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Toilday, Mid-Day
some things always stay the same, until one day, they don’t.
Case in point. I was visiting Sera and we were talking about basically nothing, and out of the blue I said to her, “I need to get out of this place.” It is a familiar refrain. She got real quiet and we stared at the wall for a while before she said, “You and me both”. And then we lamented the fact that it took quite a bit of money to strike off on your own, and that was something neither of us had. It’s a conversation we’ve had dozens of times, and it’s like we’re reading off a script.
Diamond Lake isn’t a strike-it-rich kind of town: it’s more of the your-dreams-have-died variety. If you’re lucky, you can work and make enough to stay afloat until you get sick and die. If you’re really lucky, you can do that without resorting to living at Jake’s. For most folks, that means earning enough to stay trapped here. Getting out is so far out of reach that most don’t even talk about it.
Sera and I like to buck the trend.
At least she’s got an excuse for being an optimist: her family is better off than most. They’re not going to give her money just so she can leave—family businesses are their own sort of Diamond Lake—but they could all go if they wanted to. Mine’s not like that and there’s never been an option other than funding my own way, and that’s not exactly panning out. Apprenticing for Osgood has paid okay (no one gets rich on barmaid money, and I certainly didn’t), but there’s not really a lucrative future there. I mean, I’m no genius when it comes to figures, but even I can see that seven apprentices to one smithy is not great math.
So it’s an old conversation, one that dates back a couple of years, with the same beginning, middle, and end. At this point, I think Sera and I have it just because it’s familiar and there’s a twisted sort of comfort in the familiar.
And then it changed.
I don’t like visiting The Feral Dog. For one, I used to work as a server there and going inside brings back memories that are better off repressed, and for two, it’s run by Kullen, who somehow manages to be sleazier than the tavern. But his nephew Zhog works there, and I was dropping off a kukri for Zhog, so I was visiting The Feral Dog. And we got to talking, like we do, and it was like deja vu: I was having that same conversation again, only substitute him for Sera.
Like his uncle, Zhog is a half orc, but that’s both the start and end of the family resemblance. There is not much love lost between the two, either. Kullen has taken care of Zhog since the latter’s parents died, and while I am sure he feels a familial obligation there, I don’t doubt that his loyalty is influenced by having access to cheap labor. Kullen has what you might call a “transactional” parenting style: as long as his nephew works in his tavern, Kullen provides a roof over his head and enough food to eat. Zhog wants to get out from under his uncle, but that takes money which he doesn’t have, and isn’t going to make by working for just food and lodging. So it’s the same story, just with different actors.
Unlike Sera and I, Zhog actually had a shot at it, but he ended up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He received some sort of inheritance from his parents when he turned 17, and spent it getting equipped to get out of Diamond Lake and see the world. Zhog has been an acolyte of Desna for as long as I’ve known him, and “see the world” is one of those Desnan things where you take a pilgrimage without a destination. Unfortunately, math wasn’t his strong suit, either, and he spent his inheritance on the “getting equipped” bit, and there was nothing left for the part where you “see the world”. And thus, he’s still here. So, that’s only mostly the same story, I guess. I’m calling it close enough.
One of the few things I miss about being a barmaid, or working in a tavern in general, is that you overhear a lot. People are pretty interesting, and by extension, taverns are interesting places—even the seedy ones. While Zhog and I were bemoaning the state of our finances, our ears picked up the conversation at a three-top that was a group from Korvosa. I don’t know why, but adventurer types from out of town always seem to end up in the Feral Dog, despite it being, literally, the worst of their options. It’s like a magnet for people who like to complicate their lives. We could tell they were adventurer types because they were talking loudly and indiscreetly about exploring the Stirgenest Cairn. Typical.
Diamond Lake is surround by ancient burial cairns from some long-dead culture, the kind that built enormous and elaborate tombs to prove their greatness. All of them have been raided by explorers since their discovery decades ago, and consequently emptied of valuables because who doesn’t love a little grave robbing? And yet, for some reason, every year people from out of town—most seem to hail from Korvosa like this bunch, but we get treasure hunters from all over Varisia and beyond—get the idea to come and explore the Stirgenest Cairn, with dreams of looting it’s hidden riches.
There are no riches, hidden or otherwise. Like the others, it was bled dry years ago and there’s nothing left of value inside. Listening to tourists dream about scoring it big in the Stirgenest Cairn is what passes for community entertainment in Diamond Lake. Like, there are several factions in town that do not see eye to eye on hardly anything, but one thing they will all agree on is that tourists who don’t do their research are endless sources of both amusement and money. Which is probably why we don’t, as a community, correct this public misconception. Admittedly, that’s not particularly virtuous of us, but the way most people figure it: treasure hunters are here to exploit the town, anyway, and their money is good, so why not exploit them first? Also, Diamond Lake is one of the last places you go when seeking virtue.
“Too bad all of those cairns are empty,” Zhog said.
I almost agreed as an automatic response, but I cut myself off and just stared at him. Were they all empty?
Zhog was looking at me funny. “You okay?” he asked.
I’m not normally known for sitting quietly with my mouth gaping. The opposite, really. I feel like mom is being polite when she says I have a way of “filling the gaps in conversation”.
“Yeah. I just…I think I have an idea.” I told him I’d be back in a couple of hours, and left him standing with a puzzled expression while I went to find Sera.
When I was twelve, I started hanging out with a group of teens that called themselves The Night Walkers. Sera was one of them, and also the one who encouraged me to join. We did all sorts of crazy, irresponsible things that only teens would do, and that only parents from Diamond Lake would ignore. It was more than just irresponsible, really. It was, like, irresponsibility taken to staggering heights. We ran around in the night, literally, like a cult of survivalists. The group was actually quite fun, even exhilarating at times, and a good diversion for a town that’s all dead-ends. I learned a lot of useful stuff that is not so easy to learn on your own, but we should still call it what it was: a bunch of kids being reckless in the dark. We navigated the hills, learned how to hunt for food, even played field games, all by moonlight. Sometimes by just the light of the stars. We had initiations, rituals, you name it.
And we also visited a little-known and well-hidden cairn that became an open secret among the Night Walkers and other kids in town. At the time, it probably wasn’t known to anyone over eighteen. We all called it The Whispering Cairn, named after the strange sounds that echoed inside when the wind blew in just right. We even spread rumors that it was haunted (an easy sell just on the sounds alone) which both elevated it to legendary status among Diamond Lake youth, and kept the casually curious ones away.
I am not sure who discovered it—probably Sergiu or Alina, our de-facto leaders at the time— but regardless of its origins, the Night Walkers kind of claimed it as our own, and we used it for our initiation ritual. A brave or foolhardy few, like Sera and myself, even spent the night in it as a test of our mettle. But what we didn’t do was explore the thing, because we all knew at some deeper level that it was dangerous. You could see animal tracks leading in and out, and sometimes footprints from something larger and bipedal. You went in not knowing if you would be alone, or if you would stay that way.
About five years after I joined the group, our collective luck ran out. A friend of mine, Masildi, went in to spend the night and she never came back, and that was the end of the Night Walkers. A couple of years later, another idiot kid tried to do the same thing, because one disappearance wasn’t enough, and Alina found out about it and we went to pull him out. He was attacked while he was inside—by what, we don’t know, and we didn’t wait around to find out—but we got him out before he could bleed to death. As far as I know, no one has been back since.
No one has ever talked about the Whispering Cairn outside of that group of friends. The Stirgenest Cairn was emptied years ago and people still can’t shut up about the thing. If the Whispering Cairn had been explored and looted, you would think we’d have heard about it. We’d probably never stop hearing about it.
What if it hadn’t ever been explored? What if it wasn’t empty, like the others?
I needed to talk to Sera.
Toilday, Evening
There were seven of us in all. Sera and I have been friends for practically ever, and I worked with Zhog and Snagsby back in my serving girl days. As for the others? I had seen them around, and no one is truly a stranger in a town of a thousand people. Snagsby works with Viore, and also knows the newcomer Varin. Most of us probably knew Viktor at least casually.
“For those who don’t know me well,” I said, starting us off, “call me ‘Bel’. Seriously, just call me ‘Bel’.”
I always need to get that out of the way, because while I don’t ever use my full name it’s far from being a secret. I want to say that my parents have a sense of humor, but I really think they were being serious when they named me Belessandralena, especially since they use it all the time. They never shorten it: not out in public, not in private with friends and family, and not even casually at home. Never. Most kids’ names get longer when they get in trouble with their parents. Mine just got more enunciation.
Dad has labored in one of the mines for as long as I can remember, and he’s always been close with the local gnome community since several of them are in his same work crew. That is the super-abridged story of how I got my name. Once, when I was younger and feeling particularly feisty, I argued that it’s gnome men that have the long names, while the women’s names tend to be really short. Dad just said that I was missing the point. I was so vexed by this response that I didn’t even think to ask what that point would be. I still haven’t, under the theory that some mysteries are maybe better left unsolved.
“We’re all here for the same reason,” I continued. “The ‘why’ is different for each of us, but we all are looking for something that is outside of Diamond Lake. A better life. A chance to see more of the world. Connecting with our past. But getting out, and staying out, takes money, and none of us have enough of it to survive for long on our own. Sera and I have an idea that might just change that.”
My “why” fell into the last category. A few months after I turned seventeen, I started developing the ability to see in the dark. By “in the dark”, I mean, “in the complete absence of light”. At first I thought it was just getting more sensitive to dim light, but it didn’t take long to figure out that light itself just wasn’t a prerequisite. Once I was done having a panic attack—I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and it’s pretty terrifying the first time the lights go out and you realize you can still clearly see the room—I went to see Sera. She’s been able to see like this since, I dunno, the womb, I guess, and I thought maybe she could help me figure out why it was happening. She suggested that there was something in my ancestry that wasn’t human.
Once I built up the courage to talk to mom and dad, they suggested I write to Aunt Esma, who is the family historian. And she had been digging around, too, because I guess I’m not the only one in the family with…unusual traits. According to my Aunt, if you go back a couple of generations on my mom’s side, you find that my great-great grandmother was pregnant with her oldest daughter before she met her husband. Based on hints found in some old diaries, Aunt Esma believes the father was a dragon in human form.
Think about that for a minute: somewhere in my family history, there is a real dragon. A dragon that, given how long they live, may still be around. As soon as that thought settled in, I kind of grew obsessed with the idea of tracking them down. It’s not entirely crazy. I mean, sure, there is the possibility that they don’t want to be found, and they are a dragon. But I feel like I need to try, and I have a where and a when, and I even have the name they were using, so I have a starting point.
“It’s common knowledge,” I continued, “that all the old cairns around here have long since been looted and emptied, but there’s one that’s about a half day from town that we’re pretty sure has never been explored. Because almost no one knows it’s there.
“Sera and I were part of a group of kids that used to go inside this cairn from time to time. She and I even spent the night in it once. We called it The Whispering Cairn because of the sounds it makes when the wind blows, and for a while we spread stories among the other kids in town that it was haunted so we could more or less keep them away and have it to ourselves.
“The few people that do know about it don’t go there anymore. About five or six years ago, a friend of ours tried to spend the night inside, and she never came back out. We’re pretty sure she died in there. And then a couple of years after that, another kid tried to do the same, and they go hurt, bad. That was the last time I knew of anyone going there.”
I paused to take a deep breath. Talking about what happened to Masildi is never easy. It doesn’t help that she and I parted on such a bad note. I could make all sorts of excuses for why things ended they way they did, but they are all just variations on blaming the victim, and that wouldn’t be right. So I just swallowed my guilt and pushed on.
“Even though we’ve been inside it, none of us went in very far. Just down the entry hall to a junction with alcoves on either side. That is less than a hundred feet in. But the cairn goes back a lot farther than that, and we don’t know what’s there.
“What we’re proposing is that we band together, and explore The Whispering Cairn. I won’t deny that it’s potentially dangerous. Sometimes there are animals living in there, and it’s possible we’d need to deal with that. But we are a group of seven, and we aren’t kids anymore. We’re also armed, and not without some skill.”
“Is it actually haunted?” Snagsby asked.
“I don’t know. It might be? But we never saw anything that suggested it was. The most dangerous things we came across were animals and other people.”
There was some discussion after that, and to my surprise and relief, no one got up and walked out. So that was a start.
“There’s more. If we want to do this, there’s an abandoned mine office near the cairn that we could maybe use for a place to stay. It wasn’t in great shape when we found it several years ago, but if it’s still standing we could maybe fix it up a bit so it could keep us dry, and give us a place to work out of that is away from prying eyes.”
This was another Night Walkers discovery and we used it as our private hideaway for a couple of years. I described the small structure which resembled a farm house, complete with kitchen, bedrooms, cellar, and a well out back. When we found it, the roof was leaking and we patched it with a sort of homemade tarp—we were teenagers, remember—but I doubt that had survived the last seven years. We’d be lucky if the roof hadn’t collapsed. But the idea had a lot of appeal. Even in severe disrepair, it would be better than sleeping outdoors. As long as it didn’t come crashing down on us.
Snagsby asked, “How much do you think we might get out of this? I need to know if I should quit my job.”
And that was the rub. I didn’t know. Abadar wouldn’t allow me to mislead them, either, even if I wanted to. “There’s no guarantee. This isn’t like a secured investment. The cairns around here that have been looted have held phenomenal treasures, but that doesn’t mean this one will, too. And though we are reasonably confident it hasn’t been explored yet, it’s still possible that someone else has already cleaned it out. I wouldn’t quit your job until after it’s paid out.” Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, and so on.
“Great! I’m quitting my job then,” Snagsby replied. And, I might add, completely ignoring my advice.
After that, everyone else threw in, too. We were officially signing up to be squatters and grave robbers.
Wealday, Noon
I am not really a morning person. I spent nearly three years working as either a barmaid or server and—surprise!—taverns, pubs, and dining halls both open and close late. It was, in fact, the perfect schedule for someone who grew up spending more than a couple of nights each week staying out until the small hours. Though apprenticing for Osgood has forced me closer to what misguided people might call a “normal schedule”, I have so far managed to avoid getting up with or before the sun in my adult life. I am more than happy to keep it that way.
I was concerned the half-day’s hike to an abandoned house that I’ve not seen in several years would threaten that stance, but it turned out that there was not much enthusiasm in the group for an early start. The idea of having someplace close to the cairn that we could use as a base of operations meant that we didn’t have to plan for a round trip, so leaving early morning instead of stupidly-early was fine, as there would still be plenty of time left in the day. Granted, this was something of a gamble since we didn’t know what condition it would be in, but I was willing to take that chance.
We set out individually and rendezvoused just outside of town before making the hike. The idea there was to not make it look like we were planning something. One of the downsides of a town as small as Diamond Lake is that there aren’t many secrets, and seeing our group of seven leaving for the wilderness, carrying gear-laden packs and weapons, would likely attract the wrong sort of attention. And by “the wrong sort”, I mean “any at all”. This half-baked plan of ours would only work if we didn’t attract a following.
When we got to the house three or four hours later, it was pretty much as I remembered it except for the gaping holes in the roof. I could see the tattered remains of the tarps I had helped put in place seven or eight years ago.
Stars, had it really been that long?
We had actually done some upkeep on it as Night Walkers, with a large part of that being keeping the weeds in check. What we saw now was a good reminder of what happens when there’s years of uncontrolled growth. The fence had gaping holes, much larger than I remember, where roots and brambles had split the wood and dirt had rotted fence posts. The yard within was severely overgrown as well, and getting a foothold on the building itself.
Those issues aside, the structure still looked pretty sound. The upstairs was sure to be a mess, and there was likely water damage downstairs, too, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. We were just getting ready to have a look inside when we heard buzzing noises coming from around back.
The source of the noise became apparent very quickly: four mosquito-like things the size of a house cat converged on us. Stirges. Vicious, blood-sucking pests that prey on just about anything that’s warm-blooded, and if enough of them get to you they can bleed you dry.
Just to be clear, these weren’t around the last time I was here.
Honestly, I didn’t expect to come across stirges since this isn’t their typical habitat. You tend to find them in the same place you’d find mosquitos, which usually means around stagnant water of some sort. There’s a huge nest of them not far from the Stirgenest Cairn—we don’t just make up these names, you know—which is closer to the southeastern shore of Diamond Lake (the lake, obviously, not the town that’s named after it).
Regardless of whether they should be here, they were here, and that was no good. I sliced two of them in half with my horsechopper. Viktor blasted another with magic. The fourth turned out to be a tough little bugger but it pushed its luck going after Sera and she skewered it in response. The whole thing was over in less than half a minute.
And then the front door, which was hanging slightly ajar, slammed shut.
Well, crap.
The whole point of this excursion was to claim squatter’s rights on the property, but that was not going to work if someone else was already there. So we did what any reasonable group of people would do in the same situation: we knocked on the door and announced our presence.
The answer came in a raspy draconic. “Go away, humans!”
I’ve spent the last couple of years getting combat training from anyone at the garrison who would teach me, in exchange for a small fee (well, it was a large fee relative to my income, but no one was getting rich off of it). Sometimes that came from commander Trask. Sometimes it was one of the holy knights that sporadically visit from Korvosa. Usually it was from one of the Korvosa Militia soldiers on duty. It was an agreement I made with the commander that, more or less, kept me out of trouble by redirecting my frustrations in a direction less likely to antagonize the Sheriff and his cronies. It also gave the militia a bit of spending money, and a way to break up dull routine. Osgood also encouraged his apprentices to actually learn how to use the weapons we helped forge. So other than keeping me mostly broke, it was a win all around.
You can’t spend that much time around a group of soldiers—I would add “surly” as an adjective there, but it’s more or less redundant—without learning a bit about their duties. Everyone in Diamond Lake knows there’s some tension between us and the lizardfolk that make their home in the marshes to the southwest, for example, but I had learned just how often those tensions turn into pissing contests with the militia. It also occurred to me that this, here, was way outside their usual territory. Enough that the commander would elevate its status to “incursion”.
I honestly didn’t want to start a fight with lizardfolk. Even given this little territorial matter, I see no reason not to live and let live, and try a diplomatic approach. I pointed out to them that they shouldn’t be here, and they answered with an insult followed closely by a javelin, tossed through one of the many gaps in the mostly boarded-up windows.
Well, okay, then. Pissing contest, it is.
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Raiding a house is not an easy task, even one that is in severe disrepair. They were outmatched, but had an advantage in that we had to break our way in. Fortunately, the house was not able to put up much of a fight so all it did was slow us down. Viore and Zhog knocked the front door down going in, and Sera squeezed her way in behind them. They ended up face-to-face with three lizardfolk, and a fourth in reserve.
I stayed outside, and moved up to the windows. Two of them were tossing javelins through those, and I answered by stabbing one with the horsechopper. They went down and did not get back up.
Spells went off inside, sent by Viktor and Varin. Two of the lizardfolk in the front room collapsed. And then Sera got stabbed. I watched it happen through a window on my right. She was hurt bad. Really, really bad.
“Sera!” I cried, half in a panic. “Get out of there!” Though I think she had already figured that out on her own.
The remaining javelin-throwing lizardfolk appeared at the window in front of me, and I punched them with a spiked gauntlet. After seeing Sera get hurt, you might say I was in a bit of a mood.
Snagsby did something and I saw some of Sera’s wounds close up, but it wasn’t enough. Zhog and Viore distracted the lizardfolk in front of them by killing them, though, and that allowed Sera to back out of the fray. Zhog got in behind the one I punched, and then it was all over.
Almost over. During the fight, they called out to someone for aid and that aid never came, so we assumed it was still somewhere inside. Viore opened a door next to the stairs, and got it in one. This last lizardfolk was a bit tougher than the others, but had made the mistake of waiting until he was the only one left. I admit that I didn’t understand the point of that. We taught him a lesson in tactics that would last a lifetime: all 10 seconds of it.
This was my first time killing someone. The stirges didn’t really count, because it’s not like there’s a lot of love in the world for giant mosquitos. The lizardfolk, though, were sentient beings. They had lives, friends, maybe families. I don’t really know much about lizardfolk culture, but they operative word there is culture. When the fight started, adrenaline kind of took over and I didn’t think about it much, especially since I was trying not to die or get any of my friends killed. But afterwards? I don’t know. I don’t feel bad exactly, but I don’t feel good about it, either. It feels like the sort of thing that will stick with you.
I’d also never really seen much magic before. Sure, Varin uses little spells to cool drinks at the Rusty Bucket, and that’s fun and flashy, but to see spells cast in anger was a much different experience. Even Allustan, who is Diamond Lake’s resident bigwig, doesn’t go throwing it around. Based on what I saw today, presumably that’s because he doesn’t have to. If people know what you can do, you don’t need to go out of your way to give demonstrations. It also probably explains why his brother, Diamond Lake’s governor-mayor and chief pervert, is able to hold onto power. A little nepotism obviously goes a long way.
There was a surprising amount of stuff inside the house, much of it courtesy of the now-departed lizardfolk, which suggested they had been here for a couple of weeks, at least. The most grim discovery was a set of armor and weapons that came from one of the Korvosa Militia. I didn’t look forward to delivering that news. I don’t know everyone there by name, as the soldiers rotate, but I do know that every now and then one or two don’t come back. Like, for good.
Some magic scrolls, potions, and some coins suggested that more than one person had been using the house in the intervening years, and that not all of them had made it back, either. As Night Walkers, we never bothered to go down into the cellar—kids and cellars don’t really get along—but we’re responsible adults now, so nothing was off limits. There was a bunch of old mining equipment and a few odds and ends down there that were probably older than I am.
The rest of the house was much as Sera and I remembered it, just with a bit more water damage (gross), more snakes (also gross), and more giant rats (really gross). The upstairs was all but a total loss, but we could probably tarp the roof again to keep things from getting worse. It doesn’t rain much this time of year, so we have some time to get that done. For now, it would be fine.
The cairn beckoned.
I just hoped we could find it again. It occurred to me that I’ve never actually been there in the daylight.
Wealday, Afternoon
It took maybe ten or fifteen minutes to make our way to the cairn. Finding the entrance was a bit tricky because it was more overgrown than either Sera or I remembered, though I suppose that wasn’t surprising. Given how large the mouth is you wouldn’t think that weeds, vines, and brush would be enough to hide it, but six years is a long time and the vegetation here has always been thick.
We cleared away the worst of the thickets. People may have forgotten this place, but the wilderness certainly hadn’t. There were lots of animal tracks leading in and out, so many that they ran together, obscuring any obvious signs of what left them, and what, if anything, might be lairing inside. As we studied the entrance, a light breeze rose up and the cairn breathed out a long sigh, as if registering its opinion of our long-delayed return. Oh, you again. Believe me, I was having the same feeling.
