Session 05: Familiar Frustrations

Game Date: July 19, 2008
In-Game Date: Mansday, Grimander 10 – Wainsday, Grimander 12, mid-morning.

Following the impromptu interrogation, the party sends a nearby street urchin to fetch the watch. Meanwhile, Aiden opens the bag of holding and tries to stuff the painting inside. As he brings the painting close to the opening of the bag, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and he feels a sense of eldritch unease come over him. Suddenly the strings of Althea's lute sing out of their own accord. Althea gasps in shock and horror: when a bard's instrument plays of its own accord it is always a portent of the most dire proportions.

Aiden freezes, and takes the painting away from the bag. The sense of unease fades. Althea's lute remains silent now. Unsure of what is going on, the party decides not to put the painting in the bag. Aiden almost remembers something about things that really shouldn’t be put into a bag of holding, but can’t quite place the memory, as he thinks he might have slept through that lecture.

The Watch arrives, and they escort the party, along with the surviving Jeredrake, to the nearest watch house. Brovann meets them there, and tells them that he’ll let them know if he learns anything fro interrogating the subject.

The party has little time to solve the mystery presented by the painting, as they have a dinner with the Baroness Tarmikos and her consort to attend. However, when they arrive they are informed that the Baroness has been regrettably called away, and will be unable to dine together. The butler does not ( or cannot) say where the Baroness has gone. Puzzled and slightly suspicious, the party heads back to the Silverthorne Inn and eats a dinner of much more meager fare than they were expecting.

Gathering in Rowan’s room, they attempt to unravel the mystery of the painting. Lumi says something that causes Aiden to remember the factoid he was trying to come up with earlier. Portable holes can’t be placed within bags of holding, or vice versa, or else one gets rips in the fabric of space that tend to severely inconvenience anyone who happens to be nearby, usually by pulling their bodies through a hole the size of a grapefruit.

A closer examination of the painting reveals that the fabric on the back side of the painting is of a different material than the canvas on which the portrait is painted. Aiden breaks the painting apart, revealing a folded square of a heavy material. Everyone gathers around as Aiden unfolds it, revealing a strange glyph that has been inscribed on the fabric. With the suddenness of thought, there is a white flash. Rowan sees stars for a few seconds, and when they clear, her companions are all lying flat on the floor, having fallen where they stood when the flash went off.

A quick and panicked check reveals that they are all breathing, but try as she might, she can't rouse them. The glyph is still glowing slightly. Rowan grabs the cloth and begins to unfold it. A wind begins to blow around the room, blowing out two candles and causing the lamps to flicker. The wind continues to increase in strength, so Rowan closes the fabric up once more, and the wind dies off. Confused, she takes the fabric, leaves the inn and heads for the Royal Church at a dead run. There she requests an audience with the High Priestess. Daratris greets Rowan warmly, but with concern in her expression. Rowan, trying to make herself and her companions not seem like complete idiots, explains the situation. Daratris tells Rowan that the effect was most likely that of a symbol of sleep, and the effects normally wear off in a matter of minutes, half an hour at most. Rowan, realizing her friends have probably awoken by now and are freaking out because she has vanished along with the portable hole, heads back to the inn as quickly as she can.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party has awoken and is freaking out because Rowan has vanished along with the portable hole. After a minute the party realizes what probably happened, and so they settle down to wait until Rowan shows back up a few minutes later.

Seeing that no lasting ill effects have been suffered (aside from Lumi being wet from when Rowan threw water on her to wake her up), they try reopening the portable hole again. The glyph, its power now gone, has crumbled into powder that is easily dusted off the fabric. As they open up the hole and lay it flat on the floor of Rowan's room, the wind picks uponce more, whipping around their clothes and hair. Aiden reaches into the hole, and feels something try to grab at him! He stumbles back with a cry. Nothing can be seen, the hole remains a circle of inky blackness. Caspian tries reaching in, and is grabbed, but he pulls free. Curious and determined, he tries again, but this time Rowan, Lumi and Aiden hold onto him. Caspian grabs the thing in the hole and they pull upwards.

Out of the hole shoots a humanoid figure. Except for a pair of glowing pale eyes, the thing is translucent, seemingly composed of rushing winds. It looks at them without making a sound for a moment. But when Caspian draws his sword the thing attacks. As soon as the party engages the creature, a second one pops out of the hole and joins its companion in the fray.

