Wednesday May 19th, just after the body's appearance

[willyousee]

Travelers: if you were not at Thistle House tonight, you need to know. A face familiar to some as the Blue Illuminant has appeared at the door - unmistakably dead.

[The speaker's voice may be familiar, with its soft French lilt, but Alcuin is not precisely calm tonight. Indeed, he seems shaken and queasy.]

I can show you if you wish, but it is most unusual. And unpleasant.

Keep your wits about you and please stay in close contact with one another if you can. I would suggest not venturing out alone, and if you can manage to stay close with our infiltrator friends, so much the better.

Have any of you any expertise in unnatural deaths? We are going to need your help if we are to determine what has done this and how best to stop it happening again.

Comments

[gitanes]

Exotic like unusual. Exotic like magical. Magical tortures, Alcuin, the kind that would leave behind those markings, that smell.

[willyousee]

The sulfur and the punctures in particular. I know little of torture, but he is soaking wet, caked in mud from the lake shore, and the lake is said to have a sulfurous essence. Do you think it likely that he was bled and drowned in the lake?

[gitanes]

I think it's highly likely. It'd definitely be easier to do that than put a bunch of sulfur in a bathtub, and harder to trace.

What I don't understand is why he ended up outside of Thistle House.

[stophamatime]

Wouldn't it be a really bad place to put someone unless you want everyone to find them?

[willyousee]

It would make it a message. Or a warning, more like. Someone or something is out there and wishes the whole town - townsfolk and visitors alike - to know it. The party was well known, and many people were not quiet about their intentions to attend. It was the best opportunity to affect the largest number of people in a very public manner, unless the culprit was to wait until the play.

[Which means that if they're still out there, they will have other opportunities to terrorize the town en masse.]

I cannot help but wonder if it is particularly directed at Travelers. Anyone in this state would provoke such a reaction, but we pay special attention to those we know. It is more personal.

[stophamatime]

...you can do more if nobody knows you're there. Unless it's supposed to scare us off?

[willyousee]

Scare us away, or create chaos and confusion, which might make a better working environment for it. It all depends on what it wants.