Although the world remained dim, life returned into the party. They entered Noanar’s Hold and found a place to stay called the White Hart Inn, a nifty stone building. They entered the inn, and before even being greeted, noticed a broom sweeping the floor on its own and trays of food and drink being floated out to the guests. Mitsui was amazed by this and jumped around from object to object, trying to understand what was going on.
Jayr, on the other hand, was terrified, thinking these were ghosts. Xeric offered to buy everyone a drink, including the 7 people currently in the bar. While a group of 3 turned Xeric’s generous offer down, Jayr took him up on the offer and quickly downed a few glasses of ale to calm his nerves. Avgar, the innkeeper, explained it’s just unseen servants, a simple spell. He then made things worse once he began talking about how the lands are haunted and to stay in at night. Jayr was soon sloshing his words around. Kida, Hark, and Seraphina made a bet on how many drinks it would take before Jayr passed out. Kida won, as Jayr passed out halfway through his 11th drink.
Kida brought Jayr upstairs and Seraphina followed. They put Jayr to bed and then Kida and Seraphina went to their room. Kida went to bed; however, Seraphina waited up, wanting to speak with Xeric.
Meanwhile, Mitsui decided she wanted to sleep outside and hopefully see the ghosts. Hark moved to a table by the door, waiting to hear if Mitsui got into trouble.
Xeric decided he would talk with the patrons of the inn. There were 2 groups of 3 and a lone person. The first group Xeric talked to was the one that had taken him up on the drink he had offered earlier. The group consisted of a dwarf, a halfing, and a human. The most talkative of the group was a dwarf named Grannik Deepbane. He mentioned how he and his group were travellers interested in the supernatural and had heard rumours of ghosts in this town. Xeric and the group exchanged information, with Grannik having mentioned something about hauntings around Stone Stand to the East, but they couldn’t find the location. Xeric mentioned the cleric in their party was scared of ghosts.
Xeric then talked with the lone man, Brayan. He was a resident of the town and seemed a little melancholy. He wouldn’t really tell Xeric what was going on, but seemed interested in the outside world. He did mention the area wasn’t haunted, that’s just crazy talk from Avgar. Although Xeric gave him opportunities to leave and travel with the group, he turned them all down. Xeric did not talk to the group of 3 humans that had refused his drink offer.
Eventually Xeric decided to turn in and headed upstairs. There, Seraphina asked him to have a private conversation with her. They agreed to talk in Xeric’s room. Upon entering the room, Xeric then locked the door behind them, explaining it was for protection.Seraphina wanted to know why Xeric came back for her? Why did he save her? Xeric explained that he saw her as a companion and felt responsible. They talked a bit more and started to come to a bit of an understanding. Seraphina showed Xeric her scrimshaw dagger, revealing the inscription in Thieves’ Cant on the one side. The two parted on friendlier terms.
As the sun arose the next morning, Seraphina went out to check on the horses. Both she and Mitsui, who had been sleeping on the roof of the inn, noticed the group of 3 humans saddling their horses and riding out. Seraphina was a bit unsure about them but was happy to see them leaving. Mitsui saw from her position on the roof that instead of riding out of town, they turned into the woods. Both she and Mitsui went into the inn to get ready for breakfast, as the rest of the heroes joined them.
After a bit of time, Grannik’s group came down and joined our heroes for some morning food and to exchange information. They did inform our heroes that they had encountered a caravan that had been taken out by some frost giants on their way to Everlund. Seraphina was happy to practice her Dwarvish and told tales about the White Lady of Easthaven to Grannik. After breakfast, as Grannik’s group was getting ready to leave, Jayr asked him a question. Grannik used his mystical powers to answer “yes” directly into Jayr’s head. This spooked poor Jayr and had Grannik on the floor in stitches. He then whispered something into Gison’s, his halfing companion, ear. Giso then went up to Jayr, summoned some ghosts around him, and punched Jayr, inflicting minimal damage but getting his ghostly ancestors to gather around Jayr. Once again, poor Jayr was scared out of his mind, jumping into Kida’s lap, who was also not enjoying this supernatural display. Grannik lost it and was rolling on the floor in laughter, Seraphina and Xeric chuckling as well at their cleric’s antics. Grannik’s party then headed out to investigate the town’s ghost rumours.
Jayr had enough of this town, so Kida decided to stay with him in his room and comfort him while the rest delivered the saddles. When Mitsui, Hark, Seraphina, and Xeric arrived at the keep, they noticed it was rather beat up. All the windows were bricked shut. There was, however, a hole towards the top of the keep. They knocked on the large wooden doors. After about a minute, Amrath, a dwarf, opened a shutter and asked our heroes what they wanted. Our heroes explained they came from Triboar with some saddles. The doors opened, and they were instructed to just drop off the saddles.
