Aporeu chronicles Issue 69: Death Before Winter Solstice
Stories from the adventurers
This week
Short introductionDeath Before Winter Solstice by Mud
Mud go with 2 aventurs do new mission for monies. Lonan says human man dead and we must go look for who made the man dead. Horseman Kalesh and scaly nas- ..Scaly maby nasty elf lady go with Mud to big nice house. Elf lady knocks on big door and old human man open door. Old human is looking for who made the dead man dead, but he not smart enough. So he take us to room where 5 human people are and one of de 5 people have made the dead man dead. We will look who made the dead man dead. Mud find nice looking glass for looking and look very good at all the nasty humans. 'Butter' have spot on head. He is been hitten and little dry blood. Butter makes the house nice and clean. Very very cleeean. He talk difficult, not like Mud, buy soft and takes sometime before he finally can say word. Mud don't like Butter, nasty human.. But, when Butter talks, Mud thinks he is not telling lies. Then is youngest human man, he has necklace of God of eeeh.. God.. Mud know..necklace of two hands with red robe.. .. Ilmater! God Ilmater. Godman rubs Muds hair. Nasty human.. Other man a bit older, he very much no talking. Better human man. He is only little nasty human. Then nasty human man who is older than only little nasty human man and nasty human female. Lady human has papers of oldest man. On papers he writed "I've had it! I will do it and it will end all our problems!" and Mud smells alcol on papers. Oldestman gets angry, he says didn't make the dead man dead, he says only little nasty man is crazy and talks to devil. He says crazyman made the dead man dead. But Godman says crazyman did not make the Deadman dead. So, very misty-eyes. Also, the three human man's are brothers and sons of the dead man. Peculia and Peculia.. Then we go look at place where dead man died. In office, were Butter takes us too. When walking, Mud looks in Butter pockets and find only medicine, so Mud gives those to Kalesh. In office there is blood, Mud looks and blood goes to books on shelves. Kalesh looks at sword on the wall and finds key in sword. Then scaly elf Lady throws knife in books. Mud don't know why.. But then scaly elf lady takes out book and find clue. In book word "second" is in circle of blood. Mud look in all the books, but no more blood circle.. Then look under desk and under desk is "A" in blood! And when go out of office, floor is creaky creaky, so Mud look for more creaky and then find safe onder floor. Safe has 2 locks and key goes nice in one. Now we find key 2. We look in all rooms were human brothers sleep. Crazyman has diary papers that he try to make secret, hiding in bag. Godman has statue of two hands with red ribbon and papers saying he borrow much monies from dead man. Older man has papers saying he first has to give monies to someone, but now doesn't have to give monies anymore. Then we go look in Butters room. And soooo clean! Mud don't think Mud will find any nice secrets. To much clean, very very clean. Nasty human.. Then we go into kitchen where Butters is making food. Hmmm.. Looking very nice juicy meat and food.. When looking in fire where food made yum yum, Mud finds burned papers.. Mud looks very much at Butters.. He cuts meats so nice and good. Then Mud go spy on 4 humans again in room, see if they do suspisses things. So very sneaky look... But no suspisses.. But Mud do see lion statue. So Mud goes in and takes statue and looks and there is secret place in statue and secret place has key! Muhhaha, Mud loves secrets and sneaky and nice. So give key to Kalesh and scaly elf Lady. En then go spy on Butter, sneaky sneaky.. An Mud looks sneaky for little time. And Butter wants to do something, but then doesn't do thing.. Mud thinks Mud is not being sneaky enough... Kalesh and scaly Elf lady come back from opening safe. In safe is papers from dead man. And we go back to big room with all the humans. And read papers. Dead man gives no monies to his sons and they are not happy. Dead man does give special job to Butters. Mud don't know who made dead man dead, very very suspisses. Mud growls at crazyman "rrrraaaahr" and! He growls back! Muhaha! This is exciting. So Mud takes Claw and puts it in room. Make more growls and make every bodies scared. Maby someone attack! And then crazyman takes Claw and attack! But he attack himself! Crazy crazyman.. Muhaha. So then Oldman from who let us in house comes and says: "who killed the man?" and Mud don't know. So Mud point to nasty Butter. Kalesh and scaly elf lady do know though and say crazyman, Ivan made dead man dead but that Butters is guilty too! So, Mud was little bit right. So Oldman takes crazyman and Butters to jail. That was very interesting day. Mud take home monies, nice juicy meat for Rawr en going to sleep a little bit. Very tired now. Bye.Death Before Winter Solstice by Kalesh
