With his enhanced sight he spots a number of animals that are not readily apparent- squirrels and birds hiding in the trees, rabbits in the underbrush... He is within 2 miles of the ship and within a mile of the town (the two are less than a mile apart) but the paths through the woods are not exactly straight... it is late afternoon at this point.
Pocketing the leaf, and breaking off a small twig with a few more just to be safe, Turpes heads back downstream in a hurry.
He heads for the town, but keeping an eye on the sun; he doesn't feel safe sleeping there, but he will if he can't get back to the ship in time. He wants to know what goes on in the clearing at night, and scrying will be easier from the Philomela.
He is able to make it back to the ship just as the sun is setting.
Moving quickly, Turpes drags a chair out on deck, and gets a blanket and his dinner. He then heads into his laboratory and casts a ceremonial spell, taking the twig out of his pocket for the purpose. Spellcasting done, he returns, feeling around for the chair, sits in it, pulls a blanket over himself, and eats his dinner, all with his eyes closed, as he does not wish to be distracted by his surroundings. He spends the night keeping vigil, but what he is watching is something very far away.
[rolled for spell on discord]
He cannot eat dinner while concentrating on the spell, he will need to eat either before or after his vigil.
He will quickly eat before the casting.
He sees a group of people gather around the spring. When the moon rises the water glimmers silver, then it takes on a rainbow of hues. Each member of the group kneels down and drinks from the spring, transforming into a different animal as they do so.
He will try to remember the people. Are any of them the headman? or someone else he recognizes?
Is that all he sees before he can't maintain the spell any longer?
When the spell wears off, he will make sure the fleet's sentries are alert and ready, he warns them to look out for animals that are too smart or too aggressive.
After that, he goes to his lab to recast, but the spell fails. He casts a spell, to make himself able to hear at a distance, and one to make him able to see in the dark. He gets to the highest point of the ship accessible to an uncoordinated scholar, then he keeps watch, to see and hear whatever he can for the rest of the night.
From the ship itself he doesn't see anything or hear much- there seems to be unusually high level of activity for animals at night, but that could be his imagination, or simply the fact he has never given it this level of attention before.
By the time it gets to early morning and nothing seems to be happening, Turpes gives up on his vigil and goes to bed.
In the morning, he will go to Verecunda. After greeting her, he will explain what he's learned about the island. "I'm not sure if this is something that can be developed into a covenant resource or not. They don't seem to be very useful trading partners; I don't know if they're a magical tradition or just happen to live near a magic spring, but I suspect the latter. Do you have any thoughts or advice?"
"It might be worthwhile to learn more about the spring. Otherwise I'm inclined to agree, unless their secrecy can be used to amuse the patron somehow."
Turpes will get a couple of grogs to go with him to carry sample jars, and head back up the brook to the spring, where he will take some samples of the water. Once he has a couple of samples, he will spontaneously cast Moonbeam on the water, and see if there's an effect. Before he does so, he will instruct one of the grogs to collect the water if it changes while he's holding the moonlight on it, but don't drink it.
The moonbeam spell does not change the water in any way, though it should be noted that the moonbeam spell does not have all the supernatural properties of natural moonlight, and it would likely require breaking the limit of the lunar sphere to accomplish this. In theory you could use a muto spell to trap actual moonlight in another form...
He will return with the samples, taking a rock from inside the spring, or mud if he can't get a rock; and another rock from the clearing (keeping them in labelled bags).
He will discuss with Verecunda if she cares to stay another night, he'd like to transform moonlight to liquid and test it on the actual spring the next morning, but his magic is insufficient to do so. He is trying to avoid confrontation with the villagers, especially while they're in animal form.
He will also test a bottle of the sampled water in moonlight to see if there's any effect.
the bottled water in moonlight does not change.
"What duration would you use to bottle moonlight? It almost seems that would require an enchantment to maintain concentration until it was needed."
"Well, if you changed moonlight to liquid, wouldn't it still be moonlight? I was thinking of pouring the liquid moonlight into the water and seeing if it did anything."
"Possibly, of course fire changed to rock won't burn anything, but it can still be a worthwhile experiment. So duration moon? Obviously it will need to be improvised, and probably not done in the regio in case that has some impact on the qualities of the moonlight." she contemplates the problem. "Not exactly my strongest arts. What if you use the bottom or lip of a bottle for a ring and use ring duration? That would bring it down to three magnitudes. My aquum is certainly pretty decent, if I had the time to create this as a charged item it would be no problem at all, simply untie the knot to cast the spell... I only passed my guantlet seven years ago, honestly I think this is beyond me."
Turpes shrugs. "Well, I got the water. I suspect there's nothing special about it away from the spring. I guess we should come back some time, maybe."
[sorry if I'm totally missing the adventure, just not seeing much to make him stay.]
Actually you simply handled it better than I expected by investigating while avoiding the people- there were other dimensions to the potential adventure you could have discovered had you stayed in the village, but I your decision was probably the wiser one.
5xp, one confidence, the ships sail on...your season has taken no significant interruption if you want to take lab time, other mages and companions take their rotation investigating islands, you will have another adventure in this same thread for summer 1201 when you have finished advancement. also any correspondence or other business for the spring should be handled before we begin.
Is there vis available for Turpes to purchase books with?