Sigil

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox

Once again, we are moving to a winding down of the day. Yes, it's a bit of a skip, but just in case random encounters begin to do their thing, which I will note is very rare if you're inside of friendly walls, everyone has the benefits of a SHORT REST. Congratulations, you earned it.

Meanwhile, out in the world, stuff is getting dark pretty fast. If there's stuff that you need your characters to do, chores or the like, upkeep on equipment, whatever, you're at the very last possible opportunity. As of the next update, I am very much rolling us over to full nighttime, and any of the shenaniganry which may follow. Be ready to set up sleeping arrangements, as you've got a pretty full house in there.

Per our usual, please get with me about die rolls, stuff I might have missed, and/or to adjudicate stuff which might need adjudication. Best of luck, and thanks again for participating in the oddness that is Avonshire.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Coach House

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: Thick, puffy flakes of crystalline water sink gently earthward with increasing frequency. It's still rather gentle, and not too windy, but this is becoming a decent amount of snowfall, putting a layer of fresh powder over a landscape which has melted slightly and refrozen. Caution abound.

Time: Early evening, still. The time for Tea is long past; we are closer now to the final repast of the day, were one to have a proclivity for it.

Ambience: Twilight has began its march toward the inevitable fall of night. The liminal time frame found that, upon closer reflection, it was likewise tired of remaining in the sky and relinquished use of the space to a more present caretaker, this one darker, cloudier, with just a few motes of starlight peeking through. The early evenings of Winter make themselves known.

There is comfort and fellowship, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, within the Coach House. While no changes of note have occurred with the decor nor lighting, the overall social feel of the location has grown a bit more professional. Books and papers take up the better part of two tables, prompting others to be very careful with their tea, among other things. This is a place of planning now, with even the guests of the establishment putting in what little they may be able to offer.

*****

Barbal noted the insistence of the group that he stay for some time with mild amusement. It was interesting that these people were trying, at least to his eyes, to look out for him. Or their mission. Either way, it was a commitment, and he respected this. Still, this wasn't a reasonable request, so far as he was concerned. "Look, I know you have things you need to do here. And I have things I need to do there. I'll stay as long as it takes to have a leisurely breakfast (I mentioned how I take mine, yeah?), and I'll give you every detail I can recall about any ...eh... weird dreams I have. Then I have me and mine to tend to. If I have another bad night, I'll send you a little card with the outline of events." He nodded with faux sagacity and took a sip from his cup. "It is sweet that you young'uns are thinking about us, though."

Tarace merely kept his head low and began clearing the table, refusing to add to this particular conversation but still reaching for a social "out." To this end, he latched onto something which Victoria had just said, about initially wanting to find a boat to take her back north to Khimn territory. "Oh my, that's a journey, Miss Belmont. Are... are you from there? Your accent sounds a little like it, I mean, I think it does. And they have Elves there, right?" He looked embarrassed, like he might have crossed a line in what was otherwise small talk. "I'm sorry, is that, I don't know - is that okay to ask?"

Lizbeth kept fluctuating her emotions with the ebb and flow of conversation, though she did seem to be evening out a little more as plans were made and things locked it. Perhaps it was the certainty of having a course of action to follow, even if that course of action amounted to simple vigilance and continued preparation. "Oh, just the Coach House! Sure, we can to that first thing in the morning. I mean, we should do that first thing. With the snow, it should be easy to see if anyone came up in the night!" She took a moment to go over her current situation with her more recent tutoring. "This is a busy winter, that's for sure," she offered, hefting her curved, wide-bladed sword in her hand while sitting alongside one of the tables covered in books. She continued speaking to Kathryn, "You're teaching me how to be a Knight, Master Urmdrus is drilling me on being a Soldier, and Mademoiselle Belmont was nice enough to tutor me on Arcana. This sounds busy, but I think," she paused, her mood becoming more grounded by the second, "I think I need to know this. No matter what happens with the Vineyard, this is stuff I need to know about myself. Thank you." Now directing more to the group as a whole, "Thank you all."

