She nods sagaciously, after noting ably his foul mood, "I understand why you'd say that, it's a common belief. But... I am a priest. So ... maybe things aren't quite as simple as you think."
She walks silently next to him, not adding anything especially, except, finally, "I'll leave you to your thoughts, then. Maybe you'll find what you're looking for on your own!" She finishes, cheerily, as she nods, and she hums to herself, and falls back. flip, spin, twist
Before they reach the old dock, she stretches herself - as they walk, as if she's preparing for something. "Great, guys, so - I've got a lot of magic I can use, just let me know what's best - sooner than later, I might need some time to prepare! You're all the expert adventurers here - I'll follow your lead." She salutes, which she seems to mean, completely sincerely. She'll do whatever the party asks to help.
"That... is a good idea. We generally know what each of us can do, but if you are to work with us for this joint purpose, we need to share." Yaziyah touches the multitude of amulets, pouches and trinkets hanging from her belt, then flicks the head of her hammer over her shoulder. "My magic is mostly protective, supportive, or curative. I also hit things with this."
As they walk, the Shoanti stops here and there when she spots a familiar face, asking a few questions and trading news.
Yazi learns the following:
The Emperor of Old Korvosa rules Old Dock from his palace on Silk Street. He’s seized control of several tenements there, and rarely leaves the place. Mobs of his fanatics scour the streets of Old Dock, seeking more conscripts for his cause. Those who resist are instead captured for other purposes.
The emperor sees Old Korvosa as his stage. He forces some of his prisoners to take part in violent, deadly games or gruesome performances, pitting them against his most ferocious pets and followers. Others he simply
beheads with his favorite toy, an extravagant guillotine called the “Tall Knife.”
Those who seek to speak with the emperor must first earn his respect by providing him with entertainment. Of late, it is said that the emperor’s favorite entertainment is a brutal game he invented called blood pig. He’s
converted a large rooftop inside of his palace into a playing field for this game, and the howls and screams of those playing and watching can be heard throughout Old Dock every evening.
In the process of gathering some information, Yazi spies a young woman, with a black eye and a few cuts on her face. It looks like she was crying recently. The woman approaches Yazi, and stuttering a bit says, "y...you're trying to get into the palace? I... I know a way. A back way. I escaped just recently - The Emperor is a monster! I'll show you, if you'd like." She sniffs and wipes away some of the tears that streaked down her face. "I was being held near this strange, skinny man with paint all over his clothes was - he helped me get out. I hope he'll be okay..." She looks very worried.
She takes a beat, "or... you can talk your way in, maybe you can get close to him by playing blood pig - but that's a horrible game! Whatever you do, please, get that man out! He risked his life to help me!"
After casting a minor healing spell to help with her injuries, Yaziyah offers the woman a few silver shields and directs her to the community center. "This is a place where you'll be safe. We'll do our utmost to help the one who helped you."
She shares with the others everything that she has learned, adding "Personally, I am not inclined to enable any more of his madness and try to play his horrid, cruel games. I say we try to make our way in unseen, get Salvatore out and then deal with this 'Emperor'."
While Yazi is talking, Magda helps Vera shop around for a spell of some sort that is supposed to make a group of people hidden.
Marcus raises a brow and breaks his quiet. "Blood pig?" He asks.
The woman hesitates, then responds, ”well, blood pig is this … sport where you chase piglets around this arena trying to catch them. The blood comes from the fact that they get wounded and bleed everywhere and it’s slippery to hold them. When you catch them you throw them into a pit to be devoured a wolverine.” She blanches a bit, but the healing seems to help her condition, and she excuses herself, thanking Yazi as she melts away from the party.
As Yazi gets a plan together, Vera informs Magda that she was wrong and they did not need a scroll, that she already had one. Which Mags understands, since books make her eyes cross so remembering what are in them is hard.
The half orc kneels and lets out a soft whistle. Then after a pause, she lets out another. This one tinged with annoyance. Her alley cat slinks out between a couple of barrels. The two converse a bit, a greenish finger brushing against a feline ear, then Cat heads off.
