The Sixth Evening
Remember how I earlier said that I think perhaps all people in this nasty place are strange? Well, having seen the town, I now firmly believe the truth of that suspicion!
When we left the hut the next morning, MM (his name turns out to be Luc, which is what I'll call him henceforth) decided to come with us. Not that he told us anything, of course, but having acquired a walking, if silent, shadow, it was fairly obvious what his intention was. We poled for a few more hours before walking the last mile into town (a thoroughly miserable experience, by the way: everyone else seemed relieved to be upon dry land, where crocodiles seem to be less frequently encountered, but the knee deep mud ruined it for me). Upon arrival, we noticed something rather weird: the town appeared to be deserted! Closer inspection showed that there was a funeral today, so we approached the graveyard, having nothing better to do (in retrospect, this is why adventurers aren't well loved everywhere ? who needs a bunch of passing strangers pushing their noses into the town's daily life?). Well, the weirdness increased: the coffin was chained! I mean, who chains coffins shut, in Corellon's name? Apparently, the answer to that question is "the people of Marais d'Tarascon." It soon became apparent that the reason they chained the coffin shut was that something in it was still alive. I was very confused ? humans are beyond my understanding sometimes ? but Prihelm tried to stop them (while I don't understand humans, most of them are at least rational enough not to bury the living, so I was thinking they probably had the dead man's cats in the coffin or something silly like that, but Prihelm thought they were burying a live person; I really really worry about him sometimes). Of course, this just led to your friendly local adventurers being evicted by the constabulary, but not before I tried asking what was going on. Funny thing, but they wouldn't talk to me!
Well, we eventually asked the priest, and he proved to be amazingly unhelpful ? wouldn't tell us anything about the burial. We made it to the Full Moon Inn, from whence I write this entry. The people here also proved to be music haters, which further lowered my estimation of their sanity, but the food was good and I got a nice, long, hot bath, so I'm not going to question their customs TOO closely. And eventually, we were able to find a pair of chatty people: I met a guy named Duncan d'Lute, who is a merchant from the nearby town of Port d'Elhour. He didn't know much except that the village people were acting a bit strangely, but he was polite (even though he spent a bit more time staring than I'm comfortable with, not being like Mitsy), so he might be a worthwhile contact. But Prihelm was able to extract some information from Katha, the barmaid (she was busy flirting with him, but subtly, and as the poor boy has been around Mitsy's blatant flirting so much recently, he didn't notice. A pity, because she was cute and probably would have told him more had he gone for her). Still, he was able to get a story about how a few people (including the recently deceased Jeremiah d'Gris) in this town have died recently in unexplained ways, giving off a horrible odor of rotten meat and not wanting to stay in the grave. Seems a little hard to credit, but then, the coffin WAS chained shut, and SOMETHING in it was alive...
I hope to find out more tomorrow, but for now - wait, what was that scream?
Oh gods, I'll never close my eyes again! I'm shaking even now ? you can see it, can't you? Leighla says I'm not insane, and so does Haley, but I don't know if I believe them... But wait, let me start from the beginning.
Remember that I heard a scream from downstairs. I ran down there, and quickly discovered that the common room reeked of an incredibly disgusting, nasty, putrid odor ? rotten meat, just like Katha said! I'm afraid it must have overpowered me, because I passed out. I came to quickly enough, but I was still queasy, which was why I passed out again when I saw a corpse (rotting, which explained the odor) where a patron had been when I went to my room! And when it moved... Oh gods, I want to go home!
But Leighla stood fast, and tried to feather it. Sadly, she missed, and I didn't do much better (no surprise, given how my hands were shaking, and I was never a great knife thrower anyway). Haley was able to turn it (I didn't know she could do that: I'll have to remember to ask about the ramifications of being an arcanist at a later date), and I thought that was that. Horrible, yes, but far worse was to come.
We were just turning to go back to our rooms when Duncan came downstairs ? but HE was dead too! It was bad enough when it was someone I'd never met, but with an acquaintance! Oh, I wanted to put him out of his misery (it was the least I could do), but the sight was too much for me. I'm ashamed to write this, but even as Haley dove behind a bar and Mitsy and Dogboy bolted and Prihelm stood there with a familiar glassy stare in place, I ducked behind a table and attempted to become one with the shadows... Only Leighla was able to stand fast (claiming something about the blessings of Solonor ? maybe there's something to this religion stuff), and she dispatched the poor soul back to his premature rest.