Kalesh met Effie and Mud in the guild hall early in the morning. We had all signed up for a quest that asked adventurers to help the guard with solving a murder. Lornan let us know that Tikhon the investigator would be waiting for us at the mansion where the murder happened. After getting the location of the mansion, we went on our way. Along the way, Kalesh got to meet the others. Mud was as inquisitive as always, though a bit difficult to understand most of the time. Kalesh did not know Effie yet, she’s the most talkative of the group; which was good since both Mud and Kalesh aren’t the best at that. Arriving at the Mansion, we knocked on the double door and it opened almost immediately; it was opened by Tikhon. He told us that we were here to solve the murder of Frederick Pheaca; the owner of this mansion. Tikhon guided us to another room filled with five other people. The three sons of the murdered man named Dimitry, Ivan and Alex. A woman named Kaitlyn who later turned out to be Dimitry’s ex fiancé. Lastly there is the murdered man’s servant named Arthur. Mud noticed a recent nick on Arthur’s head, which was suspicious. Tikhon gave us a letter that that was of interest to us and made ready to leave, he would return later for our chosen culprit. Before opening the letter, Mud picked up a nearby monocle and investigated the nick on Arthur’s head a little closer. Arthur started shaking and took some medicine. He explained that he gets seizures from time to time, and sometimes he hurts himself during one of these. Kalesh thought this was a logical reason, but could also be a clever lie; he seemed to tell the truth though. We read the letter, which was apparently given to the investigator by Kaitlyn. The letter was written by Dimitry and directed to Kaitlyn. It read that he was ‘really going to do it’, which was very suspicious. Mud recognized the stain on the letter as alcohol, Dimitry had been drinking while writing this. When we started questioning Dimitry and Kaitlyn about this, Ivan jumped into the conversation and accused Dimitry of suspicious activities on the night of the murder. People had seen him walking around town all bloody, and his gambling debt had also been paid. Questioning Dimitry further confirmed that his debt had indeed been paid, apparently with the money Kaitlyn had given him to send to her sister. This was also the reason they were no longer engaged. Dimitry didn’t like his brother accusing him of the murder, and he was quick to point out that Ivan had demons of his own, literally. He had apparently made a pact with some kind of devil and it was apparently speaking to him from time to time. The other brother, Alex supported Ivan in dealing with these voices. Alex seemed a religious man and wore an amulet with two hands bound together by a red rope. He seemed the only brother that wasn’t troubled by something, that wasn’t enough to rule him out as the murdered though.
After questioning all of the suspects, Arthur guided us to the late Frederick’s study. Frederick had been found in his study, stabbed three times by a sharp object. We asked Arthur to stay while we searched the room, just in case if we had more questions. Kalesh inspected the ornamental sword on the wall, a key was hidden in the hilt of it. Effie inspected the chair in which the body was found. Drops of blood lead to the bookcase. She decided to throw a dagger at the bookcase. Kalesh guessed she was trying to figure out which book the blood lead to. Before we got a closer look at the bookcase, Arthur asked if he could go back to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. We didn’t see any problem with that at the time, so we let him go. We shouldn’t have let him… The bookcase had signs of books being recently moved; there was also a book missing. One book had ‘2nd’ circled with blood, this seemed like a clue! Mud also found another clue; under the desk the letter ‘A’ was written with blood. ‘A’ and ‘2nd’, Kalesh still isn’t sure what these clues meant...
When we figured we had found everything and started to leave the room, Mud suddenly stopped and started to follow a creaking sound. He found a small safe hidden in the wall with two keyholes. One keyhole was decorated with a lion and the other with a sword. Mud tried the key we found in the sword and sure enough, it fit in the sword keyhole. We couldn’t find anything with lions in the room, so we figured it had to be somewhere else in the mansion. Leaving the study, we found the rooms where the sons were staying. We decided to search them for more clues.
In Dimitri’s room we did find further proof that his debt had been paid in the form of a release paper. The date on the paper was the same as the date on which the murder had happened.
In Alex’s room we found a statue that depicted the bound hands symbol just like his amulet. We also found a contract for a loan that Alex had signed with his murdered father. It had quite a high interest rate that was obviously in the late Frederick’s favour. It seemed Alex did have a possible reason for murder after all.
