DoA|Chapter 1|Part 3: Suspicion
General Summary
Song: Intensité Urbaine by Hoenix
When the group of Doilean civilians opened the chest, they found that it was filled with silver pieces. A bit of arguing followed, but the ultimate decision was that it had likely been embezzled from the settlement and thus belonged to Doilea and its people. They swiped a few pieces of silver but left most of it—several thousand pieces of it, in fact—in the chest before carting it back to the lumberyard.
There, in the lumberyard, the group found that someone had come along and swiped the chest they'd previously stored in their carriage, as well as broken the knees of two of their elks. This certainly slowed them down a bit, but they were able to get a new pair of elks hitched to the carriage so they could return to Doilea as quickly as possible, with Wetzel's help and experience. Erakhan drove a wagon carrying Umkas's body while Wetzel carried the other travelers and their belongings in the carriage. Together, they rode south.
Midway through their journey, the group was chased by a large, ferocious thing. It seemed like a bear, but much larger and more aggressive than a standard polar bear would have been. Only Medrekk got a decent look at it, yet all he saw was a hulking form, gnashing teeth, and swiping claws barreling after them. Quick wits, reflexes, and luck (quite a bit of it, really) allowed them to evade capture by the bear so that they could return safely to Doilea.
Near the gates of Doilea, Erakhan saw a roaming reindeer with a rider strapped or frozen to its back. He descended from the wagon and approached, cautiously, to see that it was Pimnir, the inspector whose path they had crossed when returning to Doilea from Medrekk's cottage. The man was dead, his throat having been slit. The reindeer's rider was difficult to remove due to being frozen and somewhat stuck in the stirrups, but was able to be detached and put into the carriage with the others, who unfortunately had to stare at the grisly sight for the remainder of their journey to Doilea.
Eventually, the group arrived at the gates of their settlement, eager to finally rest after such a challenging, exhausting day. Unfortunately, the settlement guard had other things in mind for them... arrests, imprisonment, and trials. Once the carriages were at the gates of Doilea, everyone was instructed to step out and answer questions, particularly Erakhan, whom the guards knew more personally from repeated interactions with the ranger. After a quick interrogation, everyone was escorted to the council hall's holding cell, where they waited overnight. It turned out that the lumberjacks who had previously fled had alerted the guard about the assaults and possible murder that had taken place at the lumberyard, making the group that had been acting under the Doilean Council's orders seem suspicious and possibly even dangerous.
The next day, everyone was interrogated by the duke, kommendant, and goldmaester of Doilea. The interrogations were challenging and nerve-wracking. Unfortunately, they resulted in severe losses for Ava, Erakhan, and especially Wetzel. No one was imprisoned or given an egregious fine, but the losses were still great. Ava and Erakhan, now seen as untrustworthy and lacking in judgment, were told they could no longer requisition weapons from the barracks, nor could they go out hunting on behalf of the settlement, causing them to lose their jobs as rangers. Wetzel had it worse... he had one month to leave Doilea. The council had determined that he was unpredictable and possibly prone to violence and impulse, even against his own wishes. While they did not wish to destroy him, they believed him to be a threat that they could not understand or control, and so he would be ousted from the settlement. He had time to get his affairs in order and that was that.
Medrekk actually received good news... the council was grateful for all the hard work he'd done and offered a buyout of the Thunderstep Estate for 100 gold pieces. Medrekk told them he would consider the offer and left the council hall with the rest of the group. Not allowing the somber news they'd all received to stop them from learning more about the strange anomalies they'd been encountering, the troupe headed for the Weeping House to seek information from the clerics, who had been inspecting the body of Umkas that seemed to be infected with the creatures.
During the long trek to the northwest corner of Doilea, they heard a preacher... or something akin to it. The man spouted off not about gods, but about their demise. He spoke of an entity called the Coming End that was inevitably going to come to wipe out the gods, magic, and perhaps all that existed. The preacher declared that the only hope that anyone had was to prepare for the Coming End's arrival, whenever that would be, and to start praising, worshipping, and preparing for it now. Better yet, they could fund the Church of the Coming End, which was working hard to ensure a swift and efficient arrival for the Coming End in the hopes that if they did so, they would be spared its destruction. The preacher was dismissed after a few questions were met with unsatisfactory answers, but he continued his speech in the distance as the group continued on to the Weeping House.
After arriving at the Weeping House and being escorted down to the cellar where Umkas and the creatures were being examined and studied by the clerics there, the group—and Wetzel in particular—learned quite a bit. In particular, they learned that the entities were from the Far Realm and that they had been entering the world through rifts—tears in the layers that divided the realms and planes. These rifts had been caused by faulty mechanisms and machines that permitted intraplanar travel, but had failed to properly close the portals, resulting in tears that are causing some of the anomalies being detected by Wetzel.
Following these discoveries, the group did a bit of shopping and walking around through Doilea. When the day seemed to be coming to a close and they started splitting off in their own directions, Wetzel and Medrekk noticed a flash of red out of the corner of their eye. The flash turned out to be an oddly-colored red sparrow, which alighted on a nearby post. With its pause, they could see golden trims along its feathers, nearly glowing in the firelight. It looked to Wetzel, gave a long stare to Medrekk, and then fluttered away.
Comments