HLoM: The Firebird, Chapter 2

[Nathan of the FoS]

]

Colin starts back as Leila transforms, then gives Vasili a rather sour look, with a certain admixture of increased respect. "I'm sure there will be no call to disturb ye," he says flatly. "Stick to your beds and ye'll come to no harm. Ye'd do better not to wander the halls, though. No telling what might come of that, especially not if the mist-lady has found ye already. Good night to ye, ye'll be presented to the laird come morning, once we're done with the execution."

The mercenary gives you a curious look as he finishes his warning and advice, then, apparently satisfied by what he sees, he goes down the stairs.

Colin accepts the Diplomacies and vamooses. Sense Motive DC 14 for what he was curious about.



"I am certain of it," Lady ApBlanc says dogmatically. "She has been gone for weeks, for weeks without whispering a word of leaving, and she would never have gone without telling me. She knows I...I could not bear to lose another child. And his manner. Oh, he's very careful, but I've lived with him these twenty years, I know him like no-one else."

Here she pauses, wavering, as if wondering how or whether to go on. Finally, she continues, "There are so few here I can trust. Colin is my kinsman, my oldest friend here, but everyone else who might take my part has been sent away. My son was murdered not three months ago, and Craig knows more of it than he will say..." She gestures with the paper in her hand as she speaks.

Seeing that the name of Craig confuses you, she explains, "My husband--hardly anyone here calls him by his name." Beginning to break down again, she whispers, "He's a hard man, and I don't dare go against him. Not openly. I need your help."

Sense Motive DC 18.

[Isabella]

Richard grimaced when the man was gone, with just a tinge of black humor to it. "A prescient warning, to be-to be sure," he said quietly. "Let us hope not-not too much so. Let us find a-a path to the courtyard that shan't cross his path again. I-I-I think he's concerns we might-might have sympathies for the laird condemned."

[NeoTiamat]

"You have it." Lena said soothingly. Right. This woman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Hard to blame her, really, but now was not the best time for it, not if they were to unravel this puzzle, get the Shard of Ezra, and get out of here before nightfall. Or whatever was objectively nightfall (could the haunting actually get any worse, she wondered?) (Of course it could, it can always get worse). "But you misunderstand, milady. I do not doubt your accusations. I only wish to understand what happened."

"I think... I think it best if you begin, so to speak, at the beginning. We are strangers here, tell us all that you can. One never knows when some little detail may prove important."

Sense Motive +23
[dice]0[/dice]

Diplomacy +23
[dice]1[/dice]
Works out to 28, which is three Diplomacy Points; one Charming Presence and one Clarity if Isolt calms down (somewhat at least) and gives us a detailed recap of recent events.

[Revka et al]

Regarding Ushka's betrayed look: "What?! It's endless food! You can eat all you want and never get a bellyache, like the one you got at the Thott pavilion during the fireworks. Don't tell me you miss that? The only drawback is that it doesn't actually nourish you at all. It just tastes scrumptious."

"You may be the only female I know who would turn down endless food that doesn't make you fat."

Cattia's first thought is that they would be happy to get the girl back as long as it didn't require deviating from the quest they were already on. The search for the shard was trouble enough already without adding several more hours of an exercise in pointlessness.

That being said, she showed none of her true feelings, and went right along with Lena expressing her sympathy and pressing for details. Isolt was a ghost, and it did not do to anger ghosts. Who knew what sort of power the woman could unleash on them if she thought them insincere or treacherous? Even ignorant of her true nature, Isolt might have unconscious control of the time shifts, enough to return them to the future and a five-story drop onto jagged rocks.

So Cattia was all for placating her, and getting whatever useful details they could in the process. But she was still taken aback when one of those details struck her.

"Your son? Three months...surely you don't speak of Gilan? Would this be...Morholt?"

"Indeed, why don't you start three months ago. I fear we may have information about your son's murder."

[Nerit]

Nuray crossed her arms and looked at Richard once Colin was gone. "Freyr, why do I get the feeling this castle is conspiring against us?" Her voice dripped with sarcasm. Perhaps little known to outsiders, but Rashemani definitely knew sardonic humor. Among themselves, mostly. (It's either laugh or cry, they say.)

"I've met my limit for ghostly freyifs and freyns," she said more seriously, and turned a wary eye on Rojan. "I think we need a plan, or we will just let this awful nightmare play out, and let our fates be decided for us."

[Nathan of the FoS]

]

"It would be good to have a plan, gudyf," Tara replies, "but it has to be one that can account for these...changes." She stops and runs her hands through her hair, eyes distant, before continuing. "Actually, what you say about this nightmare playing out strikes a chord. Maybe there is some key here, something that has be achieved...the restless dead return to the same moment over and over, it's said, but this time it has the power to take us with it. Maybe we need to break the pattern, or complete the pattern, or something..."