It was well past Teatime, but the rather heavy nature of the meal as well as events moved many away from pursuing something greater for Supper. To keep things easy as well as keep her hands busy, Lizbeth rose and strode toward the kitchen, offering, "I'm going to get something simple together us. For before we turn in. Like soup. Excuse me." The little blonde girl with custom armor on and weapons older than her grandfather paused at the kitchen door to see if anyone had a request or comment about her proposed actions, before entering proper.

Urmdrus also rose for his own preparations, but his took him away from the Coach House. "Can reinforce door. One hour, start to end. Make noise." He shrugged, giving a touch of thought to what he had explained. It was true, doing work like that would be a bit of a noisemaker. "Does not matter. Everyone knows we are here." The older Dwarf took up his large hammer, then let heavy bootfalls punctuate his way to the main door. Resting a hand upon it, he turned back around to explain in his own, few-worded manner, "Full dark when done. I stay here tonight." It felt like a statement as opposed to a request. Urmdrus opened the door just enough to allow himself room to exit, then closed the door behind him as quickly as he might, attempting to preserve the interior warmth.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 33 / 33 Armor Class: 16 Conditions: N/A Location: Coach House (Taproom) Action: Skill Check - Arcana Bonus Action: Morty, Familiar Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kathryn had quite a bit to say, from Victoria's viewpoint. And the truth was that she agreed with most of what was said. It was also a bit of a relief that finally, finally someone was using their voice to put people on a collective path. Victoria was rarely what one might describe as a "follower", even if she did go along with the flow of a social situation from time to time, and she was loathe to now. Things being what they were, it was within everyone's best interests - including her own - to fall into the proverbial line and be a team player. She had grown fond of little Lizbeth. Even felt inspired by her youthful spark and willingness to continue in the face of some serious existential upheaval. Victoria looked over to Lizbeth, gave her a little, enigmatic smile, and turned back to Kathryn. When she finished her speech, Victoria responded. "I must admit, Lady Kathryn, that I have never been party to a siege, either. This is actually the longest I have stayed in one place for a long while, in fact." She gave a quick, huffing laugh, continuing, "Before the drama with the letters and the Constable, I was actually trying to get to the coast and find passage on a boat to take me north, to Khimn." She spoke in frank and open tones, stating simply what was, and not how she felt about it on any revealing, personal level. "I'm getting off topic; apologies. I will certainly defer to your greater knowledge of all things martial, and I shall assist where able, but you would be better off with a true Wizard than myself. My abilities are better described as 'in the moment' as opposed to preventative. There exists a simple spell which could set up an alarm in the way you are describing. It's even a ritual spell, so that it may be cast several times without arcane fatigue. Unfortunately, it is not part of my repertoire."

Victoria cast a quick mental command to Morty, the burlap-wrapped porcine thrall who had, up until that moment, been doing its best impression of a stone still and dead silent piece of macabre, decorative furniture. Morty clopped evenly toward Victoria's small errand cart near the wall and pulled it over to its mistress. The Bard went into her travel chest therein and produced a proportionately sized hand bell, which Kathryn had apparently called for specifically as an option. "In case you'd forgotten, I picked this up in Darenby, just after we all met. I gave it to my Morty and turned the little fella into an alarm sentry. Watch is so much easier when you give it to something what doesn't require rest." Sure enough, anyone who had been in that Hayloft would have remembered Victoria's animated companion with the handle of the bell in its mouth, standing steadfastly with eyes pointing to the only area of egress. "You know how the old story goes; a lady and her thrall, off on a whirwind, Big City Adventure." She spoke with levity, hoping to give a touch of it to the situation. "But I shall be happy to lend the assistance of Morty, my bell, both or either, to the cause of fortifying our location. A girl needs her beauty sleep, after all." Yes, beauty sleep. That and she required a properly rested mind to fill her arcane cup, so to speak. Her major contributions to the group were her skill sets and her magic. Only going in with one was limiting.

Whispers of fried scorpions drew Victoria's attention for one short, frothing second as she wondered what generally went on within the horned skull of her Tiefling associate. She tried not to think on it with too much in the way of effort. Aneurysms were birthed from such things. Whatever it was, it was probably quite personal, and she left it at that.

