#Mystery in the Highlands

[bargainsleuthbooks]

#Booktour #ARCReview #MysteryintheHighlands #TheScottishLadiesDetectiveAgency #BookReview #LydiaTravers #NewBooks #CozyMystery #July2023Books #Bookouture @Bookouture @lindatyler100

I'm happy to be part of the #BookTour for #Mysteryinthehighlands, the latest #Thescottishladiesdetectiveagency book by #LydiaTravers Once again I was sucked into a fascinating mystery full of surprises. #bookreview #July2023books #Bookouture #newbooks

When members of a choir start dropping dead in the Highlands, Maud McIntyre and her lady’s maid Daisy go undercover to discover the inharmonious culprit. But will they uncover the killer before another murder takes place? Edinburgh, 1911 : When Maud and Daisy receive a letter from Daisy’s cousin, Clara , sharing her fears that two sudden deaths in her local choir weren’t accidental, at first…

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: Along the Road of Nameless Graves

Presiding over a series of forested foothills and mountainous valleys that divide two rival kingdoms, the mist-shrouded barony of Siirvyn has seen more than its share of war over the past generations. Betrayal, invasion, and massacre are all too common motifs in the barony's long history, leaving all sorts of scars on both the landscape and the people who dwell within it.

Adventure Hooks:

Rumours of a treasure draw the party to Siirvyn, apparently concealed in a vault beneath the ruined castle of a long dead baroness Taviaa. Surely it won't be too hard to locate a single ruin in a land frequently beset by war, right?

The party arn't the only one combing across the barony looking for something. A hardluck knight seeks her brother after he vanished on a foolish quest, and might be willing to help the party out of jam if they aid her in search.

Folk of the barony tell of Grimcackle, a great black winged beast that moorlands that's sometimes heard laughing over the desolate battlefields but is only ever seen by the lost and the desperate. To heed the old stories it plunders the old battlefields of it's choicest riches, hoarding the wealth of the dead over centuries of war.

Subquest 1:

The party's hunt for riches gets complicated after arriving in the region to find that there has been no less than eight baroness Taviaas over the past century(backwater fiefdoms do like tradition after all) with five castles between them. Most have been destroyed by disaster, neglect, or siege, leaving the party to trek across the land checking checking out each option (though a clever party might narrow their search by hitting the local archives and cross referencing historical accounts).

Potential ruins include:

The delapidated lair of the local owlbear

Huanted by the ghost of one of the baronesses Taviaa,

The Hideout of a gang of smugglers with far reaching ties

Thoroughly cursed by a battlefield savaging spriggan who deals in cursed weapons.

To make matters even more complicated, one of the castles has been restored by the current baron Arkolo who would likely not take kindly to a band of renegade sellswords pilfering riches from under his nose, forcing the party to avoid it entirely or risk getting thrown in the dungeon if caught.

Subquest 2:

Ser Riley of Breakbridge never expected to inherit the family title, her father favoured her elder brother Rhys far more, and when the old man died in the last war there was no question who his holdings would pass to. Then, a couple of years ago Rhys got it into his head that he needed to reclaim the family's ancestral sword which was lost in the same bloody battle that did their father in, crossing the mountains to scour old battlefields and not being seen since. After righting the mess Rhys caused by his chivalric absence, Riley has come to Siirvyn herself to drag him, or possibly his body back from his foolhardy quest. The party may run into her requesting aid from the Baron, seeking advice from the local shrine to Tyr, or drinking off another unsuccessful trek through the wilderness at the local tavern. She'd welcome their aid in her search, and would gladly pay them back by lending her blade to theirs in their search (or using her influence to spring them from the baron's dungeons, should they have been caught).

Rhys' trail snakes all across the barony (including leaving a journal in one of the ruins the party wanted to search), but terminates in the great barren battlefield that was his father's last stand. While searching these moorlands the party & Ser Riley will run into a band of armed scavengers apparently conducting their own body-hunt for one of their fallen comrades. They served on the opposite side of the war from Riley's family, and if that wasn't bad blood enough, they apparently came to blows with Rhys a little under a year ago and aim to settle the score with his sister.

Regardless of how the standoff plays out (talking the scavengers down and exchanging favours or beating the information out of them) the Next step is to find Grimcackle's nest. By now (especially if you're playing with my affliction system and the party is tired out from all their wandering across the countryside) the party will have realized that the only way to see the great raven is to be nearing the edge of death, whether through actively dying, being poisoned, or just being exhausted to the bone. This is because the great raven is infact a psychopomp, tasked with sorting out the dead from the region's innumerable wars. Once the party find the particular tor the dread raven uses as roost, they'll find him quite chatty in the way of most birds, happy to trade gossip or play show and tell with his many finds. Rhys did indeed come to challenge Grimcackle for the sword, an act of daring rudness that forced the psychopomp to drag the knight's soul to the purgatory it rightfully belonged.

