Starday, Desnus 7th, morning

Finding the Land Farm was a chore. If you have ever followed directions given to you by a 10-year-old boy, then you probably know what I mean, and it didn’t help that they were based on landmarks that were decades out of date. Fortunately, the copse of trees still stood, as did enough of the house, that we didn’t lose half the day literally wandering in a field before we came across it.

The grave markers sat at the edge of the crumbling ruins of the farm, each bearing the name of one of the Land family. Three of them were marked with an engraving of a four-petaled flower, denoting them as victims of the Red Death Plague. Unfortunately, they were also accompanied by mounds of fresh dirt and open pits, because someone had recently dug them up.

There were footprints everywhere. More than one person had been at work here exhuming the bodies. Prints ran between the open graves and what was left of the house, and as we approached the latter the trail devolved from orderly footsteps to the chaos of a battle. As if to emphasize that discovery, a low growl came from inside the remains of the structure.

We entered cautiously. The floor was splattered with dried blood, and in the corner of the front room sat the rotting remains of an owlbear and a severed human arm. The latter sported a tattoo, and when Zhog saw it, he said, “Oh, we are fucked.” It was the tattoo worn by Kullen’s crew.

I should probably say “gang” there, but I am trying to be polite.

“My uncle’s crew is down one member,” he added, underscoring the “we are fucked” part.

That’s when a second owlbear announced its presence. This one was obviously not a corpse like the first, but it had been seriously injured. Which is probably the only reason we got through this alive.

“I think this was a mated pair!” I said as I moved in to fight it off. Kullen and his crew are tough, but two owlbears defending their nest? No wonder it had gone wrong.

I sliced into the thing as Sera and Zhog moved in next to me. It lashed out at the three of us, landing savage blows over and over. Still, we managed to whittle it down, and I finally got in behind it and checked it with my shoulder. The spikes on my armor drove into it, and it dropped to the ground, dead.

We found an owlbear…chick? cub? (I am not an expert on owlbear vocabulary)…in a nest in the far corner of the main room. So, not just a mated pair defending their nest, but one defending their offspring. Honestly? I’d be amazed if Kullen’s crew was only down one.

This did leave a problem of what to do, as the young owlbear obviously isn’t going to survive on its own. The thing is, wild animals literally cannot be tamed, so it’s not like someone could take it home as a pet. And while animals can technically be trained and, I don’t know, used as guards or something (as long as you are very careful never to forget that they are wild) that process still starts with raising one. And let’s not forget that owlbears aren’t just some normal animal, either: they are an ill-tempered abomination that, according to legend, were created by some ancient wizard that possessed more talent than sense.

As far as I’m concerned, owlbears fall into that category of “kill on sight”, but the others saw this as an opportunity—one with razor sharp claws, and a vicious bite, all of which we had recently become acquainted with—because they are either insane or greedy or both. So we took it with us, on the understanding that we’d find someone to take it off our hands as soon as possible so it could become their problem long before it became ours.

That, however, was a future concern. The more immediate one was Kullen. All indications were that his people had dug up the Land family, and if we wanted their remains back, we’d likely have to talk to him. Given that one of them died doing it? Well, talking to Kullen under ideal circumstances is mating fire and kerosene. Intruding on one of his jobs, much less a job where one of his own had died? I wasn’t looking forward to that. And from the looks of it, neither was Zhog.

Afternoon

With all this on our minds, we headed into town. The first stop was to see Allustan about our owlbear problem opportunity. I guess he had been voted “mark of the week”.

Allustan: Diamond Lake’s resident wizard, and brother of our corrupt mayor. The mayor who oversees our corrupt constabulary, and keeps the corrupt mine managers in check, and who is so widely known for corruption that it doesn’t even qualify as an open secret: it’s just open.

You are probably sensing a theme here.

I am not sure what to make of Allustan. The rumor is that he and his brother were a lot alike when they were younger, but that Allustan has mellowed with age and might even qualify as being “civic-minded”. Supposedly, he helps reign in his brother’s worst impulses and serves as an effective barrier against a change in the balance of power between the corrupt city government and the corrupt mine owners. Personally? I find the whole political situation distasteful, but no one gave me a vote.

