Your eyes are drawn to the massive dragon skull that hangs above you. You’ve seen some interesting choices for displaying trophies, but you have to hand it to Auberon for choosing to suspend that thing from the ceiling. It’s posed as if ready to lunge down and snap you up. As you eye the yellowing fangs warily, something tucked behind one of the teeth catches your eye. The half-elf wizard, Ianstaer, is standing directly beneath the skull, clutching his staff with both hands and eyeing you with suspicion.
You crane your neck to try to get a glimpse of the object tucked behind the tooth of the dragon skull, but you can’t quite manage to get a good view. If you had any of your exploration pack with you, you could hoist yourself up there. Perhaps there’s another way…
As you approach the young wizard, he takes a rapid step back, thrusting forward the staff in his left hand, pointing it towards you as it begins to glow red with magic.
“Whoa there, ‘friend’, back off! My fireball could take out an entire forest, just think what it could do to you if you try coming at me like that. What do you want, ranger?”
As you assure Ianstaer that you mean no harm, he relaxes a little, lowering his staff and stepping in closer.
“Sorry about that, I overreacted. As you can understand, I’m a bit on edge. If someone could take out Auberon like that… well, they would probably make easy work out of any one of us, even I can admit that. We need to figure this out quickly before whoever it is strikes again!
We can all agree that I’m the smartest one here, which is why I think I’ve got it narrowed down. Federic the Fool? No, he’s neither clever nor skilled enough to pull something like this off. I’m thinking it’s either that Infernal sorceress, Chastity or whatever her name is, or that too-polite halfling thief, Finnian. The sorceress came from pretty far away to be here, suspiciously far, Esmer I think is where she’s from. Would she really come all this way just to celebrate the birthday of an old flame? As for Finnian, I’ll let you in on a little secret – the halfling knows magic. A high-level wizard like me can tell, can’t you? I’d wager the killer is definitely someone who can wield a spell or two, how else might they have cast that darkness? Of course, I’m a magic user myself, but if I did it then why would I be telling you all this?
Let me be clear though, and this goes for you and anyone else who might be listening in, if someone comes after me they better come with everything they’ve got, or the last thing they’ll see will be the deadly green of my glowing staff as I blast them to the nether-realms with one of my famous fireballs!”