Resigned by the love she bears her brother, Riley insists she must venture into the shadow to save him, leaving the party with the choice of convincing her to abandon her quest, leave her to her fruitless pursuit of honour, or risk it all alongside her for the sake of an idiot who thought he could convince an aspect of death to respect his pedigree.

Subquest 3:

After their harrowing adventure the party return to town to find that Baron Akolo has been assassinated and all of Siivyrn has been thrown into chaos and suspicion. Fingers point and depending who the blame lands on it might spell civil war or invasion for the backwoods barony once again.

Background: Both neighbouring powers wish to control who moves through the region's winding passes, and expend great effort in both war and peace to ensure the barony is favourable to them. While occupying armies and vassalage have been all too common in the past, the region's ostensibly independent ruler Baron Arkolo is a puppet in all but name for the winning side of the most recent war. Little more than a bandit leader during the conflict savaging battlefields and attacking supply lines on both sides, Arkolo saw the way the wind was blowing before anyone else and made himself indispensable to his current patrons before their inevitable victory.

Little more than a strongman at first, the newly elevated baron managed to ingratiate himself to his subjects by leveraging his outlaw status to cast himself as a hero fighting against the great powers rather than ruling on their behalf. All the while the canny old bandit was of course playing both sides, toadying to the victorious kingdom while helping to run the smuggling operation for their rivals.

Clues & Consequences:

The baron had a stormy relationship with his son and prospective heir Kalo, who came up raiding alongside his father. After the war however, the young man felt he'd had enough of violence renounced his possesisons and joined the secluded temple of Tyr as a means of making peace with his bloody past. Arkolo never approved of his son's taking the cloth, refused to name another heir and would frequently make pilgramage to the temple just to argue with him. Despite their years of contention however the had seemed to reconcile in recent months, becoming closer than ever. Kalo is not taking his father's murder well, and has decided to dust off his old bandit skills alongside his newfound connection to a wargod as a means of finding the killer. Like an angered bull, he's liable to charge at whoever draws his attention, a weakness the real culprit might use to direct him onto the party's trail.

Gareth Gosdown, the baron's advisor and castilian is an agent of their patron kingdom, sent to keep the former outlaw in line and the kingdom's garrisons well supplied. In the wake of Arkolo's death, he's less interested in finding the killer than he is reinforcing his masters' hold over the barony in case of a new invasion. Known for butting heads with the Baron's more slapdash ruling style he's the one the common folk are most likely to point to.

Taviaa (ninth of that name) was born to the Baron after he'd claimed the region and married one of the local nobles. Though still young, she has a cutthroat attitude and a mind for politics, which made it all the more frustrating when her father refused to give up on her pious half brother as heir and name her instead. She knows she's the obvious culprit, the case made all the more convincing by the fact that she's recently been paling around with emissaries from the other kingdom.

Art 1

Art 2

[movie--posters]

I got a friend watching Beyond Belief, I'm watching Highlander with her husband while rewatching Buffy by myself, another friend is watching Murder she Wrote and another is watching X-Files and yet another is watching Star Trek: Voyager. Everyone I know is watching shit from or that started or aired in the 90's. No matter who's house I go to it's 90's time. Are we nostalgic or did TV peak?

[mostlyinthemorning]

List eight shows for your followers to get to know you

Thanks to @lizzie-bennetdarcy for the tag!

Schitt's Creek (obviously)

2. Mrs. Davis

3. The Lake

4. Highlander

5. Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

6. Sense8

7. Veronica Mars

8. Smiley

Tagging @missgeevious @carolrain @dinnfameron @noahreids @blackandwhiteandrose @weathereyehorizon @likerealpeopledo-on-ao3 to share their top shows.

[sixminutestoriesblog]

A supernatural gift? Or simply a relic so old that everyone’s forgotten where it came from? However you chose to look at the Fairy Flag of Clan MacLeod of Scotland, its a mystery from the shadows of ancient history. It’s been waved twice so far - it has one last unfurled miracle left. What is it being held back to ward off in the future dark enough to need fae magic to save us from?

[paulgadzikowski]

[Image description: Preview panel for the comic strip at the link below. Peri Brown of Doctor Who: The Eternal Mystery and Connor Macleod of Highlander are sitting at a table in Peri’s TARDIS with many open books in front of them. Peri is saying, “I need it again.” Macleod is handing her a yellow marker and saying, “Haven’t you got another?” Unfortunately there are not image descriptions at the main Hero Of Three Faces site. End description.] 

