Arodus 12, 4712 (evening)

This is the second time in my life that I’ve watched someone destroy a shrine to Shelyn.

I was barely 12 years old when the Cathedral in Sandpoint burned to the ground. My bedroom faced the cluster of chapels and I remember being woken in the middle of the night by the glow of the flames and shadows flickering on the walls. I just sat there in bed, paralyzed with equal parts fascination and fear, watching as the fire spread and engulfed the entire complex. It was maybe a hundred feet away, but I could feel the heat of it through the open window. Then dad burst into my room and pulled me out.

The rest is a jumble of memories, but I do recall quite vividly the stables catching fire, followed by the White Deer. The flames encircled the homes along our block, raining hot embers into the sea as it spread. Dad said it was pure luck that so few buildings burned (and that our house was one of those spared), though I supposed those more directly impacted, like Ana, would have a different opinion.

At the time, the entire town thought it some terrible accident. Years later we learned the truth, and it was far uglier than most could imagine. Nualia was consumed by hatred. Hatred for a father that presumed to choose her life for her, and believed that years of emotional abuse somehow qualified as parenting. Hatred for a town that simultaneously deified and vilified her (I still remember the words she spoke to me on the cliffs that evening). Hatred for a lover that abandoned her. Hatred for even her celestial ancestry. That sort of hate does terrible things to a person, and it was a crack that Lamashtu exploited. Nualia was far from blameless, of course. It’s just that all this history made Lamashtu’s job easier.

You can at least look at that fire—at Father Tobyn’s murder, for that’s what it really was about—and trace it back to her anger, no matter how distorted or misguided her thinking had become. This business in Kalsgard, though, was just a callous decision of convenience. What was the best way to slow us down, and preoccupy Uksahkka’s protectors? Destroy the shrine that sheltered her, of course. What a fine distraction.

It was also very personal. A child of twelve isn’t a devote follower of anyone (and regardless, back then I was still struggling with the teachings of Irori); today was much different. This really hurt.

Two enormous earth elementals stood in the rubble and were pounding on what remained of the temple. I didn’t even stop to think: I just acted. Before the others could move¹, I had conjured a sphere of water ten feet across and engulfed the nearest of the two. While my friends moved in to attack the second, I rolled the ball with it’s prize out into the street and as far away from the shrine as the spell would allow.

I heard a strange bird call and saw the remaining earth elemental turn its attention to us, abandoning its demolition. Radella pointed out that the large raven with the red feathers was there, and that it dissolved into smoke before her eyes (but not before she put an arrow into it). Etayne and I exchanged a silent conversation, and then we both said “druid” at the same time.

Soon after, I saw the priest, Lin-Po, lying in the street, unconscious. I summoned a lantern archon to assist, first to aid him, and then to help us with the fight. These earth elementals were big, much bigger than what I could summon with my relatively-meager spells, and the one that engaged us absorbed tremendous punishment while dealing out the same. It took nearly all of us to bring it down. A thought occurred to me then: What if I hadn’t been able to stop the first one? What if we had to fight both at the same time? It makes me shudder thinking about it, but fortunately we didn’t have to find out.

We barely had to do anything with the second. The summons that was keeping it here expired shortly after my own spell did. Good enough. The point was to save Yin-Po and what was left of Shelyn’s shrine, not to have some epic battle to the death in the streets of Kalsgard. Besides, none of us wanted to be here long enough to face questions from the city guard. Yes, everyone in this city seems to walk around armed to the teeth (even the foreigners), and there were plenty of witnesses that could establish that we were helping, but after last night’s mischief I was not excited by the prospect of city officials probing into our affairs.

I guess I wasn’t shocked when Uksahkka turned up missing. Remember that part about destroying Shelyn’s shrine as a convenient distraction? The door to the cellar that served as her safe house had been forced open. Inside, Radella found a dart laced with poison and a black feather much like the ones we saw all over Brinewall. Much like the ones from Kikonu. We had a brief exchange about this with Yin-Po and he suggested we may be dealing with something called a Yamabushi Tengu. They are a type of Oni; apparently the Tian demons take many forms, much as they do here. What that told me was that we have some research to do. All we’re missing is the time to do it.

I guess we hadn’t experienced enough surprises for one day, because the helmet we looted from the funeral ship chose that moment to reveal it’s true nature to us: an angel named Helgarval, in the form of a winged helmet, because, sure, why not? He described himself as a servant of Desna, sent here as a familiar for a master that has long since passed on. Stuck on the material plane with no way to go home, he was simply “doing good where he can”.

