Moonday, Sarenith 27 (evening)

Getting weapons and armor into a venue that allowed neither was not a difficult challenge. We banked on the fact that security had not been searching bags or packs (though as team managers, neither Meril nor I had to worry about that—it was common practice to bring equipment for the teams in and out in this manner) or examining people for enchantments. Everyone took a different approach. In my case, I carefully stuffed my horsechopper into my magical storage pack before heading out. Donning armor would not be practical, of course, but I had a spell that I typically reserve for social situations that would be good enough, and a couple of long-duration protective spells that we cast before we entered.

We arrived at the arena well before noon. Unlike on previous days, we sat more or less together: by prior arrangement, Meril and I took seats in back of the section reserved for managers and sponsors, and my friends sat in the general seating right behind us. We were expecting the arena to be full, hence the early arrival to ensure we were all together.

As I sat down next to Meril, I handed him a potion that would give him the ability to fly.

“If you tell anyone I gave this to you without charging you for it,” I said, “I will deny it until my dying breath.”

Our plan started going awry almost immediately. The master of ceremonies, Talabir, took to the field to start the games off, and he had Auric and Khellek in tow. A number of questions raced through my head: Why was Auric walking out onto the field? Had Celeste gotten the message to him? Did he believe it? What in the name of the gods was he thinking? And so on in that fashion. They all boiled down to a single, alarming thought: Auric is right there, and we are in deep trouble.

We didn’t have to wait long for that trouble to start, either. Talabir barely got through his opening when we heard a loud bang! as the ground shook violently. I immediately reached into my pack and pulled out my horsechopper, and called upon a divine spirit to enhance it. Next to me, Meril had pulled out his crossbow, and I quickly cast an enchantment spell on it. Behind me, I heard my friends casting various spells. None of us were worried about attracting attention at this point.

Down on the field, our two teams exchanged long glances and steeled themselves for battle. Then the ground shook again, and the Apostle of Kyuss erupted from the center of the arena. More spells fired off behind me as my friends prepared to enter the fray. I pulled out my potion for flight and cast a spell to imbue my horsechopper with divine power.

And then it all went wrong. We heard Raknian yell out from his box in the stands, “Yes! The hour is here! Lo, the Apostle of Kyuss has emerged! There is your champion! There! There!”

In a single motion, the Apostle leaned over and closed its maw around Auric. His screams cut off as he disappeared from view. We never had a chance to save him. Around us, the crowd erupted into a panic and people started running for the exits.

“Shoot Raknian,” I said to Meril as I stood up. I reached out to form a human chain with Sera, Zhog, and Viktor. In an instant, we vanished from the stands and reappeared on the ground, barely 50 feet away from the giant maggot as hundreds of tendrils emerged from its body, writhing in all directions.

A barrage of arrows arrived from up in the stands, courtesy of Arcane Auriga, and from the two teams on the field. The Apostle’s tendrils deflected most of them, but a few got through and sank into its flesh.

From up in his box, we heard Raknian scream in pain. I looked up just in time to see him drop to the ground. Then all around us, ghostly figures rose up out of the arena grounds. The panicking crowd became a stampede as people trampled one another to escape.

On the field, the Apostle turned to face Ilthane’s Fury and spewed a torrent of acid, burning them all to within inches of their lives. They couldn’t stay in this fight with injuries that severe, so we needed to give this thing a much bigger target.

“Viktor!” I called out. “Enlarge me, please!”

I downed my potion and flew forward to engage it, growing in size as Viktor’s spell enveloped me. Sera flew into view ahead of me, darting around the Apostle to try and flank it. In my peripheral vision, I saw Viore, Cress, and Dave jump onto the field from the stands behind us.

Zhog sent arrows flying past me towards the maggot, but each one was deflected by the beast’s tendrils and fell harmlessly to the ground. I heard him scream in frustration.

Up in Raknian’s box, black smoke appeared and coalesced into a skeletal horse. I risked a glance to see Raknian, transformed into some undead knight with dessicated skin, mount this new steed. He paused briefly to survey the scene.

Another barrage of arrows from our allies arrived, most deflected again, but some striking true. The Apostle turned towards me as I approached, and it spewed acid a second time, engulfing me, Viktor and Zhog, but fortunately our protective spells prevented any injury. As my vision cleared, I saw the near-skeletal form of Auric on the ground, advancing in front of us, his armor melted and the remains of his body crawling with worms.

There was a burst of flame as Flit, now flying directly above us, dropped a vial of alchemist’s fire onto the maggot. Sera moved in to follow up with a strike, and the Apostle reared around to grab her in its maw much like it had done to Auric. I panicked, ready to throw a spell to help free her from it’s grasp, but a talisman she was wearing shattered and she magically slipped away.

Auric’s skeleton came after me and hit me hard. I ignored it and went for the Apostle. Calling on Abadar’s power, I smited it three times, leaving terrible wounds across its body. After the third blow, I saw a cloud of golden, sparkling dust explode in front of it, and could see that it had been blinded. Behind me, Zhog took the skeleton down with a volley of arrows.

Up in the box, Raknian launched his steed into the air, cleared the top of the arena, and dropped down out of sight. He was not sticking around to see how this ended, and that meant we’d have to give chase.

Another volley of arrows arrived from our allies, several of them striking the Apostle as it lashed out blindly at Sera. From above, two more vials shattered across its back, one holy water and the other alchemist’s fire, as Flit made another pass. Then Cress sank four arrows into the Apostel’s flesh and it fell to the ground, dead, with a loud crash.

“I’m going after Raknian!” I said, and launched myself up into the air at full speed, arcing over the top of the stands to the north.

I saw Celeste and Rennida directly below me. “Which way did he go?” I called out. They pointed to the northeast, and ahead in the distance I could see him moving through the streets. And that’s when I realized he couldn’t stay in the air for long, which also meant he couldn’t clear the city walls. He had to maneuver through the streets.

We had better options. We could catch him.

“He’s headed for the gate!” I yelled as loudly as I could, and changed course to intercept. I flew over rooftops, trying to cut him off, but he was too fast with too much of a lead. If he made it out of the city we’d never catch him.

Fortunately, Viktor had a better idea. In the distance ahead of me, three figures appeared out of thin air, just ahead of the Bloodsworn Road gate.

One of the figures drew their bow and shot at Raknian. I saw him take an evasive maneuver with his steed, but it was no good: the phantom horse shuddered as two arrows struck it, and then it vanished in a cloud of black smoke, sending Raknian rolling on the ground. He yelled something I couldn’t hear, and as I closed in I could see Cress, Viktor, and Zhog blocking his escape.

Viktor cast a spell, and a huge pit opened underneath Raknian, sending him tumbling down.  Then Cress and Zhog ran to the edge of it, and loosed their arrows.

Yeah, I could have just stood back as they used him for target practice, but I was way too gods-be-damned angry for that, so I floated down into the pit to finish him off, just as Flit dropped two more vials on him. And then it was done.

Sorry, my friends, but I wanted a piece of him, too.

To their credit, the town guard was on the scene quickly, but not half a minute had passed from when the Apostle emerged to when it fell. While I have no doubt that the guard, or failing that, the Order of the Nail, could have stopped it, the biggest obstacle to doing that quickly was not being there at the start.

We spent a couple of hours with the guard, being questioned and essentially debriefed. The captain they sent was surprised Raknian was behind all of this, though he found something about thousands of eye witnesses to be pretty convincing. We took him down to the altar room, now sporting a new entrance in the form of a gaping hole in the ground, and showed him the Apostolic Scrolls. They were sitting there inert, their magic expended.

We convinced the guard to search the manor as well, and learned that Okoral was gone. It looked like he had cleared his belongings out a day or two ago. We figured him for killing Eligos and Pollard, but of course we don’t have any proof of that.

That evening, we met up with the other teams for a well-deserved celebratory dinner (we had no problem finding a place to serve the lot of us: if anything, it was just the opposite, as everyone seemed to want our business just to say we were there). As I sat at that table, looking at all those faces, many of them competitors turned friends, some of them just people doing a job but who stepped up when the call came, I couldn’t help but feel proud of what we had accomplished and how we had done it.

“Every one of you,” I said, standing up to speak. “Is an honest to gods hero of this city. We all did this together.”

“Props to you all,” Viktor added.

We toasted to that, and I sat back down. I was seated next to Meril, of course, and smiled at him as I sat back down. And then suddenly we were kissing, and it was warm, and sweet, and wonderful. Hoots and cheers rose up from around us.

So we kissed again.

Oh, I could get use to this, too.

Sunday, Sarenith 26 (dawn)

We realized there was more of that hidden level that we hadn’t explored yet, so we went searching to see if there was another way to the creature. It turns out that there was, and we even got a look at it, but it was blocked by the same force that prevented us walking down the hallway from Bozal’s altar room. So we were still stuck.

We tried arrows, channeling energy, magic, even poking it with a long pole. Nothing worked.

But, as I said, we got a good look at it, and it was a gargantuan maggot thing, nearly the size of a small house, with legs ending in hooked feet, a cluster of dozens of eyes, and a giant, fanged maw. I felt for auras and registered that same, overwhelming corruption.

We went back to the altar and I stood in the green light once again.

Is it time? Let me out! it said.

I can’t. It’s not possible for us to do that.

Us? What do you mean ‘us’? It’s always been only you.

It’s ‘us’ now.

Are you of Kyuss? Are you with Bozal?

We are with him now.

He will set me free. No… You did something to him!

Yeah.

I will devour you, too, then!

If you want to devour me, you’ll have to help us solve this puzzle. How do we release you?

I don’t know.

Useless! It didn’t know any more than we did.

The question now, was, how much time did we have? Presumably, Bozal knew how to release this thing, but he’s dead. It would be pretty stupid for there to be only one way to set it free, though, so we figured Raknian must have a way to do it, too. But, he wouldn’t know Bozal is dead unless he checked in, and the letter suggested they don’t talk directly that often.

If that’s the case, it probably wasn’t going to be turned loose during today’s match. And, besides, if you were going for maximum effect, and maximum damage, you’d wait for the final championship, when the games would draw the largest possible crowds, and arguably more of the upper echelon of Korvosan society. So we had a day to figure out what it was, and how to deal with it.

To do that, though, we had to get out of here.

Originally, the plan was to get past the guards again, but then we discovered a passageway that led from here to Raknian’s mansion. Which makes sense, I guess, since it’s a lot easier than navigating the secret door and the death traps and so on just to talk to Bozal.

Of course, getting out that way was easier said than done. Cress opened the door at the end of the passageway as stealthily as he could, and saw three guards playing cards, and two very familiar-looking dwarves: Pitch Blade. The guards didn’t see the door open. The dwarves did. And then we had a nasty fight on our hands.

We didn’t want to alert everyone within earshot—fights are loud—nor did we want anyone getting away to warn others, so we threw two spells into the room. The first put most everyone into a state of confusion such they couldn’t tell their friends from their foes. The second plunged the room into a magical silence. There would be no cries for help, and no sounds of battle. There would also be no more spells, but we could work with that.

While the guards assaulted each other, we dealt with Pitch Blade, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel good. They may have been borderline polite to me during the dinner, but to literally everyone else they were obnoxious, bordering on offensive. If they were here now, then they were obviously put here on purpose in case we came through this way, which made them a part of this conspiracy. The fact that they were terrible people was just gravy on top.

When it was over, only one guard was still alive, though he was unconscious and bleeding out. I dragged the bodies of the dwarves into the secret passage for later disposal while Viktor cleaned up and Viore stabilized the survivor and had a private chat with them. The guard was in a tight spot. The three of them had very clearly fought one another, and he didn’t have a good explanation for what happened, so Viore gave him one: a fight broke out during their card game, and it turned lethal. The best part is, it’s technically true. As for Pitch Blade? They were there, but now they’re gone, and he didn’t know where they went or what happened to them. Also true.

Of course, he could always try to implicate us, but that would be a much harder sell. All the guards’ wounds were from their own weapons, and pretty obviously so. And it wouldn’t explain why they had fought with each other. It was in his best interest to stick with this story, and forget we were ever here.

To make sure there was no change of plans, we knocked him back out (this would also help make this more convincing, though I doubt he saw it that way) and quietly made our way up from the manor’s basement. We dispelled an alarm spell at the front door, and then snuck outside between the guards’ rounds. From there, we were in the clear. We got back to the warehouse just before sunrise.

Which, at this time of year is about 4:30am. And you can shut up now because I don’t want to hear it.

(late morning)

Cress and I headed over to the arena to check on the team and the matchups while the rest of the group prepared for fighting the maggot thing. Viktor is doing more research into its abilities and weaknesses, and the others are procuring equipment, along with alchemical and magical assistance.

The matches were already posted and, surprise, Ilthane’s Fury was assigned to fight something called Madtooth the Hungry at noon. That meant Draconic Brood was up against Auric’s Warband at 10am.

I ran into Meril just before I headed down to talk to the team.

“Did you get access to adamantine weapons?” I asked.

“No. We’re going with blanches,” he said. “I just finished the delivery.”

Ironically, we now have two adamantine axes that no one is using, courtesy of Pitch Blade, but pulling those out in the arena would likely be tempting fate.

I nodded and said, “That’s still a significant advantage none of the other teams have managed so far.”

“I hope it’s enough. We’ve come this far, and I don’t want to lose now to those arrogant asses.”

I smiled. “I think the one thing we have in common is that we’d rather be fighting one another for the championship then fighting Auric’s Warband.”

He chuckled and said, “Well, I’d rather be fighting Auric’s Warband than Madtooth the Hungry, whatever that is. They way they are playing it up, it’s a fierce monster of some kind.”

“I guess as the last-minute entry into the competition, we drew the short straw here.”

