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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 8840689" data-attributes="member: 6816692">A rock solid mystery            We're just about to leave, when the Court announces the return of Riffian, leader of the Wild Hunt. The really tall warrior enters the throne room and greets us all with a loud “Huzzah!” before he apologizes to all the fey of the Court that he wasn't able to catch “that damn fox” yet. There is a very silent murmur, but before Riffian can realize that, and before we can ask what would be so special about that fox, the warrior turns to Auryn, Gabriel and Andrei.“My apology for the incident on the chess fields. I hope that none of you were trampled by my horse.”When we show Riffian that we are unharmed and managed to jump out of his way in time, he appears to be honestly relieved.“Oh, and don't think that I would begrudge you for being friends with that idiot Rock. I can see that you are made out of a totally different kind of wood.”We're surprised to hear that even someone like Riffian would know about our “friendship” with Rock Rackus, but as the Docker appears to be a legitimately legend in Clover, we silently accept the fact that we'll most likely encounter many more people with strange misconceptions about us. Riffian then looks at Auryn for quite a few seconds before we can almost hear something click in his head.“Oh! You must be the 'small flower lady' Asrabey spoke about. Tell me, do you know where my dear comrade would be? Is he doing well? I'd love to spar with him one more time.”“This will be difficult, I fear.”, Auryn replies. “He's in the Waking, either still in Drakr, or maybe he has returned to Risur. But he is well, and while I believe that seeing an old comrade is just what he might need right now, the pathway to the Waking has been shot down.”Riffian sighs almost theatrically, but nevertheless thanks Auryn for this information. Thisraldion on the other hand appears to be glad that Asrabey is nowhere near for now. Riffian then leaves the room and as soon as he is out of hearing range, the whole room bursts into laughter. When one of the fey becomes aware at our confusion, they explain that the whole “fox” story is just a decoy to get Riffian and his Wild Hunt onto the battlefield each day.(I'm pretty sure Carlyle was as irritated by Riffian as he was by most of Asrabey's habits. And that's the reason why Auryn instantly had a soft spot for him despite not being family. Now I still don't know whether Carlyle would revel in Riffian's and his disdain for Rock or loathe his comraderie with Asrabey, but tend for the latter. Carlyle always finds a reason to not like brash people)Thisraldion then tells us that they'd expect us to return with more information on Rock's murderer in two days. Salinn kindly offers us rooms to stay in during our time in Clover, and she also does hope that we're able to solve this mystery so maybe peace can return to the city once more. As she explains that this would be very close to the lazaret, we ask her whether we might see and examine the body of Rock Rackus. Salinn tells us that Rock has already been laid to rest, but we may exhume him if we get the permission from the moss cat mortuary.Fortunately, getting permission is not too hard as it merely requires our participation in an appeasement ceremony. After the exhumation, we examine the still well intact and completely naked body of Rock and find that it has been magically preserved. Regarding the cause of his death, we see that Rock has been struck with an arrow, but also realize that he cannot have died from the arrow wound. This kind of exonerates Olazdor, as the arrow legitimately belongs to the leader of the Hedgehog Court.We also see that Rock's head had been severed, but this must have taken place after his demise. Especially as the head was severed with two blows to the same spot. What is also quite weird is the fact that the body has lost surprisingly little blood. Carlyle senses that something is not right at all with the corpse, so he examines the remaining blood for unusual substances and finds traces of some kind of poison. Unfortunately, he cannot classify the substance and neither a magical examination of Rock's blood or the blood on the arrow gives him any results. He then turns Rock over back and forth an bites his lips in confusion.“None of this makes sense...”, he murmurs. “It is as if Rock hasn't lived the life we knew he did. How do I put it... this body shows no signs of 'being used' at all. Just look at him: He is immaculate, besides the wound and the severed head of course”“A simulacrum?” Auryn guesses, being eerily reminded of that time when Tyler Starke and Lord Byron-Saxby had forged a double of her to commit crime. But we have to dismiss this idea, as a simulacrum would have most likely dissolved already.We then ask those present about what is known about the discovery of Rock's body and the kittens tell us that Rock was found dead in a bend in the Krogtunnel on the night of the 16th.Rock probably used the tunnel quite often to get from the Unseen Court to the Hedgehog Court, which raised the suspicion that Thisraldion might have become jealous of Rock's connection to their rival Court, and possibly Olazdor.