It’s not often that surprises go our way, so this one was a welcome change. He had snuck on to Snorri Stone-Eye’s funeral ship as part of his own investigation into something called the Frozen Shadows, a criminal organization that has been gradually infiltrating Kalsgard over the last few years. Apparently they have a reputation for carrying out almost supernatural assassinations—which to me just says that they use magic to get away with it, and are good at telling stories—and the late Snorri was up to his stone eye with them. And the Rimerunners Guild? They are almost certainly a front. A well-connected front, with ties possibly as high as the Linnorm King for the Thanelands. Which is more or less a hint that we should be careful.

I’ll be honest here: I almost wasn’t.

Qatana and I loitered just up the block from the Rimerunners Guild building, located in the Jade Quarter along the riverfront, as Radella and Ivan broke in under the cover of invisibility. It was a long, long wait, and I kept thinking of ideas that could help distract the guards inside should something go awry. The longer I waited, the more aggressive my planning became, morphing from a distraction in case of trouble to just a way to wreck part of the building for good measure. At the top of the list was earth elementals since that seemed like poetic justice. Though mine would be considerably smaller and weaker than what we faced earlier, two or three of them could still make fast work of the masonry. Another idea was letting air elementals inside to play whirlwind, just to mess up the place. And the list went on.

See what I mean? I was letting what happened at Shelyn’s temple get the better of me, and the waiting and doing nothing was not helping.

Then Uksahkka emerged from the rear entrance and I came to my senses. As we suspected, she had been shot with a poison dart to render her unconscious and then kidnapped. She woke up shackled in chains in a locked room in the Rimmerunners Guild. Ivan and Radella had tended to her and engineered her escape without being detected, which is part of why their little foray was taking so long. I had Nihali send word to the others that we would be delayed. (As it turns out, they were dealing with their own problems: someone had implicated us in the poisoning death of a hunting dog, and that led to a very drunken confrontation with the dog’s owner in the pub where they were waiting for us. I got the short version of that story, and it was enough to convince me that the less I know about it, the better.)

Some time later, Radella and Ivan made their exit and in their hands was an impossible prize: the complete contents of the Rimerunners Guild’s secret vault. All of it liberated without raising a single guard’s suspicion that anyone had even entered the building, much less spent an hour inside looting it. I was, and still am, stunned. I’ll admit that the bouillon is nice (I like to think of it as partial compensation for the grief these people have caused us) but the real treasure was a ledger and other business documents detailing a number of sketchy affairs. Combined with what Uksahkka overheard while being prisoner, Helgarval’s own investigations, and what we have learned ourselves, we were able to form a fairly complete picture of the Frozen Shadows’ dealings in and around Kalsgard, as well as confirm most of our suspicions.

We are now looking for a place named Ravenscrag. It’s a castle or keep of some sort, purchased from Snorri Stone-Eye three years ago, presumably while he was still living. The ledger details very large sums of money being transferred to Ravenscrag on an ongoing basis, marked as “development expenses”. Kelda volunteered to discreetly dig around for information on Ravenscrag (we warned her to be careful, though I think she has figured that out already) which should help since she knows the city and we don’t.

I am tired. It took hours to comb through those documents, even with Radella’s help. But I am writing because I can’t sleep. My thoughts keep returning to the shrine today. Was there something we could have done to prevent it?

I think there was. We deliberately took time to rest. We could have gone there directly after leaving the ship but we were tired. Very, very tired. I understand the argument, and I didn’t disagree with it, but still…would that attack have happened if we had been there hours earlier? Even minutes earlier?

Part of me says that it wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe they didn’t know where Uksahkka was and they were following us (though that wouldn’t make me feel any better, as it would mean that we led them to her). Maybe they were going to raid the shrine anyway, and we just happened to have good timing (though not good enough). Or maybe they were just keeping an eye on her, and were forced to move because we did.

Those are all logical arguments, but they may also just be rationalizations. It’s hard to shake the feeling that we screwed up here.

Arodus 13, 4712 (evening)

No one tried to kill us today.

The morning did not start particularly well. On our first full day in Kalsgard, Etayne spent most of her time in the Bone Quarter, keeping an eye on the caravan while also providing her services to the community. One of the people she befriended was a young Tian boy who she eventually learned was paid to spy on us. She offered him some money to try to find out who it was that was doing the asking, but he never returned. I made an offhand remark that night that our clumsy probing around had probably gotten him killed.

It turns out I was prescient. His body was found lying in the street by the river in the Jade Quarter, just after sunrise. Someone had cut his throat.

