A band of adventurers departed Haven this week bound for Bogside, having accepted a commission to recover a reliquary from the reputed 'living vault' of the reclusive Vesna Koss, a job that has already claimed one crew of professionals without explanation.
The previous team, described by their employer as a lockbreaker, a sellsword, a hedge mage, and a scout, spent two days casing the estate before entering at midnight. They were never seen again. Witnesses near the estate reported hearing a sound described only as a 'hollowing' at the time of the crew's disappearance, though no further details have been confirmed.
The new job was brokered by a hooded intermediary who approached the party at The Mended Wing tavern on behalf of a Haven collector known only as Crowfoot. Crowfoot confirmed the terms of the arrangement in a private meeting at his east quarter offices, The Closed Eye, agreeing to pay 2,500 gold pieces for successful retrieval of the item, with half the sum already advanced. "The last crew was capable," Crowfoot said, according to an account relayed by a witness to the meeting. "Two days casing the estate, a midnight entry, and then nothing."
The party itself drew notice of its own during the negotiations. A raven belonging to the ranger Rask Swiftcloak reportedly caused Crowfoot's floating feather, a fixture of his meeting room said to have sat inert for seventeen years, to pulse with a golden light, an occurrence Crowfoot's own staff called unprecedented. Separately, a monkey traveling with the bard Dr. Franco Singsong was seen lifting coin from a dozing fisherman's purse near the lake docks, an incident that drew laughter rather than alarm from onlookers.
Before setting out, the party outfitted itself at The Northern Star, Haven's outfitter, spending roughly 210 gold pieces on studded leather armor, thieves' tools, rope, rations, and healing potions. The shop's proprietor, a retired mercenary who declined to give her name for this article, said the group struck her as "green, but not foolish, which is more than I can say for the last lot that came through here asking about Bogside."
The party, consisting of Rask Swiftcloak, Dr. Franco Singsong, and the wizard known as Dr. Destructo, along with their animal companions, set out from Haven along the river road at first light, reaching the edge of the Mire by the second day of travel. Officials in Haven said no word has yet returned from the estate, and the journey to Bogside is expected to take at least another day.