Acknowledging things could still go south with Aramis and his merry men, or we could still get more info here, should we start thinking about our next course of action as well? Some options I see:
Follow up on Leland the Smith and Stephon the provisioner, given Neddy the carpenter seems to have been a hot tip.
Dungeon crawl under the Temple of Solis, with or without stealthy entrance.
Take rooms at the Silver Scale and try to ambush whoever comes for us in the night. (I'd rather not bring trouble down on the Flock of Sheep.)
Call Hengist and Kaul's double homicide a job well done and get the heck out of town.
I particularly like the double homicide remark. Just wanted to say I'm going to try and post later today. I've been really under the weather the last two days with a stomach bug (or possibly the 40oz flu - we had our face-to-face session on Friday, and much mead was spilled).
Anyone know a good image hosting site? I can't seem to recover my Imagshack account that I've been using with them, and I'm annoyed enough to avoid them in future...
So, regarding next steps, I'd generally promote hounding Aramis to the baron's so as to have our story told our way.
Unless, of course, Aramis' story includes the discovery and death of our elf in the shelf, in which case we should either swim for it or try and frame the elf for the whole thing.
That would be smart, yes, so... Hengist can be talked into it, anyway.
If they're online soon I'd suggest a bloodthirsty qualified group of investigators split off to question another peaceful villager. Given They (whoever they are) are going to know we're snooping around anyway, we might as well seize the momentum. But it's probably not a solo/small team mission, so either way.
Also, anyone smarter than Hengist starting to have suspicions about the Cottage Elves' day job?
I don't think Kaul had been resolved beyond grabbing the pack, so presumably he's still inside as well - so we're missing two party members in a building we can't necessarily get into, and their status is unknown.
I dunno how long "some time" is, but he presumably went upstairs; if he's in on the gig he would have checked where Gwydion was hiding, but there's a chance Kaul snuck out with the pack and the chest.
We should perhaps see if Kaul left the way he came over the palisade.
In either case, us ...4? remaining really ought to stick together and not split up again, whether that's to Mallory or we bust in under the temple.
I see Koewn and Hardrada are down for seeing the baron, and Hengist really ought to be in on that to take the fall, so I'd call it for that.
I think splitting the party for another lead only makes sense if the other team jumps on it, which I don't see happening at the moment, so may be best to stick together.
Next move after this, we seem to have votes for dungeon crawl under the temple or night time stake out. I'm good for either one, so I'd let someone else make the call there, but we probably ought to decide to get it queued up.
So much for shortly. How about longly? I'm still working on it. And...something else.
I should also let people know that I'll be travelling for the next week. I'm uncertain of what my internet connectivity is going to be like. I'll be hiking in the Grand Canyon on the weekend, so Saturday/Sunday will be dicey, but during the week should be okay...