After the incident at Butt Hill, things quieted down for a while. We returned to RE to discover that Elspeth had taken off for parts unknown sometime a few weeks ago, before the Spitting Camel burned down. The bartender of the Frog and Firkin said that he'd seen her heading north out of town. That's probably for the best, since I've got Su living with me at the Four Seasons.
Hal, Keef, Erose, and Schnellmaken got called up to do duty in the town guard, which is currently undermanned. Hal, Keef, and Erose got put on a patrol together. I told them that they should quit the guard-- Erose is a Lady, Hal is a Royal Ranger, and Keef is a Rolling Stone!
Since everybody was busy working in the guard, I spent some time with Throntax, getting her to figure out my guitar. She tried to get me to allow her hideous sex-golems to violate me again, but I resisted. The results of Throntax's analysis:
One day, while they were on patrol, Erose, Hal, and Keef met a group of wagons and riders coming from the south. There were four riders and seven wagons.The wagons were brightly-colored in the Southern style. The three of them challenged the travellers, who turned out to be a group of travelling performers, a "circus." They were coming to give a performance in RE. Erose and company directed them to a farmer who was willing to let one of his fields. I met with Erose after her shift, for a drink at the Rivers' Arms (Hal and Keef had extra duty), and we decided to go and check this "circus" out.
We went to the camp they were setting up. A fairly large tent was being set up in the middle, and the wagons were arrayed around it. We went up to the first person we saw, a very large man (larger than Keef!) who was working on the tent. He introduced himself as Andre' the Giant (he wasn't an actual giant). He said he had been raised by dwarves, which is how he got that Parisian name. He said that there was a snake-handling priest of Odin with the company. He encouraged us to come to the show that evening, and went back to work.
Next, we went over to a wagon which had a sign on it saying, "Madame Misteriyoo." We entered, and found a gaudily-dressed, bald old dwarven woman. She said she was the owner of the circus, and that she had mystical powers, which she would demonstrate if we gave her some silver. I figured why not, and let her have a go. She was obviously a fraud; everything she said was general and vague, except that she knew our names. She read our palms, and said that I had a very long love-line, and that Erose's life would be cut short by betrayal.
As we left, a young Persian-looking girl entered, carrying tea for Mme Misteriyoo. Erose kept muttering something about the circus being evil, and that they'd steal children and use them in demonic rites. I think she was having a flashback from all those leaves she ate a few weeks ago at Butt Hill.
That evening, I went with Su to the circus. Erose, Hal, and Keef were also there. It was quite a spectacle. The show started with Mme Misteriyoo coming up to the stage and introducing the "Madame Misteriyoo Circus." Andre' hit a gong, and a circle of flame appeared. Some dogs jumped through the hoop, followed by their trainer, a sleazy-looking guy called Michel the Magnificent. His first trick was to pull fire out of his ass. Many dog tricks followed. He fed his fire-sword to his assistant, one Gabriel. Then, he "turned" one of the dogs into a girl. She jumped through the hoop, and became a dog again. The next act was a "stone man." A gargoyle came onto the stage, and started telling a long, boring story. He said that he'd been the guardian of a temple in Paris, but it had burned down, and now he was in the circus, blah, blah, blah. The next act was Andre' removing the gargoyle (who was called "Le Sacre' Cour, FWIW). Next was the Hound of Shadow, which they paraded around the stage for a few minutes and led off. This was the first of a myriad of bizarre creatures: a giant squirrel, a 15-foot snake, a seal with humanoid legs, etc. Next was some illusion/conjuring tricks, for which I somehow ended up being the "audience volunteer." An intermission followed. Then Misteriyoo herself came on stage and told fortunes. Then, was a striptease act, "the dance of the seven veils," and then some snake handling by the priest of Odin. All in all, quite an odd show.
