We were in pretty sad shape; most of us were wounded, and Mitsy was dead. Actually, that's an understatement; Mitsy was not only dead but missing several body parts. I did my best to make her look better for her funeral (it's what she would have wanted), and (can you BELIEVE this?) my erstwhile friends accused me of robbing from the dead! I've never been so offended in my entire life!
Prihelm found a piece of cloth that one of the ghouls had been wearing; evidently this was the item that CB had wanted us to find. Haley reminded us that we needed to burn Mitsy's corpse before she came back as a (half-digested) ghoul; building a big funeral pyre for the poor girl, we did so. I still can't believe that she's dead!
We decided to pass the rest of the night at the cemetery after an abortive attempt to track down the other two undead; I'm afraid that I wasn't able to sleep at all, between my grief and the fact that I was still having nightmares. Not wanting to keep my friends from their rest, I stayed up all night. I'm not as young as I used to be; I'm VERY tired!
And now I'm writing this; we've just seen the tailor, Tomas by name, who tells us that the cloth comes from the Tarascon servant uniform (not a great surprise), and we've also finished talking with Deruno, the dwarven shopkeeper, who was able to tell me that my short sword is nothing too fancy, but still magical. He also sold us (for a good price; apparently, we're minor heroes around the town, having saved Lillin) some magic healing potions and a few other things; I gave the bracers to Haley, who looks like she could use some armor. I just wish I hadn't had to trade in my nice bow for an older short bow; I'm not as good with those, and I'll have to buy my bow back from the little guy once I have the money. Actually, I think that should be the party's first priority, since I DID pay for all this stuff, except for about 20 gold that the others were able to contribute.
Once I finish writing this, we're going to go investigate the Tarascons. I think all of us are convinced by now that they're deeply involved in this mystery. So apart from recording what I think is the last verse of Luc's hexad, I'm going to wrap this up.
"The over shining sky the of light the dead, shall to all turning fail and gutter red."
Mysterious stuff: I can't make heads or tails of it yet. But since I have a burglary to plan, I'd better get on with it.
The Eighth Evening
I find this hard to believe, but every day I spend in this place is worse than the last! You'd think that things can only go downhill for so long, but my life is steadily getting harder and harder, with no end in sight. I really wish I'd listened to Aunt Leandra!
I see that I left off with us just ready to "investigate" the Tarascon's townhouse. Oh, THAT was a big success... We got there and knocked again, but of course, no one was home. Just as some of us were preparing to go around to the back, Dogboy walked up (and I'd thought we'd lost him... oh well!). I guess I'm glad he's back; it wouldn't do for me to run into his zombie on a dark and stormy night, after all. And perhaps he can be of more use than he's been so far; after all, Mitsy turned out to be sort of okay towards the end...
Of course, even though I think it's fairly obvious, it seems that none of my companions has much of an idea about how breaking and entering is supposed to work. This proved very problematic, we subsequently found. But let me start from the beginning. We found the rear door, but alas, my rudimentary skills with lockpicks proved to be entirely insufficient for the job. Not to be deterred, I was merely going to pry the window frame loose or something like that when I found, to my horror, that DB had just unlimbered his axe and, being urged on by both Haley and Liss (I thought they had more sense than this!), was preparing to chop the door down. Perhaps I'm just being silly, but I had always thought that subtlety was crucial in such issues, and that even if one is willing to make a lot of noise, breaking a window is a lot faster and easier than battering down a door. Since it was one or the other, I chose to go through the window; alas, this is rarely, if ever, a quiet procedure, and I knew that we'd only have a few minutes to investigate. If only my comrades were a little more patient, I could have gotten us in for a long period of time, but alas... Remind me not to go on any "investigations" with them ever again!
We found ourselves in a kitchen, but since we didn't have a lot of time, I went straight upstairs after trying to block the door to slow down pursuit. At this point, things became fairly confused; next time, perhaps I should "investigate" on my own or with just one or two comrades rather than the entire party. I went to the study, checked the desk, and since I don't have the strength to deal with looking behind the bookcase and Liss, Haley, and Dogboy were helping me with the study in any event... I moved on to the bedrooms, but didn't find anything useful. Apparently, DB moved the bookcase for the rest of us (he's fairly strong), and revealed an alcove containing a cloak and a scroll tube.
This was about the extent of our investigation, since at this point, the constable showed up. I was able to hide (in retrospect, I should have just continued to search, but I was a little upset about the prospect of having to go to jail or having to plan a jailbreak just because my friends don't understand the finer points of burglary), but the rest of the people got caught. I'm not sure how they did it, but Haley talked her way out of it (showing remarkable tact, for once; being caught red-handed in a burglary may have had something to do with that). Gremin eventually let us go, giving us an admonishment not to try some other such foolish stunt again.
Being incredibly bright, I suggested that as long as Gremin was occupied investigating the townhouse, we ought to take advantage of the chance to investigate the plantation. Alas, I was once again unable to get through the lock (it was a really tough one!), and people were once again pondering trying to smash the door down. Not wanting to be arrested twice in one hour, I was all for going home when Leighla saw a bit of light. Following her (and being followed in turn by the rest of the party), we found a window into the dining room. I was just looking through it when a ghoul reached out and grabbed me!
