Warriors Of The Coast

[DEFCON 1]

"I'm going to do a floor by floor sweep. I think Nelson has the top already. Taviss, stay with the Lady and Zan; I'll take Garrick with me."

As Khalia stands there with the empty lamp, she nods once to Ari in agreement. The monster hunter moves into the room and to the right hand door, throwing it open and hurrying on through with Garrick following on behind. Taviss and Zan also then enter the entry hall and take stock of the situation.

With nothing else of note to be found in the entry hall, the three of them move into what looked to be a pantry at one time (Room #13) with row upon row of shelves. There are small, dented cooking utensils, and the remnants of some foodstuffs on the floor. Other than that, it looks like the pantry was stripped clean. From behind you all, you hear Ari and Garrick re-enter the entry hall from the other side, then announce they are moving up to the second floor.

[sblock=Ari & Garrick: ]You sprint through the right hand door and move quickly through a stripped-bare pantry, a kitchen and dining area that has some of the chairs knocked over, a storage room of chest and boxes that seems to be mostly emptied, then a small bathroom with two wooden chairs with holes in the seats that stand over a pair of pits that go into floor and into the ground and a washbasin on the inside wall. You move quickly into the entry hall again, then go upstairs to the second floor. [/sblock]

[sblock=Nelson: ]As you look inside the compartment that normally holds the lamp oil, you notice a few dried oil stains right beneath the opening, and that there is just barely a small amount of oil still at the bottom. You would think that either the lighthouse kept going until it ran out of oil (and no one ever refilled it), or perhaps someone drained it of it's oil. The size of the stain on the floor leads you to believe that either the people who put oil in are very, very messy, or more likely that it was the result of trying to siphon the oil out.[/sblock]

 

[DEFCON 1]

Khalia, Zan and Taviss finish up their searching of the pantry and move forward into what appears to be a kitchen and dining area. A stone oven dominates the outside wall of this room. Nearby stands a sink, and cupboards line the walls, their doors hanging open. One corner holds a table and five chairs, the chairs strewn about the same way they were in the entry hall. Looking through everything, it is obvious that this room has been looted of it's most valuable housewares as well. There's no indications of any struggle or invasion (by monsters, vermin, and the like), and Taviss notes no bloodstains that he can find.

[sblock=Ari & Garrick: ]You reach the second floor landing and enter what looks to be a common workroom (Room #8), probably where the Limran's repaired their furniture, fixed the lighthouse housing and the like. Tool racks are mounted on the walls, and large tables occupy the center. You move to your left to the next door which remains open and enter what appears to be a very small bedroom. It contains an adult-sized bed and and empty wardrobe.

As you move through the bedroom and approach the next door, you definitely get the smell of death hanging in the air. You throw open the door and quickly move in. A double bed dominates the room, and beside it stands an empty, open wardrobe and a night table with a lamp. Clothes are strewn everywhere, most of them stained a deep, splattered red. You try your best not to choke on the stench as you cross the room, and when you look behind the bed you find the remains of two bodies. Those of Carl and Julia Limran... the man and woman of the house.[/sblock]

[sblock=Nelson: ]You get up from looking inside the oil compartment of the lighthouse housing and move to the glass door which opens onto the outside walkway around the light chamber. The smell of the sea air is strong and you smile to yourself in recognition. You walk around the glass housing to look out onto the sea, but notice something almost immediately. Probably a quarter-mile away and about 100 yards up from the slight, rocky beach you see a tall, wooden, hastily-build tower with a large fire burning at the top of it. This obviously takes you aback for a second, when your eyes then move out to the sea a bit. You now notice what the real problem is. You can see at least three wooden ships have ground themselves on the rocky shoals of the peninsula reef. All of them have taken on water, all of them look to have been burned, and all of them look to be devoid of people. If that fire tower has been running continuously while this lighthouse has been out (especially during the night), it's obvious that those ship's captains probably thought the fire tower was the lighthouse and thus didn't realize how close they were to the shore and that they were going to run aground.[/sblock]

 

[Ringmereth]

Satisfied with his inspection of the room, Taviss motions impatiently with a sideways nod of his head to keep moving, and creeps towards the door.

 

[James Heard]

Nelson begins to look around for the lighthouse keeper's spyglass.

 

[DEFCON 1]

[sblock=Taviss: ]While Khalia and Zan continue looking and inspecting the kitchen area, you move on to the next door and open it up. What you find is a large storage room filled with a few barrels, a number of chests, and some gardening implements. These have all been opened, and again probably all the important or useful items have been scavenged.[/sblock]
[sblock=Nelson: ]You move back inside the glass light housing and look around for a spyglass. There isn't one in plain view, but when you open the lid of a storage box up here, you find one that had been broken and put to the side. Upon inspection you can see that one of the lenses is cracked and that it no longer can adjust it's focus. However, it being better than nothing, you go back outside and use it to look down the beach.

Although a bit blurry, you can tell that the three grounded ships all appear to be stripped of things like sails, rope, barrels and the like. The wooden signal tower has a large stack of wood at it's base (obviously to use to keep the fire going), and as you watch you notice a lone man with long hair, leather jerkin, and tall boots walk up from beyond the point to the tower, move around the tower a bit and inspecting the fire, and finally head back southward past the rocky point and out of sight.[/sblock]

 

[stonegod]

[sblock=DM and Garrick]Ari, familiar with this stench, takes a bit of cloth from his pack and wraps it around his mouth and nose to damp the smell. He calls out to the others, "We found the lightkeepers!"