The musings of Baronfjord seemed to come from a place of logic, and Victoria tried to put it together with what they had figured out about their probable antaogonist. "There could be something to that, of course. I do not say that there is beyond certainty, but historically, Prince Farid had many who worked under him, and he was one of the (probably adopted) sons of the Lich Emperor of the Alhazred." A sort of darkening came over Victoria, "...although he is supposed to be dead now..." She shrugged, "Well, they wouldn't be subtle." Equal parts apocalyptic and diplomatic, usually suffixed with a smile and glass of wine. Or brandy, in this case. Thus was Victoria.

She did take a passing interest in the books which Kathryn and Baronfjord were kind enough to bring up. Victoria did not select anything specific, settling on giving things a quick glance and, admittedly, reading over a shoulder or two. This was starting to give her a headache, attempting to figure out the mental and emotional patterns of a deceased man who wrote about magic in such a way that one had to fact check it, then check it for misspellings, then rearrange until it made sense. "I cannot speak to state of mind, but it looks like there are a couple almost rituals in there, buried among the personal discourse. Nothing I can use as it is."

Lastly, for the moment, Victoria began to count on her fingers the number of languages that Lizbeth had demonstrated proficiency with. How she was able to do so at her age, with little to no schooling in linguistics nor the appropriate, expensive tutors nearby, was truly impressive. Though it was not kin to this revelation about the young heiress, Victoria nonetheless had another thought in that moment. "I am going to try sending music out into the wind tonight. Maybe I am being foolish, but something happened a few weeks ago and I prefer to test coincidences in the face of looming despair."

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox

Another update, another opportunity to soar to narrative heights upon wings of feather and wax. But we all know how that story went. Very sad. Anyway, let's get to the crunchy part. As mentioned in the Discord, the deal with the books was abstracted by die rolls and such earlier, to reveal general information at that time. HOWEVER, as there has been a consensus of opinion formed within the IC by means of declaring actions and having character conversations, I'm going to toss a section of osseous matter at you all. Everyone lookin ghtrough the books gets a free Investigation check. ROLL HIGH. However, even with a high roll, information regarding plot movement will not be an epic reveal. But things may yet be recovered from the writings.

We are winding the day down. I know that we left off at "Teatime," but it looks like the only plans for the evening were from NPCs, so... yah. Let's assume that we are going over the haul, the books, naptime, study, etc., for the time being. If your characters do have something pressing elsewhere, get with me and we will work it out.

And as always, speak with me in our Discord for rolls, rulings, and/or questions about stuff going on. Or if I missed something that needed to be addressed. I do that sometimes.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Coach House

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: The snowfall stabilized into a productive, but relatively gentle snowfall. The winds have backed off a little, coming now in short gusts as opposed to long pulls of winter air. It might be considered nice, especially in comparison to the relatively brutal night before.

Time: Early evening.

Ambience: Soft colors of approaching twilight give the sky lovely painted notes, what little of them can be seen amid the mostly full cloud cover. It is winter, and as such night comes a little earlier, prompting a timely dusk.

Within the confines of the Coach House, it is a more or less comfortable setting of simple, well constructed wooden furniture, with hearthy scents of tea, aromatic oil, and gentle firewood. The light retains a constant, only slightly flickering presence, cast from the hearth, candles, and the occasional grapeseed oil lamp. Wind and snow make the odd sound outside, but that remains the only influence it has upon the setting within.

*****

The absent stare which Lizbeth gave to her sword seemed, to her observation, to stretch for a long time and no time simultaneously. This day had been full and eventful, not entirely like the day before. It felt to her that this was all winding toward something of even greater consequence and that she was at the middle of it. Part of her wished that it might be over, while an equally, inwardly vocal part wished to put off whatever was to happen for as long as humanly possible. But as it turned out, only one of her companions on this evening was fully Human. Considering her history in this rural place, that was honestly something novel.

Her thoughts were put aside by Kathryn's suggestion that their training change to include walking the perimeter of the Rose River Vineyard, not only for the physical exertion of a hike through hilly ground, but to inspect the area. "Yeah, I guess. I don't know what to look for, but I'm willing to give it a try." It was as straightforward as she could muster at the time.

