A funeral for three and a feast for sharks
As we prepare Finona's body, we find a golden ring on one of her fingers which looks very much like the one we found on Bergeron. But instead of "Old Bergeron Gold", the inscription on hers says "Original Brave Ideas". Now we originally thought that the first inscription could be linked to a jeweller's shop of the same name, but this seems more than suspicious. We decide to hand both rings over to the RHC crypto-specialists, but make our own guesses as well: Both rings share OB and LE, even if the former seems more likely than the latter. We cannot make much sense of the last variable though (G and I might be codenames like Q and M?).
After we comforted each other and made sure that we could bring the dire news to the rest of the crew in a professional, proper manner, we get back on deck. Margit resumes her care for the wounded and Flying Spark agrees to be petted by those who suffered mental trauma.
(He secretly enjoyed the attention, of that we are sure...)
After that, we perform Finona's ritual to close the planar portal carefully. Because we accidentally stayed too close to the emanating wave of energy, it leaves an odd feeling of pleasure (Auryn) and pain (Carlyle). As we thought, the golden seal is able to nullify planar energy taint, so we immediately use it to cleanse the amulet of Dr. Meredith and other items that could have been contamined by Apet energy. We still keep the amulet locked and the container under surveillance.
As we also noticed that Dr. Meredith/Sijhen teleported to an unknown place, we use one of the sending scrolls to warn Delft and ask to be escorted to transport the Seal of Mavisha safely in 8 days. We also tell him that Dr. Meredith is the "new Ragman" and that they should arrest her if possible. (Searching through my notes, the sending was something akin to this: "Found seal. Need secure transport in 8 days. Flint Harbor. Meredith dangerous, powerful creature, Ragman. Arrest and detain with caution. Please." Yep, Carlyle insisted on a polite sending.)
After eight long days of travel without any major occurrence, we arrive back in Flint harbor. To our surprise, the welcome committee recieving us is no other ship than Rear Armiral Dawkins' ship, the Aurora (Or Dawn? I think Aurora is the more poetic translation of Morgenröte). Auryn is more than happy to see her dear friend again after all that happened recently. Politeness and modesty demand that she waits until she, Carlyle and Dawkins are in private to show her joy about their reunion. The three share a good cigar and bring each other's information up to date.
We explain what happened aboard the Dracon de Mer and warn Dawkins that Dr. Meredith harbors an extremely dangerous creature which might stem, ludicrous as this may sound, from another dimension. We can give an all-clear for the status of the Kraken though as She who Writhes is still sleeping like a good baby Titan.
Dawkins on the other hand has some dire news for us: Just two days ago, Guy Goodson, his son and his son's wife were found dead in an alley after they had attended to a charity event. The news coverage suspects a case of robbery, but police investigation had been mysteriously quiet regarding their demises. He adds that Goodson's funeral is scheduled for this afternoon and that he knows that all of Goodson's business partners are invited, even if he fortunately wasn't asked to attend himself. Mr. Carlyle suspects that the young Lord Vantrys might be among the attendees and Goodson was among the sponsors of some of Auryn's concerts in the past, so we both plan to attend to the ceremony as well. First we'll have to get the seal to a safe place in the royal treasury though.
Before we part with Dawkins, he uses his usual farewell gesture to Auryn to secretly signal her that she's now officially on the hunt for "the creature from beyond". Which makes Carlyle in turn wonder just how close these two really are.
(Yeah, the Vekeshi are not fond of a brain-eating monster roaming free in Flint either...)
We make sure to get the seal of Mavisha to the treasury as discreetly and safely as we can and are relieved to get neither Dr. Meredith nor suspicious planar energy in sight. We give the order to have the damn thing be guarded day and night as the "new Ragman" could be after this object. Afterwards, we hurry to change clothes and attend the funeral ceremony.
When we arrive at the cemetery, we are astouned to see that so many people have come to say their final goodbye to Guy Goodson and his family. We know that Goodson was a pretty public figure and had many business partners, but this crowd is really huge. And among them all, like a small fish in a basin of sharks, stands one very confused looking Nathaniel Vantrys just next to the fiancee of the deceased, Cecilia Fordren. It seems almost like the young woman is trying to seek comfort from the heir of the Vantrys family and it also seems like the young Lord for once doesn't mind to be so close to a woman. But maybe these two are simply the only two who feel highly uncomfortable to be continuously stared at by the other businesspartners of Goodson. The ony one who is gloriously (and fortunately) absent is Francis Fordren.
The ceremony itself is pretty traditional and conducted by a coven of druids who give the deceased back to the land which birthed them. We take our time to offer Lord Vantrys and Cecilia our heartfelt condolencies. Lord Vantrys seeks Mr. Carlyle's support again and this time, he whispers that due to the special contracts and their clauses it seems like he'd might actually inherit a fortune from Goodson who leaves no heirs of his own. All of a sudden, his financial troubles could come to an end – a relief Lord Vantrys seems embarassed to feel. Now the whole scenery suddenly makes sense to us and we promise Vantrys to talk to him in detail later. Just when we are about to leave the pair alone, Mr. Carlyle's otherwise stern expression momentarily turns into a faint smile.
