Family Business

In the baking heat of Osirion, it is hard to ignore the presence of the sun, and as such, it is no wonder that despite the land's more traditional customs, worshippers of The Dawnflower can be found in abundance there. One such devotee is Willapur, a kind and matronly Grippli with a honed skill in medical alchemy. The swamp fields she cultivates along the Junira river are most often quiet, peaceful places, but that peace was shattered when the Chirurgeon saw a tall Garundi man steal her prized statuette of Sarenrae and escape into the desert with it.

Distressed by the theft, Willapur leveraged an old debt, and summoned the drifter Irwin Yona to her house by letter. Meanwhile, her nomadic middle son Iopo happened to be the area, and stopped by to check on his mother. After a pot of tea, Willapur introduced the two wanderers to each other and tasked them with tracking the Garundi man towards the Footprints of Rovagug. The pair agreed, so with a packed lunch and some elixirs, they were set off on the first day of Erastus 4722AR.

Hunting a Thief

The unlikely pair tracked the thief towards the Footprints of Rovagug, following his trail easily enough through the wetlands. As the ground started drying out, the prints were harder to follow, though Iopo and Irwin still tracked their quarry into a canyon. In there, they set off an alarm snare, and were attacked by a hatchet-wielding bandit. Despite giving the pious pair a good hiding, the bandit eventually surrendered, fearing for his life; their assailant was revealed to be a 14 year-old boy named Kito. He explained under duress that he had been adopted by the thief, named Ephraim, and trained in the ways of the desert. Recently, however, Ephraim had become erratic, taking to locking himself into his room at night and emerging the next morning with ragged clothes and destroyed furniture. Furthermore, Kito's boss was spending much of his time at a creepy temple to an unknown god that was located in the centre of a corrupted oasis. When offered the chance at redemption, Kito took the chance eagerly, surrendering his weapons to the hunters, and he gratefully gave them directions to the temple in exchange for a chance to be looked after by Willapur.

Irwin and Iopo followed Kito's directions easily enough despite the heat, and soon found the temple in the oasis. The ziggurat was constructed of strange black stone, and where the door should be there was only a bone handle and small keyhole. After checking the perimiter, Iopo tried the handle, which aggravated a diseased crocodile that had been hiding in the moat's depths. After the croc was defeated, Irwin dissected it to check if the key had been swallowed by the beast, but had no such luck. Iopo searched the bottom of the now safe moat, and found the small silver key submerged in the muck at the bottom.

Inside the temple, Iriwn and Iopo found Ephraim praying at a dark altar with the statuette of Sarenrae in hand. They attempted to approach quietly, but a stray rock caught by Irwin's boot alerted the theif to their presence. Enraged, Ephraim transformed into a bipedal crocodile monster, and attacked his pursuers. After a hard fight, in which Iopo was nearly drowned, the monster was subdued. Iopo gave Ephraim a chance to repent and commit to The Everlight, though he swiftly executed the thief when the latter refused redemption.

With the statuette of Sarenrae retrieved, Irwin and Iopo took the chance to search the temple, finding a small amount of loot, as well as some heretical carvings of the liberation of Rovagug and the destruction thereafter. Iopo destroyed the carvings and the heretical altar, and the pair returned to Willapur's house.

That evening, they found both Willapur and Kito alive and well - the former was happy to have the statuette back, but was a little confused when she saw the excellent condition it had been left in by the thief. The odd group shared a meal that night, and Willapur offered bed and board to the boys for as long as they needed, though she warned them that there was something strange going on with the cattle in the area dying.