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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spyscribe" data-source="post: 2359926" data-attributes="member: 5808">Part the One-Hundred Thirty-FirstIn which: Lira and Anvil explore Bountiful at night, and we find out what happens to the treasure.Aboveground, the streets are deserted, and—aside from the party’s own movements—absolutely still.  The effect would be eerie, except for the memory of what the streets had been like before.  Nothing like a town of animated skeletons to put things in perspective.Anvil and Lira make their way towards the desecrated temple in the middle of the town.  For the last half-block, they have been stepping carefully through a swathe of fallen skeletons piled nearly to their knees.  They appear to have collapsed where they stood when the arch was broken.  The dry >clack clack< of brittle bones sliding against each other is the only sound in the darkness.When they reach clear road again, Lira breaks the silence.  “If we burn Bountiful, do you think the Sovereigns will send someone to investigate?”“It seems likely.”“Do you think we’ll be gone by then?”“Probably,” Anvil replies.Lira stops, choosing her words carefully.  “If it looks like we won’t… would you mind preparing an undetectable alignment for me?”Anvil considers.  Since her divine revelation, Lira has shown a strong and distinctive aura under a detect chaos spell, not something—like her holy symbol—that she can hide under her tunic.  On the one hand, Anvil is not sure that church leaders generally condone using Ketennek’s blessings to conceal chaotic priests from the forces of the Law.  On the other, the laws of the Sovereignty state that it is illegal—on pain of death—to be a chaotic priest, and so he would—to whit—be using Ketennek’s blessings to prevent her unjust execution under a miscarriage of Justice.  It is an interesting dilemma, one he will have to record in his Log of Justice.To Lira he says only, “If it appears likely we will have to deal again with the Sovereigns, it can be done.”She nods.  “Thank you.”They continue in silence, past the carpet of bones, to the temple beyond.###Thatch uses a large golden tureen to scoop coins off the floor of the royal vault and dump them into a waiting cart which the group has appropriated.  Annika and Kiara have gone to walk with Petros back to his tower, leaving him, Eva, and Benedic to sort through the assorted loot, estimate its value, and decide what will be taken back with them.Before he and Lira left, Anvil broached the question of whom the treasure in the vault rightfully belonged to.#Eva looked at Anvil as if he were a little dim.  “I think that would be us,” she replied.“The former resident of this keep may have heirs,” he pointed out.“Yeah, but umm… how are we going to find them?” Thatch asked.  “You know… if they’re out there.”The group finally decided that if anyone in the Sovereignty had really been concerned about the contents of the vault, they would have sent their own group of operatives to retrieve them. #Euro, still lighted, trots by.  The ruby in his teeth casts red glowing spots on the surrounding walls and floor.  He drops the gem in the cart and turns back to the pile to get another.Yep, thinks Thatch, it’s good to have money.###The inside of the temple is pitch black.  Since neither she nor Anvil have any light spells left, Lira strikes a sunrod on the stone flags of the entryway and follows close behind Anvil as he proceeds through the desecrated space, sword in hand.The building has been wrecked: furniture overturned, papers scattered, and anything that might have once been holy to Ketennek has been deliberately defiled.  Lira finds a recently dated decree from the Baroness Teysu Gyoko, who seemed to have been the local noble, in a ransacked office, and pockets it as documentation that they were here.  Everywhere, the walls and floors are covered in blood.  Anvil and Lira soon they find the bodies--brutally murdered and left where they fell.“Could this have been some kind of last stand?” Lira asks.Anvil shakes his head.  “Everything is barricaded from the outside.”“Why would…?”  Lira abruptly stops, realizing the answer to her own question.  “They didn’t want the clergy to be skeletons.  They just wanted them dead.”Anvil says nothing and steps forward into the main sanctuary.The huge space swallows the light of Lira’s sunrod.  More wreckage of pews… blood… Anvil approaches the main alter and finds that someone has cut a large square hole in the center of it.  Lira tugs on his sleeve.“Look.”His gaze follows her finger.  Pinned to the wall above the altar is a foot.Anvil takes the sunrod and steps closer to the wall.  Standard temple architecture usually places a large holy symbol of Ketennek on this wall.  It’s still there… behind the disemboweled priest nailed to it.Behind Anvil, Lira swallows bile and tries not to think about what order death, nailing, and disembowelment might have occurred in.“Do you want to try and take him down?” she asks.“Why?” he answers.  “We’re going to burn it all anyway.”Anvil turns on his heel and walks out, Lira following quickly behind.###Eva picks up the last stray gold coin in the corner of the vault.  Euro does a sweep, comes up empty.  Thatch surveys the empty room.“Umm… I guess there wasn’t much not worth taking then, was there?”</blockquote>

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