“I…don’t know. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’ve picked up on it. Raknian keeps looking at your people with a scowl on his face. It looks…personal.”

After a long pause, I just said, “It is. Tell you what. After this is all over? We’ll talk and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Sounds like a story that’s good for a couple of beers.”

“We may need something stronger than that.”

With that settled, I was back in the stands just in time for Draconic Brood’s match. Meril had saved a seat for me next to him.

The battle was truly epic. The crowd was expecting Draconic Brood to fall, but that is not what happened. Not even remotely. It became clear early on that Auric’s Warband had come to rely too heavily on their golems, and counted on their inherent resistance to injury to whittle down their opponents. But to their surprise, Draconic Brood was prepared and they were able to cut the golems down in time. It was a development Auric was not ready for, and when Khellek fell to Draconic’ Brood’s sorcerer Auric had too little support and too many opponents. He yielded, and Draconic Brood was declared the winner in an upset that will likely be remembered for years to come.

I congratulated Meril on his victory.

“Thank you! Honestly, I’m surprised but pleased. So hopefully that means we will face each other tomorrow. May the best team win, and good luck to you.”

(afternoon)

I made a quick run into town after Draconic Brood’s bout to find something I could wear for tomorrow’s games. Again, as the manager, I had to look a certain part, so I needed something that was a little flashy, but I also needed to be able to move and fight in it without it falling apart or getting in the way. I found a dressmaker that was willing to make needed alterations to something suitable, and do it as a rush for pickup early in the morning, in exchange for a generous fee and an endorsement from one of the semi-finalists in the games.

I settled back in next to Meril at the Arena about a quarter to noon. We watched as a large, covered cage or box was raised up from below, and to my complete lack of surprise, there as no sign of frost, or of anything, really, suggesting that it was even remotely cold. The announcer got the crowed worked up, and they were chanting “Madtooth! Madtooth! Madtooth!” as the guards pulled ropes to release what was inside.

What emerged was an immense frog with tentacles in place of forelegs, three eyestalks on the top of its head which could look in all directions, and a frighteningly long tongue. (I later learned this was called a “froghemoth”. Apparently a few very unlucky people have encountered them in the Mushfens, and fewer still have lived to talk about it.)

It was an ugly fight, and the creature was clearly chosen to negate the team’s primary advantage, which was their agility and teamwork. Fortunately, after our discussion a couple of nights ago, Tirra had procured a number of wands for them as a precaution, and they used one that produced lightning bolts to great effect. While it didn’t harm the creature, they quickly figured out that it slowed it down, and by hitting it over and over, they kept it in this sluggish state and were able to bring it down. But it was close and nerve-wracking, and their lives were all on the line (Madtooth certainly wouldn’t stop just because someone yielded). One team member went down to their injuries—not dead, thankfully, but they were at risk of dying right there on the field—and most of the others were hanging on by a thread.

Meril congratulated me on the win. I’ll admit that I was still pretty shocked by the whole thing, though I had enough of my senses to thank him.

“I guess this means we’ll be facing one another tomorrow,” I said.

“Indeed. It will be a good match.”

I smiled and shook his hand. “It will. And I’m pleased we’re facing one another.”

We met with Tirra to confirm that we’d satisfied the terms of our agreement. Though it was Draconic Brood that defeated them, we had provided key tactical information and advice to their manager that resulted in the Warband’s defeat.

“I figured it didn’t matter who won, so long as Auric’s team lost,” I said.

Tirra agreed, and said her guild was content with the outcome. So that is one less thing to worry about.

The question now was, what would tomorrow bring?

We had a discussion about this, because the situation could be even worse than we feared. Last year’s champion was now off the field, but what if “champion” was a generic, not specific, term? Technically, anyone who fought and defeated an opponent could be considered a champion. Would this maggot creature really differentiate between “champion of the games” and “champion in battle”? Did “champion” even matter at all?

Assuming it wasn’t discriminating, its appearance and attack could occur at any time from the final bout through the award ceremony, and it may not care who it eats. We can’t assume its goal is based in semantics.

Regardless, we needed to warn the teams.

(night)

We met up with Viktor, and he told us what he learned of these maggot things, which history calls Apostles of Kyuss. They are capable of generating numerous undead by swallowing victims whole and spitting them back out, and they can unleash a torrent of acid much like a black dragon does. To truly harm them, weapons needed to be made of silver and imbued with holy power.

At the day’s closing ceremony, Raknian seemed surprisingly calm for someone whose pet team just lost, but I guess it didn’t matter who was standing at the end as long as it satisfied the conditions set out by Bozal. Whatever he is getting out of this arrangement—that note didn’t say—it only required that his champions, however those are defined, be in the center of the arena. Presumably because that’s where the Apostle would emerge.

Our suspicions and concerns were growing by the hour, and we met with Celeste to fill her in on what we’d learned. She suggested we could just leave the competition, now that the arrangement with Tirra was satisfied, but this was way more complicated than that.

First off, there was no way I was going to warn just half the people on that field. I was going to tell both our team and Draconic Brood what our suspicions were, and let them make their own decisions. Second, something was going to happen tomorrow, whether the teams forfeited or not. There was zero chance Raknian was just going to cancel events and go home. He’d find a way out of this, regardless, because he had something significant at stake.

What we really needed was help.

I spoke with our team before they went back down to the village and gave them the short version of what was happening. We had told them at the start of the games that we were investigating something under the arena, so they know we’ve been up to something all this time. They weren’t quite prepared for the severity of what we found, but they agreed to stay in the competition. In part because of the prize money, which they stood to gain a significant chunk of if they won, and in part because…they wouldn’t be alone. We would be there tomorrow, too, and prepared to fight. They sparred with me; they know I, and by extension my friends, are capable. And, depending on what Draconic Brood decided, there could be even more support down there with them.

I flagged Meril down next. “Remember when I said I’d tell you the whole story after all this was over? Well, we need to talk about it now. It’s important.”

We picked a tavern that has some private dining rooms to have our talk. This was a much harder conversation, and a much harder sell. Unlike our own team, he had not been part of this from the start, and I had deliberately kept information from him. There were reasons for that, obviously, but the best way to do this without shattering the trust we had built over the last few days was to tell him everything. I started with our arrival in Korvosa, than ran through Zhog’s and my kidnappings, the dopplegangers, the mind flayer, Raknian’s connection to it all, what we found under the arena, the prisoner we had rescued, and even Lahaka’s murder.

“You have to admit, this sounds like the wildest conspiracy theory ever,” he said. “Do you have proof of any of this?”

“We do. I can show you the warehouse where much of this happened, and provide additional evidence while we’re there.”

He agreed to come with me, and we gave him the short tour of the place (“this is the cell I was held in”, “this is where Zhog and I were chained to the wall”, “this is what’s left of the lab equipment”, and so on), showed him the notes from Zyrxog that we hadn’t yet turned over to the city, and ended with Lahaka’s body.

“Tell me you’ve seen that signet ring he wears,” I said.

The strangulation marks on her neck, and the imprint of those two snakes, were sobering. He nodded solemnly.

“You and your team need to decide what you want to do,” I continued. “Our team is staying in the competition. But no matter what happens? My friends and I will be on that field tomorrow. No one is fighting this thing alone.”

“If this really happens, our teams have to count on each other to face the common enemy, and forget the games.”

“Agreed. If this happens, we are all on the same side.

“But you need to be warned: to fight it effectively, you’ll need silver weapons that are imbued with holy power. It will be resistant to magic. You’ll need to be prepared for acid and for undead. We barely have the resources to cover ourselves, but we can help you figure out options for your team.”

We talked this out for a while, and formed a rough plan. Then he asked the only question that really mattered: “How confident are you that we can take this thing down?”

“I am nervous. But the more people we have on the field that are willing to fight, the better our odds. And if we work together, and I believe you are people we can work with, we can do this. We can’t rely on the city’s resources because Raknian is too well connected. If the city knows, Raknian knows, and all this planning will be for nothing.”

“And if we walk away from it, it will be loose in Korvosa.”

“Yes. If you and your team feel they can’t stand up to it, then that’s fair. You do what you have to do. But my friends and I don’t have that choice. Someone has to try and stop it. Right now, that ‘someone’ is us.”

“I hope you are wrong about this.”

“I hope I am, too. But, I am saying to you as a paladin of Abadar, this is what we saw. We may be putting the information together wrong, but this is our best guess about what is going to happen.”

Draconic Brood is staying in the games, and is prepared to fight. He spoke to them not long ago and just got word back to us through a messenger.

But we weren’t done yet. We needed all the help we could find, and we had a good idea of how to get more: Arcane Auriga. They have been at the arena watching the remaining matches, and as unlikely as it sounded, Zhog had a respectful relationship with them, and we could maybe use that to talk with them. We just had to find where they were.

Zhog and I set out to do that, and though his suggestions of where to look didn’t pan out, I talked to people at each place we visited and eventually got a lead. We finally tracked them down to a small tavern in Midland.

They were surprised to see Zhog come in, and didn’t immediately blow us off when we approached. Like I said: respectful.

“Is there someplace we can talk privately?” Zhog asked.

“What’s this about?” Rennida asked in response.

“There’s potentially a significant danger to the city during the games tomorrow,” I said.

They looked at one another, then she nodded her head. So we grabbed a private room.

“As a paladin of Abadar,” I began, “I swear to you that everything we are about to tell you is the truth, as we know it.” I told them the shorter version of the same story I gave Meril, starting at the arena. I also pulled out Lahaka’s body (it was a private room, remember) because it was some of the best physical evidence we had.

“We are going to be on that field tomorrow, no matter what,” I said. “It’s not fair to ask you to put your own lives at risk, but you know how to shoot arrows, and you are good at it. If you can get them silvered and aligned, then even from a distance, you can make a difference.”

They’re on board, too.

Then the night took a bad turn. We sent messengers to Ekaym and Eligos. The first was to arrange a meeting with him early in the morning, and we got a reply not long after confirming a time. The second was to apprise Eligos of the plans for tomorrow. That messenger returned, reporting that no one answered the door, but the door itself was standing slightly ajar.

We immediately sent for Celeste. She was a bit annoyed at being summoned so late, but when we explained what happened she agreed to accompany us to investigate. We found the home exactly as described, and cautiously entered. It didn’t take long to spot Pollard’s body lying in a pool of dried blood. His throat was cut wide open.

“This is not good,” Zhog said.

“We screwed up,” I replied. “We should have checked on Eligos sooner. We should have been protecting him.”

We found Eligos in his bed, apparently assassinated in his sleep. After a very long silence, I said, “We need to notify the authorities.”

“Without implicating ourselves of any involvement. In fact, it would be best if we weren’t here right now,” Celeste added.

Except there was a pile of papers and items that all pointed to us, presumably in his study or whatever room he used for research. Being detained as persons of interest ahead of tomorrow’s games would be a disaster. So Sera and Cress went looking, and turned up his research and our items, all organized in a nice bundle. Looks like he had finished his work, and was in the middle of a final letter to Allustan. We gathered it all up and left.

We used the time as we walked back to the warehouse to tell Celeste what we had planned for tomorrow. Then Zhog pointed out something we missed. “We haven’t warned Auric’s Warband.”

Crap. He was right. “We need to let them know that they’re at risk,” I agreed.

“You don’t think they are in on it with Raknian, do you?” Celeste asked.

“It feels more like a, ‘Here’s my champion, sitting right here next to me’ scenario,” I said.

“OK. I’ll talk to them.”

That’s as many people as we think we can warn.

Moonday, Sarenith 27 (early morning)

Today is the day. The final bout is scheduled for noon.

Ekaym met us at the warehouse at 7am.

“It’s bad news,” I said. I get that this was not exactly a gentle start. Give me a break; I’ve never done this before and wasn’t sure where or how to begin.

“Bad news is better than no news.”

“Your sister is dead. She was murdered by Raknian, then turned into a zombie. We destroyed the zombie, but preserved her body.” I pulled her out of the bag again and unwrapped her. “You can see the marks around her neck. And the imprint of what we believe is Raknian’s ring. I’m so sorry. We all are.”

He was obviously very upset. And while he had every right to be, we needed to be sure he didn’t do something rash, especially ahead of the match today.

“Listen to me. We think something horrible is going to happen during the games.”

“Something horrible has already happened!”

“Something even more horrible than this. Listen. Please.”

And I laid it all out to him.

“I know I am asking a lot of you,” I said, “And it’s not fair. But, please, wait until after the games to take action. There are thousands of lives at stake now.”

He considered for a moment, then nodded and said, “I can wait another day. And, thank you. For finding her.”

We have planned as much as we can. All we can do now is see it through.

Sunday, Sarenith 26 (small hours)

We returned to our favorite manhole just before midnight, and immediately there was a new wrinkle. The cover was sealed with magic, and a small sign was posted next to it.

ACCESS RESTRICTED

Access to this sewer opening is denied to all without express permission by the East Shore District office. Existing permits rescinded unless countersigned by the East Shore District.

We backed off while I considered the matter, though it didn’t take me long to come up with a legal argument in our favor that would likely hold up in court. The city of Korvosa issued our pass to enter the sewers to perform our investigation, and there were three potential sticking points.

The first was that the pass was issued to us to investigate the source of the doppleganger conspiracy, and while we did get to the root of that, we also came across evidence of another crime committed by an influential Korvosan citizen, namely Loris Raknian. While I wouldn’t normally claim that our authority to investigate the first crime extended to the second, the fact is that Raknian’s involvement suggested a conspiracy with the first, and a conspiracy makes the two one and the same. Which means our authority to investigate was still valid. This was perhaps a shaky argument, but a logical one that I was confident we could defend.

The second issue was that the local authority was denying us access to the sewers. Here, we were on much more solid footing. While the East Shore District did have a right to restrict access to their sewers, the fact is that their authority did not trump the city’s. The East Shore District did not have the authority to revoke our pass.

