27th Of Rain
Back we go to the Halls of Cordaris today. We are heading toward the Doors of Purification, but on the way we locate a secret door to the Blood Pool. We chicken out on following this path, though, once we hear the movement of undead down the hall. Calista seems really uneasy about fighting them. We took care of the orcs easily enough — I doubt we’d have any problem with some skeletons. But then, she knows a lot of adventurers, like Aliya Al-Mari of the Runewardens, and says she’s actually seen undead, so maybe she knows something I don’t.
While searching the alcoves in the hall leading to the Doors of Purification, we come upon a candle with a combination carved into it: 24–B–13. Could this be the new combination of the Legacy that crazy Velator Timerian was gloating about right before he died?
Tasting the water in all four fonts in the alcoves of this hall, Archinemus leads us through the Doors. His technique seems to be working, till we get to the third door. We think it’s magically sealed — it won’t open up, even with Calista’s spells. A woman approaches us on the other side. When we ask to come in, saying we have important news as to the safety of the Legacy, she calls us liars and refuses! But we weren’t lying. We were trying to tell her that she and what’s left of her Order aren’t safe down here, now that the Delver’s Guild is about to open the Halls of Cordaris to explorers. But she plays it tough, claiming that Timerian is still around to protect them. The only way she’ll believe we’re not enemies is if we find and rescue her comrade Jastov. She thinks the orcs must’ve gotten him.
So we head up to Level One and start looking. We find a storeroom and some goblins and Spireman orcs. After a bit of a battle, we locate Jastov in one of the cells where we’d previously found the dwarf and skulk. This is Jastov the Reliquarian, whom former Order member Saedra had called trustworthy when we talked to her in the tavern. Jastov said the orcs captured him before he could get some gems from the chaos well. (The Order of the Legacy once thought they could use pure gems to harness the power of the chaos well to protect the Halls of Cordaris.) He said the Legacy was dangerous but, like Saedra, he was magically compelled to tell us nothing more specific. He did tell us that there are only two Order members left besides him, now that Timerian is dead (and he didn’t seem too broken up about that, sensible fellow). He said the Blood Pool has spawned horrible skeletal creatures covered in blood.
We try to convince him of the dangers he faces in staying down here — other adventurers will come, we said, and they won’t be as scrupulous as we are! He said that if he had the new combination, he would try to move the Legacy and depart with it and the others, but if Timerian changed it, there’s nothing he can do. After a lengthy discussion, we decide to tell him the combination we found on the candle. (Charnoth was inclined to bust through the Doors of Purification, punish all surviving Order members for condoning the taking and torture of prisoners — the litorians are very sensitive to that sort of thing, on account of their tribesmen being taken by slavers — but in the end he came around.) Unfortunately, what we’d found was the old combination.
However, to show his gratitude for our freeing him, Jastov gives Tharn a few light-emitting crystals and hands us some notes that ought to show us how to find a lot more of them. This crystal is a rare mineral called aethel that absorbs and stores energy. It can store even magical or elemental energy and also make magic items. The notes are from a former member of the Order named Naethus, who found the aethel cave somewhere beneath Ptolus (but not in the Halls). The notes suggest taking a trip to the North Market district, to a candlemaker’s shop called Fever Moon.
Then we return Jastov to the Doors of Purification and, after drinking from the fonts, he manages to get through all of them without difficulty. Thinking that we would never get the other Order members to trust us, and that the Legacy was probably far too dangerous for us to mess with (not to mention in the care of these people whom we’re trying to convince we’re friendly) we agree to leave him to do his best to convince the Order to move out. I hope he succeeds. He says he’ll try to convince the others not to treat us as hostile the next time we meet in these Halls — we’ve still got the Blood Pool to deal with, after all!
28th Of Rain
Today we learn about a reward of a thousand gold coins for the capture of Shilukar, a dark-elf wizard who reportedly stole from House Abanar. Something for us to think about to help increase the size of our down payment for the shop!
Shortly after we hear this news, the cleric Mand Scheben of the Temple of Ashe (god of cities) calls up the debt that Barbatos owes him, on account of saving him from the ear-seekers. He needs our aid — and will compensate us for it, too — at Castle Shard. Apparently this is a magical place in the Nobles’ Quarter where weird stuff and weird people (like the infamous powerful wizard Moynath Autumnsong) seem to pop up.
Next we go to Myraeth’s Oddities to get some loot identified. We also offer Myraeth a first payment of two thousand gold on the shop to seal our agreement. That’s half the total down payment, so we’re getting there! He takes a look at our aethel crystals and tells us that enough of these raw crystals could bring down a magical energy barrier. Funny, I think that’s exactly what the Legacy members were trying to do! Giving us five hundred gold for one of the crystals, he tells us that a source he knows of near the Spire has dried up. I wonder if that’s the source our note directs us to?
