“It would seem we have all made it to the boneyard.  Perhaps now we can look about.”

SCG resets himself strapping his heavy living steel shield in place and reattaching his chainbelt to his armored kilt.

“I told them we need both the head, skin; and stomach contents for the trial.”

He does a quick scan of the island for a lay of the land,
Sir Constantine Godalming rolled 8 using 1d20+3.  Perception
“Anyone else think this place will be foggy at night?”
This message was last edited by the player at 23:34, Mon 09 Dec 2019.

Echoing the motion of the village lads, Vadim also made his gesture of respect for the local dead before offering Shade a hand across the last reach of water.  Even for someone of his frame he had lifted her effortlessly on the very few occasions they had to pass over an obstacle;  more frequently he was relying on her guidance in order to pull himself out of the mud or to avoid overbalancing after yet another swampy blunder.  After Darcon's spectacular magical display Vadim clearly considered the man an archmage, and had probed the magic-user with questions about the hows and whys of magic used to raise and bind undead as they had dragged themselves through the swamp -- at least, insofar as the other would engage.

"I told them to take the bones," Vadim growled, unlacing his boots and sitting on an exposed root to try to wash some of the mud out.  Sore and weary though he was, he found himself glad for having been active over the past hour.  He watched the little wicker men twist in the breeze and tried to guess at what had led the first villagers to place their graves here, of all places.  Pulling his boots back on he shook his head;  swamp-folk he would never understand, and after the past hour or so he would be content if he never had the chance to.  That aside, he had work to do.

"Do you know 'Children come home to mother', and maybe 'The Lady's vanguard'?" he asked Jonah.  In terms of culture and repertoire Vadim was, to say the least, somewhat insulated.  When it came to music fit for a burial ground however, well, that was a different story, and Vadim was hardly going to turn down an opportunity for ongoing music while he worked.  That was a rare occurrence indeed.

"I will do what I can," he bowed to Garland rather ceremonially, if a touch arthritically.  "You tell me if there is help that you need to bless these buried.  I know some prayers."  Vadim turned to the others and cracked his knuckles, acknowledging the knight's suggestion.

"First we check to see if any of the graves are disturbed, yes.  Tread with care.  Follow any paths." He looked back out into the swamp, which was too quiet and too noisy at the same time.  "Perhaps we go in pairs."

---

Vadim will start checking on the graves and, if none of them seem to have been disturbed, will set to tidying up the overgrowth and generally tending to the neglected cemetery.

This message was last edited by the player at 02:56, Fri 13 Dec 2019.

Jonah idly strummed to pass the time as our heroes spread out to search the boneyard, but far from distracting his song seemed to sharpen and enhance their perceptiveness.

The boneyard was a large wooded island, rising to a firm and dry hillock in the middle and ringed by the muddy, swampy banks common in the marsh. Here and there markers with names and dates were distributed under the trees, clustered in family groups and tacking back through Morast's history.

---

---

Jonah and Garland found the old remains of a small camp at the southern end of the island. There was an old, abandoned fire pit, a moldering tent that had long since collapsed, a tin plate and rusty spoon and what may have been the burst remains of an old wineskin. Nobody had camped there recently.

Nearby in the weeds was a small coracle similar to the boats that had brought the group to the boneyard. It was tied to the shore and the reedy growth around it showed that it too was long abandoned.

The graves themselves were at first un-promising but Darcon's sharp eye caught six that appeared to have been tampered with. None of the six were clustered together but an examination of the dates showed that these were the six most recent bodies interred in the boneyard. The soil was sagging as if collapsed from below, an odd circumstance considering the well maintained nature of the rest of the graves. Vadim was easily able to point out that the coffins had been exhumed and the graves re-filled.

---

Your initial search of the island turns up three main points of interest, the camp, the boat, and the tampered graves. You can make perception or survival checks on each, or take 20 which will take 1 hour. You could also take 20 searching the entire island which will take the remainder of the afternoon until nightfall.

SCG takes in the island and inquires of the others
“Would the camp then be the murderers and since he died by camin he failed to return?”

SCG looks at the boat and Swampy growth
“Anyone want to help retrieve the small boat among the reeds?”
If nothing else maybe a clue was onboard or some way to identify the murderous camper

Darcon eyed the disturbed graves thoughtfully, trying to process what it might mean. "We should investigate those more closely," he remarked, gesturing at the disturbed graves in turn. "Does anyone have anything against say, digging one up and seeing what we uncover?"

