DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

Stepping lightly through the grisly scene, Dufgal aims for the back door, scanning as he does for any clues of human remains ; living or dead.

"A little peace would be a fine thing."
Anora admits, as her eyes start to sting and pain her from the rough day they had just put down.

She pang of guilt hits her; regret at having sent the man out into the village alone. She wondered how Dufgal was fairing, even as she follows Ty into the side hall, and away from the dreadful villagers.

OUT BACK OF THE TANNERY (DUFGAL)

Approaching the ruined back door, Dufgal notes two things about the remains he has to step around and over to reach the rear entrance of the building. First, there are bits of human remains scattered amongst those of the dead and dismembered farm animals. Fingers, an ear, most of a foot still inside a shoe... and second, the slain appear to have been torn apart. Ripped to pieces, clawed and bitten by fearsome talons and fangs... but not eaten. The gruesome remains look to be the result of some wanton evil, not some beast looking to fill its gullet.

The house is quiet and dark as Dufgal peers inside. To see much, the stalker is going to need some light.

Dufgal, careful to make no noise nor to step in anything bloody, moves to just inside the door. He slowly leans the door back in place and proceeds to modify a torch. He knows he only needs the littlest light, so he hollows out the center of the torch about an inch so the flame is kept small. Then he strikes his flint with the steel rod and sends sparks to do their duty.

Then he begins to look around.

AT THE WOLF-SPEAR (ANORA, ALDRIC, TY)

Ty and Anora (and Aldric if he accompanies) find the back rooms, and the upstairs rooms if they press their search, empty of people but not belongings, which have been placed on beds to claim them. It seems many of the townsfolk overnight here, at least on glum nights when a sacrifice is expected. They do find a washing room near the back door with brushes, a few buckets and rags, and a pair of empty wooden tubs big enough to lie down in.

OUT BACK OF THE TANNERY (DUFGAL)

With his flickering yellow light casting a pallid glow on his big face, Dufgal searches the building, using that little flame to dispel most of the shadows from the rooms he goes into. Through the workshop and into the back room used to store supplies and tanned hides he goes, then into the kitchen and the front room where business looks to have been done. Finally it's up to the two bedrooms above, using stairs that creak heavily, making the man frown. The upper level is fairly undisturbed, but the lower is a wreck. Blood spatters the walls, small bits of flesh and gristle rot on the floor, furniture is smashed, tables are overturned.

It looks like something came in that front window and a massacre proceeded through the house, out into the yard. Perhaps of interest to Dufgal, he finds a locked wooden strongbox with metal hinges and corners beneath the counter in the front room. It's small enough to tuck under an arm, but as he's considering that a sound reaches the man's ears... a baying. A terrible baying and howling in the distance, east of the village. Perhaps from the stone circle he glimpsed earlier...

Grabbing the lockbox and tries to open it with his thieves tools.

Aldric is content to follow up on Ty's lead for nightly accommodations. He grabs his oar and follows silently, the squeaking if his armor made even more pronounced now that is thoroughly wet. He mutters prayers as he follows, partially to placate Pelagia but also to avoid speaking to anyone after his tabletop debacle.

While others look for a bed, Aldric heads right for the baths.

INSIDE THE TANNERY (DUFGAL)

Feeling the hair on his arms rise with the sound of whatever that just was, Dulgal sets the small strongbox on the counter in the front room and uses his tools and his expertise to quickly pop open the lock. (DC 12, success.)

Inside, the findings are meager. Three silvers and seven copper coins illustrate that most payments in the community are made with favors, livestock, and other goods; the several hand-written scripts describing who owes what to whom punch that notion home.

Also in the box -- a quill and bottle of ink, a piece of hard, dried-up cheese, and three thick glass quarrels -- diamond-shaped piece of glass, rare in a place like Hirot, of the sort that are normally set into a small lattice of some sort. At the bottom is another note in a flowing hand -- if Dufgal can read, he'll see that it's a missive that someone wrote to themselves. Dolsten?

