[RP] Crag's Secrets: Chapter 1 - Arrival

Belladonna stepped cautiously into the tent, her sharp eyes immediately catching on a suspicious orb resting atop the upper surface of a small wooden dresser. As she approached, the orb seemed to react dramatically to the sunlight streaming in through the tent’s open flap.

The sphere absorbed each stray beam of light with an almost predatory hunger, drawing it inward, churning it into something else, and then radiating an otherworldly glow outward. This glow wasn’t just any light—it reached out toward Belladonna herself, casting long tendrils that seemed to brush against her skin like ghostly fingers, as though probing her presence, her very essence.

That was when the halfling’s instincts screamed at her—this wasn’t natural. Something was wrong. Acting purely on intuition, Belladonna snatched one of the blankets draped over a nearby bed and threw it over the orb. Instantly, the light dimmed, and the orb let out a piercing, eerie sound—a mix of an alarm siren and a high-pitched whistle—before falling silent as abruptly as a trumpet cut off mid-blare by an assassin’s arrow.

"Some kind of alarm?" Dalia, her companion, mused from the tent’s entrance, nodding approvingly at Belladonna’s quick thinking. "Nothing in the robes' pockets. But their owner? Definitely tall... and fond of hoods."

Belladonna turned her attention to the dresser’s drawers. Most were empty, but one yielded a collection of items:
- small, empty, bell-shaped glass bottle, with wooden stopper,
- small wooden figurine of a bird,
- slightly tarnished silver coin with intricate carvings along its rim. One - visible - side depicts a radiant sun,

What do you do?

Listening to Delia's thoughts on the robe's owner, she thinks back about what they have seen so far. Was that hunting blind designed for someone small like herself or someone very tall, necessitating the standing on the chair?

She shakes her head and focuses on the task at hand. Belladonna decides to pocket everything she has found for now.

"Hey, are you stealing somebody's stuff?"

Delia has wandered over to Belladonna and her investigations through the drawers.

"N-no! This just might be better to check out on that table outside. Maybe they're clues about what happened."

She gives a side eye to the covered glass sphere and decides to leave it securely where it is for now. She has no experience with the strange presence she was feeling with it and will consult with the others about it, once they are together and decided on where to rest for the night. She leads Delia out of the tent and plans to put the items they have collected on the table to investigate in better light.