Due to some violent content, Parental discretion is advised. In the year two
hundred and forty seven, in the Age of Judges, Vartan was summoned home
after the death of his father. Upon his return, Vartan discovered something evil
festering beneath the city of Eterno. With the help of some very unlikely allies,
Vartan works to uncover the mysteries of his hometown and put an end to
the nightmares that plague his people. Welcome to Ethereal Embrace. Have you ever
felt like you're walking around in circles? Long travels are the worst, especially
when you're hiking. Day two in the basement of the briar residents, Can
we get out of this basement? Get sick? Would that perception? Real
quick? What's the point of entry and exit? It looks like the stairwell.
It looks like they came in through the house, like through the front
door back door. It looks like they use the stairwell down at the basement.
As far as whether the front door back door, you'd probably have to
go back up and investigate to see if you can figure out which door.
Yeah, I definitely want to look around upstairs. Do you want a perception
check for upstairs. Yeah, go ahead, And so you guys go head
back upstairs on your way. Brass Cane says, do you think we should
reinstate the curfew? The citizens are already afraid enough and news of the Briars
is sure to spread quickly throughout the town. Oh yeah, I think so.
Damn Yeah, you're right, Damn. I think that we should put
the curfew in place because people's safety is more important than our mess with the
robin. We can, we can figure out how to deal with explaining this
to them ourselves, rather than put the towns people at risk. Brass Cane
says, consider it done, and he steps away to go talk to one
of the guards that was outside and essentially tell him to go draft up the
curfew rules for tomorrow morning. Yeah. The concerning thing is though the Briars
work held inside their house. Yeah, That's that's why I was like trying
to think of what to say, because that was popping in my head.
Yeah. So unless the person or people who did this to the Briars are
abiding by the curfew as well, we're not making people any safer. Brass
Cane, did you find a point of entry or exit for the possible culprits.
Not yet. My first task was to get you all right, all
right, I'm we'll have a look around upstairs. I want to I want
to look over this entire house inside end out. Okay, go ahead and
make the thirteen seen. You do find that the back door had been shimmied
open. There was damage to the actual frame around the door. So that's
the point of entrance was the backside there. And you do see that there
are recent thick footprints that are on the ground outside the back Are they larger
smaller than the briars? There are several larger booted feet than what the briars
all all human shaped feet, any any other humanoid humanoids, So there are
a couple bigger footprints as well. All right, I'm gonna stop brass came
before he goes anywhere and be like you think you could send a couple of
guards to the neighbors and ask them questions if they saw anybody around or behind
the houses that they normally haven't seen before. Yeah, I'll do that.
Or just a group of people that have been moving around together, Yeah,
I'll are you thinking like people from in the town, or just anyone in
general. I mean it's hard. It's very rare seeing anybody from outside of
town. So my suspicions lie on HiT's somebody in the town already. But
you can go check it out yourself. There's some footprints behind the back door
where they should me the back door open, so I don't know, maybe
you can recognize some of those footprints or boot bootprints. Yeah, I'll see
what I can do. Might be easier to track these footprints in the morning,
buy a cast light or that. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna follow
the footprints. Do you mind doing the investigation lack normal around with the neighbors
real quick. Yeah, we'll begin questioning, all right, thank you?
All right, roll survival checks to track the footprints, both of us.
Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna use uh Grampy's old coin, all right,
I'm gonna say dungeons, dungeons. Nice? So yeah, nice, I
got a thirteen. Okay, so that thirteen and not twenty, so within
not twenty. There are several tracks that lead away from the house back toward
the woods on the eastern side of the city. You can follow these tracks
not only to the wood line, but you believe through the wood line,
deeper into the woods. All right, our heroes will be right back after
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Now back to the town of Eterno. The ground is wet and it seems
like this group of people were more concerned about making a speedy retreat than they
were a concealed retreat. And what time is it now? You said we
woke up around three, So how long has it been? Probably about forty
five minutes. Okay, it's not quite four mm hmm. Would we would
have grabbed all of our stuff, like our like our pack and bags and
stuff like that. Right, Yeah, I assume you would have grabbed your
I mean he told you someone got murdered. I'm sure you would have grabbed
your gear before you, Yeah, left the house. It's still really early
in the morning. I mean, it looks like they were trying to get
out of here or no, buy I U saw all that ship. Yeah?
Yeah, we can follow these footprints deeper into the woods. I think
we might want to. You maybe be a little bit more stealthy than they
were, because they were making quite a hasty retreat. I assumed to a
base of some sort. Yeah. Yeah, it's still pretty early in the
morning too, we shouldn't I mean, hopefully we can go check it out
and be back in time before the Robin gets in town. Yeah. Okay,
do we want to how far into the well? I mean, can
we just stealth into this following the footprints? Yeah, I would say you
can stealth through the woods and find it. Especially Vartan is like nature born.
