18 Erathisway, 4520: Poisonings Revealed

Arkomir writes...
The next morning, we all meet up in the kitchen for breakfast. Dharra pokes her head outside and finds the Cavaliers posted nearby. She hurries back inside and grabs some food and drink to give to them. Kezahr has also managed to identify the potions for us. They are: a potion of greater healing, a potion of fire breath and two bottles of oil of etherealness. There is still the ring we found on the fiend in Ethiss to identify but she will need a pearl to identify that. We will try to find one for her.
Dharra and I walk Devlin and Kezahr back to the tower and arrange to meet Katya at the tailors. Dharra will try to meet up with Devlin at lunchtime. I thank Kezahr for last night and we arrange to see eachother again tonight. We head back to the triways where the tailor shop is and meet Katya there. We head inside Praek's Tailors
Inside is a little overwhelming with so many choices on offer. We are greeted by the male owner who appears to know us by reputation. He seems in fear of us and we try to dissuade him of this. Susannah, the lady who was killed, was his mother. She was not happy that we were gifted the Chandlerveil as the house had been in their family previously and she was keen to get it back. It is a bit awkward at first but we work our way past that to finally get some clothing sorted out. The mans name is Havren. We start with Katya and get her outfitted with some fine clothes, some travelling clothes and underlothes. Both Dharra and I get travelling clothes and undergarments. We pay half now and can pick up the clothes in a week. We then turn the conversation to his mothers death. His mother was found dead from a knife wound and there was also indications of poisoning. His mother had investments in the town and was quite vocal in her dislike and distrust of us. Vakesh also had investments in the town and we wonder if these two things could be linked in any way. We are trying to work out who would gain by killing Sussanah and painting us in a bad light. We thank Havren for his time and if we find anything else out, we will let him know.
We head to The Lonely Forest for a cleansing beverage. While we are sitting there we notice Essa sitting in the beer garden, ministering to folk. After a little while, she gets up and heads over to our table. As we start talking, a Cavalier rushes in looking for Essa. She is needed down at the docks so we head that way with her. As we make our way through the triways and down toward the docks, there is a line of Cavaliers on the way. We head a little East of the docks and find ourselves in some open space near the reconstruction site. The dwarf from the breakfast meeting is already here, Essa runs in to where she is needed. Aleif is lying on the ground, curled up and moaning, with blood on her lips. Dharra casts protection from Poison, and Cure Wounds I Lay on Hands and counteract any poison, as well as stabilising her health. She coughs and shudders, but seems to stabilise. Essa craddles her. The dwarf is crouched at Aleif's feet and is trying to check on her. Underneath where she fell, there are a bunch of papers. Dharra picks them up and instantly feels awful. I remove her poison as well. Hanirash has been called as has the tower. Aleif got these papers from Alden Dewfoot at the Tower so we head there as quickly as possible...
We race up through the town being lead by some Cavaliers, whilst others clear the way for us. We get to the tower gate and I hear noise coming toward me - the sound of horses. We manage to get out of the way, as Moulton leaves the tower on horseback. He seems incensed and is being followed by Kugellux. Dharra sends a message to Moulten asking for Alden's whereabouts and she gets a reply that he is upstairs. We head into the tower and upstairs to find Alden. We make it to the second level and the guards here continue to be on edge and are readying for action. We spy Alden, and head toward him. He doesn't appear to be poisoned. After some questioning of him, we settle on finding the ink he used to write the papers this morning before he handed them to Aleif. He wrote the messages then handed them to Aleif. They had their usual breakfast meeting with the usual crew as well as Elsa and Arbert, the dwarf. He takes us to his room. On the way, he grabs two guards that can stand outside his office whilst we investigate.
Inside his room, he has a look around and says that things look the way he left them. He seems disappointed about that, but definitely believes it. Dharra detects a magical item in the drawer of the desk, right at the back. We secure the room, post a guard outside the door and the window with strict instructions to keep folks out. We ask another guard to find Hanirash and Kezahr and meet us in the library. In the meantime we head to the library with Alden.