(This scene was intense as well. First, Auryn hates funerals. Especially when those involved are people she knew. Now Goodson was a pretty grey character to begin with, but he was a philanthropist and patron for several artists of Flint, even if he maybe only sponsored them to give himself a good name. We secretly called him Mr. Goodguy on several occasions because of that. So she's really mourning his death and will probably miss him. Carlyle on the other hand saw Goodson as an opponent of the Vantrys family and the main reason why his Lord lost touch with him and his dutys. So he's secretly happy to be rid of him and to have Vantrys out of Goodson's influence. Even if he knows it is utterly wrong to feel happiness at someone else's cruel demise. And he made it so that he'd be sure only Auryn would be able to percieve this "dark side" of his. Yeah, that's Carlyle's way of sharing his thoughts and feelings.
Also... Vantrys is okay with a woman being close to him, too? Who'd have thought that after all that Jack romance and his uneasyness when it came to members of the opposite gender?)
After the ceremony we and all the business-sharks accompany Lord Vantrys to the funeral reception at his estate. During all the chatter, we get the impression that Vantrys, along with Fordren (the uncle, not the niece) could be getting the lion's share of Goodsons's fortunes. This combined with Vantrys' known distaste for some of Goodsons' extravagant habits seems to stir the unspoken rumour that Vantrys might be behind the attack on the family. What adds spice to this rumour is the fact that the coffins of the family were closed during the entire ceremony, which seems really odd for a traditional risuri ceremony.
After the sharks leave Vantrys and Cecilia alone, the young Lord explains the mystery of the closed coffins: After the family was found dead, Stover Delft had him summoned to identify the dead bodies. And it turned out that they died by a sudden loss of brain – which was not really a beautiful sight to behold (and seeing Cecilia pale by his rather harmless description explains why Delft wouldn't have summoned the bride-to-be instead... seems like our boss is learning some empathy after all). We try to reassure Vantrys that everything will turn out to be fine and no one will believe that he ordered the assassination of Goodson as the culprit is almost certainly our new Ragman. And Delft will surely confirm that the Ragman has nothing to do with Goodson, Vantrys or their business.
We also talk a bit with Cecilia Fordren who all of a sudden has lost her fiancee and her financial security on top of that. She says that she'll get over Goodson as the two were not really close to begin with. The Carlyles offered to let her stay in their estate and the engagement contract she and Guy signed will guarantee her a monthly payment which is enough to cover her expenses. She says she's really fortunate that her fiancee thought of her security even if she had nothing to offer herself besides the Fordren family name as her own family branch is impoverished. This is why she was really surprised when her uncle offered her and her mother that Cecilia might get engaged to the famous Risuri businessman.
Vantrys asks us to stay in his estate and be his guests for tonight, an offer we gladly accept after all the travelling by ship. Mr. Carlyle counsels Nathaniel Vantrys for the rest of the evening and promises to make things right for his family. It seems like Lord and Butler are finally able to reconnect after having grown distant over the last months. We also promise to find and arrest the murderer, so Vantrys and Cecilia can find peace. Without wanting to go into further details, Auryn also warns Vantrys that Fordren might turn his interest towards him and his businesses, now that his original partner is six feet under. Carlyle agrees and adds that while Goodson might have been a nuisance, he was rather harmless compared to the predator that is Francis Fordren.
Later that night, Vantrys leaves Auryn and Carlyle with a fine bottle of Port (or whatever the drink is called in Risur). After a while, we get an unexpected visitor as Stover Delft was wondering where the heck we could have gone after the funeral was over (isn't that obvious?). We invite him to share a drink with us and he informs us about the latest Ragman activities, which ended in the untimely demise of the Goodson family. We also tell him about what happened at the excavation and that we at least managed to secure the seal. Delft says that he'd rather connect the Ragman murders to some other serial killer than to explain what really happened to the public as he fears that the people of Flint might panic at the revelation of some mysterious entity. We are not really convinced that this would be the best solution. After all, the Risuri are used to fey, the wild hunt and the Titans, so they wouldn't really care whether the person who's killing artists and philanthropists is a human or not. Still it won't be our job to decide which should be the official version of the story.
Once we finally got to bed and found some sleep, some loud noise wakes us again. The culprit turns out to be a stone which was thrown through one of the estate's windows and which is inscribed with the word "murderer". To our annoyance, Vantrys' guards only managed to beat up the stone throwing idiot (a drunkard with far too much pocket money than reasonable) without asking him who gave the order to throw the stone in the first place.
We plan to continue our search for Dr. Meredith the next morning. During breakfast, we are visited by a disturbed looking Hans Weber who hands us a note he found earlier. To our surprise, the note contains a message from Dr. Meredith who tries to warn Weber that Sijhen wants the three relics, has something to do with "Gidim" and is interested in something called "Obscurati". Mysterious as this all sounds, it seems like we don't have to give up on poor Xambria Meredith yet.