[tSoY] Dungeons and Dragnet

[Aristeas]

Another day, another occult massacre

Karalain is investigating.

Mysterious red powders are Valandil's department, so she leaves them to him. Of more interest to her is the scene itself. Her face is focused and impassive as she examines the slaughter. She makes a careful sweep while the others are doing there thing, seeing if anything unusual- more unusual- jumps out.

Failing that, there's the usual checklist of questions. The coating of ash on the floor should be good for footprints, and shifter prints would be especially distinctive. Are there? One assailant or several? There are shards of glass inside, suggesting that he, she, or they came in that way. Yes? Careful examination of the victims' belongings: does anything they have suggest a profession, or identify them more specifically? Does it look like the assailants took anything?

"Hm," she says.

 

[VenezuelanWiz]

Blood, Corpses, Alchemy, Necromancy

"The blood, good sir, is right in front of you", said Valandil with a sense of disgust. "Or what remains of it. Necromancy is the explanation I would venture"
Valandil then examined the corpses. "Where is the elder's head? I can't see it." he asked after casting a glance around.

 

[Lackhand]

Karalain: The ash coats the room, it's true, but it blends with the walls.
In fact, there's less than you would have thought, all told.
It's concentrated near the bodies: it lies heavily on the bed, the walls around it, and the bedspreads on the floor, and the walls and ceilings about them. And, of course, the bodies. It's heaviest in the cavities. ninja edit! Sorry. My brain got ahead of my fingers!

The thicker patches, and their placements, remind you of nothing so much as paint-splatters.

The coating of ash on the floor is muddled and blowing about, the crossbreeze from the door and the window muddling the prints.
Yes, there are shifter prints there, and a claw mark around the window, on the inside -- left by the perps on the way out? -- it's an enormous paw, easily capable of the wounds on the bodies.
Three, maybe six perps. Hard to say exactly.

The belongings are still here, just as they were left: assorted cutlery of the "three feet long, worth hundreds of silver, ill-maintained" variety, a collection of rings and baubles, a pouch of soft golden coins lying within reach of one of the bedrolls.
A coating of the strange ash over everything.
It's clear that the deceased were Adventurers.

There's also a blackened staff in the closet, tipped with a small, tasteful jewel, and a supply of rope, lanterns, and some digging equipment was neatly coiled behind the door.

All the paper and cloth at the scene are mildly singed, as though an overhot iron were passed over them.

In other words... perps entered through the window, and took nothing.

 

[tursiops]

in which Himura pretends he is a rogue

Himura looks out the window to see how many stories off the ground they are and looks for an easy route into that shaft from outside. If he sees one he will go back outside [if not he will jump down] and look around at the midden heap for a) more ash. b) anything that looks like footprints down there and if he finds neither of those he will disrupt the midden looking for anything that the perps might have dropped. (oh and I was thinking of things he could just see but if you want a search check or something of the sort I rolled a "good success")

 

[VenezuelanWiz]

Blood and Magic, Locked Doors and Missing Heads

Valandil, after seeing Himura San vanish, turned to Sotto and inquired if the door was locked when they arrived. Then he started looking for charred bits of the room, particularly the undersides of the beds, bedsheets, bedrolls. He was trying to figure out whether it was an alchemical agent that caused the burning, or some magical power. He knew that chances were slim he would discover anything of use.

 

[Lackhand]

Himura: You head back out of the inn and into the rain, avoiding getting wet by sticking close to the stained stone face of the tower.
A short way around the spiralling Knight's Stair found a greasy sort of door, some 10' below the inn's grade and wedged between a pair of shopfronts.

It opened up onto the bottom of the shaft, where a variety of inorganic trash lay heaped: ruined tools, construction debris, a kiln's worth of potsherds, and some thin and anemic grass.
You could see the rest of the group through the blown-in glass window, a good distance above.

You could also see the cloud of flies, buzzing around a dismembered head laying discarded amidst the trash.
You assume it's the head of Emerikol the Elder, with its long gray beard and fish-like eyes.

It was clearly removed casually in the same slice that split his belly, and someone, or some thing, seems to have chewed off left side of his face.

The head is coated with the ashy stuff, and again, no blood.
It's dry, and dirty, and small, and sad, and kind of squishy over the hard bone.

There is some more of the ashy around it and at the top of the heap -- and a few traces along the wall closest to the inn, you notice now -- but that's it.

A human girl-child watching from the building across waves down gap-toothedly at you through the thick, dirty glass.


Valandil: Sotto informs you that the door was not locked when the police arrived.
However, the proprietress unlocked the door when she saw some scattered ashes in the hall and felt something was wrong. She immediately called the Watch.

The undersides of everything were mostly clean.
It seemed obvious that the ash originated at the bodies, coating any facing surfaces with a few broad splashes.
As to what caused the burning, I'm not sure how you'd be able to tell the difference, but contact with the ash seems to be what caused the singeing.
Anything removed from them didn't have the same scorching (the topsheets, for instance, were a sort of brittle amber color when you brushed the ash away; the mattress itself was still a dirty off-white.)




The old woman clearly wanted to leave, seeming somewhat distraught.

Sotto's not sure what else he can do to help (having finished his deposition) -- he's going to head back to the West Bailey.
Knowing him, he'll probably alphabetize his papers. Again.

He wishes you all good luck. He's going to get back to the *normal* rapists and murderers, if you have no further use for him.

 

[CaineWasFramed]

"That's all right ma'am, you're free to go," Darrien says to the old woman, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Hopefully your sons are fine and are just trying to recover from all this. Is there any place they usually go to relax or hang out in their free time?" After taking down the information from the woman, he stops back up at the room so recently rented by the three unfortunates. "I'm going to check out the building across the shaft, see if anyone heard or saw anything. Feel free to come with." Passing by the shaft outside the inn, he calls out to Himura "Find anything in there?"

 

[tursiops]

Himura calls up (and responds to Darrien) "I've got a head!" he describes the head to the others

not so ninja edit

Himura waves back to the girl with a smile and walks towards her building. He takes note of her window and other windows that might also be able to see the doorway to the midden/shaft.

When Darrien passes Himura points out the window where the girl was/is. "A girl there could see me in the shaft. Are you going to see if others in those buildings may have witnessed the event?"

 

[VenezuelanWiz]

Where Valandil Explains The Messy Room

Before Darrien left, and after he made sure that everyone else [Sotto, the propriatess, the Shield members] is out of ear shot, Valandil shared his theories. "I feel as if they were, torn violently apart. Followed by their blood exploding." he said. The disgust was evident on his face and in his tone. He then asked Darrien to explain to Himura San so he was up to date on his theory, and what they might be facing.

The shadows flicker a bit as he explained this. He however kept his mental pictures in check so as to not startle anyone, as he had done in the past, by playing them on the walls with shadows subconsciously. Gruesome beasts entering through a window, shredding three people, then either the beast or some other person entering the room and exploding the blood of the now dead people does not make for a good shadow puppet show.

He then tried an experiment asking anyone that was going to stick around to yell, once he'd entered the next room over [if it is open and vacant] just to see if people in the neighboring rooms could hear.

 

[Lackhand]

Darrien: (Not sure if you wanted to proceed or interact with Himura. Ping again with whatever you're doing )

Himura: Yay heads! You can faintly hear a hoarse hollering from inside the inn, with no particular urgency behind it.

Valandil: The walls are thick and muffle the sounds of footsteps.

They're not, however, thick enough to deaden full-out shouting, which is audible and would probably awaken you from sleep. The outer walls are thicker, though.