At the library, the door is closed. We knock and hear Kezahr ask who it is. Upon entering we find Kezahr and Eleanor holed up in here. We catch them up to speed on what has been going on. Westley Frenymtist is also here and says that this appears to be a nasty business. The documents that Aleif had where about which lots could be demolished next. There have been some objections form folks in the north of the town, in the more well to do areas. Fafnir returns from his scouting mission. Westley wants to leave, but I suggest that we should stay put. Fafnir reports to Kezahr that folks appear to be on the move. We ask the guard outside if anyone has managed to find Hanirash. It appears that he is outside of the town at present, so we send Fafnir, with a message, to find Hanirash. We get the sense that Moulten is returning to the Tower.
The room feels a little tense as we wait. We hear the sounds of yelling from down in the courtyard, and then the sound of him coming upstairs. Moulton appears in the room and he eyes Alden. We tell him that we have sent a note for Hanirash to return and also tell him about the enchanted item in Alden's drawer, of which Alden is unaware. We try to devise a plan to test the items in Alden's room for poison. We settle on looking at the magical item in Alden's desk first - without touching it. We all head down to Alden's room to do so.
Alden unlocks the door, and asks if he could have a word with Moulten, Dharra and myself. He looks a little sheepish as he tells us he has secrets and he has a past which may become clear when we search his room. He insists that despite what may be found, he serves Belhaim and would never hurt Aleif. He would also prefer if we were the ones to search his room as he would be able to show us some things. Moulten agrees and we head in to Alden's room, leaving the door unlocked.
In Alden's room, the room appears to be the same as when we left it before. We open the drawer and take out the magic item. It is three segments of a type of mushroom and a dagger. The dagger is the magical itemand Alden identifies it as his. It is not normally where he keeps it though. This dagger is from his past. He walks over to the chimney and pulls out a small metal casket. He opens it and takes out three small pouches and a small vial and a single small black leather glove. Alden is a member of The Quiet Hand. He has been in their employ for quite some time and is in fact, still so. During our interrogation of him, he sits in a chair and cannot make eye contact with Moulten. He has tried to limit The Quiet Hand's impact in Belhaim, for what that is worth. Kezhar pops her head in and says that Hanirash should be here soon.
After a short amount of time, there is knock at the door. Kugellux inquires after Moulten, who leaves, asking Kugellux to guard Alden. As we step into the hallway, Kezahr falls to her knees in pain. Dharra casts protection from poison and she stabilises. I reach out with Divine Sense but get nothing. Kezahr points down the hallway toward the dining room. Dharra and I head there. Moulten stays to look after Kezahr.
e get to the dining room and burst in and see the door opposite is open so we head through there and keep going. We don't see anyone other than two guards so we look over the battlement. On the ground below we see Katya's body, lying still. There is a silken rope around the battlement heading down to where she is lying...
We enter into a battle and after making our way down to Katya, we note that she has been stabbed and poisoned. After some investigation, it turns out Wesley is the one we are after. He has disguised himself as Alden to get out of the Castle grounds. We head out into the city to try and find him, Katya is currently being restrained by some guards at the tower. We head back toward the Chandlerveil and spy Wesley heading that way. We engage him in battle whilst trying to get to our house and protect Holly. We manage to subdue him and his giant spiders. We arrange for Holly to get a message to the tower. We investigate the fallen body of Wesley and locate his magical dagger which also appears to be poisonous. Has has dark silken wraps around his arms we we take off and his black slippers are magical as well and we take those. We take some thieves tools and put those straight into the bag of holding. We collect 68 gold, 9 electrum, 72 silver and 16 copper, his short bow and arrows, a small glass stoppered sphere that appears to be full spiders. We keep two piles of things, some we would like to keep, and some that is of interest to the investigation.
A little while later, some town guard appear and form a perimeter. Moulten, Kugellux, Kezahr, Holly, & Katya appear behind them. We lay out what transpired to Moulten and Kezahr confirms the magical items. Kezahr leans down next to him and investigates him further. She pokes at the base of his spine as there is something magical under his skin at this point. She cuts into his back and finds some metal attached to his spine. She keeps cutting away and pulls out a flat piece of metal that was being used to transform Wesley. His skin now appears quite translucent and slightly bulkier. His hair is quite light and grey and he has a lot of scars up his back that don't appear to be self inflicted but they do look quite old. There is some writing on his arms which looks slightly elven, but also not elven. It says:

