Mysterious Beginnings

20th day of the fourth month
 
Liliana woke in a cage, clean straw, mouth dry, don’t remember anything after dinner the night before. Liliana’s head pounded with a massive hangover but she didn’t remember drinking just sitting in Raythanya’s, eating her meal of duck with dauphinoise potatoes and a glass of red. She had studied while she ate, the last thing she remembered was going to attend to the call of nature then…. Waking up in a cage.
 
The cell doors were wide open and she could see a guard at the top right of the room. Liliana spoke to the guard who said this was the drunk tank and they’d brought her in until she sobered up, as she’d been standing on the top of a building saying she could fly.
 
A warforged stomped over,
“I do not understand, repeat what you said. I do not drink.”
 
The guard said that the warforged had been proclaiming himself to be a pigeon.
 
Liliana and the war forged spoke and they learned they had both eaten at the same place the night before. The warforged was short and stocky, his outerskin dark shiny blue, bright in places, his eyes neon blue. A mono pod on a single tank track like roller trundled out behind him at ankle height and spoke to the warforged in beeps and bleeps. He was painted in the same colours as the warforged. Liliana and the warforged exchanged names, he introducing himself as Shadow.
 
The guard mentioned a noble woman had been in but she had left already, her Felicity was her name, Felicity Fry, a human. Liliana knew them as good people, making their money in lumber, owning a lot of the land out on the frontier, including all the land that Hamningburg was on. It was built on the sight of what was once the city of Paxander. ( https://www.worldanvil.com/w/tellus-harldawg/a/paxander-settlement?preview=true) Once an elven city but destroyed in the elven purge, now humans are rebuilding it trying to undo the harm and atone for the atrocities committed in the elven purge. A man called Hamish was responsible for some of this but he is now long dead.
 
This led to a conversation about nobility where Shadow believed if he could physically get the blood of a noble person that would make him noble and Liliana could not sway him form this viewpoint.
 
“Oghma have mercy” Liliana said.
 
They left the building walking into a big square around a fountain made of giant fish spitting streams of water, on the other side was a bridge over the canals, the city being built on a myriad of islands on the Wutjorn river. As they reached this and crossed the bridge they heard a voice shouting,
 
“Hey stop them,” and saw guards from the drunk tank sprinting towards them, the same guards they had left behind.
 
“You said we could go!” Liliana cried impatiently,
 
“Murderers” they cried, "stop them!"
 
“This is taking the piss uh?” Liliana said to Shadow.
 
Shadow looked confused, taking her statement literally.
 
The guards approached and quickly a fight broke out, Shadow refusing to attack while Liliana cast thunnderwave and firebolt, annoyed at how pitiful the damage was, she was quickly knocked unconscious. As the guards closed in on Shadow, a warbling high born voice cut them off and strode past Liliana who groggily opened her eyes. This was none other than Felicity Fry. She bought the guards off and after they left, she told Shadow and Liliana that it seemed all three of them had been framed for murder.
 
A warehouse containing exports including coffee, rugs, all manner of things had been burned down and 17 people died inside, the building had burned to the ground, it was clearly arson (Liliana regretted using a fire bolt on the guard). Footprints of two small people in the dust around led away to the canal.
 
After more discussion, it turned out all three of them had eaten at Raythanya’s before. Felicity said she had an investigator working on it but had only bought them a brief reprieve of an hour or so before the guards would return to arrest them....