RAVENLOFT: The One That Got Away, Chapter 3

[Brock Marsh Runoff]

BENN'S HOUSE

Dorgio gives Benn a look mixed with weariness and confusion. "Ash from the sky? No I did not. A sign perhaps? Or something more ominous?"

He rubs his stubbly chin. "I have been thinking, we should be seeking Jeurgin out. I have spells that can...compell the truth from him, if need be. Make sure he is an ally and not a fiend. His little beasts, Gruz and Smezel, they somehow detected Jon last night. And it must have been Jon. Without them, Maytr may be much harder to track."

[Lord Skybolt]

THE GUNSLINGER

The carriage rolls down the cobbled street. The Gunslinger relaxes as once-familiar buildings slide past in the green glass window pane.

After such a long trip, a long nap would be nice, but something feels wrong and it keeps him awake.
No, not feels. Smells.

Sniffing, the Gunsligner finds the source of the offending odor: his overstuffed valise , which rests on the seat opposite him. It exhales a faint but unmistakable stench in the confines of the passenger compartment. He hadn't noticed the stink on the deck of the keelboat, or on the open wagon ride into the city.


Smokestacks rising over the black and mountainous mills. Hot metal tang of the foundries. Teeming slums, rat-on-a-stick and the sweat of factory-serfs. Heaps of filth choking the alleys and tumbling into the turgid sewer channels.
Pools of multihued alchemical waste.
The lime pits where bones of dogs and men dissolved to make fertilizer, in white pools stirred by blind, chained workers.


The carriage rattles on, iron-rimmed wheels striking the cobbled pavement like the rolling hammers of the great forges...

Snapping out of his doze, the Gunslinger finds the carriage drawn to a halt.
The driver steps down, opens the door. The man bows slightly and lets down the steps for his passenger.
A breeze blows into the cabin, replacing the stink of the tainted luggage with the smell of baking bread.
"Monsieur Smythe, you've arrived."

Alain walks out of the carriage . Thinking to himself:"I hope my house is still in good shape, hmm I wonder how the others are doing ."

[ewancummins]

THE GUNSLINGER

The carriage rolls down the cobbled street. The Gunslinger relaxes as once-familiar buildings slide past in the green glass window pane.

After such a long trip, a long nap would be nice, but something feels wrong and it keeps him awake.
No, not feels. Smells.

Sniffing, the Gunsligner finds the source of the offending odor: his overstuffed valise , which rests on the seat opposite him. It exhales a faint but unmistakable stench in the confines of the passenger compartment. He hadn't noticed the stink on the deck of the keelboat, or on the open wagon ride into the city.


Smokestacks rising over the black and mountainous mills. Hot metal tang of the foundries. Teeming slums, rat-on-a-stick and the sweat of factory-serfs. Heaps of filth choking the alleys and tumbling into the turgid sewer channels.
Pools of multihued alchemical waste.
The lime pits where bones of dogs and men dissolved to make fertilizer, in white pools stirred by blind, chained workers.


The carriage rattles on, iron-rimmed wheels striking the cobbled pavement like the rolling hammers of the great forges...

Snapping out of his doze, the Gunslinger finds the carriage drawn to a halt.
The driver steps down, opens the door. The man bows slightly and lets down the steps for his passenger.
A breeze blows into the cabin, replacing the stink of the tainted luggage with the smell of baking bread.
"Monsieur Smythe, you've arrived."

Alain walks out of the carriage . Thinking to himself:"I hope my house is still in good shape, hmm I wonder how the others are doing ."

ALAIN finds him old house in outwardly good repair, but with the front windows and door boarded shut.
Walking round the back, he sees the windows and doors there are not sealed.
A garden grows in the back yard, behind a wooden fence.

As Alain gets closer to the back gate, a figure emerges from the garden shed.
The wiry, gray-bearded man stops and stares. He rubs his eyes.

"Alain, ye have returned!"

Wat hops over the fence, spry as ever, and hugs his friend.

