Osric: The murder of Merchant Dabas the younger (8)

Our group is currently at Shadowdeep attempting to complete some commercial transactions and hire a blacksmith for the village of compliments. Rolo, the halfling has taken off to deal with 'clan business' (Our PC playing Rolo was unable to attend this session), but both Jenks and Scabs are able to meet with the dwarven smith Flanigan they arranged a social event last session with.

A frigid snowstorm has come off the icetooth mountains and grips the city. As an aside, the GM has revealed that he is setting this campaign in Allansia, a place that may be familiar to those who played fighting fantasy books. He has obviously taken some liberties, but it is a cook world and has a fair amount of creative 'flex' on account of all the different authors of the books creating material.

The groups heads down a narrow stairwell to enter the dwarven pub. On the way down Jenks is bumped by a hoody figure with a baleful milky white eye who reeks of fish. Expecting a drunk bar fight he holds his tongue and passes by. This, friends, comes back to haunt him.

Flanigan, after a few drinks, is shown the recovered dwarven plate armour with a diamond in the chest. He notes this is actually duergar manufacture....a group of dwarves from the first battle against chaos that were corrupted. The Dwarves don't like talking about them. Naturally the question of where this came from comes up....and we tell him about the crypt of Kas the bloody.

Flanigan: Located in the old city of Greenich?
Us: That's the one.

Flanigan tells us we're idiots to disturb the crypt. Duergar are in Greenich due to a curse on the duergar king. Possibly if we deal with him, the others may be released. I forget the details but either they guard the liche (or serve him?), or the dragons treasure....or both.

Our biggest issue now is that the liche room could be disturbed. Only really a problem if there is a sudden ecological void (goblins wiped out) that would allows stupid adventurers to access more of the dungeon. Ummmmm, hmmmmmmm. Possibly might be an issue.

Flanigan wants the duergar plate to destroy it, he doesn't much care about the large diamond though. As a sweetener he offers to make a magic weapon for the group using the diamond. Over the next 3/4 of a day he (and the group assisting) forges a scimitar with magic properties. The blade will cause an invisible creature to turn visible and be unable to achieve invisibility for the remainder of the day. Perfect for use against his ancestral enemies, no?

With regard to our smith shortage, Flanigan is too successful to agree to leave Shadowdeep to come to Compliments. We ask him if there are any aspiring blacksmiths he'd like out of town, and he suggests the dwarf Gideon who has been sniffing around at his business. We approach Gideon in the pub and he would agree to come to Compliments for a capital infusion of 1000gp plus a stone building. He also needs to crank out at least 60gp worth of goods a month. He notes that we better decide soon as the merchant Dabas junior (senior was previously murdered) has been bargaining with him as a house blacksmith too.

We decide we should speak with the merchant Dabas, both to avoid a bidding war or earning an enemy if we hire Gideon, and also because he has the tealeaf clan ring (Rolo's clan).

In the early morning (after catching up on sleep post the pub visit and forging a weapon) we head over to visit Dabas (the younger). A heavy snow has fallen and there are very few people around. Scabs seems to be suspiciously familiar with the location of the manor. As we arrive we find the guard at the gate is dead with a snapped neck and positioned like he's asleep, he's also quite cold.

We briefly toy with the issue of how not to appear like total criminals while potentially acting like total criminals. Eventually we decide to brazen it out and head straight in without disturbing the corpse. We find the guards dogs in the yard are mostly dead, however one has undergone some horrible mutation....it mostly yelps and cries in pain and tries to move it's blasted structure. Jenks the druid promptly puts the beast out of it's misery. We are beginning to get a bit spooked.

After we pass bloody snow drifts we enter the front door (swinging in the breeze) and find the entire house stinks like rotten fish. Barely up the stair case we are suddenly attacked by frozen, rotting/undead halflings. We do well in the fight and it isn't till near the end we find they have a draining paralytic touch. Eek.

Scabs predicts an elf will be present sooner or later as well...... Apparently these aren't the tealeaf halflings that we thought they might be.

In the upstairs bedroom of the merchant we find the undead frozen elf. In addition to the elf, who is feasting upon the fingers of the corpse of dabas, there are some 'dancing girls' (dead) and a dead mutant with a milky third eye and tentacles instead of fingers. The door to the balcony is wide open and frigid air billows in. Jenks finally connects this mutant to the the smelly bastard who ran into him coming out of the pub. Probably a good thing he didn't say anything at the time.

We grind our teeth and check the elves mouth and stomach to see if the ring we seek is present. While we do find a number of bitten off fingers and rings, there is no sign of the ring Rolo is hunting for. We conduct a bit of petty theft but mostly leave everything for the law to search.

After summoning the watch, we watch as they summon a cleric of law and lock down the place. We are questioned a bit and then there is a blast of frozen wind that fires open the balcony doors. One of the dancing girls sits up right and is obviously possessed by...something. A horrible witch voice emanates  from the corpse and mocks us and the city and predicts our doom. A calling card of the snow witch of the ice finger mountains.

Hunting for more information we try Anadamas the sage, but he has been meditating for the last couple of days and is unreachable (as per his servant). We go to the splintered shield academy to track down the league of Justice. Gelf, the priest, Trad the fighter, and Noin the wizard going us to speak of the happenings.

The League of Justice agree to go to ice finger mountains to face the snowwitch and her burgeoning army of chaos. Flanigan will also accompany them. We are to investigate the crypt of Kas and attempt to ensure that it is not disturbed again.

We decide to hire an cleric and illusionist to accompany us in our trip back to the dark crypt and head off North to deal with one of the proliferating threats to the region.