The Natural Disasters #4: Bleeding Beauty

General Summary

The party continues travelling with the Lotus Circus as they approach the hamlets around Daggerford. As they travel, Remington attempts to communicate with The Artillerist that he requires a trade for ammunition, but he can not properly communicate with the voiceless mask. The group arrives at a small hamlet with a large home in its midst. The Lotus begin performing and the party plans to leave them behind because they are wasting their time, but Remington's requirement for additional ammunition and Arnold's distrust for the Lotus concludes with the party staying with them.
In this time, Remington begins hunting down a vanished Artillerist to cut a deal with the eversmiling gunman. His hunt fails as the trail goes cold behind the large house in the hamlet. Eventually however, The Artillerist returns to the caravan before they leave and Remington barters his father's gun for another clip of ammunition as well as future possibilities at bartering, educing an interested voice from the unmoving mouth of the mask.
Soon after, the caravan travels on, has a murderous meeting with a Nilbog. Soon after, they stop in another small hamlet for the night as the Lotus begin performing. In the crowd, a pale skinned silver haired teenage girl stands, smiling at the performance of Magic Hands bumbling card tricks. The Lotus and party find places to rest, and they all find a nice sleep, unbothered by the world.
They are rudely awakened by the sounds of people in light armor and carrying weaponry entering the hamlet. These people enter a home and members of the troop begin standing guard in front of the home. Arnold goes over and is led away. He returns stating that the building "smelt of death."
After this, Hope failed to gain entry to the scene but smelt the odor of decay. She proceeded to ask around for information about who lived in the home and whatnot. From what she learned, she figures out that a teenage girl, Beauty, protected the town and had a bright future lived within the cordoned house. However, due to the fact that she could not enter the home, Hope decided to sit under a dead tree and watch over the small village.
Meanwhile, Ariel goes on a hunt for evil within the home. When he enters, he sees that blood has been shed all over this small home in a small kitchen living area. He approaches the pale corpse of Beauty, slumped over at the counter. Ariel looks over the body and sees that it seems that the girl had her throat cut and was expertly cut in other locations in order to bleed her to death in the middle of a fight. He continues to investigate the home, but he does not find much more information from the evidence in the area other than learning that the crime is hidden via some evil of the lower planes or similar otherworldly presence.
Bear continues to investigate around, planning on sneaking into the crime scene later. Whilst casing the town to find ways past the investigators, he finds an alleyway that contains a splatter of blood. He grabs Arnold to show him, and Arnold expresses his fear that this murder could have been some dark delight of the Lotus's.
After a time of investigating, Rosé tells Remington and Kriv that it is time for them to leave lest the people of this town accuse them of this murder due to prejudices against circus members and strangers. Remington and Kriv agree, so they go to tell Hope this. Hope disagrees and says they need to solve this before they can possibly leave, and Remington and Kriv concede this a fact.
Eventually, the entirety of the group meets at the tree and discusses everything they have learned. The group decides to send Kriv with Ariel to the body to speak with the dead girl.
However, as Kriv and Ariel begin heading towards the home, the caravan finishes packing all its things, and the Lotus begin driving away. Arnold says he must follow them to prevent them from doing anything else. He runs off calling to Lilith, his dead horse from a time forgotten, mounts his new horse, and angrily charges after the fleeing carts.
Kriv and Ariel learn from the dead teenager that her parents were supposedly in the house with her, but something disguised as her father managed to murder her in a fight. She then passes on, dead again, and unlikely to ever return to the material plane.
Following the only lead the adventurer's have left, they head into the wood, where they find the parents of Beauty arguing. They reveal that they were not home the night before, revealing Beauty may be an unreliable source of information. To confirm this, Ariel casts zone of truth to make the interrogation absolutely credible. They eventually break the husband and find that he remembers being with a man the night of his daughter's death and the wife left the home to find him.
Learning this, the party figures out that the most likely situation is that someone, possibly Dandy seduced the man, after which Chrysa took his clothes, disguised as him and committed the murder. Upon deducing this, the crew grab their horses and race after the band of murderers and their friend, who has nearly died twice already.

Report Date

07 Jun 2020