Week 26 - The Plot Thickens, Congeals, and Solidifies.

The next morning, a message arrives that a woman is waiting at the Watchhouse in relation to the murder of Eligos the Erudite. The party hurry over to meet Astra Forgedawn, a geek chic elf who is visibly upset. The more astute members of the party realise she is genuinely shaken at the loss of her fiancée. Astra and Eligos had been seeing each other and were planning to marry, despite their different backgrounds and ages. Although her looks say otherwise, Astra is many years older than Eligos. They shared an interest in ancient Xen’drik artifacts. Astra is happy to help bring Eligos’s killer to justice, so the party invite her to their stakeout.

Lower Levels

The captured Starshine has told the party of her arrangement to hand over the horn of blasting to a hooded man: 1400 hours in the Commons Garden, atop Morgrave University.

Our clever heroes disguise themselves with magic, so Astra is not recognisable, and Flash looks like the thief, Starshine.

As the party approaches the grand steps of Morgrave University, the all-day graduation is in full swing and the atmosphere is a carnival one. Inside our heroes see students revelling in their success and drowning their sorrows. Some have even dressed up in costumes – bears, mummies, gorillas lurch across the grounds. The occasional Watch patrol walks past the entrance, but does not impinge on the celebrations inside.

There doesn’t seem to be a reception desk, but there is free beer. Beyond the entrance hall are the crowded gardens of the lower level.

The party finds a sign, and learns the basic layout of the University. Heading straight for the top, our heroes locate the Commons – a tranquil rooftop garden. Being two hours early for the hand over, however, it is empty. Rather than loiter conspicuously, the party grab a sausage on a stick outside the nearby Menthis Hall, where a graduation ceremony is about to start. Grath the Goliath hires a mortar board and is ushered in, and the party follows.

Inside, a grey haired professor, Daerin Ollio, is giving this year’s keynote address, and startles our intrepid investigators by mentioning Eligos’s passing, and dedicating his next book to him. Daerin’s face gives nothing away of what he is feeling – if anything at all – but his air of knowing superiority is barely concealed.

“In a return to my earlier interests, I shall soon publish a new work on the power of music in ancient Xen’drik… I’m sure my old friend Elgios would approve.”

A successful sense motive check reveals he is very excited about something. He is also noticed to be looking frequently at someone in the front row.

The party consider disguising themselves as graduands (the word for the day), to get a closer look, but decide not to. After the ceremony, the figure has a few inaudible words with Eligos, and exits past the party. Astra recognised him as Garnet Springer, Eligos’s missing assistant. Garnet, or Garn, as he is called, is a shifty-looking shifter. His robes are unkempt, and the long fingernails and hair of his kind does nothing for him.

Wisely refraining from contacting either suspect, the party stake out the gardens, which are full of graduates getting their portraits done. After a while the gardens empty, leaving typical student trash, which Constable Tool picks up to aid his disguise as a groundskeeper. Meanwhile, Jericho and Astra pretend to be sweethearts on the bridge and Flash is waiting by the fountain disguised as Starshine.

Grath scares off an admirer as the Professor crosses the bridge. For some reason, Jericho decides to pick his pocket as he walks past. Deftly, he lifts Daerin’s money pouch and pockets it.

Daerin plans to meet ‘Starshine’ and initiates the handover, but there is a problem! ‘Starshine’ has the goods (Horn of Blasting), but Daerin can’t find his money! Panicking, Daerin retraces his steps to look for his money pouch. Frantic gesturing convinces Jericho to pretend to have found it, and the brilliant green emerald within. Daerin is so grateful he rewards Jericho with a whole gold coin.

With disaster averted, the exchange occurs and Daerin is detained. It doesn’t take long to convince him to sing; he admits organising the burglary after being tipped off by Garnet, Eligos’s assistant, that Eligos was dead. Garnet is now trying to blackmail him for the murder, but Daerin denies responsibility.

The party march him back down through the lower level gardens when they are ambushed by six men in gorilla suits, mingling in the fancy dress crowd. Hang on a moment… they are gorillas!

Grath seems to be untouchable as he slays beast after beast. Constable Tool causes fur to fly with the pommels of his daggers. Jericho and Flash stay wisely out of the way. Actually, these are summoned fiendish apes, which the party realise when the first one disappears when killed. Flash briefly turns them against each other with a spell, but that does not last long.

Another figure appears in the background – a familiar warforged figure. This is Gravedigger, the one responsible for the demolition of Eligos’s tower. He rains spell after spell upon Flash, who shrugs off Blindness but can’t help being walloped occasionally with a Spiritual Hammer.

Flash tries to get even with Domination, but his control is shut out by a protection from good spell.

Some of the fiendish apes run after the captured Professor, who makes a run for it. Unholy Blight hits some of the party, and the warforged starts after the Professor, creating a Wall of Stone to separate the party. While Tool and Jericho start up the wall, Flash turns ethereal and walks through the corner wall. Gravedigger has been slowed by a Ray of Dizziness and approaches our goliath, who has felled many a foe. Laughing, Gravedigger casts slay living as he touches Gauthakan. The party hold their respective breaths until Gauthakan shows his true barbarian colours by resisting.

