Residents of Bogside are once again trading rumors about the reliquary vault on the old Koss estate, after a crew of four hired to breach it disappeared without a trace and a new party was seen entering the Mire along the river road this week.
According to Zahira, a salvager who has worked the estate's edges for years and who first flagged the vault's disappearance to interested parties in Haven, the missing crew, a lockbreaker, a sellsword, a hedge mage, and a scout, spent two full days casing the property before making their attempt at midnight. "They went in confident. Nobody's seen them since," Zahira said. "The only thing anyone heard was the sound."
That sound, described by a night watchman posted near the estate as a low "hollowing" groan from somewhere beneath the ground, has fueled longstanding claims that the vault is not an ordinary strongroom. Local accounts, repeated for years around Bogside's taverns, hold that the vault reads the intent of those who approach it, sealing itself against fear and yielding only to a calm hand. Whether that is superstition or fact, no one has yet returned from inside to say.
The job of retrieving a reliquary from the vault has since passed to a Haven-based collector named Crowfoot, who according to an agent known only as the hooded man, offered the new party 2,500 gold pieces for the item's safe return, half paid in advance. That party, an elven ranger, a half-elf bard, and a human battle-wizard, was seen departing Haven along the southeastern river road and entering the Mire's outer bogs earlier this week, according to travelers who passed them on the road.
"Whoever goes in after that vault ought to know what took the last ones," Zahira said. "I'd want more than gold before I set foot near it again." Bogside officials have offered no official comment on the estate, and the Koss family itself has not been reached. Caravan drivers along the marsh road say they intend to watch the estate closely for any sign of the new arrivals in the coming days.