Burglary & Backstabbing

When we eventually met back up with Eliodiel, she advised she did give the potion back to Ginny. Which, fair enough, it did belong to her, but that could have helped Verrick so much with this trial. Ginny did offer her a reward, a portable hole. Attached was a note "68 skeletons 1 ballista." Rhodri believes it release a bunch of animated skeletons to use as a buffer or distraction if we ever needed to flee a place in a hurry.
 
The next morning, Verrick woke up, very sick. So sick, Evelyn opted to stay back with him to keep watch. We made our way to the town hall, to find it had been broken into in the night, pieces of the Chardalyn statue we broke having been stolen and several guards murdered. There were no markings on the door indicating a forced entry or lock picking. We were able to not the footprints were identical to those left when Rhodri's mother was attacked, but there were 3 sets of prints this time. We believe possibly Dwarven. Whoever they are, magic was most certainly used.
 
We managed to follow the footprints as the led out of town, towards the nearby mountains. We went back to Captain Imdrah, relaying this information. Without Evelyn and Verrick, we were not interested in going much further. She agreed to come with us, and we followed the tracks for about a day. Finally coming across a giant fortress embedded into the mountainside. It was heavily fortified and most certainly active. Even though there shouldn't be anyone out here living.
 
We headed back to Easthaven, having to camp out for a night. Upon returning to town in the morning, we found the Town Hall once more ransacked. This time, the front door having been torn away. We found no signs of Prudence or the Speaker, so we started investigating from the top down. We eventually found the speaker and his last guard locked in a cell. Apparently Prudence took advantage of the reduced number of guards and chose to backstab the town. Her and her gang of thugs locked the speaker and guard up and took off with the copper cauldron.
 
The speaker mentioned one of the thugs had a tattoo representing Zentharum, a local crime syndicate in the south. The speaker still paid us, and had I been in the right frame of mind, I would have refused. Perhaps we'll give back the rubies, until we are able to find and return the cauldron. She possible returned to Targos, being that is where she is from.
 
We also stopped back and Voran's house, so that Eliodial could talk with Celeste once more.
 
Afterwards, we headed back to the Inn, hoping Verrick will be well enough tomorrow so we can continue on.