The creatures may look made of air, but the blows from their fists land like sledgehammers. Althea gets cornered by one of them and takes a double-fisted blow that snaps ribs and punctures a lung. She activates her invisibility cape and tumbles to the side out of harm's way. The creatures are tall but wickedly fast, dodging both spells and blows with equal ease. Rowan and Caspian quickly find that even their best blows seem to do little damage. But the creatures are not invulnerable. Althea recovers enough to begin singing her haunting melody. The elementals are indeed affected by her song, and the air elementals begin to miss with their oversized fists more often. Lumi, having healed Rowan from some hard blows, turns and attacks as well. Eventually, Rowan’s frost blade, Caspian’s sword-delivered spells and Aiden’s fire magic take their toll, and the creatures dissipate back into the air from which they were summoned.

Panting and bruised, the party once more investigates the portable hole. Poking their heads in side and casting a few light spells, they see a bare hole, perhaps ten feet deep and some six feet in diameter. At the bottom of the hole is a book, and nothing else.

Retrieving the book, they find it in good shape. Bound in leather and metal and perhaps 200 pages thick, it appears written in a language that none of them can read. The handwriting is so precise and regular, had the printing press existed, they would have sworn it was typeset, not written by hand. The book is not magical, as Caspian discovers with a spell. Lumi casts comprehend languages to let them understand the writing; she finds that the cover of the book reads simply, “The Book of the Artificer”

Although the spell allows them to understand the language the book is written in, gibberish is still gibberish. Not exactly gibberish, but the words are highly technical, and make little to no sense to the reader. There are also many complicated and heavily labeled diagrams interspersed throughout the book. They seem to depict the construction of armor, but the level of intricacy rivals, if not exceeds, what the best gnomish engineers can perform. In the middle of the book, where the diagrams are heaviest, some 30 pages have been torn from the book. There’s no way to tell if the pages were missing before Colwyn found it, or afterwards. It’s possible even that the Jeredrakes have the missing pages, and they had come back for the book once they learned where it was.

Lastly, there is a paragraph at the end of the book that is written in plain language. It translates as: “This is the complete knowledge of the Artificer. Use the knowledge herein wisely, and with all due reverence for the forces with which you work. Once more we have taken fire from the gods and used it to warm ourselves. Be careful the fire does not burn out of control. I implore the reader one last time to be judicious in taking the gift that should be the gods’ alone.

“Signed; Caduceus, the last Artificer.”

Confused and disheartened, the party heads to bed.

In the morning the party sells some of the loot they’ve accrued, and buys some needed adventuring gear with the proceeds. They run into trouble when they try to sell Lanarg’s magic breastplate when the shopkeeper, having used a wand of analyze dweomer, realizes that the item is evil, and will curse any good person that attempts to wear it. The shopkeeper tells them that the sale or purchase of magical items of an evil nature is strictly forbidden and the punishments are severe.

The proprietor’s only reluctant suggestion is that the thieves guild might be interested in buying it. Rowan, Lumi and Althea take the breastplate in hopes of selling it to some thieves with less scruples about evil items. Caspian and Aiden continue shopping alone. Caspian has some specific things on his list that prove difficult to come by. The two eventually wind up in a strange cluttered shop run by a small, exceedingly strange hooded old woman who calls herself Tenoctris. She is able to find the boots that Caspian wanted, though she doesn’t have the energy crystal he was seeking. Tenoctris suggests that they try finding the black market. The guys there can usually obtain hard-to-find items, for a fee. It also, she says, might take some time.

Meanwhile, Rowan, Lumi and Althea head back to the tavern that Colwyn’s elf-ladyfriend worked at. They ask as politely and subtly as possible if Colwyn ever gave her pages from the book. She relies with a confused negative. Scratch that possibility.

At the thieves guild, the three ladies make a spectacularly mediocre impression with the guards at the door. Finally in exasperation, the door guard gives them directions to a out-of-the way arms dealer in the warehouse district by the docks, and gives the a passphrase to use so he knows they’ve been sent by the guild.

