Nelyna walks over to the body and waits while Caine and Jim take a look at the envelope and its contents. She still looks unsteady on her feet. She looks down at the poor young man with sadness in her eyes. Such a tragic waste of life.

"Let me have a look at the poor man's wounds and those tracks, try to make any new tracks around the body until we know what we are working with."

Survival16

Caine looks up from the letter at Jim and then the others.

"Vampires?" Caine says as he reaches to the back of his neck, feeling a phantom twinge of pain from his own past. "Not to but too fine a point on it, but that seems like it should cost extra. A lot extra."

He looks back the way they came, the stabby twigs still fresh in his mind.

"Think there's any other way back to Daggerford?"

"Probably not," Jim replies to Caine's question. "However, it looks like the dead does bite after all."

After a brief moment of looking at the body of the fallen man, he continues.

"Anyway, we better get a move on. It sounds like those wolves might still be around, and I'd rather not be caught by them and end up like this."

"Agreed, let us make haste to somewhere defensible.  Vampires? I honestly thought they were just campfire talk and all that."

"We will burn the body first.  A proper burial would be best but we must make concessions for the situation."  Razi says this matter of factly.  His smile is gone and he has has an almost workman like demeanor.  While the others investigated the note and body, he has been piling up loose branches and dry materials from the forest floor.  "This is indeed a cursed land.  Vampires... marauding wolves... (sigh)... I understand why she sent me here."  He will drag the corpse over to his makeshift pyre, accepting any help that is offered.  "Leaving corpses out to rot in the best of times is an offense against the higher orders.  To do so in a land plagued by such shadows would be to invite disaster."

"Leave it," Jim urges as he casts a look over his shoulder in the direction of the wolf howls. "This body has been here for at least a week and if we don't get moving now, then someone will find us lying here next week."

He turns away from Razi, looking around in all directions.
(Perception: 11)

"I don't think the 'highest orders' are paying much attention to this place."

Caine watches Razi for a moment and realizes he's not going to leave until the body is on the fire. He trots over and helps heave the body onto the pyre.

"You're not going to be much help here if we don't get going," Caine says.

Using the torch he already had lit, he helps ignite the wood then moves off with the others to continue down the road they're on.

Quote from Thoradin_Orcbender >>

Caine watches Razi for a moment and realizes he's not going to leave until the body is on the fire. He trots over and helps heave the body onto the pyre.

"You're not going to be much help here if we don't get going," Caine says.

Using the torch he already had lit, he helps ignite the wood then moves off with the others to continue down the road they're on.

 

"Thank you."  Razi is more than willing to depart once the fire is going.  He will take the rear guard position as he is the one who insisted the linger to burn the corpse.

Nelyna decides to walk in front of Razi, near the rear of the group. She is still quite weakened from the fight with the lunatic and his animated twigs. The sounds of howling so close by chill her blood. They needed to find some sort of shelter and soon. 

"Let's get going, please," she murmurs. "If we can find any sort of shelter, I need to rest and recover my magic, especially if we are to face vampires at some point." She shudders visibly. "I've never met a vampire. Normally I would be thrilled at the opportunity to study such a creature, but I doubt I would get a chance before it tried to suck the life out of me." 

Jim turns to Nelyna, "You know, I've always had a deep fascination with magic. Just how exactly is that you are able to cast spells? I've always tried, but failed."

"We need to look somewhere we can fight from, they will try to surround us I imagine.  And we need to go NOW."

Survival 22

Nelyna turns to Jim. "Oh, it has taken me decades of diligent study. It can take months or even years to learn a spell and master it. I write down my spells in here." She shows him the spellbook or grimoire that she carries with her. It's leather-bound with silver clasps. "If you'd like, I could try to teach you a simple spell."

"Most wizards study under a master wizard, someone who teaches them and mentors them. Master Neralmo of Never Winter is my master," she continues. "He's a very famous, esteemed wizard. If we are able to break this curse, he should be quite impressed, and he may even promote me so that I'll no longer be considered just an apprentice..."

Nelyna trails off as Sleet exclaims that they need to move quickly. Aside from the foreboding feeling she had gotten when they arrived, she doesn't sense anything, but she scans her surroundings just in case. Those wolves had sounded close...

Perception - 13

Jim nods along listening to Nelyna's explanation of magic, "Well, that's the thing. I have been reading magic books for most of my life. So I guess I've been trying to teach myself, without a mentor. I just never mastered the ability, not like my friend though. She was better at it than I."

Jim looks back and sees the large wolves standing at the edge of the forest.

"Blimey! Those wolves are massive. The one even seems to have red eyes."

When they all get a little further away, Jim turns back to Nelyna.

"One spell that I really would like to learn, is that one with the floaty hand. I think that could be really useful for someone like me."

Razi stares for a while at the wolves before continuing the retreat with his companions.  A pack of massive, man eating wolves on its own would be a horror… the baleful red eyes of the pack leader confirms there is something unnatural and terribly wrong here.

He is compelled to stand against true evil… but as Caine ablely put it, he won’t be able to do much good if he is dead.  And right now he is exhausted and sapped of magic.  “I run tonight so that I may return and bring light to this darkness another time…”he mutters as an oath to himself and his patron.

"Well, I guess the state this place is what you should expect for a town in a cursed place," Jim says quietly to himself. "Let's go and speak to those two kiddies over there. They might have some information for us."