Shade had been rather pleased that, despite her injury, she had been able to navigate the swamp without too much trouble.  The threat from Nook if he dared wet his paws again had also been a potent motivator.  Unfortunately her companions had made heavy work of the trek, and she might as well have waited for a ride.

Well, they had other talents.

At the boneyard, she wanted over to the camp and boat, giving a cursory glance at the graves before examining the remains of occupation with great interest.

"Who sleeps in a graveyard?  Who camps in one?  Aside from a gravedigger, I suppose..." she muses out loud.


OOC: 20:33, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 18 using 1d20+10.  Perception on camp.
20:33, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 28 using 1d20+10.  Perception on boat.
20:33, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 11 using 1d20+10.  Perception on graves.
20:36, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 21 using 1d20+5.  Nook Perception on graves.
20:36, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 17 using 1d20+5.  Nook Perception on boat.
20:36, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 14 using 1d20+5.  Nook Perception on camp.

"The dead must stay in their graves. If there is evidence they have been distrubed or have risen after their burial I will consent to search them. However undisturbed graves will remain so." he says, stressing that he will not let anyone violate the final rest of someone without cause.

"Let's have a look around first, then we can work with what evidence we find rather then jump to our own conclusions."

"Well, I'm not quite in the mood to start investigating graves, so I say let's start with checking out the boat." says Jonah, "I sing about the undead occassionally, and that is the frequency I want to keep my encounters." and he goes over with Constantine to help pull the boat.

"I think you will find very little," Vadim commented to Darcon, "But we will see."  He lent a hand lifting the boat onto the shore for further inspection, though his interest was more in finding whatever oar or paddle had been used by the previous owners than in taking note of any clues as to their identity or origin.  Likewise his brief look around the camp seemed more focused on looking for useful tools than any other thorough investigation.

At the graves, however, he changed tack;  he ran his hands over each marker to feel for any chips, cracks, or other indicators of tampering, then put on his spectacles to peer closely at the stonework or carving, the vegetation and regrowth, and the presence or absence of any fetishes.  Once he was done probing and prodding he returned his glasses to their pocket, doffed his clanking greatcoat, and did some lopsided stretches in preparation for the dig.  As he did so, Vadim quizzed their guides on the identity, physical description, and cause of death of each occupant.

---

OOC: Can Vadim take the oar from the coracle and use it for a shovel?  Likewise, if he can spot any digging tools at the camp he'll take those before investigating the graves.

Spending an hour to take 20 with Profession: Gravedigger at the gravesites.  Total of 30 (or 28 with the -2 for using improvised tools, if that applies)

06:00, Today: Vadim Karamazov rolled 12 using 1d20.  Survival (Boat).
05:59, Today: Vadim Karamazov rolled 12 using 1d20+4.  Perception (Boat).

06:00, Today: Vadim Karamazov rolled 12 using 1d20.  Survival (Camp).
06:00, Today: Vadim Karamazov rolled 20 using 1d20+4.  Perception (Camp).

While Garland and Darcon were respectfully examining the sunken graves Shade looked over the long abandoned camp and Jonah helped Constantine with the boat.

Vadim's examination of the gravestones revealed nothing unique, they appeared to be of the same cut and quality as all the surrounding grave markers. The lads were able to give details about the deceased, four elderly who had passed, one of sickness, and one who had been wounded in an accident and succumbed. The empty graves didn't seem to have much in common beyond being the most recent.

As it turned out their exhumation was merely an excavation, there was no body buried below the ground. Below the short growth of loam they found the shredded remains of a burial wrap but no body. The collapsed nature of the earth suggested that there had been a body buried there at one point which was then exhumed and the earth replaced, leading the the partial collapse of the grave. Vadim's professional expertise was easily able to point out that the collapsed but undisturbed nature of the grave meant that the body had been removed by a third party. It wasn't likely an undead clawing its way free from the earth as he and Garland both feared.

A more careful examination of the camp confirmed the first sightings, it had been used sometime in the past but had been abandoned for quite a while. While it certainly had not been used in the past months, none of our heroes possessed the woodcraft to determine when exactly it had been abandoned.

