Page 47 - Bad Juju

We leave the guards at the house to make sure no one else can mess up or steal anything from the scene, then return to the Mayor with as much evidence as we can carry. The Mayor looks even more shocked to see everything we bring than when he saw his own name on the list of sacrifices, but he tells us that we have found plenty of evidence against Ironbar to make him lose trust in his ex-Chief Justice, he'll be a wanted man from now on. This may not be our usual way of dealing with villains of his caliber, but no one really has any complaints.

Talking for a while with the Mayor, we discuss what the names being on the list means. Aishe points out it might just be a list of people who owe these gangsters money, but VV reminds her that we've already learned a lot about this ritual and what it's supposed to do. Based on the note we found on Aldern, it seems they are earmarking people to later kill in some ritual fashion, so they can harvest some sort of Evilness energy that apparently resides in them naturally. That, along with using the strange fungus from the sea caves and possibly some other things, will do something they call the Sihedron ritual. Aishe glares at Yoo at the mention of an evil energy, pointedly reminding everyone that his name was on the list, but VV explains that it probably isn't any sort of classically bad energy. Seeing as how the Sihedron ritual seems to be connected to the Rune Lords, who all styled themselves after dark emotions such as wrath and lust, it would likely be that the Evilness energy would be more like those.

The Mayor mentions that if we're interested in learning more about the Rune Lords, we might be in luck. There's an old – and some say crazy – scholar currently in town named Danial, who is visiting Magnimar for the next month or so to study at the Great Library. He actually used to live in Sandpoint and the Mayor is surprised we haven't heard of him yet, but no matter since now would be a great time to meet him. We agree that we should meet him at some point, and decide to do so the next chance we get.

Also the Mayor would like to reward us for all that we've done for his city, so he gives us each a slip of paper that he says is worth six-thousand gold pieces and can be used at any store in the city. With that, and whatever loot we've gathered and haven't already sold, we should all be able to afford some pretty nice magical trinkets! The Mayor also offers to throw a parade in our honor, as a way of publicly introducing us to the city at large as the heroes who have saved them from a terrible plot; everyone is excited about the idea, except for VV who tries to remind everyone that we did just foil or at least delay the plan of a powerful crime syndicate and so a parade in our honor is like asking to get assassinated. But Aishe is set on having the parade, so VV grudgingly agrees if only to stay close to Aishe.

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The next few days are spent preparing for the parade, which practically becomes a festival after Aishe and Yoo have had time to suggest "improvements" to the basic plan. There's also a lot of shopping to do, since we've been carrying quite a lot of unnecessary loot around in our little traveling wagon. After selling it all for another few thousand gold, we divvy that up and everyone finds plenty of things to spend their six-thousand plus extra gold on. Kaiya orders some fancy armor from a foreigner's shop and pays them extra to have it done before the week; when it's done and she tries it on, she looks like one of those Eastern samurai. Yoo finds a powerful Brooch of Shielding somewhere, he says it was the hidden treasure of some back-ally shop, Balthazar finally gets some real magical monk's robes and the chain shirt he bought for Snips arrives. Aishe and Yoo can't really decide what to buy, since there's not much in town for casters, so they each buy a ton of scrolls as well as some magical backpacks to carry them in.