8 Flamerule 1493 thru 7 Eleint 1493
❧Caravan leaving Baldur’s Gate
Morning
So we joined up with the caravan before it left the city. There are about 20 wagons and we did see some of the people from the cultist compound on one of the wagons. T-Bone and Kalama also noticed a female gnome that was eyeing people a little too casually. We made a mental note to keep an eye on her.
We weren’t on the road long when a wagon 2 spots in front of us caused a ruckus. A wheel broke or something and part of the wagon hit the ground hard enough to break a couple of crates open. The people on the wagon tried to cover up the contents before anyone could see it, but we did get a glimpse. It’s hard not to notice crates full of gold and jewelry. Wanna bet that they’re from the dragon hoard? Anyway, someone had a look at the wagon and it didn’t look like anyone had tampered with it.
Since we’re supposed to be guarding a merchant, we spent a little bit of time trying to get to know the man, but apparently, he’s not called Lasfelro the Silent for no reason. He’s not mute, he just doesn’t talk much. When he does talk, he likes to tell jokes, but also he likes to sing! So every once in a while, he’ll just break out into song. Luckily he’s pretty funny and a surprisingly good singer.
One interesting little tidbit is that he has a live Gargoyle pretending to be a statue in his wagon. There’s a silver chain attaching it to a chest in the back of his wagon. Looking back on this, I can’t believe we didn’t try harder to find out more about this!
❧ Somewhere on the road
Morning
Everything was pretty quiet until we were about halfway to Waterdeep. We each grabbed a bowl of oatmeal from the chow line and sat down to dig in when that gnome woman stabbed a damn knife into Lhel’s bowl! Before we could completely lose it, she raised the blade to show a tiny bead on the end of it. Apparently, she saw some of the cultists adding slivers of bone to the oatmeal while it was being prepared. They used a type of poison that has a delayed reaction, so you wouldn’t even know you were poisoned for a few days.
T-Bone found some slivers in his food too so we all dumped out our bowls. The gnome told us that she’d meet us at dinnertime because she was going to try to remove as much of the poison as possible.
At dinner time the gnome finally introduced herself as Jamna Gleamsilver. She claims that she’s a Harper there to investigate the wagons. I can’t help but wonder why nobody warned us that she might be here, but she seems to be telling the truth. Either way, she did share her observations with us.
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First of all, the cultists were isolating themselves into their own little group, away from everyone else. That makes it rather hard to try to start up conversations with any of them, doesn’t it?
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One of the cultists is wearing a robe. His name is Azbara and he’s a Red Wizard of Thay.
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We weren’t the only ones they tried to poison. They’d made attempts on everything that saw the contents of those crates from the first day!
In short, we’ll be preparing our own food from here on out. Maybe we should’ve been doing that from the start.
Things were quiet again the next day, but then on the 5th morning, we noticed a commotion by one of the wagons. There were peopling yelling and alarms sounding. We rushed over to see what was happening and found a dead cultist on the ground!
Another cultist pointed at me and accused me of murder! The caravan leader asked to inspect my weapon. I showed him my beautiful longsword and he determined that it wasn’t the murder weapon. They think the killer used a shortsword or a sword and a half, so my longsword ain’t it, pal!
The crowd started talking about searching the wagons for the killer. The red wizard, Azbara, stepped forward and pointed out that with no evidence or witnesses, there was no reason to check the wagons. I keep thinking maybe the murder weapon would’ve been a good thing to search for though. We moved on after they buried the guy.
2 months after leaving Baldur’s Gate, we arrived at Waterdeep. It’ll be weird to be back after so long. If we have time, hopefully, we can drop in on my cousin Manda. Most of the family moved on after pa died, but Manda’s family stuck around.