Knightly Letter: Ileas 10

Ileas,
 
I'm writing this letter as we're taking some time to rest at the shore of a lake at the town of Marsh's Fury. Luke, Hayley and myself are slowly turning into fish due to some mysterious being singing at us. So while I can't tell you how things will go on, I'll start by writing how we got here, how three knights turned into fish might make for a good story.
 
When last I wrote we just came back from our dinner with Alma Marblehook and took some well needed rest. I thought I was plagued by an exhaustion fuelled nightmare of a hag ressurecting Cornu in Logvale (the woodcutter village we visited on the way to Keralon, all those years ago) and commanded him to come after us. But in the morning it turned out everyone had that same dream, the hag seemingly sending us a vision of what is to come.Since there was no way of knowing if the vision is from the past, present or future we decided to take some time scouting the area for tracks of wolf-Cornu, but could not find any besides signs that Patty's geese have moved away.
 
Strange that after all those years we might have to face Cornu again. but while we won't have your help I think we're in a much better spot to face him, last time he cornered and hounded us while we were weaker and more strained for resources, getting the jump on us. We're also way stronger than we were five years ago, so unless the Hag infused him with ore sinister powers I at least suspect a direct confrontation with him would work in our favor. So you can imagine not finding any tracks is at least unsettling, as he could get the jump on us.
 
The rest of that day went somewhat as usual, Hayley went out to perform some ritualistic magic to improve the harvests of the farmers, Gael went to talk to Tommel, though if he learned anything he's not sharing it. But Luke found something while investigating the kitchen, not necessarily something in the kitchen, but investigating the vision of Niara being eaten by a frog in the kitchen made him think of a Banderhobb, a vile frog like creature created by Hags, kind of consolidating the idea that the Patty would be first and foremost saving Niara from Patty (or maybe some other Hag would be trying to make Patty's plans for a daughter fail). Regardless, this news did mean the kitchen was not really as off limits as we first thought for Niara, so we decided to hire her again with a proper wage.
 
The day after there was a letter at the door for Luke, it was from his master Amarra, urging him to look into a specific tome called the Grimoire of Creation and its connection to different towers like Caern Fussil, connected to elemental planes. And claiming their hearts like he has the heart of Caern Fussil could give him a lot of power. Now I don't think Luke's really lacking for power but Amarra and Luke see it differently, as Amarra's arch nemesis is in Keralon according to her and she think Luke needs to be able to access the highest levels of magic (or help her access it) to defeat this enemy.
 
But both those things, research into high magic and the Grimoire, would be available to Luke in the academy, a place that still caused him some discomfort as he had been expelled from it during his last stay. But things were different now, Luke made himself into a knight of the Briar Ring and a Noble Lord to boot, he was also forgiven for any transgressions and even the King himself said that the nobility of Keralon would do well to leave all those things in the past. So with that he made himself immediately ready to leave for the academy, and not wanting him to face his past demons alone, Lil and I went along with him.
 
When we got to the academy it was hard not the impressed by the grandeur of it all, students crossing between buildings, magic oozing from the tiles on the floor to the tiles on the roofs. Luke led us to the headmaster's office, where we were greeted by a woman called Brunhilde, an elderly secretary who Luke could persuade to give us five minutes of the headmaster's time, right after the current appointment which ended up being a student that got scolded and hit with an arcane ruler. The headmaster at first laughed at Luke's requests, claiming he has some nerve to request access but that he could start over as a freshman student and maybe do a test to show how much he learned to skip a few years, but that had yet to be decided. It did sound like this process could take a lot of time.
 
It was hard not to notice Luke's fiery tendencies boiling up while the Headmaster was claiming it would do him some good to re-learn the basics. So when we exited the building I pushed whatever exhaustion Alma's dinner left me and did what every good friend would do: invited Luke to go out drinking and shoot fire bolts at 'old wizard shaped' driftwood in the Lorerun river, or well Luke was shooting fire, I resorted to skipping rocks at them.
 
The next day, when the exhaustion was finally gone from Lil and myself, we set out to gather some jobs. We realized that both organizing the festival for Wolf's Rest and expanding our keep and investing in the village requires large amounts of gold, and since Knighthood makes it our job to help people we all went to our respective circles to look for bounties and minor quests we could do. In the end we landed on a job Gael found: a noble named Meredith Marsh needs help with disappearances in her village called Marsh's Fury and we should meet up with her in her family's townhouse. It's a shame since the job I found about a haunted museum sounded like a fun time, but it's not the mass disappearance of an entire village, as we would learn when we talked to Meredith, a middle aged half elf who was busy packing as she had already written off any knight coming to help her. She explained how she likes hunting and after one evening of hunting she came back and the village was fully abandoned. As she found no tracks and as the last heir of the Marsh family she could only come to Keralon and seek help from the knight circles.
 
Deciding to help her we set out towards Marsh's Fury after informing the people back home that we'd be gone for the next week at least, as the trip would take a few days. On the way there she mentions how her grandparents mysteriously vanished 50-60 years ago, but at the time no one thought much of it, thinking they just vanished into the swamp and drowned. But maybe these things were linked.
 
But as we arrived on the eve of our third day of travel (around the 14th of Aran) we saw that the village was full of life and its people were going their merry way, seemingly oblivious to them having vanished a few days ago.
 
We set out for Meredith's house and decided to keep some watch during the night, but before that Luke wanted to see if there's magic around but only found that Meredith's bow and ring were magic. Both heirlooms of her family, though she wasn't aware the ring was magical, as it seems to have a long history going back to elven justicars who ruled these lands, and the ring could be used to imprison people. During the night while on watch Dadroz noticed how people came out of their houses to drink water from the swamp before going back inside.
 
The next day we decided to talk to some people near the swamp to ask about their nightly excursion, and they said they were just really warm in the night and were incredibly thirsty, which was confirmed by them still drinking water. As Hayley started investigating them it became clear these people were slowly tranforming, gills and webbed feets were starting to form. It was clear something very strange was going on as no one remembered anything about the night they vanished, but Gael managed to find a witness: a dog he talked to with some magical help that explained people just woke up in the middle of the night and went to a small island further into the swamp. The dog then was kind enough to lead us further into the swamp, treading over many slippery rocks until we got to the island he mentioned. There we found a lifelike statue of a woman wearing a ring similar to the one Meredith was wearing. And when looking around we found a silver box on the banking of the island.
 
But as Gael reached for the box a bunch of alligators jumped out and attacked us. And while the inital wave was dealt with easily enough, one of them revived due to mysterious singing in the distance to grow to twice its size and its scales tightening into a strong armor. In the end Gael was smacked around by the oversized alligator a bit but we managed to bring it down a second time. Here we set out for where the singing came from, and writing this makes me realize we forgot about the box. So maybe I can run back in a minute to see what was in it. But once we followed the sound to the bank of a giant lake we saw or heard nothing.
 
Gael suggested we should play some music so Gael, together with my sister and I played some music and after a few minutes the singing came back. Though it afflicted Luke, Hayley and myself with forming gills, though it might curse us to a fate as fish for the time being it would be useful to have gills when going into the lake to confront whatever is causing these problems.
 
Hope I can write to you soon, otherwise I hope you'll visit whatever body of water I'll have called home when the curse takes hold permanently.
 
Alistan