"He'll look about the back, avoiding any pigs" the idea of a bloody pig as a pet made no sense to her, but it sounded dangerous.
"That sounds vile. We are not playing this game." Yaziyah's tone brooks no argument.
As they wait for Cat to return with news, she glances at Marcus. "It may be difficult for you to sneak in unheard, but I don't want us to separate from each other. Magda, or perhaps Olenna, can you help him be quieter?"
Magda looks at the wall. For anyone else she would suggest he take off his armor, but the wall is the wall, and the steel is just part of him, she is fairly certain.
So she shakes her head.
She does have other spells for people.
Marcus's frown sharpened. Torturing animals was a surefire way to identify a sadist. He didn't anticipate this talk going well.
Marcus nods to Yazi. "Stealth was never a strong suit of mine. I could switch my armor but I'd be a lot easier to kill when blades are drawn, and it takes quite a while to put on properly. Disguise instead maybe? Even invisibility only helps so much, I know I'm loud."
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In spite of her quiet, private faith, Olenna was no expert in divine magic. For her, faith was more a set of guiding principles: the empyreal lords she clung to were strong beings who cared about the same things she did and whose written advice and material influence helped her make decisions time to time. So the idea of requesting particular spells of Laori flummoxed her. She was no "expert adventurer" either. This was all new to her. So she follows the others' lead.
When Yazi brings up "The Tall Knife," a chill runs down Olenna's spine. "The children were singing about that a few hours ago," she mentions.
She also concurs with the plan to sneak in. This Blood Pig game sounds awful. Cruel, like Pilts.
As they are preparing to move in and Yazi asks about ways to make Marcus quieter, she looks thoughtful. "There are probably spells that could help, but as far as chemicals...well..."
Olenna retrieves a piece of paper from her back and scribbles some notes on it. "Depending on how long we're willing to take and what ingredients we can find, there are a few things I can make to lubricate armor joints, quiet Marcus' footsteps, deaden the sound entirely, or even slow Marcus' heartrate. But they take time to brew."
Mags mouth moves as she silently sounds out a word flame hair says that she is unfamiliar with. Not uncommon for her to do so in truth.
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Cat leaped away from Magda, his tail in the air, and then looked back at her for a moment, before turning and padding softly down the street, hugging the buildings. A moment later, he was gone.
Cat had been far from Magda before - that’s how it had been for most evenings, and Cat knew he was different from other cats. He knew this because… he did. And he was. He doesn’t remember anything from before Magda, when she was young and afraid, in the orphanage, and she had friends but… they weren’t the same type of friend that cat was. Cat was special.
Cat thinks, in moments of inspiration, or self aggrandizement - that he was formed of the dust of cracked shingles, the iron of the spiked fence, the bones of the sepulcher, the door, and the waste and the feathers and blood and fur of the city. But Cat knew something else, that he was a cat. He was the Cat. Of Korvosa. He was of the city and the city was of him, but also he was a stray cat, wandering around a back alley while the worst monsters betrayed each other behind closed doors. Betrayed the city of Korvosa. Because he was the Cat. And he would play his part.
Keenly watching for guards, the small tabby slunk under carts, around people shuffling in the street, dodging a well-placed kick with aplomb, and slinking into the ruin of the playhouse. Cat appraised the situation. A benefit of being cat is that something tricky for a normal cat, in this case, scaling a building with minimal footholds, was trivially easy.
He stretched himself, his claws scraping stone for a moment, and thought, his tail switching back and forth, and with a sudden leap, bound onto a foothold. Then another. Before long, he was on the roof. He peered carefully in all the nooks, and across the grisly field, and when he saw the piglets - he licked his chops - despite the fact that he didn’t need to eat, that’s what cats did when they saw a delicious morsel, and he was the cat, and it was just so.
