(@Pandora, if the group decides that your Performance is not needed, I will grant you, that you can keep your nat 20, 24 Performance roll and use it anywhere in the future, since a nat 20 should be something special and it would be a shame wasting it like that.)

(OCC: i already canceled the plan and labeled it as dumb. ^^. Let's keep it for the future ;)) 

Pandora rolls her eyes and snorts. She's a little bit disappointed but maybe her idea was a product of the adrenaline from the fight. "Okay. i accept it. but i'm a little bit sad too. I thought it could be funny." she says while she raises her arms. "Let's go to Elro. Maybe we have another choice to talk to the elf if we explain the situation to him." And maybe i will get some spicy hot wine too. Delicious!

"Don't sweat it Pandora, we all get excited in the heat of a battle.  This receipt was an amazing find, was there anything else worth finding?"  He walks around until he sees the pale chest and examines it.

Elmira nods and is happy to go along with the plan.

Ashton takes a look at Pelc's chest and spots the pale chest. He looks at it and then tries to open it. It is not locked and opens with a soft clicking noise. Inside he finds a black wooden pipe and a small matching bag of tobacco. (OOC: You may decide to take it with you or leave it there, as you like)

Having settled on the plan, that talking to Elro might help getting more information from the elf, the group, two of the Glassblades and the captured elf start walking back to Elro. Other Glassblades stay back at Pelc's to start cleaning up the mess, taking care of the other elves and of Pelc herself.

You walk the few minutes back to Elros cabin and one of the Glassblades knocks at his door before entering.

Inside you all find Elro sitting at his desk and gesturing you to wait just a moment longer, before he rises and walks over to you. He looks at the captured elf with a sorrowful look on his face.

"I sent you out to find out what caused Urgons death and now you are back here with a wounded and captured elf." He stops to think for a moment and then adds...

"Well I have some theories on how this might fit together, but please enlighten me with your story before I assume the wrong things here."

Carina speaks firmly, as if she doesn't notice Elro's apparent suspicions (accepting any help for advantage from anyone or Guidance from Xerim if applicable to help on any subsequent Persuasion that is needed).

"Yes.  Let us start from the start, Elro Aldataur."  Unless stopped, Carina proceeds in and unashamedly warms herself by the fire.

"Cabbart and Mila allowed us into Urgon's cabin, which had been ransacked, unbeknownst to them - not Mila's fault as she may have been on her allowed meal break.  We thought it strange at the time that so many of Urgon's apparent valuables had not been taken.  We found hobbled dwarven footsteps leading away to Tulgi Lutan's cabin.  After some back and forth and our threatening to bust down the door and leave it open to let the cold in, she allowed us to enter.  Indeed, Tulgi was the one to break into Urgon's cabin, looking for the cure, as she herself is near death with the icy sickness."

"Furthermore, Tulgi admitted to working on behalf of her sister, Hulil Lutan, who is based in Croakers' Cave with ten or more other bandits.  At least part of their express goal seems to be to watch for Aeorian relics from Eiselcross or elsewhere and steal them, as Tulgi herself admitted.  I believe she said they sell these relics to the Uttolots of Shadycreek Run.  After Urgon had sold the relics from his journey to Eiselcross at Pelc's Curiosities, Tulgi broke into Pelc's to steal them, again by her own admission, passing on all of the relics to her sister Hulil and keeping only a magical dagger for herself."

"We proceeded to Pelc's Curiosities where we found it closed but with the door ajar.  Upon entering stealthily, we found five elven burglars in the process of ransacking it too.  They attacked when challenged.  Three are now dead, one unconscious and one you see wounded before you.  They too admitted to working for Hulil, who herself apparently has the disease as well.  The bandits were tasked with looking for a cure, or possibly other relics to sell to a priest in Shadycreek Run in exchange for a cure."

"We then entered Pelc's back room where we found Pelc herself to have succumbed to the disease, leaving nothing but a statue of ice.  Truly, this disease is tragic and dangerous.  Some skillful Investigation by Pandora here uncovered the original receipt from Urgon's sale of goods to Pelc.  So we have a list of relics, one of which is likely the cause of the disease.  Not the dagger, which Tulgi had kept, so it could not have gotten Hulil sick.  But any of the others could be the cause.  A scroll case, a jade statuette, a quiver with arrows, a silver ring inlaid with jasper, and two blue glass vials."

Carina gestures to Pandora to show Elro the receipt.

"After a brief rest, we propose to trek to Croakers' Cave to confront Hulil and the bandits to contain the relics, so as to halt the disease's spread.  Let us know your counsel and perhaps anything you know of Croakers' Cave as this one," (she glances at the wounded elf) "wants to talk no further."

