Event:4713/04/14 Varnhold

We arrive in Varnhold. The town seems deserted. As we cross the ford over the Kiravoy River on the way to Maegar Varn's building, we are attacked by chuul. We slay them. Find pit traps on the other side of the ford. We manage to mostly avoid them, but lose Moto. We decide to cut across town rather than keeping to the roads. Stopping in a house built into the cliff, we find a torn book written in the language of the Ulfen (Skald), about 30 pages long, along with a magic box, which is a folding boat. Continuing toward the stronghold, we kill a spriggan and 3 wolves in the yard, then begin breaching the fort. It's well designed to resist attack and is a rough break-in. We find the well room and find 4 potions of water breathing. Moving through the rest of the structure, we find the rooms looted / ripped apart. Grikk pieces together Varn's map of the area, gaining some info about the surrounding lands. We find a couple spellbook pages in the destroyed library. No notable reason for the disappearance of everyone though. We spend the night in the stronghold.

On 4/15, we begin exploring the town proper. Not much to speak of in most places:

• We drive rats out of the granary.
• We find a cat that tells Kessler, who uses Speak with Animals, that its feeders disappeared during the red sun time when the birdsong came. (Evening when a new birdsong came... spell?).
• Heading to the well, we find the rotting body of a naked spriggan lodged in the well. Grikk removes it.
• The Pottery looks ransacked.
• The Stockyard has dead animals being picked over by crows. As we investigate, we end up in a fight with a Murder Crow.
• The Cemetery has 14 wooden grave markers. The most recent grave belongs to Andrisha the Potter and is dated 1/22/4713.
• We visit the Church of Erastil.
• The two-story Inn has "Nomen" scratched into the front door. There's a rotting corpse of a spriggan with its head bashed in on the floor, while an unmoving giant spriggan stands surrounded by a nimbus of amber. Dispelling the amber mist reveals that this spriggan was already dead. A nearby table contains notes about a jade bracelet and Professor Professor Ervil Pendrod's research. Looks like Pendrod vanished with the others. Only one room was occupied, presumably by Professor Pendrod. His room contains typical traveling gear, along with a small library of reference works including a centuries old geography book by Carmyn e'Brothasa. The Nomen Centaur were a force the Taldan 3rd Army fought against. There's a note about a mythical island that Vordakai used to live on. We also find a masterwork viola created by Azores of Wispil. We take many of the books with us.
• The Tannery has hides outback that are probably Centaur hides missing the human portions. Grikk doesn't know. The others take effort to bury the hides as properly as they know how to.
• The ramshackle house just inside the town is filthy, and the hogs out back look like they were eaten by a wild hog.
• The Brewery made Cheerful Delver Stout.

We spend the remainder of the day fortifying the stronghold for the cohorts to hold up in.