Hori, Chantrix and Voola wake up to their cohorts gone. No blood on the ground where they were, just an impression in the grass and no one in sight. They cautiously make their way back towards Thunderbliss. When they get to town they see more than one person that they either saw die, or killed outright the night before. This is confusing.
When they get to the village green they see a vaguely dwarven shape near a cistern off in the distance. When they approach they find Norbith with a GIANT cup of coffee and Gigi mostly down the well. Norbith and Gigi explain that they only vaguely remember what happened the night before, it's very dreamlike. The others are quick to tell them exactly what happened to them. Gigi and Norbith let them know what they learned - the townspeople die every night and don't remember it the next morning. They also can't leave, no matter how far they get in a day, they'll wake up back in Thunderbliss the next morning.
Gigi also explains that there is magic of some kind down the well. The party decides to get some rope and lower her down to look at it. She uses her new 'identify' spell and finds out that this spike in the well is causing the events of Thunderbliss. And it will keep getting stronger and stronger the longer it goes on. To break it, they must overcome the baser nature of people which Gigi interprets as no one getting killed at night. Gigi describes the symbol on the spike - like the one on Voola's arm it sounds vaguely elvish, dwarvish and dunar all at once.
Back out of the well, the party confers. Hori posits that if they kill everyone before sundown then they won't kill each other at night. Curse solved. After some tweaking they consider just burying the townspeople up to their neck but realize that none of them have enough persuasion to achieve convincing people to do that. A better idea is to get everyone drunk, but Johnny tells them he doesn't have anywhere near enough alcohol for that. Second idea is to put everyone to sleep. They try to convince Harim to help them but are not very persuasive. Voola and Chantrix go find Old Nan and ask about local herbs that might help with that and get directions to a nearby Tala treet where they can gather leaves that put people to sleep. Voola, Chantrix and Hori go off to do that while Norbith and Gigi attempt to convince the town to take the tea when they get back. Gigi is moderately successful - Norbith probably made more enemies.
They get back and brew the tea over a big bonfire. Gigi begins a performance and the convince some of the townspeople to drink, but not all of them. Burga, the somewhat racist merchant, starts telling people not to drink it because and orc made it. The party gets the town to turn on Burga. When the sun goes down, about half of the town has taken the tea, including Gigi and Norbith.
Voola, Hori and Chantrix leave well before sundown and make camp about a mile outside of town.
DM Notes
Most of this game was learning things and making plans. There were some opportunities to do some ability rolls in town (persuasion, medicine, acrobatics) and build up confidence in skills that aren't "let's stab that thing." I thought the tea idea was great and I am committed to giving them whatever they want to make their solution work (within reason of course) so of course there's a tree nearby that medicinally could work.
The range of things they talked about trying were great - although I had to do a whisper aside convo with Hori of "YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE LAWFUL GOOD." I actually made a lot of use of the whisper function in roll20 to talk to Gigi about the spell since she did the identification. it was funny to watch everyone in the shadowed boxes start talking about why was God speaking directly to Gigi.
I had written the spell to be immune to being asleep (people will just wake up and go about their murdery ways), so this isn't going to work. But I like the theory! Just wondering how long it will take them to realize it didn't work.
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