Allustan is also apparently Viktor’s mentor. Viktor is a pretty decent guy, and he speaks fairly highly of Allustan, so I guess that’s a point in his favor. Of course, Viktor’s hardly an unbiased source, but he’s been sharing some of our discoveries with Allustan and so far that hasn’t turned into a warrant. So, carry on, I guess.

Allustan was willing to play ball on the owlbear plan, at least for now. He said he knew someone who knew someone, which I guess should not have been a surprise. “I’ll get in contact with him again. If he doesn’t want one, he will likely know someone who does. Even after a reasonable handling fee, your proceeds from the sale—if, of course, one can be arranged at all—would still be considerable.” For my own part, I just stayed silent and let them talk. There was nothing positive that I was going to contribute to the conversation.

Viktor showed him more of the rubbings he’d taken, which is probably why Allustan was willing to go along with this audacious plan.

“You must tell me where you found these!” he said. “They are tied to the most ancient histories of our world!”

Viktor looked at me and I just shrugged. May as well go all the way.

“There is an entrance to what seems to be an ancient, uh, building—”

“Cairn,” I corrected. All the way.

“Cairn. And inside, that’s where we found this.” He went on to describe the traps, chambers, and various passageways.

Allustan’s suspicion was that these were tied to the Wind Dukes, which our parlay with the earth elemental (before we smashed it to rubble) more or less confirmed. “What we are talking about are the movers of events that date back to the Age of Creation, when many of the deities of Golarion had not even yet come into existence. This information will help me research these glyphs. This could be the discovery of a lifetime! These look like they are of the language of the Vaati.”

I didn’t know what a Vaati was, but he did, and it sounded important, I guess? If he was willing to do some legwork here to figure out what, exactly, we found, then great. More free time for us. And as a bonus, we could spend it back at the house instead of choking on the air in town.

The second stop was the meeting with Kullen. We debated the best way to do this without involving his “associates”, and settled on catching him just after the lunch rush at the Feral Dog. And, yes, they serve food there. Don’t ask. After several days of trail rations pretty much anything is an improvement.

I worked as a server there a few years ago when I was a teenager, in a moment of what I would call desperation and character-building. Mom and dad were not happy about my choice, especially given the reputation of the place and what goes on there, and I wasn’t either. But let’s be honest: the family needed the money. Even the pittance I was bringing home with me was enough to make a difference in our lives. It was also one of the few places one could get a serving job without any experience.

Believe it or not, it’s a lot safer than it looks, and that is mostly because of Kullen’s management. Say what you will about the man—and there is plenty to say—but he keeps people in line. Kullen is loud, volatile, and borderline abusive, but when you work there you know he’s the only person you have to worry about. Only the craziest of crazy people cross him, and few go on to repeat their mistakes. I had to put up with a lot from the patrons there, but Kullen made sure they never crossed certain lines.

This may sound like I have fond memories of working at the Feral Dog. I don’t. The only good things that came out of it were the money and my friendship with Zhog. What I’m saying is, I really didn’t want to be back there—this made for twice in one week—but we weren’t exactly drowning in options.

Alas, Kullen wasn’t around. We sat at a table and ordered lunch, hoping he might come in while we ate. There weren’t many customers left after the rush, but we did hear a frustrated voice from a four-top nearby: “You said that cairn was full of treasure!” I turned to look that way and recognized the group from Korvosa we saw a few days back. I could practically script out that conversation. We’ve all heard it, so many times.

After the better part of an hour, we figured Kullen wasn’t coming back any time soon so Zhog suggested catching him at home. Pestering Kullen where he lived felt like a bad plan to me, but Zhog knows his uncle best and the list of alternatives was down to zero, so I didn’t object. This was basically the Zhog show, anyway. There was no one here better equipped to start this conversation, and my opinions on the matter probably weren’t worth anything.

We caught Kullen as he was coming out the door. Because we just have that kind of timing.

“And what’s all this?” he said, looking our group over and eventually setting his eyes on Zhog disapprovingly.

“We need to talk to you,” Zhog replied. “And I brought somethin’ to eat.”

Kullen relented with a grunt and showed us in. He sat at a table and glared at us. Finally, to Zhog, he said, “I didn’t know you had this many friends. Ever.”

“I got business associates. We are doin’ business together. And our business crossed your business and we need to talk about it.”

This was the part of the conversation that none of us were looking forward to. Kullen did not disappoint.

