Thaldis's page

Am I really meant to put all my questions here?

A lot of rappers seem to think it rhymes with "snow."

The Liar

Brynia was not a perfect specimen. She had a tall forehead, and her eyeteeth drove their medial neighbors inward behind the fores, giving her a bucktoothed appearance. But she was hale and fit, with a pleasant face and hair of a warm straw color, and as Thaldis drank he became keenly interested in seeing her breasts. As time wore on he began to find her teeth rather endearing.

"What a lovely charm," Thaldis said, referring to the simple jasper pendant she wore, as she brought him another cup of beer. He lifted it gently from her chest and drew it closer for inspection. Brynia blushed and cast her eyes at the ceiling. "It reminds me of a piece I once saw on a councilman's wife in Sothis."

"Oh," Brynia said quietly. She was not a natural skeptic, least of all when it came to compliments. She paused uncertainly. "Have you seen Sothis?"

"Yes. More than I cared to." He smiled faintly and let go of the pendant. Brynia straightened but did not move away. "Perhaps I can tell you of it later, when there are fewer guests to see to."

"Yes, I'd like that," Brynia nodded. "You'll be staying for dinner, then?"

"I expect so," Thaldis said agreeably. Brynia stood a moment longer and then hurried off with her skirts in her hands.

As Thaldis returned to his reading, a familiar and utterly round figure hobbled out of the rain into the Bottoms Up. Thaldis squinted through the tavern's dim light.

"Isigro?" he called. The man looked up and gave an emphatic, wobbling nod. "What are you doing here?"

"Eh..." Isigro adopted a sour expression. "I think I don't tell you that. But, heard you were in town. Wanted to see how you and your friends fared."

"Isigro," Thaldis said with a slow smile as the Sczarni lowered himself into a chair, "that was *your* job. Remember? You were to look out for my friends."

"Eh, yes, I remember." Isigro's accent seemed to thicken each time Thaldis saw him. "You don't worry about that. The Bastards did not return. But, meant your other friends -- this company of yours. Heard you killed five score of ogre on Hook's Mountain. If I had known you would do this, would have been much afraid when you came for me." He gave a wheezing laugh.

"It was shy of two score," Thaldis said with a dubious look. "And I am a poor fighter, as you surely know. The others did most of that work."

Isigro shrugged, perhaps mildly disappointed, and went quiet for a moment. "This rain, eh? It is not a good rain. It gives me an ill feeling." He grabbed his belly with both hands and shook it for emphasis.

"You realize that we may be sitting on the rainiest spot in all Avistan," Thaldis said with a wry smile. "I know of no place that sees less of the Sun than west Varisia. Even the summers have a chill." Isigro's slackened jaw and pinched brow betrayed a profound sense of unfairness. "But I agree. I wish I knew what to make of it." Thaldis took a sip of his beer and glanced down at his papers. "When we arrived yesterday, I overheard some people talking about Eolana, the seeress. She is your niece, yes?"

"Eh, yes." He nodded slowly.

"It sounded as though she passed through here recently. I would like to speak with her, if she's still nearby."

Isigro frowned. "Why you want to speak?"

"Because, Isigro," Thaldis laughed, "every minute that I don't spend speaking with Eolana is one that I might spend thinking about what you are doing here in Turtleback Ferry."

***

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Master Valedost. I've heard quite a bit about you these past few months. Don't worry -- I assume it is mostly fables." Eolana was much prettier than he had hoped. She had a heart-shaped face, with a delicate mouth and big violet eyes that seemed almost to glow. "I understand that you did my uncle a favor. As much as I love him, you must know that does not reflect very well on you."

"Yes," Thaldis said, kissing her hand with a smile. "You may think of it instead as a favor to your cousin. But I will get to the point. You say that you have heard of our work?"

"Yes," she said uncertainly. "The troubles in Sandpoint -- ghouls and goblins, that sort of thing?"

"It is bigger than that now. Something...historical. Do you know of the Runelords of Thassilon?"

Eolana shook her head. "Only dimly. Master Valedost, I think I know why you asked me here." She paused and laced her hands together. "I can't join you."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said with a frown. "May I ask why?"

