Session 10

“The dependent is thriving.” turned out to be true. The dependent… Giggs… had turned himself into a petty tyrant. A monopolist taking advantage of the power vacuum he had created. It seems the effects of the war have reached Neverwinter and the markets have been taken over by Giggs. His factory of misery now seems to sustain the city. But worse than that… that ignorant worthless sack of skin insulted my discipline and my life's work. When I suggested he use undead for his factory rather than slaves he said that they would make the product taste bad. Taste bad!?! It is not as if I suggested he use walking rotten flesh to pack rations! People are much more disgusting than walking bones… even flesh can be preserved with the right magic… His accomplishments were a product of opportunism and indifference to the suffering of others. Like the nobles I so despised. Any fool and dullard can use slaves to build wealth; it's not as if such a job requires the brightest of people. He has worked for nothing; he was handed freedom and he used it to steal it from others. He takes the credit and fruits of their work for his own. Moreover he was incapable of understanding the merits of my suggestion. The dead are tools, the living are capable of higher pursuits than this… this… recreation of the nine hells. I wonder how the elf would feel about Giggs now. But he is gone, turned to dust that shifts and moves in the confines of the jar he was buried in. The sand in the hour glass falls so slowly for so long, how long? How long did it fall? How long was I left with my thoughts? Those gods were trapped in that strange machine in that place so far way. The cult of crimson red, their captors. Ilmater and Kelemvor… the shadows stick to me still from that place… dye I can't wash off. I find myself between places so often, I have seen without sight for so long that I hadn't noticed the times I was blind. The dependent was a leach, a parasite, a person who begged for sympathy for freedom… for himself. He should have been discarded like a bad first draft. He shares that trait well with Rugo; he is a bad first draft. He will find his end the same way as Rugo did, cut down in a basement. No perhaps burnt to a cinder? Ripped apart by undead? Even now I am burning with rage just thinking about him, his smug smile, his know it all attitude. He thinks he knows so much but he knows nothing… But what of the other slaves then? Will they share the fate of him? Are they destined to walk the same path as their creator? Should they be saved? Can they be saved? Is it worth the risk to consider them? I feel it is my place to pass judgment on Giggs but is it my place to judge them for a life they haven’t lived? Judgment… the eternal scales… fate… how can one be judged for a life they are fated to live..? No, if fate is real then it will find me and if it isn't then I must decide I must pass judgment. Giggs must die… The slaves must be discarded… left to their own devices. This is fair judgment. I am no hero, I am a scholar…