Oliver can detect no trouble in the house, and the streets themselves are quiet. Not unnaturally so, but there's a tense nervousness in the air. A major murder was committed in a public place, and that's bound to put a pall over everything.
Valerian: [sblock]You don't know anything about the Cult of the Coil specifically, but you have occasionally heard of people that consort with the unsavory beings that live in the Demon Wastes or in depths of Khyber. People like that are violent, crazy or nearly so, with conflicting adgendas and uneven motivation. They recruit the desperate, the insane, and those seeking power at any cost. They tend to be led by highly charismatic leaders, but once the leaders are defeated, any organization they have fragments.[/sblock]
As the rest of the party exits the house and begins to walk back, Yatrax catches each person's eye in turn and speaks in a low voice.
"Something tells me we might run into this Roth," she mutters. "Yes, he could be a guide Arrgha'n, but I'm more worried that he could be competition. I'd rather not find a maurader in my bed."
She pats Oliver's arm as she says so, but her brow is furrowed in concern.
When the party return to the square, Master Vorj is just finishing up with the Guards.
"Olidamma's favor, your timing is impeccable. We're leaving, now, before they find other questions to delay us," he snaps tersely.
The dead-wagon has already come for the Master Tanner as the caravan begins to pull out, and the village of Ulman began to return to its daily routines.
Arrgha'n keeps his ears and eyes peeled as the caravan continues onward, through the large city of Starilaskur, down the trade road to tiny hamlet of Hatheril, only there because of the lightning rail stop, past two crossroads, and onto the road to Erlaskar.
There are three more locked-room murders before you get through three different towns along the way, in each case, at least a full day before you got there, each about a week apart. All three take place outside the town proper, and two of them you only found because you were looking for them. At all three places, the bodies are clawed to death, much like the Master Tanner. In each case, the place was ransacked, some marks were on the floor. In two of the cases, you found a spiral painted on an obscure piece of furniture. On the third, the spiral was carved into the body. In that third scene, you also found a partial spiral in metal, like that one you found in Ulman.
The scenes are frighteningly similar, only the victims changing. Most are some kind of trader, minor or major. And somehow, you feel a sense of menace hanging over these scenes, like whoever is doing this is taunting you.
As you turn on the road to Erlaskar, the Blackcaps Mountains loom in the north along the road. On your south, a small but thick wood hems in the road. The members of the Defenders Guild have been nervous for the past few days, for if there was any better place along the way for an ambush, they don't know of it.
You all sleep warily, one eye open, as the darkness from the woods and mountains looms over the road. Occasionally Irthos has spotted faint colored lights very high up the mountains. Valerian thinks they may be either dancing lights or perhaps a mountainous species of will-o'-wisps. Yatrax distrusts them on sight, but seems to welcome the faint moving shadows from deep in the woods on the other side of the road. Oliver's attempts at gallentry along the nearly month-long journey have borne some fruit with her; but what lurks in the shadows here throws a faint chill along his spine.
In the darkness before dawn, the depth of the third watch, there is a terrible cry, suddenly muffled, from Kurst. Arrgha'n, the other member of your group on watch, spins to see the young warlock bleeding from a terrible gash in his side. But in front of him, black and gray in the darkness, is the incredible gape of an ethereal maurader!
OOC: Kurst's cry wakes everyone up (other than Arrgha'n, who was already awake), and you have one standard action this round, though you are prone and in your bedrolls, probably unarmored and unarmed, unless you chose otherwise for your characters. For simplicity's sake, let's say you're around a campfire in a circle approximately 20' in diameter. Kurst was closest to the forest, Arrgha'n to the mountains, on the forest side of the road. The caravan is in a defensive circle, and you're closest to one of the supply wagons within that circle. The Defender's Guild guards are between or on top of the wagons, looking outward. The other members of the caravan are sleeping around their own campfires or in the wagons, a fair distance from you.
