quickly, though Vorest gets pretty badly hurt. We search upstairs and find a letter addressed to us. We bring it to Captain Darren's to open it up. Maybe it'll have evidence - it's for sure from Hondal.

Vandederp opens it and it says:

Then the letter explodes.

Captain Darren is annoyed. We are annoyed. Barnaby runs in and announces that his troops are being attacked by zombies, where they are burying Crymson Starr.

Vorest summons war horses so we can keep up to Barnaby. We get to the grave yard and see 14 zombies overtaking the guards that stayed. We beat the zombies and the guards say that some zombies took Crymson's corpse off with them.

We follow the zombies and catch up to them, as well as some cultists. We beat them and then burnt Crymson and the zombies. After this we start tracking the cultist that ran off during the fight. We follow the trail back to the city, where we lose it. 

We go to Captain Darren, where everything has gone crazy. Apparently Lord Thadeus was attacked by zombies at the temple of Ilmater, where he was saved by Hondal.

While talking about how weird the zombies behaved, we walked to the temple. We wonder around and then walk through the market and find Gwyneth. She mentions that she has gotten on with "Master Kensingley," and that he has shown her the "way" and insists on bringing us to meet him.

She brings us to a nice house. She acts like this is her house. She runs off to another room and shuts the door behind her. She comes back and beckons us on. The room is big, and there are balconies and doors.

And we see Gwyneth casting a spell and Hondal shouting down.

Well. Damn.

We manage to beat them, but Hondal has escaped. Again. Vondal is going mad trying to find secret passages. Vorest says that he could have possibly gone in the stone floor with a spell.

We wait, and Hondal eventually comes out of the ground. We beat him up, and Vondal mentions that Vorest should try Moonbeam on him. She does, her last spell, and he bubbles and burns to a crisp. We worriedly told Captain Darren. He searched Hondal's house and found dead people and an altar to Loviatar, and, eventually, thanked us.

9th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We take Crymson's corpse to Captain Darren's. He thanks us and takes Crymson. As we go to make our leave, he speaks up, awkwardly - he is clearly having a very hard time saying whatever it is he wishes to say. Eventually, he asks us to come to a soirée, a birthday party as it were, where he could also present us as heroes of Kelethoen to the other lords. 

We accept, and after getting some recommendations, we head out to go shopping. We make appointments at a salon to get cleaned up. We also manage to find some fancier clothes and we sell some things to Cedric (he really does appear everywhere!). We also manage to find some fancy looking swords, because the guys didn't want to be completely weaponless.

8th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We wake. We go to the building in the center, it's a large warehouse. Everything is boarded up. We walk around and see the other archer from before, but he also sees us, and ducks into an alley. We follow him. We see him drink a potion and jump in the sewer. I chase him, and he is stupid fast. I follow until he goes up and then I return to tell the others where he ended up going.

Vondal heads up and into a dark warehouse. That gets bright quick. The archer had run up a rope ladder in the center, onto a floating floor. Crymson is also there, and stood with a bottle of thick red potion.

We are in trouble. We fight and manage to kill everyone, except one scout, when Crymson screamed bloody murder and vanished through her magic doorway.

They had been well prepared for us. There were scouts and thugs everywhere and they were ready to kill us from a distance. There was eve a point when a demon was conjured (though Vondederp did really quick work of him). I think he was a fiery gorilla - all I saw was he was red. 

We took the scout prisoner. We need to talk to Captain Darren about this. While we were looking around we also found a scroll, to create an abysmal tear, I think, and it sounds like we did a lot of the dirty work - basically there need to be 10 people killed on 10 nights in specific places, "annointed" - like we did today. Below us a strange red, cold "fire ball" appears.

We go see Captain Darren and talk about the scrolls and what we saw. He mentions that there were circles at the other sites in the map star. We choose a site on the star and head there. We heal up and set up for a fight.

Crymson comes this night - and we manage to interrupt her spell. She brings up a three armed mouth nightmare, but we still manage to beat them. We rest for the remainder of the night.

7th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We let Captain Darren know his problem has been dealt with. He says we'll join Barnaby's team in their raid on a warehouse, coordinating at 2 in the afternoon. 

We arrive at the warehouse. Barnaby sends the other 4 to the back, and we enter the front.

The people inside try to destroy something by fire, which I stop. We beat everyone up and save the papers, which look like they are detailing their slave trade operations. 

We go back to Captain Darren's and he marks up the map a bit more. There are locations they were told to look for Crymson. The dots look like a star, as Vondal pointed out. Captain Darren asks if we can check out the middle buildings tomorrow.

We head back to the inn, when we are attacked by 6 thugs. While fighting them, Crymson brings an air elemental to the party. I go to chase her, and she jumps to different roofs. The others destroy her elemental and she runs through a magical door. 

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

We return to the inn to rest.

6th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We go to the guardhouse and we are greeted by ALL the guards. We are warned by them about the Captain. He was attacked by the lady in red at his home during the night. Her name is Crymson Starr. She's been here for months. She's been in the Warehouse District. We probably ran into her a few times. She has a couple jobs going - but freed her men, including Paldo Daggerfell. Captain asks us to take him out, discretely if possible, at the Lucky Badger - a frequent haunt.

We set up an ambush location and I got on the roof to look out, and watch the inn. When he comes out, with guards, I manage to lure them into our trap. We manage to beat them, but I was quite hurt. That's quite frustrating!

Then we hid the bodies in the sewer and tidied up a bit. Vorest let the rats know there was some fresh food.

And then we went home for the night.

 

5th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

After lunch (because of all the excitement early this morning!), we head to Captain Darren's office. We see Boris in the main office. He shoves us into the captain's office.

He hasn't had a chance to really interrogate the prisoners, but they were close-mouthed on the way to jail. He asks us to join him in an attempt to get some information.

We head down to the cells. Everyone looks angry. Captain Darren says that they were just like this last night. He asks a bunch of questions and it's like talking to a wall. 

We suggest talking to the oil covered guy. He mentions that he can't say her name, though he would like our protection. We hear a huge *CRACK* while talking about how he needs out. It's in the other room. I stay with the prisoner, while everyone runs off.

The wall in the cell I'm in vanishes. I rush in between the oily fellow and the missing wall. Through it I can see Captain Darren and Vondal. There's a stone elemental being controlled by a lady in a red cloak. The elemental goes to attack Vandederp. We beat the elemental and the lady runs off and jumps in the sewer. Vandederp jumps down but he can't tell where she went. He comes back up. We head back to Captain Darren and he mentions that there have been reports of a person with a red cloak - in the market, in the warehouse district, just all over. 

We say we're going to try the sewers. Captain Darren wishes us well, and beware.

We go into the sewers and Vorest leads, but we get lost and then are attacked by gross looking people. 

We exit the sewers and head back to the inn, defeated.