SESSION FIVE: ONE SALT
Morning at the Moon Blades Guild began with the usual combination of breakfast, paperwork and somebody proving that written instructions remain dangerous in the hands of adventurers. Eldric had barely settled in before a junior ranger approached her with a bow that needed regripping, and she happily spent a few minutes helping them sort it out. Galek, meanwhile, was summoned towards the kitchen by one of the adventurers assigned to dinner duty, who was standing over a large pot of gravy with the expression of a man attempting advanced alchemy.
Galek tasted it and concluded that it needed salt.
The cook nodded, reached beneath the counter and picked up the entire bag.
“The recipe says one salt.”
Galek stared at him.
“One TEASPOON of salt. Not a BAG.”
Quietdale would eat that evening after all.
At the breakfast tables, the group were greeted particularly warmly by one of Cass’s former companions, who had drawn breakfast duty. Extra helpings appeared in front of them with a simple thanks for dealing with the bastards responsible for the North Road ambush.
Then Raff came downstairs.
The previous evening he had returned from Applewood Orchard with his ankle badly injured and wrapped. This morning he bounded down the stairs without the slightest sign of a limp, stiffness or discomfort. Metro noticed immediately. Raff noticed Metro noticing.
“What?”
Apparently that was his entire medical explanation.
It was not the only thing that had changed. Metro’s plate suddenly began sliding away from her while Raff stood nowhere near it. A faint magical hand hovered beside the bacon, and Raff grinned.
“Look what I can do.”
Zarxius watched the exchange, looked around the Guild Hall and began putting things together. Raff was not the only person who seemed different. People around the Guild appeared stronger, faster and generally more capable than they had been the previous evening.
The party themselves had undergone a considerably more dramatic increase.
Raff, apparently, had responded to his own improvement by learning how to steal breakfast from across the room.
Some people acquire great power and immediately question their place in the universe.
Raff used Mage Hand to annoy Metro. Moving the breakfast plate, tying shoelaces.
Order had been restored.
Edwin eventually called the group over to settle the money from the North Road job, but before he could finish another purse arrived from the Estate. This one was attached to Raff’s old Blackwater report. Edwin called him across, and Raff immediately straightened.
“Finally. Recognition!”
Edwin began reading the paperwork. The bounty had been authorised following confirmation that the target, Mara V., had been killed during the North Road action.
Raff’s expression slowly changed. "Delayed recognition!"
He looked at Edwin, then at the party.
“You killed Mara?”
The group confirmed that they had.
“Venn?”
“No. Vane.”
Raff stared at them.
“...Vane?”
There was a pause.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Somewhere within the Quietdale administrative system, somebody had apparently decided that two criminals named Mara whose surnames began with V were sufficiently interchangeable for accounting purposes.
Edwin, who considered incorrect payments a personal attack upon civilisation, immediately began dealing with the problem. An additional job slip was produced. Mara Venn was still alive, the bounty clearly remained unresolved, and somebody was going to have to find her.
Dun, perhaps experiencing a temporary spiritual awakening, did not even attempt to argue that the party had technically killed a Mara and should therefore receive the payment.
When the jobs were released, Raff’s party claimed the Mara Venn contract. Before leaving, Raff approached Metro with an offer. He had unfinished business with Venn, the party had just successfully dismantled another bandit operation, and joining forces seemed sensible.
Eldric immediately identified the important issue.
More adventurers meant more people splitting the reward.
“No.”
Raff shrugged.
“Alright. Thought I’d ask.”
Galek stopped him before he left and asked whether he used a sword.
Raff shrugged again.
“I use anything that draws blood, dude.”
Galek considered this, removed his own sword and handed it over.
Raff stared at the weapon, then at Galek, before reaching into his own equipment and handing over a pair of magical brass knuckles in return.
Somehow Galek had completed a perfectly legitimate adventurer trade in which a sword had become enchanted punching equipment.
Edwin was not consulted.
With Raff’s group gone, the remaining Moon Blades moved for the board.
Metro moved faster.
By the time most of the room had worked out what was happening, she already had the contract.
HOLLOW FARM
A remote tenant farm had stopped reporting. Livestock had begun wandering into neighbouring fields without anybody accompanying them. The reward was good and the job sounded straightforward.
These remain two of the most dangerous qualities a job can possess.
The journey east was interrupted by two travellers attempting to make sense of an outdated map. They introduced themselves as investigators from Ranoir Academy and explained that they were searching for two missing students.
Nella Voss. Perren Dain.
The same two young mages the party had encountered several days earlier on the road towards Greywatch.