The third was that we’d need to essentially circumvent the lock to exercise our authority. This was more of a gray area, but we could argue that the manhole cover was illegally and unreasonable sealed, and that the city was not consulted before taking this action. As our investigation had some urgency, there wasn’t time to go through proper channels to get it resolved.

So we broke in.

We also set off a magical alarm, but we learned our lesson and spotted the second one in advance. Viktor dispelled it, and we entered the sewer with no further interruptions. Since the second alarm didn’t go off, I think the guards up above assumed we had tried, and failed, to get inside. Whatever the reason, no one came looking for us.

With spells to conceal our passage and surround us in a layer of breathable air, and potions for invisibility, we managed to carefully sneak our way past the guards between the village and the arena’s underground. There were more alarm spells to contend with, but Cress summoned a dire rat to set them off and provide a visible distraction. This worked exceptionally well, and soon we back in the wine cellar.

With the assistance of a spell to locate secret doors, we found what we suspected was there, but had missed the first time. It opened up to reveal stairs going down. They were protected by a trap that Sera says was designed to outright kill the first person who entered.

Someone was going to a great deal of trouble to keep people out of here.

With that trap disabled, we descended to what we think was a sublevel halfway between the first basement level of the arena and the second…and were immediately accosted by over a dozen undead, most of them worm spawns of Kyuss. And beyond them was where we found the tiefling that was the source of all this trouble.

He sent two shadow demons after us, but they didn’t last long and soon we were facing him directly. That’s when he tried to bargain with us. “You know nothing of the forces at work here. Kill me, and you unleash your worst nightmare, without me to stop or control it!”

Or at least, it sounded like he was bargaining. I did some quick calculus on this: we keep him alive under the assumption that he will, what, exactly? Not unleash our worst nightmare? Be willing and able to control it if it gets out, anyway? This seemed like a bad deal to me, because it was open-ended, lacked specifics, and, let’s face it, there weren’t a lot of reasons to trust him.

Once he got the message we weren’t going to ask him to clarify his offer, much less take him up on it, he said, “I am nothing compared to the horror that I am preparing. Strike me down! My revenge will then be sure because it, uncontrolled, unfettered, will destroy you utterly!”

Then he recklessly charged me, and hit me with a spell that would rate as the singularly most unpleasant experience in my life. Wounds just erupted across my body and I nearly collapsed on the spot. I heard Zhog scream in a panic; he had a spell that monitored our health and it was one hell of a shock to both of us. Not gonna lie: I was very afraid for my life in that moment.

And, again, this is why I don’t banter during fights. Sometimes the unexpected happens. You don’t gloat until it’s done.

Fortunately, my friends acted quickly and provided some desperately needed healing. And the tiefling was now in the middle of the group of us because it was a suicide run, one where he planned on taking at least one of us—namely, me—down with him.

Now that he’s dead, the question became, “what now?” And it didn’t have an easy answer. It still doesn’t.

The Apostolic Scrolls were on an altar in the room, protected by some sort of force barrier. A green beam of light ran from them, down a long hallway and stopped in a dead end. I checked for auras and there was an overwhelming taint just beyond the wall. And as I stood in that green beam, I realized something was talking to me inside my head.

Bozal? Are you there? I feel my strength growing every day. So hungry…when will you let me feed?

I said to the others, “I think his name was Bozal”.

When can I be released? it asked. I am ready!

I tried thinking a response back to it. Bozal is currently out of the office. Would you like to leave a message?

A cautious reply came back. Who are you? Are…you of Kyuss?

I ignored this while we explored the hallway. An invisible force prevented us from passing more than half way down. And by “prevented”, I mean, “jolted me hard enough to hurt and prevented me from passing”.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get to whatever this thing was, and nothing was panning out. So I entered the green light again and asked, What would you like to eat? I mean, why not? If it’s being fed, there must be a way to feed it, right?

It answered back, Souls of the living! You promised me the soul of a champion!

Which is not at all the answer we were expecting. A complete picture of what was going on was starting to form: this thing would be unleashed at the end of the games, on the unsuspecting victors, and probably the unsuspecting crowds of thousands at the stadium. Not good! Not good at all!

We took a break from this puzzle to explore Bozal’s chambers, and that’s where we found our next surprise: a zombified woman matching Lahaka’s description. She didn’t react to us, and I went to put her out of her misery when Cress stopped me. “Her throat,” he said, pointing. “Look at her throat.”

The process of turning her into an undead had preserved the evidence of her murder. She had been strangled, and along her neck was what appeared to be the imprint of a ring. A ring with two serpents intertwined. A ring whose design exactly matched the one we’ve seen Raknian wear. He had strangled her then dumped her body on Bozal.

We destroyed the zombie, careful to preserve the neck, wrapped her body in cloths, and stuffed her in the magical bag for now (what else were we going to do with her?). I did not look forward to delivering this news, or her corpse, to Ekaym, but at least he’d have his answers.

And I think we’re going to need a new bag, because we keep shoving corpses in this one.

Also interesting was an incomplete note, apparently penned by Bozal. It read,

Raknian,

Don’t lose your focus. You have a bigger prize here and you know what is at stake for you personally. Just make sure your champions are at the center of the arena at the appointed time and you will have your promised reward.

We went back to the room with the scrolls and the creepy green light to consider our options. The best way to stop whatever was planned was to kill this thing here and now, but we couldn’t figure out a way to get to it. We proposed and rejected a whole slew of ideas, ranging from the impractical to the impossible, and got absolutely nowhere. Our only solace was that we still had a couple of days of games ahead of us.

“If we can’t figure out how to get to this thing,” I said, “and we’re right about our suspicions, then we need to be prepared to take it down when it…bursts out…” My words just kinda died off as a horrible thought occurred to me. “Oh, crap! I just realized something! That thing told me what it was hungry for: it said, ‘Souls of the living! You promised me the soul of a champion!’

“The soul of a champion, not the soul of a specific champion. There’s already a champion! Last year’s champion is in the games right now!”

Shit!

Starday, Sarenith 25 (afternoon)

I met with our team early this morning after the match-ups were posted. They are set to face Pitch Blade at noon.

Our team has two options for dealing with them. The first is to use magic to curtail their fury. There’s a spell for quelling rage and other strong emotional states, but violent acts like those found in, say, a gladiatorial battle, break the spell. That would make it a temporary solution at best, and one that’s not particularly reliable. This leaves the second option: run out the clock. The fighting style the dwarves use is based on working themselves up almost into a frenzy, but it’s not one they can sustain for long.

As we talked it out they were favoring the option two. Pitch Blade’s big disadvantage was that there were only two of them. In the first match, they won not just because their opponents were woefully outmatched, but also because they took advantage of the free-for-all nature of the fight to team up on individual combatants who had little to no support. This strategy wouldn’t work as well in a one-on-one bout, so a giant game of keep-away could very well wear them down, and rob them of their most effective tactic. And Ilthane’s Fury could also keep a couple of scrolls at the ready for opportunistic use.

With that out of the way, I headed back up to the manager’s section to watch the first match of the day: Auric’s Warband versus Final Phoenix. Unlike the Warband’s first bout, the battle wasn’t as lopsided and Final Phoenix even held their own for a while, but they, too, struggled against the flesh golems and it was just a matter of time before they went down. The last team member yielded and Auric’s Warband emerged victorious.

I saw Zhog talking to a couple of the elves from Arcane Auriga during the free time after the match (he had tried to chat them up during the dinner a couple of nights ago but was soundly rejected, but I guess his persistence paid off). An archery range was set up in the arena for the public to try their hand at it, and he and the team’s leader, Rennida, had an impromptu competition. Zhog is found family to me so I went over to watch, and he put in a rather impressive showing. Enough that Rennida agreed to a round of drinks in a show of respect. Good for you, little brother!

The next match was ours against Pitch Blade, and just as we had discussed, the team relied on their agility to counter the dwarves’ brute strength. They would get the dwarves worked up, dash just out of reach, then lure them back in so a teammate could land a strike from behind. This pattern repeated itself several times, with no one really landing any decisive blows, until fatigue finally hit. Then Ilthane’s Fury descended on them like a pack of wolves, landing precision strikes over and over. It was not the most exciting battle because it dragged out for so long, but a victory is a victory, and the crowd erupted at the upset.

Both Raknian and Okoral were furious. I rushed down to congratulate the team on their win, and overheard the latter speaking quietly (but not quietly enough) to the defeated dwarves on my way back to the stands. “This isn’t over yet,” he said ominously. “Meet me in my office later.”

Some people just can’t handle losing. Especially when those people are Raknian and his lackeys, and the people they lose to are us. I made a mental note to warn both the team and Celeste about possible reprisals outside the games.

After a quick lunch, I sat next to Draconic Brood’s manager for their bout at 2pm.

“Congratulations on your team’s victory,” he said to me as I took my seat.

“Thanks. And best of luck to you in your team’s match. My name is Bel, by the way,” I said, offering my hand.

He shook it and said, “I’m Meril. Pleased to meet you.”

Draconic Brood was up against Snow Leopards. It was a lengthy bout because they were evenly matched, and it ended up being a crowd favorite. In the end, Draconic Brood emerged as the winner.

“Congratulations!” I said to Meril.

“Thank you! Honestly, we’re just happy to be here, much less to have made it this far.”

I thought he’d been an awfully good sport throughout the whole games so far. Most of the other managers are either stand-offish or openly unfriendly. Meril was a refreshing change.

“Would you…be up for dinner this evening, to celebrate our victories?” I asked.

He seemed shocked that I’d even ask, but readily accepted the offer. I suggested an early evening time since we’re planning another visit to the arena underground late tonight.

I caught up with my friends and told them that I had dinner plans. Zhog gave me a hard time about it.

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” he said.

“I have a dinner date first.”

“Maybe you should not go to dinner with some stranger. Maybe you should just go get some sleep.”

Um. Excuse me?

“I’m going to take a nap, then I’m going to dinner, then I’m going to take another nap. And then we’ll meet,” I said angrily. “You just spent time with elves with bows, so don’t give me shit.”

He didn’t have a response to that.

OK. Maybe I deserved it after hassling him about Marzena and their age difference, especially since Meril is definitely several years older than me. That being said, Marzena is almost old enough to be Zhog’s grandmother, so…maybe not.

(evening)

Dinner with Meril was lovely. I think the answer to why he’s been so pleasant throughout the games is that he’s just a really good person who likes people.

Naturally, the conversation turned to the games, since that was ostensibly the reason for the evening out. He confirmed that two of the team members of Draconic Brood are brother and sister, and do, indeed have a draconic blood line. They’d been more or less in the sword-for-hire business taking care of…things that need taking care of. Having fallen into something tangential to that ourselves, I know how that goes and it’s hard to describe it without making it sound like you’re just mercenaries. There was certainly an element of that in their history—one does have to eat—but the difference lies in who you work for and what jobs you take on.

He said they were self-funded in the games. I’ve learned that this isn’t that unusual, though it is a lot harder to field and support a team without a sponsor. You’re basically putting all your own money on the line. Getting past the first round will ensure you break even on the entrance fees, but that won’t cover your time and material. It’s also their first year in the competition, so they’ve made a rather impressive showing making it to the final three.

We both knew that one of us was going to have to face Auric’s Warband. Given what my own team had “accidentally” overheard, it sounded like Ilthane’s Fury was being “randomly” chosen to fight this Madtooth creature. That meant the honor would go to Draconic Brood in the next match, and I realized then that…I didn’t want them to lose.

“Do you have access to adamantine weapons?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

“In case you end up facing those flesh golems.”

He didn’t understand the connection. It was obvious to me, of course, but then I remembered that not everyone’s team has a Viktor. When we saw those flesh golems at the dinner, the first thing Viktor did the next day was research flesh golems: their creation, their abilities, their weaknesses, and so on. According to him, any sufficiently skilled, dedicated, and wealthy spell caster could make one. His research into the process suggested that the big advantages of flesh golems are that they are difficult to injure with weapons, and all but immune to magic. The latter was a tough nut to crack, but the former was solved with lots of money. Something most of the entrants, including Draconic Brood, just didn’t have.

“You could try and get a sponsor, even if it’s just for loaner weapons.” I suggested. “I could help you with the contract.”

“I think it’s too late for that. There’s not enough time to get something in place.”

The other option was blanches. I’ve seen my friends use them. Because they don’t last, they are best used on arrows and other ammunition. He seemed to think this was a more realistic alternative.

The whole discussion was a bit of a downer, though. I guess this is why people don’t come to me for relationship advice.

Wealday, Sarenith 22 (late night)

We were stopped while dropping down into the sewers last night. My maps suggested manhole not too far from the arena, and despite our efforts to avoid them we were confronted by a pair of wardens as soon as we popped the cover.

I showed them our permission slip, but they were more than a little obstinate.

“So, you’re sewer workers?”

“We’re contracted by the city to investigate some strange happenings connected with the sewers, so we’ve been told to go down into the sewers—”

“Yes, yes. That’s what a sewer worker is.” It’s not, really, but if they want to invent a cover story for us, I wasn’t going to argue with them. “I guess this says you can do it. I’m going to go inform my sergeant, but you can carry on.”

That was not part of the plan. The last thing we needed was someone from the arena getting wind of this, so I tried reasoning with them.

“Some advice for you. We’ve got authorization for our work, and no one wants a sewer problem in the middle of the games. You go bothering people at night about trivia, you’re just going to draw the wrong kind of attention to yourself.”

They looked at each other for a moment. One of them finally said, “Well, it is late. We can tell them in the morning.”

“I think that’s wise.”

Crisis averted.

