Sessions 6 & 7

While Keg is unable to read the entirety of the Gnomish inscription, he and his companions take a rubbing with the materials provided by Maglain Chulene and return with it to Whitelake. The party finds Maglain and he obliges them with a translation of the carving:


 * "..and in those days came to my land a Dwarf named Kagmac Forgehands, who sought of me refuge and I took him in and welcomed him as a friend. I bid him tell me how he came to be a stranger to his own clan and people and he told me true. When I learned his past I rescinded my welcome and bid him take his leave of me and my home and he so departed"

Maglain is also able to tell the party that the inscription would have dated from the reign of the Gnome prince Bothais, who would have ruled about 2300 years before the present day. Keg is able to confirm that this date would have put the arrival of this Forgehands Dwarf at the Gnome fortress somewhere within about a hundred years of his clan's defeat and loss of their ancestral keep. Maglain again extends on behalf of his patron, Lord Reeve, an invitation to spend the night at Lymewood Hall.

In the morning, as the party is breaking their fast and preparing to return to Stoneport, their conversation is interrupted when a squadron of guards enter briskly and whisper something to Lord Reeve, who becomes rather grave and excuses himself. The party, curious about what could have prompted such an interruption, convince Lord Reeve to bring them along. They are led all together to the temple to the church of the Seven Doors to the House of Heaven, where they find that the priest has been murdered in his bedchamber.

The party is let within where they find the priest's body has been mutilatd. He was posed into a kneeling position and his own head was severed and placed into his hands, where his tongue was drawn out and pierced a dozen times with silver needles. His heart had been carved out and dropped by the side of the room, outside a ring of powdered iron that had been lain down around the body.

Several members of the party are overcome with a terrible dread that forces them out of the room where they wretch into a potted plant. They are unable, thereafter, to cross the threshold. From outside, Aramil, directs his companions to investigate the body and he is able to point out the usefulness of the dirt stuck to the priest's boot. He shows it to the guards and determines that the priest must have been somewhere in the hills to the north of the city the day before and that he must have been on a farm that raises potatoes. As the party is wrapping up their examination of the scene itself, they are interrupted by the arrival of Valent Swobrush, Captain of the Bronzeclaws.

Swobrush and Bharash exchange terse and uncharitable words before the former departs. Bharash explains to the party that he worked for a spell as a cavalry officer in the Bronzeclaws and that he resigned on less than pleasant terms.

The party tramps around the country, canvassing the farming community and eventually find themselves headed to the Pratt farm, where some mysterious visitors have recently been spotted. When they arrive and investigate the grounds, they discover that the family has been murdered, except the farmwife, who managed to hide in the cellar. It seems that the patriarch of the family had taken it upon himself to host an acquaintance of his incarcerated son-in-law as part of some sort of arrangement to keep him safe.

As the party is getting ready to leave, a pair of Bronzeclaws ride up to the farm and have words with the group. Concerned about how the situation would appear to these officers of the law, the party intimidates them and convinces them to leave before they themselves make their way to Shieldbridge to visit the prison, where they discover that the Pratt girl's husband had gotten put away and ended up keeping company with a Buluru cult and that the cult's leader had threatened the lives of the Pratts if he didn't help them. The cult leader told the boy that the Pratt's would be responsible for assisting a certain 'man with stars behind his eyes' when he arrived at Whitelake. When the party goes to check in on the cult leader in his isolation cell, they find that he has been hanged in a seemingly impossible fashion with his own manacles through the cell bars.

As they leave the prison, the party discovers that a serial killer has struck several times. The trail leads them to the sewers underneath the city. As they arrive at a tunnel they must slide down into the unknown at to continue their pursuit of the killer, a company of Bronzeclaws arrive, led by Captain Swobrush. Swobrush, impressed with the party's work, apologizes to Bharash and admits he thinks he was a fine soldier. He also tells him to take good care of his team, before they jump down the tunnel and land in a sewage pit. The party smooth talks their way through a pair of oytughs, one of which has been very ornery because it's inflow tunnel has been blocked and he hasn't been getting anything to eat.

The party climbs up into the next layer of the sewer, when suddenly...