To: Mme Helva Longthews,
Kalsgard, Thanelands

Madame Helva,

I apologize for resorting to an advocate as an intermediary instead of personally delivering this package to you, but though we have never met I still feel I am bound by a promise that was made to you and I intend to keep it.

I know that this has been a difficult time. At the risk of salting fresh wounds, I felt it important for you to learn the full history of the events that led to your husband’s death. You may not find much solace in this, but you will at least find some answers both to questions you have, and to questions you didn’t know to ask.

There are two parts to this story. The first, you may think you know because it begins with your ring-giver, Snorri Stone-Eye.

Snorri was, of course, a rather famous Ulfen warrior, widely renowned and feared for his successful raids on the soft lands to the south. Of course, mounting such raids is, itself, an expensive undertaking as one must pay for provisions, equipment, men, and the time to train the latter with the former, with no guarantees of the returns. In his early years, Snorri’s prowess as a warrior with strong leadership skills and a keen eye for strategy was enough to convince investors to provide him with financial backing, and one of the earliest of these was an up-and-coming trade group named the Rimerunners Guild.

For years, the Rimerunners Guild financed Snorri’s increasingly successful raids, lining both their coffers and his, and allowing the Guild to expand their operations in the Thanelands and eventually beyond the Kingdoms across the Crown of the World into Tian Xia. As Snorri’s fame and fortune grew, so did his ambition for even more spectacular raids and more exotic returns. Unfortunately for Snorri, this constant drive to top his earlier successes took a heavy tool on both his body and his mind.

I know that this may be difficult to hear. Or maybe it’s not, and you had suspected this all along but did not say anything publicly out of respect for your lord. I don’t know. But this toll on Snorri Stone-Eye was punishing. He traveled to the farthest reaches of the Steaming Sea, into some of the most extreme and exotic locations in this part of the world, and the stresses of these endeavors proved too great even for him. I don’t expect you to take my word on this, which is in part why I have enclosed his personal diaries (the other part is because his immediately family hid his condition from the world, and sending these diaries to them would serve no purpose other than to suppress truths that you have earned the right to know). My intent is not to disparage Snorri’s reputation, but rather place the evidence of this in your care.

Snorri Stone-Eye believed that his false eye gave him the power to see across time, both into the past and the future. As he grew older, so did his obsession with his mystic, prophetic powers. He had visions of the end times, and in his diary he wrote this: “In the winter of the world, the gods will come down to fight, and the rough beast will be released”. Fearing that all civilization would be destroyed, he made increasingly desperate voyages to remote and dangerous corners of the Steaming Sea, searching for artifacts that would help him survive the fall and the period of desolation that would follow. His final voyage ended in an illness so foul that it would corrupt his soul.

You probably noticed Snorri’s decline in health over the last year. This disease was supernatural in origin. Afflicted with some unusual form of zombie rot, Snorri Stone-Eye died a slow death, gradually wasting away until he rose as a draugr: the walking corpse of a seafarer doomed forever to unlife.

You may find this difficult to believe, and once again I do not expect you to take me at my word. I will offer proof, or at least evidence that you can follow up on, to confirm my claims.

His immediate family and servants hid this condition from the public for obvious reasons, not the least of which was that it would taint the image of the legendary man who had earned the nickname The Mad Reaver. They went to great lengths to ensure his secret would not be discovered, even at his wake. His funeral ship, a longboat of otherwise unremarkable design, was modified to create a deck above the rowing positions and the draugr that was formerly Snorri Stone-Eye was chained inside the makeshift hold. To complete the illusion, a manikin was covered with a shroud and placed on the deck next to the funeral pyre. This would accomplish the task of destroying the undead abomination he had become while still maintaining the illusion of an ordinary funeral. The boat itself was heavily guarded not just to protect the grave goods from ambitious thieves, but also to protect his secret from public exposure. I am sure if you ask the right questions at the docks, you will find dock hands that could hear the faint sounds of dragging and rattling chains coming from the hull of his boat.

As I said earlier, there is a second part to this story. This part begins in Tian Xia, and the repercussions of it will soon be made very public. I can’t predict the accuracy and completeness of what will be said and what you will hear, so I will tell you what I know to be the truth.

Some years ago, a young Tian woman by the name of Kimandatsu came over the Crown of the World and into Kalsgard. She found her way to the Jade Quarter, and eventually into the auspices of the Rimerunners Guild. Over the years, Kimandatsu would grow to become a trusted friend and adviser of Ms. Thorborg Silverskorr. As Silverskorr’s influence in the Guild grew, Kimandatsu’s grew with it and when Silverskorr was eventually elected as chairman of the board, leading the operations of the Guild, Kimandatsu sat at her side.

