08 - 03/17/25 : Murder Most Fowl

As the party, continued on their path to Ezri's lay line, they encountered a toll set up by Bard's Gate guards. Ezri and Snow both doubted that these were really guards from Bard's Gate and took their chances on attacking them. The guards did turn out to be bandits and, after beating them, the students claimed their ill-gotten goods for themselves. The next day passed by much more uneventfully, but the wagon did cross paths with a group of travelers with a broken wheel. The previous day's trap encounter gave the party suspicion on helping strangers on the road, and the party decided to move on without engaging with the strangers.   The party finally reached the town of Umberghast and decided to find lodging for the night at the Brass Arms Tavern. The students conversed with the owner, Dagobert Button, and the mayor of the town, Pendren. Wanting to get an idea of the student's intention with the tower, the mayor told them the town's history, and about how their local wizard, Elzora Quintessa, had suddenly turned to necromancy, and a group of traveling adventurers had helped the villagers defeat her. Ezri had doubts on the veracity of the story, but the mayor seemed convinced that there was no harm in letting the students explore the burned remains of the tower.   As the trio were preparing to rest, a commotion outside drew their attention. The mayor had been trapped in a wall of wind and cornered by a masked individual, claiming to be the child of Elzora Quintessa. She claimed that she would take vengeance on the people responsible for her mother's death and stabbed the mayor through the chest with a crystalline sword before vanishing. With things escalating even faster than she expected, Ezri suggested that they investigate the tower now before people start pointing fingers at the newcomers.   The party arrived at the ruins of the burned down tower, which had very little remaining that seemed of interest. Ezri was notably more anxious than usual upon arriving at the tower, but her companions quickly entered and found a charred corpse among the refuse. Snow noted that the body seemed to have been killed with a blade before being burned, and Nessali noticed that the corpse didn't seem to match the description of the wizard they had heard of. Most immediately relevant, however, was the trapdoor hidden beneath the body, which led to a basement that seemed in much better shape than the upper levels.   Inside, the group immediately encountered a fire trap, which Snow took the brunt of while protecting Ezri. Beyond this trap was an oddly heated room full of alchemical equipment and a carved wooden wolf statue. The next room held a magically powered greenhouse, and Nessali noted the skill required to make plants thrive so well without sunlight.   Further in, the party encountered a caged chicken dressed in wizardly garb. The chicken introduced himself as the 'famed' wizard, Callister Greycloak, whom no one in the party had heard of. Callister begged the party to release him from the cage, which they agreed to, with some hesitation. He explained how he had been stuck in the body of a chicken since Elzora's death, and how he had taken over tutelage of her daughter, Adelinnea. He explained his knowledge of elemental runes and how Adelinnea had become a skilled carver of these runes. He led the group to the door to the chamber containing the ley line, where Adelinnea was likely hidden, but they found the door to be stuck closed due to a blockage of elemental energy in the area.   Before getting to these blockages, the party investigated the last room in the hideout, which seemed to be Adelinnea's room. It was especially orderly, but the two did find a diary on the desk. While at first they assumed it to be Adelinnea's diary, reading the final entry implied that it was actually her mother, Elzora. The diary expressed confusion about the villagers' sudden behavior, and her desire to take Adelinnea and leave, with the diary addressed to "her beloved." She also mentioned in the entry not knowing where Callister had gotten to, but that their safety would necessitate leaving without him.   With the basement fully explored, the students began looking into these blockages. The first was a large well of water which had a magic purification system that seemed to be turned off. Callister explained how it utilized a series of runes depicting various creatures of the plane of water. These runes needed to be placed in increasing order of power to properly restart the system and return the flow of water aether. The party had a slight error in their initial attempt but were able to defeat the resulting lesser water elemental and correctly align the runes on their next try.   They found the next rune in Callister's room, where he used wind runes to access the books on his bookshelf, which he noted Adelinnea had made a mess of. Once the runes were active again, the over saturation of wind aether caused a small wind storm in the room, though the party was able to locate runes among the papers scattering throughout. Ezri closed herself in the room and released bursts of fiery magic until all the runic papers were destroyed, thankfully without blowing herself up with wild magic in the process.   In the green house, the group quickly found the rune blocking the earth aether, but, when they tried to remove it, a group of magically enhanced plants burst out, protecting it. The students used a book of arcanohorticulture to identify the plants and identify the means of their removal. They eventually managed to remove these plants and destroy the earth blockage. Finally, the arrived at the first room, where the sweltering heat indicated that a blockage might be, and identified that it was being used to power the fire trap at the entrance.