Loose ends: abandoned boat to be repaired at the Shorepines
Participans: Terri, Bethany Claie, Syltorin Margaster, Zinlynndise Imare
Locations: First Landing, woods outside First Landing, Shorepines
Short summary: Terri
Last time, Beth had found a lead on the bandits that had kidnapped her daughter 15 years ago. Worse still, she was apparently traveling with them willingly! Beth and Syltorin interrogated an associate of Amber, the daughter, and attempted to learn where the group was camped out near First Landing. After some moderate success, the party knew where the last place the bandits were seen was and set out to the Shorepines. En route, the party was assailed by an assassin, Leaf, set upon us by Rose, known associate of Amber. After defeating him, interrogating him, and freeing him, the party set forth to confront Rose and save Amber. At last catching them, Beth attempted to speak with them diplomatically, but Rose refused to allow access to her wife, Amber. Beth dueled Rose and lost, which cracked Rose's resolve. Through magic, Rose and Amber watched Beth's memory of Amber being taken one night 15 years ago and learned the truth of her own life, lied to by once-friends all these years. The two slaughtered their previous family and joined with the party to return to First Landing in their own ways.
Full report: Syltorin
During my previous expedition into the northern caves that house the 'classroom' of Marbas the Unknown, Bethany Claie and yours truly, lord Syltorin of the House Margaster, discovered clues that pointed us towards the current whereabouts of her long-lost daughter, Amber, who was kidnapped more than a decade ago back in the Old World, during a horrible raid. To respect Beth's privacy, as well as the privacy of her child, I am going to omit some of the more personal details, but I would like to preserve this important chapter of our lives for posterity nonetheless.
The first step was deciphering a book that we recovered from the chamber where we defeated the hideous Gibbering Mouther - a task that proved trivial for my skills. It turned out to be mostly a research journal belonging to a man named Jason Gartzs - one of the kidnappers. It contains four rare alchemical formulae, all of which are in one way or another tied to blood. It appears that they were acquired during the so-called communion with Marbas, though they are fragmentary at best, and might require some careful restoration. Ominous, gruesome, but potentially useful, they remain with me, in the Assembly of the Black Lotus, and are available for copying - for a fair price, of course.
Amidst these formulae, there were daily notes of a more mundane variety, and they revealed the group of four members - one for each formula, most likely. As the days passed, insignificant conflicts between these members sprouted into rifts, which themselves eventually blossomed into outright bloodshed; I personally wouldn't be terribly surprised if they mostly finished each other off before the Mouther got to them. One note in particular caught my attention - a request for more reagents from their main camp. This camp, in turn, didn't have enough of those stockpiled, so they had to wait for a delivery... from the Old World, of all places, which meant First Landing.
The people mentioned in the journal seem to have gone by their nicknames instead, ambiguous enough that determining who was behind these aliases was nigh-impossible - no supplementary descriptions, nothing. We were, however, lucky enough to also retrieve a bundle of supplies from the same cave, which had the stamp of the General Gilbert's Goods. Thus, we investigated this lead further, and after a conversation with Mr. Gilbert, we discovered that Jason was a regular, but he hasn't been seen for months. He would usually come with a couple of other people, and the frankly extravagant amounts of supplies that they would purchase could make a lowly baron blush. Mr. Gilbert suspected that they were constructing something massive, and that their camp was somewhere to the south.
He also claimed that he saw a young woman that matched Amber's description, hand-in-hand with another lady (whom we later learned to be one Rose), but only once. This Rose, and another associate, a Tengu by the name of Seynomour, were seen frequenting the more... unsavoury parts of our glorious frontier hamlet. I happened to know the necessary passphrase to enter one such establishment, and thus we were allowed inside, where a drunken Orcish brute soon mistook Beth for Amber - a blatantly uncouth encounter which nonetheless gave the two of us a semblance of hope.
Shortly after, we were joined by this self-important Seynomour - a shoddy facade of arrogance that poorly concealed a gambler and a card sharp, as well as a control freak who didn't appreciate me meddling in his perfect little world. Nonetheless, I invited myself to his table, and after we played a couple of rounds, I managed to spot his tricks and call him out, which caused him to take his unceremonious leave, throwing a wrench into our plans. Seynomour escaped into the streets, but since we needed him for further interrogation, Beth and I assembled a rather... charming crew, to see this mission to its conclusion - we were joined by Zinlynndise Imare and Terri the next day.
It was quite a chilly morning, and it got only colder by night, to the point that it was snowing. We decided to visit the last place where Seynomour has been seen, but we found it shut down and deserted. With the help of a kind stranger, we managed to track the Unknown down to Ahmad's stables, where some of us found themselves a tad bit too enthusiastic about entering the premises. In the end, locks were broken and repaired, animals were frightened and pacified, Ahmad was offered the necessary apologies, and Seynomour was retrieved from within.
We aren't sure whether he's been squatting there regularly, but we quickly determined that he was under the influence of multiple drugs - eyes dull and bloodshot, nearly bulging out of their sockets; tongue shriveled up; the insides of the beak bloodied; breathing shallow and weak; skin pale. We treated him to the best of our abilities, and rushed to the closest healers, where he was provided with necessary medical attention - he was afflicted by an overdose of Shiver, Diluted Hype and potentially other mixtures, and consequently possessed symptoms of liver failure.