Ivan’s room didn’t seem interesting at first. But Mud found a hidden compartment in his luggage. Inside he found Alex’s journal in which he wrote down his thoughts that sometimes turned into ramblings where he seemed to be possessed by that devil. The last entry was on the day of the murder, and it started with Ivan having a conversation with Arthur and became more and more crazy as we kept reading. He seemed to have had one of his episodes on the day of the murder.
We decided to also search Arthur’s room, but his room was next to the kitchen. When we got to the kitchen, Arthur was indeed preparing dinner. However, a burned smell filled the kitchen. No food was burned however, the smell came from inside the stove. We found remains of a book inside which was most likely the missing book from the study. This might’ve been a vital clue, but now it was burned… Arthur said he didn’t know anything about this book. This made Kalesh very suspicious of Arthur, but everyone had access to the kitchen so it couldn’t be proven. We entered Arthur’s room; it was meticulously cleaned. We couldn’t find anything special inside, so we got back into the kitchen.
While Effie and Kalesh kept an eye on Arthur, Mud went back to the room where the sons were still waiting on us. After a little while, Mud came back with a bust of a lion head and another key! There was also some blood on the corner of the bust. With the other key, Effie and Kalesh went back to the study to try and open the safe. Mud stayed behind to observe Arthur stealthily.
In the study, the other key fit into the lion keyhole and the safe opened. Inside we found a bunch of paperwork about Frederick’s trade deals. We also found a sealed letter inside, which later turned out to be his last will. We decided that it would be best to open it in front of the rest to see how they would react. We collected Mud and Arthur, and went to the others.
Frederick’s last will stated that his family was to get nothing of his fortune, but that it should be invested in his business so that it could keep going. The only one in the room that was to get any money was Arthur, since he had been responsible for managing this mansion. He was noticeably surprised that he was to get anything at all. Furthermore, the nick on his head seemed to match the corner of the bust on which Mud found that blood stain. Mud pressured Arthur about this and Arthur admited that Dimitry had hit him with the bust on the day of the murder. Dimitry didn’t remember this, as he had been very drunk that day.
This really was an incredibly complicated situation. Ivan, Dimitry and Arthur were all very suspicious and were at the mansion arround the time of the murder. Ivan was in his room having one of his attacks. Dimitry was drunk, and he did hit Arthur over the head just before the murder. Arthur was also in the mansion, and had been acting very suspicious the entire time we were there. He had tried to hide certain facts that came to light later, who was he trying to protect? Only Alex had an alibi that could be verified. Alex had been healing a child at the temple during the time of the murder.
Ivan was starting to act weird. He seemed to be getting another one of his attacks. Arthur and Alex tried to calm Ivan, repeating a certain sentence to him. Mud dropped a rapier on the ground and taunted Ivan. Ivan jumped to the rapier and stabbed himself. He was in some kind of trance. Alex tried to restrain him and heal his stab wound. Dimitry was getting annoyed with us causing his family harm and started to get openly hostile to us. We might’ve taken this too far... Then we heard someone knocking on the door.
Tikhon the investigator had returned to hear who we thought was the murderer. We weren’t exactly ready yet, so he gave us until he finished his cup of tea to figure it out. Mud got all the knives from the kitchen and Tikhon pointed out that one of the knives seemed like a perfect fit for the murder weapon. Kalesh took some of arthur’s medicine to check whether it was actually real. It tasted like real medicine, but Kalesh still didn’t trust him. We had seen Arthur be very skilled with these knives, and Kalesh still suspected him of burning that book.
Tikhon took his last sip and put his cup down, he wanted to know who we accused. Kalesh looked at the others and gave his opinion on it. Kalesh thought Arthur deliberately triggered something in Ivan the day of the murder, causing him to have an attack and murder his father. In Kalesh’s opinion Ivan murdered Frederick, but with Arthur causing it. Effie agreed with me, Mud kept growling at Arthur. With that, Tikhon called in some more guards and took away both Ivan and Arthur.
Kalesh later heard that Arthur was found dead in his cell. Kalesh sure hopes he didn’t send an innocent to jail, but he believes one of them was the killer. Ivan seemed to be a danger to himself but also to others, so perhaps this is for the best.
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