The Flayed Man part 3

Good news, everyone! You followed the flayed man's /other/ direction and so far you're not finding any more remains. You barely find evidence of the man's passage, though the occasional physical footprint is located that indicates he does at least leave some markings. He was naked, after all, and bare foot. ASsuming these bare-foot in the mud footprints are /his/.

Still, nothing is immediately turning up as any indication of what's going on. You follow them for a time longer...

GAME: Seldan rolls survival: (15)+16: 31

GAME: Malik rolls Survival: (5)+5: 10

GAME: Iskandar rolls survival: (4)+8: 12

GAME: Verna rolls survival: (1)+5: 6 (EPIC FAIL)

GAME: Olek rolls survival: (13)+15: 28

Iskandar holds his burning dagger out like a torch as he walks, keeping to the back of the group so as not to spoil with the light the darkvision, night vision or any other assorted vision of the trackers in the party. "I'm not so sure about leaving the remains behind," he muses. He still has a scrap of cloth, just enough to identify as Frostmantle colors. "By uncovering them, we have also exposed them to animals or to others."

Olek hrms after a tracking a while, and he observes, "Haven't we just gone around the village? So he's been pacing around it all this time? But it's got to be kind of recent, if the tracks are still here," he muses further. "As for the fellow, can't we lay the bones to rest properly out here? It may not solve it, but I think it'd be a start? Hunting down the villains that did it would probably help also, right?" Olek, a bit weak on his ecclesiastic knowledge, but a good outdoorsman.

The only extra vision Seldan shows is the faint glimmer of a few of the gems on the headband that he wears. "Olek here has the right of it," he affirms. "We are but circling the village. Look you." He points out a tree that they had passed earlier, with a particularly gnarled branch that is both unique and hard to mistake. "Regarding the bones..." He looks over at Verna. "I defer to the servant of the Grey Lady on this matter."

At his left hip, there's a mutter, a gruff man with a khazadi sound. "Finally, some sense out of you."

"If you were held down and murdered in the dark in the cruelest way possible, in a way that your friends and family never knew what happened to you, would you wish to spend an eternity in such a place?" Words that one might expect from one the priests -- but this time, they're coming from Malik. "I would wish someone to take me home. Not leave me in the dark, and cold, where the ground drank my blood and my screams echoed through the trees."

Olek says to Malik, "I'd me more concerned with getting back at the bastards as did me in than where my bones lie, myself. But ... if his family wants to resurrect him, I'm sure the bones would help. So taking him home -does- seem like a good plan. But can we? As in, do we know where his home was?" He looks to Verna, and wonders, "Do you have the magic to speak with the departed? We could just ask him..."

Verna is not an expert at the wilderness, nor of that which dwells in it. That the flayed man was without footwear, however, does, in her mind, cause prints of a distinctive nature to be left. "He will not spend eternity in this place," she notes to Malik. "To ensure this may well involve learning the details of his demise. His current incarnation may aid us in that."

Iskandar turns his head slowly as Malik goes on to stare in his direction. Then he shifts his eyes slightly to watch Verna. "Um, yes," he finally mutters. "Just what I was thinking. Well, not exactly." He holds up the scrap of cloth. "I still wonder what this has to do with all of this. He was a mercenary. Not a traveler, or an adventurer. He wouldn't have been here on his own."

"Let us begin with sending him to the Grey Lady's halls," Seldan puts in quietly, nodding ti Iskandar. "Now that we have unearthed them, we cannot leave them, lest the crows pick them over. If he is not to be interred here, then let us bear them back to Alexandria. I would not burden the villagers by taking them to the village. If the apparition follows, it would cause panic, and that I would not have. If none else wish to, I will speak with them, and then we can return."

"Maybe not the village," Malik suggests. "Possibly someone in it. A lover, maybe. Or a killer." At Iskandar's question, Malik offers a different thought. "It takes several strong men to hold down a man while he's being flayed. And mercenaries tend to be the -- violent sort, one way or another. It's just as likely that they are responsible for his death as anyone else."

-- Log is missing a few poses / emits but at this point the party took the remains to the Vardaman temple, in which they are told the body can be asked 4 questions! --