The girls make their way into the seedier part of the city, eventually finding a small shop nestled into the back of a warehouse. The owner of the shop is gruff and hostile, even after the correct pass-phrase has been given. He offers Rowan a ridiculously low price for the item, trying to convince her that no one else will buy it, so she can either sell it for less than she hoped, or not sell it at all. Underneath all his bluster and rudeness, he seems afraid of both the Jeredrakes and the city watch. After some haggling, Rowan and the other two leave. They’ve only gone a short way when they are accosted by two cloaked figures, a human female and male halfling, by their look. These two direct the ladies to a stairwell leading down to a dingy basement door. Not without some trepidation, the three descend and pass through the door. They enter a mostly bare room, with a desk with a lamp on it providing the room’s only illumination. The only other exit from the room is a door opposite the one they entered. It opens, and a massive figure comes out, ducking to get under the doorframe. He introduces himself as Otter. By all appearances, he’s a bugbear. Rowan surreptitiously activates her headband’s true seeing ability. Otter is exactly what he appears to be, but in Rowan’s eyes, the walls disappear, and instead she sees shelves and shelves of random items of all kinds (think Wall-E’s collection). The shelves stretch off into the gloom beyond the range of her vision. Rowan realizes that they have probably found the black market in Fallo. Otter is a friendly sort, and deals honestly with them, and is the first person to give them a remotely fair deal on the breastplate. He also gives them a deal on a new and slightly better bag of holding.

On the way back from the black market, the hairs on the back of Rowan’s head prick up. She gets a strange but undeniable feeling: someone is watching her. She turns, but sees no one unusual. The feeling persists most of the way back to the inn. She tells the others about it, but none of them can spot anything out of the ordinary.

Everyone gathers back at the inn, and in a few hours it’s time for the banquet in their honor. A carriage delivers them to the palace, and they are shown through lavishly appointed halls into the banquet hall. A courtier announces each of them in turn, with their full names and titles. Only Rowan gets a reaction from those assembled when the announcer calls out “Rowan Liadon, daughter of Laren Liadon!” The Blood Eagles nearest the door clash their hobnailed boots together as they snap to attention and salute her as she passes by.

They are seated just below the royal family and the High Priestess and her daughter. After a few moments, everyone rises for the royal family. The king, as expected, is incredibly charismatic, and is far more handsome than his portraits around the city indicate. The dinner goes smoothly, King Lucan asks the party of their adventures. He knows Aiden’s father from long ago, and also surprises Lumi by knowing Father Tilok! He tells Rowan that her father was in the city briefly less than a week ago, but couldn’t stay long. For a brief moment the King’s smile falters, as if remembering something unpleasant. But the look is gone as quickly as it came, and the king moves smoothly on to another topic.

Before the meal is served, the High Priestess stands, and with a nod from the King, presents each of the party with a silver medallion, The Silver Star of Fall. The palm-sized medal is in the shape of a seven-pointed star, one side for each of the grand dukes. In the center of the star is a stylized eagle in front of crown. She pins the medal upon the breast of each adventurer and kisses them on both cheeks. When she finishes, the king stands and applauds them, and the rest of those assembled quickly jump to their feet and follow their king’s lead. Sitting back down, the king calls for the feast to begin.

There is a small murmur of surprise from the table as Althea stands up a while later and takes her place on the small stage for the performers. Adjusting a tuning peg (all musicians everywhere are required by the laws of the universe to do this), she sits on an intricately carved stool and begins to play. She sings an older but still well-known ballad. She plays the first verse and chorus as an instrumental, then begins to hum along with the second verse. By the third, she sings the notes wordlessly, and on the fourth verse, she begins to sing the words. By this point her fingers are dancing across the strings, pulling a complicated but achingly beautiful harmony to her singing. Althea lets each note she sings hover in the air without any embellishments, using simplicity to enhance the natural beauty of her voice. One by one, the conversations about the table die off as they are drawn in by her singing.

When at last she finishes, she simply stands and bows to her stunned audience, then returns to her seat. The queen smiles, complimenting her on her performance, then asks without preamble if it was her mother or her grandmother who had the celestial blood. Althea smiles and replies that it was indeed her grandmother who was a celestial. Since the beginning of Althea’s song, Anadan, the crown prince, has been unable to take his eyes from Althea. Those with an eye to see also notice that Kitala has eyes for Aiden, though she quickly looks away when he glances towards her, and only stares at her plate when he talks to her. The younger of the two princes, Aellan has noticed this, and looks at Aiden with a cold jealousy.

