Still The 29th
It’s late when I arrive at the dockside bar called the Savage Shark. It’s a bawdy, loud, and crowded place, but I don’t see Diethan anywhere around. I also don’t see Salsan, whom we were supposed to meet here. A little asking around reveals that I’ve missed him by just an hour – he left word that he couldn’t stay but would meet us there again in a week. As I’m getting ready to leave, a dwarf hits on me. As if! I must be twice his height!
I head over to the Ghostly Minstrel, where I find my friends and Diethan. It seems that, while spying on Shilukar’s supposed hidey-hole, he saw the gnolls come out of the house they’d been guarding . . . with the dark elf! That’s the last thing he saw before going unconscious. When he awoke. Diethan found himself face to face with Linech. The treacherous gangster said he was willing to let bygones be bygones. Sure he was – he was the one who tried to kill US! But he let Diethan go, so maybe we don’t have to worry about him any more after all.
We decide to keep Seanus on, and he seems happy enough with the arrangement – especially when we offer to pay him 3 silver pieces a day and give him room and board (meaning, he bunks with me). The halfling is good at spying and always seems enthusiastic.
30th Of Rain
Today I buy some supplies and to go work. I ask my mentor, Gorti Jurgen (she’s the Guild’s ranking rep at the Undercity office), about sources of aethel crystal. She shows me on a map the location of the Fevered Moon candle shop in the North Market and explains that extensive caves lie beneath it. It’s not real close to the Spire (Myraeth had told us he knew of an old source near there) but it is near the King’s River. The notes we were given about the aethel crystal mention a cold river.
Meanwhile, Diethan learns that Shilukar’s fence, Ammel Dar, was seen around with a fair-skinned elf (Shilukar in disguise?) and a half-elf woman who can only be Biesta, Linech’s addict half-sister.
1st Of Bloom
Today is a litorian Gathering Day. We all raise a cup to celebrate their winning the brawling contest on only their second day in town. Wow, was that only a month ago? Charnoth hears an intriguing new legend about something called Father’s Warclub. Once it was wielded by a female litorian who came to the city looking for something called the Shadow Eyes. This warclub supposedly has the power to heal. Makes for an interesting tale to tell around the fire.
2nd Of Bloom
Today I hear something disturbing. About ten days ago, blood-dripping undead skeletons burst out of an old shack above the Halls of Cordaris, destroying the shack and escaping into the city to wreak unknown havoc. I’m terribly afraid that this is the old man’s warehouse. What have we done by failing to search them out and kill them?
3rd Of Bloom
Barbatos tells us that he’s been looking into the story of Lord Abbercombe. This noble house used to oppose House Abanar, House Vladaam, and House Sadar. It seems that the last Lord Abbercombe was cursed with a wasting disease and died about five centuries ago. Stories claim that ancient wizards tried to find a way to preserve this lord. Is this our golden statue?
4th Of Bloom
Over breakfast at the Ghostly Minstrel, a little creature with batlike wings flies into the dining hall and lands at our table! It snaps its shadowy fingers and a horn appears, which it blows. “Your presence is required at Castle Shard!” it announces. Everyone was looking at us. We were very proud.
We arrive and are ushered in by the courteous butler, Kadmus. We’re surprised, however, to see that Zavere is VERY angry at us. Or rather, at Barbatos. It seems that our wizard pal also secretly publishes a broadsheet called the Midtown Partisan. (Or perhaps not so secretly, since clearly Castle Shard knew about him.) In any case, now it becomes clear that Barbatos’ research on Lord Abbercombe was not simply done out of idle curiosity – the golden nobleman was the lead story in his newspaper’s latest edition. Barbatos had published all the secrets that he could dig up on Lord Abbercombe – and, according to Zavere, a number of lies to boot. This story is generating too much interest in the golden statue we recovered. For one thing, it used to be a secret that he was gold.
Apparently, we can help, though, Zavere has learned that Shilukar has the key to undoing the curse that binds Lord Abbercombe and keeps him in stasis. We must get it. To do so, our first order of business is to find the fence Ammel Dar. We agree to give it our best try, but if you ask me, Barbatos could have been more appreciative of the fact that we all stepped up to ameliorate a problem he created. He just kept mumbling something about freedom of the press and changing the subject.
While we were there, though, we took the opportunity to ask Zavere about local slaver groups, because we fear we have drawn no closer to finding Charnoth and Tharn’s tribemates. The lord of Castle Shard describes the city’s most notorious group: the Ennin (Rill says she knows a sorcerer in this evil organization named Vanum Vaal).
6th Of Bloom
Today, we split up. Barbatos goes off to do more research. Meanwhile, the rest of us go to the Savage Shark again to gather information on Ammel Dar and Shilukar and to meet Salsan. Seanus goes off to search for word of Biesta, since she was lately seen in Shilukar’s company.
This time, we do fortunately meet up with our lizard man friend. Salsan tells us he can take us to the slave city deep below Ptolus—the one that he said some litorians had been trying to escape to. It’s a dangerous place, he warns – a lizard man named Ssethenus who used to be Salsan’s chieftain now rules there. This cruel and selfish tyrant does not welcome outsiders, it seems. But we’re too excited at the prospect of finding Tharn and Charnoth’s tribemates to care about the danger. Salsan explains that few escaped slaves ever manage to leave the slave city, because they have no money, they fear that they’d be recaptured in the city above, but most of all, because Ssethenus won’t let them.
Shilukar is forgotten for the moment as we make our plans to descend to the slave city.
