[Notes for the run of March 2, 2000.] Discussing the paper clues we've found, we note that they all seem to be written in the same handwriting. Also, the even edge on one piece suggests trimmed paper, as in a book. Paris notes that the local padre teaches reading and writing (as Genelle's father did in Jouet), and that the only books he could offer to show us back when Anton first asked to study in the village library were a couple of primers. [I don't remember Anton asking this, but I'll take your word for it.] We return to the church and ask to examine the primers. The padre mentions that these have been used by teaching-padres since the village was founded and, indeed, we notice that the handwriting of the clues matches the notes on the earliest blank pages in the back of the primers, pages used by the first padre-teacher, Gillian. Close examination reveals that one of the blank pages has been cut out of the book and is missing. Comparing the pages to the paper clues found, we conclude that the paper seems to match, and that a single page would yield somewhere between 5 and 7 strips. Anton wants to go wait in the mine to see what happens in the early evening (the time of day when Roget got nabbed), but nobody else is up for that until we know more about how to deal with the supposed demon. In addition, Rhori says he has to be in town this evening because he intends to apologise to Singer's party. We discuss how to go about that, and how we might get information from them. Paris suggests that, as part of the evening entertainment at the inn, Anton could tell the tale of killing the troll at Etienne, emphasising Brillig's role since he's not here (so it won't reveal too much about our own skills), and the help of Etienne's spirit. The goals are, one, to pique Singer's ego in the hope that he'll respond with a tale of the killing of trolls here, and two, to get the miners to realise that maybe they too have a patron spirit, Gillian, looking out for them. Rhori adds that we want to make sure the miners realise that we're doing the same thing here (killing trolls and so forth); after some discussion, we agree that we won't say that at first. If Singer tells about what his party has been doing here, that's good enough for reassuring the miners, and it's a lot better in terms of us learning about what they're doing. If Singer instead tells a more generic tale that does not obviously apply to the locals, or if he doesn't take the bait at all, we can add more. We also agree that Anton's tale should wait until after Rhori's apology. Anton spends the afternoon practicing the story and setting it to music. Alexis goes and hangs out in the inn, buying drinks for folks. Calais works on his telescope. Paris visits the church some more. Everyone else gets some sleep. Alexis sees a guardsman from the barracks come in, carrying a huge axe. He looks at Alexis, startled, and asks, "Aren't you the Duke Westmoor's herald? Where are your guards?" She tries to settle him down but he goes on, "This is a dangerous place. Does the captain know you're here?" Alexis tells him she's not here officially. "Oh, secret mission, huh?" He winks knowingly. She asks about the axe, and he says he brought it here for a friend. At about that point, Rhori and Paris come in. Rhori hails the soldier, and they go off to the bar together. Paris joins Alexis. The soldier whispers to Rhori, "That's the duke's herald! But don't tell anybody." Rhori tries to explain things, but as usual only confuses things even more. The fellow concludes that Rhori is part of the Duke's secret service -- if such a thing exists, of course. Along the way talk turns to Paris, and the guardsman muses whether she's sleeping with the Duke. Rhori explains that the Duke is engaged to the Princess, "so he's not sleeping with anybody except, well, not with anybody... probably..." Even Rhori realises he's slipping into dangerous territory there, so he tries to shift the subject back a step, saying, "No, Paris likes the Prince, not the new prince or the crown prince but the other one..." (Over at Alexis's table, Paris's ears are burning. :-) The guardsman hasn't heard about the "new prince", so Rhori tells how Silverlocke is now recognised as a prince, and so forth. He mentions that he (Rhori) was one of Silverlocke's men, before Silverlocke became a prince that is; the guard is impressed. By the time the rumor mill gets done churning through this mess, who knows what they'll be saying about us. We'd better finish up here soon and move on. Singer's party comes in at dinnertime. Our practiced eye tells us they spent the day traipsing around the countryside without fighting anything. They sit down in such a way that they can keep an eye on us. Rhori's friend asks if they're part of our team. Rhori says no. The guard asks if they know we're here in secret. Rhori tries again to explain that we're not here in secret. The place begins to fill up soon after Singer's party arrives. Anton comes in, and Rhori decides he'd better get on with the apology. He goes over, unarmed and unarmored. One of the fighters there stops him. Rhori explains he wants to apologise, and the fighter, confused, backs up to let him speak. Rhori apologises for his actions of the day before, saying it was inexcusable. One of the fighters, uncomfortable, says, "Don't let it happen again." Father Maythias just glowers. The rest don't say anything. It seems likely that they think the apology is part of some complicated ploy, and