A Lodge in the City of Strangers

Zinthyra sighed, exhaling her weariness all at once. This is what she wanted, right?

“Venture-Captain Zinthyra Tannol,” she said, voicing her full title to only herself. She’d worked for this recognition and earned this chance to learn everything about the Azlanti wizard Lesolethe, who was so much the subject of her research into mortals that some derisively called her “obsessive.” Of course she was obsessed. Azlant. Thassilon. Empires that endured in ways nothing on the First World, the ephemeral land of the fey, ever could. Even after ten millennia, their magic and monuments still influenced the lives of countless beings on Golarion. Mortals didn’t exactly have the lifespans necessary to appreciate that fact or recall those days, though.

“Well, some do,” she mused, remembering both her excitement at the reemergence of the Thassilonian city of Xin-Edasseril and her despair as its ruler, Runelord Belimarius, put up wards against fey—all this, after she supposedly “wouldn’t stop harassing” the populace with endless questions. Still, most in that city had been trapped in time, and few knew any details about Azlant to the west; none, at least, that she hadn’t already learned in her centuries of study. Still, it was up to her to recover the knowledge she wanted. That’s what all of this was for: the test of leadership the Decemvirate, the shadowy leaders of the Pathfinder Society, gave her in briefing as well as sending agents into Lesolethe’s laboratory. She didn’t enjoy leading others, but this is the best way to gain access to Lesolethe’s secrets, and the Azlanti wizard had become something of a personal project over the last several decades for Zinthyra.

Lesolethe had control over special magic that wouldn’t reemerge in mortal magic for millennia after the fall of Azlant, yet something within the laboratory had caused the wizard to completely seal the site and abandon it, leaving no mention in her journals. Here Zinthyra stood at last with the key to unseal it and the right to send Pathfinder agents into its depths. It was thrilling beyond belief—everything she wanted. Or at least everything she’d asked for.

She was fey. She should have been well acquainted with the prospect of getting exactly what she asked for in a bargain, yet here she was sidled with the administrative duties of an entire Pathfinder lodge. What’s worse, this one was trying to keep an infuriatingly low profile, as its entrance was in the famously anarchic Kaer Maga, the City of Strangers. Apparently, whoever built the shop had done so over a buried teleportation circle, probably one left by Lesolethe herself. Some thieves had thought to use it in a fake travel scheme to rob people, and some Pathfinders thwarted those plans, which gave Zinthyra an infuriatingly indispensable ally in Nellie Bow, an investigator who had reached out to the Pathfinders when she noticed the disappearances the thieves had caused.

Nellie would not leave Zinthyra alone, which had at first caused her no end of frustration. That was until Nellie revealed she knew just who to talk to and who to pay off to make sure no one would bother the new lodge and that questions about a new shop that did no real business would go largely unnoticed. Nellie was infuriatingly well-informed about the networks of favors and debts that let the anarchy of Kear Maga run smoothly. She was also far too smug about how helpful she knew she was being, which the sprite didn’t appreciate, as she didn’t exactly enjoy being indebted to mortals. Apparently, Nellie thought she “owed the Pathfinders,” who’d apparently saved her life during the incident with the thieves. Zinthyra couldn’t begrudge the transference of a life-debt, but it still felt wrong to be benefitting from a bargain she hadn’t arranged. It hurt her fey pride.

Still, the City of Strangers was run on a set of unspoken rules, payoffs, and favors that would make many fey monarchs proud, and Zinthyra had come to know all too well how much she relied on Nellie. The mortal should really just hurry up and join the Society; she was Zinthyra’s second-in-command in all but name already. Regardless, the meeting with the Ardoc family had gone exceptionally well, and their bribes to the Duskwardens to get materials moved more quickly up the Halflight Path were well-received—a lucky thing, given it was the quickest way to get materials from the base of the Storval Rise to the top of the plateau on which Kaer Maga stands. As Zinthyra passed agents posing as shopkeepers and bored customers in the used mop shop she’d decided to establish as a front (despite Nellie’s objections that mortals don’t buy used mops, the concept just struck her as too amusing), she passed the warded doors into the shop’s basement. There, she activated the hidden teleportation circle built into the millennia-old stone floor they’d hidden under a trap door.

As the rush of teleportation passed, leaving her who-knows-how far beneath the city, she found herself in her office, the space appointed with a small sprite-sized writing desk sized for her atop the one Nellie had been using. The agents assigned as security had balked at letting Nellie inside, but Zinthyra pointed out that the whole incident with the thieves had already given the investigator knowledge of the whole teleportation setup. Plus, none of this would have been possible to achieve without Nellie’s intimate knowledge of the city. If she wanted to work here, Zinthyra figured that would do just fine.

“Welcome back, runelord,” Nellie quipped, giving a small bow. Zinthyra knew she was poking fun at her self-appointed title, but Zinthyra had been studying Thassilonian rune magic for longer than most mortals had been alive. Besides, several mortals had taken to using the title themselves as a signifier that they practiced one of the Thassilonian schools of sin magic. Zinthyra turned her nose up primly, simply asking, “Are the agents here?”

Nellie nodded, and Zinthyra smiled. “Well, it wouldn’t do to keep them waiting much longer—it’s time for us to see what secrets Lesolethe was so keen to keep sealed down here. Let’s get the first briefing of the Aeon Lodge underway.”