[Adam]

Benn's house
Raen knocks on the door politely and after being admitted in, he looks around at the departure preparations. He looks at his hostess and then to Benn "Are things that bad, Bennedict? Or you had the trip planned anyways?"
As Benn asks about ash falling, Raen shrugs "Yes, but I assumed it's ash from all the things the refugees burn"

Bennedict greets Raen cordially. He turns to look at the preparations, stroking his mustache. "When I've explained why I've called you here, the reasons for my caution will be clear. I hope its just paranoia, but I would rather not be wrong."

BENN'S HOUSE

He rubs his stubbly chin. "I have been thinking, we should be seeking Jeurgin out. I have spells that can...compell the truth from him, if need be. Make sure he is an ally and not a fiend. His little beasts, Gruz and Smezel, they somehow detected Jon last night. And it must have been Jon. Without them, Maytr may be much harder to track."

"You may be right. The young man has a talent for finding creeping things that would rather not be found. But..." He hesitates, "I had hoped perhaps we could just be rid of him. He's clearly gone further into the depths than I had hoped when we parted..." He smiles. "And if I'm being honest, those two creatures he runs around with creep me out."

[ewancummins]

CHARLOTTE enters the room.

''Benn, darling---no, please don't leave your friends, this won't take very long--I just wanted to let you know I'm nearly ready for the trip."

She smiles at Raen, Dorgio, and the others gathered with Benn.

"Dorgio, if Lorna and the boy are coming, you'll want to know all this. We'll leave the wharf an hour after sunrise. The Briar Rose makes excellent time-- that is what Captain Pickering told me. He say's the only two dragonboats as fast are the Virago and Marot's Pride. Anyway, I'm told we'll reach Silbervas pretty quickly. Falkovnia..."
She gulps.
"But we don't have to get off there. The Briar Rose will sail--err--steam--on into Dementlieu. We stop at a riverside inn, and then we take a stagecoach across the lowlands to Mordentshire-by-the-sea. The main road is patrolled by militia, so we should be safe. It's a bit of a roundabout way, but from what I have heard, highwaymen have made the western border woods and moors too dangerous for us to just cross the Musarde and then go the whole trip overland. This is the best I could arrange on such short notice."

[Adam]

Bennedict kisses her lightly on the cheek. "Safe travels, darling. I'll be with you as soon as I can."

[ewancummins]

Bennedict kisses her lightly on the cheek. "Safe travels, darling. I'll be with you as soon as I can."

Charlotte departs the room, leaving Benn and his companions to their meeting...

[Lord Skybolt]

THE GUNSLINGER

The carriage rolls down the cobbled street. The Gunslinger relaxes as once-familiar buildings slide past in the green glass window pane.

After such a long trip, a long nap would be nice, but something feels wrong and it keeps him awake.
No, not feels. Smells.

Sniffing, the Gunsligner finds the source of the offending odor: his overstuffed valise , which rests on the seat opposite him. It exhales a faint but unmistakable stench in the confines of the passenger compartment. He hadn't noticed the stink on the deck of the keelboat, or on the open wagon ride into the city.


Smokestacks rising over the black and mountainous mills. Hot metal tang of the foundries. Teeming slums, rat-on-a-stick and the sweat of factory-serfs. Heaps of filth choking the alleys and tumbling into the turgid sewer channels.
Pools of multihued alchemical waste.
The lime pits where bones of dogs and men dissolved to make fertilizer, in white pools stirred by blind, chained workers.


The carriage rattles on, iron-rimmed wheels striking the cobbled pavement like the rolling hammers of the great forges...

Snapping out of his doze, the Gunslinger finds the carriage drawn to a halt.
The driver steps down, opens the door. The man bows slightly and lets down the steps for his passenger.
A breeze blows into the cabin, replacing the stink of the tainted luggage with the smell of baking bread.
"Monsieur Smythe, you've arrived."

Alain walks out of the carriage . Thinking to himself:"I hope my house is still in good shape, hmm I wonder how the others are doing ."

ALAIN finds him old house in outwardly good repair, but with the front windows and door boarded shut.
Walking round the back, he sees the windows and doors there are not sealed.
A garden grows in the back yard, behind a wooden fence.

