N'drak research notes #3, Highhelm

It feels like a slight eternity since I last updated this journal. Probably something to do with getting repeatedly punched in the face in both training and library research (note: elaborate a bit on that). Anyway.

I'm told my friends have been busy following up on a lead about King Taargick, featuring a gnome we might have traumatized a little in prison (note: elaborate on this later, or maybe scrap it). I've been training for basilisk quite a bit, and this leads us to multiple bits of good news: my post reincarnation weakness seems gone, and performing sports seems to have done some promising things to my general constitution as well. Also, I've managed to turn part of my legs into a semi-decent tail, so my balance is back to being somewhat sensible. This has given me some interesting fungus flaps along the entire side of my body as a side effect, which I'll have to do something with later. No real progress on installing proper teeth and claws, but in general, I count this as a win. Uvuko would probably approve of this way of dealing with change and adversity, and to not show too much undue nostalgia, I've decided against grafting my entire body onto my old skeleton. No idea where that is anyway. Did we bury it?

Magically, things are interesting as well. Seems our associating with these northern dwarves has made it possible to peer deeper into darkness, and it seems my own closeness to a sizable source of fire elemental magic has caused part of it to awaken in me, seemingly replacing a bit of elemental earth. Found that one out when attempting a summoned rock toss and getting a fire projectile instead. Slightly worryingly, I feel like I could summon way more fire if I tried. I'll have to test that outside of the city.

Research-wise (and Five Kings culture-wise), things have been interesting. We've been to the whole Tolorr clan meeting, which was spectacular. We talked to many interesting people, including Bulgra Veldollow herself (well, that was mostly Mellaril, but details) and got her grandson back into the clan by getting Taargick's clan dagger back to the the Tolorr. We'll need to have a chat with him at some point, seems he's with the Rivethun now.
Interesting other people we talked with were the likes of Ria (nice scholarship there) and Valahask (a iruxi with some actual sense of humour, we had some fun with "improving" the procession with a cuddly toy), but also Rosha Coppervein (a fellow magic worker, none too social, but interesting anyway) and a dour twat called Ygrin Oathcarver who attempted to beat her up for some family resentment-thing during the mock battle. I should have kept up a bit more of the tangle-tale I had been leading him on with during dinner and he might have left in a huff. Anyhow. A grandson restored, some friends made or remade, a clan dagger returned.

And then we went to try and cleanse the sodding thing. We went on a library visit to find out some parts about the history of Taargick, the dagger, and that blasted giant cave worm, getting closer to the truth. And then some statues of old hardliners animated and punched me and the bard in the face. Luckily, Kolkar and Aetoin managed to fix that (and beat the rocks into submission). Then we cleansed the dagger, causing some spirit animating nonsense to go right back to the face-punching. Fixed that, dagger works, another statue animates, this time king Taargick himself, and gives us a quest to go after the worm, that seems to be a historical friend of him of some sorts. The librarians were actually pretty understanding about the whole thing with the animating statues.

Some gnome (one Jirelga, it turned out) had introduced both the dagger and spectral, fiery, cave wormy death to the village we visited earlier, so we had to get her out of prison (seems some framing had happened to her) and have a chat to find out where she got the dagger. In the process of getting to her, we uncovered some actual crime (something about illegal tunneling we found out about earlier), went to a collection of buildings where a rather fishy "hardware store" was now to ask some questions... And things went rather wrong there. We were going about it like some decent dwarves, i.e. by not moving in and commencing the murder. Turns out, one unpleasant bastard named Ygrin was working with these people, he recognized us, a fight with a rather large crowd ensued, he transformed into some antlered menace and nearly murdered the lot of us after stealing one of our priest's healing spells. Luckily, he was a right bastard and started toying with us, so we managed to kill him without any fatalities on our end, which leads me to the following:

There is no proof that the Blacknoon crime guild was responsible for illegal tunneling. That was all the fault of one Tuom Molgrade, who was using the grudge nonse of Ygrin to make illegal Molgrade stuff, and she initiated the tunneling. Nothing to do with the crime guild itself (them being such patriotic citizens of Highhelm), and nothing to do with a surprise cache of resources that helped us clear up the mess in the remainder of the building and certainly nothing to do with any leaders of the Blacknoon.

The next angle of actual research (hopefully without too much getting punched in the face by brutish statuary or grudge priests, or indeed anyone else) is following up on where Jirelga found the dagger. We might even get to interview the worm, hopefully without getting set on fire or too badly eaten.