Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

“No… no, I’m afraid I don’t have a blanket as such,” he admits after a moment, glancing back up toward her. “But perhaps my cloak might do for the time being, eh?”  He pulls at the edge of it slightly as he says it.

One second she’s 30’ away, the next she taking your cloak, then in a blink she’s back at the chest her baby wrapped in your cloak…

”…silence is golden golden…” she quietly sings.

Darixa make an insight check as Cook suddenly jerks from his position propped up in the opening.

The messenger looks at Esme with surrender, “The kinda vile things that happen to brave young women who happen into the company of scum.”  His jaw clamps shut and he looks down at his hands, dirty scarred neglected.

     Cook's jaw drops.  Then he does.  The little girls disappearing and reappearing several times like that rightly freaks Cook out and he forgets exactly where he is.  So when he takes a step back he’s expecting floor…. Maybe even a step down.  But there is no floor…. And the steps stopped halfway up.  Cooks backpedaling foot catches nothing but air.

     And down Cook goes.

     There is a bit of a yelp of surprise.  A quick curse. And, of course, falling.

     When Cook finally comes to a stop, hopefully not too broken or bloody but surely in a rather unflattering heap, he sees Darixa and her question eventually seeps into his rather confuzzled brain.

     “Umm… no?” Cook answers, quickly looking back up at the attic from where he fell on the second floor.  “Nope.  Not all day…”

     Cook gets back to his feet and looks sheepishly at Darixa.  “Little girl.  Up there in the attack.  Spooky little girl,” he explains.

     “Stole my cloak,” he adds as a bit of an afterthought.

(Darixa Insight: 4)

Quote from Culuril >>

(Darixa Insight: 4)

 ((Insight into… what?  The “stole my cloak” comment?  I wouldn’t say Cook is lying so much flavoring the telling of events…lol)

Darixa can’t tell if Cook is mentally doing okay or reacting to everything that’s transpired up to now…

(insight 4, inject a little chaos.)

Darixa hops back a bit, startled when Cook falls back down. "Are you... joking?" she asks tentatively. "You expect us to believe a spooky little girl up there stole your cloak?" She does seem a little worried for the man. But she looks around for wherever the messenger is that Esme and Seri have been talking with. "Hey! You don't keep any little girls up in the attic, do you?" 

Seri too is taken aback as Cook descends unceremoniously and cloak-less.  As he and Darixa converse and Esme prompts the messenger, Seri's voice grows quiet and thoughtful.  She gazes around at the wreck of the manor house all around them.

"Makaster seems to have been a mad alchemist, obsessed with turning other metals into gold," (which Seri still believes to be nonsense, but she does not press the point).  "As obsessed as a ship's mad captain might be in their pursuit of a legendary treasure or sea creature."

"He persisted to the point of insanity, until his fortunes failed, his mansion fell to ruin, and he transformed into the deranged undead skeleton we battled along with his thralls in the basement.  Procan knows, a man of such obsessions might think nothing of locking his daughter who would not be quiet in an attic until she too perished from hunger, thirst or cold, for want of a cloak, becoming a ghost who yet haunts this place above as he did below."

She pauses.  "Cook.  Did this possible daughter of Makaster speak of... gold?"