they're unsure what Rhori is up to. The distraction gives Anton time to set up for his tale. "For your evening entertainment, I'd like to tell a story, with some musical accompaniment, about a town much like this one, and how my companions and I blah blah blah." About the time he finishes the introduction, Singer makes a remark heard only at their table, and they laugh. Anton is in good form, though, and skillfully raises his voice just enough to keep the rest of the room from being distracted. He then goes ahead with his song. Anton does spectacularly well. [Make by 13.] Many people nearest Anton have stopped eating in order to listen. Some have even stopped drinking. Even Singer didn't interrupt, though he winced once or twice when Anton perhaps hit a wrong note. The room breaks out in applause, and it's clear Anton won't have to pay for his dinner tonight. Singer takes the stage and says how he had been planning to tell the second part of the trilogy he began the other night, but instead will tell a more appropriate tale. He tells the tale of how _they_ came to a town nestled in the hills, and even worse than the danger in the mine was the darkness that wandered the town at night. And they went into the mine at night, and found the troll that was building a labyrinth, a veritable underground warren into which it dragged unsuspecting miners, and so on. Of all the party, only Alexis notices that at one point some of the folks at Singer's table look uncomfortable, and Father Maythias in particular gives Singer a "don't go there" look. She notes this was soon after the point in the tale where they've killed the troll, and Singer was starting to say something about "the nine ninety nine." Anton declines to take a second shot at the stage, and Singer continues with part two of an epic trilogy he's working on. Anton recognises it as a variation on Beowulf, and realises now that the closing line we heard the other night (about how someone failed to save the king) was the end of the first part of that tale. Someone goes over to Anton and asks more about Etienne. Anton explains how Etienne was the original priest or padre there, and somehow even after he died his spirit seems to watch over the town, and he sent a vision telling us about the staff and so on. The miner says this town has someone like that. Anton draws him out as the miner tells about Gillian. Eventually the miner adds, "When we went in the next day to try to find Roget, I saw Gillian." What did he say? "He didn't say anything, he just dropped something." What? "Two things. One of them disappeared, but I gave the paper to the foreman, because he can read." Anton asks what the other thing was. "It was a little mirror or something, and I held it up to the light to get a better look at it, and it disappeared, and I wasn't as scared any more." (Sounds like a silver card.) Alexis, who's sent a couple of drinks Singer's way, says she wants to see if Singer will talk before heading to bed, and asks the rest of us to leave in case that helps, but Singer's party starts setting up their first watch without talking to her. She comes out and tells us about the "nine ninety nine" slip, and how Father Maythias glared at him and Singer shifted away from it. Pyotr says, "Tells us perhaps they know some of same stuff we know about demons" and maybe they know other stuff as well. Anton was going to head for our quarters, but Calais points out that it's not raining, so the church seems safer. Alexis suggests that if the darkness comes out to prowl the village tonight, we should go to the mine and see what we find, since that seems to be what Singer's party did the first night we were here. Rhori wants to go back to the cave immediately, but we convince him to wait until the darkness starts prowling. Perhaps we'll be able to follow its tracks back. During first watch, we hear a moaning above the wind. We look outside and see a house disappearing into darkness. We wait half an hour to see if an apparition will visit the church again. Sure enough, one moment there's one padre, next moment there's two. One of them speaks. Anton quickly casts magic sight; the one that's speaking seems to be a form of white church magic. "I grow weaker as they leave. It can only be killed in the heart." We head for the mine. All of us touch the statue as we go. Rhori finds demon tracks -- all left feet. We track it back. It did not come from the mine; the tracks lead back to the right of the mine (the opposite side from the crevasse). After a point, there are no demon prints. Rhori and Hobbes search about some and eventually find kobold prints instead. Hobbes also reports that the scent changed at that point. We track the kobold tracks back. It gets harder as the going gets rocky. Anton lobbies for being in the mine at midnight, but he says it's just a gut feeling. After some waffling, we head for the mine. As we head back, Hobbes asks Rhori if we still have to be quiet. Rhori says not real quiet, but he shouldn't make a _lot_ of noise. Hobbes says slyly that _he_ won't make a lot of noise. He leaps at Paris, who dodges nimbly. We get to the mine shortly before midnight, and pause to cast a few spells. Paris draws her holy sword; in addition to the usual glow and chorus, it glows blue, telling her that something evil has passed through here. She notes that the "detect evil" ability doesn't cost her endurance when she uses her holy sword. Rhori takes the lead as we get to the end of the cave. He totally blows