Case of the Missing Pie

Historian: Caleb. Date: 03/17/2025

TLDR – Someone is after Alphie! But don’t worry about that. We investigate the scene of the crime, and find out that Mrs. Penderghast made a Sunlight Pie in order to heal her sick daughter, but it was stolen when she set it on the windowsill to cool. We question the horribly unsupervised neighborhood kids, who tell us they saw a deer steal the pie and run away along the rooftops. We follow its trail to the cemetery, and discover Snibbs the gravedigger locked in a coffin. He tells us he was tasked with stealing the pie (among other things) by some pixies, and they always seem to interact with one specific gravestone. He leads us to the gravestone of D. Fire. We open the secret passageway and go inside, only to find that it’s the grave of a dragon – and that there’s still a living dragon inside, who seeks to take over Low Falutin now that he’s been (mostly) healed from a curse by the pie. We immediately piss him off.

• Date: 6 Lionnir 777AR.
• Caleb gives the recap… again! Alphie’s Cold is increased by 1.
• We begin in a dark place. In the background there are sounds of shifting and moving. Constant work and action. A shadowy figure makes their way over to a large wall filled with blinking lights and gems, some of which could fit in the size of a palm. Hundreds if not thousands of individual runes are scrawled on them. The figure flips switches and turns a knob, and crackling comes over the air. A voice on the other side asks them to proceed.
  • “We have identified that Alphecca has awakened their power within Low Falutin. We have run tests on the area. They’re in possession of the Gibbit.”
  • “This is troubling. Dispatch the retrievers. Take Alphecca alive. Kill the rest.”
• We pull out, we return to Low Falutin, as we continue to make our way down the street one bright morning. Jericho asks Newton for details on what was taken, and he says it was a pie. Maybe pecan? He tells us there’s literal sunlight in the pie, specifically in the sugar – the actual light and its warmth and all the goodness to come with it. She’d been working on it for the past 64 hours straight.
• We continue, and head down a normal-looking street, with small gardens in many of the front yards. Birds flutter from house to house. Newton points at a house with tulips outside, and one of the windows open. He says this is Mrs. Penderghast’s house. We knock on the door, and a badger woman with longer whiskers steps out, wrapped in a series of scarves going down her body. Her ears perk up as she sees Newton.
  • “Oh, Newton, thank you for bringing them. Would you be the Tattercoat Knights?”
• She offers us tea and wanders inside, and we see a small kitchen covered from floor to ceiling in dirty pots, pans, bowls, empty ingredient bags, and so much more, all covered in batter and bits of smashed-up fruit. She clears a spot for the kettle.
• She tells us making a sunlight pie is a bit of a to-do – it took her 71 hours! You have to make the right lens to focus the sunlight, give the right amount of prayers to the Lamplighter, refine the sugar, cook it down, cook it up, add in the right amount of vanilla and other extras so the sunlight has something to spill into… [and so on].
  • “You must understand, though, it was a labor of love. My niece has been feeling rather ill for the past few weeks.”
• She tells us her niece can’t sleep, and she was hoping to cheer up and bring her back to good health with the pie’s many medicinal qualities. She had just put it up on the windowsill and was gone for maybe 5-10 minutes, and it was gone when she came back.
  • The pie had rhubarb, apple, peach, pecan, and bits of meat inside, along with some peas and carrots. She didn’t tell anyone she was making it. The pie glows.
• She thinks the neighborhood kids took her pie – they’re always up to mischief. They might’ve crossed a line this time.
  • The kids are led by Gerald, and often play in his nearby treehouse. Joan and Aldo are also always up to trouble with him.
• Upon inspection, there are some sparking crumbs on the windowsill, along with some thick, black, nutrient-rich dirt – it doesn’t seem to be the same type as on the road. Heavy bootprints lead up to the sill, and then out and away. They seem to be adult-sized.
• We ask if she knows if anyone else in town has been sick, and she says a merchant, Kirval, hasn’t been seen in quite some time – he might be a bit ill, but he also just might be out trading and doing merchant things.
• She tells us the sunlight pie gives heroes a particular edge for a while – something about the bodies of heroes absorbs it better. She offers to make us one eventually, but for now, she wants to go to get some sleep. She’s a little drowsy! Jericho points out she was working for 64 hours, and Astranna interjects and says 71.
  • Jericho tells her after that he knew 71, and just wanted Mrs. Penderghast to correct him. Astranna apologizes.
• Jericho has Piero take a whiff of the crumbs and set up on his shoulder. We follow the footprints, and they cut across the street at an angle, stopping at a house catty-corner from Mrs. Penderghast’s. There’s damage to the outside bark, like someone/thing climbed it. Gwyn volunteers to climb it, and with 2 successes, pulls her way up. On one of the branches, she finds more thick black dirt. She doesn’t find anything else, but the tree is adjacent to a few others… seems possible they might’ve hopped from tree to tree.