“Zhog, when you first came here, I gave you the best advice you were going to get in this town. ‘Keep your nose—and any other part of you that you want to keep attached—out of other people’s business.'”

So that was clearly not a great start. But, good news! It got worse. Zhog pulled out the arm and showed it to his uncle. “We found this. And, by the way, the owlbears are dead.”

“Zhog,” he replied, his tone getting increasingly threatening, “this looks an awful lot like stickin’ your nose in someone else’s business.”

“Look,” he says, pointing at the tattoo, “everybody knows what that means. If somebody else had found that, it would have been trouble for you. I’m doin’ you a favor by returning what’s yours.”

“What. Were you doing. In that house?”

And now we had to talk fast. We didn’t want word of the Cairn getting out, so Viore and Zhog were a little loose with the truth, and vague about where we had been, but stuck to the core of it. We needed the return the bodies to their graves, and bury the bones of the boy with his family. We had found the boy’s remains, and we needed to put his spirit to rest. Kullen knew about the marker with the empty grave, which confirmed to us that he had been there.

“This was a bad deal all along,” he said, borderline furious. “And it cost Skutch his life! So. What do you want from me?”

“We want to know where the bones are.”

“You’ve been in this town long enough to know that nothing is ever that easy. This puts me at risk.”

I knew where this was going, and figured it was my turn to talk. I asked, “What degree of financial risk are you facing?”

“What are you offering?”

Unsurprisingly, the art of the bribe is not one of the skills you pick up in Abadar’s church. While offering money to a private party to get some information from them is a far cry from, say, paying off a government official, it’s still not something that is encouraged so I was out of my depth. In the end, it cost us 100 gold to get Kullen to talk. I have no idea if we overpaid, but that was not our chief concern.

The job, he explained, was a request from Balabar Smenk to obtain some bones for someone named Filge. Smenk is Diamond Lake’s resident creep—other than our mayor, that is—and arguably its most ruthlessly successful mine owner. He actually owns the Feral Dog, and in a way, that means he owns Kullen and his crew. So when Smenk said “dig up some bones for Filge”, that is exactly what they did. The problem, of course, was that this cost Kullen one of his men, and when Kullen angrily expressed his displeasure to Filge—he knew better than to complain to Smenk—Filge dismissed him out of hand.

And that is how you get on Kullen’s really bad side.

“You go get your bones if you want. I don’t care about that. But, in return, you bring me that thin bastard’s eyes.”

Well, crap.

Afternoon

According to Kullen, Filge is the latest in a long line of vagrants to move into the old observatory. I use the term “move into” loosely there because it doesn’t really have an owner, so they aren’t really tenants so much as they are squatters occupying the space. Since there’s no owner, there is no one to file a complaint against trespassers, and that makes it remarkably easy to just sort of live there for a while until what passes for the authorities in town figures it out. Keep your head down, and you can go several weeks before you’re arrested.

I’ve never been to a nicer town, myself, but we get visitors from them quite often, and I’ve read a few stories that take place in one. In a nicer town, the observatory would probably be what the locals call an “eyesore”. Pretty much everything in Diamond Lake fits that description, though, so we just call it “the observatory”.

Dad says there used to be an order of monks living there. He didn’t say who their deity was, but it was probably Desna or an empyreal lord since it’s way too old for Nocticula and way too public for the less savory faiths. He didn’t say how long ago, either, but based on the crumbling exterior of what is surprisingly quality construction, I’m going to guess it’s been a few generations since they left. It sits on this bluff—an important feature in an observatory—that overlooks one of the town’s abandoned mines. The mine is unimportant; it’s so old that no one remembers its name or who it belonged to, so we just call it “the mine under the observatory”.

Our first stop before going over to visit Filge was to The Captain’s Blade to pick up some weaponry. The way we figured it, Filge specifically needed bones for some project, which suggested necromancy, which further suggested we might be facing them as skeletons. I love my blade—I made it myself, after all—but smashing bones is not what it’s designed to do. A pronged hammerhead on the end of a seven-foot pole, on the other hand? The right tool for the job.

One Lucerne hammer and a 10-minute walk later, we were standing next to the narrow stairs that led up to the small landing in front of the entrance. Below the landing was a wooden door that looked like it would open to a little storage space. It’s the sort of thing that you’d call a shed if it was a free-standing structure, but since it was built into the side of the observatory we just called it “the storage space under the stairs”.

