Storm announces he will sea5ch the ground floor. He moves slowly to inspect the nearest room. Just before entering each room, he will detect evil.

Westin shudders upon overhearing Vendavel's discovery of Eliphas corpse in the adjoining room. He had heard that Eliphas's body was likely still in the house but confirmation was nevertheless, perturbing. Wanting a little more space, he proceeds down the steps to join Wick in his search. "Eliphas's body is in a bedroom upstairs," he tells him. "Have you found anything?" he asks.

Upon spotting the books, he will head over to them and start taking a look what their subject might be.

"I'll leave the searching of the room for now to you two.  I'm going to make sure that my planned direction will work and that this is indeed the man..."

Telemachus walked over to Eliphas' body and knelt down to look at the man.  His nose wrinkled at the smell but come tomorrow that wasn't going to be a problem.  Still he knew that Eliphas had been a more than adept practitioner of magic and utilized both charming and illusions to keep his hold on things.  Pulling out his sling he pushed the leather against his nose and tied the ends behind his head to provide a counter smell of oil and leather to overwhelm the body's scent.  He then inspected the body closely to ensure that it was not disguised by illusion or other means and that the man that had fled wasn't in truth actually Eliphas.

Upstairs

Telemachus' examination of the corpse revealed that this truly was the body of Eliphas.  A full examination would reveal that the man had been, literally, stabbed in the back.  Also, there was tale-tell discoloration which spoke of poison.

---

Ground Floor

Storm moved into the parlor, finding that there were no emanations of evil in the vacated house.  There was substantial evidence that there had been dogs in the parlor, probably the two dogs that had been led away by the four men who had stated that they had been employed by Eliphas and were now away from the village, on a quest to bring a murderer to justice.

---

Cellar

The books on the shelves proved to be a number of treatises on magical theory, although no spell book was present.  What was present, however, was that elusive volume Ars Mathematica.

"I've found it! I've found it! Someone tell Panatix. The Arn Mathmatica is down here!" Westin calls out excitedly.

He was no expert on poison and while if he had been there when it first happened he might have been able to make some guesses now it was so long since he'd died that the poison was likely long gone past identifying at his level of skill.  Covering the body up again he stood up and removed the hastily thrown together sling-mask before walking over to where Lenelle was standing by the desk, "Find anything?"

He knelt down to look underneath the desk while awaiting her reply to see if there was a hidden cache as well as get a feel for any drawers real dimensions that might appear smaller when open.

The desk in the bedroom appeared to have been primarily used for correspondence.

Lenelle took the entire stack of correspondences, and displayed them to Mac. "Let's have a look through these, shall we?  And see if there's anything noteworthy.  But not in here.  That stench is unbearable."   

So said, she turned and walked from the room, and began sorting through to see what was there.   The sole language she knew was Calandian, but her literacy in it was perfect, from all the study and scribing she'd done as part of her training.

Assuming there is anything;  I may have jumped the gun --  I did say that I pulled open the drawer, or drawer(s). If there are any.   
This message was last edited by the player at 01:51, Thu 29 July 2021.

Storm searches the room for cupboards, drawers or doors to open.

"We can do that. It all smells almost the same to me right now between the bodies of those that were killed earlier, the soiling due to punishments and clearing out those below the church."

He didn't quite have the look on his face and in his eyes that he was dead to the world for the time being from what he'd seen today, but the wear was evident even if he was holding it all together.  A smile smile touched his lips, "Hopefully he doesn't write in Calandian.  The navigator I served and the captain worked studiously at making sure I wasn't properly lettered for some reason so I've only ever learned the most basic of the scrawl.  Gave me more time for all the other languages I learned during those travels though..."

Correspondence had been written in several languages--Calandian, Karakulian, and a number of languages which were unknown to anyone in the group.  The correspondence seemed to be innocuous on its face.

Downstairs, Storm found nothing to open, other than the door leading into the kitchen.

"This one is Karakulian..." offered Telemachus when he spotted that particular tongue, "but these?  I'm familiar with even Old Karakulian, both Elvish dialects, Gnomish and even the exceedingly quixotic Orcish written language and these others are none of those.  Maybe if we could read them all we could see if he's put in some sort of cypher and they are more than they seem but otherwise," he shrugged his shoulders.

Westin heads upstairs, looking for Panatix. "Does anyone know where Panatix is? I want to give this to him," he says holding up the Ars Mathematica.

Wick joins the others and glances over at Telemachus, "The paintings and the serving pieces might fetch a few asil if we can find a good buyer.  Where's that on the priority list?"

Pan hears his name and goes and finds Westin.  Staring at the book, he shakes his head, "Just when I give up ever thinking to find something, there it is.   Have you looked inside yet, I'd like to know what all the fuss was about?"

