Session 56

After the events in Mythwell, Dain and Summer question Eskall about where he comes from and his motivations. They decide to shackle him to prevent him from doing anything stupid along their journey. Eskall attempts to escape the manacles, but fails miserably. The party makes their way along the road toward the village of Avanfiaran. As they are breaking down camp one morning, they hear a woman scream from just over a hillside…

The party rushes over to investigate the scream, finding an Elven woman in a cart not far off the main road, apparently having set up their own camp, and she is sobbing over the body of her dead husband. The party questions what happened, and the woman, who introduces herself as Amara Vandiir, says that they had been travelling to Nenthafiaran to start over in a simpler place, and they set up camp to sleep here for the night, and she woke up to find her husband dead, with his throat slashed. The party seems a bit suspicious, and questions her as to where the horses are for her cart. She points to a location in the woods where they had been tied up, but the party finds none. However, Summer notices tracks indicating that there were horses there before, but the tracks indicate they may have run off, perhaps spooked by something. Eskall performs funeral rites and buries Amara's husband, who she says was named Twyll. The party offers to bring her along with them to Nenthafiaran, and asks if her husband could possibly have had any enemies. Amara seems incredulous at the suggestion, saying that Twyll was simply a laborer who would do odd jobs around Mythwell. Eskall briefly attempts to summon his horse to escape, but Summer's keen eyes spot him and she sneaks up and restrains him. The party then sets off down the road again…

Several hours down the road, as the sun is setting, the party can see a lone man sitting just off the road at a campfire with nothing but a pack nearby cooking something. Suspicious, Summer goes to investigate from the nearby woods, but despite her extremely practiced stealth skills, she is spotted as if the man could sense her a mile off. He calls out to her and makes conversation with the now approaching party. He introduces himself as Tavon, and says that he is a cobbler from Nenthafiaran who was in Mythwell purchasing some specialized tools for his trade, and was now on his way back. Dain seems dubious of this explanation and attempts to bait the man into revealing his true intentions with no luck, the man seemingly either genuine, or an extremely practiced liar. Dain grows impatient with the man and casts Detect Magic, believing the man to be hiding something, and senses an extremely potent aura from the man and from an item within the man's pack. Dain demands to see the tools the man purchased in Mythwell, and Tavon finally grows weary of the questioning, and tells Dain he should have minded his own business, before vanishing into thin air. Summer retreats to a tree, camouflaged and hidden extremely well, but is shocked when she hears Tavon's voice whisper in her ear, and is shanked, taking a critical wound to the side. To her shock, despite the attack, Tavon is still nowhere to be seen. The party takes some heavy hits while attempting to find the man, until Dain gets fed up and launches a Fireball into the treeline, hearing a Wilhelm scream as the man is flung against a tree from the blast. The party manages to finish him off after some difficulty, and searches his body to find a menacing looking dagger and a rolled up parchment, which reveals that the man was seemingly a hired killer sent after Twyll due to some very large gambling debts. The party informs Amara of this, who is crushed by the revelation.

The party finally reaches Avanfiaran, to find a small mining village without much to say about it. The village has no inn, instead boasting only a small tavern, known as the Twelve Flea Tavern, which has only ale of… questionable quality, run by a Human man named Adrien Bridger. While here, Eskall requests that Dain craft him a Flametongue Sword. Dain decides to release Eskall from his manacles. The party then goes to set up camp just outside town, seeing no point in lingering in the boorish place. However, during the night, despite no warnings from the Steel Defender, the party finds their things tossed about with a noticeable sum of money missing, and Dain checks the Bag of Holding to find that the Darkblade is also missing.