c2393/Lavanda-27

What’s up Fabs? Esteemed Former Regent, Captain Second, Fabiola Auguste,

I hope that this letter makes it to you, I’m not sure the bearer is any state to wipe her own ass, much less travel the roads and deliver this update to you finds you well. But here’s hoping. We have recently finished exploring Nivertois Mill, one of the wild goose chases you sent us on options you helpfully provided to us. I’m assuming that you had no way of knowing that it was an absolute shit show under there. We discovered unforeseen challenges there. There were zombies. There were… things that would make any sane person swear off monogamy. There still is a thing down that we can’t name, communicate with, or accurately describe. Nor do we really want to. That’s someone else’s problem now. Including what we believe to be the undead.

To sum up, there were a vast number of undead zombies, which we think were created out of the remnants of Kharchu’s hapless party. We believe that a number of these unfortunate beings were formerly Kharchu’s team. We have dispatched them, as well as the strange beings that seemed to be responsible for making them: an undead couple calling themselves the Crowes. We will let Kharchu fill you in on what she knows about them, as she probably knows more than we do, though the regent’s counselors may think about new lines of work after helping her deal with all the shit she’s seen. After nearly getting our asses handed to us, we managed to defeat Mr Crowe, and Mrs Crowe ran screeching off. It was a challenging fight, and the seemingly male part of this pair was defeated, though his “mate” escaped. Guess she’s someone else’s problem now too. We found some sweet loot, or at least that’s what one would expect our reward to be for such bravery. Instead we found a pile of junk, interesting relics in the cave, with the exception of including some much appreciated healing potions, and a magical non-magnifying magnifying glass. If Brom’s detect magic hadn’t clued us in that it had some interesting properties, we probably would have thought it as worthless as your advice.

After we had our fill of rotting leather shoes and various detritus, wWe then turned our attention to a cage in an area of the caves. Olivia wisely, bravely, nay, heroically attempted to interact with the thing. In return more eyeballs and teeth than a creature should have slammed against the bars, and slithering towards us were enough tentacles to make a sailor blush many tentacles. We debated for a good long while what to try and do with the monstrosity, as well as trying to sort out what the fuck it is its nature might be. Brom said it felt to him that the earth seemed to reject the very idea of the thing. Perhaps it is an aberration, perhaps it is a remnant from The Profane, or perhaps it’s a new arrival here. None of us have a fucking clue really recall seeing a lot of undead things recently, or horrific monsters. In the end, we decided that the best thing to do was to walk away, as we are not getting paid enough to deal with this shit. we were ill-equipped to deal with such a creature at the present time.

We then wound our way through some narrow passages and found Kharchu fitfully sleeping in a tiny alcove. Given the godsawful smell of the place we could tell she’d been holed up there for some time, stewing in her own filth and barely surviving. We could tell she had been bravely holding out in there for some time. She had revealed herself to Beeroy in the fight against the Crowes, and so he tried to wake her as gently as possible. She still came at us with the most pathetic shiv we’ve seen, but we won’t hold that against her given the circumstances. She was a bit on the delirious side, and wasn’t sure we were even there at first. After convincing her that we were in fact there to help, Riv tried some healing magic on her. That worked about as well as tits on a bull. Similar to before, there were complications with the healing. In the end she was stabilized, but Riv got hurt as much as she got healed. The taint of healing magic seems to be getting worse, so we have that to look forward to.

Kharchu was in no mood to go to Mellow Stand, as she had apparently been run out of town which led to her seeking shelter in those damned caves encountered trouble there recently. She didn’t want to go into details initially, but wanted to head back to Grasmere. We decided to all go together as far as Myrtledale, and then after a night’s sleep send her with an escort to you, while the rest of us went on to Mellow Stand. We found a suitably disreputable charming inn called the Hissing Crane. There was a drunk bard going through the motions, and a dwarven innkeeper holding more liquor in her than we currently have in the Stewed Prune. We sought room and board, and after some haggling agreed on some budget options, mostly involving staying the hell out of sight in the stables and putting Kharchu up in a room. Unfortunately, the nosy bitch got more curious about the interesting nature of our party, and completely unfounded rumors about our involvement in violence. So our low cost lodging quickly became exceedingly overpriced lodging as Olivia bought her silence with coin. which we obtained without incident, though some sought to take in fresh air by sleeping out on the grounds.

We set up a watch over Kharchu and Nambra. Have we mentioned Nambra? She’s an elf that tried to kill us and steal our metal goat, Goat… twice. We’re good now, we think., a new companion we can discuss later. We figured out that our found non-magnifying glass describes the
properties of magical items when it feels like it. So far it got tired after looking at one potion, and then tells us to try again later. Everyone took some time before having the evening meal. Brom spent time communing with his god while Riv screwed around with the non-magnifying glass
determined the nature of our curious magical find. Olivia spent some time with the horses in the stable, since it looked like the owner of the place didn’t give a shit to. Bold worked through a new dance number diligently practiced his martial arts and calisthenics. Eventually we all returned to the main hall of the inn where we were fed some, let’s call it food, and had a chance to reflect on what we’d seen in the last couple of days. We all feel that the taint on the land is growing, and it wouldn’t surprise us a bit if the Tower idiots knew far more than they are letting on.

In the morning Kharchu felt up to letting us in on how she ended up in a literal shithole surrounded by undead monsters discussing her plight so far. She and her entourage went to Mellow Stand first. They felt that someone was screwing with them like a cheap whore. They felt their investigation was being hindered from the start, but couldn’t tell by who or what. They started getting harassed. Initially this was minor, more an annoyance. Then some truly weird shit was going on. But eventually they felt they were being watched at every turn, and messages were carved into their lodging’s doors. The local constable and the Pillarhand did fuck all were unable to assist when they brought their concerns to them. All this seemed to stem from the questions about the sinking of the fleet. Kharchu felt it wasn’t the Mellow Stand she had previously known. The sailors blamed the sinking on The Maelstrom, which you know damn well better than we do is long ago sunk outside of Grasmere. She was thinking this could be a set up, that someone is framing the High Regent, or even the whole region for some reason. They left town under all the pressure, and were ambushed at the mill, where all but Kharchu were killed or turned.

That’s about all of this godsdamned mess we can say all we have to report at the moment. A number of our party are escorting Kharchu back to you, where she should be able to fill in some more details. They’ll join us in Mellow Stand, where we will try to get to the bottom of this steaming pile. We’re yet again thinking you haven’t paid us enough to deal with this shit. We look forward to completing this mission soon.

Sincerely,
The Trouble Brewing Co.