The long hallway stretched into darkness. We could see a band of geometric shapes on the walls at waist level, or what remained of it. Most of it had either eroded away or, in some cases, been scratched off deliberately. Just inside the entrance was the graffiti from the kids that used to come in here: initials, faded names, drawings, and the like. These were the marks of those just seeking bragging rights for being inside the cairn, maybe trying to impress some girl or boy. They’d worked on the kids who didn’t ask too many questions, but didn’t stand up to real scrutiny. It just didn’t take much bravado to walk 10 feet in, where the sun was still shining, and ink your initials. This was the toddlers’ playroom.
We slowly made our way in along the dust-covered floor. It was a strange feeling retracing my old footsteps. I’d been in here maybe half a dozen times, and all but one of those was alone. And for all that time I was in here, I never really bothered to actually look. Probably none of us did, because the point was to be here in the dark and say you’d done it. So in a way, I was really seeing the cairn for the first time.
The wind kicked up, and a chorus of almost human sounds rose around us, and I could feel the goosebumps on my skin as chills ran up my spine. This was the cairn I remembered. Just being in here for a few minutes was one thing. Spending the night was another. Every breeze, every shift of the wind, sent new voices, sometimes even amusical tones, echoing throughout. It was not easy to stay calm. You couldn’t tell what sounds were real or just in your head, and of the former, whether they were the cairn or something else inside there with you. It drove more than one kid to panic and an early exit.
I remember my overnight stay in here vividly. Unlike Sera, I couldn’t see in the dark yet, and I was sitting in utter blackness for most of it. I was young, and Sergiu was still riding me, so I purposely chose a windy night because, paradoxically, that impressed the others more. It ended up working in my favor: the noise was nearly constant, and though the sounds rose and fell, I could still filter them out. Breezy nights, where the winds died entirely, were worse. The sounds would kick up with the wind just as you relaxed. You were always on edge.
Now that I had the time and inclination to explore, I could see where those sounds came from: small, metal tubes, hundreds of them, built into the walls. Some were broken off on the ground. The builders spent a lot of time trying to create this weird and unsettling effect. Given how long this must have taken, I had to wonder if they built this cairn first, and then decided “Let’s not do that again” before working on the others. Such a mundane source kind of ruined the magic of it, but knowing the cause didn’t change the fact the effect was still eerie.
Sera and I pointed out our names when we reached the alcoves. If you made it this far in, you were probably spending the night, and that meant you had a lot of time on your hands. It was the only time I used Sergiu’s red lantern, as it provided just enough light to slowly etch my name in the stone. It took a couple of hours, but it made me a proper vandal.
The second set of alcoves was just beyond. The short hall between the two was as far as I’d ever gone. When we reached it, a very human scream rose around us as the temperature plummeted.
I knew that voice. So did Sera. She called out, “Masildi!” and her name echoed within. Unsurprisingly, there was no response.
And then it was gone.
Snagsby had asked me yesterday if the cairn was haunted. I would like to change my answer.
We never really knew what happened to Masi. She went in, and she didn’t come back out. Sergiu and Alina went in the next day and found no trace of her in the first alcoves. That is, however, as far as they looked. There was this unspoken agreement that you didn’t go past the first junction. When Sergiu deliberately tried to wash me out at my initiation, his stone sent me maybe ten feet beyond, but I’d never been that far since. To my knowledge, neither had anyone else. The mental barrier of the first junction was just too much to overcome.
We’d just sort of assumed Masi had died that day, and I guess this was proof that we were right. I didn’t want to imagine what she ran into that caused her to scream in terror like that, but the problem was that I could imagine it. Very easily.
The guilt was overwhelming. Her parents knew she had gone out that night, believing she’d be spending the night out in the woods. It was something a lot of us did, so it wrung true. But I don’t think anyone ever told them the whole truth. They moved away a couple of months later, and we lost our chance. I can’t say that I blame them for leaving. Would you want to stay?
We found Masi’s old bedroll in the second set of alcoves. I don’t know if she had actually come in this far, or if it had been moved in the intervening years. There’s no way to know. It was behind a weird, marble platform, that had what looked like a fragment of a giant mirror frame sitting atop it. The base of the platform had some runes that we couldn’t make sense of, but Viktor said he had seen something similar before, so he made a rubbing of it for later study.
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We could make out a faint, green glow in the distance. That was new. What wasn’t new was the sound of a canine growling. I had heard that sound during my initiation nine years ago, and it’s one you don’t forget: wolves. Back then, I was on my way out and admittedly I got lucky. This time, we’d have to face them if we wanted to keep going.
I didn’t enjoy fighting wolves. But we did it, and I’m here to talk about it, so I’ll leave it at that.
There was a third junction just a little farther in. The wolves had made their den to the right, among a pile of debris. It looked like there might have been a chamber beyond, but the structure had collapsed, filling the passage with rubble. This gave me the chills, too, as it was an uncomfortable reminder that caves collapse, especially man-made ones. Mom doesn’t say it, but I think she worries every day when dad goes to work. Cave-ins in the mines are rare, but two have happened in my lifetime and I am not exactly old. I try not to think about it.
We dug through the rubble and found a pack, an armband, and an old lantern with indigo glass. It reminded me of Sergiu’s lamp, only a lot fancier. Oh, and also a stone finger, like it had maybe been broken off a statue.
The other side was intact, and had an enormous mural wrapping around the wall at the end, in faded colors. If you stood there, the effect was one of standing in a room with seven passageways leading away from you. In the image, each hallway ended in a colored lamp hanging from a chain, with the colors arranged in the order of the rainbow. The lamps in the painting looked similar to the indigo one we were carrying, which felt too much like a coincidence to be a coincidence. I mean, I am new to this line of work, but it felt like one of those obvious clues you hear about in stories.
The main hallway continued deeper into the tomb, but it was filled with webs from who knows how many spiders. The green light shone through them from beyond, giving it a haunting appearance. Snagsby and I looked at the webs, then at each other. He nodded and then used a spell to create sparks that set them alight. The webs directly in front of us burned away quickly, but so did the fire before the rest could catch. It was apparently something he could repeat, though, so he ignited the next layer, then the one after that. We moved ahead cautiously, burning the webs as we went and sending hundreds of spiders scurrying into the holes and cracks in the stone. It was slow going, clearing what must have been a hundred feet of web-choked hall, but it was better than cutting our way through it and being swarmed by arachnids. I kept waiting for a larger spider to drop on us, but mercifully that wasn’t on the day’s agenda.
The passage opened up into a large, central chamber with hallways radiating out like eight points of a compass rose. The hall we came from was “south”. At the end of the others hung a lamp on a chain at roughly eye level, the scene nearly identical to the painting we had seen just a few minutes ago. The light came from the green lantern that was hanging straight ahead in the northern point, the only one that was lit. Two of the seven lanterns were missing: indigo, which we seemed to have in our possession, and red.
The ceiling above rose to a dome. In the center of the room sat a sarcophagus. Or what I assumed was a sarcophagus, since I had never actually seen one before. Again, it’s my first day. The lid was carved into a statue of a man lying flat on his back, eternally asleep. One of his hands was outstretched, and Sagsby noted that a finger was broken off. He pulled out the one we found, cast a spell, and it reattached as if it were whole. Neat trick.
Zhog and I each grabbed the lid to lift it off. This was a bad idea. Flames burst out from it as it opened, and in our surprise we both let go. The lid slammed back into place and we checked ourselves for serious burns. I was singed a bit and it hurt, but not as badly as my pride did. We tried again, only this time from the sides. Again, flames shot out, but this time we weren’t where they were and no harm was done. We set the lid on the ground and we were feeling rather clever until we discovered that it was as empty as it appeared. Raiding an ancient tomb was turning out to be a lot more complicated than I had thought.
We turned our attention to the other halls. Each went a short distance and dead-ended at the lantern hung from it’s chain below a low, domed ceiling. Taking a cue from the mural, we lit the remaining lanterns, and hung the indigo in its rightful place. Below the blue lantern in the northeast hall, though, we saw someone’s skeletal remains. Several of its bones were broken. Looking up, we saw the ceiling was quite higher than the others, and there appeared to be a passageway there.
“Looks like they fell to their death,” Viktor said. It seemed reasonable.
Several of us set our heavy packs down, and we all climbed the chain, one person at a time, to have a look. Viktor and Varin needed a little help, but we weren’t too worried: Varin said he had spells that could arrest a fall, just in case someone slipped. We emerged in a small chamber with a short hall leading away towards a giant carving of a head at the end, with a mouth several feet wide, open in a raging scream.
Everyone agreed this was some sort of wind trap because what else could it be? Sera and Snagsby pulled out sets of climbing pitons, and started driving them into the cracks in the walls on either side. Viktor, Varin, and Viore—the “V” club—stayed behind as the rest of us worked. Sera and Snagsby tied the ropes to the pitons, and we advanced along the hall, pounding the metal spikes in every few feet, forming a safety line that we all could hold on to. As Sera neared the face, the eyes began to glow red, forming swirling, mesmerizing patterns. Sera and Zhog couldn’t tear gaze away. And then the wind began.
It was a stiff wind at first, like you might find in a summer storm. Sera and Zhog regained their senses in time to grab the ropes and hold on, and resumed their advance. The wind steadily picked up, growing fiercer and fiercer until it was so strong it was like a solid force, pushing us away.
“Let’s do a controlled retreat,” I called out, realizing I couldn’t hold on for much longer. That was easier said than done. The wind was a force so strong we couldn’t easily control our movements, which meant we couldn’t hold on to the ropes. One by one, we peeled away from the wall and tumbled down the hall towards the pit. I bounced hard, barely managing to stay conscious as I was blown backwards. If it wasn’t for the spells, we all might have plummeted to our deaths.
We stood safely on the ground, the wind still buffeting around us from the hall above. “That would have hurt,” Varin said, unnecessarily. We were all thinking it.
Again, my pride took a heavier beating than the rest of me. The wind continued to rage for several minutes, and it was clear that we were not going to be able to brute-force our way through this. Much more complicated, indeed.
“We’re missing the red lantern,” Snagsby said.
Yeah. You think?
This sort of thing—finding clues and solving puzzles—was just not my thing. Once it’s clear what needs doing, I am there to do it and I won’t look back, but working out what to do? I’m not dumb, but this is a little beyond me. Logically, I know that’s why we are doing this as a group, so that our collective strengths can cover our individual weaknesses, but it still stings.
“Let’s get back to the house and call it a day,” I said. I was tired. I could see the others were, too. “We can think on it tonight.”
And start fresh in the morning.
The walk back to the house—it looks like a house, it's functionally a house, and "house" sounds better than "mine office", so ergo, it's a house—seemed longer than the one to the cairn. In part that was because we were tired from the long day, but mostly it was the feeling of defeat. When we left in the morning, I was fairly optimistic about returning to a place that was, on some level, familiar. I was eager to explore, excited by the possibilities it offered, and confident in our skills. And why wouldn't I be? Between us we could fight, overcome obstacles with logic and skill, perform wonders through magic, and call upon the gods for grace and mercies. And yet, despite those varied talents, here we were, walking solemnly and silently back, as dogs with tails between our legs, battered and bruised. And all we had to show for our efforts were a few trinkets, mostly taken from those who had tried before us, and failed more thoroughly.
And then there was the crumbling remains of Masi's old bedroll in my pack. I had last seen it, what, five years ago? The last time I had seen her. I wasn't even sure what I was going to do with it. There was no family to give it to, no grave for it to be buried in. Burning it or just tossing it out like trash felt wrong. Burying it in the wilderness would probably be the best way to honor her memory, but it would bury the answer to the question of what had happened to her, too. So what to do with it? Take it back to town, I guess. Give it to (as much as it pains me to say it) the Sheriff, so that the story her life wouldn't end in a question mark. Of course, that would also open myself, and my companions, up to questions of our own and unwanted prying eyes. Knowing the Sheriff, it would probably also end in some form of extortion or blackmail.
The truth is still the truth, though, even when it's inconvenient and poorly timed and it needed to be told. On the other hand, it's also been five years, give or take, and there isn't anyone still searching for her. Sitting on the answer to a question that no one is asking for a few more days or weeks would not do anyone any harm.
What it really comes down to, I guess, is that I don't know what Masi really would have wanted for herself. Or what her parents would have wanted.
And what about my companions? As we learned today, what we are doing is dangerous. If something happened to one of us, what would we do? And that got me to thinking. While Snagsby and Zhog were busy using magic to make small repairs around the house, I pulled out some parchment—I never go anywhere without something to write on and something to write with—and worked up some simple legal documents, so we could all express our wishes in the event we don't survive this. It's an ugly subject, one most didn't want to talk about, but given the realities of the day it was a discussion we needed to have.
Sharing a living space with a number of people you don't really know all that well is an enlightening experience, whether you are seeking enlightenment or not. One of the first things Zhog did, for example, was string a hammock between two structural pillars on the second floor. Yes, that second floor, the one with the gaping holes in the roof.
"OK, I admit I am curious," I said as stepped off the stairs. "Why up here?"
"I spend my nights in a brewer's cellar," he answered as he tied off the second strap. "Don't want to sleep on the floor here, too. And I haven't slept under the open sky since I came to Diamond Lake." Right. Follower of Desna. And, nephew of Kullen, a man not known for the comforts of home.
After dinner (which sounds more formal than it was, which was us just eating whatever non-perishable rations we had brought with us), Zhog said some prayer to Desna and his bucket filled with two gallons of some sort of ale. I watched as he drank the whole thing down, spilling a bit here and there in his enthusiasm to finish it off. It was another reminder of why I don't drink a lot. Abadar doesn't forbid alcohol, of course, or even frown on it if it's done in moderation, but the key words there are "in moderation", and drinking is one of those vices that is prone to excess. This is especially a problem in Diamond Lake, where if there's one thing we have an excess of, it's excess. I find it easier just to abstain. More than one person has tried to be clever by pointing out that I used to work in a tavern. Yeah, well, what of it? A person's got to eat, and there aren't that many options for work in town, especially for a woman. While I never enjoyed dealing with obviously drunk patrons, I'll take the tavern over the brothel any day.
The evening fell into a pattern of idle chatter, and this is where I am most at ease. The conversation broke up into small groups, as it invariably does. Viktor and Varin were talking magic and spells. Zhog and Snagsby spoke of making it to a real city (for reasons that should be obvious, Snagsby was of the opinion that Kaer Maga didn't count), and all the things such a thing offers. If I believe half the things that were said, places like Korvosa are paved in gold, all manner of humanity is welcomed with open arms, and untold riches are to be had for those willing to work for them.
Color me skeptical. While there are likely kernels of truth in these fantasies, cities are still made of people, and people and are probably not that much different from one place to another. I imagine large cities simply provide more places for the worst of them to hide.
That being said, that is so far above where we live now that it's hard not to indulge. Korvosa may still have its slums, but I am reasonably sure they don't comprise the whole town.
Sera woke me early for our shift on watch. This was more or less like old times, except we couldn't spend the two hours talking lest we wake everyone in the house.
Watch duty is pretty dull, which is of course how you want it to go. It's a lot of standing around, walking around, sitting around, looking at nothing and hoping it stays that way. When I would camp out by myself a few years back, it wasn't really possible to spend the whole night awake, much less awake and on alert, so I had to get creative. That mostly came down to finding a good, defensible location, masking my scent, and discouraging wildlife. In a group of seven you can watch for surprises. In a group of one, you don't want them at all.
The day back at the Cairn started with a long, methodical search of every inch of the walls from the entrance to the sarcophagus. If you think watch duty is dull, try spending an hour around people who are caressing stone walls like they are rediscovering a forgotten lover. I get that all this is important and that we may have missed something yesterday, but some of what they were doing might actually count as foreplay. It was almost enough to make me uncomfortable.
When they reached the central chamber, Zhog had finally had enough and came over to me. "Let's try pushing on that thing and see if it moves."
I mean, why not? His theory was that either the head or the feet were meant to point in a certain direction and if that was so, then the sarcophagus might rotate. It was better than getting intimate with the walls.
"All right," I said. "Let's give it a go."
We both crouched down to put our weight into it, and gave it a push. It took a couple of tries, but sure enough it started to give. We pushed harder and the sarcophagus swung 45 degrees counter clockwise before locking into place. The head was now pointing towards where the red lamp would have been if we had the red lamp.
"Look down the halls and see if anything has changed," I called out to the others. They spent a few minutes searching each one, and as near as anyone could tell, there was nothing different about them.
"Let's try again," I said to Zhog.
We gave it another shove, and it rotated again so that the head was pointing towards the entrance. There was still no change that anyone could see, so we kept at it: there were still five more positions to try before it came back to its original orientation.
Two more rotations put the head pointing towards the indigo lamp, and then we heard a grinding sound from beneath us as the hall rumbled. A five foot diameter cylinder rose up out of the floor directly underneath the indigo lamp where the hall dead-ended. It was tall enough for a person to stand in, and based on the crushed bones and rotting fabric that was inside, someone had already tried to do so.
This is the sort of thing that says "obvious trap". Our brief time with the cairn, though, has made us suspicious enough that we wanted to test the theory, because not all obvious things are obvious. Well, so far, the one obvious thing has been obvious, but "one" isn't a big number, so it was best not to just assume. Since no one wanted to bet their life on it, we put a waterskin in there instead, and sent the cylinder down, then brought it back up.
Short answer: definitely a trap.
Two more rotations pointed the head down the hall towards the green lantern. Another cylinder started to rise under that one, too, but it didn't make it far before it stopped. We heard a loud banging followed by repeated popping and what might have been straining and shearing metal as the ground in the hallway started to shake. Zhog and I quickly pushed the sarcophagus to the next position, and it all stopped as the cylinder sunk back into the floor.
"Let's save that one for last."
We were now pointing towards the hall with the yellow lantern, where a third cylinder had risen up from the floor. This one looked clear: no bones, no sign of any traps, just a human-sized chamber that was apparently some soft of elevator.
I've not seen many elevators, and none that looked like this. Some of the larger mines use them to take people and ore in and out. Around town, a few places have one for moving heavy loads up and down. All of them use ropes attached to a counterweight via a pulley system, and someone has to pull on the rope to make it go. This one had no visible mechanism of any sort.
With the experience of the last two elevators fresh in our minds, we repeated some experiments before stepping in ourselves. Once it was clear it wasn't just crushing anything inside, or dropping it fast enough to cause injury, Snagsby volunteered to ride it down. He surprised us by coming back up on his own.
"There's a button down there, and when you press it, the cylinder comes back up," he said. Which was convenient, as we were trying to figure out how to go down without leaving someone behind. Or being trapped underground for the rest of our lives.
Details.
One at a time, we entered the cylinder and descended to the chamber below, exiting into a small anteroom whose walls were lined with bas-reliefs of human figures done in the same style of the carving on the sarcophagus. Each hairless, sexless figure was seven feet tall, and posed as though paying deference to us. Some of the carvings came far enough out of the wall to practically be separate statues, and several of these were missing their arms, heads, and any other body part that was easily broken off. More evidence that others have been here before us.
Why would someone steal a stone arm or head from a wall? I can't imagine there is a huge market for statue limbs, so I figured it was done out of frustration. The only other exit from the room was blocked by a large, stone slab that was standing on its end. It looked as though it could be pushed over, but again, this seemed like an obvious trap. I bet most of the would-be thieves that made it this far thought the same, and decided that a stone hand was as good as they were going to get.
Fortunately, we have Sera with us, and she was able to disable a pressure plate that the stone was sitting on. She said it was set to trigger something when the weight of the stone was removed. With the plate disabled, we could safely, albeit very loudly, push it over.
Where Sera learned this sort of thing is a bit of mystery, and not something that she really talks about. After the Night Walkers disbanded, she put her skills to use by starting a business for herself, doing I'm-not-exactly-sure-what. She always spoke of it rather vaguely. "Sometimes, people need to have things done without attracting a lot of attention," she said to me once. "I know the town, and I can navigate it in the dark. That lets me be discreet." She never bothered explaining what "things" meant, or who "people" were, and why attention was an issue. I didn't ask. The less I know, the better. But I am pretty sure it goes beyond her childhood pastime of picking the locks to the rooms of the inn that her parents manage.
The hallway beyond was lined with alcoves, each containing a statue of another sexless figure, their arms stretched outward and their hands cupped as if holding or offering something. We were giving them a closer look when I saw a pair of eyeballs joined by connective tissue float out into the hall.
There are a lot strange things in and around Diamond Lake. The lake itself has been polluted for so long that the only fish that seem to live in there are the gar, a predatory species with razor-sharp teeth that can be as long as a man is tall, and some longer than that. The hinterlands have their share of wildlife, including unnaturally large and aggressive forms of wolves, boars, and bears. And enough people have claimed to see ghouls that these stories are generally accepted to be true (though clearly they haven't seen ghouls up close, since they lived to speak of it). What we don't have a lot of is floating eyeballs. Or any. We don't have any floating eyeballs. I am pretty sure I would have heard about something like that.
One eye looked at Sera, and she turned and bolted as if in fear for her life. I've never seen Sera afraid of, well, anything, and this oddity was more gross and curious than scary, so I assumed that magic was involved. Then the other eye tried to get a bead on me. I felt something try to take hold, but I was able to shake it off.
You would think a pair of floating eyeballs would be an easy target, but it was small and surprisingly agile, and that made it difficult to smack the thing. Viore managed to hit it with a magical bolt of some sort, while slings and arrows sailed harmlessly by. I swung my blade twice and missed both times. Then it made the same mistake just about everything has made since our adventure began: it moved inside the arc of my horsechopper where it thought it was safe.
Surprise, Mr. Eyeballs! Have a good look at my armor spikes as they are slamming into you.
After that, Varin caught it with a crossbow bolt, the eyes dropped to the ground, and that was that. The spell that struck Sera apparently wore off in the meantime, and she got back just in time to watch us make sure it was dead. By squashing it under our feet.
The hallway led to a large room built around a huge, square central pillar of stone. The north end was bitter cold and the floor there was covered in a brown mold that I believe someone said was actually called brown mold. Other than the name, we knew nothing about it, but it seemed like something that we did not want to touch. The closer we got to it, the colder it became until it was so impossibly cold that it felt as though our flesh would freeze. Once again, we put it on the list to deal with later.
"Later" was shaping up to be great deal of fun.
The south end had more evidence that would-be grave robbers were here many years before us. A Large stone block had fallen and crushed someone next to the central pillar. There was a latch that reset the trap and raised the block back to the ceiling, and it revealed the crushed remains of a display case, and the crushed remains of the body that attempted to steal from it. The chainmail it had been wearing was completely unscathed, however, which suggested that it was enchanted. Sera disabled the trigger—again, don't want to know how she knows so much about pressure plates—and we retrieved the armor.