After the show, we went out of the tent. Erose seemed almost disappointed that there'd been no baby-eating or anything like that. A woman who was more than a little foxy (literally: she had fur and a tail, and a very vulpine face) chatted Hal up. Misteriyoo came up to me and said that she hoped I'd liked the show, and offered to let me see the "dance of the 14 veils," for an additional fee. I sniffed, and told her I didn't need to pay for sex. She proceeded to make the same offer to everybody who came out of the tent. Hal went off on a walk with the fox-woman. (Later, I heard that she led him around in a circle, and then came back to the circus, where Mme. Misteriyoo hit him up for 50 gold pieces to make it with Foxy. Hal was so horny by then that he had to pay.)
During my conversation with Mme M., Su had wandered off. I went to look for her, to walk back to town, but she was nowhere to be found. I got a little nervous-- all of Erose's mutterings about the eeeevil circus were getting to me. I asked after her, but no one had seen her. Finally, one of the town guards told me that he'd seen her go off to one of the wagons where the prostitution was going on with Michel the Magnificent, and she'd looked quite smitten. I couldn't believe it! How tacky, to leave in the middle of a date with me to screw some pissant dog-trainer! It just goes to show, human women cannot be trusted. I returned to the Four Seasons alone, but first I went by the Velvet Glove and told the mistress of that establishment about the unauthorized whoring going on in the town. That ought to fix Madam Misteriyoo.
Next day, Su showed up, perfectly fine. We had a huge row, and I threw her out. If she likes whores so much, she can go be one if she can't find any other work.
I hate circuses.
Later that day, a messenger came into town with a letter for Hal. It was from Lord Johann. It was a summons for a Royal Ranger to investigate a murder-- some travellers had been killed. Hal gathered up Erose and Sanjay, I went along because i wanted to get away from town.
The crime had occurred about half a day's ride from RE, just outside of Wittenberg. It was the circus-- they'd all been murdered in their sleep. We speculated that a sleep-spell might have been used, since nobody looked like they'd noticed they were being killed. It being early summer, by the time we got there, the bodies were already beginning to smell. We went into Mme. Misteriyoo's wagon. She was as dead as the rest of them, her throat cut. Stuck to her chest with a dagger was a note saying, "Do not cross the Ho's guild!" I asked Hal and Erose if murder was a usual practice in Steinhall for guilds whose franchise is violated. They said, absolutely not. I hadn't thought so, but I wanted to make sure that I hadn't caused these people's deaths through ignorance. There was a chest in the wagon that had been rifled through, and Misteriyoo's jewelery had been taken. There were char marks around her crystal ball.
We looked through the rest of the camp, and took stock of who and what was dead and missing. The shadow-hound and gargoyle had broken out and run off. The giant squirrel was also missing. There was a set of human tracks leading around the camp, obviously belonging to the murderer going about his business. In one of the wagons, we found four dead Persian women. They were chained tothe wall of the wagon, in what looked like a permanent situation. I guess Erose was right about the circus being evil, after all. Hal's woman, in dog form, was dead. A bunch of horse tracks led off-- the killer had absconded with the troupe's horses. Hal summonned the local priest to talk to Mme. Misteriyoo's ghost. She said that she didn't know the person who killed her-- it was somebody dressed all in black, with a black mask. I thought this sounded a little like the Shadow, but he really doesn't seem to be the mass-murderer type to me, so I didn't say anything.
In Wittenberg, we asked if anybody had seen a string of horses being led through town last night, or early in the morning. On the outskirts of town, a farmer told us that he'd seen them riding through-- a man all in black, and a buxom blonde woman. The woman had returned and sold two horses to the farmer, for 20 gold. Hal, Erose, and I continued to follow the tracks, which led west towards Grosslangheim. Sanjay stayed behind. We arrived there in the middle of the night. Inga, the innkeeper, told us that two people had come through at midday with a string of horses. One of the people was a buxom blonde; the other was a grizzled old man. They'd sold her some horses, and travelled on towards Softcraft. We did, too.
