MAL Ep. 3

Main Text
So in session 3, our heroes continued to investigate their curses and the curious case of the Magistrate's assassination, learning the following:

* Aler is being injured by healing spells and cured by harming spells, the same way undead are (though he does not appear to be undead.) Additionally, when he activates a healing artifact and uses it on someone else, they are also taking damage from it.

* Vanessa (at least he assumes it was she) sent Aler three potions of Inflict Serious Wounds with a cryptic unsigned note about drinking them in times of trouble. So is she trying to poison him, or does she know about his healing issues? Drow are so confusing!

* Searching Tell's mansion, the party again caught no trace of Petros' scent.

* From the scents present on the master bed and the guest bed, Red deduced that Mrs. Tell had been sleeping in the guest bed recently (which also explains why she wasn't present during the murder.)

* There was a faint trace of necromantic energy in Tell's house, as of a necromantic spell or creature present here within the last day. Zadkiel pointed out that this could have come from the Speak With Dead spell.

* Aler discovered Celia's diary in her lingerie drawer. In the last several entries, she fretted about her husband's mood swings (his spirits apparently lifted on the day he hired you, then crashed again the week after) and decided to send her children to Grandma's till they could sort this out.

* Red discovered a switch in the fireplace which opened a staircase to a secret room next to the winecellar. A pentacle painted on the ceiling teleported in two bone demons. Jon determined that while the pentacle did radiate some faint Abyssal energies, the portal itself led from one point on the Prime Material Plane to another. In other words, the pentacle is not a gate to the Abyss, nor is it possible that your nemesis Chavalk could have sent them here from his plane-- there's probably a demonologist/planar mage around here on Malachi somewhere orchestrating this.

* Also in that room was a carved idol of Sholaith, definitely not the living elemental icon Genevieve had with her-- it was non-magical but had trace elements of magic on it as if a spell had been cast on it recently.

* There was also a stone medallion with Terran writing on it (later identified as using divine magic to cast Transmute Mud to Rock, Transmute Rock to Mud, Stone to Flesh, and Flesh to Stone, once a day apiece, when the command words are activated.) Jon declared it to the Ducal guard outside and agreed to bring it to the Grey Citadel as evidence. The cord of the medallion had Tell's scent on it.

* The party met Detective Noyar, to whom Black had referred earlier. Noyar discussed the case with you (including asking Jon for his alibi last night and mentioning his awareness of Jon's disguise capabilities.) Noyar gave you the names of Magistrate Solon and Ducal Emissary Laisha Overton.

* Noyar said that Raise Dead had been unsuccessfully attempted on Magistrate Tell.

* The group visited Madam Marie, who was spooked by the eerie reading of impending doom she got from reading Jon's palm and insisted on returning his coin.

* The group wanted to go to the seance medium to contact Tell's spirit, but Jon insisted on going back to the Temple of Alayan to get an actual Speak With Dead spell cast instead. The magistrate's spirit was confused and primarily kept asking after his wife and lamenting over the eternal youth he had lost his chance with by falling out of favor with Sholaith. He said he barely knew Petros, and that his only enemies were Arthon, Genevieve, and the cult of Sholaith. Questioned about the idol in the basement, he said Sholaith "barely spoke to me anymore," and that she had promised to take him back to the fold again soon, but now it was too late.

* Jon and Zadkiel went to Celia's house and cajoled/blackmailed her into letting them in. She was short and cagey with them, claiming to know nothing about most of their lines of questioning, but did volunteer that Jarvis had been in poor spirits this month, speculating that he was stressed about the nightmare plague. She also said that he had been frustrated with the mayor and seemed upset with himself for letting one of the cult leaders escape.

* The rest of the party went to the Mage's Guild, having been warned by Morgana that the organization was unwelcoming to non-members. The guildmistress, asked for help with research on interplanar portals, became irate and threw the PCs out.

* Returning to the Temple of Altaris, the group met the newly ordained Greeley and learned that the local shiver users were no longer seeing extraplanar nightmare visions. They also learned that the community is currently suffering a lot from shiver withdrawal and that the personnel at the rehab center could tell you more about this. Greeley opined as a formal criminal that killing a magistrate was about the dumbest, highest-risk crime a person could commit. He also volunteered that Genevieve disliked Tell-- "they had a history."

* Kit arrived on the scene as the party exited the church, sporting a black eye and tousled hair, and triumphantly announced that she had found the ass graffiti.

And there we broke for the day. Onward!

Addendum
By the way, I'm noticing a little bit of information overload going on in this campaign-- I may have populated this town a little TOO well (everyone you talk to has something to say, but not all of it is relevant to the immediate problems at hand!)

I feel I should point out, as feedback, that the PCs aren't always asking townsfolk questions related to the subjects you are aware they know the most about. To give one example, on the list of questions players have asked me about were 1) those two Fey you encountered on the Dreamscape and 2) the reason why Chavalk was unable to manifest on the Dreamscape. Those would have been sensible questions to ask Morgana about while you were at her house, since she was on the Dreamscape with you and Petros, but because you were so intent on finding a mage to tell you more about the pentacle gate, you never asked her those other questions. (And in Morgana's case, she isn't really the best person you know to question about contacts in town anyway... )

Note, I'm intentionally choosing an example there that wouldn't have been a super productive line of questioning anyway and therefore doesn't give anything away. There were others that would have been (and still can be) more productive.

Overall, the party made a good amount of progress in today's game, but I think it might help things not to fall through the cracks if each of you, say, took point on remembering to keep poking at the questions related to your own curse in addition to the investigation about the Magistrate's murder.

It may all have to wait till after you're done hootin' it up at the circus though. ;-)

Onward! Laura