24 Khordak
The Pink Unicorn crew set about some business before joining Calloway’s soldiers.
Aida opened the safe from von Stettin’s safe house. Along with cash and treasure, they found a pair of magic boots that enhanced Aida’s running and jumping, and a mastercrafted axe that let the holder sense his depth underground. Oskraks took this.
They searched the assassin’s knapsack. Along with empty potion bottles of true strike and magic missile, they found a cash payment in platinum and a vial of suicide acid, that is, acid laced with a mineral narcotic that allows it to be drunk painlessly. It both kills and destroys the mouth as a precaution against magical interrogation.
They took Gerald’s body to his order and attended the pyre at his modest funeral.
Then they went shopping to supply themselves for the long march ahead. Most notably, they bought a string of horses to allow them to weave in and out of the army’s path.
Calloway’s army had already moved out of the Garth. The crew caught up with them at a new camp at the edge of a wood that surrounds the Garth. They found the army happily poaching firewood.
As they entered the camp, an aide greeted them and told them that they would be bunking in a contubernium called The Cave. The tent in question had that name written in whitewash on a plank above the door, and an orcish fetish hanging from a forked pole beside it.
As they passed into the tent, a physicker in a white, red-trimmed cloak passed out. Blinking in the dark tent, Aida was swept up in a great bear hug by an orc. Brugo had been smuggling supplies to the camp, and joined when the army moved out.
A young man arose and stepped forward to greet them. His name was Bartolt Kolb, and he had been an officer in training when his unit was disbanded. He had joined Calloway’s camp. Although the Cave Dwellers were auxiliaries and not subject to strict military discipline, he had drifted into a managerial role in the tent.
He introduced them to the other Cave Dwellers: Evelyn Letalova, an arcanist of unknown skill who was currently wrapped in a cloak and “projecting her astrum through eleven realms” with the help of a small hookah; Clara Lauper, a semiretired adventurer; and, though he was out shoeing horses, Harrom Dremlin. Bartolt warned them against calling Harrom a dwarf; he preferred the endonym gnome, from a dwar- gnomish word relating to mystic wisdom.
Annais immediately began scheming to make The Cave the most happening tent in the camp. She learned that Clara could sing and Bartolt could bake. She uncorked a couple of bottles of wine and began an impromptu cookout with live music.
Harrom returned from his work and greeted the newcomers vigorously, challenging Annais and Oskraks to wrestle and showing off his silver belt in the gnomish martial art of muzi tarro. Both brushed the challenge off, and Annais asked him what was good to drink around here; they began drawing up plans for a mobile still.
25 Khordrak
In the morning, the army decamped and moved north. As Calloway feared further tracking of her movements, the army was never to receive its marching orders ahead of time.
28 Khardrak
After three days of moving north, the army came within riding distance of the monastery where Felix Eberlin was being held.
The Pink Unicorn crew struck out on their horses, planning to hit the monastery and rejoin the army further north.
The monastery stood in the middle of a mulberry grove surrounded by a low wall. The crew jumped the wall and slipped up the hill to the monastery.
They grappled up to a second-floor window and slipped into the main building. It was a prayer hour, so the upper floors were mostly deserted. They started upward, but then hid from a lone monk who was descending. They turned around and headed for the cellar.
The cellar was filled with vats of wine of various vintages, some of them quite good. Aida picked the lock on a treasure chamber, which held a few chests of treasure and a silver coffer holding the skeletal hand of a saint. Oskraks checked this over and judged it to have some virtue.
Deeper in the cellar, they passed through a small catacomb, checking every burial place to be sure Felix was not bound there. At the bottom of the catacomb, they found a locked iron door.
Picking their way through it, they found a domed chamber. The walls were sculpted all the way around the floor, so the room had no sharp angles. Beneath grating, water flowed in a ring around the outside of the room. The floor within the ring was covered in faint carvings that repeated the phrase, “Let whatever rests here rest alone.” In the center of the room, a huge lead sarcophagus was bound to the floor by iron chains.
Annais approached and put her ear to the coffin. Inside, she heard a slow heartbeat.
The party left the room and locked the door behind them.
They waited in the catacombs for the next prayer hour, and then explored further.
The cellar let into a tunnel that crossed the cloister and debouched into a charcoal cellar. Making their way upward from this, they found a scriptorium and library. They searched for incriminating documents, but found none.
They returned to the cellar, passed through the tunnel, and started making their way upstairs. The door at the top of the stairs was now locked.
Annais took the door off its hinges. Beyond, six monks faced them in the hallway. The two in front loosed crossbow bolts that bounced off Annais’s armor.
Annais and Oskraks carved through the monks. Having gone loud, the party scrambled at full speed to check the upper floors of the building.
They reached the abbot’s office on the top floor. While Aida began going through his papers, the others looked out the window. Evidently the bodies had been found and the monks were in a rout, believing that the thing in the basement was loose.
From nearby, they heard someone screaming, “You can’t leave me here!” They followed the voice down a hall and fought an animated suit of armor that guarded the door to the tower.
In the tower was Felix. They helped him down and told him all that had happened during his captivity. He wanted to join Calloway’s army to support Amélie, but the party gave him a donkey, piled him with silks and golden icons, and told him to return and save his sister’s house from ruin.
In an outbuilding, the party found a still. They loaded it onto a donkey cart, and filled a second with the finest wine they could find.
They caught up with Calloway’s camp. There, they distributed some of the wine and told the quartermasters about the unguarded monastery full of ill-gotten treasure.
Several foraging parties visited the monastery, solving Calloway’s funding issues for the immediate future.