The ongoing conversation appeared to give moderate annoyance to Urmdrus. At least an aspect of it was working its hardest to bring him some amount of frustration. The older Dwarf was aware that his ability to communicate in surface Common was limited in ways that spoke to nuance, which led occasionally to mild misunderstandings. Luckily for him, he didn't do a while lot of talking apart from the people who he had known for many a year anyway and better understood his intent. This was not a luxury he possessed on this day, hence, the touch of negativity. Urmdrus set his mug down a little harder than he intended and looked straight at Lizbeth, uttering fast strings of complicated sentences in oddly accented Dwarven.

Lizbeth perked up when she was being addressed in this way and nodded a quick affirmation to Urmdrus. She then cleared her throat and addressed the others in the room. "Okay, so, um... It's not that there's definitely an unused secret storage room somewhere. Master Urmdrus was asked to construct a large stone cap, like what might be used to seal a long-term storage area, for grain or such. Or, like, a bulwark when you seal off a mineshaft. Then he never saw it again after it was finished - never got to use it. He thought that was a strange. Like, if someone asked for something specific like that to be built, there was probably a reason for it, is what he was saying." The amazingly multi-lingual girl looked to Urmdrus and spoke what sounded like a question to the Dwarf, who in turn nodded his own affirmation. "Yeah, that's what he was saying. There's got to be a reason for it, but he doesn't know what or where it is. If you find it, you can recognize it by the fact that it's a huge, round, stone bulwark. And it has a Duergar crafter's mark on it, unless someone chiseled it off."

Finally satisfied, Urmdrus settled back into his chair more comfortably and took a decent pull from his drink.

The Mosswaters, now thoroughly invested in the unfolding conversation, took special note of the information and planning presented by Kathryn and Baronfjord. The planning for a seige from the former raised Halfling eyebrows well enough, but when the latter began to discuss the finer points of potential undead masterminds and a Prince with a very desert-sounding name, objections began to form into words. "Woah, woah, woah there, folks," began Barbal. He wasn't quite standing up from his seat at the table, but he was leaning as if he might at any moment. "I hope I'm reading the room wrong, but it sounds like you want the both of us to stay here for the foreseeable. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. If I'm right - then NO." He look of surprise shifted into the sort of face one might give when pursuing the best deal at a livestock trade; shrewd, no-nonsense, businesslike. "Tarace and I have a farm to run. I know it's winter, but we can't up and decide to not go back home without a lot of preparation first. Now, we agreed to a night, for this ...eh, dream thing..." Barbal lifted his cup of totally not cursed brandy as if to make a toast, "but when it's good and light out, we're getting back to the farm soon as we're able."

Tarace, ever the diplomat, added, "Oh, but we're more than happy to be of assistance until then." He looked to Barbal, who was only slightly reddening. "Aren't we?"

"Yeah. Sure." grumbled Barbal, not exactly happy that he was being undercut by Tarace but understanding that he probably meant well.

The collection of books from below were placed upon the shelf in no particular order, as far as one might tell from a glance in the dark with a beeswax taper candle. One might assume that the author might have had something in mind, but casual observation did nothing to impart what it might be. Bringing them into the light upstairs did reveal a couple of overt details, that being tht the books themselves were not uniform in any way that would identify them as a matched set, and a quick flip-through allowed one to note that they were penned in a bold hand, written in Common, for the most part. Their recovery was uneventful. One might be forgiven for accumulating the unavoidable heebie and/or jeebie after having returned to the scene of the skirmish, a questionable underground spot which until recently housed the undead. All that was left was to put literate eyes to pages and hope something could be gleaned from the madness.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 33 / 33 Armor Class: 16 Conditions: N/A Location: Coach House (Taproom) Action: Skill Check - Arcana Bonus Action: Morty, Familiar Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This adventure appeared to Victoria to be sliding into the territory of "sleepover," which didn't necessarily bother her. What was adventuring but living a life of perpetual sleepovers dotted by liberal helping of alcohol and violence? Yes, goals were met. Maybe even a better world was forged, at least in part. The grand scheme of things seemed to make these societal ups and downs balance out on a long enough timeline, which fit Victoria's personal philosophy on things. Be it the cause or the effect, such things were cyclic, to her general belief. But the constant within the little nudges between law and chaos, good and evil, all tended to revolve around those three concepts: Alcohol, violence, ...and sleepovers.