It was at this point that I stopped to think about what we were about to do. Specifically, we didn’t have any real authority to just barge in and evict Filge. Abadar is pretty clear on the point that he doesn’t care for vigilantism or any other action that can be summed up as “taking the law into your own hands”. That being said, there’s a rather long list of other things that Abadar has little tolerance for, too, and those include: corrupt government officials, squatters, and animating the dead. While we could go tell Sheriff Cubbins that a suspected necromancer was occupying the observatory and robbing graves, the problems with that approach ranged from “believing anything we said” to “getting him to care” to “doing something about it”.

You might think that this would put me in a bit of a bind, but here’s the thing: I took up this faith because I honestly believe it’s possible to govern people responsibly, and the way you do that is more or less the opposite of how things are done in Diamond Lake. Sometimes you just have to lead by example. If there’s a necromancer squatting in an abandoned building, animating the dead from corpses that he’s exhuming from peoples’ graves, then they’re kind of a danger to everyone, and maybe that’s something you should investigate sooner rather than later. If, in the course of this investigation, said necromancer were to start a fight and end up dead, then that’s unfortunate but also something of a time-saver.

Sera opened the door to the storage space under the stairs, revealing the storage space under the stairs and a tiny creature that appeared to be made up of bone fragments. It was not at all happy about our intrusion, and it scurried up to us and started biting at me. Someone called it a “mote”, which is apparently short for, “undead creature made of bone fragments”. Sera and I smashed it to even smaller bone fragments, and we more or less had our confirmation that this Filge character was a troublemaker.

The entry room in the observatory, proper, confirmed our earlier hypothesis. Three animated skeletons—two adults and a child—sat behind a crude barricade and they were armed with crossbows. They shot at us as we came in, and so we smashed them into fragments, too. A quick examination of their remains showed skeletal deformities consistent with the plague that claimed the Land family, so that was progress and more proof of our suspicions. Further examination revealed that their crossbow bolts were coated with some sort of poison, which is another entry on the list of things Abadar doesn’t approve of. It was also what some might call “antisocial behavior”.

Most of the rooms on the ground floor of the observatory were still empty, which made a certain kind of sense: Filge was only one person and probably did not need all of this space. He did, however, find a use for a rather large room at the base of the tower that was probably a former dining hall, and it was the creepiest thing I have ever seen. Nine decomposing bodies were seated, motionlessly, around a table, with dinner plates, silverware, and unfinished glasses of wine set before them. What was he doing with nine zombies at a dinner table? No idea. What was the point of all this? Didn’t care. They didn’t even flinch as we destroyed them, one by one.

Stairs ascended the tower to the room Filge was using as his bed chamber (the large bed in one corner gave it away). Continuing with the “I’m a psycopath” theme, a mummified figure about the size of a gnome or halfling, dressed in a black suit and tophat, stood against one of the walls. It was holding a platter with a woman’s severed head on it. A platinum piece sat on the head’s outstretched tongue. Another corner of the room held a statue of an angelic figure, and the base of it was inscribed with “Filge” in ornate lettering.

Someone clearly has a high opinion of themselves.

We left the head alone, because why would we want that? And also because it felt like an obvious trap. A small work desk contained a mess of notes and papers. Among them was a letter to Filge from Smenk, requesting his services. Smenk claims someone has been finding “green worms and unkillable zombies” in the southern hills, and they’ve been brought below the Dourstone Mine for study. Who is “they”?  And why would “they” be below the Dourstone Mine? And how does Smenk know about any of it? These were all good questions, and they suggested we had stumbled upon more than just a vainglorious necromancer with limited social skills and a penchant for grave-robbing.

We ascended the stairs to the top floor of the observatory. A long time ago it probably held a telescope for viewing the stars. Now, it hosted Filge’s necromantic laboratory. There were four glass cylinders spaced evenly around the room, each filled with a yellow fluid and containing a monstrous humanoid body within. Filge, himself, was in the center, doing something with the body of a blue-skinned humanoid creature as though he were a surgeon in an operating theater, with an animated skeleton following him about. It seems he didn’t waste any time moving in and getting to work.

Filge was displeased with the interruption. At his command, the glass tanks shattered and zombies emerged from each, three of them troglodytes, and the fourth a bugbear. These are creatures that are disgusting even when they are alive, so you can imagine how much more fun they are when they are dead.

