Caspar shouts up to Tittlin in a tree, asking if he can see anything besides the troll. Tittlin pulls out his spyglass, doing a quick sweep, and doesn’t find anything. Caspar whispers to us that he doesn’t think the Baron actually expects him to kill the troll by himself - of course it’s a trial, but more likely of his bravery and combat experience than his ability to fell a troll alone. He instructs Momen and I to enter our positions, activates the diadem of meteors, pulls out a heavy crossbow, and fires a shot striking the troll.
Firing another shot and missing, the troll gets pissed and begins charging at him. Reaching him within seconds, Caspar draws the Rapier of Wounding and inflicts some wounds on the troll. The troll seems to regenerate and swipes at Caspar, but he hardly seems phased. Momen and I cheer him on as the fight continues - they trade blows for a while, during which he busts out the vial of acid and launches one of the meteors. The meteor explodes, dealing some fire damage to the troll. All of a sudden, the tree nearest to the explosion shakes to life. Tittlin spots two other trees moving to the south, and Caspar begins shouting out orders at us. The nearest shambling mound smashes Caspar with its branches, and the troll swipes at both Caspar and the tree. The nearest tree all of a sudden begins to look somewhat scared, at least as scared as a tree can look, and Momen’s wyrmling flies up and spits acid breath on the tree and troll.
One of the other trees strikes me with its branches and grapples me. I enter a rage and try to fear the far tree, but it continues to approach. The troll takes several more hits from both the tree and Caspar, and it begins to run away. Caspar instructs Momen to keep the trees busy as he chases after the troll. I quickly become preoccupied with the mound in front of me as it completely engulfs me, and I begin hacking away at it with Shifty from the inside. I feel the pressure from the bark around me increase, but I manage to resist it and continue slicing. I hear an arrow thud into the trunk and it collapses to the ground around me as I escape. Looking around, I see that the troll has been cleanly beheaded by Caspar, and watch as the nearest shambling mound is struck down. The final shambling mound resumes its tree impression and we leave it alone.
Tittlin asks what the Baron thought of the show, and he seems quite happy with Caspar’s command and combat ability, telling us that we can count on his support. We all head out of the swamp and back into Tumblebar. While here, Momen heads over to The Chopped Hopper to sell some dragon parts.
We head out from Tumblebar, taking a route requiring another portage to the northwest and towards Swanmere. Upon arriving, we see that it’s a tiny farming community and only about 100 years old. We pull the boat up to the beach and locate someone to try and set up a meeting with Baronet Dmitriy Mashir. The man indicates that this will be rather difficult without a necromancer, as the Baronet died a few weeks ago and some young upstart now runs the town. He’s apparently not the heir to the Baronet, although the man claims that that new guy’s about as close to an heir as you can get around these parts.
We thank the man for the info, and discuss the path forward. We talk for a bit, deciding that it’s best to find out what the townsfolk think of the new guy which Caspar sends Tittlin off to do. Caspar, Momen, myself, and honour guard head to speak to the town guard. The more nicely dressed guard of the bunch named Magnus introduces himself and indicates that he’s the lead of the town guard, and has been for the last 50 years. He tells us that bandits used to be a problem, but Dmitriy blew a bunch of money on some fancy shmancy magic vault for storing the town’s valuables. Ever since then (~15 years ago), they haven’t had any problems and despite the townspeople being quite mad about the spend at the time, it’s more than paid for itself. [Rudin Jaroslav] is the new guy, and is apparently one of the only literate people in the town. He was pushed into the position because of this, and is a relatively scrawny guy who seems to be quite anxious and stressed. Tittlin comes back and indicates that Rudin is reasonably well liked amongst the townsfolk, although there’s some questioning of his competency and some rumours going around that the reason he’s anxious is because he can’t open the town treasury.
We decide that Rudin is probably our best shot for now (as opposed to supplanting him with an outsider), and go to talk to him. Upon Caspar being introduced, Rudin is a complete bumbling mess. He plants his foot firmly in his mouth as Caspar explains and confirms the situation, and after sufficient word vomit Caspar gets annoyed and leaves the room for us to deal with him.
Rudin lets out a huge sigh after Caspar leaves, and it becomes very clear that he’s absolutely terrible with authority. We discuss with him a bit further in a more relaxed manner, eventually landing on an agreement that he will happily support Caspar so long as he gets assurance that Sylnala will be kept on a short leash once Caspar becomes the duke.
He takes us to the deceased Baronet’s manor, and we are very obviously greeted with the door of the magic vault at a building next door. Momen identifies the magic circle on the door as something that would cause anybody trying to enter the vault without properly opening it to quickly meet their painful demise. Some buttons and characters reside on the wall next to the door. Tittlin heads inside to search for clues. “Coffer Co.” is etched into the wall above the buttons.
I hurriedly punch in “password” and hit enter - the letters appear illuminated on the wall, and then flash red. A voice says “incorrect password - three tries left”, and Momen pushes me away from the buttons. Tittlin comes out with a letter and tells us to hold on. He hunts around for a question mark on the vault and presses it. All of a sudden, a room appears on the front lawn with a giant golem inside. He dings the bell and the Coffer Co. help bot springs to life, asking if we need help resetting our password. Tittlin says YES. It asks for a name, to which he replies “Dmitriy Mashir”, and it begins to ask us security questions. It starts with his mother’s maiden name, and we all head inside to hunt for clues. Tittlin finds a family photo of the Williams family, and notices that the person corresponding to Amber, Dmitriy’s mother in the Mashir family photo, looks similar to the young girl in the Williams family photo. He heads over to the rep and says “Williams”, to which it replies “correct”. Fiddling around, Tittlin unearths what appears to be a thin bone sticking out from under the tree. The next question is “Where did you bury Spencer”, to which I reply “Under the apple tree”. Another one correct. The last question is “When did you and Hailey Cardinal meet at the old windmill?“. We once again head back inside and look through Dmitriy’s letters and calendars. It’s quite obviously marked with hearts on the calendar when he met up with Hailey, although there don’t seem to be any planned in the future, which indicates that they didn’t plan these meetups in advance. Momen flips through an almanac and comes to the conclusion that they met up “after the rains”, cross referencing the dates between the almanac and the journal. The golem confirms the correctness and it allows us to change the password to “CCMB9697”. We retrieve Rudin who changes the password to something that he’ll remember, and he opens the vault and counts its contents.
Tittlin asks to swim around in the copper for a moment, which Rudin allows, and the vault is then locked up and Rudin transfers the ownership and recreates the security questions. He thanks us greatly for our assistance and confirms his support for Caspar.