"It's for the best, Monsieur Mosswater, I'm almost certain." Victoria extended a warm, knowledgeable look as she supported Kathryn's idea. "I could be incorrect, but it's possible that we're the scariest thing above ground here. And you're safe from us." She smiled. It wasn't a great joke, but it might have served to fracture some of the proverbial ice. Tarace seemed to be the worrisome type, at least moreso than Barbal. "In any case, we certainly have the room for it." The thought of the gravely Halfling taking to some form of night terror and waking in the night, unable initially to process what he was seeing and voicing his fear abruptly and very likely loudly, thus giving Tarace intense secondhand trauma was not exactly the best possible result of what might happen, but it was within the realm of possibility. Victoria was not looking forward to dealing with it. Although, considering the time of day and recent attack, it was objectively the better potential outcome. Sleepover it is.

The call to pour through more books from the handwritten library shelf below sounded a lot like the kind of task that was expected of her, now that her role was being more solidified as the educated, more bookish one of the party. That it was taken up by Baronfjord and Kathryn took her for a surprise. "Oh, well... let me know if you need any help with that, okay?" She didn't move to help collect the writings from downstairs. It wasn't something so delicate as to require three sets of hands. She did, however, flip to a couple of specific pages in her Ritual book which dealt with understanding languages foreign to her comprehension, just in case.

As Kosara gave serious thought to nodding off, briefly, Victoria wondered if a good nap might be in order for herself, as well. In the end, the decided against it. But it was awfully tempting. Victoria used the moment to mull over the Tiefling lady's words about the older generation of people in and around Southmoor. Darker of complexion with sharp eyes. She looked to the dagger that she had claimed from the "diplomatic envoy" they had been accosted by before. Same wavy pattern on the blade as Lizbeth's sword, single edged like it, too. But of slighter curve, with a thickened spine for impaling. She knew what type of knife it was, too. Like the word used by the locals in Barbal's story, it was called a Kard.

Victoria's face went blank. Cultural diffusion was a valid explanation and happened all the time; Victoria herself was proof of this with her mixed Human and Elven heritage. Even so, this was not the kind of coincidence that she liked. But moreso then this, the sudden addition to the conversation from Urmdrus stopped her thinking in and of itself. Music. Strings, to the south. "I, too, have heard music in the dark." "I thought nothing of it. I even played a little with it, myself. That seems quite unsettling."

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox

Ello ello once again, another update to be updated, as is my heathen proclivity. But let's keep this short, I got outs to pass and don't feel like gilding the lily at this hour:

For those of you going after the remaining books - have fun. I had already figured on throwing you a bone with what you were able to snatch and run with, but, if you want to nab the rest of them and roll a high enough Investigation check, then consider a second bone thrown. Make sure, like the Afroman of legend, that it's good and high. (cue the music)

Folks putting the screws to Urmdrus - He's speaking Common as a second language, and while he might have passed all the high school courses for it, he's not 100% fluent. Keep this in mind as the interrogation continues.

Past those points, it looks like we're all making some headway, even if it doesn't look like you are. Believe me here. Or don't; your call. I'm all good on this end. And if you need something from this end, like a a die roll, arbitration, or exciting images of coffee mugs, get with me in our Discord and we'll see what happens. I'm not sure if a Huzzah is in order, so I'll just leave it at that.

...

Okay, I lied. HUZZAH!!!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Coach House

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Weather: Snow descends in big, flat flakes from an overcast sky. Weather is indeed coming back in with the colder evening, but it isn't remotely as harrowing as the previous evening. It is cold; colder than is necessary to produce frozen precipitation, but the many weeks of the season have hardened most to the worst of it. The wind is still an issue, but at least it hasn't gotten any worse. To make it short, the weather outside is frightful, but it isn't insurmountable.


Time: Early evening. The time for Tea has passed, as tends to happen when people are lost in conversation about important matters.

Ambience: The day begins to shuffle into the softer tones of the evening, turning from a white and blue atmospheric greeting to the very beginnings of lustrous twilight hues. There is still a bit of light in the sky, but it is receding in the way it usually does around this time at winter.