In the collapsed remains of the tent Vadim found an empty glass vial that still held the dried residue of a green substance clinging to its walls. Shade guessed that it was a potion but Darcon was able to correctly identify it as a similar substance, an extract, a potion-like concoction favored by alchemists. A brief magical examination of it showed that the vial had once contained an extract of darkvision.

Also in the tent was a delicate razor with a long pearl handle. Garland identified it as a scalpel, a medical instrument used by physicians and chiurgeons. It was of exceptionally fine workmanship and had the figure of a raven carved into the end of the handle.

The boat was still sound, with an oar, a backpack that held an old damp artisan's outfit (shirt, breeches, shoes, and an oiled canvas apron), and long dried bloodstains on the bottom. There was a length of rope lashed to one of the oar locks that ran into the water below. When Constantine dragged it up he pulled a large sack from the muck, big enough to hold a man. Inside the sack was a coil of rope, a gag, a rusty hooded lantern, a leather case that held three carving knives of various sizes, and a rusted shovel.

While Constantine was hauling at the sack Jonah spotted a pale, graying, hairy little lump discarded under one of the boat's benches. It could have been a mass of pond scum or the remains of some small rodent, but when he investigated he found something far more horrifying. It was the skin of a detached human face.

“I am afraid my friends we have found something very sinister indeed.  I have no ideas but likely kidnapping, torture and murder and also was it eating the bodies?”

The clues mean little to SCG
Sir Constantine Godalming rolled 19 using 1d20+1. Eternal understanding trait Knowledge under 15 DC.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:12, Wed 11 Dec 2019.

SCG lays out the findings on the ground for inspection
See DM post above

"Aye." Dimka nodded gravely to Constantine.

"We knew that the Beast must've been taking villagers to eat them up. Wicked creature."

Jonah picks up the piece of gray lump, realizes what it was and practically flings it down, but is able to do so somewhat respectfully. Before dramatically shivering in place.

“That’s really disgusting! I don’t think in even in the stories I break out for The Night of the Pale ever described peeling the skin off someone’s face. Anyone have any ideas if this was done to someone recently alive, or one of the bodies missing from the graves.”

He pauses, “You know, I’m not sure I really want the answers to that question.”

He bows nobily to Constantine, “With your leave, sir. I can do little more here. Let me see if I can help the others.”

With that, he makes his way over to Vadim, and starts plucking on the mandolin a bit, “Let’s see. Been a while since I played the 'The Lady's vanguard'. Jonah the elder used to play with me and sing it a bit when travelling in the lowlands. If you can at least hum it a bit as I play, I’m sure it will come back to me.”

OOC: Jonah continues to perform Bardic Performance: Inspire Competence

"What do you mean, 'face'?" Vadim downs tools, such as they are with what he's cobbled together out of found materials, and hustles back to the boat.  The wrinkled skin gets a grim set of the jaw, but it's the sight of the gag which brings a creak of protest from the wood as his knuckles tighten to white around the gunwale.  Suddenly it seemed as though the croaking of the frogs and crickets was an ominous prelude to an answer nobody wanted.

"Goes something like this," he said to Jonah, beginning to hum an old dirge, recognisable enough albeit distinctly off-key.  From separate pockets Vadim produced a straight-razor and a boline, gently lifting the old skin onto the boat's seat and teasing the edges out to give a clearer picture of what -- or whom -- they were dealing with.  His left hand wouldn't seem to stop trembling, threatening to slice the skin into pieces with his razor, and in the end he stepped back to leave the others to it.

---

Trying to determine whether the skin was removed post-mortem.

13:13, Today: Vadim Karamazov rolled 7 using 1d20+4.  Profession (Mortician).  Doesn't include the bonus from Jonah, but I don't think that's going to make enough of a difference in this case.

The grotesque little scrap was undeniably a human skin, not any sort of mask or recreation. It was old and would surely have rotted long ago were it not preserved by the natural mineral water of the swamp.

Even still, Vadim wasn't able to identify how old it was or whether it had been gruesomely collected from a living victim.

---

Vadim, you don't manage to glean any more information from it than that it is indeed a human face.

Let me know if there's further investigations that you'd like to do in the swamp, or if you'd like to move back to Morast or Lepidstadt.

As he inspected their findings, Darcon had a brief uncomfortable flashback to the Splatterman of Harrowstone upon seeing the scalpel, and he eyed the scalpel with unease.

