View source for Statement to road wardens

'''Janna Forgedaughter's Statement to Road Wardens regarding the events of the evening of April 9th, 2514 and the morning of April 10th, 2514 at the Hooded Man Inn'''


My party was headed to Ubers Reich when the rain started coming down too hard to make camp outside. I spotted an inn on a side road. When we got to it we found the main door barred, but noises and lights were on and the side gate door was open, so we announced our presence and entered. When we knocked at the main inn door, a massive Human greeted us. He said his name was Otto and he owned the Hooded Man Inn. There was also a Human man he called Hans, dressed as a road warden, and another male Human who was never introduced. He mopped. There were no other persons visible, and no sounds of other persons either. Otto claimed they were all very nervous due to a bandit attack earlier that day, and that the inn was full due to a coach arriving. He did say we could stay in the common room, but overcharged us significantly and then had trouble with basic money counting. When Caelyn and I went to stable our horse and donkey, six horses bolted out of the stable. If she was less skilled at keeping her own beast in check, I would have been trampled. After our animals were cared for, and the others rounded back up, she had a look around to find out why the horses had been frightened. In the hay loft, she found the body of a Human boy. I didn't climb up to look, but she said the body was partially eaten and covered with bite marks. Otell and Zacharie came out to the stables, and Otell joined Caelyn in the loft. He even checked up on the roof, but found no tracks or monster signs aside from the dead child. Zacharie told me of his disbelief that Otto was actually an innkeeper, and I concurred, since the man lacked the basic skills of his craft. He suggested we ask Otto about the stable boy to try to catch them in a lie, but Otto's plausible response was that the boy had run off in the bandit attack. When asked why none of the other patrons were in the main room, he said they were all sleeping. The time was around seven in the evening, and that seemed extremely unlikely, especially if they had had the excitement of a successfully defended bandit attack. We were still suspicious, so when he brought out stew for us, I motioned the others to let me try it first. Being of sturdy Dwarven stock, I am less susceptible to poison. The stew was definitely unsafe, though whether poison, illness, or I now suspect some chaos contamination, I know not. I spat out the stew, and declared it unfit. My party refused to eat it. Otto claimed nothing was wrong with it, and took a large bite, but we were adamant. The rain was still falling too hard to leave, so Otto showed us to the common room. It was filthy, and Zacharie refused to stay there. Otell and he chose to return to the stable to sleep, and Caelyn and I went into the common room. Then Otto locked the common room door from the outside, trapping us within. As there was no latch on the inside, I began removing the hinges. Caelyn saw, out the window, Zacharie and Otell reaching the stables and being attacked by a chaos beast, a spider-bodied man, which we assume to be the killer of the Human child. I worked quickly to free us, but Otell had dispatched the monster before we were able to help. Going to join the others, Caelyn and I paused to try, at least, to rouse any other inn patron. We knocked on the door of the first room on the second floor, we shouted to the inhabitants, but heard nothing, so we leveraged the door open. Inside were no people, but bloodstains and the signs of a fight. Downstairs, Otell and Zacharie had returned to the inn. We joined them in the main room, intending to confront Otto and demand an explanation, but neither Otto, nor Hans, appeared. Listening, we followed the sound of a chant down into the cellar behind the bar, and then down again into a rough-hewn cavern beneath the cellar. Inside, Otto, Hans, the unnamed mopper, and another Human we hadn't seen before were standing in a circle around a statue, waving their hands and singing. They looked the fools, but then that statue came alive, a demon, and it killed the chanters. Then it came for us. Caelyn's shot must have been blessed by her forest god, because it buried in the demon so far only the fletching was visible. Then Otell, with all the force of a Norsecan ice storm, attacked it with his great axe, and the thing was killed. Turned into powder, I guess that's how demons die. Otell and Zacharie had been wounded in the fighting, and there were also five living Humans, drugged and bound, in the cavern, so we turned the innkeeper's room into a care ward. Then Caelyn and I buried the dead. Even the chaos priests, because an honest burial can keep unclean things from rising, right? We did keep what goods we found on the chaos priests, as just recompense for risking our lives. One of the Humans, we found when they woke, was the actual owner of the Hooded Man, and he and his wife fed us and let us sleep while we waited for the road warden patrol to arrive.