In the House of the Rising Sun Moon

We begin the main thread of the adventure in the House of Selune, with the innkeeper Elara. We ask around, and in addition to being the innkeeper, she is also the local healer, and mortician. So you get fed, fall sick, then die, and she’s with you all the way.

It has been 3 days since Wilhelm was murdered. His body is in the cellar, where Elara runs her mortuary business. Louie is immediately on edge, and Rusty joins him when we go downstairs to find there is only one trapdoor between her morgue and the inn’s kitchen. Everybody knows you need to keep two doors between food preparation areas and waste processing areas! Rusty offers to fix the problem for her.

We inspect the body - it is apparent that Wilhelm died of blood loss from the claw and bite wounds to his head and neck. We are told he was found in his barn, and that there were no indications the body was moved. Wilhelm has some defensive wounds on his hands, and in one of his hands he is still clutching long, dark grey hairs.

Ivan has no respect for personal boundaries

While we’ve been doing proper forensic investigation, Ivan has been pruriently leafing through Wilhelm’s private diary. He triumphantly says that he found incriminating evidence inside, and tosses the book down. Rusty, always willing to hear new evidence but never willing to take unsupported opinions as fact, picks the book up and reads it. The contents will remain private, because Rusty does respect personal boundaries, and also because Ethan never recorded the contents in the notes he sent me. Th gist of it was, Wilhelm had long been harboring a secret affection for Elara, but never acted upon because he realized that it would be inappropriate.

Elara was embarrassed but not offended, and Ivan is a dick.

Ivan also raises suspicions regarding the rapidity of the funerals for the victims. They are, in accordance with local custom, laid to rest 3 days after death, in a ceremony to Selune. We are invited to witness the ceremony for Wilhelm, tonight.

Rusty gathers notes

There has been a lot going on in town. Rusty collates it all into a vaguely coherent timeline.

1. Gustav Klein “died” 4 weeks ago. He actually vanished from his home. His body has not been found. Gustav has one relative, his daughter Helena. She is away in Ludendorf at university, and does not yet know of her father’s disappearance.
2. Rosemary Keller was killed 3 weeks ago. Her body was found in her home with tidy puncture wounds to her neck. Before her death, she had mentioned that she was visited by a suspicious investigator.
3. Ludwig Ernst and Karl Wagner were killed 2 weeks ago, in the youth center. Their bodies had multiple, wild lacerations and bite marks - very similar wounds to Wilhelm, but quite different to Rosemary.
4. Kristine Wagner (Karl Wagner’s wife) was killed in her home 2 weeks ago, but a few days after Ludwig and Karl. Her head was torn from her body, and the body of the family dog Skittles was rammed down her neck. Skittles head was also torn off, and rammed into Kristine’s mouth.
5. Wilhelm Friedrich was killed 3 days ago at his farm.

Let’s split up and search for clues!

No, lets stick together. We get a map of Baytown from Elara and head to Gustav’s house. The house appears undamaged - there is some dust, in which we can see Elara’s footprints, but it does not seem as though anyone else has been here. On the mantle are photos of Gustav and his daughter Helena at the University.

In a drawer we find a letter from Helena, where she raises concerns about possibly being followed. There are also more photos of Helena, but these are from a distance, and it does not appear she was aware she was being photographed.

There is also a burnt, largely illegible letter in the fireplace. What we can discern of its contents are threatening.

Father Horus gathers all the little children

We gather at the shrine in the center of town for the funeral of Wilhelm. Horus coats the body in something - he claims it was honey and milk - and then lays the body out under a massive magnifying glass and cooks it to a crisp, like poor Wilhelm is an ant that drew the attention of the local psychopathic child. Nobody intervenes in this defilement of a corpse, though, and Wilhelm cooks for a solid 30 minutes. He ends up a lot more burnt than he should have been in that amount of time, though, and Rusty is wondering whether there might be some more penetrative radiation in that “moonbeam” than just infrared.

All that is left of Wilhelm is a small stone, which is placed in a mausoleum with a pile of other stones. Rusty is forcibly reminded of an invention he once saw - a De-Gun. He wonders if this system also has a “reverse” function. If so, it could be a nice way to evade resurrection limits.

Ivan got bored ages ago and is interrogating the townsfolk. He is highly irritated that they all seem to enjoy Wolfsbane tea, and that silver cutlery is very common. This doesn’t seem to gel with his preconceived prejudice that the town is populated with lycanthropes. For a domain that is “obsessed” with science over superstition, they all do a really shitty job of understanding or following the rules of science. Rule #1: Regardless of how elegant your theory is, if it conflicts with observable reality, then reality wins.

Elana gives the party a key to a room at the inn, and we settle in for the night. Rusty builds her a door, and Ethan reckons that would cost 45gp of tinkering supplies. For enough wood to build a doorframe and door, plus 2 hinges and a latch. Wood must be rarer that frickin’ gold around these parts.