It occurred to me that part of our success has been people dying before us. Were we looking at multiple individuals, or a group like ourselves that simply lost people as they went along, until the only one left alive was the one who had only stone limbs broken off of statues to show for their trouble?
While our group has been exceedingly cautious since yesterday's events, there is no denying that it helps to have deadly traps pointed out to you in advance. I suppose one could say, correctly, that much of the challenge has been removed because of this, but I like living and prefer to spend a great deal of time doing that, so I don't care. We are not here to feed our egos. The fewer deadly traps we have to find on our own, the better.
With a bedroom to the south, a dry fountain in the west side of the central pillar, and what looked like an old privy beyond that, this was starting to feel like it was someone's private quarters. The only room left to explore was to the north, and required that we travel through the brown mold.
Snagsby threw some oil on it and used a spell to spark it to flame, and the mold almost instantly doubled in size. This was obviously progress in the wrong direction.
"I think it feeds on heat," I said. It was a guess, but if you consider cold to be the absence of heat, then a creature that chills the air around it by drawing in heat, instead of living where it is cold, made a certain kind of sense. Varin took that as an invitation to hit it with a blast of freezing cold, and the mold died almost as quickly as it had grown.
The final room was something of a workshop, containing worktables, vises, a spinning wheel for cutting, and blocks of unfinished marble, among other things. Our theory is that the craftsman who made this place, or at least designed it, created this area as their personal space. Thinking back to the bas-reliefs in the anteroom, those figures were paying deference to someone, and that also suggested the builder had a rather high opinion of themselves.
We ascended back to the main level and considered the sole, remaining passageway, the one where the green lantern was hung. We now knew that there were chambers below, and we had seen the small elevator rise up, or at least make an attempt of it. The cacophony of metal, stone, and gears, lacked the subtlety of the rest of this place which suggested that it wasn't a trap, but rather a legitimate mechanism that had succumbed to age.
Everyone backed away to a safe distance as Zhog and I swung the sarcophagus to the green light. The cylinder tried to rise again and stuck as before, only this time we let events run their course. The ground shook, and with a great sound of shearing of metal the stone cylinder dropped away, and the floor collapsed around it leaving a gaping pit tens of feet deep.
The dust settled in silence, but the calm did not last. A chittering sound of a mass of insects rose from the depths, and we backed away just before a massive swarm of beetles erupted into the hall followed closely by a giant eyeball walking on spidery legs.
Flasks of oil flew from behind me as I crossed over to Sera where she confronted the spider. Snagsby used a spell to ignite the slick into flames, and half of the swarm was caught in it as the other climbed the wall. With Sera's help, I cleaved the spider in two but the beetles just flowed towards our friends. I saw Viore and Zhog get overrun, and each ran out of the mass, frantically swiping and swatting beetles off their bodies. Viore looked ill, and Zhog nearly so.
"This isn't working!" I yelled as the implacable insects continued their advance. They were too numerous to die in the fire and too small to strike at with weapons. We were tired, and our spell casters were spent, so we ran for the exit.
The beetles surged out from the cairn far behind us, and quickly broke up into smaller groups that started feeding on the vegetation on the hillside. If we had been closer to farmlands this might have been a disaster in the making, but no one would ever confuse Diamond Lake and the surrounding landscape for anything resembling fertile soil. None of these beetles would live long enough to destroy anything of value.
For the second time, we walked back to the house in silence.
Viore, Viktor, and Zhog made a supply run to Diamond Lake last night. We needed to descend the pit to reach the newly-exposed passages below, and it stood to reason that more swarms of insects might lie within. While we could easily outrun them on foot, that plan would only work so long as there was somewhere to run to. Climbing a rope didn't qualify, and that meant we needed to be better prepared, both with the right spells and more fire. Specifically, more fire than we could get from oil that is typically used to light a lantern. For that, we turned to alchemist's fire. It's expensive, and it apparently turned some heads in town since normal people don't buy so much of it at once, but it meant we all had something we could contribute.
We stood over the pit, and estimated it's depth at about sixty feet. The shaft had suffered enough damage both from the collapse and the swarm of acid-spitting beetles that one could reasonably climb down it, but we used a rope, anyway. It made the descent faster, easier, and safer. There's no shame in not wanting to fall to your death.
We guessed that the chambers we explored yesterday had belonged to either the chief craftsman or the architect of this place. In the anteroom of that complex, the statues were carved as if in deference. In this anteroom, the androgynous figures were all glaring at us pejoratively. And from this, we guessed that this was the workers' quarters, because people are pretty much the same everywhere, and if you have an ego big enough to carve stone worshippers to yourself then of course it's big enough to carve a court of judgement for those that you think are beneath you.
We didn't have to travel far before we heard the buzzing and chittering of thousands of insects. Though I was pleased to have been proven right, it would have been nice to have been wrong in just this one instance.
I have nothing against bugs. I recognize that they are part of the ecosystem, and fulfill important roles in nature. I do, however, draw the line at ones that are larger than me, swarming by the thousands, or trying to share my living space. The last one I solved more or less by paying a rent that most would consider exorbitant, and others might call criminal. Until yesterday, I had considered the first two concerns to be academic.
What causes insects to mass like this? I am no entomologist, but I bet that one answer is "lack of competition from an abundance of food". In the other complex, we found a magic font of sorts that was continually producing an edible mush that both looked and smelled like gravy. The same thing was happening here, just on a larger scale, and the bugs had figured it out. I guess the folks who created this place forgot to turn all that off when they were done.
While the bugs were keeping themselves occupied, we explored the room across the hall. This one contained several stone slabs watched over by a large statue of a muscular being wielding an enormous club, a long-desiccated corpse, and a giant beetle.
What was the beetle doing over here? Who knows. Maybe it was tired of the noise next door. Regardless of its reasoning, we killed it because it was a giant beetle, though not before it could spray me with acid because that is what I needed today.
The corpse was spread out on one of the slabs, and the slabs had the right size and shape to suggest a bed of some sort. Stone beds aren't particularly comfortable, so they were probably topped with a softer mattress back when this place was in use. What that didn't explain is why someone would lie down on one now, when it's quite obviously just a stone slab. Whatever their thinking, they got bludgeoned to death for their trouble, assuming their shattered bones were an indicator of their fate. It's the sort of stage picture that said, "trap".
We've gotten good at spotting these traps in advance, though admittedly we've been getting quite a few clues in the form of crushed and mangled bodies. It occurred to me that, perhaps, being the first person in line to explore an ancient burial cairn is maybe not the best idea. From what we've seen so far, it's probably better to be fifth or sixth. Of course, two days ago we did deliberately walk into a trap that we even knew was a trap, but I like to think that we've learned a lot since then.
We found a ring on the corpse, and an insignia on their armor that matched the engraving on the ring. According to Viktor, this was the symbol of a group that called themselves the Seekers, which he described as an unscrupulous group of archaeologists and pseudo-historians who raided burial sites for their own gain. Which sounded an awful lot like what we were doing. I guess the difference there was that we weren't pretending to be something more than just grave robbers. Not that this sounds any better, mind you, but honesty is important.
We still had to deal with the bugs, so we dealt with the bugs. The less said about that, the better. It was gross, and it smelled terrible, but through the cleansing power of fire we emerged victorious. Unlike the three additional Seekers whose remains we found in the sludge.
We followed the hall to stairs that descended into a flooded chamber. I think it's reasonable to assume that people who worshipped the Wind Dukes would not voluntarily submerge themselves in water, so this must have happened sometime after the tomb was built. That didn't change the fact that none of us could breathe underwater, which meant holding our breath and swimming.
Snagsby and I volunteered to scout it out. I left my armor on because I wasn't worried about sinking to the floor—I wanted to walk along the bottom, not swim—and I didn't want to be defenseless while I was under. It's a lot easier to fight underwater when you have sure footing, and being weighed down to the bottom helps with that. Swinging a weapon while swimming is a good way to spin out of control.
Step one was entering the water. That's when the water attacked.
I swear, I am not making this up. Something that looked like nothing surged at me, and then water erupted from the water. You wouldn't think that you could fight water, but it turns out that you can. At least, you can when it's an elemental. And as a bonus, there's no mess to clean up afterwards, because it's water.
With that out of the way, we tried this again. Snagsby and I each took a side of the chamber, which looked like some sort of communal shower, and walked the perimeter, swapping at the far end. There was a small room connecting on either side, and as I passed one I got chills as I sensed a malicious presence. A presence that seemed to be aware of us, because it was on the move.
We emerged from the water and discussed our strategy: make it come to us.
Back in the water we went, this time with more support. I crept around one side as the other half of the group took the other. I could feel the presence moving, and then I caught a glimpse of it around one of the pillars: a walking corpse with pale flesh and sharp teeth.
Ghoul.
I motioned for the others to retreat. I wasn't worried about myself, but a ghoul's touch paralyzes and that would be a death sentence here. They needed to know what we were up against. And then it came at me, and raked my flesh before ducking out of sight.
We backed up to the stairs, and I told everyone what I saw. Then it was back in the water with a new strategy: corner it and take it down. We advanced cautiously in a pincer formation, and when Viore caught sight of it he signaled its location. Slowly, we converged on it, and trapped it between us. There was nowhere for it to go, and in a matter of moments we cut it down.
It was wearing a ring with the insignia of the Seekers. So that would be Seeker corpse number five. This venture did not go well for them.
With the ghoul dead (again), we searched the rooms and found, among other things, Seeker corpse number six, and our missing red lantern.
We climbed back up to the main hall and hung the lantern on its chain. Confident that this would disarm the wind trap, we ascended the blue alcove, and approached the giant face carved in the wall. This time, the mouth opened like an iris, and we stepped through.
It led to a long, dark room with narrow plank suspended above a sea of metal balls, each about the size of an orange. We couldn't see the floor, so we had no idea how deep it was, but it didn't really matter. Like so many things we have run into here, this had "trap" written on it and no one thought performing on the balance beam was a good idea. I could just picture us trying to maintain our footing on that thing while dodging metal balls being flung around from who-knows-where.
We heard a young child's giddy laughter from somewhere in the room. While we searched for its source, the voice said, "You didn't die!"
I couldn't see where it was coming from, so I just answered to the air. "We didn't. Others that came before us cleared the way, and so we lived where they fell."
"They sure did," it answered.
"You didn't die, either," I replied, without thinking. I still couldn't determine where the voice was coming from, and maybe that should have been a clue. "Or, did you?" I added, my voice trailing off as I realized how stupid that was.
No reply. I must have really touched a nerve.
None of us felt like falling to our deaths, so we ignored the beam and climbed down into the pit. The balls were not easy to walk across, but it was a stable enough surface. Or at least, it was, until the balls started shifting. Something was moving around beneath our feet. I had just called out a warning when a large, pallid worm erupted from the pit. It was covered in slime, and had a mouth with hooked jaws that was surrounded by a mass of tentacles. A grick.
Two gricks, in fact, one smaller than the other. Both were angry and attacked immediately, and they were surprisingly difficult to kill. My blade practically bounced off the big one, and Sera was not faring any better. Zhog was carrying the enchanted sword we found down below, but he got hurt bad and had to retreat before he could put it to use. Only Viktor, with his wand that fires magical bolts of force, was reliably having an effect.
Zhog had dropped the sword where I could pick it up, so I did, and that turned the tide. Unlike our other weapons, this one was cutting into the gricks with ease, and while I didn't care for fighting so close to my opponent, I preferred it to dying. Which is where this was headed otherwise.
When we were done and the gricks were dead, the ghostly figure of a young boy, barely a teenager if that, appeared before us. His neck had clearly been broken, which was probably a clue about how he had died. Before I could say anything, he rushed towards me and then the world went dark.
When I came to, the ghost of the boy hung in the air before me. I glared at him malevolently.
“Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again.”
I had been violated and I was livid. It didn’t matter that there was nothing I could do, that I likely couldn’t back up any threat with action so there was no point in issuing one, but it had to be said. Dead or not. Too young to understand or not. It had to be said. Not just for his benefit, but for mine. My friends needed to know where this line sat. Not because I thought they might cross it, but because someone else might. This thing we were signing on for? It wouldn’t work if we didn’t understand one another. If we didn’t know and respect each others’ boundaries. If we based our relationships on assumption. Sure, this was one that they could guess, but better to take the guesswork out of it.
Speaking of my friends, they filled me in on what I missed. The ghost was formerly one Alastor Land, who wandered in here over thirty years ago after running away from his family. Amazingly, he made it quite far on his own before the cairn claimed his life, and his spirit was unable to move on. He believes that’s because his remains must be laid to rest with the family he left behind, and so he made a deal with us: we bury him, and he will open the final chamber, whose only latch is on the other side of the door.
While I would prefer not to bargain with someone who used my body without permission, I didn’t see much choice in the matter. Not one that would see this matter to the end, anyway. So I agreed.
Reluctantly.
I fumed all the way back to the house.
We held a small burial service for Masi.
I attended her funeral years ago. I sat in uncomfortable silence while I listened to the service— there wasn't a burial because there was nothing to bury—and the eulogies from some of her friends. None of those were Night Walkers, the only ones who knew what she had really done the night she disappeared. Not that anyone would have let one of us stand up there and speak.
Most everyone knew that we were all tied up in it together. We were those kids to them. Those kids who spent years recklessly flaunting the dangers of the wilderness and of the night, and it had finally caught up to them and gotten one killed. To many of them, and to her parents especially, we were to blame for her death. They weren't entirely wrong about that, but they weren't necessarily right about it, either. It also begged the question of where they were before, and why they hadn't intervened back when it could have made a difference. They were questions no one asked because the answers were uncomfortably pejorative. It was easier to just pass on the blame.
Even my own parents had been shockingly negligent in those years. Maybe it was a form of denial. Or willful ignorance. There's this malaise that drapes over the town, one that you don't realize is there until you're gone, and it presses you down and makes it hard to fight inertia. So if your kids found a way to cope with it on their own, then why not leave them be? Let them be kids. So long as no one was getting hurt.
We all know how that turned out.
So here I was, again, at a service for her. A burial this time. For remains, all we had was her old bed roll, but it was hers and it would fill that role.
I hoped it was enough.
Finding the Land Farm was a chore. If you have ever followed directions given to you by a 10-year-old boy, then you probably know what I mean, and it didn’t help that they were based on landmarks that were decades out of date. Fortunately, the copse of trees still stood, as did enough of the house, that we didn’t lose half the day literally wandering in a field before we came across it.
The grave markers sat at the edge of the crumbling ruins of the farm, each bearing the name of one of the Land family. Three of them were marked with an engraving of a four-petaled flower, denoting them as victims of the Red Death Plague. Unfortunately, they were also accompanied by mounds of fresh dirt and open pits, because someone had recently dug them up.
There were footprints everywhere. More than one person had been at work here exhuming the bodies. Prints ran between the open graves and what was left of the house, and as we approached the latter the trail devolved from orderly footsteps to the chaos of a battle. As if to emphasize that discovery, a low growl came from inside the remains of the structure.
We entered cautiously. The floor was splattered with dried blood, and in the corner of the front room sat the rotting remains of an owlbear and a severed human arm. The latter sported a tattoo, and when Zhog saw it, he said, “Oh, we are f~@%ed.” It was the tattoo worn by Kullen’s crew.
I should probably say “gang” there, but I am trying to be polite.
“My uncle’s crew is down one member,” he added, underscoring the “we are f&#+ed” part.
That’s when a second owlbear announced its presence. This one was obviously not a corpse like the first, but it had been seriously injured. Which is probably the only reason we got through this alive.
“I think this was a mated pair!” I said as I moved in to fight it off. Kullen and his crew are tough, but two owlbears defending their nest? No wonder it had gone wrong.
I sliced into the thing as Sera and Zhog moved in next to me. It lashed out at the three of us, landing savage blows over and over. Still, we managed to whittle it down, and I finally got in behind it and checked it with my shoulder. The spikes on my armor drove into it, and it dropped to the ground, dead.
We found an owlbear...chick? cub? (I am not an expert on owlbear vocabulary) in a nest in the far corner of the main room. So, not just a mated pair defending their nest, but one defending their offspring. Honestly? I'd be amazed if Kullen’s crew was only down one.
This did leave a problem of what to do, as the young owlbear obviously isn’t going to survive on its own. The thing is, wild animals literally cannot be tamed, so it’s not like someone could take it home as a pet. And while animals can technically be trained and, I don’t know, used as guards or something (as long as you are very careful never to forget that they are wild) that process still starts with raising one. And let’s not forget that owlbears aren’t just some normal animal, either: they are an ill-tempered abomination that, according to legend, were created by some ancient wizard that possessed more talent than sense.
As far as I’m concerned, owlbears fall into that category of “kill on sight”, but the others saw this as an opportunity—one with razor sharp claws, and a vicious bite, all of which we had recently become acquainted with—because they are either insane or greedy or both. So we took it with us, on the understanding that we’d find someone to take it off our hands as soon as possible so it could become their problem long before it became ours.
That, however, was a future concern. The more immediate one was Kullen. All indications were that his people had dug up the Land family, and if we wanted their remains back, we’d likely have to talk to him. Given that one of them died doing it? Well, talking to Kullen under ideal circumstances is mating fire and kerosene. Intruding on one of his jobs, much less a job where one of his own had died? I wasn’t looking forward to that. And from the looks of it, neither was Zhog.
With all this on our minds, we headed into town. The first stop was to see Allustan about our owlbear problem opportunity. I guess he had been voted "mark of the week".
Allustan: Diamond Lake’s resident wizard, and brother of our corrupt mayor. The mayor who oversees our corrupt constabulary, and keeps the corrupt mine managers in check, and who is so widely known for corruption that it doesn't even qualify as an open secret: it's just open.
You are probably sensing a theme here.
I am not sure what to make of Allustan. The rumor is that he and his brother were a lot alike when they were younger, but that Allustan has mellowed with age and might even qualify as being “civic-minded”. Supposedly, he helps reign in his brother's worst impulses and serves as an effective barrier against a change in the balance of power between the corrupt city government and the corrupt mine owners. Personally? I find the whole political situation distasteful, but no one gave me a vote.
Allustan is also apparently Viktor’s mentor. Viktor is a pretty decent guy, and he speaks fairly highly of Allustan, so I guess that's a point in his favor. Of course, Viktor's hardly an unbiased source, but he's been sharing some of our discoveries with Allustan and so far that hasn’t turned into an arrest warrant. So, carry on, I guess.
Allustan was willing to play ball on the owlbear plan, at least for now. He said he knew someone who knew someone, which I guess should not have been a surprise. “I’ll get in contact with him again. If he doesn’t want one, he will likely know someone who does. Even after a reasonable handling fee, your proceeds from the sale—if, of course, one can be arranged at all—would still be considerable.” For my own part, I just stayed silent and let them talk. There was nothing positive that I was going to contribute to the conversation.
Viktor showed him more of the rubbings he’d taken, which is probably why Allustan was willing to go along with this audacious owlbear plan.
“You must tell me where you found these!" he said. "They are tied to the most ancient histories of our world!”
Viktor looked at me and I just shrugged. May as well go all the way.
“There is an entrance to what seems to be an ancient, uh, building—”
“Cairn,” I corrected. All the way.
“Cairn. And inside, that's where we found this.” He went on to describe the traps, chambers, and various passageways.
Allustan’s suspicion was that these were tied to the Wind Dukes, which our parlay with the earth elemental (before we smashed it to rubble) more or less confirmed. “What we are talking about are the movers of events that date back to the Age of Creation, when many of the deities of Golarion had not even yet come into existence. This information will help me research these glyphs. This could be the discovery of a lifetime! These look like they are of the language of the Vaati.”
I didn’t know what a Vaati was, but he did, and it sounded important, I guess? If he was willing to do some legwork here to figure out what, exactly, we found, then great. More free time for us. And as a bonus, we could spend it back at the house instead of choking on the air in town.
The second stop was the meeting with Kullen. We debated the best way to do this without involving his "associates", and settled on catching him just after the lunch rush at the Feral Dog. And, yes, they serve food there. Don't ask. After several days of trail rations pretty much anything is an improvement.
I worked as a server there a few years ago when I was a teenager, in a moment of what I would call desperation and character-building. Mom and dad were not happy about my choice, especially given the reputation of the place and what goes on there, and I wasn't either. But let's be honest: the family needed the money. Even the pittance I was bringing home with me was enough to make a difference in our lives. It was also one of the few places one could get a serving job without any experience.
Believe it or not, it's a lot safer than it looks, and that is mostly because of Kullen's management. Say what you will about the man—and there is plenty to say—but he keeps people in line. Kullen is loud, volatile, and borderline abusive, but when you work there you know he's the only person you have to worry about. Only the craziest of crazy people cross him, and few go on to repeat their mistakes. I had to put up with a lot from the patrons there, but Kullen made sure they never crossed certain lines.
This may sound like I have fond memories of working at the Feral Dog. I don't. The only good things that came out of it were the money and my friendship with Zhog. What I'm saying is, I really didn't want to be back there—this made for twice in one week—but we weren't exactly drowning in options.
Alas, Kullen wasn't around. We sat at a table and ordered lunch, hoping he might come in while we ate. There weren't many customers left after the rush, but we did hear a frustrated voice from a three-top nearby: "You said that cairn was full of treasure!" I turned to look that way and recognized the group from Korvosa we saw a few days back. I could practically script out that conversation. We've all heard it, so many times.
After the better part of an hour, we figured Kullen wasn't coming back any time soon so Zhog suggested catching him at home. Pestering Kullen where he lived felt like a bad plan to me, but Zhog knows his uncle best and the list of alternatives was down to zero, so I didn't object. This was basically the Zhog show, anyway. There was no one here better equipped to start this conversation, and my opinions on the matter probably weren't worth anything.
We caught Kullen as he was coming out the door. Because we just have that kind of timing.
"And what's all this?" he said, looking our group over and eventually setting his eyes on Zhog disapprovingly.
"We need to talk to you," Zhog replied. "And I brought somethin' to eat."
Kullen relented with a grunt and showed us in. He sat at a table and glared at us. Finally, to Zhog, he said, "I didn't know you had this many friends. Ever."
"I got business associates. We are doin’ business together. And our business crossed your business and we need to talk about it."
This was the part of the conversation that none of us were looking forward to. Kullen did not disappoint.
"Zhog, when you first came here, I gave you the best advice you were going to get in this town. 'Keep your nose—and any other part of you that you want to keep attached—out of other people’s business.'"
So that was clearly not a great start. But, good news! It got worse. Zhog pulled out the arm and showed it to his uncle. "We found this. And, by the way, the owlbears are dead."
"Zhog," he replied, his tone getting increasingly threatening, "this looks an awful lot like stickin' your nose in someone else's business."