Lenelle nodded at Mac's words. "Aye.  Calandian is all I read, but I read it well. And I agree; let's take these documents with us, so they may be reviewed more thoroughly.  If we can have a complete picture as regards Eliphas' motives, it would be to the good.  He strikes me as the sort of man whose machinations might outlive him, in one way or the next." 

Storm detects evil before entering the kitchen

He nodded his agreement to Lenelle before turning his head to Wick, "Before all of this began we had spoken about finding a properly large settlement so that we could find buyers for what we have already of value that would be willing to pay much closer to their true price.  While we could sell individually if we can find a well off merchant or a noble if we sell the mass of them as a set it may garner us that better price."

Telemachus rubbed his chin as he glanced to the others, "That said I don't want to strip this place bare just to give us the most possible asil.  Vendavel will be staying here and she can use some of it to ensure that the townsfolk are protected.  I'm sure we can come to an agreement with her on things she could easily use to fund things here to help that goal while still letting us take some other things."

He shook his head towards Panatix and Westin while they spoke about the book, "If you can't detect magical traps or disable them I wouldn't.  You said this magician was bad news and if I was a powerful magician I'd leave some insurance policy on it...much like the trap that Eliphas set to make any who would take his things have a blue hand."

"I haven't," Westin says. "Figured I'd find you first. Would you be ok taking a look together? I'm very curious myself." Westin looks around for a table and chairs or anyplace that would work to review the book, other than the room with Eliphas's body.

Not finding anything upstairs, Westin says, "Downstairs is a table with some chairs. Do you want to go down there and take a look?"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:12, Sat 31 July 2021.

---

---

Westin and Panatix made their way to the dining room table to consider the mysterious, long-sought after, Ars Mathematica.

Storm found that there was still no evil in the otherwise vacant house as he made his way to the kitchen.  The kitchen seemed fairly well stocked with food, with a small, empty alcove which held a bed, possibly once having been occupied by a villager who had been persuaded to do the cooking.  There were, however, no personal effects which clarified that matter.  From the kitchen, the stairs down could be seen as well as the doorway into the dining room where Westin and Panatix were.

Upstairs, the others considered setting the correspondence found to a side until they had time to find someone who could both tell them what language some of it was written in and perhaps a translation thereof.

This did leave, however, another house--the one once claimed by Cannibal--as well as the inn where many of the thugs he had employed had made their home.

As the day wore on, it seemed that the women of the village had been emboldened enough to emerge and attack the inn with buckets of steaming water, soap, and scrub brushes.  Occasionally, clumps of moldy material were brought out and thrown onto the same pyre which had been built for disposing of the dead and the thumbs.

In the center of the village, there remained the weapons removed from the fighters who had once gone to Cannibal's aid and were now either deceased from the arrows Pathwyn had fired from the bell tower or had departed the village after the judicial pollexectomies:  three short swords, six long swords, a club, a dagger, a battle axe, and a battered old scimitar.

After some time of scrubbing, one of the women emerged with another short sword which was added to the pile.  The two women who had been inside the inn were driven out of the inn and encouraged to leave--although from the looks of it, the women had decided that it was better to go ply their trade in another place in any case.

The room in the basement of Eliphas' house proved to be a reasonably well set-up laboratory for a wizard's work, although the evidence was that the place had been rather recently set up and not much, if at all, used.  Other than the paintings on the walls and the dishes and silverware in Eliphas' house, it did not seem much had been left behind.

As the day began to draw to a close, the two fishing men came in with their catch of the day.  It seemed that perhaps it was time to cook up flounder and whatever other food might be scrounged up to go with it, and leave the search of Cannibal's house for the next day, when the dogs within would, no doubt, be extremely hungry.

Telemachus let the others in on his planning as the day came to a close, "I confirmed that I can preserve Eliphas' body for the journey back without him smelling the entire time.  I also have a way to handle the dogs in Cannibal's home...I'll need to get some fish for them to eat as they will be starving pretty well but that should make it even easier to handle them.  With a little luck I will be able to convince them that I'd be a better master than Cannibal and bring them on board the Ananke to guard her when we are away from the ship or accompany us if only a few are heading out and the rest staying on the ship."

Lenelle pitched in for a time, assisting the women with the cleaning of the inn.  Though she was there to help, not evesdrop, she did pay attention to any talk or gossip which might be relevant.

She later nodded at Mac's idea, seeing the wisdom of it.   Dogs were loyal animals, and if these were trained guard dogs, they could be a real asset if the idea worked.   As a druid, Mac was best suited to dealing with animals, and she presumed he knew what he was doing.