It didn't take too long. The "nice and lighty" house in the forest wasn't there anymore. A decaying house and sense of danger now stood in the woods.
The door was unstable and moved back and forth to the wind, on an unnerving high note.
While The Grim and Beatryce the Priestess, most of the other stay in the invisibility aura cast by Master Jansen... The Witch is on the roof and wanna surprise them, but miserably fails...
It takes about two rains of arrows and spells to pull her down. She summons seven ghost pyres, which die pretty quickly at the Undead Turning of the rightful Beatryce.
Before actually dying, the witch seems to "crawl" away (or at least her soul), retiring from the woods and going deeper, reaching and old manor, sourrounded by foul flora and a weird light in the moon.
Beatryce, his comrade "May I" (a guy who first slams doors, then asks for permissions), Master Jansens and his mysterious small-sized assistant decide to stay there and investigate further. It's too dangerous for the important "sons of the noble houses" to stay there.
They will just take a look at the house and study it, then they'll come back to Tradeport and report.
Not a good thing living the "one-way-my-way" Beatryce with the "this must be studied" Jansen, but...
The fellowship decide to go to the house before leaving and inspect it. They find the colours (the one used by the witch to draw pictures) and the picture showing Celemor and Mr. Harrow coming at her place (see previous sessions!!!). It seems like they are evil-ish items and they leave them there, asking to Beatryce to bring them back when they'll step back to Tradeport.
Finally... at home!
They decide to sleep in their houses. The Grim doesn't have one and founds out its hunter-mates at the Witch Hunters' Guild Hall.
Cirice and (late in the morning) Elowen finally meet mr. Harrow alone. It is weird and admits to travel in company of the good-looking wizard Celemor (auntie to Elowen), since he was tired to feel like a criminal just for sharing a bunch of secret with a good friend. Her wife seems to get it, Ciricie is not happy at all.
They finally meet again and decide to face Celemor, in her private tower in the Greystone manor. She's there, with Silda, an old elf magic-user now in the late 750 years...
Celemor seems worried, but cannot hide anything. She reveals that the item stolen from the Mr. Harrow's collection is... a god map! A object really similar to the one Gillian the Grim dreamt two nights before while handling the wolf fur (remember? The dream in the snows of skjolde?).
Mr. Harrow got it many years before from an "unknown friend", who asked him to preserve it and that's what Mr. Harrow did... until he felt weird influences coming out from it. Before he could start studying it, it was lost.
Someone very agile and silent entered the Harrow's manor, descended into the well locked depths and stole the precious map!
While Harrow is an Alchemis/Spellcrafter, Celemor is a "true" Magic-User and both travelled to the academy to study any possible legend and lore about the map... They discover how God Maps are famous artifacts showing all the secrets of a predetermined area and how they were probably part of a larger map.
It is said that most empires and kingdoms invested tons of gold in the recovery of even only a single God Map fragment...
It seems like Mr. Harrow "perceives" the Map's presence (since she always try to reach its owner or at least to let her owner feel she's there...), but it can be within miles, in tradeport, away in the waters, at the magic academy...
Now the party get that the dead of Hleib might be an incident, lead from the fact that its FUR attracted him north through his subconsious, that's why he suddenly came from Al Sirath in the far south to Tradeport.... But he probably wasn't aware of the inner power of the fur, while still using it to become a grey wolf in the past.
They decide to investigate further: it is time to ask around Tradeport for someone that might have seen the old man hanging around drunk, almost a month ago (the night her child Shamyr admited he went home drunk and terryfied).
They'll meet with Celemor and Mr. Harrow out of the city at night: they're leaving again for the academy and they need to know more. They'll wait for the party to come and bring (hopefully) more news.
Investigation
The investigation goes well. It seems that some sailors and other peasants met the old man, completely drunk, talking and fluffing about "a woman telling to take care of the Hags (in Tradeport, it is pretty common to call the three Elven Sisters of house Greystone - Elowen's and Alowar's mother and aunties - "Hags"). He was spotted and fleed. He thought he'd be seen, but then noone asked for revenge so...
But at the party, he's been killed and (if you remember) the killer told that a "woman" went to him, giving him a letter written in a "graceful elven calligraphy"accompanied by a pouch with 200gp. The letter contained insructions for the murder.
Now it's pretty clear that someone got money from the bank (200 gp missing, do you remember from session 1?) and used them to pay a kille of the Assassin's Guild without actually asking to the guild itself...
That means that someone knows who the killers are (or at least that a killer worked "by himself"), that someone pointed at the "hags" to create awe and that then, too late, someone at the party left the before-mentioned message "Abort the Mission".
The next step is called Fynch. Is the one who pushed Liam to create the "provoking" song the night of Summer's End, the one who was seen hangin' around the Blueberry manor the party's night and the one acting weirdly (even the one assigned to the guard of the killer the same night he got killed from someone "coming from the outside" of the adventurer's guild where he was sleeping).
Something's still missing.
Who stole the godmap? Who's the woman who spotted Hleib? Why they wanted to take "care" of the "Hags"? What is the place contained in that stolen godmap?
While Beatryce and Master Jansen (hopefully) are on their way back to Tradeport, the party goes to the adventurer's guild, where Fynch is just drinking a cup of cold tea.
"May I help you?" smiles, as always.
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