After a while the king and queen stand and excuse themselves. By custom, the meal is over when the king leaves, but by unofficial custom, there is usually a much less formal gathering with food and drink in a nearby hall where courtiers can continue eating and drinking. Tonight is no exception, and the party heads into a smaller but still richly appointed chamber. A buffet of food is spread against one wall and servants bustle about fetching drinks. Aiden strolls up to Kitala, who is listening to Prince Aellan. Aellan turns and while paying polite homage to one of the honored guests of the hour, he makes his disdain clear. The two young men trade thinly veiled barbs at each other until Kitala, looking like a mouse trapped by a snake, bolts across the room to the relative safety of her mother’s side.

Aellan looks at Aiden angrily for a moment, then sighs heavily. “You know she’s betrothed, right?” he asks, then walks away without waiting for a response. Prince Anadan, meanwhile, is talking to Althea about the possibility of seeing her again before she leaves the city, perhaps for a noonday meal. Althea replies that she’d be honored. Rowan is introduced to Lord Attaper, the commander of the Blood Eagles, and the king’s principal bodyguard. He tells Rowan that he is honored to meet the daughter of Laren Liadon, and if there is ever anything she needs, she has only to ask the Blood Eagles, and they will do it if it lies within their power to do. And the Blood Eagles are fairly powerful.

A little before midnight, the adventurers leave the palace grounds, on foot this time. They head back to the inn and change clothes, then head for the graveyard to discover if the corpse of Colwyn Daystar actually resides there. The graveyard lies outside the city walls, but only a quarter-mile away. A single small cottage stands against the outer fence around the graveyard. A light from within the house leads the party to believe that there is still someone awake within. While Aiden and Caspian stand guard, Rowan, Lumi and Althea sneak in, split up, and begin searching the cemetery. They find a large plot of ground towards the north end of the graveyard where rows of unmarked graves have been made. Seeing as how it’s likely that this is where executed criminals are buried, they realize they have precious little chance of finding Daystar’s body without assistance from the grave-keeper. Then they discover that the graveyard, while not guarded by killer statues at night, is guarded by large, mean-looking dogs. Growling the dogs advance towards the three women. Rowan steps forward and calms the animals with the ease of a professional animal handler. The dogs take to the half-elf even more when she tosses them some jerky from her pack.

Unfortunately the dogs take to her a little too much, and when she goes to leave, they bark at her in disappointment. This draws some shouting from the cottage, and the girls bolt back over the cemetery gate and into the safety of the shadows. The party decides to try and obtain some manner of warrant from the city watch to search the graveyard in the morning.

Again discouraged, the party trudges back to the inn. Once more Rowan gets the sensation that she’s being watched. Even with the rest of the party helping her look around the well-lit streets, they can see no one around. After a few more blocks Rowan sees a furtive figure behind them slip into a dark alley. She follows and corners the figure, only to find it’s a poor beggar man who just happened to be skulking in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sighing, Rowan and the others head back to the inn. The word “Jeredrakes” is on everyone’s mind, though no one says anything until they reach the inn. Once there, they all gather in Rowan’s large suite. Aiden magically booby-traps the door and windows against intrusion; anyone trying to surprise them in the night will get a fiery surprise of their own. Even though they’re all on edge now, the adventurers drop off to sleep one by one.

Althea dreams of a cat she had when she was young. It always curled up on her chest when she would lay down, and nuzzle her head against Althea’s chin. Althea awakes with the first light of dawn to find something actually is sitting on her chest! Though it is cat-sized, the thing is no cat. It looks for all the world like a miniature red dragon with an impressive stinger on the end of it’s scaly tail. It’s eyes are closed as it rubs against Althea’s chin, and it rumbles softly to itself as if purring.

Althea wakes Caspian next to her with a quiet but frantic whisper. Caspian wakes Aiden up, who blearily looks at Althea, mutters, “Oh, for gods sake, it’s just a pesudodragon. Go back to sleep.” Then Aiden rolls over and begins snoring.