Tyravasiel is happy to leave Aldric to his dripping. He retreats from that distasteful scene with a muttered, "Glory to the Sea Bitch." Good enough.

The elf commences his search for an unclaimed bed. Or, failing that, a bed that could become unclaimed due to a plausible accident concerning some local's meager kit.

Aldric strips naked and draws up a bath, in that order, eager to get out of that damned squeaking leather. He clamber into the bath and soaks his bony, sickly body in the water, all the dirt and grime oozing off of him. He sits upright, chanting prayers to the Goddess of The Brine until he falls asleep, hoping things will be better in the morning.

The fastidious fingersmith pockets the entire contents of the lockbox, being sure to add the coins and shiny things in his purse and the papers in his bag to give to Lady Anora.

He figures that he has stretched his time away from the others, so he heads back to the Wolf’s Spear.

SOME TIME LATER, AT THE WOLF-SPEAR (ALL)

It is close to midnight by the time Dufgal returns to the Wolf-Spear with his findings, and twice more he's heard the terrible howling. Most recently, just minutes prior, it sounded much closer and was also heard by the crowd inside the inn. They are squabbling over what to do and barricading the back door as Dufgal arrives in the back yard.

"Seek shelter elsewhere, the Hound comes!" a voice growls from an upper window before shutters are pulled tight and bolted from the inside. Anora and Ty, both preparing for bed in one of the back rooms, hear this commotion; Aldric is faintly aware of it, lost in his stupor as he rests in half a tub of cold water that he himself has produced.

A sound from the darkness reaches Dufgal's ears from behind him -- it comes from behind the stables, and sound like the scuff of a boot, or a paw!

Having zero interest in being some unscheduled sacrifice, Dufgal goes around to the most easy access to the rooftop and easiest ingress through a second story window might be and does not hesitate to make the climb.

Anora pulls free the instruments holding her hair aloft, and the thick black mane falls around her shoulders. She still wears the silken wizard’s robes, and will probably do so throughout the night, for fear of having to make a quick escape from the village of Hirot.

She pokes her head out of the door, as she hears frantic whisperings and warnings about the beast. Into the empty space, she calls:

"Surely not! It’s bloodthirst has been slaked by Hirot’s blood already."

It’s a statement and a question in one. The beast should be satisfied for one night. Unless… the innkeeper had been successful in cutting loose his sacrificial daughter.

Outside, Dufgal's strong hands and practiced skills make easy work of climbing up to the second story (DC 12); there are dormers and other low-roof architectural features that make traversing that space simple for the big man, but he finds himself faced with locked, heavy wooden shutters when he approaches the first two windows. He hears then the closing an latching of others -- the whole place is being buttoned up!

Down on the first floor of the road house, a rushing teen girl stops in the hallway as she's about to usher her young brother upstairs. Meeting Anora's gaze and her question, she shakes her head, clearly frightened. "We ain't heard it howl like that, that close, since it used to come every night!" Turning, the girl and her sibling rush off -- just as another baying sounds from outside. It's close now -- perhaps just outside the walls of the village! The tramping and stamping and shouting inside the Wolf-Spear intensifies!

Back in the room Anora is half-out-of, Ty inspects the heavy window, finding that its shutters are closed and reinforced, locked with two iron bolts and a thick wooden slat. It wouldn't take him long to unlock if he so desired, and as he finishes his inspection new sounds emerge -- voices, pleas from the back as someone calls to be allowed in!

Later, Ty will tell himself that he opened the window for Dufgal. Because Dufgal is a large, violent and useful lunkhead, an asset not to be wasted on something as trivial as barred shutters. Not because there are voices out there pleading for rescue from whatever howls in the wild night beyond. Helpless and desperate voices. Human voices.

Dufgal simply needed a way to get in. It was a practical matter.

"What's that, now?" the elf calls back through heavy wood. "The old ears, now, they aren't what they used to be." Literally true, although not in the way he's implying.

With his perfectly good eyes and his quite dexterous hands, Tyravasiel-Llir throws the bolts on the window, lifts aside the slat and opens the shutters to whoever might be outside.