Hours later, after the necessary procedures and rituals were performed, he recovered his senses to a certain degree, and we interrogated him. His Common is rudimentary at best, focused mainly on gambling terms, but he understands more of it than he speaks. The conversation was rather bothersome and tiring, but I managed to gain his trust, as well as extract some long-needed answers.
Jason hasn't been seen around town for a while - which is understandable, since he's been feasted upon by the Mouther - but I learned that he and his bandit crew envisioned themselves as pirates, and thus wanted to build a ship. He fraternised with Rose, and we later found out that she took charge of the group after his truly untimely demise.
Seynomour seems to have gambled with aforementioned Rose, which ended in his utter bankruptcy. At first, we believed that she was more interested in information than coin, which he wasn't able to provide. However, I later determined that she instead wanted him to stay silent about Amber, since she was trying to keep her hidden from Beth, so she overdosed Seynomour with drugs and apparently left him to die.
This is also when I discovered the identity of the Orc whom Beth and I encountered earlier - Gurlac. He seems to have spoken to Rose, who believed him more than she believed Seynomour, which resulted in the Tengu's sorry state.
Finally, he told me about the bandit camp's current location (in the Shorepines, close to the sea), as well as the placement of traps and a way to spot them, the number of people inside (around a dozen), and the fact that some of them carried guns - including Rose herself, who turned out do be a Geniekin, just like Amber and Beth, only of the Sylph variety. Since Beth couldn't recall any such person, this lead us to believe that she was also kidnapped at some point, and the overall story was twisted for her.
Mid-afternoon, we finally departed; the camp was a day and a half away from First Landing. Snow turned the surroundings pale when we were preparing to rest for the night. Preserving the fire was an arduous affair, but we managed, in the end. When it was Lynn's turn to stay awake, early in the morning, she spotted an Unknown named Zamir, clad in leathers and carrying a few simple weapons; he was sneaking around, but she invited him to join her by the campfire. This brief moment of unlikely friendship was quickly interrupted by a moment of anticipated betrayal, as he reached for his club, and his Unknown accomplice, named Leif, shot Lynn from afar. The loud bang woke all of us up, and we joined her side, efficiently dispatching the assailants. While the first one was thoroughly fried by lightning, the gunner was merely knocked out, so we tied him up, intending to interrogate him later. On his person, he carried two vials of Giant Centipede Venom, one vial of Darkvision Elixir, and an Invisibility Potion, as well as his rune-inscribed flintlock musket.
To my utter exasperation, I woke up next morning to the sight of this thug missing. Lynn and Beth elected to talk to him in the meantime, they informed me, which resulted in him being allowed to leave with most of his possessions, other than his firearm, which was replaced by a dagger which Lynn gave him. Leif was employed by Rose to assassinate us, after Zamir provided her with this novel idea, for five hundred gold coins. As... compensation, Lynn gave him twenty, in a display of charity.
Among the crew, Leif revealed, only Amber and Rose seemed skillful enough to actually use their firearms to their full extent, while others were simple amateurs. He proposed that Beth should challenge Rose to a duel, since she is a 'pistols-at-noon sorta lady'. Having experienced her devilishly underhanded schemes first-hand - mainly Seynomour's poisoning, and a hired assassin sent after us - I had my doubts about her honour, but it sounded like our best shot to resolve this affair somewhat peacefully.
Lastly, Leif told us that the bandit camp was soon to be abandoned, and that the group was going to move to a new location, so we had to hurry if we wanted to catch up with them.
The remainder of the journey proved to be somewhat harrowing, since snow slowed us down, and then it was gradually replaced by obnoxious rains. We did, however, manage to reach our original destination - sparsely decorated part of the Shorepines, near the coast. From our position atop a hill, we could cast our gaze past the trees and see the mast of the bandits' abandoned ship project, a mile and a half away from the beach. The vessel was in a pitiful state, and tilted at an odd angle. To my knowledge, the Consortium of Artificers was informed about the ship's whereabouts, in case they are interested in enacting repairs or salvaging.
We gathered the clues which were haphazardly left behind in the abandoned camp, to estimate where the bandits might have gone, and followed the tracks through the wilderness to the new location. There, we finally encountered Rose, Amber, and their kidnappers, and Beth challenged the former, which resulted in a surprisingly honourable duel, just like Leif anticipated. Beth asked Rose to drink a potion of shared memory within which she captured her recollection of the fateful day, when her daughter was spirited away. This knowledge caused Rose to give the second potion to Amber. The details of their tearful reunion will remain undisclosed, due to my respect for their privacy. The bandit threat was eliminated, however, when the two kidnapped women turned upon their captors, raining death with their wrathful bullets. This concludes my report.
Yours faithfully,
- By the Grace of Calistria, Dauphin of Vienarya, Count of Elphestos, Sovereign of the Amethyst Isles and the Bloodthorn Woods, High Lord of the Twin-Cities, the Hyacinth Prince, the Hearteater, the Horn-Masked, the Flame-tongued, His Royal Highness Syltorin of the House Margaster.