2025/07/11: Animus Hunt in Northern Alvidar

Buzz, Et-Kehri, Malakai, Terana, Othar, Union   Buzz's keen eye noticed a grain silo in the town. There was a small railing around it, and there was a guy up there with a massive bow. The man looked like an old Norse berserker. He was eyeing the party, but didn't have an arrow nocked.   The party arrived at the casino and headed inside. There were a few more soldiers waiting at the entry. They backed off in the face of the paladins and clerics, who did some introductions.   There are four floors of advertised casino areas. Everyone's on the first floor at the moment, though. There's a stage for a singer or show-lady, but the woman in the dress is currently standing to the side of the stage. Lots of green felt gambling tables around. Room is about 75 degrees F, relatively warm. Continual light spells are providing light, so the braziers around the room are mainly providing heat.   A bunch of armored and knightly types are around the main meeting table, plus a bunch of others.

Dark haired somebody's mom with an apron. No-nonsense. Straight in the center like she's running everything.

Three guys with well-used workman's aprons. Burn marks. Maybe smiths of some variety. (Verhil Vonhurtle-Tin Smith, Doontz Vonhurtle-Black Smith and Shilus Vonhurtle-Coppersmith)

Old grey-haired woman with ping-pong ball shaped hair and coke-bottle glasses. Old enough to have the withered-down look. (Aubrey Silverton- Fortune teller)

The clerics and paladins the party came in with. (Tegrach Dawnsright-Priest of Ranthiel, Dolvan Grimbough-Priest of Corrananth, Ivar Knightheim-Priest of Mishraelace)

A well-dressed gambler in a sort of half-suit, half leather armor. Like an old west suit, but more rough-and-tumble. (Kelm Greysmoke-Priest of Jentath)

A group of other blond/grey/black haired people. Dealers with similar but not identical uniforms to the below.

Tall ominous-looking guy near the entrance door. Crimson bellhop-ish uniform. Stealthy. (Collins Mettlepot)

Fat, hairy man with a poofy beard, sitting at the table. (Later introduced as Mayor Dalth Mentsh.)

Large, plain-looking man in chainmail, dark brown hair, kind of burly. At the table.

A drop-dead gorgeous slightly older woman in casino-appropriate dress. Long slinky dress, very not appropriate for the weather. (Vaniel Cressence, Priestess of Erhalace). She was pretty much sitting on the arm of a rather large, imposing-looking gentleman with a very large symbol of Ranthael on his chest. The man has a full tabard.

Golden-going-grey haired paladin man with a holy avenger sword. It's glowy even in the sheath. Sitting next to the old mom woman. He's about 7 feet tall, but she looks scarier than him. (Marshal Sir Aultas Hamerock, Paladin of Corananth)

5'8" dark-haired gentleman, greyish suit. (Meyer Tellarch)

Brown-haired guy wearing very fancy crimson suit. The one on which all the others were based. Young, wealthy rake type. He was mid-schmooze when the party came in. (Casino owner Richart Zaldeves)

Relatively attractive woman who seems to be working at the place, large tray of drinks that she's handing out. Impressively, she has something like 70 pounds of glass and drinks perfectly balanced on that tray. (Reeva Altaire- Bartender)

