Session 19

October 31st

The party lingers outside of the entity's cabin, hidden by darkness—so they hope. Light filters through the windows. Smoke is rising from the chimney. Taking a deep breath, Ophelia creeps towards one of the windows but one of the dwarves inside notices her, prompting everyone else inside to look that direction. In that moment she glimpses three dwarves, a gnome, and a silver-haired woman at the back of the room, another body on the floor. She also notices toys everywhere. Furthermore, everyone inside is chained to a workstation. Ophelia returns and they speak quiety, unsure of what to do next.

A moment later the door opens and the woman Ophelia saw inside steps out to greet them. She acts perfectly pleasant, even inviting them inside, but Eden politely declines and attempts to excuse the party without raising suspecion. For a long moment she seems suspecious of them, especially Della, but finally bids them good night.

Considering they can't reenter the city anymore, they decide to go back to the mineshaft from the previous few nights. Not long after they've settled in, Ophelia's alarm spell goes off. It is infact just Shadowjaw again. They're just there casually, curious why the party is camping out again. Ophelia explains what she saw, from the entity squaggling down a chimney to her having people chained in her cabin. Shadowjaw just takes that and leaves without further questioning. The party grumbles that he didn't have to wake them up just for that. Della returns to their first watch, the other two go back to sleep.

The way the woman looked at Della sticks with them. Not recognition, but almost a form of disapproval. They sleep poorly.

September 1st

The party returns to town to form a plan. They plan to litter the outside of the cabin with traps, lure her out, and blind her so she struggles to get around the traps. This is a good plan. When they return to the Black Stag to eat, it seems Neevan is clearly concerned about something. When she stops by their table, Ophelia comments on her generally frazzled look. She explains that Iban seems to have returned yesterady but as of now is entirely missing. Of course, they offer to check the basement and the closed off rooms that were infested, but she admits shes more concerned that he's been picked up by the guards. Ophelia runs down a list of questions to see if Neevan has any possible leads but she doesn't have any.

When they enter the basement they pour over Iban's desk, noting that his spellbook isn't present. Otherwise, there as some subtle signs of a struggle throughout the rest of the room. Ophelia puts her ear to the closed door, and hears what sounds like a frog croaking, but thick and wet. Tentatively, she cracks the door open. Through the dark she can see the outline of table and chairs. It's noted that the person with darkvision should look into the room. Eden tries to peek into the room.

Immedietely he gets a better view of what looks like a floating glob of ink staring back at him. They close the door. Without any other leads, Eden suggests Iban may have left to speak with Durz.

When they enter the courtyard for the House of Aphelion, they see the man who had been panicking about being a werewolf a few nights prior. They pass over him, though, and go to where Durz is often found on his bench. He doesn't have anything to offer them and the conversation is brief.

Without any other leads for Iban, they decide to just give in and go speak to the werewolf pack. Della leads the group to the crack in the stone cliff where they had orignally stayed, calling out their presence before entering. One of the wolves greets them along the way and they give a brief overview of why they're there. He doesn't know who Iban is, so that just leaves taking care of the bag lady, and he gestures for him to follow them. When they catch Artem up on their plan, he doesn't seem especially into it, but agrees to help with it.

They go to the cabin and this fucking bitch just jumps over all the traps in her scary form. Terrible.