The investigators had received official permission to look through the Quietdale area and were travelling under correspondence from Lord Reginald Quietdale. They needed directions, but they also had questions. Had the group seen the students? Had they noticed anything unusual on the road? Did they know anything that might help?
Eldric answered.
Dun quietly offered divine assistance.
Between the two of them, the investigators were satisfied enough to continue towards Quietdale.
The party continued towards Hollow Farm.
It did not take long for the place to feel wrong.
The property appeared abandoned. There were no workers in the fields, no voices coming from the buildings and no obvious sign of anybody tending the animals.
Galek and Strongbrew began investigating a particularly unpleasant smell around the estate and confidently concluded that they were detecting rotting flesh.
They were not.
They were detecting a mixture of human and animal shit.
Forensic careers remained unlikely.
Eldric checked for signs of undead activity and found none.
The group spread out and began searching the estate. They found farming tools, equipment and supplies, along with a chest in one of the buildings. Another room held several hunting trophies, including mounted wolves and a large eagle.
Nothing attacked.
Nothing moved.
They were simply dead animals displayed in an otherwise silent building.
Inside the main farmhouse, the kitchen looked as though somebody had stood up halfway through a meal and never returned. Food remained on the table, along with a document case.
A more careful search revealed something else.
A chalk arrow had been drawn onto the floor.
It pointed towards the fireplace.
Strongbrew investigated the masonry using the ancient scholarly discipline of hitting it until architecture stopped being an obstacle.
Earth Tremor became involved.
The fireplace lost the argument.
Behind it was a concealed passage leading underground.
Then somebody screamed upstairs.
Apparently the farmhouse had not been abandoned after all.
Eldric climbed through the loft hatch and discovered the Hollow family hiding above them.
They explained that strange things had begun happening around the property. They had seen animals moving outside at night, including creatures they were quite certain should not have been walking around anywhere. Eventually those animals had begun trying to force their way into the farmhouse.
The family had retreated into the loft and stayed there.
With the immediate danger seemingly gone, the party persuaded them to come downstairs.
The adventurers then turned their attention to the passage behind the fireplace.
Beneath the farmhouse, the tunnel opened into a pitch-black collection of underground rooms.
Something was waiting for them.
Two large constructs attacked.
Galek sent his echo forward and used it to keep one occupied while the others tried to bring it down. The second creature disappeared into the earth, only for spikes to tear from the ground moments later, restricting movement through the chambers and making retreat considerably more complicated.
The fight became a brutal close-quarters struggle below ground.
Above them, the Hollows decided that remaining on the farm was no longer an especially attractive option.
They gathered their belongings, took the document case and attempted to leave.
Then the screaming started.
Not underground.
Above.
Dun and Eldric broke away and ran back towards the surface.
They were already too late.
The wolves had surrounded the farmhouse.
The father and his teenage son were already gone.
The mother and younger child were still trying to escape.
Dun and Eldric tried to reach them.
They watched as the creatures attacked.
What happened was unlike any ordinary animal attack.
The victims did not simply fall.
They seemed to disappear into the creatures themselves.
The mother was gone.
Then the child.
There were no bodies left to recover.
One of the wolves forced its way into the farmhouse. Dun and Eldric killed it and slammed the door shut.
Below them, the rest of the party finally destroyed the remaining construct.
Then everything went quiet.
When they looked outside again, the other animals were gone.
There were no retreating shapes.
No obvious trail leading away.
Nothing.
The document case the Hollows had carried outside had disappeared as well.
The entire family was dead.
The group searched what remained of the farm and recovered another sample of the strange clay-like material they had found beneath it, but there was very little else to call a victory.
They returned to Quietdale battered, bruised and unusually quiet.
Bram listened to their report.
There was no shouting. No accusation. No speech about failure.
Sometimes jobs simply went wrong.
People died.
He took the sample from Dun and agreed to have it investigated.
Later, Raff’s party returned from their own hunt.
Mara Venn had been found.
She had also escaped.
The confrontation had apparently reached the river, where hostages had been held aboard a barge rigged to explode if the smugglers were pursued.
The group had returned without their quarry.
The Guild slowly settled into its evening routine. Reports were written. Equipment was checked. People drank. The tables filled with the ordinary noise of adventurers returning from work and attempting to make sense of whatever had happened to them during the day.
The party looked over the notes they had made earlier.
Nothing had changed.
The handwriting was exactly as they remembered leaving it.
One name stood clearly on the page.
Beneath it were three words.
Crossbow. Register. Dinner.
Outside Quietdale, those words had made perfect sense together.
Here, sitting inside the Guild Hall, they suddenly did not.
The words remained.
The connection between them did not.
Across the table, Ellie and Morgan looked at one another.
“So. It begins.”