Othar, being himself (and because there weren't any chairs left), pulled out the Throne of Death and joined the table. That raised some eyes, but they passed it off as "adventurers".   The barmaid stopped by to ask if the party wanted anything (with a deliberate double entendre). Malakai(?) asked for a scotch.   The table meeting started talking. Organization, taking reports. 6'3" pretty girl soldier and her team came in later to give a report. No new things out of the ordinary on their patrol. Elysiana, wields a silver-looking bow.   Guy on the water tower was noted as Sven. Best tracker and archer in town. (Sven Igversblud)   Paladins have been detecting evil nearby, but not spotting anything. A few times, Elysiana's detections outright failed, while other times she was getting pings everywhere, even some in town. All momentary and inconsistent. Nearly all have been at ground level.   Minor magical mishaps have also been happening around the town. Hubert Brimsby came forward and said some of the plumbing management devices have gone down, one of them permanently. Apparently the water is pretty deep and sparse here, so they need to pump it up slowly, and they also have to rely on rain gutter collection for water. Apparently Hubert is extremely enthusiastic about these and loves giving details. Buzz asked the question about what they are and took copious notes. Three of the devices are down, one of them apparently disenchanted. They should be good indefinitely, so that's strange.   (Buzz is working on designing plumbing for Kal'vus' future base, so this guy may be someone to talk to!)   Town is on full alert, families that could be moved have been moved.   Lights flickering, magical items not working, other weird things in various places. Imp-like giggling in one alley. That's what the purple and blue chits on their maps indicate. Super creepy feelings, to the point that people hide in other people's houses just to get away from it.   Water situation is fine, they have water to last for months and hand pumps and other mundane options to supplement the magic.   Sir Aultas Hamerock is the guy with the big holy sword. Commented that if we know Ion Rathe, we come highly recommended. He's the marshal of the town.   Nimbus offered the Ring of Orion to the paladins, in hopes of enhancing their detection. Ended up being given to Elysiana. (Aultas called her over, she seemed a little exasperated, apparently she has a history with these sensory things.)   She was able to note current locations of lots of supernatural evil locations all around the town.   Some theories about what the source might be. What we see may be side effects of something else? Might be dimensional shenanigans, pulling the town closer to a different dimension where these things are. Might be another pocket dimension.   Armory is within shouting distance of the town, manned by 2-6 soldiers at all times.   Villain involved here is probably Grey, who was supposedly working on vampires and divine blood.   The sewers aren't going to be a good adventuring spot unless the party uses a lot of reduce spells. The pipes are mostly the width of a finger. The plumbing just carries water, wastewater gets dealt with separately. Northwest side of town gets showers and the like, southeast side uses well water and each house has its own reservoir piped in. Buzz had a good talk with Hubert.   The device that failed looks like a big bolt with a bunch of holy runes and the like on it. It's divinely powered. Buzz suggested there might be a ritual going on that's draining divine energy from another source and catching these as a side effect. Perhaps they accelerated their work now that multiple extremely powerful people are known to be after them.   The device that failed was under the building just south of the building marked "trades" on the map. That building is the plumbing workshop, apparently. Also near the silo.   The henge has been there since before the town was. In respect for the druid faith and because it doesn't cause any problems, they left it up. Othar suggested it may be a leyline.   Bolt has nice silver wire, an interesting alloy of stainless steel. Completely nonmagical now. Malakai, inspecting it, thinks it was definitely a case of magic drain rather than accelerated age. It's completely undamaged. No corrosion.   Side note: The upper four floors of the casino are mostly maintenance, counting rooms, places for people to sleep, etc.   There are three separate smithies in the town. The smallest is a tin smithy.   Nimbus volunteered to run a comms device back to Elysiana while Buzz and Malakai set up an experiment. Elysiana, unfortunately, was already out on a patrol out south. Aultas also was gone. The priests had apparently followed Elysiana, making a wandering goon squad. "As soon as the adventurers find something, there'll be a big explosion, and then we can run over and hit things!" Nimbus caught up to them at the stables, where they were getting mounted up. She passed them the device.   Buzz put a web of improved faerie fire in the sky across half the town, trying to see where the spell might fade away faster. Partway through the casting, he felt a chill, like someone walked over his grave or was draining at him briefly, before it went back to normal. The tricorder recorded only 11 seconds of the 12 seconds or so Buzz took to set up the spell. Something went weird here. Dimensional shenanigans, in Buzz's opinion, are confirmed.   Report from Elysiana of hostiles within 30 yards of the party. Buzz alerted the group and put on his bone white mask. He immediately felt violently nauseous and increasingly drained: He couldn't see what was causing it, and the area seemed even more desolate than it already was. He pulled off his mask and retched.   No threat appeared. The faerie fire didn't go away. Buzz and co. started doing a grid search with the tricorder while Knight played overwatch and enjoyed parkour in the roof spires.   