Zoom 2020-04-22 21:00

==Follow up questions:==
* Dead Vinmira’s coded scroll: When plotted on a map, the disconnected journey directions do seem to form an incomplete part of some runic writing – say about half of the lines needed. About 30 to 40 letters worth. So one assumes that there will be the ‘partner’ scroll to this somewhere.
* Cloud castles 
** The Dark Temple was the local name given to grounded DarkStar cloud castle. It was/is the castle of Earth.
** Star Storm was originally called the Air Star – the castle of Air.
** Starport was/is the castle of Water.
** The destroyed castle at the Cracks of Doom was the castle of Fire
** Sky Fleet is the cast of Mana.
* The Interesting Times Gang did believe some of the Elvish historical account of what happened – ie not all Elvish propaganda. They know nothing of Sallahan. They are equipped with silver weapons, but haven’t needed them yet.
* Confirmation that the Elves enslaved humans (including in Wilston) and killed non-humans in the initial invasion.
* There is no bird known as the ‘Cynod Bird’ - but it may be a trollish name for a bird we do know.
* Dougal mused if Saratak could be a reincarnation of Soratan (similar to the Blue Witch) – prompted by Legend 44 - Soratan's Legacy referring to “Soratan received a vision, a foreshadowing of times to come and of his own descent into madness.”
==Party returns to White Beach city:==
The party gave 2sp’s ‘reward’ to each of the kids. They went off to their respective homes. We may visit Oosda’s mother later.
We noticed increased military action on the way back, with enhanced patrols and checks on farmhouses etc. We passed on our info of the encounter with the OB’s and doppelgängers. We were told of a similar attack on a farmhouse to the SouthWest, but the farm held out against the OBs. No reports of packs of dogs.
==Party returns to Onwen’s villa:==
There was a plume of smoke coming out of Onwen’s bedroom. Investigation showed the locked/trapped door to the Onwen’s cellar room had been blown off its hinges – but no other part of the building was damaged. There were two rooms beyond – remains were smouldering but not on fire due to the lack of fresh air. Garaf, being fire resistant, was able to enter:
* Room 1: A study/library with burnt bookcases and books, and a desk that was apparently the focus of the explosions. The room smelt mainly of burnt paper.
* Room 2: An alchemy lab with loads of shattered glass and the ‘interesting’ smell of burnt herbs and other compounds. There were lots of scorched cabinets which may have allowed their contents to survive the fire.
The party decided to cut off the air supply as much as possible and smother the smouldering books and paper with bedding, oilskins etc. The next day (once Q. had learnt it) she would use ‘pyrotechnics’ to put out the fire, and Q. and J. could use ‘chill metal’ to cool everything down.
==Loot found:==
We will subsequently find 2 books of ‘Learn Basic secondary skill’ - needs 10 int. Also a book of second level MU spells – 30% chance for each spell in the PG (Darrell to roll up).
==The Corpse cellar:==
On the other side of the house, we went to the wine cellar with all the corpses. They were all there, and were all beginning to rot except for “Vinmira”s corpse: This was beginning to lose its facial features – they were turning waxy and melting (sort of like a doppelgänger reverting to form but very slowly). Kirsten though it still had traces of “Vinmira”s scent, though there was also something else underneath.
==Owlbear hunt reward==
Francis and Brokev (plus others?) handed in the OB tongues: We got 5gp reward plus 3gp per tongue and a further 5gp for a full debrief. Our warnings about doppelgängers were taken seriously. There had not been any reports of ‘dog packs’ or similar. There was another bounty being offered – 50gp to go and investigate a house in Sallahan. (We wondered if they'd missed a couple of zeros off the end of the reward amount.)
==The Dunes==
Caradoc, Joshua, Quercuis and Twoo went with some members of the ITG to The Dunes. After the snooty hobbit doorman lets us is, we met up with ‘Brandy Vinmira’ (or so we assume) and suggested that he came back with us to the villa. He grabbed a couple of bottles of brandy on account, and came with us. (We assume that Twoo eventually, but reluctantly, also came with us.)
==Vinmira meets Vinmira==
We showed the live Vinmira the corpse of the other Vinmira, to which he exclaimed "Bugger me! I’m dead!". He seemed genuinely shocked. He had no idea what it was – but it could be an ‘enhanced’ doppelgänger – they have had reports of other Wild creatures coming back from the Void in an enhanced form – eg regenerating Centaurs, co-operating Wyverns. (Vinmira did note that these creatures were reappearing in a scattergun fashion.)
Vinmira claimed that he had asked Miriam to send us a message to say that he couldn’t meet up with us for the second night in Far Haven (though he confirmed he had been with us the whole first night).
He seemed happy to hear that we hadn’t followed Saratak’s vision of us defending Onwen at his villa.
He said ‘we’ had been seen visiting the villa (ie our doppelgängers had been seen) – but strangely the fake Vinmira hadn’t been seen. (But Cheron Axehead had definitely told us that the “Vinmira” had been with that group.)
Vinmira has been ordered by his boss (who works directly for Alvera) to go in the near future to see what has happened to Far Haven – given the expectation of an imminent attack.
This Vinmira relished the brandy he had bought, and though he tried one of our ‘good’ bottles of wine (that had turned to vinegar), it obviously wasn’t his kind of thing – even if it had been drinkable.
He suggested that we decapitate the ‘dead’ Vinmira since it showed signs of regenerating. As Umar went to do so, the ‘corpse’ put up a fight but was immediately overwhelmed by the party. 
Vinmira then suggested that we take pieces of the now-definitely-dead corpse to the main temples and as many other clerics as we could find to use divination spells and other means to ‘interrogate’ the corpse (all his spells/skills are centred on obscurement rather than divination.)
He currently can’t suggest any way of differentiating these doppelgängers from the real people – and this obviously worried him.