On a fateful trading voyage at sea roughly one year ago, Silverskorr’s ship ran into severe storms and Kimandatsu was lost. Silverskorr was, of course, devastated by the death of her friend, and it forever changed her as a person, and as a leader of the Guild.

That is the story you have heard. This is the real story.

Kimandatsu was not human. She was, in fact, an ogre mage, one with deep maroon skin. Her reasons for coming to Kalsgard were to establish an organization of assassins backed by magic in order to increase her power and influence in the Thanelands and beyond.

As an ogre mage, Kimandatsu also had the power to alter her form. It was not Kimandatsu that perished at sea, but rather Thorborg Silverskorr. It is believed, though not proven, that Kimandatsu murdered the real Silverskorr and used the storms as a convenient cover for her action. She then assumed Silverskorr’s identity and returned to Kalsgard to take control of the Rimerunners Guild, and used it as a front for her underground operations.

It is here that Snorri Stone-Eye’s, Kimandatsu’s, and Asvig’s lives converge.

With his health failing, Silverskorr was now in need of a capable henchman, troubleshooter, and lieutenant. Snorri Stone-Eye’s most trusted subject was your late husband. When Silverskorr needed work done that neither she, nor the Guild by association, should be directly involved in, she turned to Asvig.

Unfortunately for your husband, Silverskorr made a demand of her trusted followers. In exchange for the rewards in both money and influence they would receive in her service, she used her magic to place each of them under a unique form of geas, a spell that bound willing subjects to certain actions and extracted a price in blood should its terms be broken. I would be remiss if I did not emphasize that Asvig agreed to this condition.

While the specifics of Asvig’s terms with Silverskorr may never be known, the penalty of the geas was triggered on the night of Arodus 11th, 4712, and it cost him his life.

Again, I do not expect you to take me at my word. As I said earlier, this information on Kimandatsu and the Rimerunners Guild will soon become public (if it has not already). I cannot offer proof of everything that I have written here, but you will be able to confirm much of this with the right investigations. Whether or not you choose to do so is, of course, up to you.

Shelyn teaches us that love is the greatest of all things. Nothing can ever replace your loss. But the coming months will offer a number of opportunities for a woman of your stature, particularly one that has the advantage of being armed with the truth. I can’t say that you and I would ever see eye to eye on certain matters, or that we would have ever called one another friends even before your husband was taken from you. I can say, however, that you have suffered because of a force outside your control, one whose sole purpose in life was to rain misery and hate on others, including those who supported and helped her. You have been taken advantage of and wronged.

No weregild has been offered as compensation for your husband’s death at Kimandatsu’s hand, and in accordance with your customs you are entitled to blood vengeance. Interested parties have saved you the trouble. Enclosed is a piece of her remains.

I will hang a prism for you and your husband on Crystalhue. May your heart, eyes, and mind be filled with the beauty of the world.

Respectfully yours,
K.

Tindertwigs. Chain shirt. Sword. Furs. Snow shoes. We knew, we knew, these were Ulf’s things and we knew he was here. We picked through the trunk some more, just to be sure. Axes. Climber’s kit. Check. Check check check. And then. Gods, and then. Leather armor. Rapier. Samisen. I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Hollowed out inside. Ameiko. I thought I was going to be sick right there.

I’ve felt real panic before. Dread. Fear. I mean, I thought I had. I grew up in Sandpoint after all. When I was eighteen we were trapped in our home when giants raided the town. We had heard the rumors for days, and were preparing that morning to leave but we weren’t fast enough getting out. And, BOOM. From the north gate, just a stone’s throw from our house, they were there. We weren’t ready. We hunkered down in the center of the house for what felt like hours, mom and dad lying to each other and to me that everything would be OK.

It’s one thing to feel fear and panic because your life is in danger, because you don’t have control over events around you. It’s another to know that you had basically one job, one gods-damned job, and you blew it. We hadn’t kept Ameiko safe. I hadn’t kept her safe.

My head spun. What had we done wrong? A thousand things. We left her with very little protection. She didn’t have Radella’s ring. The caravan was no secret. We’d been spied on for days. They probably knew what she looked like. The list goes on. What hadn’t we done wrong?

Of course she would go out on her own. We should have known. She just wanted more information about what lay ahead. About what should be her kingdom. And she’d been cooped up since we got here. Wouldn’t I have done the same? Hadn’t we both done this countless times when we were kids? At the very least we should have left her the ring. Stupid. Stupid! But maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. I don’t know.

Is this what mom and dad felt? Every time I came home with a bruise on my face, or a tear in my clothes? That they had failed me somehow?