"What do you make of that Garland, does that carving of the raven hold any significance?" he queried the cleric.

The mage wasn't sure what to make of the vial they had uncovered. "Perhaps someone used it here during the night, be it the beast or someone else," he muttered aloud.

Not having much else to go on Darcon raised a palm and murmured a simple spell, slowly waving his arm over the area trying to see if he could get any more information using his arcane senses.

---

Casting Detect Magic. Darcon will try to detect magic in the campsite as well as the graves and the general area.

“I guess that honestly we have gotten all that we can from here.  Most of this we can take back for evidence.  Some items point towards a different perpetrator it is like some story the professor told a murder in the rue morgue but...”

SCG voice trails off with fond memories
He rubs the new holy symbol on a chain around his neck

“Perhaps we can run this all by Kendra and see what she thinks and a librarian may be helpful as well.”

“So back to get the witness statements and then back to town?”

Shade had observed the things pulled from the water, the items in the tent, and recalled the scars on the blood caiman, the structure of the beast, the detached horrible face...

"I has theories," she says finally.  "Whoever it was came here, maybe dug in the dark, plucked up what they wanted from the graves.  Cut off what they wanted, as they had the tools for it.  Cut what they wanted from the caiman too.  Scars on its face, more like that scalpel here than claws.  I'd say they used what they harvested.  Might have sunk the rest in the swamp and let the animals deal with it.  Left their tools as they didn't want to be burdened, or thought they'd be back when people had dropped a new crop in the boneyard."  Shade gives a small shrug.  "Not evidence, but signs of more of a plot.  Signs of a helper, rather than just the Beast.  Or maybe, a master.  We didn't know that for certain, but now we have tools, a tent too small for it.  It doesn't seem the sort to use tools.  If it just wanted bodies, it had them, and fresh ones, so why dig up others?  Someone else did that.  For certain, there's another person involved."

"Could be so," Vadim nodded slowly in assent after chewing over what Shade and Sir Constantine had to say.  He stuck out his thumb and frowned at it. "First, as the little one says, the tent is too small for our Beast and the boat almost so;  and why use a spade when your hands already are bigger each than shovels?"  He added a forefinger.

"Next, our Beast is put together from dead parts;  the living dead do not have problems seeing in the catacombs or the moonless night.  Why would it need such a drink to see?"  Vadim stuck out his middle finger, kinked at the second knuckle where it had been broken badly at some point in the past. 

"Third, to remove a... this skin..." he cleared his throat awkwardly and touched his forehead in the direction of the remains, "I have assisted Master Pavel at the mortuary for many years, and even his practiced hand would find such delicate work.. to be challenging.  This is the mark of one who has studied and practiced much, not a creature of short patience and thick fingers like Lozerian sausage."  Straining against the insistent twitch, Vadim gave up on counting and folded his arms.

"This great lizard, though, about this I am less sure.  It did not seem to be lacking any parts,"  he shook his head and looked out across the reeds.  "It left us with a boat broken like the one found from last year, and also I think signs on its face that maybe someone tried to make it let go of their leg with stabbing,"  he made an overhand motion, mimicing someone striking down at the snout.  "With this, to me, it seems there is a reasonable doubt that the creature which attacked us took one or more of the unburied who were lost last year.  Maybe all."  Scratching at a scar on his jawline, he looked to Garland.

"How often would such a monster need to feed?"

"What I do not understand, for whoever camped here, is why leave behind the tent to be found?  And the boat is even stranger.  Did they walk back to Lepidstadt, and with parts of bodies -- taken from the sick and frail -- not in the sack?" Steel plates clanked as he gave a mountainous shrug.  "I do not know."  Turning back to the island, Vadim waved over the closer of Dimka and Teg.

"We will find out who... that was.  If it was one from the missing ones, then we know the living were not all eaten.  If it was from the buried, we know maybe this is separate to the disappearances.  Maybe from after the town stopped coming here."  When the lad arrived, Vadim posed a question.

"Where do we find the best firm clay?  Here or back at Morast?" He was used to using small lumps to pad or fill where necessary, but the basic principle of an entire head seemed straightforward enough.  "I will need the tiny blade."

---

If possible Vadim will sculpt a head shape out of clay with basic features to fit the face onto, so that someone back in Morast can more easily identify who it belonged to previously (and nobody else has to handle the disembodied face directly).  Unless either of our guides recognises who it is first.