He watched as the bedraggled emperor and his small, silent gnome held court, putting to “trial”one of the thugs, which seemed to consist of Pilts Swastel demanding the thug recite a poem perfectly from memory. The thug was hardly and actor, and even Cat could tell, but to Pilts - this was a crime. He screamed ”this is a palace of high art - you idiot! I gave you your chance, it seems that you can’t help but squander it. Jabbyr.” Shaking, the thug tried to flee, but the gnome grabbed the man, roughly twice his size, and with essentially no effort, dragged him to what must be the tall knife, shoving him into it, and with a spurt of blood - decapitating the actor in one quick motion. The other thugs seemed to watch warily, but clapped at the outcome, and sneering Pilts dismissed them, waving his hand away - seemingly to brood.
Cat didn’t seem to think much of the situation one way or another, but he did miss Magda, and after memorizing as much of the layout that he could see, with similar ease, Cat found himself safely descending from the rooftop arena, slinking back safely until he stood near Magda, and began to clean his paws, without looking at her, though his tail was moving back and forth in a way that Magda seemed to understand.
Magda had settled on the cobbles to wait for him, knowing he'd come back cause, well, Cause. And he did, which was Right. She leaned in and nuzzled him, forehead to cheek in thanks. Then dug out a tin from her magical wonder pack.
She knew Cat could get what he needed on the street, cause again. But it didn't mean he didn't like a treat now and then, didn't make him soft, not Cat. At least Mags enjoyed giving him treats, so maybe that is why he liked them. Cause of her.
Dried bits of fish. Not fresh cause carrying a fresh fish around brought all sorts of interested noses, which wasn't good for sneaking.
Mags gave one more nuzzle, then left the tin for her hero. Standing she outlined all the nooks and crannies Cat told her. "No noise from a little two legs with pointed ears that was stronger than a Bigun? Who's that?" she wondered.
Vera begins pacing impatiently as the others continue plotting. "We're not going to stop the Emperor just waiting here. Let's get on with it!"
"No, but if we rush in without a plan we might end up a head shorter, and Korvosa would have a few less protectors." But the young Varisian wasn't entirely wrong - the more they stood around, the more chances of them being discovered.
"Did Cat see any sign of the painter? I can levitate one of us, or more, once we find the closest point to where he is."
"Cat stayed outside. No alleys for an alley cat indoors." while what she says doesn't make the most sense, it includes the notes of worry at sending her friend into the dangerous inside alone.
Olenna smiles faintly at Vera. She had been like that when she first joined the Guard: eager to knock an evildoer's head into the ground. Yazi makes sense of the situation, though. "If a few minutes, or even an hour, makes the difference between live and death, I'm willing to spend that time. But I understand the itch, Vera. Breathe, if you can."
"Ugh," is all Vera says in annoyance. But she does start breathing as Olenna suggests. And feels slightly better. It wasn't entirely a bad thing to have some adults around.
Magda bumps her friend's should, agreeing silently both at her irritation and relief.
The party casts their preemptive buffs and clambers over the debris to the cleverly placed, and obscured ladder that seems to actually be behind a permanent illusory wall. Laori gives everyone respectful quiet at the end of the process, trusting the plan of find salvator, kill Pilts, can be accomplished without too much trouble.
Before the spell is up, she also casts some unusual spells on herself, along with some typical priestly magics. - Sadomasochism, instrument of agony, intensify psyche, .
Moving to one side of the door, hammer at the ready, Yaziyah murmurs a quick prayer to he ancestors, invoking their blessing onto all present before the spell of silence descends on them. She waits for Olenna or Magda to give the all-clear with regards to the door itself, in case it was trapped or otherwise rigged with an alarm.
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Olenna drinks her extracts as she strides invisibly and silently towards Pilts' palace, feeling her body and mind reorganizing in response to the plethora of chemicals. By the time she is done, she has drunk half of her remaining stock for the day. She feels practically electric, ready to do remarkable things. She didn't need all of the trappings of external silence and invisibility to do her magic. Yes, bring on Pilts, she would stick him through...
Calm, calm, calm. Patience. Calm. Patience. Calm.
Breathe.