We dropped into the main sewer line which ran from east to west under the arena, and it did not take long to find a drain from the kitchen, and just past that a natural stream that also flowed in from the south. Faint light was visible from that passage, so Sera and Cress quietly worked their way down, and what they described to us matched the underground gladiator village that I had access to. The stream divided the cavern, and a small bridge joined the two sides.

This was all good to know, of course, but we wanted to do a little more exploring to see what other passages, if any, connected to the arena. The underground village was on the eastern end of it, which meant we now had a rough idea of where we were relative to the above-ground structure.

We followed the sewer line westward for a few more minutes, and found another line draining in from the southeast. We deduced that this ran directly under the center of the arena’s underground complex, and sure enough it led straight to a large, central drain complex. There was another natural stream that flowed into this line, so we followed that.

This stream snaked it’s way southeast, eventually running through a series of natural caverns. And this was where we found our first surprise of the night: a cavern littered with rubble and old bones, and occupied by a colony of a dozen ghasts (I am not sure “colony” is the right word here, but I’m going to run with it, anyway). So it seemed that the stories of Raknian clearing out undead from the caverns below the arena had at least some truth to them.

The ghasts weren’t much of a match for us, as we had a choke point to prevent them from swarming us and plenty of options for dealing with them at range. Sera and I moved up to form a defensive line, while our friends bombarded them with arrows and spells. It was over almost as soon as it began.

The second surprise of the night was that these caverns connected to an extremely old underground village, complete with crumbling, stone houses surrounding an alabaster statue of a giant in what must have been the former town square. And this cavern was apparently connected to the gladiator village, because we heard voices approaching from the northeast. We hid in a couple of the old structures.

“…didn’t see the look she gave her companions,” the first voice said. “But trust me, I did you a favor getting you out of that situation. You have better chances with that mystery monster they’re talking about.”

“What’s that about?” the second voice asked. “One lucky team will face deadly combat with a ‘beast most fearsome?’ I didn’t know about that when I signed up!”

“Such bravery, my friend. We will defeat our foes. But here, look, this is a work of art!”

We listened to this gripping exchange, and once the (slightly inebriated) gladiators left, we made our way back towards the sewer line and up to the surface. We now had two ways to access the gladiator village.

Mission accomplished.

Oathday, Sarenith 23 (late evening)

It’s been a long day so far. I was up before dawn because the game organizers have peculiar notions about what constitutes a reasonable schedule.

This is the first day of events, and matches were scheduled every 2 hours, starting at 8am (see the above complaint about a “reasonable schedule”). Each bout was a free-for-all battle between four of the teams. I cross referenced the lineups with the betting odds, and, surprise, surprise, both Auric’s Warband and Pitch Blade were each “randomly” matched up against three teams with the longest odds.

What really galls me the most is just how brazen it all was. You didn’t have to be a math genius—and gods know I am far from one—to see it.

Ilthane’s Fury was set to go at 10am, battling against Arcane Auriga, Sapphire Squad, and Badlands Revenge. Of these three, Arcane Auriga, the four elven women, were the bigger threat, but not by much. I’d had very brief interactions with the other two teams the previous night, and my impressions were that Badlands Revenge were basically dangerous thugs with bad attitudes, and Sapphire Squad was headed by a pleasant and charming, though somewhat self-absorbed, janni.

I had arranged to meet with Tirra outside the arena around around 7am to receive the equipment I requested, and I delivered that to our team. She had secured some adamantine weaponry in case we ended up facing Auric’s Warband at some point in the future, and potions to provide protection from arrows, among other things. The potions were going to pay off right away.

With that done, I went up to the manager’s seating to watch the matches. The first bout was Pitch Blade, and as predicted, it was ridiculously lopsided. The dwarves were actually pretty cunning, working themselves up into a frenzy and then singling out the weaker competitors one at a time, gradually picking them off as the stronger competitors in the other teams went after one another. Once the numbers had dwindled sufficiently, they tore into the remaining gladiators and beat them senseless.

Our match was longer, and actually something of a crowd favorite, because our competition wasn’t a bunch of pushovers. It looks like everyone ganged up on Badlands Revenge, and once they were knocked out, our team aligned with Arcane Auriga to take out Sapphire Squad. At that point it was a battle of attrition, and our team was just in a better position. The last of the elven women yielded, and we had our first victory.

Draconic Brood came out on top in match three. I was actually sitting next to their manager, a pleasant human man a few years older than me, and congratulated him on their victory. Auric’s Warband was in match four, and as predicted, it was a cakewalk. None of the teams were prepared for the flesh golems, and they all went down fast. Khellek barely had to lift a finger. The last two bouts were also evenly matched, but the teams were far less skilled overall. The Snow Leopards and Final Phoenix came out on top in each. The latter was a bit of an upset, which the crowd really loved.

Cress and Zhog watched the matches, too, from general admission seats up in the stands, and they were waiting for me after the award ceremony. We discussed the matches as we walked back to the warehouse—Cress took some detailed notes—commenting on the winners and what strategies Ilthane’s Fury would need for dealing with each.

When the subject turned to Draconic Brood, Zhog said, “They could, like, be your cousins!”

The two that were related actually do have some features that suggest a draconic heritage, and one of them is a sorcerer. I actually have a cousin that has the same talent, so the idea isn’t totally crazy, but I know our family tree thanks in large part to Aunt Esma, and these two aren’t in it. Still, I do feel a sort of kinship there. I made a mental note to talk to their manager the next time I saw him.

We’re going back down under the arena tonight, this time with the intent of getting inside the main underground structure. My long day is about to get longer.

Fireday, Sarenith 24 (small hours)

We dropped down into the sewers again last night and made our way back to the old ruins. Once there, we changed into serving uniforms and entered the Champion’s Village, then used the servant’s corridor to enter the arena’s underground complex and scout around. Activity there as winding down, and that was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it meant we could explore pretty freely, but on the other, if we did run into one of the irregular guard patrols there’d be no believable excuse for why we were there.

The lowest level was basically a giant ring with spiral stairs ascending to the upper level. If you thought of it like a clock face, the stairs were positioned at each hour. It was an enormous waste of space, as there was literally nothing else down here but the one corridor at the 3 o’clock position leading to the village. Obviously no on consulted me on the architecture.

The upper level is a surrounded by a ring as well, with most of the rooms carved out within its interior. We came up at the 2 o’clock stairwell, and worked our way clockwise, passing by an  interior entrance to a mess hall. At the 6 o’clock position, we found the junction which lead to the kitchen outside the ring, and to a set of prisoner cells inside it.

And I can hear you asking, “Prisoner cells?”

Believe me, I was thinking the same thing. Why in the name of the gods would there be prisoner cells here?

One of them was occupied by a man that looked like he had been drug in off the streets, dumped here, and left to rot (later, we would learn just how accurate this description is). After checking his aura for taint, Sera unlocked the door and I slowly entered his cell with my hands outstretched. He recoiled from me, so I squatted on the ground, and slowly pulled out my holy symbol. This seemed to help, but he was clearly terrified of something. He couldn’t talk, and was likely suffering from some affliction we didn’t recognize, but he was able to make some crude drawings on the dirt floor. He pointed to the cell opposite us, and drew stick figures and a squiggle that was almost certainly a worm. From this, we deduced that there had been a prisoner there, as well, and someone had come to them put a worm on them, and then something horrible happened.

We tried to convey that we would come back for him and gave him something to eat while we continued our exploration. Most of what we saw was unremarkable, though we couldn’t be as thorough as we would have liked since we had to keep dodging patrols. But two things stood out.

First, in the very center of the ring was a circular room with a huge stone dome built into the floor. It was nearly 40 feet in diameter and 20 feet high, and it just did not make any sense.

Second, there was a wine cellar just off the hall with the prisoner cells, and it had an unusual architectural feature, like a large alcove with nothing in it, that suggested a hidden door of some sort. Neither Sera nor Cress could find one, but both lacked confidence in the result. There was a spell that could help, but Viktor didn’t have it prepared, so we had no choice but to come back another night.

On our way out, we took the prisoner with us as there as just no way we were going to leave him to whatever fate befell his neighbor. Obviously, him just disappearing would be immediate cause for alarm. The solution to this was one of the ghast bodies we had stashed in our magical storage bag (please don’t ask). We pulled one of those out, and dumped it in the corner of the cell. There’s zero chance that would fool anyone up close, of course, but someone just casually looking in would see a slumped over figure. As I said, the point here was to buy time.

Of course, getting the prisoner past the guards stationed at the entrance to the Champion’s village was a tougher nut to crack. We were able to convince them to climb into the magical bag—they had to share this space with the other ghast body (again, please don’t ask)—but there was no other alternative and it wouldn’t be for long. With a couple of bottles of wine we swiped from the cellar above, we bribed the guards into letting us poor, overworked servers slack off for a bit back in the caverns. They were happy to oblige.

We got the prisoner out and made our way back to the surface. Because we have impeccable timing, we got stopped while exiting the manhole. I quickly swung into action, pointing out we had permission from the city. To speed things along and emphasize the point, I reached into the bag and started pulling the ghast body out.

Just one look at the head was enough for them. “Yes, yes…fine. Just…just take that away! There aren’t any more of those, right?”

No, sir, there were not.

We’re back at the warehouse. It’s late. Or rather, it’s early. Later this morning, we’ll figure out what to do with our prisoner-turned-eyewitness, and then plan our next moves.

(evening)

We determined that our freed prisoner would need healing magic well beyond our capability. He also needed someplace to stay where he would be safe until called upon by the city to provide his account of events. I suggested the Temple of Sarenrae, as they are more likely to do volunteer work, or at the very least provide assistance without requiring compensation up front. Voire agreed, and we made the trek there early this morning.

He took the lead, and got us a meeting with one of the priests high up in the order. We weren’t ready to lay out everything we were doing, in part because we didn’t have a complete picture of it ourselves, and in part because we didn’t want word getting back to Raknian. That being said, we weren’t going to mislead them, either.

“This is someone we rescued from a bad situation. It appears he’s been tortured, though we don’t know that for sure, and he’s suffering from an affliction we don’t understand. He’s not able to talk, and it seems he needs more help than I can give him.”

“And,” I said, “he’s an eyewitness to whatever happened to him.”

“Right. If this was more than an unfortunate accident, then additional steps need to be taken. But we won’t know that until he’s able to talk.

The priest considered this for a moment, then said, “So his ability to speak may be important to the pursuit of justice.”

“Yes,” Voire said.

“He was able to get across to us that he was kidnapped off the street,” I said.

“It help help a great deal,” Viore added, “if he could communicate with us beyond crude drawings.”

“Yes, yes. If this is a criminal matter, would the city be picking up the costs of this?” the priest asked.

I said, “If it’s a criminal matter, I would be more than happy to bill the city, or those responsible for this. The problem is, we don’t yet have direct proof of a crime. Just our suspicions based on what we could learn from him.”

“I am willing to take it on the word of a paladin of Abadar that, one way or another, the debts will be paid. We will help this unfortunate soul.”

“Thank you,” Viore said.

It didn’t take long. Powerful healing magic is amazing that way.

He was immediately able to relate his story, and it was fairly damning. He saw a “bad man”—from his descriptions of them, we deduced that this man was a tiefling—enter the other man’s cell and place a worm on his face. The man started screaming, and within a few moments he turned into a worm-filled, undead monstrosity that sounded very familiar to Viore and me. Then the tiefling led it out of the cell, and down the hallway.

The clerics found this story very alarming, to say the least, and Voire and I figurted we need toi tell them what we’ve been investigating. The only thing we left out was Raknian’s involvement, since we didn’t have proof and also didn’t want word getting back to him.

“You would think a plague of this nature, going on this long in Korvosa, would not go unnoticed,” one of the priests said.

“We don’t know how long it’s been here in Korvosa,” I said. “This is a thread we’ve been chasing for several weeks. It started in Diamond Lake and led west into the Mushfens before making its way to the city.”

They pledged their support, which is good, and for their part they will keep our witness safe. We offered them some gold to help cover their daily expenses for the time being.

There are no matches scheduled for today. There arena is open for public events and some exhibitions, which is a long way of saying that I had the day off. Still, I needed to check in with the team, if only to find out the reaction to the prisoner’s disappearance last night.

I could see immediately on the way in that the guard had been doubled, and they were going about their business with a renewed enthusiasm. According to our team, rumor is that Loris Raknian was seething with rage, had ordered an interrogation of all the guards, and made sweeping changes to the guard schedule.

There was one more thing.

“We overheard a couple of the guards this evening,” Anton said, speaking quietly. “They were complaining about their duties maintaining the cage of a creature named Madtooth, and the cold that it requires.” I don’t know what a “Madtooth” is, but I can guess. There’s been talk that one of the bouts in the games will be a battle with a beast of some sort, rather than a fight between teams. “One of them said, ‘I’ll be happy when they can return the frost salamander back to the Linnorm Kingdoms’.”

Color me skeptical on this. The odds of two guards talking so loosely, at just the right time and place to be overheard, during a time when the guards were under heavy scrutiny for dereliction of duty, seemed pretty remote. Like, “zero” remote.

“Do you really believe it, or was this ‘accidental’ conversation staged for your benefit?”

“They sounded sincere, and I’m not so sure they knew we were there, but I agree that doesn’t mean much. I’m just telling you what we heard.”

“Right. Thank you for letting me know. Yeah, we have to assume it’s legitimate in case you end up facing this ‘Madtooth’ thing, but we should be prepared for it to be a setup, too.”

With the increased activity around the arena and the village, we decided this wasn’t a good night to return.

