The bard's been one busy boy.
Immediately after the Manoir's destruction, he ran down the leads he'd gotten away with (the file folder and autograph), but encountered only dead ends for one reason or another. Having lost the lich's trail, he knew he had to re-engage with the FoS -- whom, he's decided, he'd rather see clean up their
own mess for a change; too many of his allies in the VRS have been led into peril by the vipers' ploys, over the years, so it's high time the Frat got a taste of its own medicine
-- so he set up his (painful, but worth it) confrontation with Buchvold, to ensure that at least
one valid member would vouch for his own legitimacy. Despite how they rub each other the wrong way, he and Buchvold have come to an "arrangement" that neither is likely to break, for various reasons ... at least, unless
better offers materialize, in which case things might get a wee bit messy for whichever one thinks slowest.
Together, Crow and the Borcan developed a backstory to account for his absence from the official FoS records -- the "Il Aluk survivor" pretense, which should suffice for deflecting any lower-ranking members' prying questions; as for
high-ranking Frat officers, he's got other ideas to muddy the waters in a pinch -- and he struck up a dialogue with Kingsley to see if this discerning, yet inexperienced scholar could poke holes in it. As a female and a non-wizard, she's vulnerable to being discredited in the eyes of her superiors, so that's how the bard can ensure her silence if she
does uncover a gaffe in his story ... that is, if he can't win her over as a friend. (He'd prefer the latter: he's impressed by, and rather likes, the professor.)
Apart from meeting Kingsley, Crow spent most of December racing from one end of Darkon to the other on his Phantom Steed, checking for signs of imminent Doomsday Device activation. (His previous appearances as an NPC in my table-top campaign, when I ran the Death-trilogy modules, gave him a reasonably good idea of what he'd need to look for.) As that's not where Van Rijn actually
is, he accomplished nothing more than to make his limp worse for a while, but he couldn't possibly gamble so many innocent lives, merely
hoping Death hadn't had time to construct another Device since Halloween. (Sucks to be the only Good guy in the game at times, doesn't it?
)
As nobody's yet taken me up on my offer (still open) to drop in on other dialogues for the weeks to follow, I'll assume that the bard spends most of his time between contacting Kingsley and whatever Nathan's got planned for the future exchanging letters with Buchvold (who lost touch for a while) and Kingsley ... and playing the "good guy" side of the fence, for a change. Don't worry about him blabbing about the Frat's activities, BTW: he's well aware that almost
nobody connected with the Van Richten Society is up to taking on a lich of Van Rijn's caliber -- let alone, one armed with a Doomsday Device! -- so he's not going to pass on any information to his
real allies that would provoke them into getting themselves slaughtered. However, if the moderators would like to pass on relevant information through channels that the FoS leadership
aren't aware of, you guys are more than welcome to use Crow as a conduit for rumors that the VRS may have dug up, as to recent malign activities hinting at the lich's whereabouts or doings.