She smiled knowingly. "Master Valedost, let us not kid ourselves -- you are a cad." Behind the bar, Brynia dropped a glass.

Thaldis smiled uncertainly and watched Eolana's eyes. "You have a low opinion of yourself if you think I called you here just to sleep with you."

"There are at least two ways of looking at that, I think," Eolana said with a smile. "But it is not only that. You have a predatory soul. Your eyes," she paused, laughing. "Even now, you are searching for a checkmate."

"Whatever you think of me," he paused and placed his hands on the table as if it were a piano. "Many people will die if we fail. You need only look at this town to see that. You could be a great help to us."

"Many people will die if I am not there to heal them when my caravan passes through their village."

"That is not what I am talking about, Eolana. Violent deaths, on a massive scale -- you must have heard what happened to the Gallowed."

"But you are not listening." She shook her head. "Why would I trust you?"

With a frown, lips parted to speak, he searched her eyes. "Because you remind me of someone," he said finally.

"Yes?" she laughed. "And there is more?"

"There is," he nodded. "But you should see it for yourself."

"As you wish." She gave him an odd look and reached into her satchel for a deck of cards. She sorted through them with practiced movements, laying nine face-down before him. "Choose one."

Thaldis placed his hand on the fourth card from the left and drew it toward him before picking it up. It showed a lamia with a bouquet of roses.

"'The Liar,'" he read aloud. He handed it back to Eolana and she shuffled it into the deck, along with the others he hadn't chosen. Then she drew nine cards, in three sets of three, and laid them in columns running toward him. One by one she turned over the cards in the left column.

-- a demon feeding on the souls of the damned: "The Fiend";

-- a wounded man among the ghosts of his comrades: "The Survivor";

-- a king mourning before a grave: "The Empty Throne."

Eolana sat in silence and stared at the cards. She took a deep breath. "Yes -- I see now. I am sorry." She reached across the table and took his hand. "Liseia -- was that her name?"

***

"So there aren't any operas in Sothis?"

"Not since the empire fell." Thaldis placed a hand between his head and the pillow. "No one in Garund ever really took to it. The Calistrians have bought up most of the old houses. Or so I've heard." Brynia laughed.

"Who did that girl remind you of? The one you were talking to earlier?" she asked after a moment of silence.

"Hm?" Thaldis frowned sleepily. "Oh -- my sister."

"I didn't know you had a sister," she said in a teasing tone. "Do I remind you of her?"

"No," he shook his head. "Of course not."

"I suppose it wouldn't make much sense," she said quietly.

He turned toward her and touched her face, then drew the covers down off of her. "Go on -- I want you to dance for me."

Reading by Candlelight, Part 2

The tax-collector’s spellbook had been dragged along with him into the depths below Thistletop, but he had left a small collection of notes behind, scattered about his room at the Rusty Dragon. Having decoded the Thassilonian runes to his satisfaction, Thaldis now took to studying the late mage’s cramped, miserly scrawl. A dull ache spread from his brow to his temples. No matter how he held the pages, the light from his lamp was not equal to the task.

In the heat of battle, Thaldis had forgotten the Thassilonian medallion. Perhaps its magic would have helped -- but perhaps it would have only made things worse. If he hadn’t fallen at just that moment... In any case it was clear that Tsuto’s ring would not suffice -- and the meager leathers he wore already taxed him too greatly. So he studied the mage’s notes, in search of some protective spell that the mage himself had left unused.

The fight with Alergast had spooked him. It wasn’t just that he had nearly died, although that had not escaped his notice. He was collecting enemies. Alergast had come for him, specifically, and indicated that Aldern would do the same. This puzzled Thaldis. Alergast, he supposed, resented him and his companions for not letting him die. Fair enough, and easily remedied. But they had done nothing to Aldern. Someone had turned him against them. That made three enemies in little more than a month -- four, counting Tsuto. And, as always, lingering at the back of his mind, there was Jeggare.

***

The Jeggare Company was the hand that fed the Chelish empire, what little remained of it. It gathered resources from around Golarion -- Korvosan silver, Taldorian iron, Mwangi slaves -- and shoveled them into the markets of Egorian, Westcrown, and Kintargo with military efficiency. The tower-and-swords of House Jeggare was a familiar sight in any port on the Inner Sea.

