Session 8: Lionsmane & On to Gullin Report

General Summary

The party awoke the next morning after an evening of meeting several interesting characters from Lionsmane and headed to the Westerlies to find Deid's shoppe and to return the Captara that was filled with the fire spell from the spelltouched wolf outside of the Den of the Expelled.  Outside the shoppe, the party encountered a pair of clerics giving a sermon and serving food to the refugees.  The party met the older preacher as a man named Stiles Gourn.  He preached about the God of the New Day as a new god who believed in service and working together to get through these troubled times.

Several of the party members were intrigued by the teachings, which did seem somewhat vague.  Harrigan asked some additional questions, and was left wanting additional information.  Father Brennan observed Father Gourn's assistant, Brother Gunther Panshore, engaged in a heated argument with a cleric of Shinhalla. Brother Panshore was attempting to explain to the cleric that the ruin in which they preached and served, while it was previously a temple of Shinhalla, that it was now more appropriately suited to serve the God of the New Day as the Clerics of Shinahlla abandonded the refugees.  The Cleric, Savreaux Dursthome, disagreed.   Eventually, Sister Dursthome left in a huff.  The scores of listeners were fed following the sermon and the party eventually crossed the small square to Deid's Shoppe of the Varied and Wondrous.
Deid was excited to see the heroes, especially Earendel, and paid them handsomely for the filled captara.  He also offered two more to the party should they encounter any additional spellstruck creatures.  Additionally, Deid asked for a favor in partial exchange for some magical items: a book of his that had been borrowed by his colleague, and fellow wizard, Shawn D'Urso.  Deid claimed that he had not been able to gain entrance to the house and he had not heard from Shawn in some time.  The party soon headed the seven or eight blocks, through one of the seediest parts of the Westerlies, to the relatively narrow, but wide and tall, home that Deid described.  For some minutes, the party was unable to get inside, but after a pair of them tried the door together, a spell engaged and magically jettisoned all of them inside, minus their gear.  The trap was clearly a puzzle, and the party was faced with several items and objects.  A large chandelier hung from a great height by a chain.  A small bed was in the corner.  A rug was nailed to the floor.  An odd glass cube held a key.  A small fountain bubbled along the far wall.  An unlocked chest sat on the floor between a small table and a pair of chairs, one wooden, one finely covered.  A rusted suit of armor holding an axe stood on the near wall, next to a statue of a man facing off against a large snake.  A small imp harassed the party as they worked the riddle, minorly damaging them throughout the struggle.  Eventually, Krindle climbed Ashton's shoulders and shimmied up the chain to the chandelier and then made it crash down on the party in a surprising, but extremely Krindle-like, manner.  Among the chandelier's remains the party discovered a diamond to cut the key from the glass cube and free themselves.  The facade of the puzzle fell away and they also recovered the books requested by Deid, and found Shawn's corpse.  Rupert also recovered the axe from the room and the party found gold inside the fancy chair.  Harrigan found a black pearl in a large oyster in the fountain.  Returning to Deid, the party negotiated for some magical items.  Before long, they were back at the Honeyed Lute to meet up with Bordan Cillius.Bordan was anxious to get underway to find the only creature who knew the secrets of the Rhungeist: the Wetterkatze.  The Wetterkatze was a fabled cat who protected Riverside against dark forces, but specifically the Rhungeist.  Following the Crepitus Magnum, Bordan believes that the Wetterkatze left Riverside for some reason, allowing the Rhungeist to grow in power.  Bordan had followed the trail of the Wetterkatze to Gullin, but the town has been overrun with Takers.  The breadbasket of Central Shadowspeak, Gullin is the largest farming community in Southern Balusdale.
      The party arrived in town in the early afternoon and noticed that Takers were in control of the large marketplace, running the buying and selling of goods, and collecting taxes at every turn.  The party headed to a lovely and interesting inn, the Mighty Piper, which had a large number of outdoor tables, and a second floor outdoor seating area.  The Inn also boasted a large general store.  The most intriguing part of the inn, however, was a set of magical pipes that were built into the interior and exterior walls and that magically accompanied anyone performing on the stages (one outdoor, one indoor).  Father Brennan discovered the power of the pipes shortly after he began playing, and Earendel was similarly impressed.  The party asked around and through Father Brennan's entrancing music, they discovered that the Heiderman Farm, a large estate north of Town, seemed to be the central stronghold of the five or six score takers in the town.  The party also learned from the merchant in the Inn that a druid named Violet, who often appeared and assisted the farmers, might also be available to help track down the Wetterkatze.  Finally, Harrigan made contact with a local thief named Solomon, who let him know that the Takers had a relative stranglehold on the local economy, but there was still money to be made in town.
That night, as they slept in their beds at the Mighty Piper, a group of assassins, looking eerily like those who assailed Deid outside of the Singing Sorcerer in Thornvine, attacked them in their rooms.  Luckily, the quick thinking, and quick counterattack by the heroes felled three of them, and ran off the fourth.  Krindle was able to identify them as members of the Purple Shiv, a powerful group of arcane tricksters that worship the goddess Mythantis.
The next day, the party plans to seek out Violet and possible assault the Heiderman farm.