The Hero of Three Faces is fanfiction crossovers, but it’s comic strips with stick figures, but they’re triangles. Preview panel only. Click here for full cartoon. Or see the on-site navigation tutorial. Or see this blog’s FAQ, or my archive tumblog’s FAQ. Cartoons may contain unmarked spoilers. Cartoons linked from Tumblr 10:00 (Central US time) daily are the previous day’s new update and the posts are pinned to the top of this blog. Cartoons linked from Tumblr 22:00 daily are from the archive and the posts are pinned only during annual summer hiatus of new updates.

Thanks for reading.

[vox-anglosphere]

At last, might there be an answer to all these mysterious sightings?

[mooflettes]

Milky, the red-nosed moo-cow!

Hey look, my original pokesona!

[lionroot]

Through Mist and Moors: A Clue to Ewan's Disappearance - In the heart of Glenbroch, where rugged hills brushed against the endless sky and ancient legends echoed with every rustle of the wind, a story of camaraderie and resolve unfolded. Ewan, their kindred spirit and an inseparable part of their band, had inexplicably vanished.

His lifelong friends - Hamish, Alistair, and Duncan - traded their jovial conversations and fond memories for a search fraught with tension and uncertainty. Their journey commenced on their tried and true steeds, as seasoned as their friendship and as unwavering as their mutual resolve.

Across three misty days, they navigated the vast green moors, trekked through the whispering woods, their usual hearty banter silenced by growing apprehension. From atop a ridge, their forms hazy in the predawn fog, they surveyed their homeland, their hearts burdened by their missing companion.

On the dawning of the third day, their weary eyes caught a sight in the distance. Through the dense mist, the ancient silhouette of the Standing Stones of Cairngorm emerged. The stones held a cherished place in their shared past; Ewan, intrigued by their mysterious aura, often led them to this place on their childhood escapades. Amidst the foggy distance, a faint glimmer sparked their attention - it seemed strikingly similar to a piece of Ewan's beloved tartan.

As dawn prepared to break, casting the world in a soft, ethereal glow, the trio stood on the ridge, their gaze locked on the distant glimmer amongst the stones. Their hearts filled with a potent mix of hope and concern, they held onto the sight, wondering if they had finally unearthed a clue in their quest for their missing friend.

[dogboots]

real best part of legends arceus is the time cyllene used they/them to refer to ingo

[dailyadventureprompts]

Settlement: Port Vahlgraun and the mystery of the Gutted Garrison

Couldn't have happened to a worse bunch of bastards, but still it happened, they’re dead, and that’s a problem for all of us.

- Urdrik, town elder

Sheltered where the jagged spur of a snowy mountain range meets the sea, this frontier settlement is one of the few places where vessels may dock and resupply before setting out to the deep ocean fisheries or returning to the hungry harbours of the homeland.

Provided they don’t mind uncultured neighbours or the pervading stink of tar and fish, Vaulgraun is just the place for an adventurer to make a name for themselves: supply caravans making treks through mountain passes in need of an escort, sailors from parts unknown showing up with unbelievable tales, nearby valleys filled with squabbling noble willing to shill out coin for other people to solve their problems. 

Hooks:

The Port’s governance is a rather slapdash affair as business rivalries intermarry with old family grudges, with most folk going about armed and expected to sort out their own problems. The party finds this out the hard way when they get into a bar brawl and end up humiliating the favorite nephew of a an influential local tough, who uses her connections to blacklist the party from a number of businesses and scare away their work. Their potential salvation introduces himself in the form of Barnard Glanner , a charismatic salt merchant who styles himself Vahlgraun’s first mayor... once he can convince the locals to hold their first election. In return for a steady wage he just needs the party to do some good deeds and spread his name around and he’s sure he’ll be able to sway public opinion, especially if they prevent some big disaster and throw him some of the credit.

Old Tallowear is given a wide birth by most Vahlgraun locals, a beachcomber who still hums the tune that a nest of sirens used to draw him and a ship full of his fellow sailors to wreck themselves upon a particularly dangerous stretch of coastline decades back. The fey-addled elder keeps finding excuses to visit those lethal rocks over the years, and has enough secondhand charm-magic to convince a series treasure hunters to employ him as a guide with promises of the fortunes waiting just below the tide. He’s not lying about the latter, and is even willing to sell the party some of his finds to bait the hook.

Everyone knows the local royal garrison for a bunch of brutes and bullies, shipped out to the ass end of nowhere as  blanket punishment for any number of offences, they take out their boredom and frustration on the nearby village and local hill-folk, confident that they’re too far from command to ever brook any real reprisal… which surprises everyone when they turn up dead one morning, massacred to a man with the front gate of their fort knocked from its hinges. The military is likely to think the town had something to do with it and come down on the town on a hammer once they find out… unless someone can find an explanation before they catch on. 

 Leads:

A young woman by the name of Ultia Vant has gone missing around the same time of the garrison's gutting,  a poor mulecart driver who brought supplies up to the garrison as part of the port’s royal tribute. Previously Ultia’s father was the one to made the run, but he’s been laid up for a year and a half from exhaustion.  Ultia’s cart is found looted somewhere off the road, the mule being picked apart by scavengers.