  • Astranna inspects the marks on the tree – they don’t necessarily look like claws, but it looks like at odd angles, something was poked/stabbed into the bark irregularly, with sometimes 10-12 ft jumps. Sometimes there’s clustering damage.
• Looking at the next set of rooftops, there does seem to be a point where some shingles have fallen off of the roof. Gwyn jumps over to the roof, and her foot goes straight through it. We decide to check with the homeowner, and are met with a very sleepy bat-person. They hit the bottle earlier, and are still a little drunk, if they’re being honest. They ask if there are ghosts loose in the town, and tell us the ghosts have been active.
  • His name is Lenny. We all sign his pillow for him. Anja embroiders her name.
• Alphie makes a phys check [2 successes] and sees a pink herding dog dashing through some bushes. They take off after it, and do not catch it. We make fun of them for this. We proceed to the kids’ treehouse, and see a sign that says “Strangers keep out,” with a rope ladder that’s pulled up. We knock on the door of the house it belongs to, with no answers. Looking at their garden… it’s fairly well-tended to, but the soil isn’t as nutrient-rich as what we found.
• Jericho goes to the base of the treehouse, and sees splotches of pink paint. We all come to the simultaneous conclusion that they painted that poor dog. Jericho whistles to get their attention.
  • “Excuse me, denizens of the treehouse!”
• A small fox-kid pokes his head out.
  • “Who the fuck are you? Ew. What’s wrong with your face?”
• We tell him we’re the Tattercoat Knights. He calls us ugly, and calls to his friend to have them tell us we look ugly. We find out they tied a talking frog to a dog. After some more back-and-forth, they tell us a deer rolled up to the windowsill, grabbed a pie with its hooves, and ran up a tree. They want a bribe for more information. Astranna suggests giving them the Gibbarette, but it’s immediately nixed. The party suggests giving the kids the hourglass. Astranna doesn’t want that…
• Jericho ends up offering them 5gp for the deer’s location – 2gp upfront, and then 3gp once they’ve given it to us. They agree to this.
  • “Do you have a disease? Just a question. I didn’t know a person that old could have a pimple.”
• They tell us they heard some dude scream after it hopped from tree to tree, and that it made its way toward the outskirts – they point to the west. Jericho uses Inquisitor, and finds out this is true. The kids want to buy fireworks with the money. We leave them to their antics, and go off to investigate. We find an antler embedded in a tree as we walk, and further inspection of it reveals that it’s papier mache. Piero smells a crumb up in the tree, and points out a trail of bootprints. We follow it, eventually coming to the edge of a cemetery, with constant mist hanging over it. Piero smells mustard, oak wood, varnish, acrylic paint…
• Astranna tries to be careful and respectful as we walk through, but when we hear a cry for help, she darts toward it… it gets less frequent and fainter as an hour passes, but eventually she picks it up just right and finds a plot of a few graves, one with a basic gravestone and no markings, but fresh black dirt. From beneath it, we hear a cry.
  • “Help me, please..!”
• There’s a wooden coffin with a heavy chain over it, and someone pounding against it, begging to be let out. Astranna assures him they’re here and working on it. Jericho uses Augury to determine who’s in there, and gets a vision of a figure with a heavy cloak on, walking through the mist and digging a hole in the cemetery. They stand at the back of a funeral, before putting dirt over a coffin. There are multiple visions of this, and then Jericho is returned to his body.
  • He uses Note in the Sleeve on the graveyard, and finds out that this is the main, official graveyard of Low Falutin – everyone within the town is buried here, and it’s been here for generations.
• We find out this is Snibbs the gravedigger, who was shut inside by pixies who had hired him to collect different valuable things for them… including a pie. Just pulling the chains off doesn’t work, and the others suggest Astranna use her fire to heat up the metal. She tries to think fiery thoughts, but with a 0 on her dmg roll, nothing happens. Alphie prompts the Gibbit to eat the chains, and on a successful spirit check, it does. The Gibbit spits up a pure red dagger [d100 – 6]. It’s an elder-blood dagger. As Alphie picks it up, something wraps around their arm.
• A mole-man is tucked into the coffin, his clothes a bit tattered.
  • “Oh, what are you… oh, I fucked up.”
• We chat with him, and find out he dug his own grave. The pixies seem to frequent a grave that opens up, and told him that if he ever went down there, the deal would be off. He walks us to the grave, with Jericho unintentionally intimidating Snibbs by walking alongside them and fiddling with his gun. We find a gravestone for D. Fire, who lived from 598-668 AR.