his perception, and stops as he comes to Calais's apparatus, once again neatly laid down in front of the hole in the wall. (Hole in the wall? Rhori is indeed oblivious.) As Rhori turns to tell the rest of us that it looks like something's been through here, Hobbes yells a warning to him, and leaps to push him aside. Paris, next in line, gets a glimpse of something moving extremely fast. She warns the rest of us to stay back as she herself moves up to help. She and Rhori (after he picks himself up) see an opening that leads about four meters into a larger, dark cavern. Anton notices his magic pool starting to recharge as Rhori starts into the opening. Rhori senses that Hobbes is nearly frantic, and Calais is only slightly less so as Paris follows Rhori in. Calais heads forward, joining Alexis who had also ignored Paris's warning to stay back. Alexis notices that the air in the opening is starting to turn the color of stone. She shouts out that fact. Paris tells Rhori to retreat; apparently they've discussed this sort of thing beforehand, because they both actually do retreat without further argument. As they pull back into the corridor the opening finishes turning back into stone. Anton's pool finishes recharging; it is the stroke of midnight. Hobbes gradually calms down. Rhori realises now what was bugging him last time we were here. It's that the big hole he'd chipped in the wall, was gone. We conclude that the wall opens at dusk (which is when Roget was nabbed), and closes at midnight. We go back to the troll pit. Calais takes a shovel and digs through the troll's remains, but finds only the bottom of the pit. (He wonders how he got stuck doing the physical labor; he's usually very good at avoiding it.) No warren here. Singer must've been inflating the story. (Rhori is shocked.) No scraps of paper, either. We go out of the mine, and Rhori checks for tracks (other than our own) to see if anything left the mine tonight. There was a fairly large group of people who entered and left earlier today. Hobbes smells something sort of like the non-kobold smell that accompanied the demon tracks, which also smells like whatever it was that just now tried to kill Rhori. We go back to backtracking the kobold. Calais sticks close to Rhori and Hobbes to watch for tripwires and crevasses. The trail leads up into the hills, and ends (well, starts) at a stone doorway. Calais checks but doesn't find any mechanism or other such door accoutrements. The rest of the party catches up, and we ponder the supposed door. Calais asks Anton if it's magical. Anton checks, and reports that it's got some sort of earth magic, embedded in the stone itself. At a guess, he thinks it makes the stone tougher. We check again; still no obvious way to open the doorway. Anton suggests checking the tile-like area in front of the door, but there are no trap doors. Calais suggests checking the area above the door, but Rhori's already done that and found no tracks. Eventually, we decide to conceal ourselves and wait for the kobold to return. Rhori does an especially good job concealing the invisible Anton and Hobbes in a spot above the ledge; the rest of us hide further off. About 4am or so, the door opens (inward) and two kobolds hop out and chitter between themselves. "Should I kill them boss?" asks Hobbes. Rhori isn't sure. Anton, unaware of their debate, decides to slide down and try to get a foot in the door, figuring he can deal with a pair of kobolds. He lands with a thud, just in time to see the troll coming out behind the kobolds. The troll is close enough that it can see Anton, i.e. it's within the fringe effect of his invisibility. Anton dodges as the troll swings at him, and slips aside. The kobolds turn, and one of them tries to poke Anton with his dagger, but misses. The other one misses with his bow instead. The rest of us start running forward, some of us pushing since we're quite a distance away. The troll swings again at Anton, hitting him in the chest but not quite stunning him. A kobold arrow dinks off his arm, then Anton disengages before the other one swings. It spots him anyway and takes a swipe, but misses. Before the bad guys can act again, Paris arrives and stuns the troll. From behind the stunned troll, however, more tentacles extend out at her. The third troll in line hits Paris in the foot for a bit of damage. Anton, having drawn his sword as he disengaged, smacks one kobold and nearly kills it. The other kobold totally blows his perception, fails to see Paris and the rest of us, and continues to harass Anton, bouncing an arrow off his shoulder. Rhori was headed for the wall at full speed, but Hobbes jumps down and blocks him, turning visible in the process. With the full power of the party, we are able to dispatch the two mighty kobolds. Eventually, Paris manages to chug through the four trolls. Anton apologises to Paris for making her run so hard to come save his hash. We find four cards, three crotch pouches, and two pieces of paper. [And I _still_ don't know what I'm finding in those pouches!] And there's a big cavern to be investigated next run. And we need to make sure the door doesn't close. Calais does observe there's a handle on the other side of the door, but we do not yet try the experiment of seeing if he can open it from the inside. The two new papers say: "Four letters in the second word -- are there." "At the next, start of all." (I'll send out a separate message summarising all the clues, apparition remarks, and such.)