ooc: Can Emral have read that aloud to Malak? I'd have done so at the table, bc reading letters like that is good fun. Also I read to my family, sure, but I've also read HP Lovecraft and REH to people at bonfires and cookouts, and once while driving an ambulance (former gig).
Emral folds up the letter carefully, placing it in the fallen huntsman's hand. "Your blood boiled, Rannar, and you killed yourself attacking us when we tried to settle this with words. We would have stood with you to end this curse. Now we continue on our own to understand it and end it. Make your journey through the afterlife knowing your beloved village shall be avenged, if by our hands it can be done."
Emral takes two coins (for preference copper) and places them over the huntsman's eyes after the pair take whatever gear will aide their quest. "The followers of Apollo lay coins over the eyes of their dead, to pay a ferryman to take them across the river of the dead. Let us hope he can find his rest, but we cannot break the frozen ground with no shovels or picks."
"So we know that the plague ravaged the village, but the priestess kept the children here and could protect them *from* the plague. But the villagers still revolted against her, boarded their own children up with her, and burned them all in the village's sacred space. I suspect this was more than superstition. The skeletons animated as undead, the mutations on the wolves, and now rats in the (supposedly blocked off) treasure room below. And let's remember the stamped sheet of metal isn't the first, meaning there are more beyond the gold that wasn't melted down here. I suspect evil magic of some sort, a plan to destroy the priestess and all living things. I'm also thinking some kind of... plot to steal the town's gold? Maybe connected, or maybe one took advantage of the other to profit from the chaos. Either way, we'll need to heal if we're to continue. Rannar had no healing potions, and I'm on my last legs!"
Emral carries the body to where the harp was. He then finds Olo's remains and carries them over, too, laying them beside the huntsman. He picks up whatever children's bones he can find and lays them next to the huntsman on the other side from Olo; the skulls together, and the other bones below them.
"A grim harvest gathered by this curse. Which reminds me: Malak, may I see that rabbits foot and that dagger?"
1) For the dagger, he translates the symbol on it for his archer friend.
2) For the rabbit's foot he studies it for a moment and then, bringing it to the body of Olo, lays it on the boy's chest.