Journal of Miyara Kyosuke (25)
Unedited
late afternoon
who would have a beef with the whole town? The family that was wiped
out (rikenbaku), of course, i suggestm but that was 200 years ago. Dorf
not sure what to do except hire guards. Rabena knows no effective way
to test for this quantity of spriongwort. dorf makes excuses and leaves
for his work. Rabena and ashu to go around town and check for
springwort. [note -- this waswhile the trest of us went back to the inn]
b+G invited us all to red bull for dinner. We all go, and R+A will join
us after their check.
[the dorf's barrel is tainted, and r+a are taken inside by the
housekeeper while they're draining it. a statys outside, while r goes
in. r taken to drof's offiuce. d give spermission while housekeepr goes
into tirade as soon as leaves room. r finds her own way out to find
that a has drained it in the meantime. on to other barrels. Bruhilde
joinso them as they go on through the village. also end up sneaking
into gerig's place to test that. wiht the dorf's blessing and
brunhilde's assistance, they have no trouble draining all barrels that
seem to be tainted.]
tghe only one not contaminated is the one behind walls, which means
either the person who is doing this didn't want to risk that, or it's
the person doing it. gerig's is the one not contaminated.
goru, jeison, stay behind to guard room (j) and keep party going (g) in
red bull, while we all go out to weilerburg to check the water there.
miyara and I have been here before, of course. ten small houses and one
really large one. only the largest would have a water barrel. It has a
wall around it but the gates are open. Hosei shouts a greeting as we
approach. we continue in. water here is not tainted.
check door. pireseri checks behind the door, and picks the lock, and
the door opens. he tries to hide the opening hte lock as if the door
was open all along. he suceeds in hiding it, except we knew it was
locked. miyara questions why we would go in. I agree. (of course, he is
dead) no sing of magic, apparently, and has not been ransacked. miyara
says the people probably just returned to their families. we leave, and
pireseri locks the door behind us. we return to the red bull.
after dinner about 9pm, dorf comes in and wants a quiet word with
miyara and anyone else who wants to join in. [asks her how much it
would cost to hire her and them to find out who is doing this to the
town and get them. Miyara says carimera does the money. goru doesn't
want to stay in this town any longer than necessary so doesn't want to
do this. carimera looks around to see what the party thinks. miyara
says we need to get to iri before winter, and goru has the big quest to
get stuff, and then there's the statue but we have no leads on that.
the big thing is therefore to gtet to eiry before winter, which is
where hosei wants to go too. the consensus, therefore, is not to accept
the dorf's offer. miyara hates this place too but given we don't have a
ruling from the dorf yet, and several of us think it dishonest to leave
town, and miyara tells carimera to settle the price. there is some
haggling, but the dorf settles some of the price to be in room and
board. miyara and i are insistent that it be at the red bull. that is
agreed. after all that, the dorf says he's ready to annouce the results
-- it;s his official opinion that sir t's death was caused by the legal
and justified combat with the nipponese noble miyara and members of her
party.
there follows some discussion about who couold possibly want to mess
with the town. rabena's approach is more along the lines of the source
of the springwort, where it grows and so on. it grows in upland
meadows, harvestable in spring and summer. it would be brewed into a
tea and poured in.
it is due to rain tonight, so it will help fill the barrelsand
therefore they will have to be contaminated again by the mysterious
person. i suggest pireseri can watch a barrel thorugh the wall; he can
only watch one, and the obvious one would be the baker's, but he says
he can't watch it continuously.
dorf is still here, he suggest that the dorf, elf, and doc's house
backing up to woods with barrel in back, so could be watched form
woods. baker's also, but the barrel is not in the back -- it could be
watched from the right window in the red bull. dorf talks with benito,
and after a while b nods head in our direction.
benito also announces that hte red bull inn is officially closing as of
this moment, and transferring to new owners, anyone with currect room
with be refunded and encourages current guests to check in at black
eagle because he's sure there'll be some openings tonight. later, moe
quietly, benito comes over with some papers and wants to give us the
red bull. miyara is of course astonished. hosei can't accept, of
course, he says, as he's not part of the party [vow of poverty, tells
carimera that and not to make him a part of the group until it's
settled as he'd have to give his part away]. asks benito who they could
get to help run hte inn -- he says he could asks some people from tai
liya but it would be a month or more before he'd even know they wre
interested. carmimera accepts ownership on behalf of the party and the
dorf makes it legal. (miyara as a samurai doesn't like the idea of
being hte owner of an inn)
Benito announces the Red Bull has new owners.
hosei takes goru back to bkacj eagke to fetch jeison and the stuff.
the staff stays. they are instructed to continue as before, at least
for the time. benito and guido will leave tomorrow; they leave the inn
accounts. benito clarifies that the inn is closed, but hte restaurant
remains open for this party, and we as owners will leave it open if for
no other reason than to get information.
jeison and ashu and I go into the woods to watch the three barrels in
the woods. I'm the only one of the three who can see in the dark, so
I'll take whichever barrel is in the darkest. the remainder of the
group watch the baker's and red bull's barrels from the inn. three in
woods are dorf's, elf's, and doctor's. both general store and baker can
be seen from upstairs windows of red bull, so that's three barrels
covered tonight. I watch the doctor's, ashu gets drof's, and jeison
gets the elf's (but isn't awake all night as it turns out -- we may not
know that.)