During the night, Raymond “investigates” Ivan’s locket. It contains a portrait and a lock of hair. I think we’re supposed to feel sorry that Ivan lost his little sister, or love (probably both) to a lycanthrope, and understand his crusade. Nope. He’s just an inbred bigot.

Of course there’s another murder.

We are woken the next morning by Ivan, telling us there has been another murder at the lighthouse. Off we go.

Around the lighthouse, the scene is gruesome. The ground is stained with old blood. Claw marks score the earth and trees. Johann’s clothing is shredded. Skill Rolls! A Natural 20 from Raymond determines that Johann was killed by a beast. A Natural 20 from Rusty locates a silver medallion, identical to Malar’s. Cletus notices footprints on the road - they start out as huge paw prints, but transition to human feet as the get closer to cottage.

We also determine:

• The road goes north from Baytown to the coast.
• The lighthouse is half a mile from the town.
• The murder site is 100 feet from the lighthouse, toward the town.
• The road is well worn from foot traffic.

We hear a voice calling out. “Astrid! Astrid! Where are you, Astrid?” Approaching, we see Malar, searching for someone, name unknown. When we talk to him, we learn that Malar is doing a headcount of the town and has located everyone except for Astrid.

Searching for clues

We follow the tracks Cletus found. The head toward the lighthouse cottage, and as we get closer, we notice another set of prints that come from the open fields and also head toward the cottage.

The cottage is locked. Rusty is proficient with Thieves Tools - not because he has larcenist tendencies, but rather because he couldn’t face with good conscience there being a type of tool that he was not proficient in. He picks the lock.

The inside of the cottage is thickly coated in dust. It is undisturbed over the majority of the cottage, except for the path between the door and the fireplace. There has been a fire in the fireplace recently, though it is cold now. In the ashes, we find a partially burned journal. Cletus studies it but cannot extract anything useful. He checks the chimney - there are bats in it. Cletus throws a rock at them, killing one and scaring the others away.

On the table is a map. Marked on the map are the locations of the murders. Under the bed there is a small cache of supplies. In the cellar there are a few bottles of wine. This is boring. We go elsewhere.

Let’s split up and search for clues!

The party heads into town. Cletus peels off from the group so we can cover more ground. The rest of us go to Rosemary Kellers house. It is a combination shop and house. The shop sells general merchandise. On the second floor the bedroom is a bloody mess. The window is open, and there are claw marks on the windowsill. The window glitters slightly in the morning sun - it is lightly dusted with silver shavings. On the dresser there is silver jewelry.

Stunningly high investigation rolls by Rusty determine that the claw marks on the windowsill are actually faked. We look out the window and see paw prints in the flowerbed below, but those too turn out to be forgeries.

Closer inspection of the fake claw marks show there is a broken glass cutter under the window. Gary snuffled about and found a tuft of fur caught on a nail protruding from the floor under the bed. We take a close look, and figure there is about a 75% chance it was planted.

Cletus gets butt-shanked

Cletus is watching the lighthouse cottage from hiding to see if anyone exits, or approaches. Nobody does, but then he is stabbed in the left butt cheek. He spins (hops weirdly) around to see that he has just been sneak attacked by an 8 year old. Damn, Cletus - did you spend everything on a high AC and leave nothing for Perception?

The boy has stabbed Cletus with a silver rapier, and despite wielding a lycanthrope hunters weapon, seems to think he is defending them. “Are you here to hurt the Moon People?”

Cletus, trained in philosophy, theology and debate, expertly flips the interrogation on his interlocutor. “Are you?”

“No! I would defend them with my life!” This kid is not the best spy.

Then the boy’s mother arrives and apologises profusely for the but stabbing. Apparently the boy has been having nightmares recently about the Sad Man of the Woods. The Sad Man is supposedly at least 2 feet taller than Cletus, who already scrapes 7 feet. So, tall.

Y-M-C-A!

Cletus has had enough butt-stabbing, and the rest of the party have extracted as much information as they can from Rosemary’s house. We all head to the YMCA, where Ludwig Ernst and Karl Wagner were killed. It is a converted were-house, which seems appropriate. There is a threatening message scrawled on the doors, and they really are made by claws. Inside, there are 2 large blood stains. Nearby, there are faint chalk marks that someone has tried to erase. The look like the holy symbols of Malar (the god, not the guy here in town).

Looking around, the YMCA seems to be dedicated to education, primarily about astronomy. With a particular focus on lunar cycles. We get it Ethan, we know that most of the town are lycanthropes. That doesn’t make them bad people!

Rusty wanders around the room looking for anything out of place, and notices that as he walks across the rug that the floor underneath it is wooden. The rest of the floor here is stone. Trap door!

We’re about to head down into the labyrinthine passages below the YMCA when Ivan has a total meltdown. He’s totally convinced that most of the town are lycanthropes. He wants to test them all and then kill them. We do not sympathise. We do not deny the evidence we’re seeing, but that doesn’t excuse us from following all the evidence where it leads. We can always do “kill them all, let God sort them out” as plan B.