Eventually, we all calmed down, but we noticed that neither Mitsy nor Dogboy had returned yet. I was all for leaving them be (I suspected that they were busy and didn't want to be disturbed), but the rest of the group insisted... So we followed their trail out of the inn (I'm no tracker, but in their panic they left a trail that even a feeble-minded dwarf could follow); to my great surprise, it split in two! Well, we eventually found them (separate ? the zombie had a greater impact than I would have thought) and got them back to the inn. Here, we had a problem; they would only sleep in the stable! Of course, by now, Mitsy was somewhat recovered and was shooting Dogboy sultry glances, so there may have been more to this than meets the eye (and I DID hear Mitsy mumble something about how they would be more comfortable on the hay...). Nevertheless, they insisted that Prihelm sit up and stand watch for them (I won't bother to speculate why this was HIS job...).
Telling this story has calmed me down, but now I find myself shaking again. Oh gods, what's happening to me?
When I returned to my room and slipped back into Reverie, I found myself reliving these events, sort of. Only the rest of the group ran off and left me. They left me to die! And the two zombies were advancing, rotting fingers extended, ready to throttle the life from me, when I woke up. Actually, that's an understatement. I bolted out of bed with a scream that I swear you could hear out at Luc's hut. And I was in a cold sweat, of course, and scared out of my wits. Leighla and Haley, at least, came to comfort me, and I wound up blubbering like a baby on Haley's shoulder, crying and wailing and generally carrying on. Eventually, they were able to calm me down, and I went back to sleep, the two of them on my floor (along with me ? the bed wasn't big enough to sleep three, and I needed to be close to other people). And you know what? It happened again!! I could feel the cold rotting flesh on my neck, while their bulging eyes stared at me with malevolent intent, and it was too much, and I screamed and screamed and screamed, and shot back out of my Reverie. Now, every time I close my eyes, I see them; they're waiting for me, and one of these days, if I'm not careful, they're going to get me! I've never been so scared in my life, and I don't know what to do!! Before I got to this accursed place, I was always so self confident ? I'd never met anything I couldn't handle, and now, I have to rely on my comrades to keep me sane, and we're all going to be nervous wrecks, because none of us can sleep with me around. I'm so grateful that they haven't really abandoned me (well, at least Haley and Leighla haven't), but I'm afraid to be alone, and I'm afraid that caring for a madwoman will be too much for them and they really WILL leave me! I'm probably wronging them, but I can't think straight right about now. The three of us are currently in the middle of consuming the inn's entire stock of brandy in an effort to calm my nerves (perhaps if I pass out I won't see these horrible images) and help me sleep. Somehow, I know it won't work...
The Seventh Evening
This has been a very bizarre day so far, and it's not over yet, by a long shot! Perhaps I ought to explain...
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.
I'm writing this the morning after rather than waiting until night ? too much has happened for me to wait until then! Sadly, little of it has been good... Poor, poor Mitsy!
I left off just before I tried to get some sleep in preparation for last night's adventure. Haley tried to dose me with some really foul smelling and even fouler tasting concoction of hers (I wonder if she has a sadistic streak?), but sadly, it didn't work, and I woke up screaming (again) ? I'm really turning into a wreck! Fortunately, Mitsy was able to do something about it ? she cast a spell on me, and I actually got some real sleep! This was enough to raise my opinion of her a lot, because I really missed being able to rest!
Well, while I was in dreamland, some of the others went around questioning some of the locals. Turns out that the local baker (who makes excellent cinnamon roles, by the way) sells red licorice... And her chief customers are Jean Tarascon (Luc's older brother) and some other guy whose name I don't remember... But since the man has seven children (oh, his poor wife!), his conspicuous consumption doesn't seem at all suspicious to me. Besides, Marcel Tarascon (Jean's twin, to whom he was very close) died (no one knows how yet), unhinging Jean somewhat (he hasn't been seen for weeks), and interestingly, all the town's troubles started at the same time as Marcel died. It's pretty obvious to me that these things must be connected, and I don't think the other family is likely to be involved.
