Nebol'shoy is pressed for answers, literally, against the wall of the hovel in the Drenches, and Rucia is ripping mad. Aldren latches on to the dragonborn's arm and Mockleg tries to talk sense from the rage, noting that the gnome has helped save their lives many times. Nebol'shoy is restrained while Bjork takes some of the former prisoners to the church of Sanctos where they can be cured. Rucia storms about outside, cooling off, but encounters a mysterious young girl who compels him with a sob story to save her brother from the dreaded crayfish Old Marrow on the Jaggerhead. Once the party is regrouped, Nebol'shoy tells them of his dark secret, that he once belonged to a club with these former Naturalists, each a specialist in a different field or element, but under the leadership of Csunori and her love interest they began delving into dark arts in private, culminating in the necromantress deciding to kill and raise her entire tribe. The gnome didn't go along with the plan, but was knocked out before he could escape (by who it is unknown). The rest is known to Rucia, who came back to find his tribe slain or missing...
Nebol'shoy fills the party in on whatever other information he knows about the group, dead or alive, and eventually Rucia decides to forgive him, for Nebol'shoy admits that he joined the party in the first place to help the paladin as a sort of penance. The party also tries to get some information out of the other freed prisoner, Sludd, who claims he owes the group a blood debt but would be more useful if he could get his fingers back. Bjork casts a shelter to protect the group while they sleep, and they rotate some watches, interrupted late in the morning when a mercenary comes to collect taxes from the hovel. Aldren pays for the back taxes and then sells the building to the Bluecoat for a gold coin! The PCs decide on a course of action before heading over to Old Bloodwalls.
Desnova 10, 1423.
After waking up in the afternoon, Nebol'shoy, Bjork and Sludd travel to the Silversmith Zmiev to get a spell component for the druid. Sludd seems happy with the place, and produces a silver pipe once the shopping has ended, claiming its from his papi. The other PCs go to the Blinking Kettle to gather the rest of their belongings with Mockleg and settle accounts. They then proceed to the Gravers Guild to speak with Ser Arkimedes Oldwater, and Nebol'shoy figures out the pattern to knock on the door by the flickering of torches on the building-front. He signs up the four PCs and Mockleg in the Guild Register and assigns them a cachet of equipment they can bring to explore the Crumblemoor, saying that the 50% donation to the Guild from found goods will have to be on the honor system as he is short-staffed. They take the cache back to the boat and depart from Arkany to Omutny.
En route, they encounter a swirling cloud of bats above the lake that also seems to contain what appeared to be a humanoid figure, but it moves off and doesn't harass them further as they row to the eastern shore of the Jaggerhead. They arrive at the Herring House and send a request to Sister Roil to regenerate Sludd's fingers, and also that Captain Condor has been rescued. Condor claims that he thinks the Berg sisters have sold his scalp-map off to the Lay Blades, the notorious pirates who are hiding out inland away from their usual coastal raiding, and might have stolen St. Flume's sacred Pearl of Embertides. They head over to the local Inn to get a room, and set some watches.
Desnova 10, 1423.
During Nebol'shoy's watch, a girl arrives and asks for more money for the next day's lodging, also asking about Rucia. Soon after, the innkeeper herself also shows up with the same request! They return to the Herring House, where Sister Roil offers a regenerate spell for some large donations to her Church, which the party ends up paying in a large amount of gems and a ring of swimming. Sludd's fingers return, and instantly he produces some rings from his belt and adorns them, seeming quite happy with himself. He claims he lost them attempting to rob the Berg sisters, which is how he and Condor wound up in the same flooded prison below Arkany. After some goodbyes, Bjork and Aldren equip the roguish D'vryn with what they can, despite the latter's distrust and animosity. In fact, the half-elf uses a sending to inquire with Olena Sallowmoon about the fellow, who doesn't speak highly of him, but claims that a blood debt is a blood debt. Mockleg is morose that more expense wasn't made to regenerate his missing leg, but understands that Sludd's injury was fresher, and that he is more attuned to his own handicap.
The party launches out across the lake once more, to the far shore along the Flailing Marsh, where they encounter a broken craft that has a large piece of pale caparace lodged into it, which Bjork wants to take and transform later. They set out across the pale grasses and reeds of the wetland, and after a brief jaunt see some Will-o-the-Wisps off in the distance, which they do not steer towards at Rucia's warning. The lights shift around in the distance, but eventually the PCs are distracted when they find a pit that contains a corpse and some oily-black colored, hard-shelled spheres. They appear to be eggs, and some have already hatched. Arrows and fire do little to damage the things, so Bjork uses a mage hand to whisk out the corpse's staff, and Rucia heads down in the pit to begin crushing the eggs with his maul. As the dragonborn cracks one of them, there is a high-pitched, awful squealing that emits from within, soon joined by another, much louder, amplified scream from across the Marsh...
PCs: Aldren, Bjork, Nebol'shoy, Rucia
NPCs
Triina (human female): a young girl with dirty blond pigtails that she wears under a russet cloak and cowl, she speaks in a sad but whispering voice that commands a great amount of sympathy and power.