Gauthakan’s adamantine weapon cuts through Gravedigger’s Stoneskin spell, and the warforged is soon inert. A final messenger detaches and wings it way upwards, but Gauthakan catches it and bites its wings off.

Astra’s Workshop

Deciding not to risk breaking Flash’s Domination spell, the party accepts Astra’s offer to try to recover the final message. Back at her lab, she reveals the message:

“My Lady, if you have received this then I have fallen in your service. My intentions were to silence the Professor to protect you.”

Asked who this could refer to, Daerin hazards a guess that it could be Lady Cecily ir’Soma, his romantic interest and Eligos’s ex-wife. In explanation, Daerin says that after Eligos wouldn’t sell him the horn they argued about times long past. It seems Eligos recently found an old love letter from Daerin to Eligos’s then wife, Cecily.

Constable Tool recognises the name: old money in decline.

Eligos and Cecily were married thirty years ago, but they separated due to ‘irreconcilable differences’ after Eligos refused to go back to retrieve the second of a pair of Siberys dragonshards that were the object of an abortive expedition. Little did Eligos know; she was with child as they separated. Daerin suspects this son was actually his.

When Daerin came to visit on Saturday evening, he told Cecily about his argument with Eligos, and how Eligos seemed to know about the affair and pregnancy.

Gravedigger’s Escape

To find out more about Lady Cecily, the party decide to force Gravedigger to spill the beans. It is a risky thing which might break the Domination spell, but he is chained up and all his items looted, I mean confiscated.

As soon as the question is asked, Gravedigger strains against the magic and breaks the spell. Roaring with rage, he vanishes with a word. Flash realises Gravedigger triggered a spell he had already cast: Word of Recall. Worried that Gravedigger might warn Cecily, the party hurry over to her abode without the benefits of a good night’s sleep. Nobody is home, apart from a scared butler, who reveals she has gone to see a solicitor (not her solicitor, but a solicitor). Flash deduces this must be House Sivis near Eligos’s house.

The Solicitor

The party finds an office of the gnomish House Sivis, bearing a plaque with the name of Harold Harwood. Harold is also a notary, and his receptionist tells the party that Lady Cecily is upstairs.

Three voices are heard, and Constable Tool announces his presence, bearing a warrant for Cecily’s arrest. Upstairs, a gnome is being consulted at his desk by a man and a woman.

Lady Cecily comes quietly, and her son Wextor warns her not to say anything. He strangely declines to accompany his mother to the Watch House, saying his needs to finalise some affairs relating to his late father’s estate.

It is then that a warforged appears at the foot of the stairs. No, it’s not Gravedigger, but Abercrombie the Butler. He claims to be on a mission for Justice, and bears a more recent version of the will of Eligos the Erudite. Wextor almost has a fit when he hears that… for a moment he loses his top, but then becomes strangely silent as Constable Tool goes over to inspect the will.

In an instant, Wextor has plunged a concealed dagger into the back of Constable Tool’s neck. His swift movement and powerful assassin’s strike would have surely killed a normal man, but a fluke of design means that Constable Tool’s warforged oil arteries were routed differently to most humanoids. Reacting quickly, Flash calls upon the powerful patterns of the Rainbow to mesmerise Wextor without further bloodshed.

Wextor becomes the prime suspect, given Eligos was killed with the same strike as befell Constable Tool, and the motive Wextor had (wanting his inheritance before the truth about his true paternity disqualified him, or Eligos married Astra). It looks likely that if charges of conspiracy to murder don’t stick on Lady Cecily, she will be tarred by her mysterious association with Gravedigger, member of the Emerald Claw and the Blood of Vol.

Harold the solicitor tells the party how he served divorce papers on Lady Cecily ir’Soma 30 years ago. “I was worried she was going to shoot the messenger, as it were… but luckily for me she knew better than to ensorcel a member of the House of Sivis! Funny thing is – I’m still not sure whether it was the personal or the financial shock that made her so angry. Eligos got half of the joint assets, and since he had married up, came off quite well.”

With so much evidence against Wextor, Constable Tool is confident he can get funding for truth-spells, and the case is strong. Astra is satisfied that her future husband would be happy with this outcome, and rewards the party with a note for 3000 gp each. As he bids farewell to the party, Constable Tool rightly declines this reward… but he is pleasantly surprised over the next week, when Commander Dalgoria makes him a Sergeant. No doubt he tracks down Garnet Springer, the assistant who was feeding information on Eligos’s research to Professor Daerin Ollio, and slaps extortion charges on him.

The only other mystery, that of the missing dogs, is solved when Tom the half-ogre is discovered in a local hotel room, looking after the neighbourhood’s pooches. He tells Sergeant Tool that Wextor had tried to anger him into killing Eligos, after revealing he was a vivisectionist. Despite some magical compulsion, Tom held true to his ideals, and obsessively turned room 7 of the Welcome Wench into a kennel for dogs at risk…

And so the party repays Constable Tool - a solved murder, and a promotion. Well done, all! But, what's this? Frith comes running to the party, bearing a tale of a dragon attack on Diamond Lake, and Allustan the Sage gone missing! Never a moment's peace! …