We’re interrupted in our plans by some rude oafs who assail Salsan, Archinemus, and the litorians with name-calling: “animal heads,” “freaks,” and the like. The oafs start a fight, but we’re doing all right till an aram archer joins the fray, assuming that Salsan is a foe. It didn’t take too many crack shots from that centaur before Salsan and Tharn went down. Of course, in the confusion, some of us try to attack the aram, while others just try to get us the hell out of there. Finally, healed by Calista, Diethan and Tharn wind up in their own brawl over the aram’s fate, while I carry our injured out. When the dust settles a bit, we leave a little something for the barkeep for the mess and take off.
The litorians take the injured Salsan back to the Mane for rest and recovery. Meanwhile, Diethan has to carry the unconscious Calista home – this always happens to her when she has to do too much healing. She literally drains her own energy into others. It’s then I find out that Calista lives in the Pale Tower! She has been telling us all along that she’s “staying with friends.” She never mentioned, however, that these friends are ANGELS! Nice to have friends who are the Malkuth! How can I think of her the same way, knowing that while I’m having morning porridge with Seanus, she’s sitting across the table from celestials?
Speaking of Seanus, he found Biesta in short order today, at the Griffin tavern. Only problem is, it’s too late to go there now, and we’re all fired up about freeing slaves anyway. He seems a little put out about that.
Did I mention Barbatos’ latest project? Turns out that this “research” actually involves him imbibing some of the contraband shivvel that we found on the sunken ship and, in his hallucinogenic state, attempting to decipher crazy Velator Timerian’s scrawls and organ plans. He says later that he thinks Timerian used the organ to open up a rift in reality and transport himself elsewhere via portals activated by the organ. How this will help us, I don’t know.
7th Of Bloom
As if we don’t have enough on our minds, today on our way to the Mane who do we run into but Kanagi, the forlaran we rescued from the prison in Cordaris! She says she needs our help, because someone is trying to kill her. How have we suddenly become the ones you come for protection against assassins? All we’re trying to do is buy a shop.
We last saw the foul-mouthed sylph-demon Kanagi a month ago leaving the Halls of Cordaris. Now she’s afraid for her life. Someone’s been following her, but she doesn’t know who. She says that for the last few weeks someone’s been killing those of part demonic heritage, like her. She’s just received a threatening poem from this person, who writes of “A Dream of Death” and her beauty. I can see why she’s freaked out. (Not that anyone’s ever written poetry about my beauty . . .)
We promise to do what we can to protect her and, in return, she says she will take us to a dark elf she knows named Esaer. Maybe he can lead us to Ammel Dar or Shilukar himself.
So Barbatos and I head over with her note to the Church of Phoebul, god of dreams. The temple’s closed till dusk, so instead we visit a Lothianite shrine headed by Brother Fabitor Thisk. He’s been helpful in the past. We ask if he recognizes the poem – is this perhaps some Lothianite attempt to “cleanse” the city of those of undesirable heritage? Although the cleric can’t help us, he does say he’s heard of the tiefling murders. I even check with my dad, but despite all his experience as the Head Librarian of the Delver’s Guild, he doesn’t recognize the poem. He also wonders why I never come home for dinner any more now that I’ve got my own place.
8th Of Bloom
Without any solid leads about the tiefling murders, we leave Kanagi with Seanus for safe keeping while we head off to the Slave City to seek Tharn’s and Charnoth’s litorian tribemates. We are joined by a champion of freedom from the south whom we met a couple days back (he rescued Calista’s moneypurse from a thief after the brawl at the Docks)—his name’s Karaal Kavor. He said that in his homeland, slavery is common, as are other injustices. After seeing these things happen over and over again, he took it upon himself to champion the cause of freedom. He was following some Ennin led by Vanum Vaal from his homeland here to the city (that’s the same Ennin member that Rill of Castle Shard told us she knows), but the trail dried up, so he seems eager to seek out the Slave City with us. Karaal is quite a driven fellow in serving his cause. What must it feel like to believe in something so strongly?
After breakfast, we set out. The entry to the tunnels leading to the Slave City, Salsan said, is at the site of an enormous crater in the Guildsman District. This hole one thousand feet across is all that’s left after a part of the Undercity collapsed during the Chaos Days three years back. People now call this the Delver’s Hole, and it’s a really popular area for explorers. We enter a trap door in the ruins and descend a shaft.
There are gricks ahead! These things are tough (and, strangely, not as afraid of fire as I remember from dealing with them in the Delver’s Guild). We make our way down some stairs and past a number of intersections, but Salsan knows the way. We hear guttural voices and then a cry, “Children of Ravvan, we seek you!” Clearly we are not the people these bugbears are looking for, and we attempt an ambush. “Ravvan decrees that your civilization will fall!” the leader cries. Apparently, this Ravvan person is some sort of beast-god. The bugbears have with them a strange creature we call a “peely-faced cat-dog.” It’s extremely tough, and so are they. By the time they fall, the battle has dropped both litorians and Karaal. We limp back up to the city to heal our wounds. I take the weird creature’s carcass with me, so I can get someone at the Guild to identify it for me.
I don’t seem to be faring too badly, so I go with Barbatos back to the Dreaming Temple of Phoebul in the evening. The black, star-covered temple doors stand open. Within, the temple is maze of small rooms surrounding a central domed chamber, with soothing stars twinkling above (regardless of the actual weather). All around, dozing people (mostly elves) lie on padded mats, on divans, or on large pillows amid soft clouds of incense or smoke.
The priestess, an elf named Saneris, welcomes us. We make a small donation to the temple and show her Kanagi’s poem. She studies it carefully and eventually says, “If this is the description of an actual dream, I would say it tells us two things: that the dreamer is deeply disturbed about something regarding a past relationship – perhaps the death of a spouse or lover – and that he is extremely violent.”
When we try to explain the poem, she says she doesn’t know anything about the tiefling murders. She seems very sympathetic toward the victims and possible victims-to-be, however. And being around all these sleeping people is making me tired. I’m going home to catch some dreams of my own.
