Against the Cult: Entering Orlane (1.7)

Chase calls down, "There are more villagers out here I think just wondering what was happening. I don't think they are hostile."
"Not yet hostile, you mean," Myrtha replies, stepping out of the barn to quickly check out the bodies. Villagers 1 and 2 are wearing chain shirts and bearing spears, Villager 3 wears leather armor and a scimitar at his belt (his crossbow lays intact in the weeds nearby), and villagers 5 & 6 wear leathers and have scimitars at their belts. She goes to look closer at the sixth body, sitting by itself at the corner of the barn. It's strange; this is not one of the people who had attacked them...how did it get here? It's a body wrapped in bloody bandages, a victim of some kind of torture or cruel murder, showing the signs of dozens of stab wounds. A moment later, Myrtha identifies a bundle sitting next to the body: her pack, stained with blood from the body. Myrtha regains her belongings that were left at the Inn.

Going through her pack to assure herself that everything is still there, Myrtha calls over her shoulder. "Reptile, can you check if Joseph is near the building there?" Reptile, scanning the scattered corpses, shakes his head, "Such a waste here." Then he responds to Myrtha's suggestion, "I will check up on Joseph." Aanbo calls out, "Take this, Reptile," and tosses the barbarian the Light stone. Reptile rushes off toward the house, noting as he does so the crowd of people approaching with lanterns. "Look! There's one of them now!" Chase whistles and listens. There is no answering whistle, but he hears "Careful! They're trying to signal each other. Spread out! There may be others around!"
Reptile reaches the house; all is quiet, and there's no reassuring quip from the halfling. Reptile searches around the house. He quickly finds flattened weeds that suggest that someone crashed through the weeds to get to the house. The house is still secure and shut. Joseph is either still hiding, or he ran off somewhere. Reptile notices that the neighbors are at the edge of the property now, coming up a short rise toward the party. They're maybe 40 yards away, now.

With Myrtha and Reptile occupied and Chase in the loft, Aanbo addresses Theran as the druid emerges from the barn. "Keep the bodies where they fell, but let's see if there's anything that might identify what sort of evil they represent. I'm thinking the guy who was yelling a lot might have something. And that creature might be what Ramne was referring to: tall, naked, and green." He points to the strange body just outside the barn door. Aanbo looks at the creature and (with that roll) recognizes it as a troglodyte. "The villagers will be suspicious of us, so anything we find that can support our truth will help." Emerging from the barn, Theran sees and hears the approaching crowd. With Reptile taking the Light stone with him, their attention is mostly focused on the house now. But they will turn in a few seconds and see the party standing over a bunch of corpses. In a low voice, he urges "We should really consider the Inn, before they've had time to call in help..."

Reptile covers the light, cutting off the villagers' view of him. There is a gasp from the approaching people.
"Wha--? Where did he go?"
"It's MAGIC!"
"Now now, let's not jump to conclusions."
"Don't give us that - we all heard what they were shouting!"

Each of you realize some things separately.

Myrtha sees that all of her stuff has been returned, albeit spattered with blood. She also notices that there is more stuff here than what she left in the Inn, in addition to the mangled body. This does not look good, and will be tough to explain. Would it be better to stay and assert the facts to all these curious villagers, or would it be better to flee now to avoid the likely accusations?

Reptile sees that a lot of the weeds have been trampled around the house, as if several people had converged here. There are pieces of glass that crunch under his boots, and he sees Joseph's shortbow, abandoned. Joseph wouldn't have left his bow voluntarily; this strongly suggests that Joseph has been taken, and the trampling suggests either a struggle, a couple of people picking up his body, or both. Reptile hurries back to join the others.

Up in the loft, Chase can see that there are maybe 20 villagers approaching; they're only a stone's throw away and would have seen the party already except for the fact that most of them are carrying lit lanterns, which are blinding them to the relative darkness of the starlit farmyard. Chase can see that Ramne is among the group, his weasel on his shoulders. Chase has a clear shot at any of a dozen targets, through they are slowly spreading out to surround the house and barn as they advance. Chase also realizes that, as an alternative, he could hang from his hands from the loft and drop down to quickly join the others.

Theran comes over to investigate the body, and finds that his gear, too, has been returned bloody. The body is the one he saw being tortured in the Inn. A quick check of the man shows that he has been dead for half a day at least. Looking at the weeds, Theran further notices that someone came up from behind the barn to where the body and gear are, and then set off through the weeds toward the house; all of it out of sight of the party inside the barn. Whoever it was may have had darkvision, as they did it all pretty quickly while the party was focused on the villagers approaching them in the open.

Aanbo looks at the people approaching and realizes that they are coming because the attacker now lying dead in the grass magically amplified his voice and impersonated them. It was part of a plan to cast the Dungeon Busters as the villains, and all these dead bodies won't help convince anyone otherwise. It was pretty clumsily done - why would bad guys boast of their misdeeds so everyone could hear them? - but it shows that their enemies were not idle during the whole day that the party stayed in the barn resting. They came up with a two-pronged plan: one group attacked while they communicated the idea that the party were blackguards come to kill their people, and another group deposited the body of the murder victim. Aanbo also realizes what this means about the village: not everyone is a bad guy.

Everyone realizes that the party has a few seconds to decide: do you stay and meet the villagers who have come to investigate, or do you leave the scene of the fight (and possibly investigate elsewhere while so many residents are here)?