Toilsday, Sarenith 21 (afternoon)

We met the team that Tirra’s guild assembled. There were five of them in all: Alexanda, Anton, Aurel, Milosh, and Shandu. I sparred with each of them one-on-one and for the most part they were on par with our skill level. We followed that up with some practice as a group so I could watch their tactics, and what stood out is how well they coordinated their actions to assist one another. While they’re lacking strong magical support, their mobility and effective teamwork are a definite plus.

Tirra came through with some information about the construction of the arena that will be helpful in, as she put it, “whatever other purposes you may have in mind that I don’t need to know about.” Of interest is that the arena itself is built over a series of natural caverns, and the builders worked these to create some of the underground infrastructure. Supposedly, Raknian personally went down there to clear out a population of wights before beginning construction to ensure it was all safe.

Tirra’s guild says that these caverns intersect with the sewer system. So it looks like we’re not quite done with the sewers, after all. And I am sure there will be absolutely no wights down there, because obviously Raknian has already taken care of that.

Once inside, we’d need to be able to pass without being heavily scrutinized. One of the better ideas we had for that was obtaining serving uniforms, and with some help from the guild we were able to locate the tailor shop where they are being made. Since I couldn’t participate in a plan that involved outright theft, we tried the audacious strategy of just buying some and that went surprisingly well. The place was swamped and the manager on duty had little time or patience for us, or, well, anyone. This worked to our advantage.

“Show me your work order,” he demanded. When we couldn’t present one, he got angry and said, “No work order, no credit. Cash only! No exceptions!” Which, was just fine with us. It’s kind of nice for things to just randomly go your way every once and a while.

I’ve found a gown for tomorrow night’s dinner, one that is not too formal or flashy, and a bit durable since it is an outdoor event, along with some jewelry to accentuate it. I’m going with simple, tasteful, and moderately revealing (I am not generously endowed, but I do have a bustline and I’m going to show it). I’ve also picked up some simpler dresses that are comfortable and befitting a team manager. We’ll have designated seating during the events, and I’ll be doing a lot of sitting there so I need something that looks nice, won’t show dust and dirt easily, and will be easy to spend the better part of the day in.

I have not bought this many clothes at one time, ever. In fact, even the least expensive dress cost more than I have ever spent on all my clothing, combined.

I could get used to this?

Wealday, 22 Sarenith (night)

OK, I don’t have a lot of time as we are making our first attempt at infiltrating the area tonight.

The dinner was boisterous affair that started with food, and ended with scoping the competition and influencing the bookmakers. Here’s what we learned.

First, Auric’s team, named Auric’s Warband, is more than just Auric and Khellek: they had four flesh golems with them, standing ominously and stoically—I guess that’s really the only look for a golem—behind them as they ate. They were seated at Raknian’s table, obviously a privilege of being the previous year’s champions. (Note: The golems feel like an unfair advantage, but there is nothing in the rules prohibiting constructs.)

The other teams had designated seating so we could get a good look at one another, and as their manager, I was seated with them instead of with the rest of my friends. There were 24 teams in all, and I learned quite a bit just by watching how they carried themselves. Some were clearly more fit and more calculating than the others, and from the occasional chat between managers and the bookies, you quickly got a sense for who the real competition was.

I was also quite pleased to see that some of my team was doing the same: sizing up the competition and discussing among themselves who was who. As they have been in Korvosa longer than I have, they likely knew some of these teams already. It is nice to work with professionals.

Most of the managers and sponsors ate quickly so they could spend time talking to the bookies. Technically this would be Ekyam’s job, but he was spending most of his time just staring at Raknian. And I don’t mean subtly staring at him. The guy was staring daggers into Raknian’s head. So I walked over to him and tried to interrupt it.

“Ekyam. Do you want me to talk to somebody?”

He started in response. “Oh! Uh. Yes! The…uh…” He pointed over to the bookies. “Talk to each one of them about our group, and try and play them up so they’ll do better in the ratings.”

“Okay.”

Abadar does not condone gambling, of course, but betting on the games is legal, and it’s a part of package here, so in this case duty mandated that I take part. Again, this was supposed to be Ekaym’s job, but he wasn’t having it, so it fell to me. As we were latecomers with a relatively unknown team, we were facing long-shot odds and this would not work in our favor, as the less likely you are perceived as a serious contender, the more a cloud just kind of hangs over you. And, Ekaym’s reputation was on the line, as well. If you want to be taken seriously as a license holder, it starts with the betting markets.

It was also, as I said earlier, a good way to get a feel for the competition.

I used all of my, ahem, assets in those discussions, focusing on Ilthane’s Fury’s nimbleness, teamwork, and coordination as their biggest asset. This was actually well received, and I was able to describe specific examples of how they functioned cohesively thanks to our sparring sessions the previous day (but I was careful to not provide too many details when other teams were listening). This goes a lot farther than just simple bluster and braggery, which is what several sponsors and managers were selling. In just a few minutes, we went from wildcards to solid contenders with literally even odds.

I came back over to Ekaym, who was still drilling holes into Raknian with their gaze. I sat down next to him.

“If you keep staring at him like that,” I said quietly, “he’s going to get suspicious.”

He started again and turned away, but didn’t say anything.

“If I’ve noticed it,” I said, “somebody else is going—”

He cut me off. “How did things go with the bookmakers?”

“I’ve got us talked up pretty well, so we’re doing fine.” I didn’t want to let him off the hook, though, so I cautioned, “If you’re hiding something, we need to know about it. If there’s an angle here, let us know what it is.”

“This is not the time or the place.”

“That’s fine,” I said, getting up. “We’ll talk later.”

I didn’t actually want to go into whatever his issue was right then and there, I just wanted him to stop calling attention to himself. And this time he got the message.

Next, I dropped in on the team so we could compare notes. “Which of the teams are the threat here?”

Their answer aligned with my own guesses. “Auric’s Warband are the ones we’re most concerned about,” Anton said. “They are the favorites to win. The other group is Pitch Blade.” This was a pair of rough-and-tumble dwarves, that pretty much everyone had heard at some point because they were loud and rude. “I need to learn more about them. Maybe see if we can catch them sparring at practice.”

Their manager was a man named Okoral, who just also happened to be Raknian’s right-hand man. So that was just great.

Regardless, I decided to pay them a visit. I wasn’t above using a little magic for what might be a challenging conversation, though I gave it some time before I walked over there so there wasn’t an obvious connection.

“So,” I said, with as much charm as I could muster, “I hear you guys are one of the teams to beat.”

Okoral gave me a curt nod while sizing me up. The dwarves, who had been drinking heavily, were a bit more forward.

“That’s right!” one of them boomed. “And we’ll take you down if we’re facing you, make no mistake about that! We are winning this year!”

Considering how they’d been responding to everyone else all evening, this actually qualified as polite.

“I like to hear that kind of confidence!” I said to them, smiling.

Okoral was a bit more muted. After looking at me a little too long—though I suppose this was kind of the point of what I was wearing—he simply said, “Best of luck to you. These should be interesting games.”

I actually learned a lot from just this short exchange, combined with their general behavior through the evening. These were “grab the bull by the horns” powerhouses, the kind of folk that rile themselves up into a fury and have at it. I was already forming some strategies in my head for dealing with them.

The other two teams to watch were Draconic Brood, which we know very little about other than two of it’s members look related and one of them had a sorcerer vibe, and Arcane Auriga, a team of four elven, archer women. The latter, unsurprisingly, got Zhog’s attention, as that description is basically three for three: elven, archer, and women.

At the end of the evening, after the teams had been sequestered down in the champion’s village below the arena, I got a message to Tirra to about or team’s equipment needs, then I met up with Ekaym away from the arena grounds, and hopefully away from prying ears.

“What’s the undercurrent here?” I asked.

“It all has to do with my sister, Lahaka. She came to Korvosa two years ago, not long after that year’s Champion’s Games. I’ve been looking for her for months now, but I’ve hit a dead end. She caught Loris Raknian’s eye, and I believe that they became lovers. What I do know is that she vanished the day after last year’s Champion’s Games ended.

“I hoped that by entering some gladiators in the competition, I’d have a chance to explore the arena and talk with Raknian, and maybe find out what happened to her. But so far, I’ve found nothing.”

“We’ve got reason to believe Rankian is up to something very bad,” I said, “And I don’t mean just politics or business. We’re trying to learn exactly what he’s doing, and get proof of it. So, I think we can help each other, here.”

“The two places I haven’t been able to get to are his palace and inside the arena. You now have access to the latter, so we have accomplished that much, at least.”

We’re heading down into the sewers shortly to have our first look around.

Oathday, Sarenith 16 (evening)

The drama continues. Now that Snagsby has learned that no one is searching for him, he’s inclined to stay here in Korvosa where other followers of Nocticula are working to build a temple. I can certainly respect that, as it’s the sort of higher calling that I can relate to. In turn, there is Cress, who was searching for Snagsby, and now isn’t, and is more or less out of a job. Returning to Kaer Maga for more bounty hunter work is obviously not something he is interested in given how that turned out, and recent events have aligned his interests with ours, so he’s asked to join us. Being kidnapped and coming within minutes of having your brain eaten is a powerful motivator.

Meanwhile, Varin was informed of a family emergency and he can’t stay on. Also understandable, as family is important (see the past couple of weeks in Diamond Lake for lessons on that topic).

Through Snagsby, we were introduced to a gentleman named Dave, who had taken an interest in the news that’s been coming out of Diamond Lake (this would be the news that we have been responsible for). Dave has a rather colorful past: his maternal grandmother is a necromancer, and to say that they don’t see eye to eye on this matter would be something of an understatement. Given what we’ve stumbled onto and his personal opinions towards the undead, he is also keen to sign up.

I’ve known Sangsby for a few years. Varin I know less well, but we’ve spent the past several weeks together, relying on each other in situations that are life-and-death, and you can’t do that sort of thing without getting close to one another. Plus, he was there at the beginning, too. What I am getting at here is that it is not so easy to say goodbye to either of them.

For my part in this drama, I finished my research at the library and determined that my ancestor is almost certainly a silver dragon. I didn’t really think Ilthane was in our family tree—she’s the wrong gender, for one, though I honestly don’t know how the whole “dragon takes human form” thing works—but it’s a relief to be able to rule her out. That would have been a complication I did not need.

I also looked into the chain of title for the warehouse and learned that it was owned by Telekin. They have no will registered, nor could I find a next of kin, which means the property will eventually go through escheat and end up owned by the city, to be sold off or just redeveloped as they see fit. To start that process, though, we’d need to inform the city that Telekin is dead, and none of us considers that a high priority. Let’s face it: the building is in terrible shape and should be condemned, it’s not home to a legitimate business that anyone cares about, and no one is lining up to buy it. There’s no urgency here. There is some risk to the public, however, given the partially collapsed floor, so it makes sense to occupy the place (and keep the public out) until it can be properly dealt with.

Fireday, Sarenith 17 (night)

We had dinner with Eligos again tonight. Ostensibly, it was to go over what he learned from his research, but we had our own information to share, too. He started by asking where our investigations had led us, and we filled him in, leaving out names at first.

“A mind flayer? Those are rare even around here.”

“We uncovered a connection to someone high up in Korvosan society.”

“That’s…very troubling.”

“The problem is, we don’t know who to trust. What’s your relationship to the folks that run the Championship Games?” I asked.

“I don’t get involved directly. I’ve wagered a little. It’s not the most scholarly of efforts,” he added with a smile. “It certainly fills the city’s coffers with revenue every year.”

“If I told you the name was involved in the games in some fashion, would that surprise you?”

“There are a hundreds of people involved in the games, and it wouldn’t surprise me that much.”

I looked around at our friends for cues, and saw something in Viktor that suggested I should forge ahead. So I did.

“Raknian,” he said. “Raknian is involved.”

He sounded rather skeptical of this claim, and I can’t say that I’d feel any differently in his place. So I reached into the bag we’ve been carrying and pulled out the ledger.

“This is what we found,” I said, pointing to his name as I passed it to him. “He hired Zyrxog to kill us, among other things.”

Eligos thumbed through it, growing more alarmed as he scanned the pages.

“These items are being bought and sold here in Korvosa? Many of these are illegal and dangerous!” Then he found Raknian’s name again. “Loris Raknian purchased the Apostolic Scrolls? The Apostolic Scrolls? That’s in the city?”

After his heart attack wore off, we asked about both.

“Raknian is a man with many connections and a great deal of wealth. He used to be a gladiator but as he got older, he transitioned into a new role as the owner and operator of the arena. I don’t know what interest would he have in the Scrolls, but regardless, you will need far more direct, damning evidence before accusing someone of his stature of wrongdoing.”

Yeah, that part we had already figured out on our own.

As for the Apostolic Scrolls, legend says they were penned by Kyuss himself. According to Eligos, it’s believed they can summon, or perhaps create, a great monster that is itself capable of spawning an innumerable amount of undead. If they were truly in Korvosa, that would imply Raknian or his agents were setting the city up for some cataclysmic event. If we wanted to stop it, and if we wanted to expose Raknian’s involvement—much less accuse him of our attempted murder—we’d need to get close to him. A tricky matter given that he knows who we are.

“The upcoming games seem a natural excuse, if you can find a way to use that to your advantage,” Eligos suggested. “There is a dinner for the gladiators, their sponsors, and city VIPs on the evening of the 22nd, which kicks off the games officially. I could secure invitations for you to attend as my personal guests, if that would help.”

That would get us access once, but what we really needed was ongoing access. And to that, we would need to be part of the games, themselves. No one, including myself, had an appetite for becoming gladiators—our small glimpse of actual warfare was enough to turn us away from violence as a sport—but sponsoring a team was not out of the question. Eligos saw merit to this idea, and is going to see what he can do.

Moonday, Sarenith 20 (night)

Eligos came through for us. He invited us to dinner tonight to get all the parties together and formalize the agreement. Three additional guests were dining with us: two were people we’d never met, and one was a familiar and surprising face.