Taking 10 with Profession: Mortician for a total of 14, unless anyone wants to jump in with Aid Another on this admittedly rather morbid task.

“We have yet to find any evidence that Solomon was ever here.  A perpetrator that leaves masses of blood behind and likes knives and peeling faces off of victims.  It also seems certain the true perpetrator died or was wounded by the camen enough to stop the murders for now.”

"Could be. A likely way why everything was left, if someone got eaten.  But the Beast kept on, so the stories go.  So it got another master, another helper?  Or there was more than one raiding the boneyard?  Or the Beast carried someone out of the swamp?  Either way, the scalpel is nice, and maybe someone in town knows the maker.  Can't be too many as were made like that, with the raven," Shade says thoughtfully.

"We should question the beast about these findings but I see nothing here that says he was indeed involved. Carvings and scalpels don't seem to fit with the person were talking about. We can make certain leaps in logic but we should not jump to conclusions without evidence. " he replies, thinking on the various items to see if he comes up with any answers, stories, or even rumors.

“Exactly we have evidence and none of it points to our identified suspect. Indeed it points to a very different kind of evil.”

Hopefully some of our knowledge rolls help us; or going to the library...

It took perhaps an hour for our heroes to complete their investigation of the boneyard, gather and catalog the evidence, discuss their findings and plan both their strategy for the investigation and how they would present the evidence at the hearing the following morning.

Vadim crafted a reasonable facsimile of a human head over which he stretched the gruesome scrap of skin. Teg and Dimka were at once horrified and fascinated, but the scrap was too decayed for them to give any sort of positive identification.

Between our heroes they had a wealth of knowledge about the type of tool that the scalpel was, although nothing specific about the implement itself. The raven mark was most likely either the mark of the craftsman that fashioned it or a monogram requested by the client who it was crafted for. Vadim and Shade were well acquainted with the Surgeon's Flats, an upscale neighborhood in Lepidstadt's commercial district where delicate medical equipment of all kinds was manufactured. Surely the origins of the scalpel could be divined there.

At length everyone squeezed back into the boats and made for Morast.

They passed the site of the blood caiman attack on the way back, where work was still underway and likely would be long into the night. The normal process of cleaning such a beast would involve removing the skin from the head and retrieving the teeth and jaws, a step that had been skipped at our heroes request. The head had instead been removed whole and kept in a large burlap sack, ready to be taken back to Lepidstadt to be presented as evidence.

The remainder of the hide had been flensed and stacked, ready to be tanned, and thick bloody caiman steaks were being bundled into meat bags and hung in the swamp's mineral rich water to be kept fresh until they could be cooked, smoked, or dried. The liver, heart, and other edible offal had been portioned out as well. The stomach had been opened and inspected by Morast's master tanner but there were no clues to be found there, only the bones and hides of giant frogs, unwary deer, and other creatures that would be the typical diet of a swamp predator.

They arrived back in town to general acclaim, especially from those villagers who had been ferrying meat and other goods from the site and had seen the size of the caiman. Our heroes were invited to a caiman steak dinner that was already getting underway. The central firepit in the middle of the village was being stoked and the goodwives were chatting happily as they brought out their crockery and dishes in preparation for the communal meal.

Constantine made himself busy questioning villagers about the beast's appearance and, dishearteningly, heard only confirmation of their initial stories. The night had been dark and nobody had gotten a perfect look at the creature. But it had been huge, lumbering, and it was a stitched-together amalgamation of a number of different creatures. It was certainly a description that could fit the creature that he had dubbed Solomon.

Vadim had better luck when he showed his macabre taxidermy project to Elder Lazne. The Elder screwed up his face, made a ward against evil with his free hand, and spat a wad of weed juice into the dirt.

"Aye, I recognize that face. That's poor Dowd Fisher. Wicked creature. It deserves everythin' that's commin' to it."

---

You don't find any further clues in the blood caiman's stomach, but you can take the head back with you as an exhibit.

With what you remember you can make a regular Gather Information check using Knowledge: Local or Diplomacy to trace the scalpel's manufacturer once you get back to town. Like any Gather Info check it takes 1d4 hours.

Let me know if you'd like to stay in Morast or move back to Lepidstadt. It's about four in the afternoon at the moment.