The Jeggare Company’s long reach often came at the expense of control. Shirking, graft, and embezzlement imposed significant costs on the company’s operations. Local offices were typically given only skeleton crews -- a shipping agent, a procurer, a handful of assistants. Larger ports like Absalom received additional staff, but they were never enough to ensure that the deals they made were being honored fully. So when the company governors in Egorian noticed irregularities in a local office’s books, they assigned a special auditor to investigate the matter.

Thaldis began work in 4692, at the age of sixteen, as an assistant to the special auditor Corremin in Sothis. In the winter of 4700, he received a promotion of sorts: he was named the third special auditor of Varisia. To fill the rest of hours, he was also given the duties of the shipping agent for Sandpoint. In fact he was the company’s sole representative in Sandpoint. Procurement was directed from the Magnimar office, and Thaldis returned the funds allotted for hiring an assistant, citing a lack of qualified candidates.

Late in the summer of 4708, Thaldis received a task in his capacity as special auditor. The reason the Sandpoint office needed only half an employee was that the Jeggare Company wanted only two things from Sandpoint. The first was Scarnetti’s lumber. The second was Shoanti slaves, smuggled through Lonjiku’s tunnels and into the holds of the great ships the lumber necessitated. As to the lumber, the company’s governors were generally satisfied. For the last six months, however, they had been paying for more slaves than they received.

The trader from whom they purchased the slaves, a fat Sczarni named Isigro, was intractable. He led Thaldis to a pen at the edge of the camp. A ledger in the adjacent wagon contained a table of symbols that Thaldis did not recognize.

“Heights and weights,” Isigro explained in Varisian. “And dates. You see? Nine men, six women. Nine men, six women. Each month it is the same, just as your devil-masters have ordered. So they can keep their assassins south of the bay.”

Lonjiku was similarly insistent: six men, six women, each month since Calistril. Thaldis did not trust Lonjiku, but he trusted him more than he trusted the Sczarni. Once the slaves reached Lonjiku, he had nowhere to put them except on a Jeggare ship. He couldn’t sell them, and he certainly had no interest in freeing them. Isigro, on the other hand, could have purchased three fewer male slaves and pocketed the difference. And his underlings might have felt less sanguine than he about the peculiar Chelish institution -- or about shepherding fifteen Shoanti several miles in the dead of night. And, of course, the Sczarni could always be bribed.

Finding the truth was just a matter of patience. Lonjiku was eager to prove his innocence, and he knew when the Sczarni would make their next delivery. So when Isigro’s nephew left camp with the Shoanti near midnight on the 18th of Rova, Thaldis was watching; and he was watching when, navigating a deer trail, the caravan halted to meet a pair of riders approaching from a nearby farm. Thaldis stopped and took his bearings. As the riders made their way back across the fields with three of the male slaves, he realized that his investigation could progress no further.

These woods marked the northeast boundary of the Deverin lands. The farmhouse whence the riders came, and where they now returned, was occupied by Moryl Whiteacre, sister of Amos Deverin, widowed nine years before Thaldis’s arrival in Sandpoint. The farm hadn’t been active for several years before that. She had no need for slaves; she was buying their freedom.

The Sczarni were selling the slaves twice, whether Isigro knew it or not. That was the information that the governors had tasked Thaldis with finding. They would kill Isigro’s nephew -- perhaps cut the Sczarni out entirely. But Thaldis could not make his report to the governors. The Chelish slaves had surrendered their freedom via crime or contract, such was the law of the land. Perhaps the same was true among the Shoanti. But there were no slaves in Sandpoint, nor in any other part of Varisia within Magnimar’s reach. He might forgive himself for turning a blind eye, but he could not turn a man over to be killed -- not for this.

Such were the thoughts that Thaldis wished to remember, but there had been others as well. The Magnimar office procured the slaves, and Lonjiku’s men got them aboard the ships. Thaldis’s hands were clean, for the time being. And if Moryl Whiteacre and her sons knew of the slaves being smuggled through Sandpoint, could there be any doubt that Kendra Deverin knew as well? If she was content to ignore it for now, a few deaths would change that in short order -- even Sczarni deaths.