don't actually need to kick all the guests out tonight, just enough to
fit us in with a view of the barrels.
night is completely uneventful. It did rain for a little while.
miyara has a migraine this morning, staying in her room. the all night
watchers sleep. ashu goes around and checks all barrels first.
benito discusses the finances with hosei, carimera. it doesn't make a
lot of money, but it makes enough. b believes that if we keep the place
running, it will take care of itself if we can find someone good to run
it. need to find new cook because benito is the cook -- hosei can do it
(and somewhere is Mongo, looking for somewhere to settle down in safety
after leaving in the yetsin valley. He did turn this way...) hosei had
a tour of the kitchen and its operation that morning during breakfast
preparation, then after breakfast was the money discussion.
about 10am, watch captain comes in to talk to miyara. she of course is
in her room, but would come down if called. watch capatain says britt
stultenburg was killed early this morning (the woman who found the
other woman (julienne hennig)). hosei, ravena go. omi tells me to tell
miyara that there's been another murder. obviously i would not presume
to wake miyara, but i tell her when she comes down at about 10:30.
red bull on N side of river; black eagle and helmsman on S side, the
stultenburg house is between the two. she was being taken care of by
her two brothers -- rabena convinced the boys that she was not a
vampire, and they were talking her out of her belief.
britt was found by a merchant coming into town -- she was murdered
outside town, found by side of road on the N side of town. doctor has
pronounced her dead but nothing else he could do.
at stultenburg house, boys pretty messed up and want revenge. rabena
looks over hte body while hosei and pireseri wait. britt has been
stabbed inthe chest by a weapon no longer present. she wasstabbed with
something other than a knife, not very sharp. signs of wood. rabena
says nothing out loud to the boys, ofcourse. rabena checks for any
other signs of causes of death, but there are none. she confirms that
she died early this morning, not late last night. (hosei talks to boys
while rabena checks body, they were with her last night, her morning
routine would be to go get wood and water and maybe some herbs) rabena
finds that after she died she was face down for a while (after being
stabbed in chest). H wants to talk to who found her, see where it
happend, probably want ashu to examine the area too. no other trauma on
body, including no sign of putting up a fight. hosei goes to red bull
to fetch ashu. ashu comes down and goes with H.
H goes to the Helmsman to talk to the merchant to make sure he isn't
leaving town, while pireseri goes back to red bull. that leaves ashu
and rabena to look at hte body sight.
as H goes through crowd in red bull talking about britt's death -- ther
was apparently a britt in the reichenbach family and some people are
taking this as another sign of the curse. as the group leaves the
stultenburgsm watch captain says that stultenburgs were here when the
reichenbachs were here, so no they weren't related, just foolish talk.
watch captain leads R and A out of town, saying the merchant found her
beside the road. about a ten minute walk north of town. ashu knows that
they've entered the part of the road that goes along hte edge of the
Ghostwood. the place has a big pool of blood where she was found. they
can see where britt was... there are signs that hte single horse
merchant wagon stopped by the stide of the road, he walked through the
blood, carried her to the wagon, and carried her away. she ran out of
the ghostwood running very fast indeed, tripped and fell and stabbed
herself as she fell. here is the stump that stabbed her. the question
now is what was she running from?
ashu backtracks. her track is easy to follow. it goes about 100 feet
into the ghostwood, where it turns into a very casual stroll searching
for and picking herbs and/or berries. the transition, she was
apparently met by some other very large individual with very large
boots. (as headed into woods, text above, watch captain points out hte
ghostwood and says they shouldn't go in therem as ashu and rabena go in
anyway following hte tracks.)
as turning to start following where boots went, hear watch captain and
dorf yelling from the road for them to come back. sound like something
horrible is happening there.
back in town, sometime earlier... H gets story from merchant that he
picked up the already dead body and brought her back to town, less than
an hour ago. H picks up details about what he sells and where he's
going and so on. he takes cloth down to mortensholm and brings back
spices. he's been making the run from some town in bretonia to
mortensholm for ten years and seen nothing like this before. H thinks
his story is honest.
suddnely we hear many people screaming in terror. screams are coming
from the SE part of town, in the direction of the cemetary.
miyara is coming downstairs, as the screams begin -- she runs up and
gets her weapon, and as she comes back down I tell her about britt.
miyara and I run towards the screams, and jeison goes ahead of us, not
waiting for miyara to be armed and ready. jeison grabbed a poker on the
way out of the inn and is armoured in his helmet.
[Hosei runs towards screaming, many people running away and across the
bridge asfast as they can. H seems skeletons pulling themselves up from
the ground. he doesn't run away in fear.
jeison sees bridge and people running across it, sees dorf on horse who
observes scene and rides north. (obviously that wasn't in fear, it was
to get the group from the woods -- he thought there were a lot more of
this group that went on that trip)
Hosei starts casting spells, fireballs. (each one takes ten seconds to
cast)
pireseri heads that way, sees what's going on, and turns around and
back to the inn. he knows from experience that judo does nothing
against them. he remembers that knife, and goes to get carimera nad the
knife. now if she wants to use the zogin roku and give the knife to
pireseri (or someone else) that's fine too.]
Miyara and I are running towards the sounds...