A suspicious trace
–
Although our four heroes recently stumbled upon a sinister story in Feth, they had to temporarily pause their investigations in the last blog. They owe this in particular to Löwenzahn, who kindly offered to help Bibiane rebuild her stable in Selbingen. Now that this small favour has been taken care of, our friends can once again devote themselves to the mystery of the missing men of Feth.
However, as they return from Selbingen late at night, this is postponed until the next day and they bury their heads in the soft pillows of the inn ‘The Tired Horse Legs‘. The next morning begins late, as expected, and each of the four enjoys this relaxed and peaceful start to the day. After a while, they begin to plan what the best next steps might be. Since their investigations so far all point to the mysterious girl Grete, they decide to search for the former home of her and her father.
A good hour after this plan was hatched, our four friends stand helplessly in the middle of the forest, wondering if they have strayed from Gerda’s rather vague directions. They decide to search the area briefly and then hike back to Feth. Less than two minutes later, this turns out to be the perfect decision when they discover a dilapidated house among the trees. A rusty axe lies in the tall grass in front of the hut, covered with some old blood splatters. Löwenzahn carefully pushes open the rotten door. The hut is unremarkable: very rudimentary furnishings, a mouldy bed in the corner of the dwelling and old, dirty clothes scattered everywhere. It’s all very authentic, but it doesn’t help them at all.
Hour after hour passes, but our four friends don’t want to give up, because there must be something here. And their persistence pays off, because suddenly Theo discovers something under a dusty carpet: strange grooves and cracks in the otherwise even wooden floor. Theo immediately thinks of a secret door and finally finds small wooden rollers that must be used to set a kind of code consisting of crosses and circles. He doesn’t understand this at first, until Aldric reminds him that the glass beads that each woman had found for her missing husband also had circles and crosses carved into them. Theo tries to crack the lock with this new information, but Kel Tuh Las is unfortunately not quite so patient. He conjures up his battle axe and hacks at the wooden planks. Thankfully, Theo is not crouching upside down in front of the lock, so he does not accidentally decapitate his comrade. Instead, the wood splinters and flies in all directions. However, Kel is successful – before them lies an open secret compartment with an old book. Kel carefully picks it up and blows what feels like kilos of dust off the leather cover. The word ‘diary’ can be read, albeit faded. Kel carefully opens the leather binding – but you’ll have to wait until the next Arkanthia Pen and Paper blog to find out what he reads there.
