Part I.ii. - Crimes Not Forgotten

[Juniper]

Calaera smiles. "A conscientious man, then. Good to have in his position. We'll check the jail, and then if he is riding out I will saddle Candlemark and see if I can find him. He could use the exercise anyway." She walks out of the kitchen and back through the house, waiting for Fin to join her again. "Shall we go, then?"

[comicsans12pt]

Solaz looks at the blood on her hand.

"This was probably done last night. The 'V' isn't likely to be related to any religious affiliation. If i ventured a guess, i'd say this is a personal vendetta. The timing is interesting, though."

She begins to whisper and a keen observer would notice the hand gestures she was making. The stone becomes clean and Solaz becomes visibly more calm.

She reads over the stone and runs her fingers over the the inscription and then each name. The smoothness of the stone is cool under her fingers contrasted with the sharp inscribed edges of the names.

She thinks about each life that was lost. How each one lost in the fire had a home and people who loved them, maybe children. She wonders if each one was mourned and wonders if there were some whose names were not inscribed here.

Then her mind turns to the prisoners. Who was housed here? Surely no town would want to remember the ignominy of housing prisoners, but after this amount of time, it seems the only ones who would even think about it are the children with their macabre sense of mystery-like the girls skipping rope on the way to the funeral. Why is the town so....so....bitter? No. Frightened? Maybe.

She shakes her head. There she goes again with her wandering thoughts. She stands to move around the monument to see if there is any trace of where the blood came from. She circles around back and looks over the back of the stone and then to the front again.

Finally, she looks to the prison. What view of it does she have from this spot and is it significant? She sighs. Will they ever learn more about it?

[logan]

"I'm ready."

Fin turns around and follows Calaera out, as they head off to locate the sherrif.

"If he's out riding, I will busy myself here around town while you go to search. I would be happy to do more research at the Laughing Demon."

[Veritas]

From the vantage point of Solaz and Navene, Harrowstone prison looms perhaps, at most, a half-mile to the south, atop the largest hill that can be seen to the horizon. Devoid of trees and most plant life, save for the stubborn grass, the hill looks slightly out of place. The prison dominates the surroundings, and the vantage point chosen makes it very unlikely that anyone could approach - or flee - unseen.

The prison itself is surrounded by a low wall that has begun to crumble; the roofs of watchtowers have collapsed inwards, the ramparts buckled and shattered, laying at the foot of the wall in several places. Stout iron gates, bristling with rust, conceal part of the forward facade. Inside the wall you can see the upper level of Harrowstone; an angled roof with a balcony to the front and a balcony to the left side. Presumably there was once a balcony on the right, but the entire right side of the prison is gone, as is the wall surrounding it; a dank pond waits there, filled with detrius, a sinkhole formed by the intensely hot fire that swept through the prison basement fifty years ago. The main building's stone is made of granite, but near every barred window, every steel door, black soot remains, permanently encrusting the stone with the remnants of that fire.

A wagon track, no longer well-used but still resisting nature's slow attempts to reclaim it, leads up to the gate from the town.

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Returning to the centre of Ravengro, Fin and Calaera quickly locate the jail, as indicated by the basic sign over the stout stone building. It is quiet, as one might expect the jail of a small town to be. Two horses are hitched to a post outside, and one man is leaning by the door. He is wearing a jerkin of stout leather and has a short sword strapped to his side; his clean-shaven face bears the glassy-eyed, dull look of the common constabulary - a ruffian who sought a badge to cover the occasional acts of cruelty handed out by a heavy-handed buffoon.

"Wot," he says in a Varisian one can only consider uneducated. "Can I help you?"

[joviality]

Navene watches as Solaz inspects the monument; she has taken a moment to simply take it in. Monuments, gravestones, tombs. They had always fascinated her. A place to remember those lost to the mortal coil. Yet she thought them also odd in some respects; for no one is ever truly lost to the multiverse. She wondered where the souls of the poor men and women whose names were engraved upon this particular hunk of stone were now. Some in paradise, others perhaps in hell... she had no way of knowing. 

It was then that she noticed Solaz's gasp. She studied the V as Solaz did, taking careful note of which names it covered. Desecrating a memory to those lost... Foul work indeed. Before Solaz wipes away all of the blood, she takes a piece of cloth from her pack to gather a sample. Perhaps the elf could do something with it. She then aids the gnome in restoring the monument to a shine. 

"I do not know who could have done this, but clearly someone who does not respect the dead - or the living they have left behind. Perhaps one of these Whispering Way characters we have heard so little about?"

"What do you think we should do from here? Head back to Kendra's to meet up with the others? I'm afraid I'm a bit at a loss."

[comicsans12pt]

"I think that i'd like to take a look around the grounds here. If someone is painting blood, perhaps we can see in what direction it came from."

Solaz looks at the ground around the monument. She looks for grass that has been tamped down by feet. She reaches out to the monument to feel how stable the stone is. A quiet knock on it checks for solidity. And then she walks to each of the trees and looks up and down the trunks and up to the branches.