Of the former two, the first was an aasimar woman—one that could easily pass as a human—named Celeste. She was an associate of Eligos, and essentially the brains behind this scheme.

“Eligos reached out and told me of your needs. Unfortunately, to enter a team in the games you need a gladiatorial license, and those are quite difficult to acquire. At this late stage, I would say impossible. But I have a friend,” she said, indicating the man sitting next to her.

“Smallcask’s the name. Ekaym Smallcask,” he said. “And it so happens that I have a license but have been unable thus far to procure a team to sponsor. I was beginning to despair at losing my chance to enter these anniversary games until I heard from dear Celeste here, who put me in touch with, er…”

He turned to the third guest, the one we recognized.

“I’m Tirra”, she said. We last saw her in Diamond Lake, as part of the adventuring trio that was hoping to to score off the long-emptied Stirgenest Cairn.

“My guild has an interest of its own in the games,” she explained, “and we can assemble and equip a team of gladiators provided we have a sponsor. So it seems all the necessary pieces can fit together here for all of us to get what we want.”

To field a team in the games, you needed a sponsor, a team of gladiators, and a manager. The sponsor provides the license and funding, and the manager provides the expertise that is the glue between the sponsor and the team: they are the primary liaison for the team (which is sequestered for the duration of the event), they ensure the team has the equipment they need, they function as the team’s coach. Sometimes the manager and the sponsor are the same person.

This did beg the question of, “Why?” as the other two members of that group, Auric and Khellek, were entered again this year as “Auric’s Warband”. Tirra was proposing a team to, essentially, oppose her friends. We’d have been remiss not to ask…so we asked.

“My guild has a vested interest in Auric’s band failing to win the belt for the third year in a row. Personally, since they are my friends, I ask that if it’s your team that faces them, defeat them without hurting them any more than necessary.”

She didn’t go into details, and we knew better than to ask. Regardless, her request was reasonable. Sera correctly guessed that “her guild” would be Korvosa’s thieves’ guild, and that led to a conversation that I absolutely did not need to know more about.

All we had to do was designate a manager and come up with a team name. For the former, everyone kind of looked at me since I had actual training as a soldier, which would be about as close as any of us would come to formal expertise here. As for the latter? We decided to poke the hornet’s nest. If anyone involved in the games was working with the Ebon Triad, we figured the name “Ilthane’s Fury” would attract their attention.

We formalized the agreement with one stipulation: I wanted to meet the team and spar with them, just to get a feel for their skill level. If we were going to do this, then we were going to be in it to win it. My pride was at stake here, after all. But on a more practical level, the longer the team lasted—it’s an elimination tournament—the more time and access we would have to figure out what Raknian was up to.

I need to do some shopping. The dinner is two nights away, and as the manager I will be expected to play the part, and look good doing it. That means a dress or gown. I’ve never owned nice clothing much less formal attire—even if I’d had that kind of money before, there was nothing in Diamond Lake worth dressing up for—and I am going to need as much of that time as I can spare for a crash course in fashion.

Wealday, Sarenith 15 (afternoon)

We have permanently shuttered Zyrxog’s operations in this city, and along with that, permanently shuttered Zyrxog.

They had been busy. In addition to directing the gang of dopplegangers, they were buying and selling rare items and artifacts on the black market. We found a ledger detailing every transaction, conveniently including names, dates, and amounts for each. For a being known for it’s supposed high intelligence, maintaining such meticulous records openly in undercommon—it’s rare, but far from unheard of—seems like poor thinking. Obviously, even criminal organizations need to keep business records, but most of those are smart enough to use a combination of code names and shorthand so they aren’t so damned obvious. But if Zyrxog wanted to make this all easier on us, then I was all for it.

On at least one occasion, Zyrxog’s two activities intersected. They sold something called the Apostolic Scrolls to one Loris Raknian, and shortly thereafter received a down payment from the same person to have a troublesome group of kids from Diamond Lake assassinated.

That would be us.

Based on the date, this request was made while we were en route to Korvosa. The timing there is just too good to be anything other than a response to our little stunt with the Ebon Triad, which means Raknian is mixed up in all of that, too.

We don’t know Raknian, but we’ve been seeing the name pretty much everywhere since we got here because he’s the organizer of the annual Champion’s Games. So, we have once again managed to draw the ire of an influential, high-profile, public figure. It’s not a good habit to get into. And unlike Smenk and Dourstone, we have the additional complication that Raknian is well-liked and fairly popular. It’s going to take more evidence than his name written in a ledger to take action against him.

But that was drama for later. We had other drama to deal with now.

When we went toe-to-toe with Zyrxog, they had a prisoner with them that they were preparing to, I dunno, de-brain, or whatever you want to call it. That prisoner turned out to be a bounty hunter named Cress, and he had been looking for a number of former slaves who had escaped from Kaer Maga, except instead of bringing them back he had been tasked with…making sure they were safe. Or rather, it had started out as the former, but somehow turned into the latter thanks to the interventions of a sorcerer and a powerful, magical compulsion. Snagsby, it seems, was the last person on the list.

Snagsby doesn’t talk much about his past, but it’s an open secret that he had been a slave in Kaer Maga and had managed to get away. It goes without saying that, given this history, we’re all somewhat protective of him so there wasn’t a lot of trust for the story Cress was selling. Snagsby’s half-orc heritage is subtle, so Cress didn’t realize Snagsby was standing right in front of him, and none of us were too keen on helping out. But, ultimately, it was Snagsby’s decision to reveal himself, and so he did.

Cress’s response was immediate as the compulsion broke. “For the first time in two years I’m free!”

Well, good for you, then.

We destroyed a few things on our way out. There was a pool filled with what looked like tadpoles but were almost certainly young mind flayers. They had to go. The pool itself was infused with magic that radiated a sort of dread, so that had to go, too. Vandalism doesn’t typically make Abadar’s list of approved activities, but it felt like this was an exception. And then Zyrxog’s library had a vrock, of all things, in some sort of suspended animation as a kind of alarm system, and it was really pissed when we triggered it. So that had to go, as well (I am sure it would have been just as happy to tear Zyrxog apart at being used like this, but we had already seen to that).

With all that done, it was time to leave. We led Cress and the other prisoners back up the surface and now we’re hanging back at the Crooked House.

And if anyone needs me, I’ll be taking a nap.

Wealday, Sarenith 15 (mid-day)

Our prisoner said we’d find their village just past the cave with the naga. And, yes, that naga. And I’ll go ahead and point out the obvious: the drow managed to come and go without getting into a fight with it.

It was a huge chamber, easily 40 feet high, just as deep and half again as wide with passages leading out in multiple directions. A large shelf sat halfway up on one end, leading back to chambers that were obviously sleeping quarters, while the main area at ground level functioned as a kind of communal space. It held livestock—a cow and a couple of pigs—in a wooden pen.

After their disastrous raid on the warehouse, they were only a dozen or so drow left, and they poured out of every passage and recess to engage us with their bows. This was obviously intolerable, so I asked Viktor to enlarge me and I stepped into the middle of the fray, horsechopper at the ready. There was not a single drow that wasn’t within my reach, and that put a significant dent in their plans. Clearly, no one had explained to them the concept of “defense in depth”. Things only got worse when Varin followed it up with a blinding burst of glittering, gold dust. At that point, our archers had such an advantage that the end was inevitable.

One of the passages had a barred door guarded by zombies, and this was where they were keeping prisoners they had abducted from the city above. So if you were feeling bad about how easily we wiped out this little colony, let that put your concerns to bed. The zombies were even less of a challenge for us, though they were sufficient to keep four terrified captives from escaping.

“That thing comes in here every so often, drags one of us off, and they never come back,” one of the women said. “It’s a hideous monster.”

“With a squid-like face?” I asked.

“Yes.”

There were never more than six prisoners in there at any one time. Every few days someone new would appear, and someone would be taken away, Those taken never returned.

“When did it last come in here?” Zhog asked.

“Not long ago. Maybe an hour or so.”

It wasn’t necessarily safe for them to try and make their way out on their own, but they couldn’t wait forever for us if something happened, so we gave them food, our map of the sewer, and the key to the lock.

“Give us an hour,” I said. “If we aren’t back by then, make your way to the surface.”

We pressed on. In the next cavern, the tentacle theme continued as we were ambushed by what looked like walking octopi. There were too many to fight all at once, especially since their gaze made us sluggish, so we withdrew down the passage to a choke point. They obliged by being both aggressive and dumb, leaving a superior tactical position to make it easier for us to pick them off one at a time. (Though I did have to occasionally move up and play the role of bait to keep them from losing interest. Now who was being dumb?)

And then things got weird. That cavern had a pair of white marble doors built into one side with veins of a purple, glowing mineral running through them, flanked by a pair ivory columns. Snagsby reshaped the stone so we could force them open, and it revealed a circular chamber with a giant brain carved out of the same, purple-veined marble. Snagsby tried to enter and he said is mind was immediately assaulted by some overwhelming mental pressure to bow to the will of Zyxog the Master (three guesses who that is). He resisted, but not without cost: he stumbled back out of the room somewhat dulled by the experience.

Stone benches and manacles lined the chamber, suggesting that this was used to break the wills of victims. Viktor guessed that, with the rapid onslaught, it would just be a matter of time before someone succumbed to it, so we spent a lot of time debating what to do. Which spells might protect us from the effect, which ones might not be likely to help, and so on. It was all very dull and exhausting. Eventually, I pointed out that I have a large hammer on the end of a long pole, and the effect  from the brain didn’t seem to reach past the doors.

“Just enlarge me,” I said “and I’ll bash it to pieces from here. I won’t even have to enter the room.”

This worked, albeit slowly because the positioning was awkward. But the operative word in there is “worked”, and after a few good hits the magic failed and no more giant brain. While it was satisfying and effective, it was also pretty loud so no more element of surprise. But that was assuming we even had it to begin with.

Now we’re holed up in what looks like Zyxog’s personal lab and study. It’s filled with dry technical books on various boring subjects, as well as piles of research notes that the others are pouring over. Apparently it created the ocotpus things and called them “octopin”, and it was researching creating a parasite it called “mind worms”.

Obviously, naming things was not their strong suit. In fact, it scribbled “find a better name for it later” among the notes for the latter.

Well, at least they knew it, too.

Wealday, Sarenith 15 (late morning)

We descended into the sewers shortly before dawn. There was no one around—unsurprising since normal people aren’t up this early—so we were able to get in without having to wave our letter around in front of some city official.

Believe it or not, sewers are a topic of conversation in the Church, though one that mostly takes place from an engineering and public health standpoint. Proper sewer design is important in separating waste from, say, drinking water, which helps prevent the spread of diseases both mundane and supernatural. What they don’t discuss in detail is the realities of being down in one, which is that they are disgusting. Fortunately for us we tend to plan ahead, and were covered by a spell that surrounds us all with a layer of clean, breathable air. This protected us from noxious fumes, harmful gases and even let us breathe freely underwater if needed. But most important? It got rid of the smell.

But it was still an unpleasant experience, because it’s a sewer, and sewers are filled with sewage.

About an hour of working our way through the labyrinth with only my hand-drawn map as a guide, we came across our first dead body. Well, not our first, obviously, but our first down here. They were dressed like a city maintenance worker, which was not unusual, but what was unusual was the large hole in their forehead. Mind flayers are known for their ability to suck the brains out of their victims’ skulls if they manage to get a firm grip with their tentacles. Just in case there was any doubt about us being in the right general area, or what we were up against.

I marked the location on the map so we could inform the city, and pressed on. An hour later, we saw this translucent barrier ahead of us with what looked like objects suspended in the air behind it.

Viktor and I exchanged glances, then said to the others, quietly, “gelatinous cube”. We backed away slowly, and looked for another route.

This was safer, but also a lot longer because now we had to take detours that weren’t on my map. But we eventually worked our way back to that sewer line and were rewarded with faint, phosphorescent mold that someone had tracked in along the walkway. This mold was, from what we could tell, a byproduct of the heavy metal pollution from the Forge. A few minutes later, we saw where the sewer line intersected a natural cavern that was filled with the stuff, and we knew we were in the right place.

We entered the cavern and followed the passage to the next chamber, which was lined with a different, yellow mold with numerous giant mushrooms growing out of it. I’d describe the as “swaying in the breeze”, only there was no breeze. They swayed anyway.

Viktor knows more about fungi than I do—I’m not going to ask—and said these things emitted a piercing, screeching sound when they sensed vibrations. That sounded like a natural alarm to us, so Snagsby used a spell to silence the area and I started slicing them up. This kicked up a huge cloud of spores or whatever it is that comes from mold, which would have been bad if it hadn’t been for our magical protection, and instead was just annoying.

Beyond that was a natural passage with a ledge forming a sort of overlook. This seemed like a good place for an ambush, so I opened myself up to the auras around me and sensed the taint up there right away. We snuck up on the ledge and heard something being poured down the shaft. Suspecting it to be oil—again, can’t smell the fumes through this spell—Snagsby conjured a flame to set it alight before it could reach us and we let it burn out. Then we scrambled up and confronted the defenders: more drow.

Legend says that when the Starstone struck the world and plunged it into the Age of Darkness, most of the elves fled through some portal to another dimension. Those that opted to stay on Golarion instead of flee dove down into the Darklands, and were tainted by Rovagug’s influence into a twisted culture of demon worshipers, eventually becoming the dark elves we know today. I don’t know how much truth there is to that legend, but it’s a good story and I see no reason to doubt it.

Why were there drow here? Don’t know, and don’t care. That they were here at all was concern enough. But, we needed to know more about what we were walking into, so I took one of the survivors back to the mushroom cave to have a little talk. I just got finished tying them up before my friends called out an alarm. Something about a snake with a woman’s head.

