- Marita and Krystal are upset about the ruckus created at the docks during our rescue of Marie - Despite being displeased, they are short of help and desperate - needing to ask us for further help - Six girls have gone missing over the course of six nights. The guards have turned a blind eye up to this point - They disappeared from the docks. The guards have found three bodies, all murdered - with cuts that seem almost surgical - Krystal has a scarf that belonged to Mira - who was one of the bodies - The scarf is covered with blood - "The Butcher of Kalteo" - Some of the bodies have not been taken away from the docks - Timmy the Leatherer makes items from human skin - Tara is the most recent of the disappearances - Ellette, Steve, Orlan and Graxen depart for the docks to investigate the Butcher. - The warehouse we rescued Marie from is now smouldering ash and debris - In an alleyway behind the warehouses, we find a taped off area with a dead woman laying on the ground. This is Mira. She has a surgically clean cut across her throat and her hands are folded neatly upon her chest - The throat seems to have been slit post mortem - There are scuff marks on the ground that would seem to suggest she was carried here, but not killed here - There are barnacles and salt on her shoes - which is odd because her clients were not known to be sailors - Her hands are clutched, opening them reveals a pearl that seems to be broken clean from a necklace - There is also a hint of magic on the body - coming from her jawline. Underneath her jaw, there is a magical tattoo that seems recent. It is an eye surrounded by flames and ties to Divination magic - it dissipates immediately after being discovered - There is a piece of paper within her skirts. It is filled with a list of names - There is also a ticket to the theatre lodged in with the note. The ticket is covered in blood - but there is no blood on the scarf - We make our way to Bardway - which is bustling with life. - Steve approaches a box office, asking the ticket seller if he's seen a woman matching Mira's description - We buy a standard ticket (16CP) from the ticket seller, but it does not match the bloodied one - Ellette buys a booth ticket - which is 5GP. This does not match the bloodied ticket either - Steve questions the man - who reveals himself to be Frankie - asking after a ticket that roughly matches the details we can make out on the bloodied ticket. - Ellette shows Frankie the bloodied ticket - which costs 100GP. He points across the street, at a building labelled B.T. Bardway. There is police tape across an alley beside the building - Ellette agrees to pay 5GP for this information, and a further 5GP for Frankie to mislead anyone who may come asking about us afterwards - We walk down the alleyway beside B.T. Bardway. There are no immediate signs of a crime, but the back entrance to the theatre is open - We sneak inside, finding a photograph stuck beneath the doorframe. - The theatre looks misused. A pale figure dangles from above the stage, a dead woman. - The photograph appears to be the same woman. On its back is written "Silvette, former performer" - Ellette shoots the ropes holding the woman aloft, while Steve readies herself to catch the falling corpse - The woman lands on the ground, fumbled by Steve - There are no signs of struggle on the body, but there is a shard of glass embedded in her sternum - placed with precision and without resistance - The ropes tying her appear to have been part of the set. The production was about a circus - but the painted background she was hung in front of depicts a burning cathedral - which seems out of place in relation to the circus show being held at the time - There is a residue of enchantment based magic on the body, possibly Calm Emotion or Sleep - The shard in her chest depicts the woman in life, but touching it causes this image to shatter. The flaming eye glyph is briefly visible - She clutches a piece of paper in her hand. "He promised me a final performance". On the back is a logo of a red door - Orlan approaches Frankie, asking about the red door logo. - Frankie identifies the logo as belonging to the Luxury Red Room on the outskirts of Bardway - a brothel geared towards big spenders - Graxen relates a story about a hunt for an artist in Barovia named Mathieu - who drew the etchings he used to find Sordia Vignti. - The Shorestalkers had difficulty finding Mathieu and so arrested his brother and threatened a public execution. This drew the artist out of hiding, who ran at the gallows in an attempt to barter for his brother's freedom with two silver coins. - Graxen saw the glint of silver and, believing it to be a weapon, stabbed the artist. He has felt guilt about this ever since - We make it to the Luxury Red Room, which appears to be abandoned. Inside, there is a bloody trail along the ground leading towards one