On a lighter note, Kelda returned with some solid information on Ravenscrag. It is located in the cliffs bordering the Grungir Forest, a days ride south of Kalsgard. It’s named Ravenscrag because “only the ravens and crazy people can get to it”. I suggested we head there for some surveillance by air—specifically, by raven, which seemed apropos—but we all agreed to take a day to prepare first. We’ve been going too long without any breaks.

This meant I got to spend some time with Ameiko, which we hadn’t had much of together since Losthome. We borrowed Radella’s ring so she could move about the city without being an obvious target (which was weird because it was almost like sharing intimate details of your life with a complete stranger) and spent the day shopping with Koya for everything from art paper to clothing to some magic gear. Clothes shopping with Koya is a whole experience. Just ask Ivan.

We made three stops on the way back. The first was at a wizard academy so I could pick up a new spell we might need. The second was at what remained of the Shrine of Shelyn where the rebuilding effort was already underway. Yin-Po was pleased to hear that we had found Uksahkka more or less unharmed and freed her from her captors, but less so to learn that the Rimerunners Guild was where she was being held. I suggested he not make this detail known.

The third stop was at the inn where we were supposedly still staying, despite having spent the last two nights with the caravan. I should have quit while we were ahead. Despite the lousy start, the day was actually going quite well but I ruined it by insisting that we check on the rooms. To make sure the innkeeper hadn’t, say, assumed we had abandoned them and decided to sell off our stuff. Sometime in the last 24 hours, an estimation based on when the rooms were last cleaned, intruders had forced their way in to each one of them and searched them front to back, leaving a huge mess in their wake. Fortunately, none of us were stupid enough to leave anything valuable in them so it was basically just our clothes that got tossed, but still. It soured my mood.

With the money raised by liquidating Snorri’s funerary treasure, I and three others were able to purchase rings that magically sustain their wearers with only minimal sleep, and without the need for food. It will take a week for them to attune, but once they do they will be a boon for our pending trip over the Crown by reducing the number of provisions we’ll need to take with us. I am also learning to craft magic items of my own, and this will allow me to work at night, essentially giving me more hours in the day.

Speaking of food, even with the rings we were still short of our goal. Then Ivan suggested “Why not have multiple cooks?”

It was such an obvious idea that I can’t believe I had overlooked it.

¹This is Kali spending a Hero Point.^↵

Arodus 12 (small hours, Kalsgard)

It has been a long night and I do not see an end to it any time soon. In a few hours we meet Uksahkka at Spear-shaker’s Point for, of all things, kayak lessons (and in the dark, I might add). Dad would be proud. Or, perhaps instead, he’d lecture me for resisting his attempts to teach me anything involving paddles or sails years ago (as much as I enjoyed being a passenger on boats and ships of all sizes, I never had any interest in piloting them). He even told me once that “One day you will regret not having learned”. And here we are.

The definition of adulthood is realizing your parents were right about everything.

Suishen was not at Asvig’s farmhouse, and any hope of this coming to a quick conclusion has evaporated. Our only lead now is that it may be sitting on Snorri Stone-Eye’s funeral ship, scheduled to burn during his wake at dawn. I missed the interrogation of Helva and Asvig—I was more concerned with who had escaped from the hall at the time—but Helva suggested this possibility to us.

Snorri was Asvig’s Lord, or ring-giver as they are called here, and Snorri was even more closely tied to some shady dealings and this Rimerunners guild than Asvig, himself. Asvig, it seems, was just the go-to man for anything needing done that was not strictly legal (or even remotely so in some cases, I suspect) so that others would not be directly involved. Putting that sword on his lord’s funeral ship in tribute would accomplish two things at once: getting rid of it for good, and honoring the late Snorri, himself.

Except for the part where it just doesn’t make any sense.

Neither does the idea that Ulf might be imprisoned on that ship, too. At first it seemed like a real possibility, but now that I have had time to think on it, what would be the point? Asvig didn’t seem the type to play stupid games like this, especially when simply killing the man on the spot would get the job done and with a great deal more certainty. And just how hard would it be to make a body disappear in the Thanelands? We sent forty men to the bottom of the river with barely a trace, and we’ve had less practice at it. Asvig may have been a lot of things, but nothing we’ve seen suggested that he was incompetent or a fool. His only mistake seems to have been underestimating us, and to be fair, even then he was working on no information save for the fact that we existed.

So I am skeptical that we will find anything on this funeral ship save for Snorri Stone-Eye’s corpse, but it’s the only lead we have. Especially since Ulf wasn’t at Asvig’s farm, either—not that we knew to look for him at the time, but it was obvious there were no prisoners being held there—which just puts a capstone on this perfect day.

