Session 16 Report
General Summary
[session 16: 26.05.2024]
28th-29th of Hammermoon/Deepwinter, 1489, in the year of the Warrior Princess.
The moon is nearly full.
As Vilu carefully follows Viridian’s guidance on how to sear the rest of the heart on a hot pan (a little butter and herbs, some salt found from Riesling’s cabinets), surprisingly the end result is not… as horrendous as the raw, bloody heart. Some of it sticks to the surface of the heavy cast iron of the pan, but overall, it looks pretty edible! The magical effects of the heart are certainly diminished, but an echo of the heartbeat still persists. While the others are focused on the stew Viridian has made for everyone and the .. now somewhat less gruesome sight of Vilu consuming a peryton heart, Viridian notices something peculiar about Vilu’s shadow dancing on the walls of the inn in the firelight - a rack of deer-like antlers grows from their head, despite there being none on Vilu’s actual self.
It could be a trick of light. Then again, perytons are known for casting a different shadow than what their form truly looks like.
Annie would still like to go visit Guard Captain Iulia Driftwood before everyone heads to bed, but the rest of the party seem unconvinced, especially now that Vilu still looks unwell. It might be best to head to the Town Hall tomorrow instead, especially now that it’s almost so late that she’s quite likely no longer at work. You all decide to head upstairs to rest for a bit instead.
Annie, still restless and full of energy, decides to stay in the common room to write some correspondence to Alcor - a habit of hers to tell her brother what she has been up to, even if the last letter she received back from him has been from months ago. Vilu takes the precaution to set the hard-earned peryton blood outside the window for the night to keep it from spoiling. Surely no one would steal a simple waterskin from the second floor of a building, not even in Easthaven?
As everyone (sans Annie) settles to sleep, now for the first time in a bed after many long days of traveling and sleeping on the cold, harsh ground, it’s no surprise that sleepless sleep claims you before long. However, be it the soon-to-be full moon or something else, but Primrose is awakened from her slumber by … a strange noise? She notices that while the door to your room was certainly closed when you went to bed, it is now cracked slightly open. Under the door she can see a slight blue light that seems to emanate from somewhere in the common room or beyond. While before you went to bed there were still candles lighting the hallway, now none of them are lit anymore. It might just be because Riesling is a careful innkeeper, or it might be something else entirely.
Quietly, she wakes up first Viridian and then Vilu. Plotter is adamant on continuing his sleep on the grand pillow given solely for his use, and he’s making most of the opportunity.
Annie still hasn’t come back to bed.
In the meantime, Annie has been making good headway with her letters, scribbling down what’s been happening to her in the past week, so that she can give the letters to Alcor later. Sometime after the clock strikes midnight, she hears the wooden stairs creak and someone tiptoe up to the second floor. It is a halfling man, his hair blond and curling down to his shoulders. His moustache is waxed and well-tended to, clearly a man who takes care of his appearance. In one hand, he carries a lute that he settles to rest against one of the chairs, but takes a seat at the table, uninvited. Curiously, the man signals Annie to stay silent and nods towards the dark corridor where your room is located.
Now that she pays attention to the room around her, Annie notices that the candle on the table has been blown out, and the light actually comes from the window behind her. It’s cold and blue.
In the corridor, the doors are slowly opening. As she watches, she begins to see footsteps on the floor, but no form that makes them. Each of the steps left on the floor seems to be wet, as if their owner had just come from a swim. Slowly, Annie begins to notice the shape of another halfling creeping towards her in the hallway - Viridian, trying to locate what the fuss is all about. The halfling man signals her to be silent as well, and while Viridian looks somewhat annoyed, she listens, clearly having come to the same conclusion herself. Soon after her, Vilu follows.
As Viridian steps on a floorboard that creaks, everyone stops breathing for a second. As the footsteps slowly turn to look in her direction, Annie prepares a spell in case anything happens. As she concentrates, she begins to see the form of a human woman dressed in a white gown, her hair dripping wet and covering her face. She’s still staring intently in Viridian’s direction, but eventually turns away when Viridian does nothing to threaten her. Slowly, she walks around the table, the halfling man visibly holding his breath until she’s passed him. For a moment, the ghost just stands behind Annie, holding her hand against the frosted window glass. While not everyone sees the form of the ghost, the handprint that freezes over and then melts as quick as it came, is just as visible as her footprints, now turned to faint puddles of water on the floor.
Eventually, the unnatural feeling left by the ghost diminishes, and everyone seems to relax - at least to some degree. The halfling man introduces himself as Rinaldo Ramheart, the best bard in town, but Viridian is not particularly entertained, claiming that he appeared only after the ghost did, and sneaking up on Annie like that is suspicious at least. Rinaldo explains that he himself is a guest at the hotel, and particularly curious about the tale of the White Lady, trying to track down her movements. It doesn’t go unnoticed by him that you keep switching names, rather clearly pretending to be people you are not - and much like a shark who has smelled blood, a bard recognises the opportunity for a story untold from miles away.