"Look," he says, pointing at the tattoo, "everybody knows what that means. If somebody else had found that, it would have been trouble for you. I'm doin' you a favor by returning what's yours."
"What. Were you doing. In that house?"
And now we had to talk fast. We didn't want word of the Cairn getting out, so Viore and Zhog were a little loose with the truth, and vague about where we had been, but stuck to the core of it. We needed the return the bodies to their graves, and bury the bones of the boy with his family. We had found the boy's remains, and we needed to put his spirit to rest. Kullen knew about the marker with the empty grave, which confirmed to us that he had been there.
"This was a bad deal all along," he said, borderline furious. "And it cost Skutch his life! So. What do you want from me?"
"We want to know where the bones are."
"You've been in this town long enough to know that nothing is ever that easy. This puts me at risk."
I knew where this was going, and figured it was my turn to talk. I asked, "What degree of financial risk are you facing?"
"What are you offering?"
Unsurprisingly, the art of the bribe is not one of the skills you pick up in Abadar's church. While offering money to a private party to get some information from them is a far cry from, say, paying off a government official, it's still not something that is encouraged so I was out of my depth. In the end, it cost us 100 gold to get Kullen to talk. I have no idea if we overpaid, but that was not our chief concern.
The job, he explained, was a request from Balabar Smenk to obtain some bones for someone named Filge. Smenk is Diamond Lake's resident creep—other than our mayor, that is—and arguably its most ruthlessly successful mine owner. He actually owns the Feral Dog, and in a way, that means he owns Kullen and his crew. So when Smenk said "dig up some bones for Filge", that is exactly what they did. The problem, of course, was that this cost Kullen one of his men, and when Kullen angrily expressed his displeasure to Filge—he knew better than to complain to Smenk—Filge dismissed him out of hand.
And that is how you get on Kullen's really bad side.
"You go get your bones if you want. I don't care about that. But, in return, you bring me that thin bastard's eyes."
Well, crap.
According to Kullen, Filge is the latest in a long line of vagrants to move into the old observatory. I use the term "move into" loosely there because it doesn't really have an owner, so they aren't really tenants so much as they are squatters occupying the space. Since there's no owner, there is no one to file a complaint against trespassers, and that makes it remarkably easy to just sort of live there for a while until what passes for the authorities in town figures it out. Keep your head down, and you can go several weeks before you're arrested.
I've never been to a nicer town, myself, but we get visitors from them quite often, and I've read a few stories that take place in one. In a nicer town, the observatory would probably be what the locals call an "eyesore". Pretty much everything in Diamond Lake fits that description, though, so we just call it "the observatory".
Dad says there used to be an order of monks living there. He didn't say who their deity was, but it was probably Desna or an empyreal lord since it's way too old for Nocticula and way too public for the less savory faiths. He didn't say how long ago, either, but based on the crumbling exterior of what is surprisingly quality construction, I'm going to guess it's been a few generations since they left. It sits on this bluff—an important feature in an observatory—that overlooks one of the town's abandoned mines. The mine is unimportant; it's so old that no one remembers its name or who it belonged to, so we just call it "the mine under the observatory".
Our first stop before going over to visit Filge was to The Captain's Blade to pick up some weaponry. The way we figured it, Filge specifically needed bones for some project, which suggested necromancy, which further suggested we might be facing them as skeletons. I love my blade—I made it myself, after all—but smashing bones is not what it's designed to do. A pronged hammerhead on the end of a seven-foot pole, on the other hand? The right tool for the job.
One Lucerne hammer and a 10-minute walk later, we were standing next to the narrow stairs that led up to the small landing in front of the entrance. Below the landing was a wooden door that looked like it would open to a little storage space. It's the sort of thing that you'd call a shed if it was a free-standing structure, but since it was built into the side of the observatory we just called it "the storage space under the stairs".
It was at this point that I stopped to think about what we were about to do. Specifically, we didn't have any real authority to just barge in and evict Filge. Abadar is pretty clear on the point that he doesn't care for vigilantism or any other action that can be summed up as "taking the law into your own hands". That being said, there's a rather long list of other things that Abadar has little tolerance for, too, and those include: corrupt government officials, squatters, and animating the dead. While we could go tell Sheriff Cubbins that a suspected necromancer was occupying the observatory and robbing graves, the problems with that approach ranged from "believing anything we said" to "getting him to care" to "doing something about it".
You might think that this would put me in a bit of a bind, but here's the thing: I took up this faith because I honestly believe it's possible to govern people responsibly, and the way you do that is more or less the opposite of how things are done in Diamond Lake. Sometimes you just have to lead by example. If there's a necromancer squatting in an abandoned building, animating the dead from corpses that he's exhuming from peoples' graves, then they're kind of a danger to everyone, and maybe that's something you should investigate sooner rather than later. If, in the course of this investigation, said necromancer were to start a fight and end up dead, then that's unfortunate but also something of a time-saver.
Sera opened the door to the storage space under the stairs, revealing the storage space under the stairs and a tiny creature that appeared to be made up of bone fragments. It was not at all happy about our intrusion, and it scurried up to us and started biting at me. Someone called it a "mote", which is apparently short for, "undead creature made of bone fragments". Sera and I smashed it to even smaller bone fragments, and we more or less had our confirmation that this Filge character was a troublemaker.
The entry room in the observatory, proper, confirmed our earlier hypothesis. Three animated skeletons—two adults and a child—sat behind a crude barricade and they were armed with crossbows. They shot at us as we came in, and so we smashed them into fragments, too. A quick examination of their remains showed skeletal deformities consistent with the plague that claimed the Land family, so that was progress and more proof of our suspicions. Further examination revealed that their crossbow bolts were coated with some sort of poison, which is another entry on the list of things Abadar doesn't approve of. It was also what some might call "antisocial behavior".
Most of the rooms on the ground floor of the observatory were still empty, which made a certain kind of sense: Filge was only one person and probably did not need all of this space. He did, however, find a use for a rather large room at the base of the tower that was probably a former dining hall, and it was the creepiest thing I have ever seen. Nine decomposing bodies were seated, motionlessly, around a table, with dinner plates, silverware, and unfinished glasses of wine set before them. What was he doing with nine zombies at a dinner table? No idea. What was the point of all this? Didn't care. They didn't even flinch as we destroyed them, one by one.
Stairs ascended the tower to the room Filge was using as his bed chamber (the large bed in one corner gave it away). Continuing with the "I'm a psychopath" theme, a mummified figure about the size of a gnome or halfling, dressed in a black suit and tophat, stood against one of the walls. It was holding a platter with a woman's severed head on it. A platinum piece sat on the head's outstretched tongue. Another corner of the room held a statue of an angelic figure, and the base of it was inscribed with "Filge" in ornate lettering.
Someone clearly has a high opinion of themselves. And, also, very few ethical limits.
We left the head alone, because why would we want that? And also because it felt like an obvious trap. A small work desk contained a mess of notes and papers. Among them was a letter to Filge from Smenk, requesting his services. Smenk claims someone has been finding "green worms and unkillable zombies" in the southern hills, and they've been brought below the Dourstone Mine for study. Who is "they"? And why would "they" be below the Dourstone Mine? And how does Smenk know about any of it? These were all good questions, and they suggested we had stumbled upon more than just a vainglorious necromancer with limited social skills and a penchant for grave-robbing.
We ascended the stairs to the top floor of the observatory. A long time ago it probably held a telescope for viewing the stars. Now, it hosted Filge's necromantic laboratory. There were four glass cylinders spaced evenly around the room, each filled with a yellow fluid and containing a monstrous humanoid body within. Filge, himself, was in the center, doing something with the body of a blue-skinned humanoid creature as though he were a surgeon in an operating theater, with an animated skeleton following him about. It seems he didn't waste any time moving in and getting to work.
Filge was displeased with the interruption. At his command, the glass tanks shattered and zombies emerged from each, three of them troglodytes, and the fourth a bugbear. These are creatures that are disgusting even when they are alive, so you can imagine how much more fun they are when they are dead.
Unfortunately, they also did their job of keeping us pinned down. We had to fight our way through them to get to Filge, giving him the time and opportunity to toss spells at us. Just as Sera was about to reach him, he did something that froze her in place and suddenly we had an emergency on our hands. I left the zombie I was dealing with to Zhog, and ran to her side.
Filge was holding a large syringe filled with liquid and was preparing to inject her with it. Snagsby and I arrived at the same time and managed to keep him away from her, so he stabbed Snagsby with it instead. Fortunately, Snagsby was able to shake off most of the effect, but he still did not look good as whatever was in there took hold.
As the others closed in around us, I used my polearm to trip Filge, and he fell to the ground. He tried to cast a spell while lying on all fours, but he lost his concentration and it fizzled out. At that point he yelled, "I yield! I yield!" and the fight was over.
Then Viore approached him and asked, "Do you repent? Are you willing to undo the evil you've done? Are you ready to worship Sarenrae?"
Filge answered the way any reasonable person would. "What?"
Which was not the answer Viore was looking for. He executed the man on the spot, saying, "He can go sort it out with the gods."
I don't feel good about that at all, and if I had known that this was where Viore was going, I would have intervened. This whole situation was a moral tightrope as it was, and one where I had to rationalize my involvement. But on the other hand, we were surrounded by mountains and mountains of evidence that Filge was animating the dead, stealing remains of those who had been properly and respectfully interred, using peoples' corpses as playthings, and just being a generally awful person. But on the other, other hand, he had surrendered. But on the other, other, other hand, none of us put much faith in what passes for law enforcement and justice in Diamond Lake, either, so I can more or less see Viore's point. Sarenrae didn't have a problem with it, either, but it still felt wrong to me. This is the sort of thing that comes back to bite you.
A search of the floor turned up a foot-long tube filled with some chemical solution, and inside was a slim, green worm. Likely this was the worm that Smenk referenced in his letter to Filge. We agreed to take it to Allustan in case he could make some sense of it.
On our way out, Zhog stopped to pick up the mummified figure in the tophat and glasses.
"What do we want that for?" I asked.
"For my uncle."
I decided to leave it at that.
The big question, of course, was "What next?" And if my faith hadn't been challenged before, it was sure getting a workout now.
As the observatory has no owner, that makes it the property of the city, which in turn makes its steward the Governor-Mayor. An upstanding citizen of a law-abiding settlement would, of course, immediately report all of this to the authorities and let them investigate Filge's crimes. But Diamond Lake is far from a law-abiding town, and our raucously alcoholic sheriff? When it was first announced that Mayor Neff had appointed Cubbin to the job, people literally thought it was a joke. And when I say "literally" there, I literally mean literally. No one took Cubbin seriously until he actually arrested someone. Like, for real.
And as bad as Cubbin is? His deputies are even worse, if you could believe such a thing is possible. The most upscale entertainment venue the town has—remember, this is Diamond Lake so the term is relative—is the Spinning Giant, and neither Sheriff Cubbin nor any of his deputies are allowed on the premises. At all. Not even in an official capacity (many of the Giant's patrons hail from the Garrison, which is how they're able to get away with that). That in itself says plenty about local law enforcement.
The general consensus was to consider our actions here a public service, one for which we did not require any official recognition. We also didn't want to risk panicking the citizens by exposing proof of necromancy in their collective backyards.
And people wonder why I am having trouble sleeping tonight.
While Zhog took care of the "delivery" for his uncle, I sought out the city records for the mine office. It took a couple of hours of digging to determine that there was simply no record of it, presumably because both it and the mine pre-dated the current cadaster. We could put our own legal claim on the property by defining the plot and paying a small fee for the acreage. I added this task to my to-do list.
When I got back to the observatory, the rest of the group had finished erasing signs of Filge's presence, and arranged his corpse and those of his zombified victims into a pile for burning later that night.
We (re-)buried the Land family first. There was no service this time as we were tired and just wanted to get all of this over with. Also, I wasn't feeling so charitable towards Alastor after what he'd done to me. Any words I'd have been asked to say would likely have been south of polite.
We returned to the observatory to start the bonfire and then headed out for the house before it got large enough to attract attention.
Stars, what a day.
We set out for the cairn early in the morning. I am still not sure how we got on this "get up with the sun" routine, and I'd like to register a complaint. (Someone said that the sunrise was actually an hour earlier, and really, I don't want to hear it.)
The Whispering Cairn was pretty much as we left it: dark, empty, whispering. We made our way back to the ball room and, this time? No ghost, no gricks, and most importantly, no closed door. For some reason, Snagsby tried to walk across the beam, despite the fact we all knew it was an obvious trap, and just as predicted, a steel ball shot out of the wall and knocked him off.
You would think we'd have already learned this lesson but I guess some of us are slow.
The room beyond was an enormous cylindrical chamber with walkways around the rim and a platform in the center connected by four catwalks like spokes on a wheel, two of which had long collapsed, swallowed by the chasm below. Four galleries of intricate bas reliefs lined the walls and they animated as we approached. I didn't have much patience for the whole thing but Viktor sat through the show and said they told the story of the Wind Dukes and their epic, final battle against the forces of chaos (he actually said all of this with a straight face), ending with Zosiel falling when a giant wolf-spider sent some sort of beam of something or other into him as it was banished from this world. The whole thing was more than a little overdramatic, but then again, so is this whole place, so I guess it fits in with the theme.
We tried to approach the center but a pair of knights descended from above and tried to stop us. I say they were knights, but they weren't actually knights; rather, they were more like animated suits of armor. Whatever they were, they weren't interested in conversation so we had to fight our way through, which ended up being much more difficult than it sounds. Especially since they had this neat trick where they could clash their swords together to create a boom with enough sound pressure to rattle your bones. My trick, which I liked to call "a big hammer on a pole", wasn't as showy, but it was more than up to the task.
We reached the final chamber by literally stepping out into the air and letting the steady stream of wind blowing from below carry us up. And it's up there that we found what looked like the resting place of Zosiel: a white marble sarcophagus with a lid carved into a figure, and more bas reliefs in the wall around it. The figure animated as we approached, saying, "Speak my name". Sangsby replied with "Zosiel", and a bright light shone on it, revealing a seam where we could pull to lift the lid off.
There wasn't a body inside, just a pair of demonic-looking horns, a diadem, and a strange pewter box with unrecognizable writing on it that Zhog used a spell to decipher. The text spoke at length of the Queen of Chaos.
Inside that was what we deduced to be a legendary item known as a Talisman of the Sphere. Supposedly it could control another legendary item known as a Sphere of Annihilation which, also supposedly, destroys anything it touches. There's a lot of "supposedly" in all that, but such is the way with legends. According to the others, our talisman appears to be dormant. No clue what this means—I mean, I know what "dormant" means, just not when it's used in this context—and while it's all very much above my pay grade, it does seem like the sort of thing we should hold on to.
I spent the morning working on the legal claim for the property where the house/mine office sits, and getting it filed with the assessor's office at the garrison. My thought is that we could renovate the place and turn it into a small lodge or inn of sorts. While this is not exactly "getting out of Diamond Lake" it is at least far enough away from it that I don't feel depressed all of the time.
While I was doing that, the others pestered Allustan with what we'd learned in the Cairn. That ended with inviting him back to the house so he could see it all for himself.
Remember what I said about this Filge thing coming back to bite us? Today was the day.
We swung by the observatory because...never mind why we went to the observatory. We were there, and we found a note nailed to the door.
You who did this,
I wish to have a discussion with you.
See Kullen the half-orc to make the arrangements.
S
So that's just great. If I were to make a list of everything I didn't want to do today, or possibly do ever, meeting with Kullen and meeting with Smenk would take the top two spots. Of course, Smenk doesn't know who he's looking for, or he'd have nailed that note into us instead, so at least we had that going for us.
I turned to Zhog and said, "All right. I guess we go see your uncle."
Kullen was in his office, and Zhog walked up to him and set the note on his desk. Kullen looked up and said, "I was wondering when you'd find that."
"It says you're supposed to be the one we talk to," Zhog replied.
"Yeah, Smenk wants to meet with you."
"Does he want to meet with us, or does he want to hurt us?"
Just in case it wasn't clear how dangerous this situation was.
"Probably both...but, I think he really does want to meet with you because he wants something. He didn't say what."
"So is it a meet, or is it an ambush?" Zhog asked.
"If it was an ambush, he would have had us set it up."
Kullen suggested having the meeting just after the Feral Dog closed at midnight.
The front doors to Smenk's run-down mansion are always open. Supposedly this is because of some promise he made to the town long ago that he would always be available to his miners. In reality, his property is patrolled by his thugs, and anyone who gets too close is encouraged to move along, sometimes with the assistance of a lead pipe. And that's your character study of Balabar Smenk.
We arrived at the Feral Dog at midnight and made our way downstairs once the last of the patrons had been shown the door. Smenk was waiting for us with Kullen's crew, and Kullen himself followed us in and took a position along the wall. Zhog had asked him who he would stand with if this thing went south, his employer or his kin. Kullen said that if we did something stupid, we'd be fighting him. And if Smenk did something stupid? "We'll see."
Smenk sized us up for a bit then began, "I'm in a bit of a situation, and I could use some help."
I barely managed to suppress a snort at this. If he noticed it, he didn't let on.
"And yet," he continued, "it occurs to me you're in a bit of a pickle as well." He shook his head and said, "Poor Filge. It seems someone ransacked the observatory and murdered the poor guy. I'm sure the Sheriff would want to know all about this."
And there it was.
Yeah, we killed Filge, but he also happened to be a necromancer who exhumed corpses from our community, turned them into undead, and in general performed necromantic experiments on whatever bodies he could come by. Given what we found in his bedroom and dining room, it's been one of his hobbies for a very long time and he was planning to set up shop in Diamond Lake—the man brought furniture with him for stars' sake—so was I worried about what passes for the law here? Not in the long run, not really, but we could find ourselves detained for weeks until it got sorted out.
"But, you help me out with a problem," he continued, "and I can forget I knew anything about such matters. There's a cult, calling themselves the Ebon Triad, operating secretly under Dourstone's old mine, and I want them gone."
Of all the possible things he could have said, this is perhaps the least expected, and most alarming. A paladin's training leans more towards the practical than the academic, but we are expected to at least have a passing knowledge of the various deities and religions on Golarion. I came across the Ebon Triad in my studies. They seek to merge the gods Zon-Kuthon, Urgathoa, and Lamashtu into a single overgod. Is such a thing possible? No clue, but no good can come from the faithful of these three working together.
I leaned forward and exclaimed, "You are not f!$%ing with us here, are you?"
Look, I don't curse in front of others anymore. Really; I don't. It's rude, it's crude, and it rarely endears you to them. But I grew up with plenty of people who did, so when I was younger, I did, too. Catch me off-guard, especially with something as distressing as the Ebon f&%!ing Triad in Diamond Lake, and I'll fall back on old habits.
In short, he was serious. Smenk did some poking around on his own, and his investigation turned up a separate shaft at the bottom of the mine that leads down to where the cultists have set up shop. He even managed to pilfer that green worm we found on Filge.
So why us, and why now? Because, a couple of nights ago, Smenk woke to find the head of his servant in his bed, and he's genuinely terrified of what the Triad can and will do, and how soon they'll be doing it. And that's the short version of why he chose to hire blackmail us. He was so frightened he was even willing to loan us some magic weapons to deal with the "unkillable" undead mentioned in his letter.
He asked Kullen, "This your boy?"
Kullen nodded.
He turned to us and said, "I'll get supplies to you through him."
It didn't escape me that we had just signed up for trespassing. As a general rule, Abadar frowns on this sort of thing, but I am also willing to bet he's more concerned with threats to public health and safety. A cult devoted to merging the three worst deities known to man sounds like a threat to public health and safety to me.
So. Trespassing it is.
Ragnolin Dourstone has been operating his mine in Diamond Lake for longer than anyone can remember, and is arguably one of the more successful mine owners in town. It should be said, however, that this financial performance comes largely from abysmal working conditions and low pay, which keeps his overhead down and boosts his bottom line. And if that doesn't paint a rosy enough picture of the man, rumor has it that he was run out of the Sky Citadel of Janderhoff after he intentionally caused a mine collapse as a way of quelling a labor dispute.
Surprisingly, Abadar's church does not have a lot of advice for sneaking into a mine, even one run by the esteemed citizen that is Dourstone, and even if said mine happens to be a front for a world-ending triad of cultists. So, if you're reading this and are faced with this same problem, this is how you go about it.
First, spend the morning casually casing out the mine entrance. This was mostly Sera's department, but if you don't have a Sera, anyone who is good at casing a mine without being seen will do. What you are looking for are answers to questions like:
—"How many entrances does it have?" (One. And before you make a smart remark here, some mines have more than one entrance. I live in a mining town. Please don't argue with me.)
—"How is it guarded?" (The area around the entrance is enclosed by a wall, and guards are stationed at sentry positions by the main entrance, and more guards patrol the interior. Rotations occur at regular intervals. Note: To answer this question properly, it helps to have someone like myself, who has trained with soldiers and understands guard duty. If I am not available though, there's always Sera, whose skill set is geared towards avoiding guards, which is almost as good.)
—"What is the general activity level?" (Miners work at all hours, and most of the activity coming in and out is shift changes for employees.)
Second, feel around for hints of any rumors of a cult down below said mine. Note that this tends to be situational, so adjust your feelers as needed. In our case, there were no such rumors, which suggests that Dourstone has so far managed to keep this secret of his pretty darned secret.
Third, identify a person or people that you can bribe to gain access to said mine. Note: If you are a representative of the Church of Abadar, you may want to reframe this as, "To whom can we offer our services as subcontractors, using an unusual financial arrangement where the subcontractor pays the primary?" The answer to this question, by the way, turned out to be "Just about anyone who works in the mine", because this is Diamond Lake, and while most of the mine owners are horrible people who exploit their workers, Dourstone has raised it to an art form.
As such, it did not take long to find a group of copper miners who were happy enough to get a well-paid vacation day, provided that said payment was enough to offset their risk. As it turns out, my civics training did cover actuarial matters, and assessing the financial impact of personal risk is something I am comfortable doing. We named a figure, they negotiated, we accepted, and then we had a plan.
We meet up with them tomorrow, just before their shift starts at noon. Most of the crew gets a day off, and we get to wear their mining gear (they also get some new gear in case we are down there longer than their shift). The work crew lead will bring us in like he's not sneaking strangers into a mine, and then he and his second will ensure we have a minute or so of privacy to get to the other shaft.
"The foreman says it's for accessing another vein," their crew leader explained. "It's blocked off for now, and no one is allowed near it."
That sounds exactly like what we're looking for.
As to how they address the issue that some of the crew isn't working because they aren't really there? Not my problem.
