Errol managed to track down someone who had a gem of poewr to trade. It turned out he wanted rods of metamagic, total value of around 100k gold, a veritable fortune. We still obviously don't have the complete story about these gems, since the Belar didn't blink at all at the price.

Anyway, we met with the guy, made the trade, and he left. Except that he left without the rods. He was gone for about an hour before we noticed, and then we immediately called for help, and met Tera to talk about it (and hand over the gem).

Here's the worrisome thing. She was as puzzled as we were. None of us could make sense of it. There was some speculation that he just wanted our team to have the gem, but if that's true, why all the rigamarole with the rods? Maybe he didn't want to arouse our suspicions too early, but why arouse them at all by abandoning the rods? Very odd.

Malif came up with an appropriately paranoid theory about his using the rods to track the people we represented in the purchase. This was plausible because we saw him make some arcane looking gestures over the rods, but despite good knowledge of spellcraft in our group, nobody could identify it as a spell. So he did *something* -- and the tracking idea wasn't a bad theory.

But Tera said she could detect no effects lingering over the rods, which shoots a big hole in that theory. I suppose this guy could be tricky enough to fool even the Belar, but probably not by casting a spell and hoping they wouldn't notice.

So anyway, we don't know what his deal was. Our current leading theory is that he was merely trying to send a message by leaving the rods, but none of us knows what the message is or why he didn't just say it. I guess there's more impact in abandoning 100k worth of magic items, as opposed to just saying something, but clarity should count for something anyway.

Well, the upside is that Tera said she had divined that we should keep the rods. So now we have immensely valuable items with us -- it makes us more powerful, but might also attract attention. Well, a little danger will keep us on our toes.