They grabbed her they day we left. The very morning. She must have been brought here in the middle of the night while we were holed up in the cloak room. We had no idea. (Yet another failing. Why hadn’t we purchased a few scrolls so we could stay in touch with the caravan?) It explained how reinforcements had gotten here so quickly: they were already on the way, just a few hours behind us. They just didn’t realize that’s what they were when they left.

We got lucky. Ameiko wasn’t here long enough for Kimandatsu to do anything more with her than just throw her in a cell, more or less. I imagine just having the heir was not enough. Kimandatsu probably needed the Seal, too, as well as the scions. Us.

Well, she got us, just not in the way she was expecting. And now Kimandatsu is dead, and Ameiko is safe, and the Frozen Shadows are finished.

To get to Kimandatsu we had to push our way through Runecaster. He resisted. Violently. He put up quite the fight, too, despite being outnumbered. With some well-placed spells and quick thinking he was able to spread us out, taking us on just a couple at a time, but in the end it only delayed the inevitable. We caught up to him before he could get help, and that was that.

Runecaster was an odd creature, a half-troll of some sort. I’ve seen a number of breeds over the years, but nothing like him. The troll half was obvious, but the other? Not so much. I can’t help but feel saddened by how this turned out. I mean, the circumstances of his birth were probably not great (how could they be?) and I doubt he was a popular figure here or anywhere just by the nature of what he was. His life was probably difficult. The Frozen Shadows was likely one of only a handful of options for him, all of them bad. How much of this life had he chosen for himself? How much had been chosen for him, just by limiting what he could choose? Did that leave this place as the best of his options?

Kimandatsu I have less sympathy for. And by less I mean none. As Lute had claimed, Silverskorr was indeed the purple ogre–her skin was a dark maroon and two large tusks stuck up from her jaw–and as we had suspected she was an ogre mage and oni from Minkai who had come to Kalsgard for reasons unknown (almost certainly in pursuit of Ameiko’s grandfather), worked her way into the inner spheres of the Rimerunners Guild, and taken Silverskorr’s identity. We don’t have proof that she murdered the real Silverskorr at sea, but what other conclusions are there to draw?

She was surrounded by over a half dozen of her Tian ninjas, having some absurd social gathering, and we cut through them like paper. Kimandatsu, herself, was the bigger challenge, first figuratively and then literally as she reverted to her true form, but Olmas had Suishen and I had my spells and enough of the others were able to hound her until she fell. She tried to hide using invisibility, but Suishen granted Olmas the power to see, and of course we had spent far too much time around these Frozen Shadows vaunters to not have learned that they only have two tricks. I had purposely prepared the same spell multiple times, and unleashed bursts of glittering dust into the room, coating her form each time Olmas called out her position. I exhausted all of my spells, bringing in a giant bat, and even drawing upon my own élan vital to manipulate a scroll to a more advanced summons, just as I had done at Brinewall. This last part was, I suppose, overkill but I felt like being thorough.

Ulf and Ameiko were held captive in a stinking cell filled with stagnant water, guarded in a manner of speaking by giant frogs with glowing eyes that nearly blinded us just as they had blinded their charges. Ulf looked particularly bad having been here for several days. We’ve given them healing and food, but only time will restore their vision.

While we wait, we’ve been discussing the future: both ours, and the Rimerunners Guild’s. The latter will almost certainly cease to exist. Once Lute returns and tells his story, backed by the physical evidence we will take from this place, they will either collapse on their own, or be crushed by the Crown. What little legitimate business they had will be overshadowed by the organization of assassins they had been unwittingly fronting (and I suspect the “unwitting” part will earn them very little sympathy).

As for our part, we are taking the money. That vote was almost unanimous, and though there were some objections raised about the money belonging to the Guild, it will almost certainly be seized if we don’t seize it first. When the objections continued, Suishen actually spoke up.

“You humans are terrible at managing your finances. I languished in a collector’s hoard instead of defending my family for decades because some idiot didn’t have enough money with him! I say get enough money to accomplish your mission this time.”

This did put an end to the brewing argument, I’ll grant it that. But. Fuck you, too. I manage my finances just fine, thank-you-very-much.

More problematic is the matter of  Ravenscraeg itself. Qatana insists on selling it as if it were our property just because we are standing in it. There was a legal sale, title transfer, and so on, making it formally property of the Rimerunners Guild. There is no skirting this. If the Crown does step in, which I am sure they will, there will be no finders-keepers rule. I’ve tried to explain that multiple times but she won’t hear it.

I eventually just dropped the subject. The realities of what we can and cannot do will become clear in due course.