Rojan gives her a quizzical look.

"Fine," she replies, "That's not a specific course of action. But it might be worthwhile to figure out the story that's playing out around us. We're supposed to be...mercenaries employed by the Laird ApBlanc? But what for? Why would this be a moment this place returns to? What's the culmination of the scene?"



Sense Motive reveals Isolt had an internal debate about whether to reveal something about her husband, and decided not to, whether from fear of him, because she's afraid you won't help if she tells you, or some other reason.

Isolt wavers, then nods in response to Lena and Cattia's encouragement. "It started...well. Let me tell you about Morholt first. He was a very pious young man, very dedicated to the Queen of Battles*, and he befriended a priest of the Morrigan whom he invited to visit with us, three months ago. My husband was against his coming, but Morholt invited him anyway. They had a terrible fight about it, they almost came to blows. But when our guest appeared we put on our good faces and it seemed all would be well; my husband was civil, Morholt was pleased, no cloud in the sky, it seemed. And then one morning the priest had fled and Morholt was found...murdered in his bed. The priest's bed, I mean, in the guest room downstairs. My husband said the priest must have done it and fled, but I felt...I feel that there was something more to it, than my husband knew more than he said. And then the women who prepared his body gave me this."

She gestures with the letter in her hand. "You may read it if you like. They found a shard of the sword that killed him in his side and wrote me to say that if the sword from which it came could be found, it would identify the murder weapon. Of course, the priest and his sword were long gone by then...and I have found no sword damaged in such a way here."

*One of the titles of the Morrigan.

I will fill in the name of the priest and the text of the letter when I can do it without waking up the baby!

[NeoTiamat]

"What?! It's endless food! You can eat all you want and never get a bellyache, like the one you got at the Thott pavilion during the fireworks. Don't tell me you miss that? The only drawback is that it doesn't actually nourish you at all. It just tastes scrumptious. You may be the only female I know who would turn down endless food that doesn't make you fat."

Ushka paused and considered this information. Then she nodded and went to twine her small, furry body around Cattia's legs, a decidedly feline gesture if ever there was one. The human nod had been odd in context, a sign that though Ushka may not have talked like Vasili's creation, she was no more natural than her. A spirit, a fox, a thoroughly cunning mind. In any case, Cattia was forgiven, and was being given affection in exchange.

"You may read it if you like. They found a shard of the sword that killed him in his side and wrote me to say that if the sword from which it came could be found, it would identify the murder weapon. Of course, the priest and his sword were long gone by then...and I have found no sword damaged in such a way here."

"I assume there were searches? Which your husband led, of course. Not too difficult to be certain no search discovers anything, if one conducts them." Lena said absently, reading the letter. "Go on, go on. Thus is Morholt's death. Craig is a man of violent temper? Or a cunning, plotting sort of man? Would he kill in a burst of anger, or would he plan and premeditate?"

"The guest room may be a good place to search." Lena added as an aside.

[Isabella]

"Fine," she replies, "That's not a specific course of action. But it might be worthwhile to figure out the story that's playing out around us. We're supposed to be...mercenaries employed by the Laird ApBlanc? But what for? Why would this be a moment this place returns to? What's the culmination of the scene?"

"The-the execution of the Laird, perhaps," Richard blew out a breath. "I-I hadn't thought of-of any plan beyond finding the tomb before we shift again. But... but what you say does strike a-a-a chord. If this is a-a haunting on a grand scale, perhaps it-it must be resolved as one. Something in the past went wrong, and the... the dead cannot rest until it is made right..."

Richard stared off into the distance for a moment, reflexively clenching and unclenching his left hand.

"...but I-I-I know nothing of this land. Does anyone else know when we might be? Else we-we may have no choice but to seek the tomb, and-and hope some manner of answers come to us. E-Even if I-I-I guessed right, and we've no reason to think-to think I-I have, we have no-no sure means to know what course of-of action would derail this vision, or why..."

"All I-I can say is that something so powerful to-to do this must have had an-an equally powerful emotion behind it," Richard finally said. "And that-that kind of passion, or pain, is-is not so easy to hide."

[DeepShadow of FoS]

"I have a plan," Vasili says, "or at least the makings of one. While I agree there's value in unraveling the secrets of this haunting, I don't think we should get delay in getting the shard at the moment, when we have every reason to believe it's in this timeline. Let's make haste back down to the courtyard, using whatever stealth we have. While Colin may suspect we are here to free their prisoner, we know they are terrified of the ghosts. I'll cover our passage in an illusion that resembles the mist-ghost we have already seen--Colin fears her, it seems; I doubt he will draw near. I'll dismiss Leila in favor of a few of my light-archons, which easily pass for will-o-wisps. Some fog, floating lights and illusions, and they will avoid the place at all costs. Should we be caught, we all have a perfect alibi. The illusion will fall, we'll all blink and be confused, let them think we were bewildered by their fearsome mist-ghost."