I rushed forward in time to see them engaged with…well…a giant snake with a woman’s head. She exerted a mental push on me as I met her gaze, but I was able to shrug it off. Some of the others weren’t so lucky, and it was up to Sera, Viktor, and I to take it down while our friends got in our way, because that is what we needed right now.

As we closed in for killing blows, it said, “I could have killed you all before you even knew I was here! I was trying to be nice!”

What?

Obviously, I had missed something, because I hadn’t been there for the start of this skirmish. So I asked for an explanation. “What was that about her trying to be nice to us, but we still attacked her?” I asked.

“I cast a spell that put a bane on her,” Viore said.

I met eyes with Viktor. He was thinking the same thing I was. “I would have considered that a hostile act, too,” he said.

This one is going to stick with me because we were definitely in the wrong here. Lesson learned, I hoped, about not starting fights we don’t need to have.

Fireday, Sarenith 11 (night)

The doors at the end of the hall opened to another stars-be-damned maze. This is only our second one of these and already the idea feels played out.

For what it’s worth, this one at least had a theme. The walls were all metal, polished to a mirror-like surface, and some rose from the ground to alter the layout as we walked through in an effort to isolate us from one another. Or so I assume. That being said, what was the point? It all just reeked of form over function. These creatures would probably be more successful if they spent as much time on their jobs as they did on trying to be clever and stylish at the same (though maybe that’s a good thing, since organized like this, they were already astonishingly successful).

As we worked our way through it, predictably, walls rose up and one or two duplicates of us appeared and tried to take us on, and then (also predictably) they died. This happened, like, five times and they still didn’t get the message. They were taking notes from the Ebon Triad on how to suck.

We found their boss, Telakin, sitting on a throne, of all things, in a giant hall filled with vats and tubes and similar lab equipment, and he had taken Allustan’s form. Allustan? Really? Like that was going to fool or startle us. Ooooh! It’s someone we know! How clever and shocking of you.

Give me a break.

There was a wide open space in the center that just kind of said said “trap” to me, so we approached along the walls. Turns out that was clever, but not quite clever enough. At the far end of the hall, two sets of stairs ascended to their throne, and by sheer, dumb luck I avoided setting off a trap at the top as I closed in. On the opposite side, Viktor didn’t, and nearly fell in a pit when a trap door opened up underneath him. Fortunately the operative word there was “nearly”, as he deftly jumped out of the way.

Telakin responded by creating a wall of fire separating us from them. I won’t lie: being burned in fire is no fun, and I don’t recommend it. But we’ve long since learned how to counter injuries from this sort of thing using magic. One spell from Viktor later and we just walked on through. He was still sitting on his throne, like a chump.

“He’s still sitting on his throne, like a chump!” I said to the others. While this technically broke my no-banter rule, the flames were difficult to see through so it served the purpose of letting our archers know where to aim. So I let it slide.

Of course, he thought the point of this was to exchange quips.

“You’re dumb enough to run through a wall of fire.”

This is why I don’t like to banter during a fight: you just end up looking stupid because odds are good the other person knows something you don’t, like, say, they’re magically protected from fire. Just to toss out a random example.

He transformed into a half-orc as we surrounded him. Unlike the others, taking new forms seemed to actually imbue him with abilities, but he was still afflicted with the same “good plan, poor execution” disease as his henchmen. It was too little, too late, and Sera and I cut him down.

We examined the lab equipment and determined this is where they made the gems like the one we found on Zhog’s imposter. Zhog remembered being strapped to the table here, and having that silvered helmet placed on his head. The gems were obviously an enormously valuable and effective asset to the dopplegangers, allowing them to very seamlessly assume a person’s place, but we learned  that they were also very difficult and expensive to create, and that limited the syndicate’s ability to scale out. Not that I am real upset over this.

Telakin’s quarters contained a number of legal documents and business records of transactions here in Korvosa, and an enchanted mirror that showed the true form of whoever stood in front of it for a brief time. The latter seemed like it would be of value to the city, given that a number of people in government and high society had been replaced. We found two more gems: one belonging to an influential noble, and the other to a captain in the city guard. Reading through the documents will probably clue us in to others.

There was also an interesting note, apparently written to Telakin. It said:

I have a task for you, thrall. Meet me at the sewer junction beneath the cold forge and I will give you the details. There are some troublesome small minds that must be removed.

It seems, then, that Telakin had a boss, too. Also, who actually calls their subordinates “thrall”?

That there was still a head on this snake sounded interesting to us, so we visited our prisoner.

“Congratulations on your promotion,” I said. “You’re now your own boss!”

It seemed less smug in their reply this time. “Well. You’ve won this round, but you still don’t realize you’re dead.”

Whatever. We’ve heard this kind of bluster before, and we’re obviously still around to hear it again, now.

“And who is your former boss’s boss?”

It shrugged and said, “I don’t know his name.”

Whoever they are, our prisoner is absolutely terrified of them. They literally preferred being imprisoned down here to potentially being hunted down as a deserter. Personally, I think they are overestimating their own significance, but if they want to stay locked up in a cell below a dilapidated warehouse? Well, that is a service we can provide.

As for the “cold forge”, that sounds like a reference to an actual business here in the city. When we first got here, I set out to find a metalsmith, blacksmith, or armorer that would let me rent some time with their forges to work on my armor, and I vaguely remember a place called The Cold Forge as being one of my options (I’ve been hit on the head a lot since then, mind you, so my memory is fuzzy). I am pretty sure I can find it once we are out of here, and from there we can figure out what is meant by “beneath it”.

We’re staying the rest of the night here because we are all exhausted and need to sleep. And if you think it’s easy to rest properly when you are chained to wall and have only beds of straw and an uncomfortable chair for furniture, allow me to correct that misconception. Personally, I’d rather be back at the inn and sleeping in an actual bed, but it’s not mere paranoia to assume we might get ambushed as we try to leave. If that’s going to happen, then it should happen when we’ve had time to prepare. Of course, they could just come after us here now, too, but this location is fairly defensible, and while that didn’t work out so well for Telakin, I am confident we can do better. So we are safer where we are.

It also gives us time to wreck the equipment used to create the gems, which I see as a valuable public service.

(afternoon)

Remember what I said about being ambushed? We have gotten good at predicting the obvious.

It happened as we entered the water chamber that they use as a buoyancy lift. We opened the door to the chamber and saw room filled with dark elves climbing out of the water. Floating above them was a grotesque aberration that looked like a man with a squid for a head, which we later figured out was called a mind-flayer. I locked eyes with it, and then we heard a booming voice echoing in our minds.

“I am surrounded by imbeciles! Finish them! No prisoners. No survivors!”

This was accompanied by some sort of psychic hammer that stunned Sera, Varin, and Zhog. So I shut the door. There was no reason to make this easy on them.

“Let them come to us,” I said.

And come to us, they did. We used Zhog’s foaming powder and Snagsby’s tanglefoot bags to slow their advance into the main hallway, and set up on both sides of the tee to make a kill box. Wave after wave of dark elves came in, and wave after wave of them died before they got smart and bolted. We went after the survivors and it quickly became a rout.

The mind flayer was long gone, which meant it hadn’t stuck around to see how this all turned out. Letting someone escape to deliver a report was a risk we could not afford, so we didn’t let anyone escape. While it would eventually figure out that we were still alive, that would take time and, until then? The ambiguity worked in our favor, not theirs.

We spent the rest of the morning at the inn, pouring over the documents from Telakin’s quarters to reveal the extent of the infiltration in Korvosa. It was not as widespread as we feared—again, there were only so many gems they could make, and it was a constant frustration that showed through in their planning—but it was obviously not great. And they were smart, targeting people in positions of power that were not otherwise prominent or public figures. The real power in government, after all, comes not from those who make decisions but those who carry them out.

Starday, Sarenith 12 (afternoon)

Snagsby and I set out to find The Cold Forge today. It was a two story building with a forge area out back and drains for dumping waste into the sewers. And, yeah, we should just go ahead and call that “polluting”, since they are sending heavy metals and other noxious runoff down there along with their blackwater. See Diamond Lake, including the actual lake and not just the town, for an example of how that goes.

While I am not so good at casually casing a location, I can check for tainted auras and a quick scan of building at the lot did not turn up any obvious signs of foul play. Of course, this was hardly an exhaustive search, as most of the dopplegangers didn’t register to that, either, and there are spells (and rings, like the one I was now wearing) that can mask you from these simple abilities. I told Snagsby as much, and he said, “I’ll get a closer look.”

This was my cue to occupy myself elsewhere. While I could guess what that entailed, I didn’t know and I didn’t need to know, and it was best for all of us if it stayed that way.

He found me an hour or so later and said he hadn’t seen anything suspicious. Because finding a sign that said “Ebon Triad here” or “Now serving mind flayers” would make this too easy.

We concluded that whatever was below The Cold Forge was probably not a part of it, meaning the forge itself was just a reference point. To find whatever it was, then, we’d have to go down into the sewers. As the drains around the forge itself were way too small to fit through, the meant finding a nearby sewer maintenance entry and working our way there.

I swung by the city’s hall of records—and before you ask, yes, I specifically sought that out the first day we were here—and spent some time digging through maps of the sewer system. Many of the records were old and bore signs of occasional updates, some of them hastily done and of questionable quality. This was not the level of accuracy, or even detail, that I was looking for, but it was enough to find a couple of promising entry points, identify major maintenance routes, and get directions that may or may not be good once we got down there. It was the best we would be able to do, and it was decidedly better than just starting at the Forge and hoping for a better plan.

Sunday, Sarenith 13 (evening)

We visited Eligos today and brought him up to speed. Varin almost committed a little social faux paus by asking Eligos for a drop of blood so he could verify the man’s identity with a spell. I really didn’t think this was necessary, and I wish he had said something before springing it on us at the last minute like this. Eligos wasn’t mentioned in any of our paperwork beyond a vague note to “track down relevance of that relationship and potential hazards from that person”, and as far as we could tell, that was never done. And, it came a hair’s width from offending Eligos outright. Fortunately, we were able to smooth that over.

Eligos agreed that everything we had found needed to go to the queen’s council right away, and he’d do that through Marzena. He’d also make the offer to sell the magical mirror for their use. We were pretty sure they’d bite here, and he was too. Last, I explained our plan to go down into the sewers and showed him the copy of the maps I had made. Like me, he suspected the city maps were only vaguely accurate when it came to the sewers, but he’d agreed it was better than nothing and offered to relay our request to the city.

Word came back to us at the Crooked House that night, which meant Eligos had been a busy beaver. Obviously, the safety of the city was at stake here so there was some genuine urgency to the matter, but I don’t doubt he was using the opportunity to improve his own influence and standing in the city, proper. This probably explained why he was willing to do all this work free of charge: he was just accepting other forms of payment.

The city agreed to purchase the mirror at a premium price, and also awarded us a handsome sum for uncovering a plot that threatened the security of Korvosa and its holdings. This part was a bit unexpected, and certainly appreciated. The city has its issues, or course, many of which (like the Shingles) are in plain sight, but…it’s trying. What I would give to live in a city that tries.

And last, and certainly not least, was a letter, signed and sealed, giving us permission to enter the sewer system while pursuing this investigation. Few things set my heart aflutter like an official permission slip.

Fireday, Sarenith 11 (small hours)

My memories on how this all started are fragmented and there are gaps. I’m writing this down now before I forget the rest of it. Unsurprisingly, you can’t take notes when you are chained to a wall.

The last clear memory I have is of Zhog asking to visit the Pantheon of Many in South Shore, because he saw tabards and thought we might want one. I had just finished up at the University of Korvosa’s library doing some genealogical research on my family line—it’s a private library, but with some polite requests I was able to get access for the day—and a bit of a walk and a change of scenery sounded good to me, so I said yes.

At the time, it did seem odd that Zhog was asking about tabards since it didn’t seem very Zhog-like, but at the same time Zhog has kind of been like a kid in a confectionary since we’ve been here, and I’ve given up on predicting what will or will not grab his attention. I mean, aside from the obvious in Old Korvosa, Midland, and West Dock. So when Zhog comes to me looking like a kid (not a stretch) who is so excited he’s having trouble containing himself and asks to go look at tabards, I just figure it’s another impulsive Zhog moment and play along. Besides, there are probably times as a paladin when you need to look the part, and nothing looks the part quite like a holy symbol on a surcoat. And, like I said, I needed to stretch my legs after a day of sitting and a change in scenery was in order. So why not?

And we’re there looking at tabards, and then I have these huge gaps and small fragments for what happens next. I remember not being able to move. I remember Zhog running away, shouting back at the people around me. I don’t remember who they were, just that there were too many of them. And that’s it.

When I woke up I was stripped of everything but my clothing, and bound, gagged, and manacled in a prison cell. I could hear and smell water nearby, but it didn’t smell salty so I remember thinking it was the river. I looked around once my head stopped pounding so bad, and saw multiple cells down one end of a hallway. The ones I could see into each held other prisoners.

A voice from the other end of the hall said to me, “Don’t get too comfortable here.”

Yeah. Fat chance of that.

They continued. “We’ll be sending you downstairs for the special treatment soon enough.”

Which, obviously didn’t sound so good. In my limited life experience, there’s only two kinds of special treatment, and the good kind doesn’t usually start with you being knocked out and tied up in a cell.

A couple of dull hours later—there’s not much to do when it’s just you and a 5×5 space—a pair of guards came in. They very roughly hoisted me up to my feet and escorted me out. I had heavy ankle shackles that gave me just enough movement to shuffle slowly without falling on my face (not that they seemed too concerned about that).