The entrance to the cairn looked as though an enormous maw had opened in the side of the hill, ready to swallow Bel whole. In the light of the nearly-full moon, she could make out the stone pillars that framed it, an obvious sign that this was not some natural cave formation. It was a clear night, and as the wind kicked up she could hear the strange, unmusical tones that gave the Whispering Cairn its name.
She, Sergiu, and Alina stood a dozen paces back from the gaping hole. Behind them, in a loose semicircle, were the rest of the eleven teenagers that made up the Night Walkers.
Sergiu pulled his arm back and then snapped it forward, throwing a dimly glowing rock right through the center of the mouth. Bel watched the blurry streak get swallowed by the darkness, heard the rock hit the ground and skip, then skip again, and again, and again, each one fainter than the last. Alina had assured her that they “never throw it far” and if that was true then Sergiu wasn’t sticking to tradition.
Alina turned sharply to face him, clearly furious. “What. The f%@*. Was that?”
Sergiu met her gaze, with an annoying, see-how-clever-I-am grin on his face. “A lucky throw, obviously.” He shrugged his shoulders, trying apparently for sheepish, but he just couldn’t let go of that stupid grin. Bel didn’t believe a word of it, but said nothing. There was nothing she possibly could say that wouldn’t make this worse.
Bel knew he was both lying and not. No one’s aim was that good all the time, so yes, there was no doubt that it was a lucky throw. But he had also been trying to pitch it as far as he could. So lucky throw or not, he was deliberately being a dick, and he had managed to strike gold.
Alina had him pegged, too. “A lucky throw. You’re such an a&&#&&$,” came her retort. She turned to Bel and said, softly, “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes! She does! If she wants to be a Night Walker, she has to do it.”
“Shut up, Sergiu!” Alina snapped, turning her head to glare at him briefly before facing Bel again. “You don’t. This is b+%@&#!#. We never do it like this and he’s being an ass. We’ll redo the throw.”
From behind them, a girl’s voice called out, “No redos! You only get one throw.”
Alina didn’t even turn around. “You don’t get an opinion, Neena! Stay out of it!”
“She’s right, though,” Sergiu said, smirking. “One throw. If it goes in, it’s good. That’s the rule.”
“We don’t throw past the first junction, Sergiu, and you know it.”
“But it’s not a rule, ‘Lina.”
Bel knew he had her there, and she could see Alina knew it too, the way her eyes sank, the slight—very slight—drop in her shoulders.
“I can bring them around. Trust me,” Alina said quietly, her voice gentle and encouraging.
The spats between Alina and Sergiu were all but legendary among the members and initiates. For the two years that the Night Walkers were a thing, they had argued and fought as if it were the whole of their existence. It was a power struggle in miniature, each jockeying for higher status in the family they had created, neither able to permanently usurp the other. Word was, one of the Walkers’ members thought themselves clever, and made a joke one day about Alina and Sergiu “bickering like a married couple”. Neither was amused, and they issued a scathing correction. No one had made a joke like that since.
Bel knew how this argument would end: Alina would lose by winning. If she convinced the others to do another throw, she’d be spending much of the capital she’d built with them. They’d think her going soft. Of playing favorites. Even if they never said those things out loud, the damage would be done.
Bel liked Alina. She was kind, she was smart, she didn’t mind hanging out with someone three years her junior, and she was loyal to her friends, even covering for them when they were in a pinch. And, most importantly, it was Alina and Sera that encouraged Bel to join. She didn’t want to be the one that cost Alina her standing.
Bel didn’t know for sure why Sergiu had a problem with her—he was the only one in the circle that voted against her initiation—but she could make a guess: it was probably her age. No one had joined before they turned thirteen, and Bel was barely twelve. Sergiu didn’t like it, and as one of the two de facto leaders of the group he was obviously put out. The rules of the Night Walkers were clear on this point, though: it took only a majority to bring someone in, so no matter how Sergiu felt about it Bel was in—assuming she passed the Rite of the Stone, of course. This was clearly Sergiu’s response to being outvoted ten to one.
“I’ll do it,” she said, meeting her friend’s eyes.
“Bel, it’s…” Alina lowered her voice further, speaking softly so others couldn’t hear. “Look, there’s a reason why we don’t throw the stone that far. Sometimes there are animals living there. They think it’s a cave. The farther back you go…” Her voice trailed off. It was a rare admission that what they were doing wasn’t exactly safe—far from it, in fact. Bel understood all that, but she was still determined to see this through. And she was eager to turn it into a victory for Alina.
“I’ll do it,” she repeated.
“If you do it, he wins.”
“No. If I do it, he loses,” she said slyly, and paired it with a matching smile.
Alina thought about this, then smiled back. “Okay. Go show him what you’re made of.”
Bel turned to face Sergiu and said, loudly, clearly, and with conviction, “Give me the lantern.”
Sergiu’s expression was one of disappointment with hints of frustration. Bel knew he wanted her to chicken out. Forcing Alina to ask for concessions would have been a silver medal. Now he had nothing. Slowly, and somewhat reluctantly, he picked up the lantern at his feet and handed it over.
“OK,” he said tersely, “You know how this goes. You get one turn of the sand glass. Find the stone, bring it out.”
The Rite of the Stone was ingenious. Bel didn’t know how it worked, whether it was magic or alchemy or something else, but it worked: Sergiu’s rock glowed faintly in the dark, but in the light it was just a dumb rock. Only it was more than that, too, because it was a rock taken from inside the cairn, itself, so you couldn’t tell it from any of the others. To find the right rock once you were in, you had to extinguish the light. This is where the Night Walkers got their name.
Bel opened the shutter in the lamp and let the red light spill out ahead of her. This bit was Alina’s touch: red light, she explained, didn’t interfere with your night vision, and some animals, including a few predators, had trouble seeing it. It was a lot dimmer than a normal lantern light, of course, but nothing about this was supposed to be easy. Bel didn’t want to know how much the red glass had cost. That was probably Sergiu’s doing. When he and Alina weren’t too busy arguing, they made a formidable team.
Bel had to admit that Sergiu was actually pretty cool for a boy, despite whatever issue he had with her, personally. He was the son of a mine owner, which meant his parents were ridiculously rich and in a position of influence that the others could barely imagine, and he certainly had no business hanging out with a bunch of teenagers whose families had to scrape to get by. Some of their parents probably worked in his dad’s mine, but he didn’t hold his family’s status over anyone, or flaunt his money, or even put on airs. He just wanted to hang with others his age that were like-minded, maybe interested in a challenge, open to some fun with a twist of danger and the unknown. He was just another teenager to them, and a pretty decent one at that. Sure, he could be irritating and obnoxious, but that was true of a lot of people.
Bel crept into the cairn slowly at first, picking her way carefully across the rocks and boulders. Once properly inside, the walls and the floor smoothed out, revealing the long hall of worked stone. She could see initials—some carved, some done in ink—just inside the entrance. These didn’t belong to Night Walkers, of course; theirs would be much farther in. Any idiot could make it this far, and they would still be in the light.
As she moved, Bel pictured the stone’s flight in her mind, imagining its arc as it fell. She saw the junction at the edge of the lamplight, bathed in red. The stone, she figured, struck the ground just this side of it, and its momentum carried it down the hall beyond. She closed the shutter as a test, and let the darkness close in around her as she turned her head from side to side. Nothing. Onward.
She re-opened the shutter about half way and pressed on. She stopped at the junction, closed the light again, saw nothing (as expected), then re-opened the shutter. The names carved here–if you made it this far, you made sure your record was permanent—were mostly ones she recognized. Shahab. Rita. Sveigh. Petre. Neena. And of course Alina and Sergiu. Those brave few who spent the night in the cairn also did so here (Bel hoped to join that exclusive club some day, too).
A breeze kicked up, and sent more of the atonal music echoing through the hall. The echoes were louder in here, and some sounded faintly like voices. Bel ignored them. Most other kids thought the cairn was haunted, but real hauntings were rare. Those rumors were probably started, and encouraged, by the Night Walkers, themselves.
Most kids in Diamond Lake ran with a group of some sort because there just wasn’t that much to do unless you were an adult who drank and gambled. Most were just social circles, but gossiping children wasn’t Bel’s idea of fun. A few were little more than gangs of petty thugs, which was absolutely not her thing. But the Night Walkers? They were something different. They did stuff. Stuff that mattered. And best of all, they did most of it at night. A lot of kids were afraid to go out in the dark. The Walkers didn’t merely embrace the night: they lived it. Scavenger hunts, capture the flag, exploration, hunting, all done by moonlight. Sergiu and Alina taught them real skills that few people had, much less kids, and did it in a way that was exhilarating. But doing that stuff in the dark took nerve, and that’s what the Rite was all about. If you couldn’t make it through this, you’d never make it through the rest.
The junction was behind her now, and instinct told her it was time to check again. She closed the light, and turned her head slowly from left to right, scanning the darkness. Just as she was ready to move on, she saw it: a faint glow on the ground straight ahead, maybe another 10 or 20 feet away.
She cracked the light open just enough to see the floor in front of her, but not so much that she would lose the stone. She had maybe two minutes left to get this done, so there was no time to waste. She crept forward until the glowing stone vanished at the edge of the light, closed the shutter, and inched along the final few feet in the darkness, feeling her way ahead. The glowing stone had returned and served as her guide. She stumbled on her last step, but managed to catch herself using the wall on her right. And then she was right on top of it. She bent over carefully—it was easy to lose your balance with no reference point, as she had just recently learned—and her hand closed around the stone.
From up ahead, she heard a low, canine growl. Alina’s voice echoed in her head: Sometimes there are animals living there. They think it’s a cave. Bel froze. Then the growl came again. A wolf? A coyote? A wild dog?
She forced down her panic. It was pitch black: she couldn’t see it, and it couldn’t see her. It probably caught your scent when you stepped inside. And then you startled it when you almost fell. Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached into her pocket, dropped the stone into it, and pulled out a glass vial filled with cayenne, capsaicin powder and black pepper. It had cost her every copper she had, but it was her only contingency plan. She hoped she wouldn’t need it.
With the vial clutched in her right hand, she used the tips of her fingers to crack open the lamp’s shutter as she turned it around in her left. Dim, crimson light spilled out behind her, giving her the barest outline of the passage that would be her retreat. It was just enough to keep her footing as she slowly stepped backwards.
The growl came again, but softer this time. Less angry. It just wants you to leave. Keep backing away. Don’t. Run. Except she didn’t have time for this; she didn’t want to give Sergiu the satisfaction of seeing her fail (a part of her brain suggested that, perhaps, she didn’t have her priorities straight, but the rest of it was running on adrenaline and wasn’t listening).
The next growl was shorter, softer, less threatening, and with time running out she risked a faster step. This time there was no response.
Confident she was in the clear, she turned around and walked at a brisk pace, resisting the urge to break into a run. She slipped her hand back into her pocket, replacing the vial before she accidentally peppered herself, and pulled out the stone. You did it! You actually did it!
Bel exited the cairn with half a minute to spare. The group whooped and hollered as she casually walked up to a sullen Sergiu and dropped the glowing stone at his feet.
Alina was absolutely beaming, and laughed as she closed an arm around Bel and pulled her into a hug. “Welcome to the Night Walkers!”
When I learned there was a temple deep under Dourstone's mine, I was picturing a small space, roughly hewn out of rock and packed earth. Maybe three or four chambers, at most. Instead, what we found was a massive, sprawling complex. The antechamber was exquisitely carved from stone, with black marble tiles lining the floor and marble pillars and arches. And did I say this was just the antechamber?
There is no way this was done recently. How long has this been here?
The welcoming committee was a small squad of tiefling guards. They looked bored when the first three of us came down in the elevator, as if random people visit the place all the time. Which they must, because one of them casually asked, "Delivery?" Which would have been a great cover story for us, except that this was followed closely by, "Password?" And then we had a fight on our hands. A very short fight, fortunately. Varin put three of them to sleep with a spell, and that tilted the odds significantly in our favor.
I guess it makes sense that there are frequent deliveries. No one talks about this stuff in stories, but even cultists need to eat (well, some of Urgathoa's followers may not, though some may eat more than their share) and there's probably not much in the way of fresh food down here. Not the kind that doesn't fight back, anyway. All that has to come from somewhere, and conveniently there's a whole town overhead.
Three doorways—again, carved in marble—led out of the hall. Two bore symbols: one for Zon-Kuthon, and one for Urgathoa. The third doorway had no such adornment. I guess Lamashtu's followers couldn't find the time.
There was also a curious pool of black liquid filling the southern half of the chamber. It had a foul aura to match its foul appearance, and it seemed to suck the heat from the air. Zhog experimented with it a bit using...never mind, it's not important what he used. The experiment was a let-down. The items he dipped in there just got really cold.
Sera wasn't able to open Urgathoa's door so we went for Zon-Kuthon. It was shaping up to be a pleasant Fireday afternoon of torture, murder, and self-mutilation. And skeletons. For some reason, the first resistance we encountered was skeletons in suits of armor. I didn't think this sort of thing was in Zon-Kuthon's portfolio, but maybe his followers and Urgathoa's have been comparing notes.
I guess we made a little too much noise in that skirmish—hitting suits of armor with metal weapons tends to do that—because we found ourselves rushed by more tiefling guards from three sides. One of them called out "I'll unleash the beast!" which sounded like it might be bad for us, so Sera, who was next to him at the time, cut him down on the spot. This felt like what mom calls a "teachable moment". If you're going to announce your plan to run off and unleash the beast, maybe get some distance first.
We pushed our way through more guards and then found ourselves outside a huge chamber, surrounded by balconies 10' above on three sides. We divided up into two groups, with half of us going to the upper level and the other half coming in on the main floor. And that's how we ended up confronting Theldrick, the Triad's priest of Zon-Kuthon. We knew that was his name because the tieflings we cut through had called to him for help. Help, which I feel compelled to add even though it surprises no one, never arrived.
Zhog's entrance down below was blunt. "So. Are you that Thel-dick guy that someone was calling to while we were killing them?"
Theldrick responded by shutting the doors behind them. He probably thought this was a trap, but it didn't really work out that way. Sera and I were on the balcony crew and had to work our way forward, one troglodyte zombie (what is it with those, anyway?) and cultist at a time. Our friends down below, however, were archers and spell casters and had their choice of targets, especially with us drawing away the bulk of his defensive line.
I am not saying it was easy. It was not. But once I got close enough to knock him to the ground, it was over.
We turned up some interesting documents. One was a letter to Theldrick and appeared to be written in an unfamiliar tongue. On closer examination, it was a code and not a language. "Based on how these patterns repeat," I said, "it's probably a letter substitution code. Give me some time with this, and I'll work it out."
It's a common technique used by commanders to pass messages during wartime. The idea is, you have several tables and if you know which one was used you can do this quickly. If a message is intercepted by the enemy, by the time they solve it the information is probably stale. When used to send a letter in this manner, it's just a way of saying "contents are private", and preventing it from being read by the wandering eye.
Training with soldiers has its advantages.
It took Viktor and I about half an hour but we got it. And our dear friend Balaber Smenk is up to his eyeballs in this place. "The author believes that Smek is no longer useful, and must be killed," I said, showing them the decoded message. "Smenk is using us to clean up after whatever mess he helped create."
I don't like being used.
There was more, though, and it was fairly ominous. It also spoke of someone named Kyuss. "Mighty Kyuss is the herald of the Overgod", it read, and that undead bearing his worms were the key to the Triad's research. "...send agents to the Mushfens, across the hills to the southwest. I believe that we will find what we are looking for there, among the lizardfolk"
This problem, it seems, is much larger than just Diamond Lake.
We're spending the night down here. Everyone agrees that it's too much of a risk to keep coming and going from the mine, and this wing of the...whatever this is seems safe now that we've cleared it out. The odds of being interrupted are low since there does not seem to be much inter-faith traffic.
We did more exploring and learned two important pieces of information.
The first is that "the beast" is just a wild boar. I don't mean to imply that wild boars aren't dangerous—they certainly are—but rather that it ended up being significantly more mundane than we were expecting. It was chained up in a room, like you do I suppose, and seemed hungry and not particularly discriminating about its meal. Zhog endeared himself to it by feeding it parts of its former captors and now he's making noise about having another pet. And that's all you need to know about that.
The second is just how deeply Smenk is in this mess. We found a storage room filled with crates that have his trademark rooster and coin painted on them, and they were filled with food and water. The story this told was pretty clear: Smenk entered into some deal with Dourstone to supply these fools with provisions, and Smenk being Smenk, he managed to irritate them to the point where it was less trouble for them to just knock him off the board. If that doesn't sound like Smenk, I don't know what does.
Also, how dumb do you have to be to do this? He essentially hired us to investigate himself, and even without that letter to Theldrick there's mountains of evidence establishing that he is a co-conspirator in all of this.
Since he all but blackmailed us, I am not feeling particularly charitable about what to do with it, either.
The night passed without incident.
We found a stone key with Lamashtu's symbol on it in Theldrick's quarters, so we opted for that wing next. Unsurprisingly, the door opened up to a complex of naturally occurring caves. The tunnel leading away from the door was worked a bit into steps as it descended, and it emptied into a large chamber filled with stalagmites and stalactites.
We were admiring the beauty of this natural formation when something threw a javelin at me.
Viktor identified our attackers as grimlocks: humanoids that have adapted to living deep underground. The skin on their faces had grown over their eyes, presumably because eyes aren't much good in the dark (for most people, anyway) so why bother having them at all.
This theme has repeated itself over and over: tunnel leading to cave, cave filled with stalactites and stalagmites, attacked by grimlocks. Sometimes there are chasms, sometimes there are ledges, sometimes there are pets, and this last one had a rope bridge, but that's pretty much been it for variety. We're taking a moment to rest up before moving on to—you guessed it—a cave with grimlocks in it.
Well, I asked for different and we got different.
Lamashtu is the goddess of, among other things, the monstrous and misshapen. If you've been thinking to yourself, as I have, that grimlocks aren't really all that monstrous, and might be unfairly labeled as such, then you can set your mind at ease as we've gotten to the root of this mystery. We met the grimlock's high priest today. And he had eyes. In true Lamashtu fashion, he had taken the eyes from some unidentified creature and sewn them to his face. And if that wasn't enough, he had carved her holy symbol into his chest (their chieftain had done the same, so it was a whole thing). But that is the sort of dedication to abnormality that Lamashtu appreciates. Unlike Zon-Kuthon, it's self-mutilation with, I dunno, a purpose.
The priest (Theldrick's journals imply his name was Grallak) had some scrolls—I have no idea what someone who can't see is doing with scrolls, so don't ask—that were written in Common, but they were faded and nearly illegible. All we could make out was some reference to a power growing "in the pool of the dark cathedral" that would serve as a champion for the Triad, and more references to Kyuss bringing forth the Age of Worms.
The letter in Theldrick's chambers also spoke of something called "The Ebon Aspect" stirring in the pool, and even suggested that heretics (that would be us) raiding the temple might awaken it.
Three guesses which pool they are referring to.
We're resting back in the Zon-Kuthon wing because it's nicer than a cave. And the beast, which Zhog has named "Bubbles", needs to eat.
While we were waiting, there was a knock at the door in a deliberate pattern. It repeated after a short pause.
We were not expecting company. Not polite company, at any rate.
Snagsby did what any reasonable person would do, which is knock back with the same pattern. Then he said he heard footsteps retreating, and we decided to do something about that. He opened the door and there was a tengu backing away down the hall. Sera walked out after it and said, "Come in!' with Snagsby following right behind her.
He froze and looked at Sera, then looked over at us through the door and said, "You're not Theldrick's..." leaving that thought hanging in the air.
Sera circled behind him somewhat threateningly, and it snapped at her with its beak. "Where is Theldrick?!" he demanded.
Viktor answered, "We've replaced Theldrick."
"Prove it!"
I stepped into the hall with my horsechopper in hand, gave him my most charming smile, and said, "Honestly, we were not expecting visitors today! Come on in and we'll show you around!"
"I see, I see...I didn't mean to stay. It was just a simple errand...I'll be back later."
"What kind of errand do you have?" I asked. "Maybe you don't have to leave!"
"I just want to talk to Theldrick. And I see he's not here..."
"He is here! You can talk to Theldrick all you want! He just...won't...answer."
He was alarmed, and not sure what to do, so Sera decided for him. She gave the Tengu a shove, pushing him towards the doors. I swept my horsechopper low, catching his feet, and he tripped and fell forward into the room. He tried to stand up, so Zhog punched him and he went down again, this time unconscious.
We tied him up and decided to pump him for information. I checked his aura while he was out and it wasn't tainted, which suggests...he just fell in with the wrong crowd. When he came to, I went with "nice".
"Look, we get it. You wandered in here; you weren't expecting all of this. You've got a message for Theldrick. Just tell us what it is, and maybe we can find a way for all this," I said, gesturing around the room, "to end."
"What's your relationship to Theldrick?"
Honesty is important when you're trying to build trust. "We're alive and he isn't."
"The message was to simply ask him where his guards went."
I smiled in response. "Oh! I can help you with that! They're with Theldrick."
The short of it was: he works for The Faceless One, which is the name mentioned in Theldrick's journal, and the head of the Urgathoa contigant. Those journals have suggested that there is more than a little strife between the groups and something of a power struggle. He had written, "Grallak is the key. Thank the Midnight Lord that he trusts me and not the faceless One." Well, good for you, Theldrick!
Of course, we couldn't just kill him because I wasn't going to allow another summary execution of a prisoner, but we couldn't keep him with us, and we couldn't let him go back to his cohorts. In the end, we made an appeal to logic and his sense of self-preservation: if he goes back to his master he'll be seen as a snitch and most likely killed. But if he takes a chance on us, worst case is he has a lengthy head start running away. Best case? He's the only surviving member of his little cult. He accepted the deal.
We aren't naive. We sent him up the elevator, but there was nothing to stop him from coming back down so we set up a watch, just to make sure there were no surprises.
Our tengu friend did not try to return, and his friends didn't come looking for him. This was smart, in my opinion. Odds are they knew we were here (even if they didn't know who we are) and that we'd have to come to them, eventually. Better to bolster their defenses than risk a battle on our terms.
Our biggest obstacle in the "take the fight to them" plan was the lock on their door, but the tengu gave us what we needed for getting around that, and Sera had it popped in just a few seconds. The door opened to a long hallway with numerous side passages branching off in the distance.
"It's a maze," I said, shaking my head.
There are a number of strategies for dealing with mazes according to everyone but me. I only know of one, myself: crumple them up and throw them away. Sadly, this approach was impractical in our particular situation.
As we explored and bickered—I think someone suggested that we always turn right at every intersection for some reason—Sera found a secret door, and then we heard a loud squealing sound echoing from up ahead. That was followed shortly by the source: the first of three giant weasels, which seemed much more at home squeezing through the corridors of a maze than we were. And then things got worse.