Leila's scowl indicates what she thinks of this plan, but Vasili ignores her.

"I agree we should pay attention to the time shifts, but getting the shard now will make us safer, and therefore better able to act on that information."

"...but I-I-I know nothing of this land. Does anyone else know when we might be? Else we-we may have no choice but to seek the tomb, and-and hope some manner of answers come to us. E-Even if I-I-I guessed right, and we've no reason to think-to think I-I have, we have no-no sure means to know what course of-of action would derail this vision, or why..."

Knowledge (history) +10
[dice]0[/dice]

[Nathan of the FoS]

]

"Yes, I'd say the execution of…what was his name, ApFittle?... is the clearest possibility. Really the only obvious possibility, at least for this time. But there's a lot we don't know," Tara replies to Richard. "And as Freiherr Boritsi points out, everything else is really secondary to the Shield. I rather like your plan to co-opt the hauntings to disguise our movements, Vasili--will you have to concentrate on the illusion to the exclusion of all else? Or can you begin it and let it run while you do other things?"

The conversation is interrupted by the advent of a serving maid--a young, round-faced woman with strawberry blonde hair and freckles, her neck and wrists oddly twisted, who enters not only without knocking but without opening the door. Gazing furtively around the room, her attention falls on Tara. Approaching, she bobs briefly to Richard, dismisses the rest of the group with a glance, and gestures to Tara as if to draw her aside.



"There were. He did," Isolt confirms, nodding at Lena's description of the searches being led by the laird himself. "I--I must tell you that my husband and my son fought often, but I believe they really did love each other. My husband is...certainly capable of plots." She pauses here, and an expression of revulsion and fear crosses her features before being replaced again by grief and strain. "I think him capable of killing a man he hated in cold blood. But he would not plot against the only son we had left to us. He has a fierce temper--I could only too easily imagine his falling out with Morholt and a word and a blow passing between them--but I cannot, I cannot believe Craig would murder his son in cold blood as he slept."

At Lena's suggestion of the guest room she nods. "I can have Colin show you there, if you like."

Half-way through this invitation the door swings wide to reveal the laird himself, accompanied by Marcel, the two apparently engaged in polite conversation.

"Show them where?" Craig ApBlanc asks, raising a quizzical eyebrow. "I've sent him for wine, dear heart, so he's otherwise occupied at the moment, but perhaps I can be of service to our guests?"

[NeoTiamat]

Lena's heart skipped a beat when Craig ApBlanc entered the room, but since he didn't seem to have heard anything, she forged ahead with a casual nonchalance that owed more to Dementlieuse salon backbiting than to formal diplomacy. She quietly slid the letter Isolt had given her into the pocket of her gown.

"Hello Milord." Lena said, dipping a curtsey to the Forfarian thane. Marcel occasioned a quieter nod -- good to have him back.

"Lady Isolt was just telling us about this lovely castle of yours, and its construction -- though perhaps you would be able to tell us more?" Lena said with a flutter of her eyelashes. "It's quite the imposing monument, and I confess to a hobbyist's fondness for architecture. Hardly unexpected, growing up in the shadow of Castle Ravenloft." Lena said, surreptitiously ignoring that Castle Ravenloft was a hundred-odd miles away from her birthplace. "Colin was going to show us around."

[Isabella]

"It-it does seem a good plan," Richard agreed, nodding at Vasili. "I-I-I highly doubt even the-the most suspicious of guards would want-want to investigate... would this illusion cover the-the sound...?

The conversation is interrupted by the advent of a serving maid... Gazing furtively around the room, her attention falls on Tara. Approaching, she bobs briefly to Richard, dismisses the rest of the group with a glance, and gestures to Tara as if to draw her aside.

Richard looked at the apparition, then over to Tara, raising his eyebrows vaguely and taking a step as if to offer to accompany her.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I rather like your plan to co-opt the hauntings to disguise our movements, Vasili--will you have to concentrate on the illusion to the exclusion of all else? Or can you begin it and let it run while you do other things?"

"I can do some other things while I concentrate on it, mostly moving around, directing my archons, etc. I will not be able to cast spells, however, if that's what you mean."