That afternoon we head over to Castle Shard to meet Mand and find out what he needs us to do. Walking through the Nobles’ Quarter was cool. The place was full of the most stately manors I have ever seen! Castle Shard looks like a big stone cylinder, with a column of purple crystal shot through the center. A moat of black glassy liquid surrounds the place. The elaborate tower has windows placed high up on its immense front doors. When we enter, the majordomo, Kadmus, seems very impressed with the house gift that Calista offers. (Wow, she thinks of everything!) We see some real wonders in this place, let me tell you. For instance, a woman in a glinting silver dress glides by on a disk supported by lines held by tiny flapping birds. Kadmus tells us this is Rill, one of the two lords of Castle Shard. We next meet a man named Zavere, the other lord of the place. He wears all black and welcomes us with a low voice. A gorgeous woman with huge horns approaches, smelling of the woods, like a clear mountain stream. This satyrix, Narasha, is a guest at the castle, and she flirts big-time with Diethan!
That might have led to something had not Mand arrived just then. He explains that a gangster named Linech is seeking a group of adventurers for a mission. Why does he want them? Where’d he get the cash to pay them? These are the things the Church of Ashe wants to know, because this half-orc criminal has crossed them and Castle Shard before. So he wants us to get ourselves hired on for this mission, then report back on what’s up — for eighty gold each! Sounds simple enough.
So we head off to the address he gives us in the Rivergate District. Diethan explains that Linech is a drug smuggler who deals mostly in shivvel, a very dangerous hallucinogenic drug that comes into Ptolus via ship from an island to the north. Mand said he thought Linech’s operation had been shut down, but it seems otherwise. We arrive at Linech’s burrow (a cluster of homes). Inside his home, he sits at a large desk, protected by a sizable woman bodyguard named Oukina (of course, I’ve got almost a foot on her after my recent growth spurt). Also we see a halfling servant named Seanus, a half-elf woman with drug-glazed eyes playing the zither, and a solid gold statue of a warrior. Weird place.
Linech tells us his daughter died on an island not far from Ptolus, and the ship transporting her body went down in the harbor. He wants us to dive down and retrieve her body and its glass coffin. He will give us each a potion of water breathing and some potions of swimming, plus twelve hundred gold and anything we can salvage off the ship. “It’s all the money I’ve got left in the world,” he said. How nice to see that even a criminal can care so deeply about his daughter and her final rest!
He tells us that the ship, the Dragoneye, sank three nights ago due to arson, possibly caused by the Balacazar crime family. So the perpetrators might be trying to salvage the vessel too, he warns. We’ll have to be on our toes.
So we take the job and shake our tail back to Castle Shard. When Archinemus mentions the gold statue, Zavere wonders whether it was their one-time ally Lord Abbercombe. He also explains that Oukina is Linech’s muscular girlfriend, and that the half-elf woman was Biesta, Linech’s sister, burned out on shivvel. The lord of the castle also confirms that Linech’s daughter (Linele, about twelve or thirteen years old) did indeed die on that island recently. Hey, that’s weird, come to think of it. Linech didn’t even tell us her name!
We take our commission from Mand and decide to go ahead with Linech’s mission as well. The Castle Shard folks said they would welcome more information on the half-orc’s activities. Speaking of the Castle Shard folks, that night, Calista learns from her friends at the Pale Tower where she lives that Rill once was a paladin of the goddess Gaen but gave it up for her sorcery talent. Now she rarely leaves the castle. Likewise, Zavere was once a dark knight in the service of House Vladaam, but he renounced it all for Castle Shard, too. What a pair. Their butler Kadmus brought out some great honey cakes, though.
29th Of Rain
Seanus, a halfling, meets us to escort us to the Docks to begin our mission for Linech. He seems a friendly fellow and gave away a lot of information about his employer without meaning to. For instance, he said Linech doesn’t have to worry about money “now that the guest is here.” Turns out that this guest is Biesta’s new friend: the dark elf Shilukar, for whom we’ve heard there’s a bounty of a thousand gold! Definitely something to keep in mind. Seanus said that the dark elf gave Linech the gold statue and an influx of cash. The gnoll guards we’ve seen near Linech’s house — quite an uncommon sight around here — must be his.
We arrive at the harbor, and Seanus has a boat all lined up for us. From a little girl in the harbormaster’s office, we learn that the Dragoneye went down in six hundred feet of water just past a dropoff. She also said that a dinghy rowed by people in purple and gold robes was seen leaving the scene of the ship fire. We drink our potions of water breathing and leave Seanus up on the surface with the boat while we sweep for the wreckage underwater.
We finally find it at the dropoff. There’s a huge hole in the side of the hull. Swimming through, we begin to explore….