Ashton listens to this very well thought out explanation.  "We want to take this one with us. He knows a lot about the location, layout and the forces at the cave."  He adds at the end.

Pandora listens quietly the words of Carina till her name came up. Like Carina told Elro she shows him the receipt "Do you know some of this relics? And if yes, do you know something about it?" she asks. 

Elmira listened to Carina's tale, nodding along, mouth agape, "Oh, yes, that did happen didn't it!" She gasped at thrilling details... Apparently she had the memory of a gold fish. 

Elro listens carefully to the remarks of Carina, takes a look at the receipt that Pandora shows to him and nods here and there. Finally he walks towards an open window to shut it and then turn around to you.

"Please, everyone. Take a seat while an old man needs a bit more time to think." He says, before he leaves you alone in the front room, walking into the kitchen again.

The Glassblades occupy three chairs. Two for them and one for the captured elf in between them. The table is empty, so Elro must have cleaned up the place after you last visited him. Thinking about the past events, it is hard to believe, that you left him only some hours ago. 

For a few minutes, no sound can be heard, except the blizzard rattling at the wooden shutters, howling around the cabin and the roaring and crackling of the fireplace with a kettle of boiling water on top of it. The elf looks miserable. He is still badly injured and barely conscious anymore. Finally Elro returns from the kitchen, walks into the other room and comes back with a sleeping bag. He places the bag near the fire and then orders the Glassblades to lay the elf on it. 

"Thank you my friends." He says to the Glassblades. "Now I hate to ask you for this, but could you wait before the cabin for a moment, while I need to talk to this group for some minutes? There is hot water in the kettle above the fire. Fill up your hot-water skins so you do not need to shiver out there."

The Glassblades thank Elro and pull out some water skins from under their coats. They fill them up with the hot water from the kettle using a big ladle and then do as they were ordered and leave the cabin to walk out into the storm again.

Meanwhile Elro walks over to the elf on the ground, kneels down and inspects his wounds. 

"I fear this one cannot go anywhere with you unless some one of you, that is proficient in the arts of healing, tends to his wounds." And he looks at Xerim.

"Now. If you can bring this elf back in shape we still have the following problem. He is a thief and as the leader of this, still fragile, outpost I cannot make a single exception to the rule, that the price of thievery is an unforgiving punishment. This means he now has to choose between direct execution or loosing a hand and being cast out of the village without any weapons, rations or other belongings under the rule, that he will be executed if he ever comes close to Palebank Village again."

He pauses for a moment to let the implicit message linger in the room.

"This means you can take him with you, but only under the condition that one of you carries out my judgement. Do not get me wrong here. I am no cruel man, but this young elf there might plead to you and you might feel sorry for him and do not wish him dead. Neither do I. But if I let one thieve get away with his deeds, this whole outpost will sink into chaos within the next weeks."

He looks into the flames of the fire and continues:

"I was here when we built the first cabin of this outpost and I was here when we had less drastic judgements. You would not have liked it here at that time."

He looks at all of you in turn again.

"Let him choose which hand he wants to give, then carry out the judgement. It is your choice if you heal him before or after that, so he can walk again. But in any case, think twice about your decision to go out to Croakers Cave during the raging storm. In this weather and especially in the dark, you will take several hours to reach it, and you will probably need more since you will get lost. I recommend you to let the Glassblades bring you to Arl Bortock in the Frozen Elk, our local tavern and his owner. This one ..." and he points towards the elf "... will stay in custody until tomorrow, where you can decide upon his fate. But again: if you do not tend to his wounds now, the gods might haven taken any decision about his fate from you by tomorrow."

He stands up again and then says:

"You did well in the short time. My Glassblades sadly could never have achieved this, but don't think bad of them. Most of them are still in training and none of them is a born warrior. I did not know that Tulgi had a sister. I did not know that - or how long - there are thieves hiding in Croakers Cave and stealing artifacts from the explorers. I did not know about Pelc's condition and up until now, I did not know anything about her death."

He shakes his head.

"I know, that I cannot know everything, but this is dire news. I fear I must take precautions to prevent things like this to happen again, but this in none of your business. Please! Head out to Croakers Cave. Find those thieves and bring justice to them or bring them to me. Don't let their pleads fool you. Every piece of copper they steal might kill someone in this Village that would have needed it. Many of my villagers are poor people, fighting bravely against the nature to survive in this harsh environment. But we still need supplies from outside to fully survive and for this we need every single coin. Think of the people of Palebank Village, when you face the bandits."