I got a better look at the building as they led me around. It was an old warehouse of some sort and it must have overhung the river because part of the floor in one room had collapsed exposing the water below. They took me through several chambers, then set me in a barrel in a flooded shaft. As the water level lowered I descended to an underground complex where I was escorted by even more guards to a large, octagonal room designed to hold multiple prisoners.

They affixed my ankle and wrist shackles to a chain that was attached to the wall, giving me enough room to reach some buckets for waste and straw for cleaning and sleeping. “Any funny business”, one of my captors said, “will be answered with violent retributions to both of you.”

Only then did I realize I was chained up in the room with Zhog.

It occurred to me then that maybe there were two Zhogs, and that one of them wasn’t real. I mostly remembered seeing Zhog get away when I was abducted, but…did he get away? If so, then this wasn’t Zhog. Or maybe the Zhog that was with me in South Shore was not the real Zhog, and this one was.

I’d heard of shapeshifters, of course. Supposedly they can read minds and duplicate anyone within certain limits. How do you prove someone is who they say they are, if there are beings who can also become them, and in some sense, know what they know? That’s what I had to figure out.

I said to him, “Sorry. I wanted to tell you to run, but I couldn’t even speak.”

He stirred slightly at my voice, and I could see that, unlike me, the chains on his arms and legs left almost no room to move around.

“Bel? Is that you?” he asked. He switched to Draconic and said, “Damn. So they got you too. I’d a hoped you’d sense ‘em coming.

“They don’t ask me anything, just beat me and give me food. Not even decent orc rations, neither…. But… told me to run? From what?”

“Never mind that,” I said. Something about that answer suggested that this really was Zhog, and the one I was with in South Shore was not. “I couldn’t sense the ones that grabbed me because there was nothing to sense. Our captors must have hired some thugs to do it. You can fool magic, but not a holy strike in Abadar’s name. And the latter did nothing.

“When and where did they get you? …Maybe that’s a dumb question. I don’t even know when ‘now’ is.”

I didn’t. I had no idea how long I’d been out, or how much time had passed. Even up above, there were no windows in sight, and I couldn’t tell if it was light or dark outside.

Before he could answer, the door opened and a human woman wearing underclothes came in. She stared at me for a bit, tore my clothes in a few places, then swapped them for her own. As she did that, her features changed to look like me.

“Much better,” she said. “That’s a mistake I’ll not make again.” As she walked to the exit, she casually said over her shoulder, “I’ll say ‘hello’ to your friends when I see them. Again. Nighty night!” Then the door slammed shut.

I don’t know how long we were down there, just that there were long hours of nothing happening. We talked a lot, and I grew more and more convinced that this was really Zhog. With all this time to think, it came to me that there were generally two ways to establish someone’s identity.

The first is to spend lots of time with them, as Zhog and I were doing. Even if you had perfect access to someone’s memories, you are still missing their mannerisms and feelings. With this much time spent with Zhog, it was clear that it was…well…Zhog. The problem with this approach, however, is that it takes intimacy and time, and a duplicate would, of course, attempt to avoid both. Zhog, I learned, had been taken the very first night we got here. He was out at a bar, because of course he was, and someone slipped something into his drink. We’d been with the imposter Zhog for several days and still hadn’t managed to spend enough personal time with him in close company to notice something was wrong. It wasn’t until the day I got captured that I started to notice something odd—his fascination with those tabards—but that was too easily explained away. So, this method has limits.

That leaves the other approach, which is their abilities. There are things we can do, at least in our group, that help identify us, and some of those are not easily faked or replicated. Zhog, Shangsby, Viore, and I can call upon divine power to heal. Viktor and Varin know and use certain spells. It would take a concerted effort to maintain such a ruse for a long time. Again, it’s not perfect. Sera’s skills are not tied to a divine power, wizards can study to learn new spells, and so on. But we, as a group, roughly know our collective talents and we could find something sufficiently unique for each of us.

I was motivated to puzzle this out. I figured there would come a point where Zhog and I would be confronted by our friends, with our duplicates among them, and we’d need to convince them that the imposters were, in fact, imposters.

My best shot at that, I thought at the time, would be to call upon the power of Abadar in a manner that was so clear and so obvious that they could not help but recognize me for me.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it worked out.

After those long hours of just nothing, more of what we now know to be dopplegangers came in. Five took on the forms of the rest of our friends and Zhog and I looked on as they were “chained” up to the walls. They used some sort of breakaway manacles—we got to watch as they tested them out—and it’s pretty obvious what the plan was: wait for our friends to arrive and then cause confusion.

It was a brazenly dumb plan. I mean, why bother with this sort of indulgence? If you’re able to stealthily replace people without their friends knowing, why not just get on with it? This huge confrontation seemed so unnecessary, like they were in it for the show more than the result. And I guess they really thought they could take us all head-on.

It worked at first. When that door opened and Viktor and Sera stepped in, there was obvious confusion as the dopples all called out, trying to convince the others that they had been captured, and were the real person. So I tried to seize the moment, praying to Abadar that I be granted a spell that I could not normally cast all bound like this. And he answered. I created a space around us where those within were compelled to speak the truth. I even put some verbal panache behind it, “In the name of the Keeper of the First Vault,” etc.

And no one believed me. Even Viktor, who I could tell had succumbed to it, didn’t understand. I mean, the point wasn’t to actually force people to tell the truth, but rather to establish that it was me. “Zhog over there and I are the only real ones in here!” I said.

Ultimately, it was Sera who believed me. She entered behind Viktor and I could see it in her face. She was re-evaluating something, and had come to a decision. She walked over to me, and asked why I came to see her that night. She didn’t say which night, but I knew what she was referring to. It was when I first learned I could see in the dark. Knowing what someone knows and being that person are two different things.

“Because I didn’t understand what was happening to me,” I said quietly. “I was scared, Sera. Not because I could see, but because I didn’t know who…I didn’t know what I was.” I’ve never really been scared of anything in my life. Not since those days out in the dark. But this? It terrified me.

“Guys, this is the real Bel,” she said.

And then the imposter Zhog came in behind her, grinned evilly, and slammed the door shut as the imposters threw off their chains.

It was a good ambush, but a bad plan. The the thing about ambushes, of course, is that you have to be able to follow through. I am sure they thought we were trapped in the room with them, but it was really the other way around. They all looked like us, but they weren’t us. Sera got me unshackled after a couple of attempts, I drew one of her scimitars, and as the imposter Zhog bolted, Sera, Viktor and I slaughtered the lot. Then we got Zhog free and went after his dopple. Mine was already dead—Viore, Varin, and Snagsby had seen to that.

“It was fun watching them take you down,” it said to me as we converged on it.

“But you couldn’t do it yourselves, could you? You had to sub it out.” And that was their  fundamental problem. Hand-to-hand combat just wasn’t their thing. If they couldn’t even take me down when I was alone, what made them think they could take on all of us? How did they ever think this confrontation could work?

When we had the Zhog imposter surrounded and beaten, he went out on his own terms. He pulled a concealed blade and stabbed himself in the leg, and rapidly bled out in front of us.

The real Zhog look shaken. “That was my hopeknife,” he said. “Where I’m from, we are each given one as children and taught to use them to take our own lives if we are ever caught by the orc hordes that surround our territory. We don’t speak of it outside our people, and yet he knew exactly how to use it, just like one of us.”

(slightly larger small hours)

Zhog and I got the executive summary of events since I was captured. Imitation Bel returned to the Crooked House yesterday evening and put on a show of a verbal altercation with Fake Zhog (for our friends’ benefit, apparently), accusing him of abandoning her. She said had managed to “escape” after he ran off, said something like “I need a drink”, and then stabbed Tarquin when he served it to her.

Obviously, our friends found this behavior alarming, and they captured her and stripped her of her armor and gear. That’s when they discovered that her clothing didn’t match anything I have every worn, which explains that incident with the doppleganger swapping clothes with me (though how you can be a creature that does this for their entire existence, and then mess up on something that fundamental is a mystery). She was wearing a magical ring that shielded her thoughts, and with that off of her they were able to use mind reading as a part of the interrogation. She also had a strange key that they later learned fit the entrance to this warehouse.

They were set to call the city guard, but the city guard showed up before they could even send a message to them, which was mightily suspicious. The “guards” took Bel away, but Snagsby followed them under invisibility and learned that the guards, too, were dopplegangers. So they intervened, and then the real city guard showed up. Korvosa’s guard, being generally competent, knew at once that they were dealing with imposters, quickly deduced they were shapeshifters, and called in the Order of the Nail. If you have never heard of the Order of the Nail, they are kind of like paladins but without our sunny disposition. Or a sense of humor. Or, really, any warm fuzzies whatsoever. When they see a problem, they just smite it.

The imposter guards clashed with the Nail and they lost. Badly.

Our friends then tracked the key down to this building and raided it. Inside they found dossiers on the entire party, and communications from the Zhog imposter. Turns out they took Marzena, too, but only because she kept trying to make advances to who she thought was the real Zhog. Which is another mental image I did not need.

From reading the dossiers, it’s clear that someone has been looking into us long before we got here, starting right after we took down the Ebon Triad cult in Diamond Lake. Their research was pretty thorough given the short timeline. They even had my full name. Their summary of me said:

Belessandralina Lahovanu

Paladin of Abadar. Skilled with pole arms and threatening a large area in battle. Obsesses with laws and procedures. May be able to exploit this to our advantage if needed. High-risk target, priority to take out. Resident of Diamond Lake. Has family she cares about in town. In trouble with local mine owners Smenk and Dourstone. May be the ringleader. Implicated with disruption of an operation in that town that the boss has an interest in.

May have gnomish ancestry ties.

I admit I found that last bit kind of funny.

Deeper inside the warehouse, my friends found the prison cells and freed the captives, which included Marzena. However, two of those were dopples posing as prisoners just in case someone staged a rescue. Again, good plan, but poor execution. They were hopelessly outmatched.

Our friends found my imposter in another room, and thinking it was really me this time because she was wearing my clothes because obviously that’s enough evidence, gave them my equipment.

I kind feel like we need to have a talk about that.

The rest you know.

The big question everyone had was, how did imposter Zhog convince us all he was the real Zhog for several days? The answer turned out to be a gem on his person, which Viktor and Varin analyzed and determined was a sort of mental copy of Zhog’s memories. Focus on it with mind reading, and you could recall memories from the individual it was made from. Which was admittedly pretty creepy.

We turned our attention next to three doors in this hallway, whose mechanisms Sera had thoroughly damaged to prevent them from opening. Each room beyond had, according to Viktor, two Dopplegangers in it. We figured the best approach would be to give one of them to chance to survive this interrogation, and as soon as we made that decision there was a knock on one of the doors.

Zhog and I bashed that door open and confronted the creatures inside.

“Who are you and what do you want?” one of them asked.

I was not in the mood for games. “We want to know who your boss is and where to find them. You can read our thoughts and you know exactly who we are, so if you want to play games with us, we’ll pick a very different game which you won’t enjoy. What’ll it be?”

“Not that it will do you any good, but our boss is Telakin. If you go through those double doors out there and south you’ll find him. Good luck at that point. He has plans for you.”

“OK,” I said. “You get to live.” I pointed the the other one. “You don’t.”

I walked out of the room and said to the others, “This one gets to live, and that one dies.” Though I may have failed to clarify which was which. “That one”, however, resolved the ambiguity by rushing out to attack us, and was quickly put down.

“This one” refused to take us up on our offer of freedom, so we locked him back in. Sorry, “this one”, but it was a limited-time offer.

As for the other four here? We had no use for them.

Moonday, Sarenith 6, 4722 (morning)

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?

(evening)

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 fucking 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.

(evening)

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.

(night)

We met Eligos at his manor up in the district called The Heights, which is where people live when they have more money than most families will see in their lifetime. We have manors in Diamond Lake, too, but they are all kind of shabby and sad, nothing like the white marble home surrounded by a neatly landscaped yard with white stone walls that we were staring at here.

We walked up the cobblestone path, with decorative pools and dragon statues on either side, and knocked at the door. After explaining to the valet who answered who sent us and why we were there, we were led to a luxurious sitting room to wait for Eligos, himself. Surprisingly, he did not throw us out—we are a colorful crew—which I guess means Allustan’s name really does count for something in these circles.

For someone who went from “who are you?” to “there’s this cult called the Ebon Triad trying to end the world” in the span of about 30 minutes, he seemed pretty unfazed, and asked that we give him a week to research everything. He was even willing to assist Marzena in the effort to secure a treaty between the city and the denizens of the Mushfens. And for some reason, he didn’t charge us anything. What can I say? Sometimes the world is a baffling place.

He asked if we had found lodging in the city yet, and when we said we had not he directed us to a place called The Crooked House. It is, literally, crooked. Not in the moral sense, but in construction, as there’s not a right angle in the place that I can see. Eligos and the innkeeper, a gnome named Tarquin, are good friends, and so we’ve got a decent, albeit unusual, place to stay at favorable rates.

As far as gnomes go, Tarquin has an absurdly short name for a man, and I have an absurdly long one for a woman (and it would be especially so if I were a gnome, as most women’s names don’t break three letters and rarely break four), so we felt an immediate kinship just on that. I gave him the whole story because he gets it, so why not? And it was nice to just speak gnome with someone I didn’t already know.

Zhog and Snagsby took off after dinner. Snagsby is looking to find a temple to Nocticula. Zhog is looking for…you can probably guess what he’s looking for.

Moonday, Desnus 30 (early morning)

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.

(afternoon)

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.

(evening)

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.

Starday, Sarenith 4 (evening)

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.

Starday, Desnus 21 (night)

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.

Moonday, Desnus 23 (morning)

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.

(evening)

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.

Toilday, Desnus 24, 4722 (afternoon)

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?”

Fuck!

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.

(late night)

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.”

Wealday, Desnus 25 (evening)

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.