Age of Ashes

Conferva weaves her way in and out of the crowd and finds herself at the very front of the chamber, almost on autopilot. She takes a seat in the front-leftmost spot, fiddling with the beak on her mask a bit to clear her nerves.

Two sharp taps of the middle councilmember's gavel calls the room to attention, the dark haired woman casts a warm gaze over the room before she begins. "Welcome, neighbors and friends, to the Breachill Town Council's monthly Call for Heroes. I am Greta Gardania, Council President, at your service. My colleagues and I hold this event to hear your petitions for aid with the utmost care, for as our charter says, there is no existence without community. Today, our agenda includes only one petition, from our ambassador to the Bumblebrashers of Hellknight Hill. Miss Warbal, would you please present your petition to the council?"

At the summons, Warbal steps forward to the foot of the dais, and begins her speech, distress still barely restrained in her voice, "Esteemed councilors, it has been more than a month since I've been able to contact the Bumblebrashers. I fear something terrible has happened to them! And more than that, I have seen my people's distress signal coming from the Citadel Altaerein-"

A young man barges down the western chamber door, panic in his voice, waving ink-stained hands, screaming "Fire! Fire! Run for your lives! Fire!" And as if to punctuate his cries, smoke billows through the door behind him, chased closely by hungering flames. Even as the councilmembers try to organize an orderly escape, the panic spreads through the entire room, all present thrown into a scramble of trying to find their own way free.

Before any of the five adventurers manage to get their bearings and react to the flames, a separate flame flares up near the west edge of the councilors' desks

At shouts of fire, Gin instinctively draws her pistol, in case of any foul play. As the situation settles into pure chaos, she jumps up onto the back of her bench, and quickly tossing some black powder into her gun, she looks out over the chaos, points it into the air, and fires. As the shattering retort of black powder echoes through the room, she glares down at the crowd. "Now, if I have your attention, stop panicking!" She shouts. "Civilians, out of the building in an orderly fashion please. As for my fellow adventurers here, if anyone has any kind of abilities that can fight a fire, I would urge you to use them. Otherwise, help me keep the peace, we need to get this fire out."

Ever with a flair for the dramatic, Conferva follows suit and with a resounding snap of her fingers and a bark of Shadowtongue, she summons forth Jill from her shadow and turns herself to the milling civilians. In Common now, her voice rings out, "Eyes forward, please, and help your neighbors should they falter. There will be no escape if you do not keep calm and aid each other. No one left behind." Jill, for her part, stands steadily, eyeing the fire as she crawls up from the floor proper.

Greta watches as the adventurers lead the last of the townspeople out of the burning city hall, ushering everyone into the plaza north of the burning Hall; the spreading flames soon consuming the building with a ferocity felt far from the building itself

Whistling to gather the crowd's attention once they're at a safe distance, she calls out "What manner of madness was this?! This can be no accident! Did anyone see anything?"

A guard in the crowd raises his arm and his voice in response, "Aye, the clerks saw it all. It was Calmont, that cad of a bookseller's apprentice. He lit the fires in the halls next to the chamber, and set the fire monster on the crowd as well!" A second guard concurs with his statement, and adds "Not only that, but witnesses outside saw him flee towards Hellknight Hill!"

The crowd rumbles with surprise and worry, quickly calmed again as Greta raises her hand "Friends, we'll get to the bottom of this! But we can't do it alone. Who are the heroes in attendance today? Please, step forward and introduce yourselves."

"Calmont! I've always had a bad feeling about him." Adelle steps forward. "I will bring him to justice."

Vale steps from the crowd, holding a paw to where the creature had lashed out at her. "Name Vale! I tried to put out some of the flames but that critter nearly made me kindling. I'll help out, lend my sharp bits."

Gin steps forward, wiping the barrel of her firearm with a rag. "Just call me Gin. Targeting civilians like that, and with a cowardly fire no less," She shakes her head. "Aye, I'll help bring him to justice."

Conferva clears her throat and adjusts her mask before deciding better against speaking up, about to take a step back, though Jill immediately gives her a small shove forward instead. She takes the hint and speaks up, "C-conferva, and my sister Jill. I've still my worries about your wounded, not least of all those in most direct contact with the flames and combat," she fumbles with her mask for a moment before taking it off, "but we intend to lend ourselves any way we can." Jill emits a heavy sigh, but nods, her own mask now gone too.

"First, allow us to thank you on behalf of all Breachill, heroes, for safeguarding all our lives today. In thanks, we would offer you a gift to aid you in turn," Greta says, handing the group three minor healing potions, then continues, "And we would happily hire you for the task of investigating Hellknight Hill, with two goals. First, for this crime against the town, Calmont must be brought to justice, whether yours, or ours. Second, despite the interruption, the council has decided to accept Warbal's petition, and would task you with making contact with the Bumblebrasher tribe, and rendering aid to them, if necessary."

"For each task, the reward is 10 gold pieces to each of you. Given your injuries, we would be happy to arrange for your lodgings tonight to be covered, but we would request that you consider pushing forward as soon as you are prepared, as we gain nothing by waiting overlong."

