DoA|Chapter 1|Part 2: Beast in the Lumberyard
General Summary
Investigating the home of Yvonne Valleth led to a few interesting discoveries. Someone clearly came there looking for Elnan, and they clearly meant to send an extremely clear message. Nothing was stolen, but everything was broken and destroyed. A few clues had been left behind, however... two sets of footprints, a glove with a laceration across it, blood on the threshold, and... a small metal tin. The tin was most intriguing, despite being plain and empty. Ava was confident that she knew what it was or what it had once contained, repeatedly chiming "the night of your life," to get others to realize what it was: a tin of drugs like those she'd taken the night before.
After six hours of riding north from Doilea, the motley crew arrived at the Doilean Lumberyard on the edge of the Imen Forest. There, they found themselves guests unwelcomed by the foreman, Kiff Vorgan, who seemed extremely frustrated with their presence and was repeatedly pressuring them to get their investigation over with and leave. Over the course of their time there, the investigation only grew more and more strange, as did the tension in the lumberyard. A ledger hidden next to a small chest filled with silver beneath the floorboards of the foreman's office raised eyebrows in the group, as did red paint cans that strangely vanished when no one was looking, only to be seen again beneath the foreman's bed. Perhaps more strange than anything else was the gaudy, high-end nature of the interior of Kiff's cabin, though a few other strange things stood out to the group in the other sleeping cabins.
In the Imen forest to the north of the lumberyard, where the lumberjacks dare not venture, the group found sets of footprints, one elk and one reindeer. They followed them until they split off and noticed that at that juncture, there was a significant amount of blood pooled on the snow, some just obscured by it. The tracks that continued—the reindeer's—continued northward at a breakneck and uncontrolled pace, disappearing into the dark. As the group stood there studying what they'd uncovered, they heard rustling and grunting in the bushes from some kind of monstrous creature, but the thing eventually turned and left... whatever it was.
Hearts pounding, the group retreated, heading back to the camp. To get answers to their questions, the group began questioning members of the lumberyard, learning about the various things they'd seen. Some were more willing to talk than others, and eventually it was gleaned that Kiff had been arguing with Elnan Valleth about money prior to Elnan's departure from the lumberyard (which was another discovery in and of itself, as everyone had believed that Elnan had walked with the caravan and then sauntered off, but these recountings led them to believe that Elnan had actually walked away from the lumberyard before the caravan ever departed). Through a bit more investigating, they learned that only Umkas and Kiff had actually heard any such arguing or had seen Elnan walk away, raising further suspicions about two very suspicious characters.
It was during their questioning of the lumberjacks that Sidra noticed Umkas disappearing into the Imen Forest with a large sack slung over his shoulder. He moved northward quickly and Sidra encouraged the others to aid her in giving pursuit. Through the trees they ran until they bumped into a returning Umkas, who insisted he'd only gone into the forest for a piss. Disbelieving, Erakhan turned him around and forced him to go back the way he'd come until they stumbled across what appeared to be his original stopping point. Buried beneath the ground at a shallow level were red paint cans—the same cans that had disappeared. Under those was the wood of a large chest, buried under more earth than the cans were. They'd need shovels to get that out.
When the group turned to confront Umkas, they found that he wasn't there. As they searched the area for him, Medrekk felt a knife slide between his ribcage. Warm blood pooled under his shirt as he threw a blast of eldritch energy out in the direction of his attacker and saw, emerging from invisibility, Umkas Vorwor. The older gnome man took the brunt of Medrekk's attack, his ribs cracking. The man turned to flee, becoming invisible again, but was quickly pelted in the back by arrows fired by both Erakhan and Ava. Erakhan approached the body of Umkas and saw the man face first in the snow, unmoving... dead.
Erakhan retrieved Umkas's knife and brought his body back to the lumberyard. The sight of Umkas's corpse shocked the other lumberjacks, who were clearly wary of the newcomers now. They cautiously followed the instructions of Erakhan and Wetzel, approaching Kiff Vorgan's cabin to talk to him about what had happened. However, Kiff was nowhere to be found. Now beyond uneasy, Lokevir instructed the other lumberjacks to hitch the elks to the wagons and start heading back south to Doilea—there was no reason to stay there with everything going on. Erakhan and Wetzel tried to persuade them to stick around, but ultimately failed in this endeavor.
Seeking just a bit more evidence—or perhaps wealth—the group headed up to the forest with shovels taken from the lumberyard while Wetzel watched the cart. As they were digging into the earth around the chest, Medrekk saw something moving in the distance... a hideous, terrifying beast. Like a boar, but with a six-foot-tall shoulder height and a gaunt torso. Its body was covered in fur and mucus, but its head was purely skeletal. From wounds in its side, fungus appeared to grow, and painfully so. Large mushroom caps extruded from its ribs, covered in blood and infection. As Medrekk watched in horror, the monstrous thing tasted the air with a ten-foot-long tongue, then began to approach them. It was when the beast turned that Medrekk saw that its front legs ended in humanoid hands that punched into the earth mightily with curled fists. Nervously, Medrekk alerted the others, and the creature charged at them.
The tusk of the mutated boar gored Erakhan, flung him into the air, and brought him down to the ground in time for a painful, parasite-filled bite attack before the thing turned its sights on Medrekk, next, knocking the warlock to the ground and biting his left arm ferociously, sending parasites throughout it. Wetzel, hearing the commotion, was running as quickly as he could toward the sound. He arrived to the sight of Sidra calling forth snow and darkness to forge armor around her body and crystals along her oar. Wetzel conjured a distraction using some quick mechanical work, which was enough to buy some time for Ava and Erakhan to fire off a volley of arrows that ultimately felled the creature.
Unfortunately, there was a casualty... Medrekk, lying in pain in the snow, watched in horror as the parasites in his arm burrowed their way into his flesh, leaving only bleeding holes in their wake. Hurriedly, Wetzel and Erakhan lashed his arm, heated up a knife, and carved away at the first layer of flesh, then broke the bone beneath, and finally severed Medrekk's arm completely. The left arm collapsed into the snow, parasites visibly squirming at the site of the wound. Sidra was ready with bandages and began to patch up Medrekk's stump.
The goatherd stared, mortified, at his own limb, several inches away from the rest of his body, bleeding in the snow.
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