After six months primarily doing their own thing, the party reconvened at their headquarters in preparation for a momentous event: The hiring of their first intern. As Elvira left her therapist's office to walk back home, she spotted a child sadly looking at a broken toy, and was unable to resist a bubbling urge to cackle. Horrified, she told Sammy (the child) to go ask his mom for help, before hurrying home.
Laura spent the morning doing what she does best: engaging in acts of terror against questionably guilty people. She spotted a logging surveyor in her part of the woods, scooped him up in her talons, and dropped him on one of his coworkers to send a message.
Salt, meanwhile, was playing dodgeball with his orphans, including Bruce, a loud-mouthed though definitely not actively malicious child who has taken to monk training well. Salt pounded Bruce with a dodgeball, before noticing the hulking form of Laura's Giant Eagle form inbound, and using his psychic powers to get everyone inside.
Once she landed, Laura reverted to human form, and remained covered in shit. Elvira rolled up, and the three of them started chatting while Lucifer's parent (I don't fucking know man I haven't made a consistent voice, accent, or distinction between the two at all. They literally both always sound like "a Minnesotan".) walked up and dropped her off. The group did introductions, Lucifer made fun of everyone a little bit, and then they decided to go down to the job board to see if there was anything interesting to do.
At the guildhall, the party found none other than everyone's favorite Sahuagin, The Baron Aquor chilling next to the board and directing people. Aquor, it turns out, is back on the surface because his dad decided he could handle himself after his good work helping to defeat The Deep One, and he's now off doing what he wants (and living off of a very healthy trust fund). As the group was starting to chat with Aquor, they heard screaming and a blood covered woman named Phoebe rushed into the guildhall. She explained that her mother, Lenora, had been murdered in the night, and the party rushed off to investigate.
At Lenora's apartment, the party met a landlord who was absolutely distraught at how much it would cost to clean all this up, before investigating the room itself. The party could tell that someone had broken into the apartment through the window, mutilated Lenora's body, and also smashed her mirror (spoiler, but the reason for the mirror smashing was the silver backing of the mirror). Salt found a trail of blood leading away from the apartment, and as everyone else left through the door, he jumped through the window.
Outside, the rest of the party ran into a cleric of Lathander (whose name was never established), who was here to perform Lenora's last rites. Salt, through the window, watched these last rites and lip-read the cleric praying that Lenora "rise again soon to serve in the name of the Lord of Light".
The party followed the blood trail to a tenement house, deducing that their quarry was some kind of shapechanger from the diminishing claw marks in the cobbles of the street as they traveled. At the tenement house, they talked to a chain-smoking and disinterested representative of the management company that runs the tenement house. She told them four doors to check out, each of which should have a single adventurer who had walked in that morning battered, bloody, and bruised.
At the first door, the party met a small, smoldering, mickey-mouse-voiced gnome. The gnome had an alibi, so despite his allure to the party members, they left him to his day. The next door proved trickier. The resident refused to open it until Salt bashed in the door, at which point the party saw a room full of shattered furniture, a broken window, and a very hirsute (and completely naked) man.
Questioning the man, they found out that 1. he had been having weird events where he went to sleep at night and woke up to shattered furniture and discarded clothes, 2. these had started after he asked a hag to make him "strong enough to survive the nights out here", and 3. he always went to sleep around sunset and woke up after sunrise.
The party stunlocked my guy who should've been a pretty difficult fight, and instead took him around looking for a cure. First they tried the church of Lathander, but when the priest demanded the man devote his life to the god to be healed, the party decided to look elsewhere. Before they left, the priest gave warning that if another victim were killed, he would have his paladins hunt down the werewolf and kill him.
Next, the party tried the Grove of Chauntea, where Laura had a brief religious experience at Ethyl's grave, and checked in on her mountain of unread reports at the ETA. A turtle turned into a "babe", and while disparaging how smelly and dirty Laura was, produced an amulet that would prevent the man's transformation as long as he wore it. The werewolf was then granted the right to stay at the grove since he probably didn't have the money to deal with the damages he had done to the tenement house.
Returning home, a few more things happened to the party-members. Laura received a report from a loyal ETA major named George "Codename Sparrow". Sparrow reported that the ETA was taking disproportionate action against litterers and polluters, as per policy, but also that they were hearing reports of a secretive war between small groups of cultists and the burgeoning church of Lathander within the city.
Back at HQ, Salt and Elvira received a report from the guild outlining major external events. In the north, a goliath religious settlement had reportedly been attacked and massacred by giants. More immediately dire, however, was an official diplomatic message from Cilora. In the name of the nation's king, "Aelfwine (I'm retconning this because I literally lost the piece of paper I wrote the name on) of house Ravencrest, Third of his name, high lord of the Cilorian Kingdom, protector of its faithful, and sovereign over all his claims", inviting Beggar's Hole to send a delegation of champions and leaders to a tournament to be held in two weeks time in the capital of Ciloria, Maetrigar.
Salt was able to intuit that the timing of this invitation was suspiciously close to the start of the tournament, acting both as a slight against Beggar's Hole and forcing the party to attend with a reduced entourage and without much time to prepare. Not attending, however, would be a diplomatic slight of its own, and the party decided to attend the tourney. Salt called for his eight best students to accompany the party, Laura called for three of her ETA men and "Lord's Bane", her hammer, and the party began making other preparations to travel to the hostile country.
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