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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Knightfall" data-source="post: 8107295" data-attributes="member: 2012">Inside the hand-made envelope is a whirlwind of trouble for the entire family line of Legatus Avitus, the city of Bluffside, and maybe for Falen as well. If he delivers its contents to Lady Nazaria in the morning, he could find himself embroiled in a controversy that could end his life, if he's not careful. At first, the parchment seems to simply deliver bad news for Legatus Avitus that his son has been killed in the lands known as The Southwest -- in Khemit to be precise. It goes on for three pages, as Lord Max goes into the tragedy and the arrangements being made to have the son's body shipped back to Ticinum.Falen reads it over and over again and can't fathom why anyone would try to kill him for these three pages. He's soon out of the rope trick and pacing around the small room before heading back up into it. The secrecy makes no sense to his curious mind. It's not until he begins to read between the lines, does he realize there is a code message from Lord Max to Legatus Avitus.[SPOILER="For Aust Thale Only"]The letter turns out  the only be part of the truth. Yes, the legatus has lost his son, Aulus Dovius Viatoro, but it turns out that the man had been an adventurer plying his trade around the city of Sharn. Lord Max goes on to write that the yonug man was captured by The Dusk and held captive. The ransom was Legatus Avitus's compliance with the Rising Swords and their partner in crime -- a man the coded message refers to as Phelix Del Cannitha. (Obviously, the leader of the Arreptitii.) Lord Max discovered that Phelix is an exile of the Del Cannitha family of Sharn. The Dusk kept Aulus imprisoned in a fortress just outside of the city of Tânger. Since the legatus was cursed to not have any other sons, he did whatever Phelix asked of him.The legatus asked Lord Max to send a force to free his son, but the young man died during the rescue attempt. Worst than that, it became clear to Lord Max that someone else in Bluffside is helping to blackmail the legatus, acting as a go between for this Del Cannitha fellow. That person isn't named, but Lord Max is convinced it is someone in the embassy. Why is Lord Max sure? The Dusk had known the team Max sent were coming and ambushed them. Only one survived to report back to Lord Max. (It turns out Lord Max was in Tânger the same time as Falen.)'There is a viper in your bed.' Lord Max writes. Always the poet, Falen notes. 'And Dusk will soon fall on Bluffside.'Could Praefectus Casca be the villain or maybe Lady Nazaria isn't to be trusted? And then there is the scribe, Amphion. Yes, it could all go very badly for Falen if he gives the 'letter' to the wrong person and they decode it. And if The Dusk are truly coming to Bluffside, are they coming for Falen or are the assassins already here, and they are who killed Legatus Avitus?Falen is soon wide awake despite being exhausted.OOC: Of course, Phelix Del Cannitha is the renegade sorcerer the other PCs are trying to bring to justice. But, at this point, Falen doesn't know anything about the Brelish outcast besides what is coded in the letter (and that letter's connection to the information he learn from the praefectus). Since the streets were fog soaked when he arrived, he hasn't seen any of the handbills tacked up all over Old City warning of the villain being at large and the warnings about a group known as the Loyalists who follow him. There are also broadsheets on every corner warning about the mercenaries of the Rising Swords and their rumored presence in Bluffside.At this point, no one else besides Falen knows that the city might have been invaded by The Dusk. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> [/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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