Conferva declines taking a healing potion for herself and instead motions for one of the others to take it. She listens intently and nods along while Jill taps her shadowed foot to a constant rhythm. As Greta finishes, she nods her assent and speaks up once more. "We will make our preparations and tend to those of us who are injured, but it will not take all too much time, I should think." With her own approval noted, she turns a bit more toward Vale and kneels to the ground, scooping up some mud in the palm of her hand and suffusing it with a minor glow. "I know we've not known each other overlong, but you're injured pretty heavily. Would you mind, particularly, if I tried to lend my aid?"

While Conferva is being polite, Adelle goes over to Helga and just curtly says "Hold still," then heals her with a positive-energy-infused touch.

Vale huffs quietly but realizes she probably would not be alive if not for the pair. She lifts her paw from the wound, adjusting her gear to allow application and nods to Conferva. She quietly swears in dwarvish from the pain but tries to keep still.

Throughout the application process, Conferva makes her best attempt to apply the plaster properly, and while it takes well enough, her hands are a bit too shaky to make good use of it. With a slightly frustrated shake of her head, she stands up after the arduous process and sighs. "I'm, very sorry Vale but nerves got the better of me and I ust couldn't get it to take well enough. We will see about trying again later, perhaps." She starts to put her mask back over her face with a nervous fidget. Jill cuts in almost immediately with, "I understand you're trying to be nice, Conferva, but maybe this might wait until we have found ourselves a less crowded area?"

Conferva, incensed by the disregard for keeping any form of an element of surprise, pushes her way up to the door and scowls at her goblin compatriot, but chooses to bite her tongue on the matter for now. She leans in over Helga and surveys the scene, peering in every dark corner to the best of her ability. Her palms idly find her crossbow as she glances about, messing with the string quietly all the while.

Helga and Conferva would both be greeted with a trio of goblin dogs spread throughout a large entrance chamber, seemingly on guard, and quite pissed at being disturbed, snarling and advancing on the intruders.

Said invaders easily dispose of the three rodents, before turning their attention to the room at large.

As the group properly enters the Citadel, they notice a seal carved in relief of a sunburst formed of nails above the door Helga kicked open, as well as a line of text underneath it in a language only Adelle and Conferva recognize.

Text on Citadel seal:

The room beyond the door is in shambles, littered with broken furniture and small half eaten carcasses of what must have been the rodents' prey. Lining the north and south walls is two rows of crumbling armor stands holding dented, rusted, and decaying suits of Hellknight armor picked clean of functional pieces long ago. The same seal above the main door of the keep is repeated on the walls of this room, and above it is the same line of text, though this time paired with a line in common, "Savagery must be quelled in the land, home, and mind."

A filthy black carpet stretches from the opened door in the east to the two doors in the west wall.

Conferva cleans some of the blood off the bite on her leg, wincing at the minor pain but otherwise unaffected. She takes a tentative few steps into the room first, taking a few moments to look over the corpses with a sigh. She mutters to herself in Infernal, "Aye, and so you should turn your eyes upon yourselves before you cast judgement." She snaps her fingers and Jill springs to her side. Speaking in Common, now, she turns to the rest of the group. "Can we please all agree next time before we go recklessly kicking down doors? Maybe check the lock, gently push to see if it opens on its' own? ...Speaking of, are any of you practiced in picking locks, perchance?"

In one swift motion Gin holsters her pistol and flicks a set of lockpicks from an easy-access compartment on her sleeve. "I've got some skill, yeah," She says, twirling the picks around her fingers, before easily sliding them back into their pocket. "I've found that's always a useful skill to have while adventuring."

Fortunately for the group, it seems nobody thought to lock any of the doors in an abandoned fort, and they can freely poke their noses into a few hallways both north and south, until they find rooms at their ends

The southern group finds a dingy ruined barracks, ruined beds and furniture strewn about the room, particularly in the middle, where they've been arranged to form a smaller enclosure; doors hang open to smaller, private bedchambers along the south and west walls of the room, but are clearly no less disheveled than the public portion of the room.

To the north lies what might have once been a courtroom, if the dusty judge's bench and witness stand are to be believed, though the benches on which observers in the trials once sat have long since been smashed to shards and smaller. Several doorways to the north might have once led to judges' offices, but now reveal only a collapsed wall and a pit that has filled with water over the years, as well as a muddy lump in the water on which lies a body in silvery armor.

When Conferva tells them about the body, Adelle looks surprised. "I wonder who they were... if they only died recently, they're probably not a Hellknight... perhaps we should take a closer look in there."

After a few moments, Conferva almost seems to fall back into her own body, shaking herself and her head and muttering to herself in Infernal, "As useful as that might be, I don't think I'll ever get used to it, even after all these years." With another clearing shake of her head, she sets off for the north set of rooms, some worry plastered across her face as she makes for her sister.

Meanwhile Gin slinks up to the room behind Jill, before turning her attention totally to the room at large, checking over it from the entryway in case of traps. Armor-clad bodies don't typically just knock themselves out after all.