Inside, the party may take refuge in warm and comfortable surroundings of old stone and crafted wood, the scent of food, tea, burning wood, and grapeseed oil leaving a distinct impression upon one's olfactory memory. The light is warm and soft, birthed of crackling fires, candles probably made from local beeswax, and oil lamps. The wind still blows upon the walls, still makes its presence known, but the hound of winter has no teeth in this place, at this time.

The cellar... remains.

*****

There was a measurable amount of increase of Lizbeth's mood as she received the positive remarks from Kathryn was unfortunately tempered by the fact that the recent dialogue involved key concepts like undead and child bride. This put a sincere amount of malleability to the warm and fuzzy feelings one might get from a cherished mentor's positive feedback. "I like it, all of it. I really do. I just hope it's... you know, enough." She did seem to throw herself into her martial studies. Driven, one might say. Hoping to lighten the mood with something near to philosophical, she mentioned, "It's really funny that all of this came from the land, here." As far as anyone knew, anyway. The Ankheg chitin was taken from beasts of the land. The weapons she carried - most of them - were recovered from the Vineyard grounds in one way or another.

The musings from Kosara came with something more of confusion. It sounded rhetorical, which was Lizbeth's hope as she appeared to have no idea how to answer. "I, um. Hmm. I don't know. It's not like I can tell what they're thinking, right?" Yeah, she hoped that the question wasn't aimed at her with the intent of getting an answer. She did recall a little something, though. "I was still there when Master Baronfjord got finished with Toombes's bones. The voice told us to enjoy the holidays, or something like that. But he's doing things anyway. Right? He's not keeping his word." It was odd, in hindsight, that Lizbeth's issue in that moment was that the quite possibly undead monster who might or might not want her as a child bride was being dishonest. There was definitely a need to reassess priorities.

Lizbeth quietly drew her short, curved sword with the layered, mottled blade. It didn't look quite as nice when she first drew it, but apparently all it needed was the application of a little magic that she hadn't possessed not so long ago. She held a foreign blade and it felt comfortable, balanced beautifully, and was something she was becoming very familiar with. With a sigh, she sat, suddenly sullen, and watched the light from multiple tiny sources reflect from the broad side of the blade.

Meanwhile, Urmdrus attempted to continue the conversation, answering as he might. Kathryn's question about the distillery came first. "Not edge. Middle, south fields. Under the hill, with the big tree." Yes, the Hidden Distillery was near the edge of the Rose River Vineyards, but not quite along it. The question about long storage seemed to puzzle him for a moment. "No. Made stone cellar cover, for long storage. Long time ago. Don't know where they are now. Never used." He continued to answer the flurry of other questions which came at him, now with a touch of annoyance in his voice. "No. Didn't build everything. Lot of work - local labor. I fix. I maintain. I do special work. I don't build barns. No stables. No sheds. Big House already here, when I came. Once, built outhouse." He shrugged, "Emergency."

The Mosswaters, to their credit, were also taking things as they came. Tarace listened on to Kathryn's insistence that he stick around, and although he didn't really want to stay in a place that may or may not be cursed, he was forced to admit, if only to himself, that the tall warrior lady had a point. Maybe even two. All the same, he gave a glance to Barbal to see what he thought on the matter, the latter of which threw his hand up and shook his head. Finally, Tarace answered, "Okay, fine. It was going to be nightfall by the time we got back anyway. The fellows back home know what to do, I suppose." Still, he couldn't help wring his hands about something, which came out in the form of, "But seriously, Barbal, of all the things to drink in our neighbor's entire winery, you had to pick the cursed wine. Sometimes, I swear you try to do things like this." Many a tsk and head shake later, Barbal just sighed and stared straight ahead until it was done.

The gruffer Halfling farmer, Barbal, concentrated on sipping his brandy (possibly out of spite) and fielding questions which came his way, possibly even in an act of solidarity with Urmdrus, a Dwarf who shared his boldness of speech. "Townsfolk?" he regarded. "I mean, now as you mention, maybe. Never been to the south deserts, m'self. But the older folk do, I guess, look a little different from the folk back in the Township and the younger ones, for the most part. I never thought of it much, being honest. Those Humans, they got a lot of details from person to person that're different, let alone culture to culture. I never paid it much mind." He thought about it for a moment with an expression on his face like he had never considered a thing he was staring at for years. "Come to think on it, I did hear some of the old timers use different words for things, never quite knew why. One fella, called a knife he was buying in town a 'kard.' Or something like that. Wasn't a poker player, neither. Other words, too, but that one stands out to me, first one I remember." Barbal looked a little surprised at himself. "What do you suppose that means?"

