Well, that was a nice little mess. I don’t get this whole religion thing, but these humans are consumed over who worships and how.

Boraen has sworn an oath of vengeance on – among others – the white-cloaks and black-cloaks who attacked Meesha’s shrine near Ulichton, driving away the goblyns rescued from the monastery and seizing the humans. The goblyns turned up safe – and, says Borean, druidic! – a little ways off. If like littlelings, these goblyns have an affinity for nature, perhaps I could get them to plant a few apple trees in memory of my father….

But I digress. Grel is desperate to discover who these Lightbringers in white cloaks are, who are assaulting the adherents of Tangadorin. Several of his flock have been badly beaten and their outlying farms fired.

It turns out there is another god being worshiped, Vaneer, the brother of Meesha. No word on whether any of this flock are being bothered, but lets lump these guys in with the Meeshans for now.

(And let’s not forget that fool Wikton and his god, that enlivened our last trip south!)

Mazlor is aghast that anyone would think the Light should be spread so militantly – though he knows there are many to the south who are more aggressive in putting down non-Light worship. His superior, Averin, and he made sure there were no Lightbringers in the Temple, so we tried to figure out where they were from. All signs pointed south, so we travelled back along the road to Reynalt’s fort. There, we got intelligence that led us to the leader of the Lightbringers, and we followed him to a farmhouse where he stopped, went in, and rode off again. We split the party and Boarean, Talvi, Mazlor, Itsy, and Belaldur followed the leader.

Sally, Fergus, Willie, Josef, Pyria, and I waited and followed the second man to leave the farmhouse. He led us to the gathering place, where seven other Lightbringers were waiting in a barn. Pyria distracted them while Sally quickly cast sleep, and we bound them all. Before we could leave, though, the daughter of the farmer in whose barn we were came looking for her father. Sally let the child in the barn, and cast Remove Fear – all that did was raise the volume on her outrage! I stepped up and gagged and bound her, but left a gold piece as an apology. Well, I wrote an apology, too, but it was in ancient Dwarfish, to try to cover our tracks.

Our parties met back at the Lightbringer leader’s farm. The other party had caught and, it appeared, tortured the man. All the worshippers – Tangadorin, Meeshan, Lightish – seemed OK with this, though maybe Grel was a bit green. We took our prisoners to the Keep so the Marshal could deal with the laws broken. We also took their horses.

This leader, named Keanax, said he took his orders from higher up the heirarchy than Mazlor or Averin. So great, now we have the worshipers of the Light, and Lite worshipers? What’s next, the People’s Front of Enonia? Looks like a nice little fight brewing over heresy. Still, I tried to focus on our next task – the rescue of Turgen from a Lightbringer cell holed up on a farm near Draycott. Despite some sort of clumsy trap that caught both Willie and Belaldur, we did well. I did a classic backstab on one guard who never saw me coming! But that was the only death. After Mazlor imposed his will upon the leader, the rest surrendered. Grel healed Turgen’s injuries, for which Turgen gave thanks to Meesha. Everyone except Grel got a chuckle over that. We took them all back to the Marshal for trial.

I guess next up, we look at the black cloaks? I’m getting too old for this!