Brazen Wolfe Tabletop

Pawprints and Broken Wards

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The writ from Aleris opened doors that would have otherwise stayed firmly closed for the party as they asked around the Eyeless Spire. However, the resounding information they got from the various mages, scholars, staff and teachers they questioned was that their animal companions or magical beasts had been acting strangely since the morning.

The party’s second stop was the market’s east quarter, where word had spread of a bizarre incident earlier that morning. A team of draybeasts, large four-legged mammals with small trunks and flexible monkey-like tails, had bolted mid-haul, overturning a cart of lacquered crates and chests that spilt their contents over the ground. By the time handlers had regained control and the onlookers had calmed down, several small but valuable items had vanished. Not taken by thieves, but spirited away by a flock of large black birds that had been watching from the rooftops.

Further enquiries led them to a disused courtyard between the spire and the old city wall. Here, they found more signs of disorder; chewed rope bindings, pawprints that stopped abruptly mid-step, and a scattering of broken ward-crystals that should have been all but impossible for an animal to tamper with.

In the midst of the mess sat a small brass charm in the shape of a feather on top of a rock. It hummed faintly with residual magic, the sort used to send a familiar to carry messages without a master’s instruction. Someone, or something, had used it recently.

Judging by the footprints and the other evidence they had seen, they were expecting a small Tabaxi or other creature that shared characteristics of the prints they had followed so far. However, they were surprised when a familiar raven cawed at them from a nearby wall before flying off with a dozen or so other ravens that rose in a strangely ordered flock.

And then there was the case of Yasil still being missing. The city guard’s search had turned up nothing, no sign of forced departure, no witnesses who had seen him leave or any clue of what had happened. One stable hand who mucked out stables at the inn where the party were staying swore he had seen the young apprentice at dawn, walking calmly through the east gate in the company of a pale-furred fox with three tails. The oddest part was that the stable hand was certain Yasil had not been carrying his satchel or anything at all.

Whatever had taken the Charm of Concord was beginning to look less like a lone apprentice’s blunder and more like a coordinated theft, carried out by creatures that should not be working together at all.

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