As Alain gets closer to the back gate, a figure emerges from the garden shed.
The wiry, gray-bearded man stops and stares. He rubs his eyes.

"Alain, ye have returned!"

Wat hops over the fence, spry as ever, and hugs his friend.

"Nice too see you have kept up the place for me . I need you do to some stuff for me ...."Alain explains what he needs to his old friend .

[ewancummins]

ALAINE SMYTHE

continued...

WAT sees to Alain's requests.

Meanwhile, Alain settles back into his old home. After removing the boards from the front windows, he has plenty of light to work with.

He sets the smelly valise down on a dusty table. Sniffs it.
The stench has diminished quite a bit, or maybe the fresh air has scattered the bad humors (fresh air for a city: but even a smoky day in Pont-a-Mouseau smells like a flower garden compared with the factory districts and slums of the city he had been living in).

He opens the case--
His clothes shift as if something moves underneath.

Something greasy black creeps from under a torn fold of a tunic, then retreats.

The creatures burst out.
Alain recoils.

Roaches--at least five and as big as rats. The vermin skitter across the tabletop and drop onto the floorboards.

They skitter away from the sunlight, headed for darker parts of his house.
ALAIN calls up mystic energy and hurls bright arrows of force at the fleeing pests.

Got most--crushed and sizzling--but not all.

One or maybe two escaped...

[VAN]

Sara thinks for a moment and says:

"I haven't noticed any ash falling from the sky. But again this city is never that clean! The dust might be mistaken for ash. Has someobe really see this or is just bar talk?"

[Lord Skybolt]

ALAINE SMYTHE

continued...

WAT sees to Alain's requests.

Meanwhile, Alain settles back into his old home. After removing the boards from the front windows, he has plenty of light to work with.

He sets the smelly valise down on a dusty table. Sniffs it.
The stench has diminished quite a bit, or maybe the fresh air has scattered the bad humors (fresh air for a city: but even a smoky day in Pont-a-Mouseau smells like a flower garden compared with the factory districts and slums of the city he had been living in).

He opens the case--
His clothes shift as if something moves underneath.

Something greasy black creeps from under a torn fold of a tunic, then retreats.

The creatures burst out.
Alain recoils.

Roaches--at least five and as big as rats. The vermin skitter across the tabletop and drop onto the floorboards.

They skitter away from the sunlight, headed for darker parts of his house.

Well they don't like the light . Then it is time for the house to have a bunch light every were here then . Alain thinks to himself . With those thought he goes around the hosue openning windows and light some torches as needed to let in or brighten up the house before he goes on house cleaning it of these unwelcome guests that some how got into his valise .

[ewancummins]

BUG HUNT


ALAIN

ALAINE SMYTHE

continued...

WAT sees to Alain's requests.

Meanwhile, Alain settles back into his old home. After removing the boards from the front windows, he has plenty of light to work with.

He sets the smelly valise down on a dusty table. Sniffs it.
The stench has diminished quite a bit, or maybe the fresh air has scattered the bad humors (fresh air for a city: but even a smoky day in Pont-a-Mouseau smells like a flower garden compared with the factory districts and slums of the city he had been living in).

He opens the case--
His clothes shift as if something moves underneath.

Something greasy black creeps from under a torn fold of a tunic, then retreats.

The creatures burst out.
Alain recoils.

Roaches--at least five and as big as rats. The vermin skitter across the tabletop and drop onto the floorboards.

They skitter away from the sunlight, headed for darker parts of his house.

Well they don't like the light . Then it is time for the house to have a bunch light every were here then . Alain thinks to himself . With those thought he goes around the hosue openning windows and light some torches as needed to let in or brighten up the house before he goes on house cleaning it of these unwelcome guests that some how got into his valise .

The roaches flee from the light.

Searching the valise, Alain finds a slick, sticky, gray mass like a wad of busted eggshells stuck to the inside of one of his tunics.
The noisome insects made quite a mess of his extra rations and his spare clothes, but don't seem to have chewed the valise itself.