Perception check: [dice=20] +6 [rand=0308963027924088477286762017720952200929684286871638677973996770036]

[Veritas]

The knock on the stone shows it is a solid piece of stone - a single slab that was carefully carved by a mason some time ago. Solaz finds no instabilities or insecurities within it. It is well constructed. The trees are tall and frame the statue nicely, and there is no sign of damage to them.

Behind the slab, however, Solaz finds in a tiny pool of blood, a rat - with its throat cut. There is very little blood, as if it has been drained before being discarded.

[Juniper]

A subtle tensing in posture, a slight curl to her lips, a lift to an eyebrow: the changes are subtle but Calaera is suddenly the penultimate aristocrat, her rank a new layer of armor. "I am the Lady Calaera Ordranti," she announces. "My associate and I would like to speak to the sheriff."

It is not the best tack to take, perhaps, but petty brutality as represented by this man (by the Gods, she hopes he's a deputy...) gets her back up every time. She'd rather avoid being messed with.

[logan]

Fin looks at the man, carefully, considering how likely this oaf might be to act unfavorably. Fin wasn't exactly keen on the idea of those who enforce the law. Being in a jail makes one wish to stay much further away from them in the future.

"Hello, sir" says Fin, speaking a little slower than usual.

[Veritas]

The deputy looks over Fin for a moment. His face does not hide emotions well, and it's obvious he is looking down on the elf - perhaps catching to his less aggressive stance, perhaps reacting to his mottled face, and the sneer gives everything away. He's already decided Fin could be guilty of a crime - any crime.

But then he catches the look on Calaera, and his eyes widen a little bit. The sneer vanishes as he straightens, and he hastily moves to open the door. "Yes'm," he says hastily. "The sheriff is inside."

The jail is a simple place; three cells line the back wall, stout iron bars dividing the cells from the main section of the jail. There are a couple small rooms to the side, but behind the desk sits a middle aged man writing with a quill. A wide-brimmed hat with a sheriff's star upon it sits beside him, and a dusty leather jacket is hanging on a peg by his desk. Dark eyes lift.

"Yes?" he asks in a soft voice.

[Juniper]

Calaera relaxes somewhat at the professional yet casual appearance of the sheriff, but her expression and bearing are still fairly formal. "Sheriff Caeller? I am Calaera Ordranti, and my associate Fin and I are working to close up Professor Lorrimer's affairs. We wanted to ask you what you knew about the circumstances of his death."

[comicsans12pt]

Upon seeing the rat with the drained blood, Solaz looks to Navene.

"Navene, dear, i expect you are not a squeamish person. I think i've found the source of the blood. There is a dead rat here and it appears that it has be drained of blood. I don't like the looks of this at all."

"If it is acceptable to you, when we finish any other business we might have here, i think perhaps we should go back to Kendra's and let the others know about this. I believe the ramifications of this are considerable. What do you think?"

[logan]

"Yes, as you are no doubt aware, we have travelled a long way for the Professors funeral... and he asked in his last will... for us to take care of his daughter and help her manage the affairs for a month."

"There are a lot of questions unanswered about what happened, and to help bring closure, we thought we could talk to you and see what information we could get. Kendra is in no state to do it on her own, sir."

Diplomacy Check (or atleast to aid Calaera)
[dice=20]+4[rand=364902816960038579374928738749251081635088761677827322343495432144]

[Veritas]

Sherrif Caeller leans back in his chair as the two approach, his eyes following them as they are asking about rather sensitive information. His head twists for a moment, and he is pondering, obviously, thinking over the request. A hand brushes his face, touching on the rough patch of stubble there. He nods after a second.

"I heard that you'd been named in the will. Kendra's a good girl. But there isn't much to tell," he says, after a second. "A piece of masonry dislodged from the prison and struck him on the head. What he was doing there? Damned if I know. Petros kept to himself. He wouldn't have told villagers he was going to Harrowstone. He snuck up there at night, by Pharasma, for whatever purposes."

He exhales. "What was left wasn't pretty. His entire face below his nose was smashed in, crushed his throat too. Not a quick way to die, I'm afraid." After a second the, sheriff looks down to his desk. "I wouldn't talk about it, if I were you. People don't much want to know about what happened up there. One of the reasons Petros's funeral wasn't well attended. I was away riding at the time. I heard about what happened. Reckon I owe you an apology for that as well."

[Juniper]

Calaera smiles at the sheriff. "No harm done. My companion is a Pharasman priest. Between her and Father Grimburrow, I think at least the immediate fears of the people were laid to rest fairly easily. Struck by a stone, you say?"

She pauses for a moment, thinking. "I had no idea the building was so unstable. I'm surprised the town hasn't taken action to raze whatever is left of it yet. And as for what he was doing there...I trust the Professor's motives implicitly, but I must admit myself concerned over what this affair may entail before we understand all that was in his mind. I have noticed how little the town is trusting of outsiders, especially outsiders curious about the prison and what happened there, no matter how long ago. If the site is still dangerous...that can do little to allay superstition."