There were secret passages everywhere. Tengu popped out of them left and right, dividing us up as we contended with them and the weasels. It was a chaotic, claustrophobic, and extremely musty fight. Stars, but those weasels stunk. Two of them spent considerable time in my face.
My tactics typically center around defending a very large area (and when Viktor uses that enlargement spell on me, a very, very large area) to slow our opponents and prevent them from ganging up on us. Needless to say, this doesn't work so well in narrow hallways where the best we can do is line up in a single file. That being said, a horsechopper stabs as well as it slices, and does so quite well from several feet away, which put the weasels and myself on somewhat equal footing.
Once the last of the tengu and weasels had fallen, and it took a while to figure that out because we got scattered all over the place, we regrouped in a room that was in a fairly secluded corner to rest and heal.
And to get away from that blasted smell.
Did I say that the last of the tengu had fallen? If so, I would like to revise my earlier statement. Now the last of the tengu has fallen.
This group of four ambushed us when we moved to explore the far end of the maze. They were a lot tougher than the ones we tangled with earlier, too. There was a spell caster of some sort, and one that was obviously the head of the snake. I faced off against the latter while my friends dealt with the rest. Before long he was the last of them still standing.
I don't like to chat during a fight (I've never understood those who do) but I like senseless killing less, so I broke with protocol.
"Look. You're the only one still alive. Why? Why keep fighting?"
He said, "Because I have a cause worth fighting for."
"Is it a cause worth dying for?"
"It wouldn't be a cause if it wasn't."
I suppose. But it's difficult to see the value in a cause that seeks so much destruction for its own sake.
We exited the maze into a bizarre, L-shaped hall with walls made from grey marble and a white, stone-tiled floor. Marble pillars ran down the center, each with veins of green that writhed and shifted as though they were alive. The walls had circular bulges at irregular intervals, and as we studied them with magic they opened up, revealing human eyes that followed our progress through the room. There was very little doubt that we were being spied on. Like, zero doubt. Zero is little.
We didn't want to be spied on, and the whole effect was rather creepy anyway, so we returned to the maze and found another passage out, this one leading into a storeroom. Much like the Zon-Kuthon wing, there were barrels of water and boxes of rations stacked neatly inside. There was also little doubt that these, too, came from Balabar Smenk. Like, zero doubt. See above.
From there we found what appeared to be living quarters, and they were adjacent to an even more bizarre hall with walls made from a strange, green rock that had purple veins writing inside them. Sort of an inverse of the creepy hall with the eye, only it had six pillars along the walls, black this time, with a tar-like appearance.
It also had three fanatical acolytes and a strange shadow creature that babbled constantly, and incoherently, to the point where Viore, Sera, and Snagsby were overcome. It was a bad start. Sera was hit by a spell that left her further debilitated, and was in danger of being overwhelmed, so I grabbed her and literally pulled her back and out of the way. The whole fight just seemed terribly lopsided at this point, so I asked Viktor to enlarge me with the wand. And then Zhog and I entered the fray. The shadow fell first, and the acolytes shortly after.
We actually captured the third instead of killing them and tried to get information from them, but they were so deep into raving lunatic territory that it ultimately wasn't worth the effort. All we got from them is what we already knew: the last room contained the Faceless One.
Remember how I said I don't like to chat during a fight? Well, the Faceless One did. He literally would not shut up, even while we were laying the smackdown. It was all "Every action you take is advancing my plans!", "You only hasten his arrival!" and "My victory is inevitable!" Stars, man, just accept defeat in peace. Please.
I ended up knocking him unconscious with my sap because we're going to need better proof of what had gone on down here than a bunch of dead bodies. A fanatical true believer with a propensity for running off at the mouth solves that problem nicely.
Distressingly, the various bits about the so-called "Ebon Aspect" did turn out to be true (including, I suppose, the Faceless One's prognostications, such as, "Your fate will be sealed by your own actions!"). A large humanoid grotesquerie with six arms and a nasty disposition had risen from the pool, and was busy smashing the elevator in anger as we were preparing to leave.
It was a difficult fight. I was the first one to engage it so I bore the brunt of its attacks, and got beaten severely—to within inches of my life!—before the others could engage. That bought me time to heal. Viktor used the wand to enlarge Zhog and Sera, and once they had it flanked (and once I was not on death's door) he enlarged me too. With the three of us working in tandem, and Abadar imbuing my blows with divine power, we were able to bring it down.
I took the liberty of cutting off its head, thinking, If the Faceless One's insufferable ramblings don't do enough to sway people, maybe this thing will.
As for the Faceless one, I don't know what to make of him. Albino, with a featureless face save for a small, sharp nose, he seems more like something from Lamashtu's playground but for whatever reason he threw in with Urgathoa. I am sure there's a story there but I honestly don't care enough to ask.
We decided to spend one more night down here, or at least stay until midnight when Snagsby can pray for spells. A little magic is all that was needed to repair the elevator, so we'll be able to use it to get back up top.
The Faceless One came to not long ago. Of course, we can't have that, so I knocked him unconscious again. But not before showing him the head of the Ebon Aspect so he could see how this had turned out. I didn't say anything. Just showed it to him, and let the image sink in.
We left the mine just after the shift change at midnight. We knew we wouldn't be able to make it all the way out without being stopped by the guards, so we were ready when six of them hurried to block our exit with swords drawn.
"Who are you?" one of them demanded. "You're not miners!"
I dropped the sacks I was carrying, and pulled out the head of the Ebon Aspect. Next to me, Sera unceremoniously dumped the body of the Faceless One on the ground.
"We're here," I began, "because we uncovered a cult operating under your mine. We are taking these to the garrison, and we need you to get out of our way."
All but one of the guards looked uncertain about how to handle this. That sixth one, though, gave me a look that suggested he knew what was going on.
"You've been down there?" he asked.
I walked up to him. "Do you think that we took these things down into the mine, and then brought them back up again, all to make an elaborate show?"
"What of the Citadel of Zon-Kuthon?"
"There is nobody left in the Citadel of Zon Kuthon, just as there's nobody left in the Caverns of Lamashtu, or the Maze of Urgathoa." I was careful to pronounce the capitalization.
"And...Theldrick?"
"There. Is. Nobody. Left."
And he bolted. I ran after him and tried to grab him but missed. He stopped abruptly, pulled out a dagger, and stabbed me with it. Viore responded by casting a spell that held him where he stood, unable to move. Crisis averted. We tied him up before the spell wore off, and dragged the whole lot off to the Garrison (there was just no way I was going to trust Sheriff Cubbins with this). The guards at the mine just kinda watched us go. I guess they lost their appetite for a confrontation.
It took a little explaining, and more than a little fast-talking, to convince the duty sergeant that this wasn't just some religious dispute, but that actual, necromantic activities were taking place under the town. Once we got the whole story out, he promised a full investigation...including Smenk's and Dourtsone's roles as conspirators. In just three days, we managed to take down the two most powerful and corrupt mine owners in Diamond Lake.
I've been dreaming of doing something like this for several years.
We spent the rest of the morning at the Observatory, and I do mean that literally. I slept in almost to noon. You know, like a normal person.
The irony of squatting at the Observatory is not lost on me, but it was too late to hike out to the house and too early to barge in on Allustan, which I guess was the plan for the morning. If you're going to squat in Diamond Lake you may as well follow tradition.
Why Allustan? Well, aside from being Viktor's mentor, he's also willing to do research into pretty much everything we stumble upon, including this business with the worms, and do it all for free. I don't really understand the "for free" part, but he can charge or not charge as he sees fit, I guess.
Allustan said he had heard from a friend named Marzena who serves as a battle mage at Blackwall Keep, and she, too, has come across or heard rumors of the same worms that we have. Given that her story and our story seem to be overlapping, and that Smenk's and Dourstone's organizations might not look too kindly on us as of later today, maybe it would be a good idea to go visit Marzena and compare notes. And maybe, perhaps, we should set out sooner rather than later. Hence we will be spending the night at the house and heading out in the morning.
Allustan requested that we escort her back to Diamond Lake to meet with him in person, and also compare notes. Why does a battle made need an escort? I don't have an answer to that. But we do need to get a message to her regardless, and we need to come back afterward, so maybe it's just a figure of speech.
Blackwall Keep is a small fortress on the edge of the Mushfens, the largest swamp in Varisia and quite possibly in all of Avistan, sitting at the base of the mountain pass that climbs up to Diamond Lake and eventually across the Fenwall Mountains. It and Marsh Keep (also constructed on the edge of the Mushfens, only farther south) were built to more or less discourage the lizardfolk from expanding to the east because colonialism is only for us I guess.
For as long as I can remember, I've heard stories about clashes between the lizardfolk and the holdings of Korvosa. The two sides used to butt heads constantly, with the lizardfolk gradually growing more and more aggressive because who wants to be confined to a swamp? Anyway, the stories say that, once the keeps were constructed—and manned with heavily armed soldiers—the lizardfolk raids more or less fizzled out, and there's been an unspoken truce since. The soldiers at the garrison in Diamond Lake do rotations among the Keeps, since ignoring the corruption and violence in Korvosa's favorite money-making hellhole doesn't take up a lot of their time.
Are the lizardfolk really violent, aggressive, expansionist savages? I don't know. I mean, I'd be inclined to say "probably not" but then we found that group in the house, and they were way outside their designated territory (though I am inclined to believe that the lizardfolk were not consulted on the matter when the boundaries were drawn) and pretty belligerent about it. So, maybe there's some truth to all of that. Or, maybe it's just the winning side writing history. I've certainly seen firsthand what happens when a select few who are in power get to write the rules for everyone else.
For references on that, see Balabar Smenk and Ragnolin Dourstone.
I stopped at mom and dad's before we headed back to the house for the night, as I wasn't sure how long I'd be gone, or when I would have a chance to see them next. Also, they were going to find out soon enough that I had quit my job, and maybe it was best to hear that from me, first. And, I had an ulterior motive on top of all that.
After selling much of what we found down in the temples under Dourstone's mine, I am sitting on a sum of gold that would take me four years to earn working for Osgood. Back when I lived at home, I used my income as a server to supplement my family's, which was fairly meager. Dad has worked in Gansworth's mine for as long as I can remember, and though Gansworth is one of the least objectionable mine owners in town, no one is getting rich in his employ. Mom does odd jobs for Tidwoad, but it's never been what I'd call steady work.
A couple of gold per week waiting tables doesn't sound like a lot, and it wasn't, but it always felt like we were living on the financial edge once I was old enough to understand finances, so every coin I brought in helped. My parents stretched to keep us out of the warehouses, which is where most miners and their families live, and how much stretching was required depended a great deal on how much work mom was able to get. Kids are expensive.
Once I moved out, they went to a smaller flat and that made things a bit easier on them. Easier is not the same as easy, though.
I knocked on the door, and braced myself.
"Belessandralena!" mom exclaimed enthusiastically. She turned her head to yell back into the flat. "Henric! Belessandralena is here!"
I wince every time they use my name. Especially at full volume like this.
Mom led me to the kitchen, where they were eating dinner because I have great timing, I guess. I greeted dad (and suffered another "Belessandralena!") and sat down at the table, dropping a coin purse with 50 gold on top. I'd have given them more, but it turns out this new life I've started for myself? It's expensive if you want to survive it.
"What's this about?" dad asked.
"I haven't contributed since I moved out. I still want to contribute."
He opened it up and his eyes went wide. This was easily two weeks of income for him.
"Where did you get this kind of money?"
So, they know me. They know I won't do anything illegal or unsavory, but they worry anyway. And I suppose they were right to, even if they didn't know it, since the circumstances behind this were something of a grey area. (How grey? Think charcoal.) I explained it the best I could. And let me tell you, it was more than a little uncomfortable. I left out a few of the uglier details, too, because I didn't want to scare them.
To say they weren't thrilled about me revisiting the cairn would be an understatement; they remember Masildi, too. Dad was pretty excited about what's happening to Dourstone and Smenk, though. "Serves the bastards right," he said. "Never did like those two. And I can't wait for them to get what's coming to them!"
Mom took a more practical approach.
"Does this put you in danger?" she asked.
"A little. But we'll be away for the next few days, delivering that message to the Keep. Things should cool down by the time we're back."
Mom didn't seem convinced. And to be honest, I didn't feel so convincing.
Allustan said there was an abandoned farmhouse about halfway to Blackwall Keep, and we reached it just before nightfall. We'll spend the night here (that sounds so much better than "squatting") and head out for the keep in the morning. It seems the house serves as a communal rest stop, and there are signs that people have done some maintenance on it here and there, just enough to keep it from falling into disrepair.
It was not an uneventful journey. About noon we came upon a clearing along the trail that looked like a good spot to have lunch, but I've spent a lot of time in the brush (albeit mostly at night) and this one looked an awful lot like someone was trying to hide the fact that they recently camped out. There's no reason to do that unless you 1) don't want someone to know you came through here, or 2) you don't want someone to know you're still here.
I was more concerned about the second one, so I brought the group to a stop and concentrated, trying to find tainted auras in the tree line.
I don't do this sort of thing very often because I grew up in Diamond Lake, and the few times I have used this power? I've found the results to be depressing. Sometimes you are better off just not knowing. But this was the wilderness, and we needed to know if we were walking into an ambush. Not that this was a perfect solution—not everything hostile would have a dark heart—but we could still learn something from it. And in this case, the precautions paid off as I sensed several foul auras.
Sensing that their little setup wasn't going to improve with time, an orc stepped out of the trees near Zhog, brandishing its weapon.
Zhog stared at him and asked, "Are we talking, or are we fighting?"
The orc advanced on him, answering, "It's a good day for fighting!" And then a dozen more stepped into the clearing at various points along its length, We had stopped short of being completely surrounded, but it was still not a great tactical position and since I was in front, I was voted most popular target.
Zhog pounded his dance partner, sending them to the ground, bleeding out, and two more took its place.
For some reason, Viore thought that exploding a ball of fire in the middle of them was a good idea. I mean, this worked as a demonstration of force, but here's the thing about trees: they're flammable, especially when the wet season has passed. Fortunately, Snagsby had a spell to create water, which he could repeat over and over, and got to work putting out the flames before we had a firestorm on our hands.
Though I had orcs on all sides of me, I also had my horsechopper. I used that to pin them down as the others picked them off, one by one. I cut a couple down, myself, then barked at the last one still standing: "Sit!"
He sat. And we had a nice little conversation.
"How many of you are there?" I asked.
"This is all of us."
"What brings you this far northeast?"
"Nothin' personal, y'know, just figured there'd be spoils to be taken, y'know, when the war comes."
"When the war comes? Tell me about that."
"Y'know... it's inev'table. The Twisted Branch have been on the path to war for...well, the past month."
The Twisted Branch is one of the larger lizardfolk tribes in the Mushfens.
"Why? What's going on with them?" I asked
"They're just...I don't know! But they're hoppin' mad, obviously gearing up, soldierin', marching through the swamps..."
"They're displacing your people?"
"No, it's just an opportunity we sees up here. Figure if they take on the soft skins, eh, we'll get a piece of it, maybe, y'know, it's just how it is."
We tied him up along with a couple of the other orcs that were still alive but unconscious, then ate our lunch. They weren't tied so tight that they couldn't eventually work themselves free, but they were tight enough that it wouldn't happen soon.
When we left, Zhog said, "You are at the mercy of the road. May Desna protect you."
We woke up to the sound of roosters crowing, only the roosters sounded like they'd been breathing gravel and had woken up from the grave. Then it got louder and louder and we realized they weren't just screechy roosters. We threw open the windows and saw three large, emaciated birds with bat-like wings converging on the house.
Cockatrices. Just great.
Sera, Viore, Viktor, and Zhog took shots at them from the windows, which was a fine plan right until they flew up onto the roof. I took a position in the middle of the house in case one of them made it inside, but what we really needed was to get them onto the ground so my defensive position wouldn't even be necessary.
Varin solved that problem by using a spell to conjure a wolf to serve as bait. The cockatrices fell for it, and then they were easy pickings.
Maybe if the inn doesn't work out we can get a job as monster hunters for hire.
We smelled the smoke from campfires long before Blackwall Keep came into view, and we made first sight of the tower as we emerged from the forest just as the sun was setting. It sat atop a hill dotted with fraises made from large, sharpened stakes, and from a quarter-mile away we could see it was under siege by scores of lizardfolk. They were organized into several squads of about a half dozen or more that surrounded it, with one squad equipped with a crude battering ram that they used to hammer the door. We watched as the lizardfolk exchanged salvos with the soldiers on the walls. Every time one of the latter took aim, javelins were sent in response.
We couldn’t take on an entire army, but there had to be a way we could help. To do that, though, we needed to make contact with them. Since I had the best understanding of military matters, I volunteered to go. We wrote up a message explaining who we were, and attached it to a weight so it could be dropped from the air. Under the effect of spells for flight and invisibility, I flew out above the tower and dropped it down.
"I only have a few minutes,” I said, landing next to them once they read the message. “What is your situation? How did this start?"
"The situation is dire! I don't know that we can hold off for more than another day at this rate. As to why? I don't know, they attacked us out of nowhere, without provocation. We are down to half our numbers, that are still able to put up a fight."
"How many soldiers is that?"
"Fourteen."
"Is there a leadership company among your attackers? Are they organized?"
"They seem disciplined. I don't know who the leader is, but there’s an order to their attacks and they are keeping us pinned down. And…they...they have some of our people, including our commander and our battle mage! They took them captive and dragged them off to the south into the swamp."
Not good.
Our best bet was to get the soldiers out, but that meant giving up the fort and they refused to abandon it. That left plan the second: find a way to break the siege.
I returned to the group before both spells wore off and we discussed what I had learned, and what our options were, and a plan started to form. We would go for the battering ram, which the lizardfolk had fashioned from the trunk of a large, sturdy tree. Without it, the threat to the Keep was greatly diminished, and it would take the attackers time to find, fell, and work a suitable replacement.
We needed a couple of hours for Varin to prepare some spells, but that worked to our advantage as it meant we’d be coming in under cover of darkness. While he prepared, we studied the attackers to learn their movements. Squads rotated in and out of ram duty, which was smart, but other than that there was no interaction between individual squads, and no active patrol of the perimeter. That meant we could attempt to sneak up on their positions.
When Varin was ready, we came at them from the southeast, making our way carefully up the hill. It mostly worked. We got close, but not as close as we would have liked before some of us were spotted, and two squads converged on us.
We needed to provide a distraction for Snagsby, who was still advancing stealthily toward the battering ram crew. Viore summoned a wolverine while the rest of us loosed a volley of arrows. One of the lizardfolk spotted Snagsby and threw a javelin his way. Recognizing this jeopardized the raid, Sera, Viore, and Viktor took them down at range.
With the wolverine occupying several of the attackers—making a great deal of noise in the process—and me closing for melee, Snagsby was able to sneak up on the ram and hit it with a spell. In an instant, the trunk was transformed into a tangle of thin branches and twigs, rendering it useless.
This took care of the immediate threat to the Keep, but presented a new problem: the lizardfolk formerly ramming the door were now inclined to engage us, and Snagsby was a visible and convenient target. Fortunately, we were able to identify their commander. Viore summoned a second wolverine to boost our numbers, and it, Zhog and Sera took the leadership down quickly while I kept some of the soldiers at bay with my horsechopper.
With the commander dead along with several of their kin, the siege slowly broke. We managed to take one of them prisoner as the rest withdrew. When the last of the lizardfolk had disappeared into the woods, we signaled to the garrison and they opened the battered door to let us in, with our prisoner in tow.
We took some time to assess the situation in the Keep, perform some basic repairs on the main door using magic, and locate a suitable room to detain our prisoner so we could talk to him.
"Our people have been in conflict for a long time," I said in Draconic. "What has changed? Why this attack here, and why now?"
The lizardfolk stared at me contemptuously for a while before replying. "Our chief told us it is finally time to avenge your wrongs, and Ilthane agrees, so your doom is already sealed!" He started working himself up into a fervor. "You've encroached into our lands, decimated our people, slaughtered us at your whim and for your pleasures—"
We needed him calm, so I adopted a conciliatory tone. "Look," I said, "I understand. I really do. Humans in general can be...invasive, even imperialistic. I don't want to rehash all of our history. If 'now' is the time for this, then what has changed? What have we done recently that led to this?"
"We've found allies and strength to finally take action in retaliation for what you've done in the past!" His expression softened to sadness briefly, but then he found his rage and indignation again. "Almost an entire generation, young, old, hatchlings! What kind of barbaric race are you to resort to genocide?"
We were at a loss on this. To our knowledge, Korvosa hadn't ordered any invasion of the Mushfens. If we had, the garrison at Diamond Lake surely would have been involved, or at least aware. And this would be significant news; people would have heard about it.
As for their ally, Ilthane? I didn't know who that was, but Viktor did. In Varisian, he said she was a black dragon known to periodically terrorize the region. So that was not good. Was she somehow manipulating events?
I asked what the soldiers had done to their people, and he confirmed it wasn't an invasion. According to him, humans had somehow corrupted their young, causing them to wither and die. This pestilence wiped out nearly an entire generation of their tribe.
The very thought of it was sickening, and it was hard to imagine anyone in Korvosa's military ordering an attack on children. But it could easily be forces working towards their own goals, independent of the government. The letters we found from the Triad suggested worms would be found here, among the lizardfolk tribes. Could that be what was happening here?
"Look," I said after some heated back-and-forth, "I know we've had our conflicts. But what you describe...this would be considered a reprehensible crime by our people. Who would we speak to in your tribe to get at the truth of this?"
He considered us in silence. "You should talk with Hishka. But you'd need to bring something to the table, to prove you are sincere. And that you have something of substance to talk about."
So we showed our cards. We told him we were pursuing rumors of unkillable, green worms. "These are stories we've been hearing. I'm trying to figure out if what we have heard connects to what has happened to your people."
We released his bindings as a show of faith (I still had my spiked armor on; I am not a fool), and we found our way to an agreement: we let him go, he takes a message back to this Hishka, and we meet her at a designated spot the following day. We procured a map of the region from the soldiers in the Keep, and together we identified a location that provided no cover for an ambush. We even exchanged names; he was called Gathok.
The soldiers of the garrison were not happy with us. Not in the least. And I get it, but I also didn't care. "You want to get the hostages back?" I said, "This is how you do it."
And then there was the matter of a suspicious door in the lower level of the building. It had a heavy padlock that had been smashed open by the lizardfolk when they managed to break into the Keep and capture their prisoners earlier in the siege. After the soldiers drove the raiders off, they hastily nailed the door shut. We had asked about it before, but their Acting Captain Bosh had only said that it was "off limits and may not be opened by anyone, under any circumstances". We had asked what was behind it. His answer: "It's not any of your concern."