Haley was just being inconsiderate enough to wake me from my much needed nap after only a few hours when we heard a tremendous shriek, coming from the south. Charging out of the inn, Leighla and I both headed in that direction, while the rest of the group went off to the west (I think maybe it's because they don't have the sharp hearing that we of elven blood have). We were just in time to see a dark cloaked figure (alas, I didn't recognize him) standing over Lillin, the innkeeper's daughter! She was bleeding and looked pretty bad... Leighla and I both shot at him, but alas, he was too fast and got away.
Leighla immediately gave chase, while I tended to the girl until Haley and Prihelm showed up, then followed after. When I caught up with her, Leighla had just lost the assassin, but fortunately, my sharp ears came to the rescue, and I located him on the rooftops. We chased after him from the ground (by now, Liss had also caught up with us), but eventually, we lost him (pretty much at the edge of town).
Boosting Liss up to the roof, he made a few strange noises (Leighla and I have agreed that we'll need to keep an eye on him for a while, not that this is a great trial...) before he and I managed to get Leighla onto the roof as well. Naturally, after I went to all the work to get the other two up there, they didn't bother to extend a hand down to help ME up. Some people are SO inconsiderate! But since all they found was some licorice, I guess they didn't really need me anyway.
Meanwhile, Gremin showed up and carried poor Lillin to Brucian; apparently, Prihelm and Maerlyan had managed to stabilize her enough that Brucian was able to save her. I feel much better about our group than I have in a while ? we've actually done something truly noble for a change!
Since it was dark, we decided to go to the cemetery. And it's a good thing that we got there when we did! Standing in front of the recently deceased Jeremiah d'Gris' crypt were a pair of nasty smelly undead, trying to let him out! Frightened momentarily out of our wits, I'm afraid we all watched in horror as Jeremiah rose to walk the earth again... Perhaps I should say that he rose to shamble, instead of walk, since he is, after all, quite dead.
Leighla was the first to recover; she shot one of the foul creatures (a ghoul, as we subsequently discovered), ending it's unlife. The rest of us were still rather stunned and didn't do much to help the fight, so Leighla shot the other ghoul, wounding it badly. I recovered enough to at least hit it with one of my knives before Haley managed to turn it (and Jeremiah's zombie), and off they went into the night. We were just about to follow them (can't have those things wandering around here), when we heard a truncated scream from behind us.
Whirling around, we saw three more ghouls; already, they'd savaged Mitsy. She was paralyzed by their fell touch and looked to be pretty badly wounded. Before we could do anything, they managed to also paralyze Prihelm and Haley, while the one who was attacking Mitsy started eating her! By Corellon, it was SO disgusting!!! The few of us who were still capable of fighting (Leighla, Liss, Maerlyan, and me) struck back as best we could; Leighla killed the one menacing Haley (thank the gods!), while the rest of us were still too shaken to do much. I tried to save Mitsy (I owed her one), but all I succeeded in doing was irritating the ghoul that was trying to eat her. It raked me with its claws (gods, that HURT!!), but fortunately, elves are able to resist the paralyzing touch (yet another reason that being an elf is such a great thing!), so at least I wasn't in immediate danger of being eaten. Killed, yes, but at least not eaten.
The ghoul that had been licking it's chops and trying to figure out how to eat Prihelm through his armor similarly took exception to Liss' attempts to distract it, but fortunately, while Liss was wounded, he wasn't killed and he somehow found the strength of will to resist the paralysis. Leighla and Liss and Maerlyan ganged up on it and managed to kill it, while I was forced to defend myself against the last one. I was meleeing with it when I heard a sharp "twang" followed by some rather rude words in elven and accompanied by the passage of an arrow just over my left shoulder; Leighla had just broken her bow string in trying to shoot the ghoul (at least, I assume she was trying to shoot the ghoul, even though she came closer to shooting me...). Ignoring the urge to turn to Leighla and warn her to watch what she was doing (I still can't believe she almost shot me!), I dispatched my opponent with a deft maneuver my brother Aerik taught me, separating its head from its shoulders with one blow; Aerik would be so proud of me!