• Snibbs tells us the pixies approached him about 3 months ago, while he was talking to himself while digging (like he usually does). Three of them approached him and offered him money if he got them things they needed. The first and second times, he said no, but the third time… he’d made a bet that he lost pretty badly, and needed some money. He got the money and paid it off, but then they came to him again, saying he could live a little better…
  • They have a preference towards metal objects, crafted items, antiques, that sort of thing… usually he just gets some old things people are throwing out. As for food, he once took some rancid meat from the butcher. He’s asked if there was anything with mustard, and he said there were some things, but nothing too big.
• Astranna’s nervous about tampering with a grave, but it doesn’t seem like this one’s real… just in case, she lays a hand on it, apologizing to D. Fire and saying that we’ll try to make it quick (and so on). Some words are revealed at the bottom – “People make me, save me, change me, raise me. What am I?”
  • We figure out pretty quickly this is money, but saying the word doesn’t do anything. After Snibbs says he would see the pixies mess with the base of the grave, Astranna places down a gold piece (and does not take it back after). The dirt itself begins to part, revealing a staircase.
• As Alphie goes down, Anja and Astranna notice that Alphie’s breath is visible – the air around their body is cold. However, to the rest of us, the air feels like it’s getting hotter as we descend. A little strange.
• Gwyn and Jericho make mental checks [Gwyn – B1, 3 successes, Jericho – 0 successes]. Gwyn notices the air is a little musty, but a very particular kind of musty smell she’s familiar with, and one she and her associates tried to avoid at any cost. The oxidation of metal; there’s rusting metal down here. Ahead of us, a great cavernous space opens up, with lots of rust on the ground. There are paths through the rust, and in some places it almost looks manicured, but in other places there’s just piles and piles of stuff. Accretion over time.
• Eventually, Gwyn sees something glittering ahead, as the cavern comes to an end. There’s a series of gold coins and gems glittering across the ground… Jericho stops, and since he’s been paying close attention to where he’s walking, he sees something rising amongst the rust and debris, like a large bone. Alphie, Jericho, and Anja get to make mental checks.
• Pushing aside a lot of material, there’s a lot of bone, but… it all seems to be connected. They start counting the limbs, arriving at seven… no, not seven, six and a tail, six and a… with 2 successes, they know that to disturb a dragon burial site is a death sentence to most. As they look up, tucked into the top of the cave is a massive orange, rust-colored drake starting to descend. From a chest, a pixie claps its hands.
• The dragon begins to eye us all.
  • “Who dares enter the lair of the Rustwing? Speak or die slow.”
• We introduce ourselves as the Tattercoat Knights, and he asks if we’re the ones who wove the sunlight. Jericho says we’re here on that person’s behalf.
  • “On their behalf. Such a shame. What do you want?”
  • “We merely wish to ask several questions of the pixies that make their home down here.”
  • “Only one pixie now. I had no more need of the others when my disease was cured.”
• He says a curse was put on his person, one that rotted his flesh, shriveled his wings, took his breath away… he could not fly or fight. But with the sunlight, he has been restored. He contemplates offering us room in his service, and says that as his strength returns, he shall once again lay claim to this land, starting with this town. He tells us he was cursed months ago, by a dark mage who contested his territory.
  • Jericho asks Newton about this, but he doesn’t know anything. He was just trying to find the best fishing spot.
• He offers us the chance to give him our gold and swear service to him. We huddle up to debate this, and Astranna asks about the skeleton – an ancient ancestor of his. Not D. Fire; that’s a mocking joke. Dragon Fire.
• Looking at him… his scales have lost a little bit of their sheen, and the wings are a bit emaciated. He’s definitely not at the height of his power, but certainly recovering. Astranna suggests he rest for longer before trying to conquer.
  • “This town is small, its people meager. Once I collect their jewels and food, I shall regain my former strength even quicker. They are of no threat to me.”
• We offer to go out and get jewels and food for him.
  • “I see… not a bad idea. We would seal it with a pact, then. I am an old creature. I would not allow myself to be betrayed. How do you think I kept the pixies in line? They are far more troublesome creatures than your kind, filled with the nature of betrayal and trickery.”
• We suggest maybe if he’s nice the villagers will just give shit to him, and he says that a horde won is truly a great horde.
  • “Will you join the fallen adventurers in my stomach, or shall you live a life of glory as we build a new kingdom together?”
• Astranna starts to ask more questions, and he gets pissed at her. We refuse to join his service, and the Rustwing rears up, his wings expanding. From deep in his throat, fire begins to build. As the Tattercoat Knights begin to draw their weapons, facing down the legendary Rustwing, we end here.
  • There is no level-up, but we get +3 hero points “just because”.