Sorry, but b~&!@~%$. The man was clearly terrified of what was behind that door, and after our little chat with Gathok? We all wanted a closer look. Viktor and Varin used a spell, and said a single, intelligent mind was on the other side. I walked up to it and opened my senses, and felt a moderately strong, foul aura behind it. We decided to confront Bosh with this. Not our concern, my ass.
He was hesitant at first, but quickly realized he was not the one in charge anymore. Not while we were there, anyway. "That was...You see, Battle Mage Marzena is here for a reason. She came to replace Aldis, our previous Battle Mage. And...that's him behind that door. Or...what's left of him.
"He came back two years ago from a mission to those savages, but wasn't quite himself. After a day or two, they say—I wasn't stationed here then—he transformed into some kind of monster! His skin was desiccated, like a zombie or something. So they locked him in, and he's been there ever since."
In other news, we also checked out Marzena's room and personal effects. Zhog was particularly interested in her desk, which had several loose papers, quills, and ink. I asked him what was so fascinating, and was rewarded with a series of drawings, many of which were, um, rather risqué.
Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen.
Snagsby used a spell to confirm that the thing behind the door was undead. This more or less confirms Marzena's (non-pictorial) notes, which we read through last night. She wrote down what the soldiers described to her: a zombie with worms crawling under its skin and dripping from its nose and mouth. One of these worms landed on another soldier's arm and it started burrowing into his flesh. They killed it with an enchanted weapon before it got completely under the skin.
So, yeah, this all seems connected. We meet with Hishka at noon, assuming she even agreed to do so, and hopefully we'll be able to convince her that our problems are also her problems.
The big question is, "Who is doing this?"
We entered the clearing and saw the lizardfolk party approach. We both halted at a cautious distance apart, and then two of them stepped forward. One of them was an elderly woman (for lack of a better term), somewhat stooped and walking with some difficulty. A snake was coiled around her arm.
We decided to mirror their actions, so Snagsby and I approached the two while the others stayed back.
We nodded to each other, and the woman, Hishka, spoke in draconic.
"I understand your people actually want to talk to my people. I am curious why."
"It sounds like both of our people have been taken advantage of," I said, "and we are acting against one another when we shouldn't be."
"But we haven't done anything to you—not first."
"And I acknowledge that our people have not been kind to your people in history. But, something has happened to you in the last couple of years, and something has happened to us in the last couple of years, and they appear to be connected."
Adopting a condescending tone, she asked, "What do you know of such things?"
I let the tone pass. We needed to talk, not argue. "We know that two years ago, one of the human men stationed at our Keep came into the Mushfens. We don't know what his mission was, we don't know what his purpose was, and we don't care. We just know that when he returned he was infested with something, and it was a rotting disease. When it had run its course, he was infested with green worms that could only be slain by enchanted weapons."
"And do you know why? Do you suspect we were behind this?"
"No, we don't think you're behind it. We think you may be victims of it. We uncovered among our own people a conspiracy of men who worship the worst gods in existence, and they are working to bring about what they call the Age of Worms. Part of that is bringing a monster into our world, and apparently the harbinger of that is these worms, infecting and corrupting the living."
"We have allies that made us aware that the scourge my people suffered was due to the actions of your people. That you admit it is...interesting."
"Again, I can't say we've always been good to one another—"
"You are all blind! Soft skins! You don't. Even. See us."
"We are all young, this group you are talking to. So, I would say 'yes', but...we're learning. So enlighten us. Something has happened to you in the last generation and it has caused disease and sickness, correct?"
"The hatchlings, mostly."
"It seems related. This plot goes back more than a couple of years."
"Ten years to be precise. We learned it was caused by you humans, from Korvosa specifically."
Zhog stepped forward at this and objected. "Will you stop with the 'you humans' thing? Are you responsible for lizardfolk on the other side of the world? Stop talking to us like we're all the same group. We have clans, we have tribes, we have kingdoms."
Oy, Zhog. But it was a valid point. "What he's saying is, we are not a monoculture. There are factions among our people, and whatever people are behind this? What they're doing would be considered a crime. And more importantly, they need to be stopped."
"But my information is that this is a conspiracy out of Korvosa."
"And that may be true! Some of the information we are getting is pointing to that, but that doesn't mean Korvsa, the government, the city, is behind it. Just that the plot originated from people who are there."
"Fair enough."
"But what matters to us is that it's happening, and we need to stop it."
"We already have the capability to stop it! We're doing fine, thank you. It took us 10 years to get here after all of our hatchlings were decimated by worms and decay! But we have strong, new allies with the ability to prevent this from happening again! And a strong new clutch of hatchlings that are coming of age as warriors. She is even protecting our egg chamber now, personally!"
And who is their protector? "Ilthane," I said.
Her eyes widen. "So. Her reputation has reached the Soft Skins, I see."
"I know she's a black dragon. One question I have for you is, how do you know your current batch of eggs is healthy?"
"This corruption was ten years ago. Since our alliance with Ilthane, there has been no harm to our clutches of eggs."
"There's a possibility that Ilthane is using your eggs as a breeding ground for worms. That she's gaining your trust by giving you protection and using you at the same time."
There was a very long pause after I said this. "I admit it's an outlandish claim," I added. "But you can't deny the possibility. The timing is convenient."
"That would be the worst thing to happen to our people."
"She's a black dragon. They are known for corruption."
She called me out on this. We had specifically objected to having humans painted with a broad brush, and here I had done the same thing with black dragons. What can I say? I am new to this, and I make mistakes. But, thankfully, she was still willing to listen.
Zhog asked, "How did she get rid of the worms?"
"She has laired in our lair. And ever since she did this, there have been no worms."
Zhog says, "But you have no proof that she's done anything. You don't know how it works. You only have her word that she is the one that made it stop."
It's no surprise Zhog would be the first to see the angle here. This had Kullen and his protection rackets written all over it. We had to step Hishka through it, and we kept hammering the point that Hishka has no proof that Ilthane has done anything at all to make the corruption stop. It is literally all on Ilthane's word.
"Let me ask you, blind Soft Skins. I see that it's in your interest to find a way for your people not to suffer this plight. What does it mean to you that our people suffer or don't suffer from this?"
"The world is connected", I said. "Whether or not we get along, we are sharing this space. What happens to one of us, happens to the other in some fashion. This thing is bigger than all of us."
"But the actual plight of my people doesn't concern you."
"I can't overcome hundreds of years of human and lizardfolk conflict and prejudice. The only thing I have to bring to you is, we want to stop this thing."
"Perhaps...you're not completely blind. And you let one of our people go to broker this meeting between us."
"And you came, which we are grateful for."
Zhog said, "This is what I meant about tribes and clans. We are not beholden to a king or a city. We are not wearing guard uniforms. There are seven of us here. What can we do for you?"
"I came here not sure what to expect, but...curious...thinking it would go nowhere. And now, I'm going to leave here full of dread. You're right. I don't know what Ilthane's motives are."
I said, "Let me ask you this. Do you have a way of verifying the health of your eggs? Do you have a way to detect undead? Can you detect disease?"
In short, she did not. But, we weren't going to let that stop us. Over the next half hour, we talked out ideas both amongst ourselves and with Hishka, and we came up with a tentative agreement.
Viktor would craft a wand that Hishka could use to detect undead†. She was capable of identifying it so she could trust what it does. Gathok would stay with us until it was done, then take it to her, and we would follow him to a point just a few miles from their lair so they wouldn't have to hike another 20 miles to get a message to us (time was not on our side here). Hishka would use the wand to examine the egg chamber at her first opportunity, and then meet with us afterwards. If our fears were confirmed, we would discuss what to do and how to do it, because they were going to need help.
There was more. Hishka explained that there is a schism within the lizardfolk tribe, with some aligned with her and others aligned with their chief, Shukak.
"In truth," she said, "this was one of my motivations to come and talk to you here. Shukak is not from our tribe. He arrived and assumed power when we were weak. We needed a leader and he filled that role. But I don't think he has our best interests at heart. And I didn't think these raids against the Soft Skins was the best way to avenge our people even before we met here. Now? I am more convinced of that.
"I want to counter the hold he has over the younger warriors of our tribe. If you could arrange in writing some treaty between your government and our tribe, I could probably arrange for a cessation of hostilities, at least for a time."
It was an intriguing idea and we discussed this at length. Fundamentally she was asking for more than just a right to exist. "They give us the right to live here, but the guards in those towers hold us at a knife point, and we are seen as monsters. We are fighting perception. The perception of things often matters the most, and our people perceive that Korvosa is at war against us." She wanted lizardfolk to be recognized as a society of people with laws, traditions, and families.
The best shot at accomplishing that? We free Marzena and the captain, and convince them that a treaty is the right thing to do. That both sides have been duped here, and we are not each others' enemy.
This all had to happen soon. As I said, time is not on our side. Hishka believes she can keep the prisoners alive for another day, maybe two. If they die, any hope for a treaty dies with them.
____________________________________
We followed Gathok over 15 miles into the Mushfens overnight, stopping in the pre-dawn light just a couple of miles outside his village's patrol perimeter.
It's been a long time since I have done this sort of thing. In my days (and nights) with the Night Walkers, we would be out a couple of nights per week, occasionally well into the early morning. The only rule was that we would always be back before what Sergiu called "civil twilight" because that was when you could no longer navigate by the stars, and the point of the Night Walkers was, obviously, to be out there in the dark. Supposedly this term comes from sailors, though how he got to know sailors in a land-locked mining town in the middle of the Fenwall Mountains is beyond me.
We made camp while Gathok continued ahead, and waited for his return.
We didn't have to wait long. Just as the sun was rising above the horizon, we saw Gathok walking up the path towards our campsite. His expression was grim, which told us what we ultimately needed to know. The rest was just details.
"I have good news and bad news," he began. "Our worst nightmares are confirmed. This batch of eggs are full of corruption. However, our alliance with Ilthane is not ill-informed. Her own egg is deeply infected as well, so she's but a victim of the same ill fortune as our tribe."
I hate being the one to deliver bad news. Really. I do. Gathok was holding on to a spark of hope, that there would be something salvageable in this mess, and I was about to smother it.
"Gathok...when we spoke with Hishka yesterday, she said to us quite clearly and directly that Ilthane was protecting your eggs, and leaving one of hers with you as a show of faith. That she was your ally, protecting you from this corruption.
"Either she hasn't protected your tribe as she promised, or she is the source of this corruption and has been lying to you. Regardless of which of those statements you believe, your alliance with her has ultimately failed."
However bad I felt about doing this to him—and I felt plenty bad, you try it sometime—he was feeling far worse. Losing another generation of eggs like this would be disastrous. Ilthane was their one great hope, that she had the power to stop it. With her alliance revealed as a fraud, and no understanding of why and how this was happening (much less how to stop it), they were facing the extinction of their whole tribe. And that thought was terrifying.
It took some gentle cajoling to get Hiska's actual message from him, and not just his interpretation of it. She said she snuck into the egg chamber long enough to use the wand without being seen and saw that both Ilthan'e eggs and the ones closest to her were corrupted. "We are in over our heads," she told him. "let the soft skins know!"
So here we are.
There were three problems to be solved: separate the good eggs from the bad ones to save as many of the new generation of hatchlings as possible, remove chief Shukak from power, and free the prisoners. Just the first one, alone, required that we meet with Hishka: we needed to get a better understanding of the egg chamber, and what could and couldn't be done with the eggs. So we needed a place to meet.
Gathok said that their current lair is underground, next to their old village (now abandoned since their numbers have dwindled). He suggested that we sneak into one of the huts of the old village after dark, and meet with Hishka there. We'd have to hide everything about our presence, including our scent, but it would put us in a position to meet quickly and do so face-to-face without raising suspicion from their tribe. As I've said, time was not on our side, and multiple, long treks through the swamp would compound the problem. We agreed to the "abandoned village" plan, and sent Gathok back to deliver the message.
Hiding our scent would be a challenge, of course. Varin has a cantrip that is good for cleaning, and certainly a clean animal smells a lot less than a dirty one, but that can only take us so far. We could, however, use natural scents to mask our odor, and make the natural smell of the Mushfen on our bodies stronger than that of our own. This was another throwback to Sera's and my time with the Night Walkers. She's kept her skills sharper than mine, so I deferred to her.
We're resting here for the day. We've been up nearly 24 hours with no sleep and we're starting to feel it. And, the spell casters need to refresh their spells for what comes next.
Gathok said that Ilthane has stationed kobolds in the egg chamber (ostensibly to guard the eggs, but we suspect their real purpose is to prevent interference with Ilthan's plans, no matter the source), and they are loyal only to her. As soon as we enter, there will be a fight. That told us right away that dealing with the eggs would have to come last, lest we find ourselves trapped inside with angry kobolds in front of us and angrier lizardfolk behind us.
That meant dealing with Shukak first.
As an added complication, we cannot put Hishka or Gathok in danger from their tribe, or the lizardfolk tribe in danger from Ilthane. Which means they need what's known as "plausible deniability". Everything we do has to have the appearance of us acting alone.
As such, we formed our plan around a prisoner rescue, using a lightning raid. Zhog actually had the best idea on how to do that.
"Why don't we just run straight through?" he said.
It sounded crazy at first, but...we have a map, courtesy of Gathok, and we know exactly where to go. With cover provided by invisibility and magical silence, we could get quite a ways before we were detected by other means, and even then it would take time for them to figure out what was happening. That would be enough for us to get into position and block off key passages, so we could limit the scope of the engagement by making it more difficult and time-consuming for the rest of the tribe to enter the fray. If we take Shukak down quickly enough, Hishka can assume the role of acting chief before we put other members of the tribe at risk.
At that point, we can legitimately negotiate a cessation of hostilities with Hishka. From the lizardfolk tribe's perspective, humans will have staged a raid into their lair to rescue their prisoners, and Hishka will have acted in the best interest of her people since, after all, it was Shukak that led them to attack the human lands.
Then, Hishka arranges for us to enter the egg chamber and deal with the corruption in the eggs. Once again, plausible deniability would come into play here: no lizardfolk would enter the egg chamber with us, just in case one of the kobolds escaped. It had to look as though we were raiding the lizardfolk lair on our own, and specifically going after Ilthane's egg. We wanted Ilthane retaliating against us, not the lizardfolk. (Actually, we don't want Ilthane coming after us, either, but she may not give us that option.)
The biggest unknown was the safety of the prisoners. What would stop Shukak from simply executing them once he learned we were inside? Fortunately, Hishka had a solution for this. "I will have them brought to my chamber. Shukak's lieutenant knows I've been healing them, and tending to their wounds. I'll simply find another excuse to do that."
Good enough, and probably as good as we were going to get.
We launch the raid at midnight.
There is a saying among soldiers that goes, "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy". What it means is that you can't account for every contingency, and once the fighting starts something will happen that you did not expect which will necessitate a change in tactics or strategy. A good battle plan, then, must allow for flexibility and adaptability when circumstances change.
That being said, as far as battle plans go, ours unfolded pretty well.
We ran in under cover of invisibility and silence, but were detected (vibrations, air movement, odor, and who knows what else) much more quickly than we had expected. But that was fine, because we were not expecting to go undetected, and the precise timing of it did not really matter. We made it to the chief's chamber with lizardfolk mobilizing behind us—how many, I don't know as we couldn't hear anything outside our magical bubble, but likely dozens—and set up our rear defense.
Zhog dropped the arrow that was the source of our silence spell at the base of the steps before entering the chamber, and our spell casters spun into action. We only had two passages to defend: one's surface was coated in grease thanks to Viktor, and the other was obstructed when Snagsby reshaped the stone to form a solid wall. The rest of us engaged Shukak and his guards.
One of those guards dropped quickly under Sera's attacks. Zhog and I tore into two of the others. Then Shukak joined the fray, throwing his trident at Zhog, which then magically returned to his hands. Nice trick.
Sera felled a second of the guards. Viore disabled a third. I dropped the last. And then we all converged on Shukak.
Behind us, lizardfolk were carefully stepping their way through the grease, which was not at all part of the plan. Varin summoned a wolverine to distract the one that made it through while Viktor obstructed the greased passage with dense layers of sticky strands, much like spider webs. We heard the bellowing of one very pissed-off lizardfolk as he tried to pick his way through it. That, we reasoned, was Shukak's lieutenant.
Viktor used a spell to enlarge me, and we concentrated our efforts on taking Shukak down. I called on Abadar's power to strike him, then stepped back to help cover the rear.
Then we noticed something odd. As one of Shukak's guards lay dying, three green worms emerged from its ears and mouth. Several of us called out, "Worms!" Viktor responded by targeting each with bolts of force, killing them instantly.
Sera delivered the final blow to Shukak. As he fell, I called out in Draconic, "We are only here for the chief and his lieutenant! They were the ones who took our people as prisoners!"
From behind us, we heard Hishka's voice call out. "It was Shukak's misguided policies that brought the soft skins down on us!"
More arguments and discord followed. "Now is not the time to question our leaders! Our enemies are here!" someone yelled.
The lieutenant reinforced this. "It doesn't matter what the soft skins' intentions are. They are invading, and we will hold our territory and our prisoners!"
I answered, "We don't intend any harm to the rest of your tribe! We have acted to block your access or impede your progress, not harm you who are not the chief's guard and officers."
"And what of the chief?" the lieutenant demanded.
"The chief had to go."
More cries out from behind us. "So the chief is dead?" and "What did they mean by what they said?"
Hishka spoke again. "Now you see the fruits of Shukak's leadership. This is the future of our tribe if we don't change our ways!"
His lieutenant scolded Hishka loudly, then asked me, "Where is the chief?"
"Which pieces of him?"
So he tried to take power right then and there. "The chief is dead! Long live the chief! Rally to me, everyone!"
I don't normally like to trade barbs during battle, but he had earned it. "You're next."
And he was. With two strikes from my horsechopper, he fell to the ground, dead. And then it was over.
I called out to the lizardfolk. "We have no quarrel with your tribe. We're here to free our prisoners, and help you with your worm infestation."
That got a response. More of a panic, as the news of worms spread. Hishka spoke up quickly before it swelled.
"Soft skins! You are our enemy and have invaded our domain. However, I understand your desire to save your people. Will you agree to a parley to discuss a peaceful resolution?"
"Absolutely," I said. And that seemed to ease the growing tension.
We negotiated an immediate truce between us. In exchange for releasing the prisoners, we would return their lair to its previous condition, and assist them in removing the threat of worms from their egg chamber. We had already stabilized and begun to heal their wounded (all except Shukak and his lieutenant, that is) which helped establish our sincerity to the rest of the tribe. Long term, we would build a preliminary treaty to take to Korvosa, and propose negotiations for a lasting agreement.
But the immediate problem was the worms.
First, there was the matter of the dying (and now stabilized) lizardfolk which had leaked worms onto the ground. According to Hishka, Ilthane had gifted the tribe several potions, and this lizardfolk had been administered one. And if that wasn't the very definition of "suspicious", I don't know what is.
We had Ilthane's potions brought out and they were fairly cloudy and opaque, which we found even more suspicious. We used a sieve to filter their contents; each, and every one contained a small, segmented worm. And that took care of any lingering doubt among the tribe that their worm problem had returned, not to mention who was behind it. Fortunately, only one of the potions had been consumed.
Next, was the egg chamber itself. As I said, if Ilthane later confronted the tribe we wanted them to be able to say truthfully that humans invaded it, so we went in alone. It was, as we were told, guarded by eight kobolds, and while they were not much of a match for us, the big surprise was that several of the eggs appeared to be moving. On closer examination, these were lizardfolk young that had been infested and turned into undead in their shells. We destroyed the ones that were infested, then scanned the chamber to ensure no more eggs were tainted.
That left only Ilthane's egg, which sat among the Lizardfolk eggs. We wrapped it for safe transport and brought it out of the egg chamber into the space where we had been negotiating with Hishka. A close examination of it showed small holes as though numerous worms had bored their way out from the inside. Hishka sent for a cauldron with a sealing lid that would contain any further worms until we had recovered the spells to deal with it.
We revived Captain Alezar and Marzena and brought them up to speed. Marzena was skeptical that we had negotiated peace with the tribe.
"How?!" she asked.
"They had an aggressive, outsider leader. And we solved the problem with a change in leadership."
Varin got us focused on the important part. "They have a problem where worms are infesting and killing their young."
And that got Marzena's attention. She'd been trying to get ahold of one, herself, for study—her now-undead predecessor back at the Keep was way too dangerous to approach—so we showed her one we had filtered out from Ilthane's potions. "This would be easier back at the Keep," she said. We agreed, but that would have to wait because we all needed some sleep.
Hishka graciously allowed us to rest in the abandoned village.
When I woke this morning, I saw Zhog and Marzena—who I swear is old enough to be my mom—cuddled together. At first, I thought I was still asleep or seeing things, but nope. This was a thing that was actually happening.
That image is going to linger.
We examined the egg once we were all awake and had eaten some breakfast. I cast a spell and confirmed that it was riddled with disease. Viore followed that with a spell to cure disease, and when I cast my spell a second time, it came back clean. So we opened the egg and looked inside.
It was completely full of dead worms.
After dealing with a knot of aggressive boggards mid-day, we reached the fort this evening. It was not the celebratory welcome of our triumphant return that we were expecting.
From the top of the tower, one of the soldiers called out, "Quarantine! Quarantine! Keep your distance!"
The Captain answered back, "This is your commanding officer, soldier! What is your status?"
The status was, the worm-infested, undead monstrosity that was their previous battlemage had broken out of its makeshift prison. Several soldiers were unaccounted for. They had blocked off the stairwell to the bottom level, and at least two were known to be down there with it.
Zhog turned to us and asked, "So do we just take care of this problem?"
It was clear the soldiers weren't able to manage it. Zhog suggested that Marzen and Captain Alezar stay outside as a last line of defense in case we fail. The Captain agreed, and so we shut the door behind us, prepared defensive spells and some magical enhancements, and descended into the keep.
There were four soldiers down there with it and all had been turned into similar worm-infested zombies. Two ascended the stairs when we removed the makeshift blockade, and we engaged them on the main level. Each projected a sort of aura of panic-inducing fear (both Varin and Sera fell victim to this and fled upstairs), and if that wasn't enough, they were literally throwing their worms at us, presumably to infect us, as well. All of these distractions made it difficult to truly gang on up on them. And if that wasn't enough of a challenge, their wounds were healing as we fought, albeit slowly.
We destroyed those, but had to descend to the lower level of the keep to deal with the remaining three, as they didn't want to cooperate by coming to us. This was more of the same, just in much tighter quarters.