Leila growled deep in her throat. <All the more reason I should be coming on this. You'll be defenseless!>

<We've already established that you will guard our sleep. If we are to snared in our minds by a ghostly force, you cannot be among us. We'll have to say that you were banished by whatever force overwhelmed us. And the will-o-wisp legend is strong here--their presence will lend extra strength to our claim.>

Leila scoffs. <Look, if we're on the outs, fine. Just admit it, and stop trying to argue that your little zappy glow-balls are better protection.>

<Y'know, for someone who's never seen the archons in action, you have a pretty low opinion of their combat abilities. Since you're so interested in "objectivity.">

Less than a heartbeat had passed to the world outside them. Leila's growl was cut short by Vasili's mental rebuke, and he moved on to Richard's question.

"I-I-I highly doubt even the-the most suspicious of guards would want-want to investigate... would this illusion cover the-the sound...?

"No, it's strictly visual, but I can make it large enough to obscure the source of any sounds from within. Without a visual reference, clanking metal, scraping shoes, and mumbling voices--it would all lend to the illusion. I could have my archons add chatter--they can communicate with anything that has a language, which would even be useful if our original illusion-ghost decided to investigate. Or any other of these phantasms that speak only Forfarian."

Leila rolled her eyes. <I'll just say my goodbyes to the entire castle, m'kay? See you in three weeks.>

"Regarding the timing of the haunting, The Time of Troubles in Forfar began at the end of a struggle for control of Forfar between the ApBlanc and ApFittle clans. The ApBlancs won and exterminated the ApFittles, and the beginning of the Time of Troubles corresponds with this extermination-- (some say exactly). This is consistent with the captain's and Colin's remarks about the capture and execution of this Andew ApFittle, if he's the last of the family left alive. It makes sense that the execution of Andrew ApFittle is a key turning point for Forlorn..."

At the arrival of the maid, Vasili's voice drops to a whisper, carried magically to the others by his spell.

"...and presumably for the Laird ApBlanc, who ordered it carried out."

Approaching, she bobs briefly to Richard, dismisses the rest of the group with a glance, and gestures to Tara as if to draw her aside.

Richard looked at the apparition, then over to Tara, raising his eyebrows vaguely and taking a step as if to offer to accompany her.

"I can still hear anything you whisper, Ward...Tara," Vasili murmurs softly through the spell. "You'll have to decide if you wish actual privacy, or just the appearance of it."

[Nathan of the FoS]

]


Tara acknowledges Richard and Vasili's concerns with a quick glance and a flick of the hand indicating she'd like the paladin to stand back. The whisper-magic makes her conversation with the phantom audible to all.

"Milady," the spirit whispers, wringing her hands in a gesture that combines with her broken wrists in a way that's rather painful to look at, "milady, I've found the sword. The one with the notch in the blade."

Tara looks puzzled for a very brief moment, and then recognition crosses her face. "Well done!" she says, in a low voice. "Unfortunately I can't come right now, you can see I must attend these gentlefolk, but can you tell me where it is? And we'll come fetch it later."

"It's as the foreigners thought, milady, it was in the north tower in a chest. I..."

The phantom turns to look over her shoulder, as if at some sound none of you can hear, and screams--a sound of pure terror. She is jerked from the ground to hang two feet in the air, clutching at the empty air just before her throat. Tara stumbles back, and Rojan slams the butt of his quarterstaff on the ground, causing a silvery blade to spring from its upper tip. The ghost's wrists bend back sharply, her neck flops bonelessly to one side, and she plummets through the floor.



"Ah! Well, I know the place as well as he does, I dare say," Craig replies. "Have you had the chance to go up to the top of the tower yet? The view is really quite striking. This Castle Ravenloft you speak of...it is a notable fortress of your homeland? How does it compare in its surrounding terrain and appointments to this place? Was it built as a residence or for defense?"

The letter in Lena's pocket reads*:

Far Birnam, 30 March 1833

Lady Isolt, our sister in the service of Diancecht
While preparing your son Morholt for burial we found this sliver of metal in his wound. It would seem to be a piece of the blade that slew him. Though Duncan Ap Duguid is fled, perhaps this will persuade his masters, the servants of the Morrigan, to return him to your hands for punishment. If they should find a notch in his sword to match this shard, they will be obligated to admit that a fallen cleric of their order murdered the heir apparent of the Clan ApBlanc.

Rowena Ap Hame, Holy Mother of the Order of Diancecht

NB Not to imply that Lena is reading it now, in Craig's presence! Just wanted to get the text down.

[Isabella]

Richard had his hand on his sword in an instant. But what was to be done when there was no assailant, when the murder had already happened centuries ago?

"Poor child," he whispered, slowly letting go of the hilt. "If we-if we wanted some clue to the events of this castle, I-I-I think we've just been given one. If we go-go through the courtyard, we can take the-the stairs up to the north tower. Try-try to find the shard in the tombs, and then this sword..."