You agree to meet with Rinaldo for breakfast at the Wet Trout tomorrow and exchange stories, as he’s quite curious about your story… in exchange for the story of the White Lady, of course. Annie, still restless, decides to keep writing through the night. Primrose, spooked by the nightly visitor, decides to stay up with her.
Viridian sleeps … not well. Her dreams are interrupted by tossing and turning, perhaps the haunting getting under her skin more than she’d prefer to admit.
Vilu… dreams. Of devouring, of blood in their mouth, of the gore that is still so warm as they tear into their unsuspecting victim. The ribcage holding a heart, the real treasure of what they’re after. The heart still beats, the coppery taste of the blood carrying the last moments of a life lost until Vilu finally, finally, sinks their teeth into the soft organ and wakes up. When they talk to Plotter, they can sense the mouse’s heartbeat, small and frantic, and it wakes something in them - hunger. Quickly, they rush out of the room and into one of the adjacent bathrooms to freshen up.
Primrose has smudges of ink on their face from falling asleep on a book, and Viridian’s hair remains uncombed. Annie is still awake with the same eyes, dark circles beginning to appear under her eyes. You find Rinaldo waiting for you at the tavern side of the inn, and together, you head out to the Wet Trout tavern for breakfast. It takes a little while to walk all the way to the tavern (Rinaldo swears it’s the best in town), but the morning is only somewhat chilly, and the views are rather nice by the lakeside.
Behind the open kitchen is an imposing, tall, white dragonborn who speaks with a sharp accent. She seems to be more familiar handling heavy-hitting weapons than cutlery, and as a proof of that, you notice a large battlehammer set up on the far wall. Above it is written in large, bold letters:
“No spell-casting in the tavern.”
As a strange juxtaposition to the sight, she’s wearing an apron with little blue fish embroidered on it. She introduces herself as One-Who-Shatters (the one doing the shattering), and reminds you that alcohol shall not be served until noon. You order porridge with milk, and Rinaldo gets comfortable to tell you the legend of the White Lady - a human innkeeper whose rich husband worked around Lac Dinneshere, collecting debts from the three towns and getting relatively rich with his trade. Until one windy day, when he was rowing back home, the boat capsized and instead of saving himself, the husband tried to save his chest full of gold and unmeasurable riches, and tragically, drowned because of it. The wife sadly hung herself in the common room of her inn after hearing the news of her husband’s passing, and ever since then the inn has been known as the White Lady’s Inn, when patrons of the inn have often recorded seeing the White Lady walk along the corridors, wailing for her husband. It is said that she looks for her husband in the lake, but anyone who unsettles her, she will drown in the lake. He’s rather curious about the fake names everyone seems to be using, but instead Primrose mentions the abandoned cabin. Vilu is adamant there is no story to be told there. Rinaldo tries to persuade you to tell a story over drinks, and Vilu agrees that if he happens to come across any elfroot or pipeweed, they might have a story indeed.
One-Who-Shatters does not recall much of Alcor or his friends, but she does remember the wizards - four of them in total, bickering right there in her tavern. At the end of the day, they seemed to separate and each go their own ways.
She is quite knowledgeable about caves, having perused many of them herself - There’s many around the glacier, and some even around Lac Dinneshere. The Caves of Hunger are somewhere far out on the glacier, and if the name’s anything to go by, it’s populated by old, ancient things that hunger. Things that consume. Anything that comes their way, each other, even themselves, until they are but corpses. And then they get born again, and the cycle continues. She advises you against going, as the tundra is dangerous, even without the danger of the caves.
The caves around Lac Dinneshare are as follows:
Maw of Ivory
Maw of Bones
The Crescent’s Crevasse
Cormyr’s Crack
As intended, you finally head out to the Town Hall to meet with Guard Captain Iulia Driftwood. She’s a human woman in her forties, already with grey hairs. Annie tells a guard that you have important information regarding the wizard burned at the stake, and she lets you in. You learn that the victims of Dzaan the wizard were found on the tundra after months of no news - they were presumed dead, as adventuring is rather dangerous. Iulia was convinced that the Knights of Polaris seemed to keep an eye out on the wizards, but one of them agreed to head out on an excursion to find a Hidden City that the wizard seemed to be obsessed about finding. Along with her went two youths from Easthaven, Tamlin Rivertide, a half-elven boy, and Penny Blindspot, a human girl. Both were barely eighteen, eager to start out on their own. With them traveled an adventurer from Caer Dineval, someone called Viola Killigan. Iulia mentions that the knight who went with them, likely to protect the youths as well as to keep an eye on the wizard, was a dwarven woman.
Iulia asks whether you could look into the disappearance of three fishermen on Lac Dinneshere, as they were expected to return home yesterday but due to obvious reasons, the militia were rather busy with … something else. The men you’re looking for are Samuel Coleridge, a half-orc, William Wordsworth, a human, and Benjamin, also human, and were last seen ice-fishing on Lac Dinneshare. She mentions that you shall get a 50gp reward for each.
Character(s) interacted with
Rinaldo Ramheart, One-Who-Shatters, Riesling Ten-Strong, Guard Captain Iulia Driftwood
Report Date
26 May 2024
Primary Location
Secondary Location
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