Session 26 9/4/2022

Arden, Lucia, Elektrah, Brottar

Michael, Megan, Tasha, Bill

The party was gathering and divying up the loot from the previous encounter with bandits/cultists. The party head back to town. Lucia seems unusually quiet and asks Arden various questions about death and the afterlife. She's visibly shaken after dying, however briefly is may have been. The party makes it back to town and sees several buildings have been marked with graffiti, the same symbol each time. Initially, it was just the guardhouse and the temple of Umberlee. Now it was a shop, a home, an alleyway, and an orphanage. Lucia and Brottar decide to drink their troubles away. After several hours of drinking, Lucia crawls up the stairs and curls up on the rug on the floor of her room. It is around 3a. Brottar makes sure she gets to her room and goes to bed. Elektrah is awake again by this point (having only needed 4 hours or so) and hears a commotion outside. There are several guardsmen crowded around the alleyway by the graffiti. They comment how it was painted on, not drawn with chalk and that the paint was still wet in some places. She heads back to the tavern and checks on Lucia. Lucia is gone. It's about 4:30a by this point.

Later that morning, the party sees a request on the job board for information about some criminal activities that happened the previous night. The temple of Umberlee was vandalized, a shop was burned down, a home was robbed, and somehow the orphanage has more money for clothes/toys for the children. Immediately suspecting Lucia, the party sends Brottar's Dire Wolf to track her. They are taken to the house, the shop, the temple, the alleyway, and finally to the barge. The find Lucia chatting with the captain. The party goes off to investigate further and find a trail of blood in the alleyway where the graffiti is. The dire wolf is able to track the blood through the alleys to a sewer grate. Brottar lifts the grate and climbs down to see if he can find the source of the blood. He hears a shuffling sound a short distance away, but it's moving away from him. The footsteps are light and fast, things Brottar is not. Elektrah climbs down to help and uses her spider climb boots to walk on the walk. She eventually wild shapes into a crocodile to swim faster in the sewer water. She is led to a dead end with a ladder leading up to the city. There is a small humanoid with a bandage behind the ladder. She goes back to Brottar and, with the help of the wolf, they find the other sewer grate (where the small person was). Brottar lifts the gate and they see a halfling climbing up the ladder. After some discussion, the learn that the blood was his but he's better now. He was hurt when he fell from the rooftop. He broke a bone that was sticking out of his arm. But he's better. The party doesn't press for details. They head back to the main part of town to get cleaned up. The temple of Umberlee is frustrated to know that they were robbed as well as vandalized. The main room of the temple was trashed and various colors of paint where splattered everywhere (Grey, Red, Black). It's unknown what was missing at this time. The party deduces that the paint probably came from one of the two general stores in town. They suspect perhaps the other store was behind the damage to gain a monopoly. The Dire Wolf leads them through the alleys to a dead end where they find paint cans sitting in the corner. They tell the local guardsmen what they've discovered before preparing to leave on the barge.

The barge makes it's way down the river to Baldur's Gate. They're able to secure rooms at The Harpy's Nest. Arden goes the temple of Kelemvor to chat with his brethren about what's been going on (cultists of Cyric, the torqs, the various factions around them, the missing souls, his new sword, etc). The church asks for a few days to research the blessed bastard sword. They believe it might be an artifact that will become more effective as time goes on. Elektrah is in the tavern part of the inn checking the message board. She finds a few jobs about dragons (a white dragon in the Cloud Peaks and a Black Dragon in the Misty Forest) and a group of hunters that went missing near The Wood of Sharp Teeth. She also overhears rumors of necromancy along the Uldoon Trail and a plague in Nashkel. The party spends the evening deciding which, if any, jobs they want to take. They also spend some time convincing Lucia to talk to the Flaming Fist (the local guard force that patrols the roads and town). She is very reluctant but is eventually swayed.

1000 XP for detective work and investigations.

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