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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 8076262" data-attributes="member: 6816692">Session 44 Murder on Mutravir IslandThe next morning, we're among the first people to leave bed – just as we expected. We use this spare time to chat a bit with the guards who also act like servants and whatever the guests of this manor desire.(okay, this sounds a bit wrong. But I don't know if „Jack of all trades“ would fit the „Mädchen für alles“ - girl for everything – saying in German)Carlyle is of course a bit duped inside by the fact that the Obs seems to lack proper personnel, so he makes a snide mental remark to Auryn who mentally giggles back. All of the guards seem to wear a pin of an open book and we guess that this might just be a symbol for the Obscurati. Kiov tries to make some ghost and undead related puns, but it seems as if they already know them all.(Another language related thing. You can make lots and lots of “lich” puns in German as many adjectives end with a lich. Actually, there are both the words endlich and unendlich. Examples of these jokes are like... “how do you call a scary undead? Unheim-lich”. Also, there is the verb “herumgeistern” for lurking (“ghosting”) around. And don't get me started on the town of Lich and the Licher Pilsner)We then move to the dining room to have breakfast where we're being served plenty of really good breakfast food from all over Lanjyr. With us sits an Orc named Gragh Nobble who's apparently not a linguistic genius as he calls himself the embarassor for the wilder tribes in Ber.(He called himself “Boshafter” in German which means “wicked one” instead of “Botschafter” - ambassador)He also does love his greatsword, so we brush his grammatical and spelling mistakes off and keep to ourselves. We are then being joined by one of Kiov's acquaintances, a human war wizard from Drakr called Dengar Kriegshaff who calls himself an archmage and also a cannon architect. We vaguely remember his name from the newspaper and Kiov simply returns that lighthouses are better than cannons. Which appears to be an inside joke between the two men. Kriegshaff also tells us about his secret hope that the Obs will somehow enable him to gain godlike magical powers, however this might be possible. But besides this casual megalomania he appears to be a pretty nice guy.Next is Von Hastenschrieft Williamarkanova, a dwarvish philosopher and politician from Drakr who also happens to know both Ramos Zoltan and Kiov Hetman. She makes one short but passionate speech about how religions limit our mortal ability to progress and hopes that this convocation will help her get some clarity on how the Obs may help her reach the goal of a godless nation.(And this is where I just realize that this woman is the very same Obscurati officer who became president of Drakr in adventure 13... well played indeed. Wish we made the connection in adventure 13 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Also, have you tried moving to Danor, girl? This would be just the perfect place for you and your nietzschean atheism)They are soon joined by the druid Zartan Arkel who talks about needing more time to think about all the things and do all the stuff he likes to and asks Kiov whether he may abandon his love for lighthouses for a more realistic love for life.This is where Livia decides that she had enough Drakr for one morning and focuses more on her tea. The Drakrans don't seem to notice her discomfort though and they keep on their friendly debate until someone realizes that Ramos Zoltan hasn't joined their merry crew yet. Finally, Kiov volunteers to go looking for his missing comrade (he guesses that the good guy might just have had one too many vodkas last night) and so he moves to the guest room wing upstairs where he knocks on Zoltan's door. Again and again. And when Kiov/Carlyle is certain that Zoltan is either not present or unable to answer for unknown reasons, he risks picking the door and enters the room.The moment he enters, Carlyle immediately spots a lifeless Ramos Zoltan sitting in a comfy armchair. Coming closer, he cannot hear either breath or heartbeat, so he carefully examines the dwarf and finds that someone thrust a dagger right through his rib-cage and pierced his heart. What is disturbing is the fact that dead Zoltan has a white serpent figurine sitting on his lap, and that this figurine just looks like an icon of the Voice of Rot.But Carlyle wouldn't be Carlyle if he'd just take the scene as it was laying in front of him. So he takes a closer look and finds that while the dwarf was drinking some whisky, he also has remains of milk in his beard. Nothing that would usually happen with Ramos Zoltan. Also, there's a small cut on the man's ear and faint traces of tranquilizing magic on both the dwarf and a small wooden box.He then tries to focus his connection to the spirits to conjure the soul of the dead dwarf and moves back a few steps in surprise as this one is clearly missing a conjurable soul. A magical examination of the box offers no results either and he guesses that the culprit in this case must be one of the oh-so-many Obscurati officers protected by the divination shield. What he can find out is that whoever prepared the box used a round magical laboratory. After a while, Carlyle also senses traces of a fading necromantic aura that doesn't stem from a spell.Adding all of this together, and including the fact that the presumed dagger is missing room was locked, Carlyle guesses that there might be an undead involved in this as the ghosts would