Prologue: The Watch Arrives

It's not every day you wake up to the Watch banging on your door. More mornings than you'd like, admittedly, but still rare enough that it gives you pause. Immediately everything you've done in the past few weeks flashes through your mind. How many crimes did you commit, exactly? Did anyone see you? And more importantly: do you have any contraband lying around the tavern?

Looking out the window, you can see two watchmen waiting outside. You can't really see their faces from here, but they're looking around, inspecting the front garden, including the scorch marks leftover from the fireball. At least the corpses are gone, yikes.

Out on the street, you can see some of your neighbors peering out windows and peeping over fences. God damn gossip mongers. Soon everyone in the alley will know that you're in trouble with the law.

You guess there's only one thing to do. Go downstairs and see what they want.

Kalia, usually being the first up, went to the door. He cracked it as to not reveal his full face or the interior of the tavern.

"May I help you, officers?" He said, in the tone of "don't you morons know what time it is?"

One of the officers, a female dwarf with short cropped hair, seems jumpy. She keeps looking down the street and around the yard, not really looking at your face.

The other one, a guy who's pretty tall for a human, tugs at his reddish beard. "Sorry to bother you so early," he says, not sounding sorry at all. "Are you the owner of this establishment?"

"Who's askin' "

"I am Officer Marsh and this is my colleague, Officer Tanner," the man says, gesturing towards the dwarf. She doesn't look over, distracted by something happening somewhere to the left. "We're here about... Well, we've gotten some strange reports," he says with a shrug. "Can we take a look around the backyard?"

After a suspiciously long moment, Kalia decided to lie.

"Sure, we got nothing to hide"

And shut the door.

He turned to, Neverin, his raven companion.

"Keep an eye on them will ya buddy."

You watch through the window as the two officers look at each other before heading around the tavern. Neverin flies out the window after them. You head into the back room of the tavern to try and watch the backyard through a window, but you can only see Officer Marsh, you don't see the dwarf at all.

Officer Marsh stands there, looking at something you can't see. After a few moments, he nods, and jerks his head toward the tavern.

There's a knock on the back door.

Kalia will crack the door again, and looks at the guard silently.

You look down to see Officer Tanner standing there, her face hard. "Care to explain this?" she says, and gestures to the side. You peer out and see a pale, bloated hand sticking out from underneath a pile of burlap sacks.

Kalia opened the door.

"You know I really wish I could.

Officer Tanner carefully pulled the sacks away, revealing a bloated halfling corpse. "Recent death," she said, running an expert eye over the body, but you could see her hands shaking. "Looks like multiple stab wounds here, and some sort of blunt head injury."

Officer Marsh inched towards the body, but seemed reluctant to get too close. "There's no blood," he pointed out.

Officer Tanner nodded. "This body's been moved."

"Could be a random dumping," Officer Marsh suggested. "I've seen that happen before."

"Might also not be," Officer Tanner countered, glancing over at where you're standing in the door.

Alvyn, woken up by the knocking, took his time stretching and getting up before glancing out his window. Seeing the body, the guards, and Kalia, he decided that the matter was well in hand and went back to sleep.

Clive, apparently oblivious to the entire morning commotion, meandered his way down to the main hall. He rummaged through the kitchen for a few minutes before spotting Kalia standing in the doorway to the backyard.

He began to make his way towards Kalia and called out to him.

"Hey Kalia, do you know where we put that jerky we picked up the other day at the market? I coulda swore it was in that cabine--"

Clive stopped abruptly upon seeing the officers with the body in the back yard.

He dashed just out of view of the officers and whispered harshly to Kalia through his teeth: "SHIT. Kalia, did we kill that guy?"

Kaliya looks sternly at his oldest friend.

"Of course we didn't Clive. We don't do that. We're ligament businessmen. As these guards are probably aware, lot of weird shit's been going on in Troll Skull last few days. This poor bastard is another one."

"He's not wrong," Officer Tanner says to her colleague. "In fact, there have been a number of suspicious murders around this alley recently, all centered around... Huh, look at that. They've all been centered around here." She gives you an unimpressed look.

"Look this may not surprise you but we know how you people operate. We ain't seen this guy. We don't know how he got in our yard. At this point I'm gonna have to ask you to either charge us with something or get off our property. Our laborers are gonna be hear any minute now and we got a bar to renovate."

Officer Tanner looks momentarily taken aback, before a steely expression settles across her face. "Of course," she says, glancing over at Officer Marsh. "We'll finish our investigation of the crime scene and take the body back to the station. We will be sending an officer over later to ask you a few questions. I would recommend that you don't leave town." She and Officer Marsh return to their work, studying the body and taking notes.