Against the Cult: Entering Orlane (1.7)

The customers in the Golden Grain Inn and the armed thugs who came down the stairs see Bertram laid out and bleeding on the floor and they give a dismayed cry, gathering around him. Chase backs out of the doorway and follows Reptile into the darkness beyond the lantern light. Reptile reluctantly calms down, stows his hatchets, and tries to fulfil Chase's request, but he can't see a thing in the dark. Before the humans' eyes can finish adjusting, Aanbo hisses a whisper: "Yes, I found him: he's here. Follow my voice." After a few moments of stumbling, Reptile finds the halfling and hoists him like a sack over one shoulder. Much to their surprise, no one else has emerged from the Golden Grain Inn. They take stock of themselves: both Theran and Joseph are deeply asleep and do not respond to any efforts to wake them.

Alone of the conscious NPCs, Aanbo witnessed the sleeping effect of the New Morning's draught, and this seems different. Neither Joseph nor Theran seem dead, nor has their breathing slowed to the point of being imperceptible. They have a sickly pallor, and their breaths are slow and shallow, with the occasional snore.

Chase leads the party in the direction that Myrtha had gone. At first they are silent, watching the Golden Grain Inn anxiously, expecting that armed assailants will come boiling out of the building at any moment. But that doesn't happen at first, and as they continue past the Inn and the barn, they relax enough to start whispering to each other again. They get to the bridge and cross it; thankfully it is a stone bridge and so their footfalls do not boom and echo the way a wooden bridge might. The water of the Realstream River gurgles past the pilings below them. Trees loom on either side of the road on the north bank, making it very dark here. Up ahead on the right/to the east, there is a faint light shining through the trees. Unencumbered by a sleeping companion, Chase can attempt to track Myrtha's route, which would be much easier to do if there was light for him to see the path (roll WIS (Survival) and declare whether you are doing it in the dark or using some kind of light).

"What happened in there? Did we offend the cook?" Reptile jokes. Then, more seriously: "What did they do to Theran and Joseph? What did they do to us? I feel terrible."

By the light of the torch, it is easy for Chase to identify Myrtha's tracks, and he leads the party down the road, north past what appears to be another Inn, to the intersection. Looking closely at the ground in the flickering light, Chase is able to discern that the fighter headed east at that point, and the two other conscious party members, Aanbo and Reptile, puffing and panting from carrying their sleeping companions Theran and Joseph, follow the ranger as he leads them toward the lake reservoir. Chase follows Myrtha's tracks right up to her supine body, laying sprawled under a tree near the water's edge. Aside from being drugged/poisoned and a possible bruise from falling down asleep, she seems unharmed.

The party is reunited! It's early night, everyone has been poisoned (and three of you are asleep as a result), and the Golden Grain Inn is full of hostiles. What do you want to do now?

The three conscious adventurers take stock of their surroundings. There are a few lights further in the distance around the lake. But you passed a sturdy farmhouse and barn just a short distance back (to the north of the path), and of course the other Inn. There's another building to the south of you, around the curve of the lake: your memory places it as probably the water mill.

The immediate surroundings:

Note: the star still indicates the party's location.
The green building is another inn. The purple buildings are homes and the brown structures are outbuildings: barns, sheds, etc. Brown lines are roads/paths/driveways. Green blobs are trees.
For ease of reference, here's the larger map.

Stumbling along in the dark, Aanbo, Chase, and Reptile tote their companions back to the intersection and turn north. The small farmhouse there is dark and silent. They creep into the overgrown yard and cross to the moderately large barn. The doors creak alarmingly as they edge them open, but there is no reaction from the house, nor does a dog come barking. All is still. They enter the barn; the air is stale and devoid of animal smells. It seems to have not been used for some time.

The awake members of the party are able to take a long rest.In the morning, tiny birds twitter in the overgrown yard, scratching at the dirt and flitting from weed to weed. The light makes clear what was only suspected in the night: this was a farm, and it has been abandoned.

Theran, Joseph, and Myrtha wake up an hour later than the others, after nine hours, a little groggy and without the benefits of a long rest (so they could take a long rest later in the day if need be).

Each PC gains 20 XP from surviving and escaping.


The larger map