have an easy time moving through walls.He then returns to the breakfast hall and tells Kiov's buddys that Zoltan didn't answer to his knock, even when he really tried his best wake-up-knock. The group discusses the matter for a while and finally decides to talk to the ghostly guards that Zoltan won't open his door.Meanwhile, Carlyle establishes a mental connection to Auryn and tells her of his findings. Being more of an expert in fey and occult magic, she immediately recognizes the clues as witchcraft. She remembers the ingredients as part of the bonds of forced faith ritual that Nevard used to bind his life-force to hers. So whoever is involved is this murder must be someone who knows about the magic of the Cauldron Hill witches. Which kind of reduces the number of suspects to two: Amielle, who could have witnessed this magic firsthand and Macbannin, who studied and used the magic during his time as Mayor of the Nettles.Our gut feeling tells us that Macbannin might be more likely the murderer as his demeanor seemed off every time we saw him in this manor. Still, we have to be extra sure, so we decide to test Amielle for her innocence. So Kiov ignores the fact that his acquaintances must have told the guards about missing Zoltan by now and looks out for her. He then tells Amielle that he's worried about his dear friend Ramos Zoltan who has gone missing and asks her whether she could use her ghostly form to slip into his room and take a closer look.Amielle declines as she is forbidden to just enter a stranger's room, but she does alert the staff and makes them open the door to Zoltan's room. When the guards return to her to tell her that they found the dead body of Ramos Zoltan in his chair, Amielle acts genuinely surprised, so both Carlyle and Auryn are pretty sure that she had no hand in his demise. She the tells us to keep quiet about what we just heard as she doesn't wish to cause a panic and that she has to inform Nicodemus about what happened.So we take a seat in the communal room and wait. After a while, we hear rumors spreading about a certain incident as more and more officers gather in the room and gossip. Then, the news about the murder of Ramos Zoltan are officially announced which is why all attendants of the convocation are gathered so the organizers may make a statement on the matter. Of course, this is just another excuse to let the guards check if anyone else has gone missing and to keep a close eye on everyone as for now everyone is a suspect in the eyes of the Obs.So while we're waiting in fainted nervousness, the half-elf wearing elfaivaran signs joins our small group and introduces herself as Cula Ravjahani. She seems quite self-confident and instantly realizes that Livia appears to be quite frightful (at least that's how Auryn thinks she would react) after the news of Zoltan's demise spread. Cula tries to comfort her elven sister and promises that she'll be safe here and that Nicodemus will make sure that no other Obscurati will be harmed in his domain.“Should have upped his security level before someone was able to murder my Comrade. This wouldn't have happened on drakran soil with a drakran host...” Kiov mumbles into his beard, thus provoking Cula who mocks the dwarf that keeping a tower and some cannons safe is much easier than managing a convocation full of people from different nations.Livia adds that she shouldn't really be surprised to have an actual murder happen at this event as several people literally bragged about murder and mayhem the evening before which makes her wonder if Nicodemus might have placed his bet on the wrong people. Cula claims that Nicodemus and her teacher have chosen their allies quite wisely and that everything will turn out well in the end.She then places her hand on Livia's cheek to comfort her, only to look at her in surprise as she feels the presence of a fellow Vekeshi.“They have chosen wisely indeed, sister. I am glad to see another of our order representing the voice of the pursued.” she whispers as it comes clear to Cula that there's more to Livia than meets the eye. When she leaves us again, we exchange a few mental words and guess that this “teacher” of hers might very well be Kasvarina, which may in turn mean that some Vekeshi are Obscurati as well.As we're still waiting for Nicodemus to make a statement, we meet an undersea-boat captain named Glaze who stems from Danor. She talks a bit about her mission of patrolling the Beaumont region which means that she might just be the one who chased down our ship when we were on our trip around the world honeymoon. Glaze explains that Danor just uses some experimental ships while the Obscurati got the good ships for themselves.Oh and she's also interested in conflict and war to keep the progress going. A point of view that Livia questions vehemently as she states that all of the Yerasol wars, while leading to some technological progress, caused a lot of suffering on both sides, so why not just work in collaboration towards a common goal? At least this is what her King Aodhan and minister Lya are trying to aim for at the moment. She then questions the thought of progress for progress' sake as this also heard about some problems in industrial Flint where workers were treated like slaves – which is forbidden in Risur for a reason. Glaze just shrugs it off as losing a few weak ones every now and then isn't too bad.Fortunately, Nicodemus appears before the Auryn soul inside Livia's body gets incited enough to get into an intense verbal fight with the woman...</blockquote>

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