Dead humanoids: 0 (still good).  Dead friendlies: 1 (bad, but not our fault). Gold royals: 0 (v.v. bad).

We finally make our way to the Rattlebone Inn, which appears to be very highly recommended by everyone that we have met so far.  It seems clean and pleasant so we casually drop the name of Captain Gregor to see if we can get mates rates on the room. Igor, the innkeeper, is delighted that we are friends of his cousin Gregor and offers us a room for 1 royal a night, including dinner and breakfast.  There is no way that Tanara is sharing a room with Oin’s apparently ever-increasing smoking habit or Bryan’s wandering hands, so we decide on two rooms instead.  Pavel looks hopeful, but Tanara is still playing hard to get.  We freshen up rapidly, and descend to the common room for a meal and some refreshment.  Bryan discovers some good local ale and is under the table a pint later.  We spot Sergeant Boris with some of his colleagues and buy them a round of drinks as well – always good to keep on the good side of the law.  Then Titus appears, looking crestfallen.  Apparently the Order of the Griffon are looking for warriors with more experience.  We buy him a drink as well to commiserate, and suggest that he should join us to get more experience.  Pavel looks worried, but Tanara rapidly explains that it is experience in smiting the unrighteous that she was thinking of, so he calms down again.

At this point we are approached, somewhat unsteadily, by a chap who introduces himself as Theosius.  He suggests that he might have some work for types such as us, and offers to pay for our drinks, board and lodging if we will do something for him.  Since we have bought drinks for most of the inn so far, we rapidly accept his offer, not even bothering to check exactly what he wants.  Soon after that he drinks himself into a complete stupor, so we leave off trying to question him and turn to Igor instead, who confirms that he is a local and a regular, and works as a high-class wood carver.  We are still unsure what a high-class wood carver needs with an elf, a dwarf and a halfling (except possibly as the intro for a bad joke), but gainful employment is gainful employment, especially in this market.  We continue to imbibe, but turn in for the night relatively early, dragging Bryan with us to stop him making drunken amorous advances on the cat.

Next morning we are up bright and early for a tasty breakfast of ale and cheese.  Tanara is about to nip down the road to buy a dagger (having realised that all her weapons are a little conspicuous in a city like Specularum), when a distraught woman bursts into the inn, complaining that her cellar is haunted by strange voices and scratching.  We help Igor calm her down with a swift tot of his brandy and she tells us the whole story, which is pretty much exactly the same as the synopsis.  Goodwife Thanato (for that is her name) lives just around the corner, so we offer to go and sort out whatever ails her cellar.  It turns out that we will do pretty much anything for money, not that she has offered to pay us.  We will do pretty much anything just for kicks it seems.  Pavel looks hopeful again.

Tanara nips out to buy her dagger and we then follow Goodwife Thanato back to her house.  She shows us the entrance to her cellar and we climb down.  It seems a normal cellar, but we hear scratching from the other room.  Pavel, Tanara and Bryan investigate and find a pantry, with a small hole on the far side, about four feet high.  Titus and Oin now hear noises from the corner of their cellar, so we go back and investigate, and find another tunnel.  We are obviously dealing with some sort of giant rodent infestation.  We advance into the tunnel, in increasing order of height.  The narrow tunnel winds and turns.  A side tunnel reveals an extremely unpleasant cesspit.  We continue past it, following the noise through several junctions, until we reach a wooden hatch.

Peering through the hatch, Bryan can see two figures digging a hole in the floor of another cellar.  One of the cloaked and hooded figures suggests that the hole is deep enough – the other insists it must be deeper, because no one must find what they are burying.  Finally the hole is deep enough and they place a large bundle in there and fill it in again.  At this point Tanara quietly casts a sleep spell on the two diggers, but they are completely unaffected, which is worrying.  Given that this implies that they are either very powerful, or not living, we opt to continue watching them.  The finish filling the hole, and leave the cellar, closing the trapdoor.  We enter the cellar, pushing aside the crate that covered the tunnel, and uncover the bundle.  Slitting it open, we find the recently deceased body of a beautiful young woman with blonde hair.  A quick examination reveals that she has been strangled, and that from her hands she is obviously well-off.  We decide to retire with the body, so that someone can’t come and take it away, and alert the authorities.  As we do so, we spot some red hairs caught under her fingernails, possibly scratched from her killer, and blood on her hands and nightdress, despite her not having been wounded.

We carry the body back, having filled the hole back in again, and place it in Goodwife Thanato’s cellar.  Tanara and Pavel remain to guard the body, while Titus goes to fetch Sergeant Boris, and Bryan and Oin go to try and work out which building might be above the cellar.  Sergeant Boris remembers Titus and believes him, which is lucky.  They return to the scene, stopping briefly to pick up another Captain of the Watch called Wihgamescu.  Meanwhile Oin, catching a quick fag break, and Bryan have identified the building they think is above the cellar.  Talking to Igor at the Battlebone Inn, he says that it is the house of a sea-merchant, Fortunato Vorloi, although he is away at the moment and only his daughter, Lucia is at home (with the servants of course).  She is beautiful and blonde, so we might have identified our victim.  Igor also says that Stefanos Toronescu has been courting her, but she has rudely rejected his advances.

Oin and Bryan return to the cellar, to find Boris and Wihgamescu already there, with some local deep-fried dough rings and a couple of cups of a rather bitter hot drink which we are told is very popular in  Ylarum.  They confirm that the body is indeed Lucia Vorloi and tell us to show them where we found it.  We leave a couple of watchmen with the body and return to the other cellar.  It is untouched, so we climb the ladder and enter the house above.  On the ladder we find drops of pitch – maybe one of the two men was a sailor?   We are in the kitchen of the house.  In the hall we find evidence of a fight, including a bloodied dagger, so someone was badly cut-up.  There is blood on the floor, and on the edge of one pool, someone has tried to write something.  It looks like (R|P)A(D|O).  Tanara leaps at the possibility that it might say Radu, as they might have an interest in starting a vendetta between the Vorloi and the Toronescu.  On the other hand it might just say Rache.  Bryan also finds some drops of a brown liquid that he identifies as good quality wine, but we find no bottle or glasses.  In the kitchen we find some bloodstained rope that we identify as the murder weapon, and a Toronescu signet ring.  Tanara is convinced that the signet ring is a plant to frame the Toronescu for the murder – it is very difficult to tear off a signet ring, and the two men burying the body were in no hurry – they would have removed such an incriminating item as they had time, and you can’t not notice losing a signet ring.  That said, if you want to frame someone for a murder, why go to such lengths to hide the body?  No one else is present in the house – where are all the servants?

Returning to the cellar, Boris insists that we explore the rest of the tunnels.  They are a confusing mess, but the only other feature is another cellar, that the digging seems to have started from, as there are wheelbarrows, supplies of timber for propping and tools.  It looks like the assassins started at this cellar and tunnelled into the cellar of the Vorloi house, which is how they gained access.  It doesn’t explain why they didn’t leave by this route as well – we are fairly sure that they didn’t, as we were in the cellar for quite a while.  Maybe they spent a long time arranging the murder scene though, and then retired through the tunnels as we were in the Goodwife’s cellar.  A lot of the tunnels seem to be dead ends when they realised they were going in the wrong direction, and they seem to have tunnelled into her cellar by mistake – their digging noises explains what she heard.

We are now in the cellar, waiting to open the trapdoor and see what lies above. Hopefully some answers, rather than more questions.