How did they get in?

Hard to say exactly how, when, and where.
But that city as so vile, so dirty-- outside the white-washed and perfumed tower-houses of the rich , where Alain was only privileged to set foot a few times-- that an invasion of its disgusting pests into his personal belongings is perhaps not so surprising after all. All it would take would be eggs laid, some food, time, warmth, a dark and enclosed space. Water, too, but his valise did get damp in the rainforests of Valachan...

Alain recalls something he found in a slum exploration: a mound of hand-length roaches in dark room swarming over something long and bulky on the floor like mice over a table of food . When the crawlers fled his lamp, then he saw the white bones, the ragged strips of flesh and cloth, a still recognizably human form...

Cleaning out the roaches may be a dirty job, but Alain has learned some tricks to deal with these horrid bugs. Light to deny them comfortable spaces. Cleaning the house, searching out leaks , clearing away any food, and so on.
Several common poisons have failed to work against these giant roaches in the past, but Alain knows of alchemical preparations that should attract and kill the creatures. The problem in that other city was not so much killing them as dealing with their endless numbers.
Does he have the skill to mix such stuff his own, or will he need help?


In his experience, some small predators will kill the bugs. Cats. At least, the alley-cats of that city, a mangy and feral breed, would not hesitate to slay and consume the fat roaches.

[Brock Marsh Runoff]

BENN'S HOUSE

Dorgio nods at Charlotte's plan. "I wish we were having more time to prepare, but the sooner you, Jonas, and my family are out of Pont, the better. Likely there are still people in Mordentshire who know Lorna--like the family she used to care for. I stitched their boy up, he had a nasty tear on his forehead from the shipwreck. Hopefully they will be able to return the favor if you find yourselves in need. And Miss Weathermay, should it come to that."

After Charlotte leaves, he continues his conversation with Benn.

"Aye, I mislike those beasts as well. And there is no doubt he has been...touched by the strange powers of our world. But if my scrying reveals no betrayal in his heart, he may yet be of use. I feel bad for him, in truth, how isolated he must be by his disfigurement. But I felt bad for Maytr once as well, and I do not wish to repeat my...failures."

"There is something else as well. You remember the Captain whom we encountered all those years ago, when Maytr was first on the loose? Thibault, I believe his name was called. He may not be our closest friend, but he seemed a dogged guardsman, and it might be that we should look him up."

[Adam]

"Thibault has done well in the gendarmes," Bennedict says, "And he should be informed to make sure his peers are on the look out. However, I'm...less than inspired by his competence and that of his men. If they're going to catch Maytr, it will likely be because he makes a mistake. Not impossible, of course, but not likely either."

He looks to Sara. "It's something I heard from an informant when I was speaking to him this morning. Could be nothing."

He looks around at the small group. "Well, I suppose I'll get down to business. I've invited you here because Dorgio and I have reason to believe that a dangerous criminal has returned to Pont, a man we first traveled with and then learned to be a murderer named Jonathon Maytr. 'Man' may be putting it a bit strongly, I should add, as we also have reason to believe he has joined the ranks of the lycanthropes, or something like them. This is the man Dorgio wrote about in his publication some years ago, and if he has returned here I can only conclude it is to do the people of this city and us, in particular, some harm. And, I'm afraid that one of the intruders you dealt with during our event at the house last evening may have been him. As such, there is every possibility he will have marked you as cohorts of ours and, thus, potential targets." He looks meaningfully to Sara and Kat (if she's present.) "He is a murderer of young women of...a certain appearance or kind. I would ask for your assistance in hunting this fugitive but, if you chose to withhold it for your own safety, I would ask you to at least be cautious and look to your own safety that you do not end up being added to his list of victims."

[kintire]

Kat shrugs

"I've never heard of any ashfalls, but I'll ask around if you wish."

She then listens closely to the briefing before frowning slightly.

"I've only heard of these shifter things in tales. Anything I should know about them? Also... young women of what appearance or kind? Please, I don't think this is the time for polite evasions..."