SpoilerChapter 6

Inarah dutifully presented the evidence the Jackals obtained from Papusashu's mansion to the Maelstrom. Yukiki's name was cleared but it remained to be seen whether the true criminal would face justice; for the right amount of coin, many heads would look away, even at the upper echelons of the Immortal Flames. Weeks passed and word around Ul'dah claimed Papushasu was under intense scrutiny by the authorities, but no charges were made.

In the meantime, Kilid was approached for some work by a rather shifty sounding hyur. With Stone, Thara and Inarah at his side, he met the potential client at a quiet location in La Noscea. The negotiations swiftly turned sour and the hyur revealed his true intentions; with a cadre of heavily armed men, he attacked the Jackals with the aim of elimination. After hearing a call out on the pearl for aid, Thya, Helia and P'etri rushed to meet them and fended off the attacks, with most of their foes taking a long dirt nap. The old hyur, nicknamed "Giggles" by Thara for his creepy, constant laughter, vanished into thin air.

With Myra's connections in Ul'dah, the Jackals were made aware of a deal going down at Candlekeep Quay between Papusashu and an unknown figure. Inarah, Thara and Tata hid themselves nearby to eavesdrop on the conversation between the greedy lalafell and none other than Giggles himself. Papusashu delivered a hefty sack of crystals to the hyur and promised a much bigger shipment, so long as he got the war he'd been promised. Once the negotiation was over, he took the ferry to Aleport and Inarah called the rest of the pack in to follow him.

Tracking down their target to a lighthouse between Aleport and Swiftperch, the company found Papusashu surrounded by armed men and an enormous sealed crate. It wasn't long before blades were unsheathed and the grass at their feet turned red. Some of their foes, however, seemed oddly serene and made no attempt to fight back; the blue marks on their faces were, as the Jackals discovered later, marks of the Drowned, enslaved by Leviathan.

With many of the guards dead or dying, there was a brief lull in the battle and a muffled skittering could be heard near the cliff's edge. The Jackals backed up and pressed themselves to the lighthouse wall, unsure what fresh threat this would bring, and stared in horror as Sahagin clambered over. The beastmen grabbed Papusashu and the crate of crystals with aid of the Drowned and disappeared as quickly as they arrived.

The threat of crystal smuggling now eradicated, the company hoped this would be the last they heard of crystals for a long, long time. They each made their way back to their homes but with the night's events weighing heavily on their minds.

Epilogue

With Papusashu gone, the Jackals had one last matter of business: the not-so-dearly departed's earthly belongings. To that end, Inarah got in touch with one of her contacts in Ul'dah, X'rhen. Although now a bartender at a high class hotel, Rhen was once rather acquainted with city underbellies. He was able to provide Inarah with details of guard patrol routes in the Goblet and, after some persuasion, even picked the lock on the front door to Papusashu's mansion.

With time ticking away before the next patrol arrived, Rhen and the Jackals swooped in to relieve the house of anything not nailed down. Thya found herself a set of finely crafted smithing hammers, P'etri acquired some paintings that caught her eye, Emreg made off with an armful of jewels and Yoral raided the pantry for fish (of course) and a bundle of expensive herbs. Stone stumbled upon what appeared to be an heirloom axe and Rhen hit the cactpot with several bottles of Bacchus wine.

Rhen eagerly moved on to pick the lock on a safe downstairs but was rather disappointed to find only lalafell sized party clothes inside. However, Inarah spied a feminine looking dress with a locket hanging on it. It appeared that the locket belonged to none other than the Jackals' client, Yukiki. Kilid also later found an unsent love letter in a secret compartment in Papushashu's desk, addressed to Yukiki.

Raid over without incident, everyone moved out to meet in Horizon where Yukiki was waiting. She was clearly disturbed by the news of Papusashu's dastardly machinations and how he came to his end, especially after Kilid gave her the mementos found in the mansion. "Yes, well, you've been paid. If you'd kindly vacate my presence, I would be alone now," the sullen lalafell ordered as she tossed Kilid a hefty sack of gil.

Although the job was done and the villain certainly wouldn't be smuggling crystals again, the Jackals couldn't help but wonder if this was the last of it. Giggles was still out there, after all...

"Ah s'pose ah were 'opin' fer too much t'get everythin' wrapped up in a neat lil' package?" Inarah sighed to Kilid. "Aye, y'were," he muttered as the company made their way back to Limsa.

A fun, real march

The Sunny Seaside bar V: irtua Fishing
A more fleshed out selection of images can be found at: http://imgur.com/a/yaTHm

Spoiler
Act 2: Ashes to Ashes

Chapter 1

Not long after Papusashu's mansion was raided and the plunder fenced off to eager buyers, Kilid collected the post on his way to the tavern. He settled into a chair and handed the bundle to Inarah as they shared a pint with Helia and P'etri. Bills, payments for contracts performed and so on were all there, but one item in particular stood out with its ornate handwriting. Inarah opened the envelope curiously; it contained a handful of invitations, all in the same beautiful script.