We dragged into Softcraft early the next morning. We were exhausted, and our horses were totally worn out. We thought our quarry might have stopped at an inn for the night, since they were posing as horse traders. While Hal went to find Sven the garrison commander, Erose and I started visiting the inns, asking after a grizzled old man and a blonde woman who were selling horses. At the second inn I visited, the innkeeper said that people of that description had taken a room the previous night, and that he hadn't seen them leave yet. I asked him to delay them if he saw them leaving, and ran to get Erose, Hal, and Sven. We returned to the inn, and the innkeeper brought us to the room they'd used. It was empty, but it looked like it had been used.
It didn't look like they'd been gone long, so I ran over to the temple of Freja, and ran up the steeple. Looking along the road out of town, I saw two people, a man and a woman, travelling with two extra horses. I ran down, and told Erose, Hal, and Sven. Erose, Hal, and I gallopped down the road, and accosted the two travellers. They did indeed match the description of the people who'd been selling Misteriyoo's horses. The blonde, Erose and Hal confirmed, was the Shadow's assistant. The old guy claimed to be a horse trader. He said he'd met a guy all in black back near Wittenberg, who had sold him the horses and the girl. With much griping about being ditched, the girl confirmed this story. She also told us that Shadow had dark hair and ruddy skin. It looked more and more like the Shadow had done the dirty deed. Hal arrested both of them. They were locked up in the garrison, and the three of us took some much-needed rest.
We brought the chick back with us to Wittenberg, and left the old guy with Sven, under arrest for participating in slavery. We rode back to Wittenberg, and told Lord Johann what we'd learned. Sanjay had spent the day investigating Misteriyoo's crystal ball. It was hard, because it had a magical ward on it against being used by anybody but Misteriyoo. However, he did discover that it had clairaudience, as well as clairvoyance. It was probably the means whereby Misteriyoo had learned as much about the citizens of RE as she had (who the wealthy people are, who was likely to go for what type of whore, what our names were, etc.). We took the ball as "evidence," and headed back to RE with the blonde girl. Before that, Sanjay scryed out Shadow in his own crystal, and saw that he was somewhere in a forest, maybe the Deep Woods. It looked like he was long gone.
When we returned to RE, we reported to Lord Lara, and had the girl thrown in the castle dungeon. We arranged to have the entire Ho's Guild brought in for questioning. We told Lara about the Shadow, and mentioned that we never expected he'd do anything of this sort-- he always seemed rather wimpy and relatively harmless. Definitely not the type to commit mass murder. Lara suggested that perhaps he'd been framed. We went back down to talk to the girl, and found her dead! A cleric was brought in immediately. Her ghost was summonned, and questioned. "Who killed you?" "I did-- better the quick poison than the hangman's noose." "Did you frame the Shadow?" "No, I didn't." "Did he commit the murders?" "No." "Who framed him?" "The leader of the Theives' Guild."
Given the circumstances, she must have participated in framing Shadow, to some degree, but the dead can be very literal-minded.
Next, the Ho's Guild. We'd already arranged for a cleric to be there with a Lie Detection spell ready (to question the blonde), so we had him use it to question the leader of the Hos. She denied having arranged for anybody to be killed. All she did was hire a ruffian to "send a message" to the circus, and Madam Misteriyoo in particular. She'd paid him 100 gold to deliver a warning note, and to rough up the circus a bit. We asked if she thought the Thieves' Guild would frame the Hos' Guild for arranging the murder, and she said no, the TG and the HG generally got along well. We asked her to describe the person she'd hired to deliver the message, and she described the old man we'd left in Sven's jail in Softcraft! She said she thought he may have been one of the Mountainfolk (who are known for their skillful assassins).
Damn and double damn. We sent off an express messenger to Softcraft. Sanjay made an attempt to scry out the old man, and succeeded. He saw the old guy breaking out of a cell. Fortunately, Sven was ready for that, and recaptured him.
So, what's going on? It looks like the assassin guy, maybe working for the Thieves' Guild, was just waiting for a chance to do some heinous deed to frame the Shadow. When the commission from the Hos came, he took it as the perfect chance, killing all the circus people, disguised as the Shadow (pretty easy). The part played by Shadow's former assistant is unknown. We'll have to ask the assassin when we get him. I also want to find the Shadow, and get his side of the story.