Xeric, seeing that Mitsui wanted to explore the place, made up some rubbish about needing to examine the merchandise upon delivery and to confirm everything was there in an effort to distract the dwarf. Mitsui easily snuck in to explore the keep. After about 15 minutes, the dwarf had enough and told Xeric everything was good. He told him he’d give him an extra 10 gold if he just left. Xeric countered with 15, expecting not to get it and buy more time, but was shocked when the dwarf paid it and told them to get out. On their way back to town, Seraphina and Xeric were going along slowly, as they felt unsure about the whole situation. Hark wasn’t worried, though, because, after all, this was Mitsui. Seraphina and Xeric told Hark to continue back to the Inn and tell the others about the situation, and they returned to the keep.
Seraphina used Rope Trick to help Xeric climb up to the hole. Xeric also turned invisible. After about 10 minutes with no sign of Xeric, Seraphina started to worry and returned to the Inn to talk with the others, remembering what happened when the party was split the last time. Meanwhile, Hark delivered the news to Kida and Jayr. Upon hearing this, Kida got upset, also remembering what happened the last time the party split up and went charging out of the inn and towards the keep. Jayr, not wanting to be left alone, miserably followed after. Hark, still not worried, stayed at the inn and used the gold piece Seraphina gave him to buy a glass of milk at the bar. They ended up meeting each other in the middle of town, and were planning to charge the keep when Amrath came upon them and handed Seraphina 2 notes, saying they were from their friends.The first was meant for Seraphina and read “i have found are ally and we are having a meeting with the lords of the keep, and they have asked mitsui and i to stay the night at their keep as guests as we from a treaty. wee will meet back at noon tomorrow at the inn. Signed Xeric Bloodfallen.” The second was a note for Hark from Mitsui. Upon delivering the notes, the dwarf turned around and returned to the keep.
Having read the note, the 3 went out in the wilderness, looking for herbs and such to make potions. Seraphina thought this would be a good way of distracting Jayr from the hauntings and herself and Kida from the two idiots in the keep. After the talk with Xeric the night before, Seraphina was practicing trusting her allies and having the others practice this as well. Seraphina did try to get a blue jay to assist her, but outside of being told about some white men, she could not entice the bird to help. They returned to the White Hart Inn for the evening.
As they were settling in for the night, Seraphina gave Hark the note from Mitsui. He read it then crumbled it up and threw it on the table. Seraphina picked it up but found she couldn’t read it. Frustrated with the whole thing, she re-crumbled it and tossed it into a mug.
They then noticed 2 of the 3 humans enter the inn, one with a wound across his chest. Seraphina and Jayr determined this wound was from a rapier; however, the 2 men insisted they had been hunting a hill giant, and that while it killed their 3rd brother, they managed to take it down. It did leave an injury as its spiked club grazed one of the 2 remaining brothers. Not believing this story, Jayr offered to help and took the man’s armor off. Jayr, Seraphina, and the man then went upstairs into Jayr’s room to start healing the man and hopefully get the truth out of him. When Jayr asked him to explain the real truth, the man insisted that what he said was the truth. Still not believing him, Jary held him down and asked Seraphina to pull the truth out of him. Seraphina closed the door but didn’t lock it as she couldn’t reach it, and taking out her dagger, began ripping fingernails off the man, a technique she witnessed Xeric doing not that long ago. Instead of revealing the truth, the man began screaming for help.
Downstairs, the remaining brother heard the screams and started to head upstairs. Kida tried to stop him, explaining that their cleric was a “bad healer”, meaning that he could heal but not without more pain happening first, but with her limited knowledge of Common, was unable to explain this and failed to convince him that nothing bad was happening. She started using force but the man then turned to the innkeeper, who told Kida violence wouldn’t be accepted. She then quickly rushed upstairs ahead of the man, and finding the door unlocked, rushed in and held the door closed. She was shocked to see what Seraphina and Jayr were doing.
The man did finally crack though. He said he would tell the truth in exchange for a favor. When Jayr agreed, the man shouted to his brother, who was on the other side of the door trying to get in, that everything was fine. He then explained he was one of 3 Daerivoss brothers. He, Marthun, and his two brothers, Lezryk and Rantharl, had agreed that whoever landed the killing blow on a giant would inherit their father’s fortune. When Rantharl killed the giant, Marthun and Lezryk were jealous and killed him instead. This is how he really got the wound, as Rantharl managed to injure him before dying. He wanted our heroes to kill his other brother, Lezryk, so that he could get the fortune. In return, he would give them a portion of the fortune. Jayr agreed and, after healing him up, allowed him to leave. Kida was still shocked, and Jayr explained he didn’t know what else to say. Obviously they couldn’t just kill the third brother. They would have to figure something out. He tried coming up with ideas on what they could do, but Seraphina kept pointing out all the flaws in his plans but couldn’t come up with any solutions herself. She decided that they should just wait for the rest of their party before making a decision, but Jayr wanted to keep this secret. Seraphina put her foot down on that, explaining that “this was a party that trusted each other, dammit!”
Upon returning downstairs, Marthun winked at Jayr and bought him a meal. Hark was nowhere to be found, not that the party immediately noticed. Thus time stopped, as our heroes were separated into 2 groups.
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