The female's face went pale as her golden eyes passed over the contents. "Somethin' wrong, 'Narah?" Kilid frowned and came to stand next to her, resting a hand on his wife's shoulder. Voice trembling, Inarah explained that the Jackals had received an invitation to Papusashu's funeral. More alarming still, the names on the invitations were the false names the company had given when they crashed the party at the foul lalafell's mansion.

This raised several questions. How was a funeral arranged so quickly for someone who had not even left a body, who may not even be dead? How did the invitations, addressed to people who didn't exist, find their way to the Jackals' door? "Someone's toying with us," Helia remarked darkly.

After some deliberation, the four agreed to attend the funeral, scheduled for that evening, and bring some backup should anything go awry. Thara, Xiv and Yoral joined them on the ferry from Limsa to Thanalan and made the trek through the desert to the Church of Saint Adama Landama.

Their journey went without incident until they arrived outside Camp Drybone and noticed a broken down caravan with a mob of orphan children in tow. The children descended upon the Jackals, prodding, poking and laughing. P'etri found her coin purse not just lighter, but missing entirely, Helia had her hair pulled and the rest were scratched hard enough to draw blood during the swarming.

Moving swiftly on to the church, the company was greeted by a lalafell priest. He performed the last rites, including a tirade against "thieving mercenaries who thought nothing of plundering a dead man's home," and emptied an urn full of ashes onto the ground. Rather than falling to the parched earth, despite the still air, the ashes rose up with a life of their own and coated all of the Jackals head to toe.

Helia aggressively questioned the priest but he swore he was never given a name; only a very substantial amount of coin. Turning to each other with worried frowns, the company left the church and planned their next move. Helia and P'etri went straight to the Alchemists' Guild in Ul'dah to have the ashes analysed whilst Inarah and Thara agreed to try to track down the sender of the invitations.

"Aye, someone's toyin' wiv us alright...an' we're gonna find out who," Inarah mumbled under her breath as they headed back to Limsa.

Upper to no good
First, the entire album: http://imgur.com/a/gJ8fq

Took screenshots this time!
Full gallery: http://imgur.com/a/kuN2v

Spoiler

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Chapter 2

Some suns after the funeral, Helia and P'etri informed the rest of the Jackals that the Alchemist Guild had finished their analysis. The ashes were the remains of a hyur, not a lalafell, and mixed with a combination of dried voidsent blood, the powdered claws of some sort of creature and a sprinkling of fire shard fragments. Helia was certain they were spell components, most likely for a curse, and she and P'etri headed off to Coerthas to seek counsel.

In the meantime, Inarah had managed to get a lead on whoever had sent the funeral invitations. Tracking the man down to a back alley in Limsa, she found him, but he was no more than a bloated corpse lying face down in a shallow puddle of water. The stench of rotten eggs hung in the air and her ears flattened from a buzzing noise that, whilst so faint as to be almost imperceptible, was relentless. Not thinking too hard on it, as death wasn't an uncommon sight in a big city, she shrugged it off and chased up another lead.

This one led her to the Silver Bazaar in Thanalan and she brought Thara along to investigate. The pair of Seekers found the man's home empty yet there was the same buzzing sound and sulfuric fetor Inarah had encountered with the Limsan lead. Inarah scouted the roof of the building and, in the distance, saw a faint light glowing at the nearby pier. With no other clues to go on, the two miqo'te headed down to the docks.

As they approached the pier, the light winked out and a streak of white appeared a few fulms from the water's surface before vanishing with a loud splash into the sea. The women cautiously moved to the edge and discovered a corpse matching the description of their lead.

With the stench of sulfur and incessant buzzing growing, a flash of darkness seemed to not quite steal all light from the world, but invert it, with black becoming white. The Seekers saw the man's body no longer face down in the water but hovering in the air and, more horrifying still, bearing the faces of their respective mothers - both long departed. The water around them turned into an ocean of white flame and the sky a vortex of, not black, but the total absence of light and colour. All of this, for a split second, with the buzzing a deafening roar in their ears.

The nightmarish scene disappeared and the pair stared in stunned silence for several moments. When they collected themselves, Thara decided they should inspect the corpse still floating in the water and Inarah reluctantly helped her drag it onto the dock. The dark skinned Seeker, remaining cool and calm in the face of Inarah's fretting, conducted her investigation. The poor sod's chest was hollowed out and filled with various rubbish, but also a handful of gems - the same sort of gems the Jackals had stolen from Papusashu's mansion. As realisation dawned upon the blonde miqo'te and she backed away in horror, there was a skittering sound on the other side of the dock. That was the last straw; Inarah raced back to the Silver Bazaar, leaving Thara alone with the corpse.

The pair converged shortly after Inarah's display of cowardice, both disturbed by the night's events but otherwise safe. As they made the journey back home to Limsa, they explained what had happened to the others over the pearl. None could make much sense of it but the company was now certainly on their guard.

Speaking of arses being kicked...
The entire album can be found at: https://imgur.com/a/sLdk3

Missing Member, present pictures (Remembered to take some this time)

If it was Pin the tail on the Jackal, we'd have had problems...
The entire album can be found at: https://imgur.com/a/QBTz5

If you go down to the Shroud today...

