ragath2

Early the next morning, Jacen, Xendra, and Dagmar woke to find Grelj didn't answer the knocks at his door. After having Flegril open the door, they found the window had been broken and that Grelj was gone. His equipment was still in the room, however.

They called Pevvik, head of the town guard, to the Inn and they sounded an alarm. Pevvik asked the guard if they noticed anything in the night. Don, the head of the night watch, said that four riders dressed in black left headed west toward Deeptown about two hours ago. He said he had not seen them before and didn't get a good look at them as they left.

Pevvik sent four riders to go track them down and bring them back to Pesca Beach for questioning. They quickly galloped off toward the gate and Pevvik told the party that he'd keep an eye out for Grelj or anything else suspicious. He said it was a bad omen to the beginning of the festival, but that they were still welcome to attend.

The party searched the small town top to bottom and found no sign of Grelj. About six hours later, the riders from the guards came back escorting four kids. The kids explained that a man paid them 50gp each to wear the black cloaks and ride to Deeptown. They thought it was a little shadey, but 50gp was a huge sum and they weren't doing anything wrong. Pevvik asked them to show him the coins and after checking that they weren't evil, he looked carefully at them and found them rather odd. They were standard sized coins, but they were octagonal and had the head of someone that looked a lot like Grelj on them. Don, sent for Silva the head of the docks and asked him if he ever had seen a coin like it. Silva looked and said he had. It is a common coin of Volsplat about a month's sail to the north.

"It is mostly barbarians up there, but Volsplat is a small city that trades in furs and metals. I'm sailing there tomorrow myself now that it's summer and the river is thawed there is a lot of shipping going there. A ship left a few hours ago in fact," he said, "they paid their docking fees in the same coin come to thing of it. Four men in black cloaks with a bunch of crates. They wouldn't store one of them in the cargo hold, wanted it in their room."

The party had checked the docks in their search, but not aboard the ships and they realized Grelj was most likely on his way to Volsplat.

"Could you sail now and catch them?" asked Dagmar

"I think so, but it might take several days and if they're sailing as fast as they can, it will be difficult to catch them before Volsplat." said Silva.

"We'll be going on your ship. How much will you charge to set sail in two hours?" ask Jacen.

"1000gp and you'll be marines."

Pevvik joined it, "I'll be sending Don with you. This all happened in my town and I want to see them brought back here to face justice!"

The party gathered their and Grelj's possessions and met at the docks, helping to load supplies so they could leave as soon as possible. After another hour, they were aboard and had set sail.

"Bleeeaah", said Dagmar as she heaved over the rail, "this is not the life for dwarves."

The party sailed for a week before seeing the sails of the other ship and tried to catch them, but the ship once again sailed ahead of them and they could not catch it.

After a month at sea they finally came to the port of Volsplat. The weather was much cooler up north and they could see snow on the mountains beyond the town. When they docked, the party immediately ran to the harbormaster and located the ship, but found the black four had left with their cargo eight hours earlier.

The party searched the town and found that a provisioner had sold the black four trail rations and horses. They also found that at least one of the four was well known in the town. Tantar the assassin had a 10,000gp bounty on his head in town for killing a wealthy shipping magnate. Many in town were buying equipment in a flurry to try and outfight themselves so that they could hunt him down and collect the bounty before he got away. They also found out that the rest of the four were Grikk, a half-orc former town guard, Esleck, an evil cleric, and Verru, a dark elf sorcerer.

The party bought warhorses (and a warpony for Dagmar) and rode south toward the mountains. They passed a few adventuring parties on foot and a few of the slower parties on horseback before night finally fell and they had to make camp. After another day of riding, the noticed a few riderless horses heading back to town and toward night the saw a campfire up ahead.

Jacen left the party to scout ahead and see if it was the four in black and Xendra sent her owl familiar ahead as well. While crouched in the bushes, he saw a large rider on a huge horse also dressed in black with a skull on his shield ride up to the campfire. He rode up to the and jumped from his mount while drawing his greatsword. The one Jacen recognized as Tantar immediately disappeared from view, then a black-skinned elf reached out a hand and a ball of fire slammed into the skull-shielded rider, setting him on fire. An equally large half-orc then grabbed the greataxe that was resting at his side and charged the flaming fighter, cleaving him twice with force great enough to knock him to the ground. Then a hammer of blue light leapt from another of the four, smashing the fighter's horned helm. The skull shield fighter then leapt up and swung his huge sword at the half-orc, connecting in the ribs, but his success was over as his knees buckled and he fell forward to the ground. Tantar pulled his two daggers from the fighter's back after the flames burned down. The dark elf then sent her white hawk into the air to scout the area and Jacen found it adventagous to retreat back to camp as stealthily as he could.

On his way back, four orcs on horses rode to the campfire, but he left the clanging of swords behind and reported what he saw to his comrades.

The next morning, they went to the remains of the camp and found several orc bodies, stripped of anything of value, piled near the fire. Dejected, they continued to pursue, but at a careful distance.