Not wanting to distrub the scene too much for the Lady investigator, Ari peeks through the adjoining door to the next room to see if the young ones meet a similar fate.[/sblock]

[OOC: Sorry for the delay. Didn't see the second post on the 24th]

 

[James Heard]

Pausing thoughtfully, Nelson gently begins to tickle the broken lens in an intricate movement of his fingers while whistling a gentle tune passed down through years to worthy Luttin children by his great-great-grandmother. As the tune progresses, tiny motes begin to float from his fingertips and lick at the edges of the glass lense, trying to coax them back into the shape they once held intact.

OOC: Nelson casts Mending on the spyglass. If it's not been an hour yet for the Prestidigitation effect to pass he'll also clean and polish it with magic as well.

 

[DEFCON 1]

[sblock=Nelson: ]Nelson stands outside, having successfully repaired the spyglass to get a better look down the coastline. With the change in focus now available to him, he can tell that the path the lone man took back and forth from beyond the point has been used quite a bit. More details of the ships can be made out (including their names), and one in particular stands out to him. Aegir's Majesty is a House Lyrandar ship that you remember Khalia mentioning back in the Green Lilac as the one that had some equipment of hers. Suddenly, you hear Ari's voice from down below.[/sblock]

"We found the lightkeepers!"

Ari Osten's voice rings out throughout the lighthouse and catches everyone's attention.

Khalia immediately looks at Taviss and Zan and hurries off to head upstairs to where Ari is. Zan looks at Taviss, then decides to follow the archivist up the stairs.

The monster hunter opens the door to the next room and finds that this appears to be the sitting room of Carl and Julia. Like the other rooms, it's been tossed about and anything worthwhile has been taken. All that remains is a number of women's clothes strewn about, a bunch of broken bric-a-brac, and several furniture pieces either too big or too worthless to take. Within a few moments, Khalia and Zan arrive and the young female noble goes very quiet as she looks at the bloody bodies of the husband and wife.

Zan immediately takes action and declares to the others. "Watchmaster Silversun needs to know about this. This has gotten too serious too fast. I'm going to go back to town and alert the militia to what's going on out here. Garrick, will you come with me?" The young rogue looks at the entire scene and realizes that perhaps this isn't the best place for a guy like him. He nods in the affirmative. Zan tells the group "I'm sure some of the militia will be out here within a couple hours. I'll let them know you were here in case you leave before they arrive." He looks grimly once more at the bodies, and then he and Garrick turn and leave the lighthouse, heading back into town.

**********

OOC: drothgery said he would be back on Sunday, so I'll not npc his character's investigation and instead wait for him to come back to let us know what he wants to do. Also, some of you might have noticed that I've put a request back in the Talking The Talk forum for a couple new players, as I'd like to get back up to at least six. Now that Zan and Garrick are gone from the story, I can fill in the new players easily.

If anyone has any questions, problems, comments, suggestions on the game thus far, please feel free to make them in the out of game thread. Thanx guys!

 

[drothgery]

The monster hunter opens the door to the next room and finds that this appears to be the sitting room of Carl and Julia. Like the other rooms, it's been tossed about and anything worthwhile has been taken. All that remains is a number of women's clothes strewn about, a bunch of broken bric-a-brac, and several furniture pieces either too big or too worthless to take. Within a few moments, Khalia and Zan arrive and the young female noble goes very quiet as she looks at the bloody bodies of the husband and wife.

"Flame preserve their souls." Khalia says, quietly.

Zan immediately takes action and declares to the others. "Watchmaster Silversun needs to know about this. This has gotten too serious too fast. I'm going to go back to town and alert the militia to what's going on out here. Garrick, will you come with me?"

"Please hurry, and be careful." She adds, as they prepare to leave. And then she begins investigating the scene, with patient and painstaking thoroughness (take 20 on search=> 29).

 

[DEFCON 1]

Khalia begins looking over the bodies as delicately as she can, and starts the investigation. Using her keen observational and deduction skills, she is able to come up with the following:

Both bodies are laying face down on the floor and the large bloodstains on their backs seem to indicate that they were stabbed from behind. No weapons are in evidence, so either the two of them were defenseless when they were killed, or whoever did this took the weapons with them. However, based on body placement and how they landed, it's more likely that they were unarmed and facing the wall when the swords(?) were plunged through their backs. A cold-blooded murder of two defenseless people.

The large dried bloodstains on the floor and on the bedspread tells you that no attempt was made to cover up this murder, and thus it was done by someone (or a group of someones) who does not seem to care about hiding his guilt. So this isn't some sort of "murder of passion" or anything like that. The people involved were obviously looking to take the stuff from the lighthouse and these two were in the way. Thus they were eliminated.

Based on this evidence and the evidence gathered from the lizardman you had already questioned, it seems most logical that the humans down the beach (probably pirates) came here to steal stuff from the lighthouse, killed off the man and woman, stationed themselves in a camp to the south, and then hired the lizardfolk to attack the town and thus keep them militia busy so no one would come down here and discover this situation any time soon. The question now is... are the humans down the beach keeping tabs on this lighthouse? And if they are... now that they know their murders have been discovered, how long will they stay in their camp before deciding to head for the hills to avoid capture? Because they must know that once Seawell's militia finds the lighthouse keeper's dead body... the entire militia will be down on them like a load of bricks.