Olenna adjusts her lenses and pulls on her studded leather gloves. With scant thoughts, the metal within each finger protrudes and recedes into some of the more specialized tools that she used to have to lug around on jobs. Now her toolkit is mostly contained within her gloves, with only the more esoteric tools now carried around separately. Powdered silver, cold iron shavings, bottled petrified oozes, carefully stoppered vials of acid, and so on and so forth. One could never be too careful, and magical traps were another level of complexity on their own beyond the mere mundane. Confident, she looks over the door and then tries to dismantle anything between her, her allies, and whoever was on the other side.
Olenna opens the door, and as expected, the door leads to a hallway. The waif explained that she thought Salvator was in a makeshift cell past the trophy room across the hall, and probably through Pilt's actual room. She wasn't completely sure. The party quickly, and carefully files into the hall while staying in close proximity to each other, careful to remain invisible. The door across the hall doesn't appear to be trapped or locked, so Olenna opens it, closing the storeroom door behind her.
The air in this room smells sickly sweet—a combination of flowers and vinegar. The unpleasant smell likely comes from the fourteen poorly preserved heads mounted on the walls of this grisly trophy hall. Most of the heads are human, although two are those of elves and one is from a dwarf with a beard roughly sheered off to match the cut to the neck. To the north, a small, child-sized bed sits against the wall opposite a wooden table decorated with a magnificent set of silverware.
Olenna wrinkles her nose, glancing over at Laori. She had called this sort of display unsanitary. That was putting it lightly. Olenna wasn't sure whether Pilts deserved more to be put down like the rabid animal he was or left to rot in a cell for a prolonged, miserable existence.
Calm.
Yazi, surely, given Shoanti custom, must be livid right now.
What Olenna wouldn't give to have picked up that quiet Varisian manual cant that some of the Deaf citizens used to communicate...
Surely they could take a moment to remove these grotesque trophies.
Olenna takes the time to look around the room for anything else of interest, staying close to Vera so that the invisibility remains intact.
The smell is like entering a rapid river to a half orc with a very keen nose. Luckily Mags learned long ago to take the good with the bad. Noting but keeping it from overwhelming.
She tries to see past it, with her nose, and keep her eyes and ears open for dangers as well.
Reflexively, Yaziyah inhales sharply when she sees the gruesome trophies - and immediately regrets it. The shock and rage come over her in waves; the desecration, the panic that someone familiar has been thus displayed, the stab of worry for Vera (didn't the girl find the severed head of her mother in Gaedren's den?). She reaches out blindly to find the young arcanist's shoulder and squeeze it in what is meant to be a reassuring manner, almost as much for herself as for Vera.
Vera looks away, not wanting to gaze upon the awful, awful preserved heads. It was too familiar a memory.
As she feels Yazi's friendly squeeze, she whispers a quiet "Thank you,", as she takes Yazi's hand and squeezes it.
Olenna nods silently to the others and tries the door to the north.
Olenna pops open the northern door. This extravagantly decorated bedroom would seem to belong in the richest of noble villas or monarchs’ castles—at least, until one looks a little more closely at the sheets on the four-poster bed and notes how stained and frayed they are, or examines the tapestries and bed curtains and sees the patches of mold and threadbare edges. A tall, well-stocked bookcase to the south turns out to be leaning against the wall for support; the contents of its sagging shelves are poorly produced books with violent or erotic names on their mildewed spines. Everything is slightly musty, stained with age, and well beyond its prime. Only the three paintings hanging on the wall hold up to closer examination, but their grisly subject matter might make them difficult to show in most public venues. To the north, a simple wooden door is secured with a lock and a heavy wooden bar.
Laori spies the paintings, and seems to be very excited, but not so much that she can't control herself. She moves as close as possible as she can to examine them, while staying within the invisibility globe.
Magda sniffs about, hoping to find the scent of the artist from his own house.
Still reeling from the shock of the previous room, Yaziyah is only focused on doing what they came to do, and ending this horror show as swiftly as possible.
Hearing Laori's suppressed squeals of excitement, the Shoanti whispers. "Are these recent? The painter might still be alive is so."
Magda definitely smells the smell of the painter through the western doorway. It doesn’t smell particularly old.
Yazi’s commentary deadens as it leaves her lips, and she mouths her statement.
