Honored Undersecretariat, Custodian of Hood’s Wisdom,

While pursuing the elusive “Snake” through the underbelly of the city, we crossed paths with a figure from ancient tales—one of the small-folk, or a “hin” as some old tomes call them. This one, who called himself Brin, struck us as peculiar for two reasons. First, though dressed in nothing but rags, he clutched a human-sized skull, marked or decorated. <Alexis includes a physical description of the skull, including the markings. He also includes, in an academic script, the insights he was given from Avv’s insights of the skull>

Secondly, my companion, a devotee of Raiden detected something… unsettling. The halfling, he claimed, was neither alive nor dead, yet bore none of the marks of undeath. He was, somehow, something else—an aberration in defiance of natural order.

As you requested regular reports and of unusual matters, I thought this might be of interest. We could not extract the hin from the sewers, but I confiscated a small sack he carried, filled with odd, seed-like objects that may be worth your inspection.

May our shared vigilance hold strong against the shadows cast by the Dark Hand. With the highest respect,
Alexis Laelius and the Crimson Calling