Moogles!
The entire album can be found at: https://imgur.com/a/T1Fgn

The beach is a common theme, here, it seems
The entire album can be found at: https://imgur.com/a/CHAjv

It's a great night to tweak screenshot settings, too!

Spoiler

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Chapter 3

Inarah had discovered another lead about a week after the events in Silver Bazaar. This one led her to Gridania to search for a Highlander man nicknamed The Bear. A wealthy arms trader and former rival of Papusashu, he had since retired in the Lavender Beds to enjoy his fortune. The blonde Seeker met her partner in crime, Thara, in Gridania and the pair headed to the Beds.

They arrived at the Bear's house, only to find a pink haired lalafell claiming she owned the house. There was some fruitless discussion as the prickly lalafell was busy digging in the front garden. Some slip of a comment seemed to frighten the woman and she ran off screaming, calling for the guards to arrest the two Jackals. The Seekers took the opportunity to investigate the area; the patch of soil the lalafell was focused on had a rather large lump in it and, after some digging, pieces of a corpse were found in the earth.

The skittish lalafell reappeared as dark clouds swept in. Rain began to pour, revealing the lalafell's true brown hair colour and a more clear view of her face, which Inarah recognised. She was Yukiki, the very woman who had hired the Jackals moons ago and once lover of Papusashu. Yukiki ran to the docks with the miqo'te in hot pursuit but she escaped on the ferry.

Inarah and Thara took another ferry and followed her, and that's when everything took an even more sinister turn. The boat made its way without trouble at first, but the sky grew dark again and the ferry master disappeared. An arm reached up over the boat's edge; Thara pulled it, only to discover it wasn't attached to any body. More severed limbs appeared and jumped into the boat as if with a life of their own...

And just as suddenly, the boat arrived in Gridania and the gruesome scene changed. What was once an angry vortex of a storm were now clear skies and the dismembered body parts all vanished, save for a male Highlander's head impaled on the ship's prow with an imp hovering over it, cackling away.

The two Seekers decided it would be best not to be found by the Wood Wailers with a decapitated head and made their way back to Limsa with great haste, not at all sure what their next step would be.

Chapter 4

Kilid had been away in Coerthas seeking advice with regard to the mysterious painting that had been sent to the Jackals' new home in the Mists. Somehow, despite Helia removing the picture of the four elezen from the frame, and Kilid locking it away in a safe in the basement, it reappeared in perfect condition on the wall in the reception area. It could not be removed, no matter the strength of the man or woman attempting to pry it off. At the same time, strange noises, like a ghostly child laughing, or items disappearing and then reappearing in a different location, began to plague the Jackals.

This continued unabated until Kilid returned from his journey. He had been told that the painting contained voidsent and was given the tools to exorcise and capture them, with the promise of no small amount of coin should he succeed in obtaining their essence. The night Kilid returned, he called the company down to the basement to explain just how they would all be involved in eradicating the voidsent.

It seemed the creatures inside understood their potential fate, as it wasn't long before the 'haunting' ramped up with more ghostly voices and the ethereal spectre of the children from the painting skipping about in the front garden. As Kilid handed out vials of an unknown liquid which would be used to stun the voidsent, the imps discarded their glamours and flung fireballs into the house. Bert was struck and out for the count, which left Jino attending to him in the infirmary.

Cass summoned a rock guardian to stand sentry at the door and she, Ludivine, Bert and Jino stayed behind whilst the others split up and went outside in an attempt to lure the imps from hiding. Xiv and Thara made short work of their quarry and Romi got hers down with the help of Kilid. Inarah's managed to outwit her, leading her on a merry chase throughout the Mists, until she gave up and returned to the house.

In the infirmary, Bert, Jino and Cass were having a discussion with Kilid, but he was behaving oddly. Sensing something amiss, Jino asked on the pearl where Kilid was; he was still outside with Romi. Realising they had an impostor on their hands, Cass screamed for assistance and Ludivine and Inarah raced downstairs.

Cass's rock guardian attacked the doppleganger but it easily sidestepped it. Inarah flung herself forward to tackle it, only to be backhanded into the wall, hitting her head with a loud thud and slumping to the floor. Ludivine dragged the dazed Seeker out of the fray and flung her vial at the ceiling, which smashed and showered everything nearby in shards of glass and the liquid contained therein. The imp's glamour disappeared and it squawked as it tried to flee but Bert, still in an injured state, managed to grab a leg and hold it down.

Cass had had enough and charged in herself, shattering her vial over the imp's head and shredding her hands with the broken glass. The voidsent dropped to the floor and the stone guardian pummelled the body a few times for good measure.

Xiv, Thara, Romi and the real Kilid soon returned back to the house. Kilid took out a small stone from his pocket and touched each of the unconscious imps with it; the bodies disappeared and the stone glowed red with each one. Jino and Xiv then got to work healing Thara, Cass and Inarah's wounds.

As the company took care of the aftermath of the night's events, Cass and Thara took the painting down once and for all. It offered no resistance as they removed it from the wall and took it down to the beach. Cass summoned another creature this time, one made of flame, and the painting was soon no more than a pile of ash in the sand.

At last, the Jackals hoped they could sleep soundly once more.