He is exceptionally well versed with walking through the woods. Okay, okay,
so I don't have my disadvantage on stealth. Well, dang, I
would say it offsets it being one with nature. Yeah, just roll once.
Four. I'm not good at stealth and normally have disadvantage because of my
armor. Mm hmm, I am a big guy. Nine. Okay,
not only are you not stealthy, but you realize that you're not stealthy,
Like as you're trapsing through the woods. Yeah, as you're trapsing through the
woods, it's like the first time you step and crunch on some acorns and
you're so big and heavy. It's just like you know in your armor.
It's a crunch. And then and used a couple of moments later, step
on some sticks and they crunch under your under your feet, and you step
near a raccoon's little hovel area and it starts hissing at you. So you're
finally like, you know, screw it. Just take off as fast as
you can while following these tracks, and you follow them until they come out
into a small clearing. The clearings maybe fifty foot in diameter, so it's
not a huge clearing by any means, but it appears to have had the
overgrowth cut down, and in the center there is a campfire site that that
you can see. Yeah, are there people around it? There are no
people around it, and the fire is not lit. You can just see
that they had a spot designated for a for a fire and the footprints end
here and the prints end here. Yes, far ten. This is a
little concerning. Yeah, how can I tell how long the fire's been out?
H Yeah? If you head over to it it, it doesn't appear
like it has been been lit tonight. Like. It looks more like it
was lit the previous night because everything is cold around it, so the stones
they put around it aren't warm. There's no smoke coming from it, there's
no burning embers. It looks like they had maybe been camping here for several
nights, but they did not light a fire to night. Can I do
when our conta check? Okay, go for it nineteen okay, and our
conta check will tell you that the way the footprints come to an end shows
that magic was used to cover them up, so they got back to the
campsite, and then magic was used to get rid of the footprints. All
right, I want to I want to use my speech of beast and leaf
trying to communicate with the with stuff. Okay, so with speech of beast
and leaf. You have the ability to communicate in a limited manner with beast
and plants. They can understand the meaning of your words, though you have
no special ability to understand them, and return you have advantage on all charisma
checks you make to influence them. So what I want to do is try
and ask the animals. And wow, there's no animals directly around. I'm
I'm guessing at this site. So I'm going to ask the trees to the
plant life to guide us in the direction that the people that were camping here
went. Okay, let's see how well that is. Ten okay? So
at ten uh, you look around you, and all of the trees around
you seem to come to life. They lean in the direction of the north,
as if a wind is pushing through them. Their leaves flutter in and
out, all in the same direction. And although they don't have audible voices,
you can hear them reaching out to you and connecting with you, and
you understand that they're trying to tell you that the people you seek travel north.
But that's about all they can tell you from this. They cannot guide
your path to lead you to where the people are directly all right, well,
let's hurry up. This way we might be able to catch tracks that
they didn't cover up and take off running. So you leave the campsite and
head out farther into the woods. You first stop at random places that you
think would be the most obvious trail for them to follow, Paths that have
been and worn down by forest animals that travel in and out of the area.
There are also a couple of paths where people specifically have traveled in and
out of the area, but you don't see any fresh prints that lead you
in one direction or another. After looking over the more common and easily to
see trails, you check some of the other more difficult terrain that they might
have chosen to travel through, but you have no success with your arcana.
You figure out this is probably a really powerful spell that was used to cover
up their tracks. All right, then, I say we backtrack back to
the camp and see if they left anything behind. Sounds like a plan.
You make it back to the campground. It's pretty easy to find your way
back, seeing that you've just been scouting the whole area north of the campground,
and go ahead and give me an investigation check. It's a thirteen because
I have a negative two on intelligence and I'm not proficient an investigation. You're
going to be the town investigator. I mean, I'm really good at perception.
I could roll a perception check if you want me to. You're good,
that's funny. Well, yeah, I got a sixteen. Okay,
So with a sixteen by a you find under some of the wood that had
been burned, some sheets of parchment and some books, some like journals that
had been burned in the fire too, So they appeared to be damaged,
but some of it might be salvageable. Okay. I pick it up and
say, let's see if we can't find anything out more about this when we
get back home. All right, Yeah, that's all you can find.
Yeah, just some parchment underneath the fire, underneath the logs that they were
using, I assume as kindling. Yeah, all right, I guess that's
all we can do here tonight. Thank you for listening to this episode of
Ethereal Embrace, a Creative Typo production. Vartian the fur bag Fighter is voiced
and played by Adam Culbertson. Baya Rustin, the half Elf Sorcerer, is
voiced and played by Tisha more again. The Human Monk is voiced and played
by Nari Quack and I am Nico your GM. Please remember to drop us
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Remember be safe, we love you all, and stay foolish.