And the raid had started so well. With the death celebration (who are these people?) well under way we probably could have set the yard on fire without being spotted, so we had plenty of time to do this right. At the posts that surrounded the house, several of us put our heads together and reconstructed the rune that bypassed the summoning trap, then we quietly moved to the rear entrance and got into position.

That’s when we heard the muffled protests of one or two women, and the much louder, drunker, lecherous advances of some of the party-goers, through the door. Etayne, Radella, Qatana…they all tried to rush that door at the same time (I wanted to be right there with them, too) and within seconds we had burst through it and pounded the three accosters. They didn’t even have time to cry for help. Or beg for their lives.

After checking on the startled and frightened serving girls, we asked them about the layout of the house and where we would find Asvig. One of them actually asked us, “Are we being raided?” her eyes going wide with panic. No, dear, it’s not a raid. We’re just here to kill everyone. Gods.

There were over a dozen of Asvig’s henchmen in the main hall, and the battle there was short but bloody. We had timed this right, though, and benefited both from the chaos spread by our spells and their half-drunken stupor. Ivan and I threw back-to-back confusion into the room with a cloud of fog and a burst of glittering dust, and then our fighters charged in and did what they do. A few seconds later, I could hear the faint sounds of doors opening in the back of the hall where startled revelers were either escaping or trying to circle around behind us to counter attack. I summoned a wolf—the choice seemed appropriate for the setting—just outside the back entrance and he took off running almost immediately.

I took that as a cue that it was time to shut the door. And bar it.

In the main hall, it sounded like Sparna and Qatana had subdued the Longthews and forced an end to the fight, so I ran to the far end under the cover of invisibility—I hadn’t been seen yet and felt it was best that this remain the case—to look out the front door for any sign of the fugitives. That’s when I heard the sounds of lions roaring, and the screams of more men outside. So a few had gotten away, or at least tried to. I called for Olmas in Elvish, and used a spell and the pearl to conjure two horses for us to ride.

“We need to find anyone who escaped, and make sure they don’t reach the others who are approaching from down the road,” I said as he came up to the doorway.

After the initial confusion of holding a conversation with an invisible Vudrani woman speaking in Elvish from behind a horse that wasn’t there when we arrived finally wore off, Olmas mounted up and we rode around back to look for survivors. This was a bad idea. The survivors were two very angry lions, and they were staring right at us.

“Let’s go!” I called to Olmas, and quickly turned my mount around and fled to the front of the house. Olmas got the message and was right behind me. The lions, of course, bounded after us.

“Between the posts on the road, where we etched the rune!” I didn’t wait for his response, I just took my horse to a full run and bolted through. Fortunately, he had gotten the message..

The lions stopped just a few feet beyond the perimeter. I was hoping for that, but what if it hadn’t worked out? Olmas had the same thought and asked me what my backup plan had been. “To continue down the road and run them into the approaching party. And let them deal with the lions.”

Sometimes I have good ideas. I was almost disappointed that we didn’t get to try it out. Almost.

Nihali came to me then. I asked if she had seen anyone escape from the house. She had, “But they were mauled by leopards.” Leopards? That’s when I noticed something odd about the lions prowling around the wooden posts: they had spots. That explained why the lion figures on the armbands, and on the ones on the wooden posts, and even the summoned lions themselves didn’t look so much like lions; that isn’t quite what they were. (Note to self: ask Etayne about this later.)

If anyone made it off the property they didn’t go down the main path or stay on it. We rode a bit, just off to the side in the grass where our horses’ hooves weren’t as loud, until we were almost too close to the approaching group to safely stay out of sight. Not having found anyone, we headed back to the house—the lions or leopards or whatever they were had now vanished—and ran into our friends on their way out.

Hiding from the approaching revelers was easy as they were already drunk or well on their way to it. From the bits of conversation that we could hear they were going for the free food and spirits, not because they had any love for Snorri Stone-Eye. They were in for a number of surprises, not the least of which was the recent change in management.

Apparently, Asvig died while being questioned, suddenly and spontaneously, by choking on his own blood. It gives me the shivers just thinking about it. Etayne and Qatana saw it happen and said it looked like some sort of geas, but not one that they had ever seen or heard of. Want proof that Asvig was mixed up with some very, very bad people? There it is.

Which is, I think, part of why Helva was willing to accept a detente. She knew Asvig was guilty. She knew Fynn had been wronged and that his claim of blood vengeance was valid. What she didn’t know was exactly deep the hole was. She didn’t have to like what happened to her husband, but we had exposed something very ugly about him that she hadn’t known and it certainly gave her pause. She clearly wanted to rebuild their little fiefdom with far fewer surprises; one where she would be making the decisions. More power to her, I guess. In a strange way, I am happy for her.

