Chapter 1: Into The Mists

Skallagrimm asks "do we take the risk and keep it? Or just bury it here and let the nosey bastard look at dirt?"

"you think I'm scared lizard breath?" Skallagrim growls at the Gith. "here's something ya can both feast yer eyes on" and he makes an obscene gesture toward the gem.

he's trying to get a reaction out of the eyeball if possible

"Be glad I do not bear the breath of the duthka'gith," answered Kar'i'nas as he continued down the road. He kept his eyes focused on the treeline on either side of the path should any other strange beings come trailing the lifeless knight.

As you move along further and further into the forest, the sparse daylight seems to vanish and is replaced with nothing but pitch darkness as night time falls. A creeping fog covers the ground and intermittently you hear howls far off in the distance. Suddenly you notice something else. You notice the scent of death in the air.

Morticia, It's not terribly difficult for you to find the source of the smell. The foul scent leads you to a human corpse half-buried in the underbrush about fifteen feet from the road. The young man appears to be a commoner. His muddy clothes are torn and raked with claw marks. Crows have been at the body, which is surrounded by paw prints. The man has obviously been dead for several days. He holds a crumpled envelope in one hand.

Skip, he has nothing in his pockets but you take the envelope. It's been sealed with red wax with a large "B" set in it and inside is a letter.

Letter

Skip, you look a the two letters and it quickly becomes apparent to you that they haven't been written by the same person. The letter you received at the tavern describes Ireena as "the love of my life" while the second letter claims that she is the daughter of the Burgomaster. It is a very good forgery though as the handwriting is virtually identical. There are no indicators as to how long ago the two letters were written but the look of the paper would indicate that they're both fairly recent. The body is as mentioned at least a few days old, so the letters are probably not much older than that.