Journey with to Cairn once again, hey nonny nonny. Here's last time.
The characters are at the Cider Mill Inn, and consolidate their knowledge. They know that some kind of metal implement was used to get into Meester Snufflestar's worm ranch, and there's only one blacksmith in Cairn: Clinket Sunwind, the groundhog. They also figure that, based on the mass of the worms, whoever stole them probably took them south from the Root, since going north would put them near the Citadel, which is always guarded. Clinket lives on the edge of town, right on the coast, next to a longhouse where the fishers live (mostly otters and beavers). They decide to head down there to look around. Ratatosk quaffs an alchemical draught to keep himself awake, and becomes a caffeinated squirrel.
The characters get close to Clinket's house, and Russelet, with his sharp bat ears, hears low, quiet moans from his house - someone sounds in distress. Snootabur and Ratatosk go to the front door, Rumdiggle and Russelet go to the back. Snootabur knocks on the door and Ratatosk hears a faint "help me" from inside. They head in and find Clinket on the floor. His stomach is bloated and distended, and he's clearly in a lot of pain. He manages to gasp "roots" and Ratatosk find a plate of roots and other succulents (or rather, the scraps thereof) on his dinner table. He decides that the smartest thing to do would be to give Clinket some of his energy draught, but Snootabur suggests taking him back to Ratatosk's lab and maybe giving him an emetic. Ratatosk agrees, and Rumdiggle hoists the groundhog onto her back.
They pass by the Root, and find Knuckles, the badger, outside having a smoke. They pass him by and he asks after Clinket, and then goes into the Root (after a brief conversation with Russelet about playing darts).
The characters arrive at Ratatosk's lab and he gives something to Clinket to make him barf (as well as a bucket). He then goes about analyzing the food scraps, and finds they've been brushed with a fine powder, some kind of dried and crumbled plant. Ratatosk can't recognize it, though - it's not alchemical - so he scampers over and wakes up Asta Ringrunner, his mentor.
Asta identifies the poison as "lake toadstool." It's not actually a fungus, just a weird-looking plant that grows at the bottom of lakes and rivers. You don't see it in Cairn much because, other than making a really nasty poison, there's not much use for it and it doesn't keep its potency long. He tells Ratatosk that giving Clinket the energy potion would have killed him; what he needs is some milkwood tea. Ratatosk makes the tea, and slowly Clinket improves.
Snootabur asks what happened, and who might have poisoned him, but he claims not to know. He says that Moriarty Sprit came and saw him today, but it was over a project and not unexpected. Other customers visited him as well. He seems pretty baffled until someone mentions lake toadstool, and then he chokes on his tea, but claims never to have heard of it. He doesn't respond to Knuckles being mentioned and doesn't seem afraid of him or Moriarty, but he's definitely hiding something.
Snootabur and Russelet decide to go back to Clinket's house to look around some more. Rumdiggle sings a song at Clinket's request, and tries to charm him into talking, but he stands firm and leaves the house. At his house, Snootabur finds two wooden cups with a dusting of powder on them, and takes them with so that Ratatosk can analyze it. She also finds his forge, and a huge book containing sketches and a running total of how much scrap metal he has (he has to work with scrap, it's not like there's an iron mine around here). She notes that the last page with any writing on it has been torn out, and the metal total on the previous page indicates a huge influx of material, probably quadruple what he already had. Someone gave him a shitload of metal and, presumably, commissioned the cutting implement used to get into the worm ranch.
They start heading back and an otter from the fishing longhouse calls out to them. He saw them carrying Clinket off and was concerned. They talk a bit, and the otter reveals that Clinket was in the habit of wandering around muttering when he was trying to figure out a challenging project. The otter chatted with him a little when he was doing that recently, and heard him talking about "making it fit his hands." Whatever he was making, he was making a handle to fit someone with fewer fingers than him (or an otter, for that matter).
The characters reconvene and talk this over. The only Awakened creatures in Cairn that have fewer than five fingers are frogs and toads. A frog could easily swim to the bottom of the river and get the poison; toads aren't strong swimmers. They can burrow, however, which frogs really can't. Someone else has to be involved. Ratatosk remembers a frog druid she knows, by the name of Bryla Slipperskin, who keeps abreast of some of the seedier aspects of Cairn. They head up to her house and get there just as the sun is rising.
Bryla listens to their information and says that she has heard of someone who might be a suspect - a huge bullfrog named Brock (she doesn't know his last name). Brock is as big as Snootabur, really big for a frog, and he's a wizard. Wizards can cast spells to manipulate minds, among other things. Bryla has never actually met him and thought he lived in the Frogmire Marshes, a long ways north of Cairn...but nothing says he hasn't come to visit.
Ratatosk notes that they're very close to the wizard's tower - might Brock be the unseen Mad Wizard? Snootabur suggests that the lighthouse south of town makes more sense - it's accessible by water, and reputed to be haunted. Russelet has heard gossip that one of the fisher's boats went missing recently, too.
Next time, we'll see where all this leads!
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