Everyone in the room, except for Laori, sees Yazi is talking about the painter, and that she mouthed the word ‘alive’.
Magda thumbs her nose and points to the west doorway. She takes a deep breath to categorize any other people smells, trying to count the number that has been in the place.
Then she'll move to the door to listen, trying to see if anyone else is on the other side and might notice an opening door.
Magda leaves the bolt to flame hair, and moves closer to Laori curious. She taps the other woman on the shoulder and shrugs a what are you looking at?
Laori points at the paintings and grins, she seems delighted, but as usual, she must have different taste than most people.
The first depicts a full portrait of a thin humanoid wearing shadows as he stands framed by a dolmen of great size. The figure’s brilliant blue eyes are the only true points of color in the piece, and they seem to almost glow with anger.
The second picture depicts a rugged mountain range above a desert under a harsh blue sky. In the foreground, a quartet of Vudrani tusked camels ridden by N’darr tribespeople race across dunes that, upon closer examination, consist of tiny skulls.
The final portrait is the most disturbing, for it depicts a handsome man in the process of peeling away the flesh of his arms as if he were taking off a pair of gloves. Underneath, his arms are muscular and covered with glittering blue scales. The man’s expression is one of delight, yet his eyes are empty pits of blackness. Half seen in the shadows beyond him are thousands of humans impaled on towering wooden poles erected in the shadow of an indistinct shape looming on the horizon—perhaps a castle, maybe a mountain, but likely something more.
"Why is there no sound in this place?" says Vera, though she expects that the sound won't really go anywhere. She continues to babble as she walks back out of the room, waiting for the point where the silence effect goes away. Once it does, she casts Detect Magic and studies the room.
As impatient as she is to just get going, Laori's pointing makes yaziyah take a closer look at the paintings.
Magda looks around to find Cat, then picks him up slowly (since if he doesn't want to be picked up anything but would be painful), then takes him to the painting of the man. Points to the man, and then toward where Cat said the Emperior was.
The first painting is a depiction of Zon-Kuthon stepping through a portal into ancient Nidal.
At first Cat is confused, but then Cat flicks his tail to indicate no or the closest proximity to such.
Vera realizes what's happening and slaps her forehead at her own absentmindedness. Fortunately no sound emanates outward.
The first painting is a depiction of Zon-Kuthon stepping through a portal into ancient Nidal.
At first Cat is confused, but then Cat flicks his tail to indicate no or the closest proximity to such.
If nothing else, the room seems to immediately conjure the work of Salvatore Scream from what Olenna knows of his reputation. She silently chuckles as people continue to forget that they are in a zone of silence. Yes, a bit of a manual cant was going to be very useful moving forward if they continued to use similar tactics.
She draws curiously towards the paintings, trying to assess them. She wasn't as much of a fan as Laori, but clearly these meant something to her.
The first picture is what Yazi thought, of Zon-Kuthon stepping through a portal into Nidal.
The second is of a minor, but haunting scene in The Umbral Leaves, a sacred text of Zon-Kuthon.
The third - Olenna recognizes the distorted shape as being some sort of spired castle, but cannot identify where. Whatever inkling of arcana she was considering passes - it must not be important.
She knows the first, second, and third paintings are so well-painted, that even with the odd imagery, would be worth 450, 800, and 2000 gp respectively.
After this door has been checked for traps, the door to the western room is opened.
The air in this room is an unpleasant mix of body odor and paint. A lumpy straw mattress lies on the floor in one corner of the room, partially covered by a few blankets, while in the other stands a large easel on which rests a nearly completed painting of immense fiends attacking a village.
Within the makeshift cell is a main who must be Salvator Scream. Salvator is a plain-looking man dressed in paintstained rags. Flea bites cover his skin, and his eyes are sunken, probably from sleep deprivation.
USalvator immediately falls to his knees and breaks into desperate quiet sobs, begging for rescue between each heartbreaking shudder, "p..please help.. me..." He looks bereft of hope.
Laori turns to him, and looks very concerned for the first time, her eyes drawn from the paintings for the first time in a little while. She nods, then turns to the others, what next?.