In the bowels of the earth

We descend into the passages under the YMCA. Cletus is following the footsteps we find, while Rusty is mapping so we don’t get lost. After a significant time (these tunnels are LONG), we find a dead female body. She died from claw and bite wounds, but the assailant was oddly short for a lycanthrope - the wounds all come from a creature of similar height to the victim. We roll the body over, and there is a masterwork silver weapon embedded in her body. It has been especially designed to create wounds that look like claw strikes and bites. Not suspicious at all. Rusty keeps it.

We proceed, and eventually the tunnel ends at a ladder, leading upward. At the top is a slab of stone. Once Cletus pushes it out of the way, we find ourselves once again in the lighthouse cabin. The fireplace had a false bottom. That’s cool and all, but we’ve been here. There’s still some passages to explore.

We head back down and follow all the paths. We find some rooms that look obviously designed to restrain a lycanthrope that isn’t able to control its urges. We also find another ladder leading up - it terminates in the Wagner house.

Wagner family correspondence

Front and center, we find a damning letter, purportedly written by Christa Wagner, to the Baron. In it she pleads with the Baron to send enforcers to the town of Bayside and burn it to the ground to wipe out all the Werewolves. It is written in clear, precise hand, with a generic seal.

When we investigate the study, however, we find that all of the other correspondence in the house is written in a different hand. In fact, all the correspondence, whether from Karl or Christa, is written in the same hand. Further investigation revealed that Christa was, in fact, illiterate. She would dictate all her correspondence to Karl, who would write for her.

Checking the date on the first letter shows that it was dated after her husband’s death - in fact, the text of the letter mentions Karl’s murder as the inciting incident for Christa writing to the Baron.

The other correspondence is also sealed, but in that case, with the Wagner family seal. The letter to the Baron is a fake! Shocking!

Relaxing at the Inn

We head back to the inn. The party is wrestling with the cartoonishly fabricated evidence everywhere, and the changing M.O. of the murders. It does not seem to be a single killer at all, and someone is spreading false evidence around without any skill or thought.

Ivan, on the other hand, is utterly convinced that we should just kill everyone. He confronts Malar with outlandish (if tru) accusations, and tries to test him for lycanthropy. While this ridiculous conversation is happening, the front door of the inn is smashed in by a giant were-shark. It’s Gustav, the first person to go missing, whose body was never found. The man whose daughter at University is being stalked by someone. Also the Sad Man of the Forest. Anyway, he smacks the living shit out of Malar. It’s on!

Gustav, who won initiative with a natural 20, bites Louie (Louie saves vs Lycanthropy) and then hits him with a claw attack that hurls him out the door and clear across the town square.

Rusty, who finally got good initiative, grows to his large form and smacks Gustav with his silvered mace. No damage. Again? 2HP damage. This guy has damage reduction.

Cletus grapples Gustav - Nat 20! He breaks the sharks wrist. He shoves Gustav over - he’s prone. He puts him in a sleeper hold. Not good enough - Gustav is prone and grappled, but not suffocating. Ivan uses his reaction to throw silver dust in Gustav’s face, which is apparently the local equivalent of Silvery Barbs. Cletus gets another try at the choke hold - success! If he can hold on for 4 more rounds, Gustav will be unconscious.

Louie runs back into range, but on the way through the shrine in the center of the square, they smack into the big magnifying glass. Louie swings it around to aim at the inn, causing the same effects as Moonbeam.

Horus tries to use Suggestion on Gustav, and it would have worked too, if it weren’t for those meddling Legendary Resistances!

Ivan straight up shoots Gustav dead.

Malar - and the party - are pissed at Ivan. Ivan doesn’t care - his sister was killed by lycanthropes, they’re all evil!

The Captain grapples Ivan. Ivan pulls out a letter and says we have to help him or this letter will be sent to the Baron! (That’s apparently bad for us?). Cletus yoinks it straight out of his hand and throws it to Horus. Horus launches it into the air like a skeet, and Rusty firebolts it (Nat 20!). There’s nothing left but a light ash-fall.

Cletus chokes Ivan out.

Wrap-up

Horus forges a letter to the Baron on Ivan’s stationery, saying that he is going on an extended leave of absence to travel to Mordent and study under the most famous monster slayer of them all, Van Richten!

We get one writ each from Malar for doing good deeds.

Elara gives another one to Rusty for his work ensuring OH&S compliance.

Louie gets an extra one too, from Malar, for killing his evil dad. Rusty mutters that he was there too, but doesn’t get anything.

Horus assists the town putting Gustav to rest. Ivan is also put to rest, less ceremonially, but more in line with the cycle of life.

Malar asks us to track down Helena (Gustav’s daughter) to tell her what happened.

Loot!

Off Ivan we get a +2 silvered light crossbow, a +2 silvered rapier, Cunning Action dust (4 uses), Vanish Dust (3 uses), Uncanny Dodge Dust (4 uses), Studded Leather Armour and a +2 set of thieves tools.