We still have not managed to find the beast that has been plagueing Smallville. Now it has taken one of our own — Aramil. At least his familiar, Jacob, was not taken, and we were able to determine from him that Aramil is now somewhere below Smallville, but is at least still alive.

Ghelt’s answer to finding the creature was to start digging (with only a shovel!!) in the middle of her front yard. The rest of us didn’t think this was a great idea, as excavating a passage can take a very long time. Also, we already know of at least one tunnel complex beneath Smallville, and it seemed to make more sense to check there first. Once Aramil was taken, Ghelt agreed to accompany us to the Everston estate to check them out. More than once, though, I heard her grumbling about how deep the hole she was digging would have been by now if she weren’t stomping about wasting time on a “fool’s errand” in tunnels that were obviously (to her) not where we should be looking.

Well, we have spent a day checking them out, and it appears that Ghelt was right about these tunnels being a dead end. So now we are headed back to Smallville, where Ghelt insists she will be digging straight down from her front yard. I spoke to Drusilia a bit, and she asked why we hadn’t taken her suggestion of checking to see if anyone in town had an unusually deep basement, or maybe had noticed a strange cave-in in their basement that might be a good starting place.... I am a little embarrassed to say that I hadn’t heard her suggest that before. If we were starting beneath the ground, at least we might lure the creature in more easily... after all, we know it doesn’t like the light.

In any case, it seems (by the behaviour of Jacob), that at least Aramil is still alive. All we can really do is continue to try to find him, even if our attempts to this point have been futile.

~=Fafnir Flamebrewer=~