Strand of the Thread, of the Web of Zaraena, mistress of Umbralgroth

. Additionally, some individual words are written below:

travel, self command, devout, sunwalker, hostaged

. There is also a tattoo on his sternum of a rough eight pointed star with an eye at each point and a web line joining them which looks like a Lolth symbol. On closer inspection and after some thinking, Dharra says he looks like a deep gnome, from the under dark. Moulten will look over all the things we found and after investigation we may receive some of them by right of conquest. We try to discern how long he has worked for the city - but all anyone here knows is that it is a long time. We all make our way back to the tower to wait for Hanirash and inspect Wesley’s room. Whilst waiting for Hanirash, we take a short rest.
Kezahr inspects the keys we found and can ascertain certain keys; the library, her room, the Lord Advocate's vault, the dungeon, but there are about 8 other keys that she does not know what they open. Upon Hanirash’s arrival, we use Rahalla to open the door to Wesley’s chamber. The room looks quite normal and is slightly bigger and more opulent than Alden’s chamber. There are fine tailored garments mainly, but some darker looking things toward the back. On a shelf near the window, there is a small hidden space that contains a mushroom trap. We slam the door shut.
After some time, we open the door again, making sure that the mushroom trap has subsided. Rahalla served her purpose well in this instance. We investigate the room further now that the trap has cleared. In the cavity left behind, there is another mushroom trap and a spider trap. There is also a black laquered chest that does not have a discernible keyhole. We put that in the pile of stuff for Kezahr to investigate. In the chimney we find, four small vials full of the poison.
Kezahr investigates the chest for us whilst Hanirash continues looking over the room. Hanirash finds a note between two books

Rid Moulten of his allies and encourage him to resign, or be gone. You will be well rewarded. EV.

Kezahr finds that the chest is actually two chests that are used to transfer things between them. Opening the chest we find a note.

Whoever will hurt the town, and of course elves are a priority - you know who to target.

Kezahr thinks the second chest is far from here, but on this plane. She will report back to Moulten on what we found along with Hanirash. We spend the afternoon in the library doing some research. We find nothing about the Underdark at all, which feels a little weird. Turning to Wesley we find that he started at the Tower during the previous Lord Advocate's time, and as such he has been here for over 15 years. He had been a key strategist and economic advisor for most of this time. He has been a part of most things happening in the town for the last ten years. He acquired several magical items for the previous Lord Advocate (ie: Dharra’s lute) and appears to have been clever enough to keep his name out of the records on anything untoward. He did a lot of behind the scenes work which allowed the Lord Advocate to worry about other matters. Over the past ten years or so, the amount of money spent on infrastructure, military and development has gone down. Whilst the amount spent on magical items and pretty girls has risen. We send a quick message to Funi asking for information about the Underdark and mentioning the tattoo from Wesley. She replies quite quickly saying:

Interesting. Will look into that name. Is this related to your sigils? Perhaps your researcher should come to the library here! Happy to help with that.

. However, the voice we hear is not Funi's, it is quite clearly Pozohr. We broach the topic of Kezahr going to the Academy for research, which she says she has been contemplating anyway. Kezahr will speak to Moulten to see if he will let her go to Confluence. Hanirash will clean up some stuff here with his investigation before leaving town for Midenvold. He believes that Wesley is behind the murders in town and will report as such.
We head home to catch up with Holly and enjoy a home cooked meal. We resolve to venture back to Verdant Isle in the morning and investigate the island further and deal with the entity that has been plaguing it for so long. Dharra is particularly interested to finish investigating the Dwarven settlement and the tower which we think may be linked to Glade in some way. After a long day we retire fairly early for a long rest…