Unfortunately, they also did their job of keeping us pinned down. We had to fight our way through them to get to Filge, giving him the time and opportunity to toss spells at us. Just as Sera was about to reach him, he did something that froze her in place and suddenly we had an emergency on our hands. I left the zombie I was dealing with to Zhog, and ran to her side.

Filge was holding a large syringe filled with liquid and was preparing to inject her with it. Snagsby and I arrived at the same time and managed to keep him away from her, so he stabbed Snagsby with it instead. Fortunately, Snagsby was able to shake off most of the effect, but he still did not look good as whatever was in there took hold.

As the others closed in around us, I used my polearm to trip Filge, and he fell to the ground. He tried to cast a spell while lying on all fours, but he lost his concentration and it fizzled out. At that point he yelled, “I yield! I yield!” and the fight was over.

Then Viore approached him and asked, “Do you repent? Are you willing to undo the evil you’ve done? Are you ready to worship Sarenrae?”

Filge answered the way any reasonable person would. “What?”

Which was not the answer Viore was looking for. He executed the man on the spot, saying, “He can go sort it out with the gods.”

I don’t feel good about that at all, and if I had known that this was where Viore was going, I would have intervened. This whole situation was a moral tightrope as it was, and one where I had to rationalize my involvement. But on the other hand, we were surrounded by mountains and mountains of evidence that Filge was animating the dead, stealing remains of those who had been properly and respectfully interred, using peoples’ corpses as playthings, and just being a generally awful person. But on the other, other hand, he had surrendered. But on the other, other, other hand, none of us put much faith in what passes for law enforcement and justice in Diamond Lake, either, so I can more or less see Viore’s point. Sarenrae didn’t have a problem with it, either, but it still felt wrong to me. This is the sort of thing that comes back to bite you.

A search of the floor turned up a foot-long tube filled with some chemical solution, and inside was a slim, green worm. Likely this was the worm that Smenk referenced in his letter to Filge. We agreed to take it to Allustan in case he could make some sense of it.

On our way out, Zhog stopped to pick up the mummified figure in the tophat and glasses.

“What do we want that for?” I asked.

“For my uncle.”

I decided to leave it at that.

Sunday, Desnus 8th (small hours)

The big question, of course, was “What next?” And if my faith hadn’t been challenged before, it was sure getting a workout now.

As the observatory has no owner, that makes it the property of the city, which in turn makes its steward the Governor-Mayor. An upstanding citizen of a law-abiding settlement would, of course, immediately report all of this to the authorities and let them investigate Filge’s crimes. But Diamond Lake is far from a law-abiding town, and our raucously alcoholic sheriff?  When it was first announced that Mayor Neff had appointed Cubbin to the job, people literally thought it was a joke. And when I say “literally” there, I literally mean literally. No one took Cubbin seriously until he actually arrested someone. Like, for real.

And as bad as Cubbin is? His deputies are even worse, if you could believe such a thing is possible. The most upscale entertainment venue the town has—remember, this is Diamond Lake so the term is relative—is the Spinning Giant, and neither Sheriff Cubbin nor any of his deputies are allowed on the premises. At all. Not even in an official capacity (many of the Giant’s patrons hail from the Garrison, which is how they’re able to get away with that). That in itself says plenty about local law enforcement.

The general consensus was to consider our actions here a public service, one for which we did not require any official recognition. We also didn’t want to risk panicking the citizens by exposing proof of necromancy in their collective backyards.

And people wonder why I am having trouble sleeping tonight.

While Zhog took care of the “delivery” for his uncle, I sought out the city records for the mine office. It took a couple of hours of digging to determine that there was simply no record of it, presumably because both it and the mine pre-dated the current cadaster. We could put our own legal claim on the property by defining the plot and paying a small fee for the acreage. I added this task to my to-do list.

When I got back to the observatory, the rest of the group had finished erasing signs of Filge’s presence, and arranged his corpse (and those of his zombified victims) into a pile for burning later that night.

We (re-)buried the Land family first. There was no service this time as we were tired and just wanted to get all of this over with. Also, I wasn’t feeling so charitable towards Alastor after what he’d done to me. Any words I’d have been asked to say would likely have been south of polite.

We returned to the observatory to start the bonfire and then headed out for the house before it got large enough to attract attention.

Stars, what a day.