In short order everyone is woken up. Althea slowly sits up, and the pseudodragon, with a look of disdain on its face, clambers off her and sits on the bed, staring at them. Aiden, finally awake, asks it a question in draconic, which the creature seems not to understand. Rowan finally casts speak with animals and has a brief but enlightening conversation with the thing. Firstly, this creature is called Bartleby, and is the magical familiar of Colwyn Daystar. This confirms that Colwyn is alive, since a familiar whose wizard dies returns to the wild. They learn that it has been following them ever since they took the portable hole in the painting the day before yesterday. While Bartleby doesn’t know where the missing pages are, he does know that his master ripped them out to begin with. The pseudodragon also doesn’t know where Colwyn is now. But the pseudodragon agrees to remain with the party for the time being; he seems to have taken quite a liking to Althea.

Even though they have proof that Colwyn is alive, the party believes there may be useful information to be had from questioning the corpse that was buried in the belief that it was Colwyn. They head to the central watchhouse of the city and find Brovann. They explain some of the situation to him. Brovann smacks one huge sinewy fist into a palm in grim pleasure. He tells them that the whole situation had never sat well with him, that his instincts told him that there was wrong. He happily gives them written permission to have the corpse exhumed and to perform whatever magics they saw fit to question it. The party wonders if perhaps a local witness would be a good thing to have along, such as a few guards, to verify their findings. Brovann thinks for a moment, then advises them to get a priest instead. Someone trustworthy, but who wouldn’t be as freaked out about speaking to a corpse.

So the group heads to the Royal Temple once more and takes Kitala along. She spies the pseudodragon nestled in Altheas hair and squeaks at it. Bartleby squeaks back animatedly.

“You can speak its language?” a surprised Rowan asks the priestess.

“Well, it’s not really a language, more of a pidgin form of draconic, but yes, I can talk to him.”

Pleased, the party carries on to the graveyard. The gravekeeper, a hunched older man named Earnst, quickly locates the corpse they want.

They unravel some of the wrappings on the corpse’s shroud to find several things. First, the hair on the corpse has been dyed, probably less than a day before his death, to be the same color as Colwyns. It looks like the skin was rubbed with pigment to darken it as well. Lastly, the corpses arm bears a tattoo of a serpent devouring itself, the mark of the Mages of the White Hand. Colwyn had such a tattoo, Bartleby tells them.

They question the corpse. It doesn’t know much, but it tells of being kidnapped, drugged, and disguised to look like Colwyn by men matching the description of the Jeredrakes’ uniform. They were the ones who gave him the tattoo, then used magic to heal the skin around it. He was taken by men who wore the uniform of prison guards into a prison, where they left him in a cell and took a man who looked like him away. Then someone forced his jaws shut while someone else held out his tongue. After a few attempts, the corpse says, his tongue was bitten through, and the last thing it remembers is blood pouring all down his chest.

The corpse lapses back into stillness. The gravekeeper wants to bury the elf’s body, but Kitala steps in. Looking and sounding every inch a noble, she orders the grave-keeper to go fetch pallbearers and a coffin to place this man’s remains in, and have them taken to the royal temple, where they will be interred with dignity and ceremony, so perhaps the poor victim’s spirit may have some peace. As Earnst shuffles off to do her bidding, she blushes and looks down at the ground, mumbling to the adventurers that it just didn’t seem right for an innocent man to have to lie for eternity in a criminal’s grave.

The group makes to leave the cemetery. Aiden remarks that they’ll escort Kitala back to the protection of the temple and then decide what to do next. At this, Kitala’s eyes narrow into gold-flecked slits. She steps towards Aiden and with a speed impressive even to a group of veteran adventurers, pulls Aiden’s sword from its sheath and brings the point within an inch of his eye. Everyone freezes, not knowing quite what the hell just happened. Kitala hands the sword back to Aiden, and with tears forming at the corners of her eyes, she says “I’m not fragile, you know. I am capable of taking care of myself.”

Aiden replies that in light of the attacks by the Jeredrakes, he doubts the truth of her statement.

She angrily replies that she’s not saying that she can take on an evil group of assassins or whatever by herself, she just doesn’t want Aiden to treat her like some fragile hothouse flower of some noble house.

With that she turns and heads towards the cemetery gates, her head bowed and her arms folded tightly across her chest.