#css misdemeanors

BOY OF TALL HOUSE COME OUT AFTER SNOWFALL, MANY YEARS. RUN WITH HOUSEWOLF. I STEAL HIS HAT. OLDER, RIDE THROUGH FOREST IN ROARINGSHELL, OUT BEYOND TO BARREN TOWERS AND BACK. OTHER ROARINGSHELLS COME NOW, BRIGHT-EYED, HOWLING. HOUSEWOLF OLD, LONELY, HOWLING TOO. …

Harrisley gingerly puts down the leaf, covered in a fine spidery writing. “And, this is…?”

“north wind... i transsslate...“ says the Walker Amid The Pines, in a voice that is the rustling of swaying branches.

“Riiiight. I see.” Harrisley looks over the other leaves now spread across his desk, covered in painstakingly-transcribed interviews with dryads, harvest spirits, the moon…

“So, er, this is rather embarrassing, but I’m afraid there may have been a slight miscommunication. When I said I needed a seasoned detective…”

“yessss... all four... i know them well...“

Aletheia University Dungeoneering Practicum

Party No. 17

• Lilias Calbach, College of Elemental Magick
• Dev Malim, College of Temporal Magick
• Susan Surn, College of Martial Magick
• Suffer Wayte-Archer IV, College of Medical Magick

Proctor’s Notes

Party “completed” the Master-Level Dungeon in 9 hours 43 minutes, the shortest time so far on record. Several of the walls will need to be rebuilt, and I will need to check the Library Archives to look up the exact text of the Riddle Scrolls in order to recopy them from scratch. Party complained that the Master-Level Dungeon was insufficiently confusing, violent, life-threatening, and flammable, and asked if I had anything “harder” available, despite my explanations that they had already received the highest possible score on the Practicum. Faced with their repeated insistent demands, I finally directed them to the Sealed Dungeon, designed and constructed by Horus Obliq the Pale shortly before the revocation of his tenure 30 years ago. As no staff member sent in to dismantle the Sealed Dungeon had ever been heard from again, I judged it to be a thoroughly suitable challenge for this group of students.

Due to the powerful barrier surrounding the Sealed Dungeon, I was unable to use the Scrying Beacons worn by the party to monitor their progress in real time, but the beacons provided a full transcript of their explorations upon their return three days later, which I have included below.

[…]

SURN: “Hang on, what’s this purple shit?”
[A purple fog fills the chamber.]
[Calbach snaps her fingers, producing a small flame.]
CALBACH: “Not flammable.”
[Calbach continues staring at the flame.]
MALIM: “I’m feeling itchy.”
SURN: “Yeah, me too.”
[Wayte-Archer examines the party’s faces and arms.]
WAYTE-ARCHER: “Hmmm, the coloration of these lesions, and this pattern of the edges… Wait, it couldn’t be… This is Langleigh’s Flesh-Eating Pox! It was supposed to have been eradicated 25 years ago! And an airborne variant is completely unheard-of, this is incredible!”
[Wayte-Archer begins excitedly pulling out vials from their satchel, collecting samples of the fog and cultures from the lesions on their own arms.]