Screaming a bit in my shock (these kinds of things don't happen to me every day, or at least they didn't until I got here), I was nevertheless able to dispatch it with more of that great swordsmanship that Aerik tried so hard to teach me. Leighla, Dogboy, and Maerlyan accounted for its companions, and that (I assumed) was that. Our first battle in which everything went well! Except, of course, that poor Prihelm seems to be cursed or something...
Going in through the window, we saw that the ghouls had been serving the remains of a young boy on a silver platter. This provoked varying degrees of reaction: Liss and Dogboy bolted (I'm beginning to think that DB is a coward at heart), Leighla screamed, Prihelm gave his familiar glassy stare, and I fainted. Haley, I suppose more accustomed to being around dead people, just looked on in disinterest as she waited for us to come around. Liss and Dogboy were gone for good, Prihelm was babbling about "look what's on the platter! Hey, Jen, did you see what they were eating?" and so forth, Leighla was even more messed up, so it was up to me to protect my friend (she owes me for this one!). We explored the house (quickly), and other than several more half eaten bodies (and most of my breakfast and lunch), we didn't see anything else.
Eventually gathering the rest, we noticed that it was getting dark. Haley wanted to explore the barn, but fortunately, was incapable of breaking the door down, do we decided to go back to town. I jogged off, expecting that the rest would follow me, and my day took a significant downturn (and here you didn't think it could do that, did you?).
Apparently, the rest were trying to find DB, who was still hidden, so I was all alone, which explained why the murderer was able to get the drop on me. Since he caught me by surprise and I was already wounded, before I could do much other than scream for help, he'd plunged that knife of his well and truly through me, and I sank to the ground, seeing no more.
Fortunately, the others found me before my life blood completely drained away (not that I'm complaining, but the murderer evidently wasn't smart enough to cut my throat or anything like that), and I was saved by poor Maerlyan.
I say poor Maerlyan because we'd only gone several hundred feet down the road before more bad things showed up. The murderer jumped out from behind the bushes, revealing himself to be Jean Tarascon (this was, of course, only a miniscule surprise). He taunted us briefly, then turned and stabbed poor defenseless Luc. Well, we weren't going to take this lying down, and I had a score to settle with the bastard, so we fought back. Between Prihelm and Leighla and I (yes, Prihelm's luck turned around, at just the best time), we had him on the ropes (he'd actually had to guzzle some sort of potion in order to heal himself) when four more ghouls, in a remarkable display of bad timing, showed up. I turned to hold them off from Haley, who wasn't doing much in this battle, and the rest continued to mistreat Jean (jerk!). Fortunately, I was able to kill one of the ghouls and hold off another, but one made it through to attack Liss, and the other paralyzed Maerlyan.
Leighla, meanwhile, had just shot Jean through the eye (while I wanted him to pay, I also wanted him to face justice, but I guess that won't happen now), and the rest of the party turned to help me with the ghouls. Eventually, we were able to deal with them (my swordsmanship is coming along quite nicely; I got another one, and even PRIHELM got into the act and killed one!), but not before they'd done serious harm to poor Maerlyan. We did our best, but we weren't quite able to pull him through. Hopefully we'll be able to get him raised from the dead; while Brucian is reluctant to do that at the moment, perhaps we'll be able to convince him later. Leighla said a blessing over his body, while I went to make sure that Jean wouldn't rise to kill me ever again. Incidentally, during the course of this, I found a potion and noticed that Jean's dagger was of excellent quality; the rest of the party doesn't seem to want either, which surprises me somewhat, but I'm not going to quibble too much; they'll thank me for saving these two things yet!
We were gathered in the inn, celebrating our victory (except for Dogboy, who would only go into the stable) when Luc unscrambled his words for us!
The night of evil shall descend on the land
When this sign of hexads is near at hand.
In the house of Daegon, the sorceror born,
Though life, unlife, unliving shall scorn.
The lifeless child of stern mother found,
Heralds a time, night of evil unbound.
Seventh time the son of suns doth rise,
To send the knave to an eternity of cries.
Inajira will make his fortunes reverse,
Dooming all to live with the dreaded curse.
The light of the sky shining over the dead,
Shall gutter and fail turning all to red.
I still don't know what this all means, I'm afraid, but he added something new: "Look for the scroll where the old rest fine, behind the stone where six start shine. The finding, however, will cause much pain, beware the time of the falling rain."
At first, I didn't understand this any better than the other. It became a little more clear when Brucian explained that Jean had brought Marcel, who had been killed by some sort of undead, over to see him. Brucian had tried to raise Marcel, but it didn't work; Jean looked shaken when the spell was cast, and left muttering something about a scroll. Putting two and two together, we opened the scroll tube, and found the scroll to have written what Luc said above. Haley read it and one of the locals keeled over and turned into a zombie! The zombie seemed to be attracted to whoever had the scroll, but I was able to dispatch it with a single precise thrust (I'm SO proud of my improvement in battle!).
That, we thought, was that. We were very horribly wrong, but since I don't really have the time to write about it any further... If I survive, I'll explain.