If he wasn’t sure before, he is now.

“What do you think about… all that stuff?”

These? These are the people Margaret was so panicked about, the ones seemingly digging into the murder? A halfling dressed like a child in rags, not knowing what he’s asking about?

Adrian plays the confusion as is appropriate to this face, older and softer than his own. “You mean… esoterism?”

“Yes!”

“Nothing much, I’m afraid,” a little laugh – that of someone taken aback by the question, not knowing how to react. “What’s there to think? It’s all just fantasies, or schemes of people seeking to take advantage of others. You know, cults, initiation rites, all that nonsense.”

The more they talk, the less suspicious the halfling sounds, almost going so far as worrying about Adrian’s safety.

“I’m not going to harm you, don’t be afraid” the halfling says, and the part of Adrian that is still capable of feeling spite wants to laugh into his face and to make him double over in pain.

Afraid? Of this good-for-nothing?

“Come with me, if you want,” the halfling offers, looking amusingly inspired, “Maybe you will get more answers than you would have liked. Or maybe you will help Margaret, other people, even yourself.”

“You still don’t get it,” Adrian says, and what he means is, you’re the one who should be afraid. “I don’t know you, don’t know your intentions about her. She’s my friend –” aunt – no one “– and even if I’m worried she might be involved in something dangerous, it doesn’t mean I’ll follow some stranger for answers.”

The halfling walks away into the night, not doing much to hide his disappointment or confusion, and Adrian watches him, aware that he’d just signed Margaret’s death sentence. He could have got rid of the halfling, or even taken him up on that offer to find and exterminate his friends, too.

But no. Let those who sniff around find their scapegoat and rest in their misguided triumph.

The time for bloodbath will come later.

—

Aka, “that one time my player almost got the entire party exterminated by talking to a stranger to a park”, back when I barely had any idea what the BBEG of the campaign would look like because they wouldn’t actually meet him for another year or so.

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More on Adrian and Margaret in Blood Ties, Awakening and Tools Discarded and Broken.