Mayhem in Oakbridge!
by Karlos Ablefirst
SHARN: As many residents of Sharn have recently become aware, there has been a brutal series of murders over the past week in the sleepy neighborhood of Oakbridge, Middle Northedge. When the first victim of these slayings was discovered, his case was immediately dismissed by the local Watchmen as suicide. My good friend Victor Saint-Demain tells me now that things would have ended there (for a while, at least), had it not been for the investigative efforts of a Thranish man named Gerard Angevin and his two partners, Shinto of Overlook and Morgan Ironwright (both of whom reside in Sharn). These three worked together immediately after Svans ir'Kilmansor's demise to begin flushing out the murderer, who would go on to kill three more Oakbridge residents over the next two days.
Naturally, I decided to visit Victor for a casual interview once I learned that he had also been assigned to the case, this time at the head of a contingent of Sharn's Best. We agreed to meet on the evening of the 18th at the Bluebird Inn, also in Oakbridge. When I arrived, I was surprised to see Victor at ease; normally, when he's on a high profile case you can't make the man sit down! But he informed me as we settled down to dinner that our two supper companions were in fact the killer's next victims. He was content to keep an eye on them while Angevin and company flushed out the murderer using the evidence they had already acquired when Victor first arrived on the scene. We didn't know it at the time, but this would happen before dessert.
It was around dusk when a tall man in shining plate armor stepped into the room, wearing the badge of a Shadowbane Inquistor on his chest and a sword on his back. He made his way over to our table, made small talk with Victor, and then suddenly turned around and arrested our barmaid! 'Preposterous', I thought - she was barely old enough to be a barmaid. Even as the thought entered my mind, she began weaving her hands together and muttering an incantation.
I don't remember what happened exactly after that, to be honest with you. The world passed into a haze of madness and agony, and I fell upon my fellow patrons, and they on I and each other, in a fury of fists, knives and feet that would have killed us all before the spell was broken. When I came to my senses perhaps a minute later, it was all over. Most people in the common room were unconscious and bleeding, and I myself had a terrible cut in my side. Angevin used the power of his Silver Flame to heal it closed, along with the mortal wounds of several others who had fallen to the murderess' enchantments.
I learned later during interviews with Angevin, Shinto and Ironwright what had happened during that terrible minute of frenzied destruction in the Bluebird Inn common room. As I suspected, the killer had placed a dire spell upon us all, which muddled our thoughts and increased our paranoia against one another. She had planned to use this distraction to get away, for she knew that Angevin's pure heart would not allow him to abandon us to each other's maddened whims. But she had not thought it all through carefully enough; while Angevin and Saint-Demain remained in the common room, braving the sudden insanity of the place to prevent us from slaughtering one another, Shinto and Ironwright pursued the killer relentlessly, quickly subduing her with their potent magicks. During the interviews, I learned that she is a changeling named Ziki, though the Sharn Watch remains tight-lipped about her motives as she awaits trial.
In the meantime, it seems as if the Shadowbane Inquisition has begun proving its worth as a law enforcement agency abroad. If this quick and decisive investigation is any measure of the skill required of their agents, I fully expect them to get the added authority that the Council of Cardinals seeks at the Summit next month. Regardless of those developments, criminals in Sharn will now surely be stepping more lightly while Inquisitive Angevin and company are in town.
[at the bottom of the article is a fairly decent artist's depiction of Gerard, flanked by Morgan and Esan, who stand in the shadows behind him]
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