From seemingly out of nowhere, Urmdrus offered up, "Music. Hear music, some nights. South. Strings."

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 5 HP: 33 / 33 Armor Class: 16 Conditions: N/A Location: Coach House (Taproom) Action: Skill Check - Arcana Bonus Action: Morty, Familiar Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kosara asked questions that Victoria, frankly, did not have direct answers to. She then spoke words that she never liked to utter, "I don't clearly know." It was accurate, as distasteful as it might be to her. "I poured over one of my books; a classic tome that covers various Undead creatures and basic habits - as useful as a text can be in this situation. What I found was inconclusive." Victoria took a light sip from her drink and explained further, "If this is truly Prince Farid, who was Human if memory serves, he would have been long dead or had extended his life in some way. Let us assume it is with undeath. He has kept his mind, and is able to speak through his thralls. Sense through them, too. We have evidence of spell use." Victoria was counting off points on her fingers in what amounted to a thinking gesture rather than a true tally. "I can see why this would make one think of a Lich. But I'm not seeing other signs that would point to that. All of his thralls were lesser, corporeal undead, that we have seen so far. Other common types might have made better spies or messengers. I just... don't know. The bad deal with Arnaud, the gifts, the fact that he hasn't moved from this plot of land in all this time? Something seems off about this. If we find out more, I can try to eliminate more possibilities. Innate control over lesser undead is a factor, as long as it is intrinsic to the creature and not an example of spell use."

Then her Tiefling associate said something interesting. "What do you mean by that, Kosara? About old faces, I mean - not being out of place in the south?"

Victoria mulled this around in her mind for a bit, carefully pacing her way back to her recently vacated chair. Near to it, Morty stood like a preserved, burlap-wrapped cairn, less than attentive but quite ready to take a command from the right person. Her Raven made a quiet croaking sound as it hopped from the back of said chair and landed on the table, deftly moving to one side as its mistress settled back in. She took her recent acquisition, the sharp shard of steel-hard volcanic glass, from its temporary resting spot and gripped the silver wire-wrapped handleas one might either a wand - or a knife. "Obsidian Fang, this one was called. It's quite the dramatic name, isn't it? " Then as a complete non sequitur, she said to her Raven, "We really must come up with a name for you..."

Baronfjord's words stuck with Victoria for a moment, which prompted her response, "I agree. This isn't something that will be bested with a fair fight. If the dreams are accurate, whatever fight we get into needs to be as unfair as possible."

The subject of child brides came up, befitting hopefully rare avenues of conversation. While the idea that this might have been what was originally meant in whatever agreement was made, Victoria again found herself reveling in disappointment. She did not know, in the slightest, how that piece of oddity might have fit into the grand puzzle of the Vineyard, and thus kept her mouth shut. Suboptimal, as a descriptor, simply did not cut it. Nevertheless, the Bard placed this idea into her mental notes of "maybes." Past this, Victoria quieted down a little in contemplation. She disliked not having all the answers.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@rivaan@Shoe Thief@Sigil@Arty Fox

To start, my apologies for the late update, and thank you very much for your patience. Sleep issues are not remotely as fun as they're made out on the interwebz. ANYWAY, that in mind, I am pretty sure that I missed a detail or three in the transition someplace. Just get with me in the Discord and we'll figure it out. With these bits and pieces of drudgery aside, I am trying to wind down the drama that is Teatime in Avonshire, hopefully with folks getting their own plans worked out with the information provided. And hell, if you need a refresher, I've got notes from earlier in this Act together for just such an occasion, just point me in the direction of the subject matter and I'll divulge as best I'm able.

Once again, my apologies for the late post. For die rolls, adjudications, and/or any of the stuff mentioned above, get with me in our Discord and we'll get stuff done. Thanks!

Oh, and of course, we have one slot open for a player, just in case they don't mind coming in near the end(ish).