Forum

[Morrow]

From the journal Of K. Garnham apprentice Seeker. Translated from the Vallossan.

We returned to Sasserine aboard the Flying Fish to find the city in the midst of Empire's Fall celebrations. The streets were lined with drunken revelers making clear travel tricky. I ran ahead using a complex mix of grace and punch-the-drunk rudeness to get to the Vanderboren Manse. The others were slightly behind me.

I found out about what happened to Dexter and the others after the fact. Shortly after I left for the mansion they were approached by a group of stiltwalking street performers who turned out to be assassins sent to kill our group. The stiltwalkers were beaten thanks to warp wood spells cast by Elyosha, blunt trauma delivered by Maggie and some general ass-kicking from Dexter. The surviving stiltwalker confessed that he was hired by Heldrath Keilani as revenge for our work against the Lotus Dragons and her daughter Rowyn.

I made it to the manor and found my way inside. I wasn't that stealthy about the whole thing; I had believed that we had beat Drevanaz to Sasserine. When there was no response to my knock I picked the lock and entered the main hallway.

There were three man-frogs in the foyer. I later identified them as bullywugs. They and I had a little disagreement; they thought that I would look better with their handaxes buried in my chest and I preferred the classic lines of undamaged studded leather armor. I had killed them by the time the others arrived.

Elyosha and I searched the manor; she tracking their slime and I opening locks. We found, and killed, other bullywugs before entering a secret armory where we discovered the near-dead body of the dwarven druid from the Jade Ravens. We revived him and he told us what he knew. They had received the warning that Elyosha had sent via ensorcelled bird. The Jade Ravens were preparing to lay in the defenses when the manor was besieged by bullywugs who had entered from a decrepit access tunnel in the basement. In the assault Keskus Kull (the dwarf) lost his animal companion.

We followed the trail and came across a large female bullywug smoking some of the finer Vanderboren cigars. We killed her guards and captured her. It turns out that she is Lorb Lorb Tub, mate of some clan leader who was elsewhere in the manor. We left her unconscious under Kull's guard and proceeded upstairs to find Lavinia and the others.

There was one room that was occupied. I tried to get a peek inside by climbing around from the other room, but the place was in darkness.
Elyosha and the others went in to try to negotiate Lavinia's release with the letter given to us by Captain Jarvel. I remained outside the window in case things went the way they usually go.

Drevanaz was there with a bullywug shaman. Lavinia, Cora and the
other two male members of the Ravens were tied to chairs; Cora's throat had been slit and had been dead for some time. Drevanaz conducted his part of the negotiations while holding a blade to Lavinia's throat. Elyosha showed him the letter and explained things but Drevanaz wasn't having any of it. According to him Jarvel would have sent a token with the letter to prove it's authenticity. No token, no release of prisoners.

I managed to crack the shutters on the window open quietly enough to throw a blade at the half-orcs back. It was a solid, if not fatal, hit and it forced him to stumble forward and away from Lavinia. She, it seems, was playing possum. She had gotten her bonds loose and used the distraction to tumble towards a nearby sword and arm herself. We fought. The shaman summoned demons that we killed. The shaman died. We captured Drevanaz.

We still hadn't found the sorceress Liamae. That meant she was probably down in the basement. We revived the other Ravens and left them to guard Lavinia before heading down to the lower level.
I wasn't prepared for what we found there. The sorceress was there all right. They had stripped her and put her in a sheet that had bits of silverware sewn into it. There was some sort of metal eating beast that was nipping at her whenever she stopped dancing. Tub's mate reminded her that if his pet got every piece then he would kill her. We killed the beast and his guards. The beast destroyed Dexter's magical breastplate.
We took the clan head prisoner. In the end we turned Drevanaz over to the authorities and let the bullywugs leave after they had given us their equipment in recompense for the damages.

Lavinia has set us up on the top floor of the Sultry Siren so that we are closer to her when needs arise.