He looks into your eyes as he says this to see if his words found their way into your heads.

"Croaker Cave gets its name from the resident giant ice frogs. Its entrance is on the shores of the Frigid Depths, due north of Palebank Village. Villagers never go there as the frogs are dangerous and hostile creatures. I wonder what these thieves have done to them. Other than that, I fear I cannot give you any helpful information about the cave or about the items on Urgons receipt. But I believe you are right. One ore more of these objects must be the cause for the sickness, as these items connect Urgon, Hulil, Tulgi and the late Pelc."

As Elro finished his speech, he makes some space, so you can tend to the elf if you want and repeats:

"The Frozen Elk is a good tavern. You will find it a comfortable place to rest and have some warm drinks and food before going to sleep. Tell Arl Bortock your story and that I sent you there. He has fair prices and you can usually find him behind the bar."

(OOC: If I didn't say so, I took the pipe and tobacco from Pelc's)

While Elro is out of the room, Ashton packs the pipe he got from Pelc's.  When he comes back into the room, Ashton will put it in his mouth without lighting it, but will continue to figit as he listens intently to Elro as he speaks.  When it is obvious he is done, because he does not want to interrupt, he starts to talk.

"I can not do any healing on this man, Unfortunately all I could do is basic medicine on him, and he has had that already."  He also looks at Xerim.  "Perhaps our paladin friend can help, I would encourage him to do so."

He looks around the room and decides that it would probably be up to him to carry out the punishment of the elf.

"I will carry out your punishment, but not until we are done with him.  I want him to walk us to the cave, tell us all he knows about how they deal with these 'giant Ice Frogs'.  Surely they must have a way of getting past them at least."

He looks down at the elf again with a bit of a sneer.  "But I promise I have no qualms about a person having to answer for their crimes.  I will give him the choice you offer and will either kill him on the spot, or send him away with no weapons and only one hand, hmm, maybe a bit of food and money to get him somewhere safe."

"Thank you for your council, it is well taken.  I think we could all use a good night at this inn. Seeing this elf in such bad shape does make me wonder if there is a place we could get some potions of healing before we head out in the morning, may come in handy."  

Elro shakes his head at Ashtons question about potions of healing.

"Back in Uthodurn you can just walk into a shop and buy them from a shelf. But I fear, there is no merchant in Palebank Village that will have a single bottle in store. It's been years now, that I try to convince one of the alchemists of Uthodurn to come here and setup a shop to provision the adventurers and explorers, that start off to Eiselcross from here. I am sure this would be a good business and it would help expanding the village further. But sadly they have no interest. I thought about buying alchemic potions to have at least some in the stores, but the route from Uthodurn to here is way to dangerous. The few goods we need to import, arrive here in large trails, accompanied by a lot of guards after long journeys. And knowing that we desperately need these goods, they come at a high price. We simply cannot afford potions by now. However, you might be lucky and find an explorer or adventurer at the Frozen Elk, that is already provisioned with some potions. They might be willing to sell them to you."

I walk towards the elf. I stop right in front of him, looking down. I bring my hands to my face and breathe out onto them. Cold air appears and stays around my hands in a small mist. In a soft, yet gruff tone, I ask him a question, "What is the reason you live your life?" 

I rub my hands together vigorously for a moment, and then I'll place my hands on his most grievous wounds. I will cast Cure Wounds 8 HP Healed

Carina is happy to spend the night in a warm room rather than trudging through a blizzard in the dark.

"While every day this disease goes un-checked is a risk, I agree that it is probably more dangerous still to set out now in the midst of a dark snowstorm and risk becoming lost.  Or arrive exhausted to combat hostile ice frogs and bandits.  A room at the Frozen Elk sounds lovely to me."

Intently, she watches Xerim healing the wounded elf.  Glad that she is probably not going to have to be the one to cut his hand off.

"Perhaps tomorrow morning, we can stop by Old Burrold's Supplies (which Elro had mentioned) to make sure everyone has crampons and snowshoes."

"Looks like he will survive the night now." Ashton says.  "We will pick him up in the morning at the jail.  I am going to have an ale, a good meal and some sleep.

Ashton walks out the door and to the inn.

"Good job Xerim." says Pandora softly. "Let's go to the frozen elk. I'm starving right now." 

She puts her cape back on and follows Ashton outside. 

The question that Xermin had asked the elf, stayed unanswered that night, as the elf was already unconscious when the burned skin slowly took its original color and the wound that Xerim's spear had torn into his leg stopped bleeding under the dim shimmering light of Xerim's healing powers.