(Going from the motive of political issues to a romantic rivalry in 5 seconds. That's just so like Rock Rackus)From all that we've learned so far, we are now pretty sure this "corpse" does not really belong to Rock Rackus and decide to search for possible eye witnesses for the murder. Even if we don't know why and how someone would go to such lengths to fake an immaculate and believable dead body.So we go back to the Court and ask if there might be any fey who have seen Rock Rackus after he left the Unseen Court that fateful night. We learn from the palace guards that Rock left the Court fully dressed that night, though presumably he must have been in Thisraldion's bed before that. So him still having had an affair with Thisraldion appears to be an open secret at Court.Other fey hush about of more potential eyewitnesses, who are being held near an arena to fight each other in the arena during the “Purge”. One of them is said to be a homeless man named Baldur Norther. We ask the Fey about that Purge and lean about the fact that being homeless is a crime in Clover. We all, especially Andrei, think that this tradition is quite cruel, and that we should find the witnesses before it is too late. Still we first we want to look for traces at the crime scene.(In hindsight, we all underused Andrei in this chapter as we often simply forgot that he was part of the party during the Dreaming episode. Which is a shame, as I really like him as a character and his concept is pretty unique. Should I ever re-write our tales in a novel version, I will definitely use him as a focal character here and flesh him out more. After all, he has all the reasons to try and return to Flint as quickly as possible, too)We go to the tunnel where Rock's dead body had been found. To our surprise, we find the place decorated with flowers as they fey appear to mourn him quite intensely. Gabriel points out that he'd usually only seen this reverence when either someone truly innocent was killed in tragic way and sighs, being reminded of the many times he had seen this in Flint.It doesn't take too much effort to find the right spot where Rock's body had fallen to the ground. We examine the place carefully and find some translucent eggshells as well as several spider-webs. Carlyle also manages to find Rock's tracks despite the time that has already passed. But once he follows the track back and forth, he raises his brows in confusion as he finds that Rock walked along his way, then collapsed and... disappeared.“It appears as if someone duplicated Rock. But how... and why?”, he mumbles more to himself as he points to a second, barely visible Rock-sized imprint on the ground. We guess that maybe someone knocked Rock our, or killed him, duplicated him and then took the original with them.“A weird trophy-hunter perhaps...?” Auryn guesses with a certain disgust in her voice.We realize that guessing doesn't help us any further, so Carlyle touches the ground and asks the tunnel for its memories of Rock. The scene shifts and he sees a vision of Rock, being completely naked and without any expression in his eyes. He is then struck by an arrow and beheaded with two blows before falling over and bleeding very little despite having his major arteries severed.Just as the vision ends and Gabriel is about to explain that this “dead Rock” would never ever have been the real one, we hear the sound of rushing water coming towards us. All of a sudden there is salty water raising quickly from the walkway and waves come crashing at us. To top this all, we can spot several Orca whales swimming in our general direction.Before any of us can comment on the madness of the situation, Carlyle encases us all in a sphere of ice. Fortunately, the sphere is sturdier than the whales' headbutts and the creatures – obviously summoned – disappear after a few minutes. Meanwhile, we find ourselves fully submerged and thus still in danger.(utilizing his wall of ice once more. I did tell you that he likes his wall spells, didn't I?)Carlyle then takes the risk to teleport a short distance right outside of the tunnel. When we arrive, we happen to be a few feet in the air, so we stumble ungraciously to the ground. Seems like even short-distanced teleport is growing more and more dangerous in the Dreaming.We take a quick thought on who might have just tried to kill us and why, but then quickly return to the matter of Rock Rackus. Since someone must have disappeared with Rock unseen and without leaving any traces, we can only think of two quite similar methods of removing him from reality: Either someone would have put Rock into a bag of holding and is now holding him in an anti-magic field, or someone has access to the same kind of Absurdist Web as we do. And since we know that the webs are connected, we agree to just try our luck with that one.So we pull out our own Absurdist Web and think of removing Rock from it...</blockquote>

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