Tricorder turned off and on again. No apparent source. Buzz left a continual light stone there. Later Killgleam felt something like he'd been negated.   Whispered hint for Buzz, from his new item: "Your enemy's minions skitter and crawl around you, close enough to touch, and yet unseen."   Elysiana wanted to give Orion's Ring back. It was useful, but she felt weird aggression after using it, like she needed to hunt down whatever she was detecting.   Kelsey, after Killgleam and Korbane said a "detect bugs" spell would be really hard to make, started digging in the snow. Buzz went to a different spot and blasted around him with phoenix fire to clear the snow.   Malakai gave Nimbus a cowl to let her shapeshift into mink. Buzz summoned another 46 HD of minks to follow Nimbus.   Thanks to keen vision and heightened senses, Knight spotted a hole punched in the fading network of faerie fire. About three feet wide, from below. Just wisped away suddenly to nothing. They launched themself at the hole in hopes of catching whatever caused it, but either missed or didn't get there in time.   Nimbus and her minions found tiny holes in the ground that the hellmice were in.   Caught and paralyzed one mouse, killed more.   Knight died briefly. Discorporated and caught himself as liquid partially in the ground. Started digging to find pieces of himself after he managed to drag himself back together. While he didn't find pieces of himself down there, his regeneration and focus did still work.   The henge turned out to be on top of a leyline. Has strangely alive moss on it.   Othar's soulfire briefly turned off. He panicked for a bit.   Area around the henge out to about 80 feet is solid to Knight even in shade form. Turns out to be a sphere around something underground below the henge. Radius covers about a third of the town.   Party spotted an unusual grey fog rolling in from the north. (Or perhaps not too unusual, it fits the local weather conditions, but still good to be alert.) Nimbus saw s   Buzz accidentally activated a fifth of a ritual at the henge using fire magic. Activated the other four with the other elements and then healing. Activated a magic circle which turned out to be some sort of life field.   Buzz used Phoenix Gate to put out a pulse of this healing life energy into everything around. A wave of life energy passed over the town, with some of the houses growing flowers and leaves. The wave reached pretty much to the mountains. Buzz gave his holy symbol a quick kiss.   Some big white-grey wolves watching nonplussed from outside the circle. About eye level with humans. One person with the wolves. Buzz introduced himself, and the heavily hooded figure introduced himself as Rye in return. He's from further up north. He's accompanied by 24 mist-wolves. Some of them had packs on their backs. He was there to trade furs.   He said his wolves could smell vampires. The scent was coming from the town, if faintly. He and his wolves refused to go into town. Something about not wanting to go into others' homes; it sets a bad precedent.   Buzz bought two bushels of furs for 8,000 gold, Nimbus bought one. The rabbits some of these were taken from were 5' long, which is apparently normal in Werel.   Got into armory with permission from priests. Tons of silver ammo, silver weapons, some fire arrows. The guards are escorting the party around. Some carvings of werewolves and vampires chasing people around; apparently they came with the building, which is hundreds of years old and practically indestructible. The floor is impenetrable to Knight like the area around the henge was.   Nimbus and Knight searched everything on the first floor, but they kept coming back to those carved reliefs. There was something concerning about them. Weird little cuts and imprints in some of the carvings that appear to go all the way through.   A knife wasn't thin enough to get in, but Knight's puddle form was two-dimensional. That part worked; finding himself hit by the anti-life/magic effect as he got past the vapor-thin filter and reached the top of an inch-wide shaft leading down was less fortunate. There was a cold light coming from below. Knight managed to flow himself back out of the hole and onto the floor next to Nimbus' feet before he died again. Nimbus set about giving them healing pokes as they pulled themself back together again.   After Knight was back up, the two of them theorized about risks of going down there and the possibilities of getting flammable oil, getting the priests to bless it, pouring it down there (possibly pressurized with Buzz's help), and then setting it on fire.   Othar, meanwhile, set about schmoozing around the town, trying to use his amulet to check people for vampirism. The mayor pointed him to Aubrey. Fortune teller and a bit of a diviner.   She advised him to speak to Elysiana. Aubrey thought the girl was a hero type, didn't really trust her, expected her to go off somewhere and die. Also talk to Lance. Anytime something goes wrong, he's nearby. Very unlucky man.   Aubrey presents herself as somewhat oblivious, but it's a facade; she knows and sees a lot more than she lets on. (She gave Othar a little wink after using "what's that, I couldn't hear you" to ignore his question.   Also says Othar should check out Meyer, the gambler, as a repayment to her. He doesn't feel right to her.   This man, Meyer, plays the game. Whatever he's here for, he's down for it. Gambling? Murder? Impossible to say at first.

He considers the mayor useless.

The casino owner will end up dead, again, if any real fight breaks out. He has a history, apparently.

Meyer is here for fun, games, and to gain information and make a little money.   Othar offered friendship in exchange for help finding the people who don't belong in the town.

"the mayor. No one is that popular and that useless simultaneously."

He disagrees with Audrey's conclusions on who to look into, but he's playful about it.

The conversation extended past the end of this notetaking. Will hopefully update with details later.