"Thank you Xerim." said Elro instead of the now sleeping elf.

"And thank you all for your deeds. Now, rest well for the night and may Corellon and Moradim guide your ways tomorrow."

With this he bids you out into the howling storm again and instructs the two Glassblades, who were waiting in front of the cabin, to guide you to the Frozen Elk. However, Xerim is the one that walks in front of the group through the chaotic twirls and twists of snow that blow all around you, as he knows the way to the Elk from the past months.

As the group reaches the Tavern, Xerim enters the taproom along with the others and instead saying their goodbyes, the two Glassblades enter the Frozen Elk as well. Aparently their duty for today ends here, as they walk straight up to the bar and order some hot mead, while removing their helmets. 

The taproom is filled with dwarves and elves, who are the most common among the races in Palebank Village, but you also see some humans and gnomes sitting at the tables. In one corner you see two suspicious looking humans rolling some dice together with a heavily drunken dwarf. At another table, two tough looking dwarves with huge tankards in their hands are sitting next to a weird looking, elderly gnome who smokes a strange pipe and gnaws on some meat while all of them pointing at papers in the middle of the table. They apparently discussing some business. And although it is already late in the night, you see two half-elf kids, a girl and a boy, running around and playing with wooden swords. 

(OOC: Xerim, as you live in Palebank Village for a while, you usually reside in your own chamber in one of the temples. You can decide where you want to stay tonight)

Carina is happy to doff her outer layer of winter clothing once more as she enters the Frozen Elk.

She sits down at the tavern bar with a smile and a contented sigh and buys the first round for the party, as well as paying for the mead that the two glassblades order.  For herself, some more warm, spiced wine.  I see myself drinking quite a bit of that in this weather...

"Elro Aldataur sends us to your tavern with his respects," she tells Arl Bortock, the proprietor.  She recounts the story she had told Elro Aldataur, though caution leads her to be vague about the exact location they are interested in (Croakers' Cave), in case there are unwanted listening ears in the tavern.

She asks how many rooms are available, wanting a private one for herself.  Naturally listening for any hints and rumors from surrounding conversation.

Finally, once the talking dies down, Carina Ravenscale begins to play the black harmonica that hangs about her throat.  Strange, melancholy chords and a melody that her aunt had taught her, having learned them herself from an extraplanar traveler.  What in another world is known as The Blues.

Performance:  19

Pandora wipes the snow from her coat before entering the tavern. As the pleasant warmth hits her, she takes off her winter clothes. 

After Carina recounted the events and asked for a private room, Pandora chimes in and asks for a private room as well "If there is a private room left, may i can have one too?" 

She turns around and have a look in the room. Pandora was looking at the people present when she hears the music. The sounds give her goose bumps, but it makes her feel comfortable. It don't takes long and she has to dance. (Performance: 24) The best therapy after such a day like this. 

Before Carina walks over to the bar you can see that the Glassblades hand over a letter to Arl, who reads it quickly and then thanks the men. As Carina offers to pay for the ale of the men they look at each other and then smile at Carina.

"That's mighty fine of ya young lass! Thank ya!"

Arl Bartock nods at Carina and Pandora after they asked about the rooms and says:

"Aye myladies. I've two single rooms for ya. Beds will comfort you, but do not expect much space. They're rather small but I never heard any complaints. And I only charge you 3 silver each for them instead of the usual 5 for the bigger rooms. Deal? Also, thank ya for helping out in the Village. The first drinks of your group go on me tonight."

The hot spiced wine is served to Carina and it truly is a drink for every sense, as it smells and tastes fantastic, looks steaming and blood red and also warms from the inside. The only thing missing is a matching sound.

As Carina takes out her harmonica and starts to play the conversations in the room become quieter and as Pandora starts her dance, some of the men and women in the room start to clap their hands, or knock their tankards onto their tables with the beat of the melody. The dice rolling humans have won against the drunken dwarf and no nod along with the music, drinking their ale. Only the two dwarfs, that have discussed something with the elderly gnome raise an eyebrow and gesture to the gnome, that they should go upstairs to talk further. The two children start dancing too.

A young red haired gnome woman walks down the stairs and takes a place at a free table. She seems to be attracted by the music and visibly enjoys it. As the two dwarfs and the gnome walk upstairs, the elderly gnome and the gnome woman exchange a quick look. The old one raises his eyebrows as if it was a question. The girl nods in his direction with a smile and that seemed to be enough for the other. The two dwarves and the gnome then dissapear upstairs.

(Carina roll  3D20+50. That will be the copper you will get from the patrons for your performance.)