If she is true to her word, there will be no retributions against us or Fynn, on one condition: that we never come around these parts again. It sounds like a ridiculous cliche written out like that, but it really was her only demand. Fair enough. In due time we won’t even be on this continent. It won’t be a difficult promise to keep.

And for our part? We had made good on Fynn’s request as his proxies, gruesome as it was, but there was no sword (and no Ulf). At least I didn’t have to walk back to Kalsgard.

I won’t have to walk to Spear-shaker’s Point, either.

Arodus 12 (dawn, Rimeflow River)

Either we have been set up, or Uksahkka is being watched. Someone knew we would board that funeral ship before it lit, and they obviously wanted us to be on it as it burned.

Aside from Etayne’s kayak capsizing—Ling did not seem too thrilled with this development—getting over to and onto the ship was relatively easy. It was getting off shore that proved more interesting: we had just gotten our gear packed up when an enormous crab came looking for its next meal. It took us all by surprise, but we recovered quickly and brought it down. Afterwards, I believe Qatana actually suggested that we cook it and have it for dinner. She was being completely serious.

We intercepted the ship just as it drifted past Spear-shaker’s Point and tied up our kayaks on both her port and starboard sides. The funeral ship itself was a longboat that had been converted into a barge. A deck had been built over the rowing benches, forming a cramped hold along the hull underneath. The funeral pyre and coals that served as a timer was up top. We threw the latter into the sea to prevent any accidents and then got to work.

It is no surprise that the raiders arrived within minutes of us. There was a narrow window in which we could pull this off, and there were only so many points along the river from which one could launch to reach the ship before the pyre was lit. That meant they knew where we would be and when, and the ninjas they sent after us only had to worry about being seen. Unfortunately for them, all that has happened today instilled a healthy dose of paranoia in the group so we had four pairs of eyes plus Nihali scanning the water for exactly this sort of interruption. Even in the foggy twilight, Olmas sighted the approaching canoes running 5 knots at 100 fathoms off the port stern. We had nearly a full minute to prepare for their arrival.

Down below, the other half of us had discovered that Snorri Stone-Eye had not died a peaceful death. His rotting, undead, and all-too-mobile corpse was chained up in the hold, smelling of decaying marine life. He had succumbed to some supernatural disease, perhaps a form of zombie rot or ghoul fever, and it seems his friends and family had gone to great lengths to keep this development a secret. On the funeral pyre, they maintained the illusion by covering a wooden manikin with a shroud.

What our friends didn’t find was any sign of Suishen or Ulf. Surprise. They emerged from the hold with the bad news just as the canoes were coming into range of spells and arrows.

We had two nasty surprises in place for the would-be boarders. The first was the downpour of rocks and dirt that had served me well just a few days earlier (it was all I had that could reach from this distance). The second was Nihali, who enthusiastically agreed to try dropping a vial of alchemist’s fire on one of the approaching vessels. Turns out, she has pretty good aim. I could feel her excitement as the boat caught fire.

Only one of the attackers made it to within arm’s reach of the ship, and that’s where he died.

While Suishen and Ulf weren’t on board, the morning was not a total loss. Snorri must have been well loved as he had a rather large pile of treasure to see him off to his afterlife.  We took a more practical viewpoint and figured he wouldn’t be needing it where he was going. We helped ourselves to a rather generous serving and stuffed it in the bag Sparna has been carrying. I estimated a haul of about 12,000 gold in coins, jewelry, and artwork on top of what they had already looted earlier.

I also learned something interesting about Ivan. Before Uksahkka left, she gave him a small clay token and said to present it at the shrine of Shelyn in the Fire Quarter when we were ready to make contact with her again. Naturally, the mention of my goddess caught my attention, and when I looked at the token I saw the unmistakable image of a songbird on one face.

“Ivan, would you mind if I held on to that?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Because it has a holy symbol on it. That songbird is the symbol of Shelyn.”

“You mean this?”

And he pulled back his tunic to reveal a tattoo of a songbird on his shoulder blade.

“I didn’t know what this meant.”

I think everyone was shocked, but none more so than I. We shared a kayak on the way out to the funeral ship, and I told him as much about her as I could in the time that we had.

One kayak over, I could hear Qatana doing the same with Olmas, only of course she was spreading the word of Groetus. She was really giving him the hard sell. It was all I could do to keep from laughing.