Strange Aeons / The Rushton Terror pt. 17 / Eire the 11th through the 12th, 3592 CE / 1-5-21

Strange disappearances have been occurring in the seaside town of Rushton, and a party of Adventurers have assembled, each for reasons of their own, to investigate. Hemlock and Esp continue to seek the reason behind their lost memories, while their companion Garrok finds himself aimless and jobless after narrowly surviving the recent ordeal at Stormbriar Asylum. Gleorn Bearheart searches for his missing cousin Torgrim, while mourning Torgrim's brother, Rorgrim, murdered by the dream creature called the Tatterman. Sigvald of Northwell came to Rushton to seek an audience with the town's priestess of Accuris, Maeve Trelawney, and finds her also now among the missing. His calling as a hunter of supernatural creatures leads him to seek further answers. And Trakir the cleric of Ishtalar almost found himself a victim of cultist machinations, a fate which he would have shared with other unlucky members of his traveling caravan. This cohort now finds themselves confronting the last of the invaders who have occupied Fort Hailstorm and by all appearances, murdered most of the guardsman and city leaders who previously resided there. The cultists in this case are fish-like creatures, who through means still unknown to the party, raised the murdered guards of the fort as formidable undead zombies. The last leader of the fish cultists, a magic-user, attempts to escape under a spell of invisibility, but is tracked by Gleorn's faithful animal companion, Scout, allowing Gleorn to fell the villain with a mighty blow from Lockpick, his adamantine great sword. With all the enemy defeated, the fort becomes a safe place for the party to rest and recover (with the exception of the dungeon, where Trakir warns the vengeful spirit of Clyde Pratt, a doctor and occultist executed by Baron Lowell IV's father for an attempted poisoning, may still linger). While resting, they review some of the documents that Esp recovered from the missing magistrate's study. They reveal important clues about the history of Baron Haver Lowell IV, former employer of Hemlock and Esp who appears to be the cause of their memory-loss before having had them committed to Stonebriar. Armed with this knowledge, the party determines they will soon have to pay a visit to Orchid Hill, the palatial estate of the Lowell family.