This morning did not start out very well (surprise, surprise!). After spending an entire night seeing horrible visions, waking up screaming every half hour or so, I wasn't particularly refreshed this morning, and I'm sorry to say that I seem to have done Leighla and Haley a disservice by waking them up with me, even though I didn't mean to. So all of us were exhausted, and of course, given the amount of brandy we went through last night, all of us were also hung over. I hope to never wake up feeling as bad as that again in my entire life!

After briefly debating where we should go, we eventually decided to go see the priest, to find out what's going on around here and to offer our help. Of course, even though we could find the church easily enough (the steeple sort of gave it away), we had the little problem of being less than entirely awake; I'm afraid that I managed to walk into a wall on the way, and Leighla followed me into it. Quite embarrassing, and it only made the morning that much better...

Well, without too much further incident, we eventually made it into the church, where after Leighla insulted the woman who was in discussion with the priest (I'm not entirely sure why she did that, although she, like Haley and I, wasn't in a great mood to start the day), we were able to learn some useful things from him. Shaman Brucian was, admittedly, a little reluctant to speak with us at first (seems he was a bit upset about Prihelm trying to release a zombie from yesterday's funeral), but we eventually convinced him that we're actually nice people, even if some of us who shall remain nameless are a little deluded... Once that was straightened out, he told us that many people in the village have died recently, though not all of them have become zombies; indeed, he couldn't even tell us how many have been zombified (apparently, all the corpses around this creepy place decay very rapidly)! Seems like something a priest ought to know (they have to have some uses, right?), but whatever. He also warned us to stay away from the cemetery at night; apparently, all the deaths happen at night, and these rural folk being superstitious, they connect this with the cemetery. I don't pretend to understand, but that's what Brucian told us... Oh, and he proved completely incapable of helping my headache; I always thought that the main role of priests was to provide physical and spiritual healing for other people, but apparently, I was wrong. Silly me!

At Shaman Brucian's recommendation, we went to talk to the constable (Gremin, by name). The poor man has lost his daughter, which is unfortunate, but still doesn't give him an excuse to treat us the way he did! We found him in an alley, spattered with blood, and in which was a piece of red licorice. He seems to have suspected US of being the causes of all Marais d'Tarascon's problems! Haley in particular didn't take this very well... After admonishing us all to try more tact while were at the church, she failed to demonstrate any of her own in dealing with the constable. But eventually, despite a great deal of bluster on his part (and quite a bit of shrillness on Haley's, which didn't do my headache any good), we were able to convince him (sort of) that we only want to help.

Gremin gave us a bit more useful information; these "licorice murders" are one of the two main causes of death in the town recently. Personally, I find the term somewhat quaint, but given Gremin's mood, I thought it better not to give him my opinion (he probably would have locked me in jail, and I really don't need that right about now!). He also was able to give us a bit of information about Luc; the barmy's surname is Tarascon. Apparently, the village was named after his family. His parents are dead, but he has a pair of brothers who live in a plantation about twenty minutes walk from here and who also maintain a townhouse. Since we weren't really able to succeed with getting much more from him (other than a stern admonition to stay away from the cemetery), we decided to try going out to visit Luc's family.

Along the way, I noticed that Dogboy had left us at some point. Since I don't really like him, and it's not like it's hard to find anyone in this fly speck of a village, I didn't mention anything at the time. Funny thing, though - no one's seen him since. I hope he's alright; he may be sullen, taciturn, and so forth, but he's part of our group still. Besides, more interesting things were afoot. Specifically, we ran across a local by the name of Liss Rihdat; he's the only friendly local we've met so far, and besides, he's kind of cute (in other words, he's on both counts better company than Dogboy).

Liss is a psionicist, apparently, and he seems to want to be part of our group. I have no objections, though I sense further distractions for Mitsy lie in our future. Besides, he gives us a new skill, he seems to be a nice guy, and even though he'll distract Mitsy to no end, he is easy on the eyes... Anyway, Liss was able to put the number of deaths at about fifteen, which is a lot in a village this small. He also had some less than complimentary things to say about Luc, who's apparently been the village idiot all his life. I still think that Luc's babble means something dire, though.

Our attempt to talk to Luc's family met with dismal failure, since they weren't at the townhouse. We decided to go visit them at the plantation, but Luc didn't seem to want to go that way; when we started walking, he turned around and went back to town, uttering a few more cryptic sentences:

"Seventh doth suns of son the time rise, to of eternity an to knave the send cries."

"Inajira fortunes his make will reverse, dooming the dreaded with live to all curse."

I can't make much sense of the first one, except that I think it means we only have a week, but the second one could be this:

"Inajira will make his fortunes reverse, dooming all to live with the dreaded curse."

Since Luc seemed reluctant to go to the plantation, and Haley and I were getting hungry, we decided to go back to town to get lunch. There is some serious thought that we need to find a way of keeping Luc from running away as we go to the plantation; suggestions have included having Mitsy baby-sit (she refused; evidently her men need to have more sense than she does, which is not really a big issue normally, but in Luc's case...), leaving him with Brucian, or locking him in jail or in Haley's room (why Haley should want this is beyond me, but to each her own). We never did decide on anything, but the consensus seems likely to be yet another option: let the man take care of himself for a while.

Well, as we were eating, Liss has an idea (yet another improvement over Dogboy!): there is what he terms a "Voodan" named, of all things, Chicken Bone, who lives a bit over a day's journey out of town; perhaps we might consult him? We decided that he would make better company than this "Lord of the Dead" that we've heard about a couple of times, but that the Tarascons would make better company yet, so back to the plantation we went. Imagine our surprise when there we met none other but Chicken Bone himself (a very bizarre looking guy with even more bizarre eating habits). After sending us out to do things to a chicken that needn't be repeated here and are best performed in private, he proceeded to eat the cooked heart (I was seriously feeling ill at this point, but since I cooked it, probably so is he!) before sharing his knowledge with us.

We are, firstly, to talk to other villagers and shopkeepers; apparently, we don't yet have all the facts (gosh, I'm surprised by this! Though why CB can't just give us the facts is beyond me...). But more importantly, he has some ideas about the cemetery, though he of course couched them in vague terms. Such a helpful guy!

According to Bone, what we're supposed to do is go the cemetery after dark and guard it (against what, he didn't say... Typical!). We would find an item (not that he would tell us what we'd find), which we were supposed to take it to a shopkeeper (no, we don't know which shopkeeper; he said we'd know when we saw the item). This shopkeeper would, in turn, send us somewhere; we were to go after dark and see what we could see.

All this is very nice, if not immediately obvious, so we're going to try it. We decided, given how tired everyone is, to try to rest up before then; that's why this entry is so long (I'm trying to avoid having to enter Reverie until the others have gotten at least some sleep). But now, I need to get what rest I can; I'll describe the events at the cemetery in the morning.