S1 E4: Clerical Errors

General Summary

In which the party has a chase, frightens an actor and defends themselves against a murderous acolyte...
Along the way back to the Keep, the heroes slow down and Mae casts pass Without Trace as they approach the place on the road marked by an X on the map. Moving stealthily through the trees edging the High Trade Road, they take an entire warband of xvarts with their giant rat skirmishers by surprise, killing most of them quickly in a much more lopsided battle than the fight earlier that day. However a pair of the speedy and cowardly creatures make a break for it and bolt rather than fighting, pursued by Xi Shi, Mae and Blizzard. The chase covers a great deal of ground, but luckily it's a sunny day, with clear weather and the main road is never completely out of sight, so no one finds themselves running into a trap, off a cliff, or hopelessly lost in the deep woods in the dark.
Mae is faster than the Xvarts by a small margin, so while the others can keep pace, she can gain some distance in a flat-out run, and between the three of them coordinating attacks and the chase, they engage and run the enemy to ground a few hundred feet from the rest of the group. They find three strange, small rubies faceted on one side but flat on the other, as well as a small vial of some kind of thick, clear, honeylike liquid that they keep corked and don't investigate further. Encountering a guard patrol on the way, they report the attack as well as the body they had found further along the road, and the guards give them safe escort back to the Keep.
This earns them some dirty looks from the lowlifes in the shantytown outside the Keep, but they return to the safety of the keep without further incident. They made their way to the Silver Spade Tavern, and after a short discussion with the Soup Goblin and a sampling of her daily specials, the heroes decided to actively question a few people to get to the bottom of this kidnapping plot once and for all, starting with the enigmatic local poet and playwright, Janni Zeffirelli, starting with a calm few questions regarding his ink-stained fingertips and preferred type of paper. The young man wilted almost immediately, begging for mercy but not seeming to understand what they were accusing him of or questioning him about, and getting it confused in his mind with his passionate and totally unrequited feelings for the lovely and dangerous Xi Shi.leaving him a blubbering and apologizing heap, they searched out a more difficult opponent in Pastor Naphan Agrippa, who had been their prime suspect all along.
Finding his house apparently empty, some discussion was had as to sneaking in and having a look around, with Blizzard asserting several times that he had an all purpose key, with a wink and a pat of his sword-pommel. Unable to come to a conclusion, they went next door to the Jewelers' only to discover Naphan was there, in a discussion with Icies Veiss. A plan to keep the man there went sideways when Icies turned his attention to Blizzard as a new customer, leaving Naphan with no reason to stay. The rest of the party went back to his house, and had a curt discussion but got nowhere. Eventually they convinced him to come to the door.
The man at first seemed coy and conniving as usual, but as Lorfel, Rongo and the others drilled him about his missing acolyte, his tone lost its confidence and he began wheedling about having no choice and the fact that Barrett's parents - Barrett evidently being the name of the dead acolyte - would probably prosecute him. He didn't want to let them into the house, but they pushed past him into a richly-appointed but off-smelling room, and the smell's origin became immediately obvious: An enormous wooden tub filled with hams filling the space in the center of the main room. Many of these were gnawed and torn in ways that they realized had a clear similarity with the wounds on Barrett's corpse on the road, something with both a large mouth and high bite pressure to go through an entire ham in s single bite. Naphan began babbling about a being that was using him in order to arise in this world, a bat-god (terminology that quickly turned into 'bat-demon') named Camazotl. When pointedly asked why he seemed to be helping rather than stopping the creature from coming into this world, Agrippa hedged and avoided the answer, other than to admit that Camazotl would 'reward' him somehow, with powers, patronage, or perhaps a lifetime supply of hams - the details were unclear. None of them had heard of Camazotl before, other than Lorfel, who remembered having come across the name somewhere in his previous studies but no real details other than what they had already learned - it was a bat-demon, powerful enough to have its own name, and that name was Camazotl.
As the heroes pressed their questioning, another acolyte sprung to attack from the dark room at the southern end of the building, ending whatever tense parley they had been conducting up till then and making it a fight. In the shuffle, Parson Naphan made a break for the room behind the door to the east. The heroes dispatched the dwarven acolyte but Naphan made it through the door unscathed. Ending the episode in the eastern room, the party finds themselves in a small kitchen pantry area with a conspicuously closed trapdoor cellar entrance in the floor, and no other obvious exits.

Rewards Granted

• 3 ruby cabochons
• small vial of a clear honeylike substance (smaller than half a normal potion dose)
• 3 tack hammers
• 25gp collected off the various defeated humanoids

Missions/Quests Completed

• "Clerical Error"
• "X Marks the Xvart"

XP

290

Character(s) interacted with

Guard Patrol Soup Goblin Montague Ford, proprietor of the Silver Spade tavern Pippa Ford, hostess of the Silver Spade inn Icies Vries, Jeweler. Parson Naphan Agrippa, bookseller, author, and evident worshiper of the bat-demon Camazotl. Godwin Foal, Acolyte of Parson Agrippa. (Deceased.)

Report Date

19 Apr 2022

Primary Location

The Keep on the Borderlands

Secondary Location

The Borderland Marches