Thaldis wrote to the board of governors the next day. In lieu of his report, he submitted his resignation.

***

That was more than a month ago, and still he’d received no sign from Egorian nor even from Magnimar. The Jeggare Company office in Sandpoint stood empty. It was possible that the second auditor had arrived without his notice -- but with all of Sandpoint as his eyes and ears, and Isigro’s clan as well, it was not likely. Even the Bastards of Erebus, having shown up at his doorstep, had not bothered to come inside to seek him out.

Lonjiku’s death had put an end to the Company’s supply of Shoanti slaves. Would they suspect Thaldis of having some part in it? Perhaps, with only Scarnetti’s lumber to draw them, the Company would withdraw from Sandpoint altogether. Thaldis quickly dismissed that idea. If Scarnetti were in danger of losing his biggest customer, he would get them all the slaves they needed. Even with the tunnels walled off, he would find a way.

Finally Thaldis’s mind returned to a more certain threat. Aldern had been a sycophant, a fool -- Thaldis thought that he had even shown signs of cretinism. The notes Thaldis had before him contained instructions for creating a magical spark. It was inconceivable that Aldern could grasp even this basic material, let alone summon a small army of ghouls. How could this simpering idiot have assembled such a force? Who could have given it to him? Who ever would?

And suddenly it struck him: Lucrecia.

Reading by Candlelight

They were not the first dead bodies that Thaldis had seen. Indeed, for an auditor -- even one of Jeggare’s -- he had encountered well more than his share of death. There had been the Shoanti slaves in the trees of Sanos Forest; the butcher in Sothis; the Bonuwat sailor, clutching his stomach, who across those many years remained a fixture of his nightmares. But these were the first bodies that could so easily have been his own. The dwarf, especially, his headless corpse slumped where Thaldis had stood only a moment earlier. Could he really have been the agent of his own survival? Had it been his swiftness, his sensitivity to the flow of battle, that had kept him alive? Yes, he thought. It had. And yet...

And yet if he listened carefully he could just hear the Fates casting their dice. He felt his chest tighten. All his skill was a mere droplet in an ocean of randomness. He needed something to protect him.

Thaldis pushed this thought aside. Before him -- surrounding him -- were the Thassilonian runes that he and his partners had copied over the past weeks, along with the translations that Quink had given them. It was not that Thaldis did not trust Quink; it was that he did not respect him. He looked as if his mind might go at any moment. Perhaps it already had. On several occasions he had seen the old man puttering about the lighthouse near dawn, with his compass and diopter and other arcane instruments. The mere sight of the elderly had always stirred in Thaldis a kind of resentment. He could hardly bear relying upon them for their cleverness. So it was settled: he would learn Thassilonian himself.

The language was not entirely alien to him; as it was the common ancestor of Varisian and Shoanti, he knew much of the lexicon and was familiar with its grammar. He had nearly understood the message spoken by the ghostly figure under Thistletop. The runes, however, were a puzzle. There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, and no one had any use for them anymore. Like most modern languages, Varisian and Shoanti were written in alphabets derived from the Jistka and Azlanti systems. These days one only ever saw a Thassilonian rune on the thigh of a Varisian dancer.

At the naval academy in Kintargo Thaldis had enjoyed success in two subjects particularly: languages and mathematics. Deciphering the runes, he found, required a little of both. Some of them consisted of a single logogram; others a logogram and a inflectional marker. With the grammar and translations at hand, it had been a simple enough task to construct a glossary of the runes -- a few nights’ work while waiting out the goblins at Thistletop, mostly. Now he worked at isolating the inflectional elements. The runes they had collected were not a large enough corpus for him to decipher the system entirely, but it was a start. And it was exactly the sort of careful tedium that he found so thrilling.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught Shayliss making her way west through the empty market square. Suddenly he was seized by fear: had Ameiko told her of this apartment? He ducked his head and spied at her over the windowsill. Had she seen him already by the candlelight? No -- she kept her western heading, her skirts gathered in her hands, her eyes scouring the ground for puddles.

Thaldis returned to his work with great satisfaction. Keeping one’s own schedule, he thought to himself, was really the most civilized thing of all.

As far as the PCs were concerned, I think Nimdhor getting punched in the face was the clear highlight of that session.