Speaking of suspiciously abandoned modes of conveyance, located in the fort’s courtyard is a very fine carriage rather unsuited to the mountianous slopes surrounding Vahlgraun. Asking around in town reveals it belongs to one of the noble families that’ve been recently purchasing lands on the outside of the mountain, the occupants having apparently stopped off in the port for a night before heading on to meet their grisly ends along with the soldiers. Just what were these agents of the gentry trying to accomplish?

Unfortunately the only witness to the slaughter the party ends up discovering happens to be a half-feral wraith they stumble across eating bodies in the forts cellar a day or two after the deaths are discovered. He speaks with a strange, archaic accent, can’t remember his name and seems quite disoriented, even for a dead man. 

The Answer: Ultia Vant was one of those people upon who’s shoulders the entire world rests, as essential in her work as she was unthanked. Without her to drag goods up the mountain the garrison would either start harassing the common people for “donations” or clear off all together, leaving the port and its vital mountain passes undefended. Her father was just as vital, until a bad stretch of weather meant the soldiers had to go hungry for a few days and they decided to beat him so badly that he couldn’t make the journey up the mountain anymore. They made Ultia watch, and swore they’d finish the job if she was ever late again. 

For a year and a half, week in, week out,  Ultia made the journey, enduring the garrison’s taunts and using every spare copper to pay for her father’s medicine. Then, oneday, her mule died, and she was left with a cart full of goods too heavy to pull herself. With no other option she loaded what goods she could on her back and started the climb herself.

The bone deep anger she felt called out to something, a spirit of violence and ruin in the shape of a horse that was quite coincidentally tired of its current husk of a rider. Tossing their mutual burdens to the roadside, the two rode up to the fort and slaughtered every living thing they could find, at which point they took off to complete whatever sinister errand the ruin-spirit asked in return for its gift of strength.

Check out my advice on how to plan and run mysteries HERE

[jolieeason]

A Cold Highland Wind (Lady Emily Ashton Mysteries: Book 17) by Tasha Alexander

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books Date of publication: October 3rd, 2023 Genre: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Scotland, Mystery Thriller, Historical Mystery, Historical Series: Lady Emily Ashton Mysteries And Only to Deceive—Book 1 A Poisoned Season—Book 2 A Fatal Waltz—Book 3 The Bridal Strain: Emily and Colin’s Wedding—Book 3.5 Tears of Pearl—Book 4 Dangerous to…

[danielleurbansblog]

Review: Root of All Evil

Synopsis: “Fast-paced, authentic and compelling – this tightly written procedural is action-packed and full of heart. Milliron definitely knows her stuff – what a wonderful new voice in crime fiction!” – Hank Phillippi Ryan, nationally best selling author of TRUST ME Rumors of a meth operation in rustic Fayette County catch the attention of Pennsylvania State Trooper Jim Duncan. When he learns…

[paulgadzikowski]

[Image description: Preview panel for the comic strip at the link. Peri Brown of Doctor Who: The Eternal Mystery and Connor Macleod of Highlander are sitting at a table in Peri's TARDIS with many open books in front of them. Peri is saying, "I need it again." Macleod is handing her a yellow marker and saying, "Haven't you got another?" Unfortunately there are not image descriptions at the main Hero Of Three Faces site. End description.]

The Hero of Three Faces is fanfiction crossovers, but it’s comic strips with stick figures, but they’re triangles. Preview panel only. Click here for full cartoon. Or see the on-site navigation tutorial. Or see this blog’s FAQ. Cartoons linked from Tumblr 10:00 (Central US time) daily are the previous day’s new update and the posts are pinned to the top of this blog. Cartoons linked from Tumblr 22:00 daily are from the archive and the posts are pinned only during annual summer hiatus of new updates.

[annafromuni]

Good ol' Scottish Historical Fiction Murder Mystery

I’m a historical fiction fanatic. More specifically, the murder mystery side of historical fiction. I can and will read other historical fiction books but my heart lies with the slightly gruesome, dark, immersive worlds of sleuthing and investigating while in polite society. The Anatomist’s Wife by Anna Lee Huber ticks so many boxes for me and let me convince you that it will tick every box…

[tudorblogger]

‘Death of a Green-Eyed Monster’ by M.C. Beaton

Genre: Adult Fiction – Cosy Crime Published: 2022 Format: Paperback Rating: ★★★★ It’s been years since I’ve read a Hamish Macbeth book, but it was really good to return to Lochdubh! Hamish Macbeth is back, and once again in love, this time engaged to his new constable, Dorothy McIver. I think I actually prefer the Hamish Macbeth series to the Agatha Raisin series, which is probably a…