Once all of them were destroyed, I headed outside to give them the update on the immediate crisis. Zhog called out after me, "Tell Marzena I'm okay! I don't want her to worry about me." Um. What?
I headed outside and spoke to the captain and Marzena. "All five of them are dead...again."
The conversation turned to their long-term prospects, which were honestly not good. Down more than half their numbers, they were worried about another lizardfolk attack.
To say they were skeptical of this cease-fire we had negotiated would be an understatement. There was even less faith in the proposal for a long-term treaty. "And what if they break their agreement and attack?" someone asked. I wanted to say, "They were thinking the same thing about us," but wisely didn't. Instead, I took a different approach to help them understand the machinations at work here.
"This is the basic problem. These worms are popping up everywhere, and everyone is blaming anyone they can find. The lizardfolk saw them and blamed us, and then we got attacked and blamed them, but what we've learned is that neither side is responsible. There seems to be a black dragon named Ilthane that started all of it."
Captain Alezar didn't know Ilthane by name, but he'd heard rumors of a black dragon terrorizing this region for quite some time. Which sounded too much like a coincidence to be a coincidence.
"We're still cleaning up down there," I said. "We'll let you know when it's safe to come back in." We agreed we should scan the tower, one level at a time, to make sure there were no more surprises.
I headed back downstairs. When I saw Zhog I said, "She didn't ask about you."
Um. I am not sure why I did that. I mean, I feel kind of bad about it now? But, Marzena is, uh, quite a bit older than him—again, old enough to be my mom, and I'm four or five years older than Zhog—and I don't want to see him get hurt, I guess. I don't know. Maybe I'm reading this all wrong.
It's late, so we're spending the night here before heading back to Diamond Lake. Marzena is coming with us to speak with Allustan, and she's agreed to accompany us to Korvosa as well so she can advocate for a long-term peace treaty with the lizardfolk.
I'm keeping my eye on you, lady.
We spent the night at the farmhouse again, which to our surprise was holding a group of soldiers that had fled from the keep when the worm-infested zombie broke free. Marzena scolded them gently last night, and convinced them to return to the Keep. "I am sure the Captain will understand given the unusual circumstances."
Hopefully, she's not sleeping with all of them, too.
When I saw Zhog I could tell that something was very wrong. He looked off and was having trouble concentrating. I used a spell and determined that, yes, there was some illness running through him that was fogging his mind and draining his stamina. It didn't feel like worms, so it was probably something he picked up in the marsh. Given our timing, it might have come from the boggards or the giant toad they had with them. Viore use a spell to end the illness and keep it from getting worse, but it would still take time for him to recover.
Our return to Diamond Lake was not the triumphant return we were expecting, either.
We headed straight for Allustan's, and after he and Marzena geeked out in the lab for an hour or so, he sat down with us.
"Balabar got released pending trial. It pays to have money and power in a town like this." He looked at Zhog and said, "I don't know how welcome your uncle would be to see you again. Word on the street is that he declared himself the owner of that bar he managed for Smenk.
"I think Balabar's days in this town are numbered, but I don't know what he might be capable of. All of you should keep a low profile."
Damn it! This problem just will not go away.
Zhog was, very reasonably, concerned about his relationship with Kullen. "Why would my uncle be mad at me?"
"I don't know how he feels about this after this shake-up," Allustan said. "I think he's broken with Smenk. And I know Smenk blames all of you. I don't know how feels about it. Maybe he's fine with you, maybe he's not. I'm just warning you is all."
Basically it came down to this: we didn't know where we stood with Kullen, and Smenk's people (and those loyal to him) might not be above jumping us if we made it convenient for them to do so. Allustan offered for us to spend the night at his home while we work out what to do.
In the meantime, he has suggested we travel to Korvosa—which we were going to do anyway—to meet with a colleague of his named Eligos. There were two reasons for that. The first is that Eligos was talking about some event happening soon in Korvosa and a need for exotic animals, and it turns out he is very interested in an owlbear chick. So that's at least one less problem on our hands. The second was that Eligos is also a scholar and wants to look at all the notes we've gathered on the Ebon Triad and these worms. Allustan is going to write everything up nice for him and we'd just take the bundle with us. That sounds like a good plan to me.
Marzena had some ideas as well. She says she can make an oil from the crushed worms we have which can be used to coat a weapon and make it particularly harmful to worm-based undead. The potency will fade after an hour. The other option is to make a foul-smelling paste that can protect an individual's skin from the worms, themselves. This is less interesting to us as a whole because of our collective abilities, but it's still an entry on the "good to know" list.
This business with Smenk has us concerned, so we decided to assess the situation. As discreetly as we could, we slipped out into town to learn what we could. I stopped by mom and dad's.
"Belessandralena!" mom said when she answered the door. Ugh. Why does she do this? "I am glad you made it back OK."
She let me in. Dad was at work so it was just the two of us. And I could tell something was wrong right away.
"Mom. Did something happen while I was gone?"
"Someone came to the house trying to find you. They wanted to ask you about some investigation they were pursuing."
"Was it one of the deputies?"
"No, it wasn't. And they didn't say where they were from when I asked. They just repeated that it was important that they talk to you. I told them you don't live here, and that I didn't know where to find you. Then they got pretty belligerent, and your father got involved and asked them to leave.
"What's going on Belessandralena? Does this have to do with this business with Smenk?"
F+##!
I stopped by my flat—the lease is good until the end of the month—and, sure enough, someone had broken in. Nothing was missing (not that there was a lot to take) but it had been searched.
When we met back up later, it was the same story everywhere. Someone was looking for Sera at her parents' inn. And while we were out, someone showed up at Allustan's, trying to find "his old apprentice". Which is pretty damned gutsy, if you ask me.
Obviously, this could not stand. I couldn't move against Smenk on my own, but if he took a shot at us? If he tried something? Then I sure as hell was going to hit back. Abadar may forbid vigilantism, but there's no rule against making yourself into bait.
It was time to meet with Kullen.
Viktor, Sera, Zhog and I found Kullen at his home after nightfall. He grunted at Zhog, then let us in.
"You caused a heap of trouble in this town, boy."
Zhog beamed. "And you're now a bar owner, unc!"
"Didn't say I didn't profit from it."
"He's gonna want his bar back."
"He can try."
"Or we can take him off the board. Me and my friends don't take kindly to being threatened. We're ready to jump, but she," he said, pointing at me, "has to wait until we get hit. It's a code. And I respect her code. But when he hits, we're hitting back. We just need to know what we're up against."
"His life in town has changed a bit, but in the long run he may pull through, may even keep control of his mine. But I'm not inclined to be in his employ anymore. I can...maybe divulge where he's hidin' out. And what you do with that info is not my business."
"To those folks you know, that are 'in the loop'. You tell them, all my friends' families? If they mess with them, it's a death sentence."
Kullen stared at Zhog for a while. This wasn't the same Zhog that he knew from just a couple of weeks ago.
"Where you stayin' so I can get word to you?"
"We're not staying anywhere," Zhog answered. "I'll come to you."
We made the trek out to the house and back. Someone had been there while we were gone, though nothing was damaged more than it already was.
Zhog dropped by to see Kullen, and learned that Smenk and the remainder of his crew are hanging out at the abandoned mine near the observatory. Next to the entrance is the ruin of an old building, and that's where we'll find them.
We've kept a low profile in town over the past few days. Given how dangerous the pursuit of these worms and those responsible for them have become, we used that time to better both ourselves and our equipment. We can't do those things if we are constantly looking over our shoulders.
We've also kept an eye and ear out, discreetly, for signs of Smenk taking the initiative. Like, dropping in our families and friends again to kick things into gear. So far, all has been quiet on that front, too, though my visits to see mom and dad are not doing their anxiety any favors.
I spent the rest of the morning arranging for repairs at the house. The first step there is to fix the roof, since there's no point in doing the rest of it if we can't keep the rain out. The hardest part of that was explaining how to get out there since there aren't roads and the landmarks all look the same ("go to this grove of trees, and turn right towards this other grove of trees," and so on). I just had to trust that they could follow a cadastral map.
When I got back, everyone was ready to put the gears in motion. We all know this situation can't last, and with us departing for Korvosa tomorrow that means dealing with it now. No one is keen on leaving family behind to fend for themselves.
So we brazenly walked into town close to noon to have lunch at Kullen's. We picked up a tail on the way there, but Viktor used some spell to spook him and he took off towards the observatory. That's pretty much what we expected, and it suggested Kullen's info on where Smenk was holding up was good.
None of his henchmen were in the bar. It seems he wasn't so anxious to cause trouble that way, either because it was too public or he didn't want to tangle with Kullen at the same time.
After lunch, we decided to poke at the hornet's nest by checking out the abandoned mine, and that got a quick response. One of Smenk's thugs was there and he moved to block the road that led to the ruined building, lead pipe in hand. The message he was sending was obvious.
Viore approached him and called out in a decidedly friendly tone. "Good day, sir! How are you doing?"
The guy just glowered at us. "You ain't got no business here."
"You don't even know who I am," Viore answered. "Maybe I do."
"You aren't too bright, are you, boy?" He swatted his pipe into his open hand and said, "It's not your business. You get on to wherever you're goin' but stay outta here if you value your skull."
And that was my cue. I stepped up. "Are you saying we can't walk on a public street?"
He looked at me, then said, "T'aint no public down this road."
"I believe that's 'obstruction of the public right-of-way'. And that," I said, pointing at his lead pipe, "is 'menacing'."
There are rules to this, you see.
He looked like he was going to have a go at us, but Zhog interrupted. "If you swing with your pipe, we'll kill you. If you hit with your fists, you get to live. Be smart."
He looked at Zhog, taking him in for the first time. "Aren't you Kullen's kid?"
Zhog smiled wide. "Yup."
Smenk's man seemed to get the feeling he was in trouble here, so he made a shrill whistle and went to swing his pipe at me. His problem, though, was that we were faster. Much faster. Zhog swung into action, hitting him hard with his fists. I punched him in the jaw, then Viore knocked him down and out.
From the ruined building, we heard a crashing sound and looked over to see two enormous apes on long chains rush towards us. That's right: apes. Where did Smenk get apes?
"And that," I said to no one, "is a public safety hazard."
Varin hit them with a spell to blind them, and the rest of us took them on mostly with saps and the flats of our blades to knock them out. We just didn't have an appetite for killing animals.
We found another of Smenk's goons back there, likely the one that set the apes on us, and he surrendered so fast we barely had time to threaten him.
"So. Where is he? You know who I mean," Zhog asked.
"Mr. Smenk?"
"Yeah."
"Oh. I know you. You're Kullen's kid."
I was very annoyed at this exchange. "You know what? I'm getting really offended by how no one recognizes us. But, Zhog? Him, they know!"
The goon ignored me. "I don't know what kind of business you all have with Mr. Smenk, but now is not the time," he said to Zhog. "Maybe you don't know but your dad, uncle, whatever he is, he's no longer in good favor."
Zhog said, "Uh huh. Remember that group he's really angry about?"
It took a while for him to put two and two together, but he got there. He pointed us to the observatory, because it was only fitting, I guess, that this both began and ended there.
We knocked on the door because we're very polite people. It opened and another of Smenk's henchmen tried to shoo us off. "The observatory is closed. Go away!"
But at the same time, we heard Smenk's irritating voice echoing from somewhere deeper inside: "...go and grab the girls' families. You, lure those kids..."
"We're done here," I said. And just as the guy was shutting the door, Sera and I shoved it hard, sending him stumbling back behind it. Then we converged on Smenk and his henchman and quite thoroughly kicked their assess. When it was all over, one of his goons was dead and everyone else had been tied up.
Not gonna lie here. I found this all extremely satisfying.
I went to get what passes for the authorities in town—none of them were inclined towards Smenk, and given recent history they weren't likely to try and turn this back on us—while the rest of the group mopped up.
I don't know how it happened, exactly, but sometime between when I left and when the Sheriff and his goons arrived, Smenk had developed a fatal case of being stabbed.
We met up with Kullen after things had calmed down. And I am really looking forward to the day when I no longer have to write things like “we met up with Kullen”.
Kullen wasn’t exactly thrilled about being summoned. As I wasn’t exactly thrilled about being here, I figured that made us even.
Zhog started us off by dropping a set of keys on the table. “I understand you and Smenk were partners,” he said. I didn’t know what those keys were for, but I could guess that their owner no longer needed them.
Kullen caught on real quick, especially the part about him being a partner. I tuned out most of a conversation that I didn’t want to hear. When they were done with their scheming, he said, “I see you have someone among you that knows about legalities, right? Someone who can draw up papers for claimin’ ownership?”
This is the sort of thing that gives me heartburn. But, when you are hired as an advocate, your job is to give legal advice and answer questions, and what the client does with all that is on them. I explained about partnerships, wills, what sort of paperwork to look for, and what he’d need to do to make a transfer of ownership once that’s found.
And, yeah, I knew what he was planning to do. Here’s the thing. Smenk doesn’t have any heirs, which should surprise no one, and that means that his mine and bar are at risk of going trhough escheat. Which would put them under the control of the esteemed Governor-Mayor Lanod Neff.
Given that these were my options, I went with the one that didn’t make me physically ill.
This is the farthest I've been from Diamond Lake. Actually, just about every day since we left has been the farthest I've been from Diamond Lake. And, previously, that record was held by Blackwall Keep. This should tell you something about how much traveling I did as a kid.
We passed through Melfesh, Baslwief, and Palin's Cove before arriving here in Veldraine. I honestly believed the closest I would ever come to these places in my life was seeing them on a map.
Melfesh is the largest of Korvosa's inland holdings, and it controls access to the Runtash River. There's a huge drawbridge there (which we didn't get to cross since we aren't headed in that direction) and if you want to go up the river, or down into the lake, you have to pay a toll for the privilege. Charging a toll and blocking a river like that requires some military muscle, and that makes Melfesh a pretty heavily garrisoned town for its size.
Rumor is they charge more for ships sailing out of Magnimar's holdings than they do for ones flagged internationally because people in power basically suck, and tend to abuse it when they have the opportunity.
Baslwief is a mining town. I almost wrote "a mining town, like Diamond Lake", but on reflection, that'd be a misleading statement. The only thing they have in common as far as I can see is that they are both mining towns. Baslwief seems to be blessed with such amenities as "drinkable water" and "an atmosphere that doesn't smother your soul and drain you of hope".
I got my first sight of the ocean at Palin's Cove.
The city started life as a military outpost long ago, and then kind of grew into this industrialized complex. With all the forges and smelters and refineries belting out smoke so thick you can taste the air, it kinda feels like what Diamond Lake will become once it grows up. Only with more siege engines. I'd say something trite like, "I've never seen so many siege engines in one place", but until recently I'd never seen any, so that kind of rings hollow.
As for the ocean...I don't even know how to begin to describe it. It's just terrifyingly huge, and I feel small and inconsequential looking at it. There's just...nothing there but water as far as you can see.
I could watch it for hours.
We're currently in Veldraine. It's an old and beautiful city, and the second-largest city in this part of Varisia. It's a navy town to its core and the military here is responsible for the defense of Conqueror's Bay, which means they are the naval defense for Korvosa. We stayed here a full day to stock up on supplies and do some research in their libraries, among other activities.
I specifically used the time to connect with my Aunt Esma. It took a while to find her home—you try finding your way in a city this size when it's your first time in a city this size—and it was a bit awkward at first because I was showing up unannounced (well, that and she'd not seen me since I was a toddler, and I had to give her a letter from dad to get that whole "Who are you?" thing out of the way) but she graciously invited me in and even offered to let me stay with her that night instead of at the inn we had chosen.
Also, she called me "Bel". I've made a mental note to visit her more often.
I got to see the old letters and diaries of my great-great-grandmother Galeriana, which was pretty amazing just on its own. I'm not known for being book-smart, but I can take notes and do research when I'm motivated, and I was motivated. Aunt Esma was surprisingly supportive of the idea of trying to find the dragon Galeriana had, um, been intimate with. Her logic was, if he spent a lot of time among humans as a human, and spent enough time with my grandmother to, uh, have this romance, then that says something about his temperament. "Just don't ask him for money when you find him."
I couldn't tell if that was a joke or not. I still can't. So I'm just going to assume it's not.
Speaking of dragons, we asked about Ilthane at every stop. No one seemed to know her by name, but there were plenty of stories about a black dragon with encounters and sightings going back several years, ranging all the way from here to the Storval Plateau. This information was not directly helpful, but it was at least interesting.
In Veldraine, we also learned about an upcoming event in Korvosa called the Champion's Games. It's some sort of pseudo-friendly gladitorial thing that attracts competitors from Varisia and beyond. It was all the locals could talk about, really, which I guess isn't surprising given the military influence here. What was surprising, and this took us a bit to piece together, was that those adventurer types we saw back in Diamond Lake (the ones that mistakenly thought the Stirgenest Cairn held anything of value) have actually been in the Games, themselves.
Odds are good, I suppose, that we'll be seeing more of them.
There’s no settlement near the halfway point between Veldraine and Korvosa so the coaches have to stop at a suitable spot in the wild and set up a camp. They do this every trip, both to and from, and have done so for as long as they’ve been operating. Nothing to worry about.
So naturally, we were attacked around midnight by bizarre, black, puma-like creatures with barbed tentacles extending from their shoulders. And that wasn’t even the weird part. The weird part was, when you looked at them, you saw them a few feet away from where they actually were. The whole experience was rather creepy, especially in the dark because did I mention they were black? And, yes, I can see in total darkness up to a point, but it’s like seeing in black and white, and…well, black is still black, isn’t it?
They snuck up on us while I was on watch. There was this moment where everything around us went still and quiet and I knew we were in trouble. Fortunately, Viktor had this spell that made a kind of opaque dome that we could see out of, but which you couldn’t see into, so I was able to duck in and wake the others while the whatever-they-were (I think Varin said they are called “displacer beasts”, which is very descriptive if lacking in creativity) tried to figure out where we were.
The problem with that plan, though, was that the dome only covered us. While four of them were content with probing our little shelter, the fifth found that all rather dull and decided the coachmen were far more interesting. It fell to me to provide a distraction. While ultimately I was successful, this was not nearly as pleasant a task as it sounds, and yeah, I am aware that it sounds unpleasant. I managed to drop the thing, but not before it scratched me up pretty badly.
In the end, we killed two and subdued the rest.
Zhog had this idea that we could keep them tied up and maybe sell them to the games master for the games in Korvosa. That sounded kind of crazy to me, but we’ll be in Korvosa this afternoon so we wouldn’t have to manage them for more than a few hours. That made this merely very risky instead of, oh, I don’t know, suicidal. So why not?
We circled around Korvosa the bring the displacer beasts in through the city entrance closest to the arena. And, as I should have predicted because people with even a tiny amount of authority just can’t help themselves, the guards there tried to shake us down.
“There’s just the fee for transporting dangerous livestock into the city limits.”
I had no doubt that there really was a fee for this, and we would have been happy to pay it, but I have a pretty good sense for when someone is trying to take advantage of me, and after the night we had, and a full day of transporting these stupid displacer beasts tied up in one of the carriages, I was not in the f&@#ing mood.
Also? I live for this stuff. “Excellent!” I exclaimed. “Then if you don’t mind, can you tell me which regulations cover the fees for transporting dangerous creatures so we can be sure we are compliant?”
“Uh, It’s in the city charter.”
“Yup. Which part?”
“Um, it’s…Article VI. Fif—one hundred gold pieces. Per animal. In cash.”
“Article VI, section…? Paragraph…?”
“Look, I do this every day as it’s my job. I’m the guard, you’re just the traveler. That’s the rules, pay up or no entry.”
“Greetings, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Guard! I am Bel, holy warrior of Abadar. Understand that rules and regulations are quite important to us, and we want to be sure we comply with the letter and spirit of the law. Now, since we haven’t been here before, we’d like to go over the specific code which I’m sure you have a copy of somewhere in your guardhouse, to make sure that you are also enforcing the rules and regulations accurately.”
He buried his head in one hand and said, “Oh… followers of Abadar.” Without looking up, he reasserted “Great, then give me the 100 gp for each, and you can be on about your way.”
I nodded enthusiastically, and replied, “But if I just gave you the 100 gp when we weren’t sure if that was the actual fee, it would almost feel like I was giving you a bribe, and that is strictly forbidden, so I need to make sure that we’re giving you the exact amount that is required. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to review those regulations, and we can pull the carriages aside while we work this out.”
It went back and forth like this a couple more times, but in the end, I wore him down. “Just… go! Get out of my sight! Go! Go! I’ll waive the fee! Gods!” he exclaimed. As he was walking away, I could just hear him talking to himself. “I swear, Abadar and his followers…”
And that is how you avoid paying bogus surcharges.
Negotiations for the sale of the displacer beasts are going smoothly. This is something Snagsby has taken point on, and which I am staying out of.
Stars, what a day. If you need me, see my associates because I’ll be sleeping until next week.
After crossing the High Bridge into the part of town called Midland, we came across a parade associated with the upcoming Champion Games, complete with musicians, dancers, and a kind of traveling circus. Spectators had lined the streets on both sides, eager to watch it pass by. I’d never seen a parade before. Come to think of it, I’d never even seen an event in a city where people gathered together because they wanted to see it. Public events in Diamond Lake tended to be crime scenes.
I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that, even though I have nothing to compare this to, my first parade experience was decidedly not normal. As we say in the Church, “Results not typical”.
One of the cage wagons had glass surrounding the metal bars and held a three-headed, winged creature that we all recognized as a chimera. As we watched, the dragon head let out a bolt of electricity, that danced along the bars but stayed within the cage, itself. Which explained the glass.
This seemed absurdly dangerous to me. Even relative to what we just did an hour ago. And my concerns were validated just moments later, when the chimera slammed up against the bars of its cage, breaking one loose and shattering the glass. And then it was free, and a chorus of panicked screams rose around us.
Let me tell you how quickly a crowd can disperse when people are properly motivated (and an angry, goat-, lion-, and dragon-headed monster roaming the streets provides sufficient motivation): the crowd scattered around us so fast that the streets were empty in seconds. And from this, you can imply that we stayed where we were because dealing with emergencies like this is what we do.
“Do we gotta keep this alive, guys?” Zhog asked.
“I don’t think so!” I exclaimed.
Our quick intervention saved the life of one of the handlers. He had been knocked to the ground, and the chimera started tearing into him. Snagsby got to him while we distracted the beast, and was able to heal him up before he could bleed to death. With all of us working together, we were able to take it down before it could take to the skies and make the problem much, much worse.
To their credit, the city guard arrived very quickly, and they even seemed genuinely concerned for the public’s safety. I wasn’t sure such a thing was even possible.