of the back rooms - This leads us to a private room stinking of perfume and blood. The body of a woman lies curled in a claw-foot tub. This is Rosa. Her skin is crosshatched with delicate slices too deliberate for rage, while a shattered mirror hangs on a nearby wall. Its shards have been arranged artistically - The body shows no defensive wounds - She is wearing a pearl necklace with a missing bead - matching the one we found at the first crime scene - A diary falls from behind the headboard of the bed. Only one page has writing. "He says each death opens another eye. One more name, one more favour. I fear what's behind that mask" - There is also a shoeprint on the floor, a high heeled shoe. The wardrobe suggests this victim only wears flat shoes - The perfume in the room smells like the first victim - Orlan casts Detect Magic, causing the mirror to assemble into a golden theatre mask - before shattering again - A smash rings out from outside the building, followed by a thud. Outside, a window is smashed - with a large stone lying on the floor. It smells like sewage - There is an open sewer grate nearby - We venture into the sewers. A shadowy figure dashes ahead, we run to follow. - We arrive in a chamber with walls covered in glowing glyphs. On a stone alter lies a chained woman, Ilira. Her eyes are gone - replaced by two dark stones that appear to drink in the light - The magic from the glyphs refers to a Silent Gaze and appears to reference a summoning rite - partly celestial and partly infernal - The woman has a rolled up document in her boot - a map marked with all the previous murder sites in a ringed formation. There are six marks, with two other areas we haven't investigated yet - The woman's hands appear to be in prayer - as if she was a willing sacrifice - There is a second set of small bootprints in dried on the alter - there were either made by a child, or a halfling - There is an engraving on the side of the alter, a circle with a lion emerging from its centre - Using the map, we arrive at an old bell tower - south of the Temple District - There is police tape at this scene - where we find the body at the base of the iron bell. While her body is horribly twisted, her face is perfectly calm. This is Casea. There are symbols clawed into the bell - A letter is clasped in one of her hands. "He walks when bells do not. The echo of the first is the final toll" - Her chest is sunken - her heart missing, without any wounds. This is possibly due to Plane Shift or Shadow Extraction - There is faint magic in the air, either Psychic Screen or Power Word Pain - The carvings on the bell read "They cannot ring in silence" - Underneath the body is a golden theatre mask, on the back of the mask - the logo of the O with a Lion's head. - Arriving at the final crime scene, we find a rundown set of apartments. Travelling up the stairs inside, we come to a loft stinking of paint fumes and rot - The walls are covered with canvases, some half finished and others slashed - A woman, Luciana, is pinned like a moth in the centre of the room to a massive canvas - blood has been used to paint impressions of all the previous victims - while one body remains unpainted - One of the woman's fingertips is smeared with paint - as if she tried to write something before her death. "Not just him, one wears gold. One wears blood" is written on one of the canvases - The paintings around the room depict a cathedral, a tall man in a golden mask with a shadowed face. The mask bares a tiny inlay of an R. This is signed with the lion crest - A signet ring lies on the floor by her foot, it also bares the lion crest - There is a journal on a nearby table. It is full of incoherent ramblings - with a burned raven's feather tucked inside. Some entries suggest the lion crest is associated with this feather, while others make repeated reference to the Gilded Eye - We make our way to the final mark on the map - the church in the middle of the Temple District, where we can hear the sound of women's cries. - The temple is badly run down - with sigils of burning eyes flickering on its walls. A strange violet light glows through the windows from within. - The voices of crying women echo from inside - We open the door and enter, causing the crying to stop. At the centre of the marble floor is six chalk outlines representing the victims, recreated with wax and blood. A seventh outline is empty. The door slams shut behind us - An alter at the back of the room holds a number of items we have found at each crime scene - and a small canvas depicting Sordia Vignti - The crying restarts, as an elderly man appears at the far end of the hall. He calls out "Welcome to House Orlin. I see the final sacrifice has arrived"The crying restarts, as an elderly man appears at the far end of the hall. He calls out "Welcome to House Orlin. I see the final sacrifice has arrived"