Adventure Log, Session 11 Back in Port Karn
General Summary
The three heroes woke up early in the morning. They had gotten to Donnington in the afternoon, and immediately headed to the inn, where they took advantage of the food, drink, baths, and beds. They wasted little time heading out towards Port Karn, and made decent time along the roads that wound through the hedgerows and fields. It was nearing harvest, and the fields were full of workers, even at night. They could hear the work songs of the Orcs as they toiled during the dark hours.
Arriving at the southern outskirts of the great city, the roads filled with people, horses, and carts going into and out of the city, Eykit noticed a young boy run off, into the city. He seemed familiar. Elitheris had seen him too, but it seemed normal to her. Kids ran around all the time. Eykit, his streetwise senses alert, noted the kid for later.
Their first order of business was to get a room or two at an inn, one with a stable for the two equines, Clyde the mule and Wilbur the horse. Then it was time to take Clyde to an armorer, to sell off the heavy gear they had him carrying. Taid knew of an armorer that he had used before, and trusted.
William “Bill” Gerrard, the armorer, was working at his forge, working on a pauldron when they entered his workshop. He looked up, and nodded at Taid, who he knew, but didn’t know well enough to have remembered his name. Taid was carrying a bundle of swords. Likely the result of looting some battlefield, Bill thought wryly.
“What can I do for you?” he said, racking his hammer and placing the half-completed shoulder armor aside.
“Hey, Bill,” Taid said, “we have some gear we would like to sell.” He indicated his companion, a Goblin wearing an oversized mail shirt that, on him, looked more like a nightshirt, as it hung down to his calves. It looked uncomfortable. “Eykit here, will explain.”
Eykit stepped forward, a twinkle in his eyes. He loved bartering, and he was talented at it. He sold the bundle of swords, a bundle of spears, and a brace of knives. Following that, he also sold the brigandine, the emerald-pommelled dagger, and a fine knife. All for a bit more than the price they expected to get. In a way, they got lucky: the gear had been well taken care of, even if it wasn’t new.
Taid thought about contracting to get his mail shirt repaired; it still had the hole eaten through it from the attack by the reek. But he figured that since he was planning on getting the steel corselet repaired and properly fitted, he didn’t need to. He would just sell it when he got his breastplate. Bill fingered the hole in the back plate. “Your work?” he asked Taid, who nodded, dipping his halberd to indicate the spike on the back of the axe blade. There was still a bit of blood on the edges of the hole.
Eykit doffed the expansive amount of mail, asking Bill to adjust it to fit him. “Adjust? Or do you mean ‘radically cut down to size?’” He grinned, to take any sting out of the remark. “You were practically swimming in it, and looked lost in a sea of metal!”
Fixing and adjusting the armors was going to take a couple of days. Money changed hands, and the trio, dog, and mule moved on. The next step was to find a jeweler. Eykit came up blank, the days in the jungle fuzzing his memory. Bill gave them a few names, and they went on their way.
They had to walk a few blocks to get to Khlem’s Gems, one of the names that Bill gave them. There, they sold a bunch of gems and jewelry. There was some talk of keeping the rings in case they wanted to get them enchanted, but in the end, money was more important.
The last stop was a mages’ guild, preferably one that might be interested in the Servitor’s head. Eykit felt that the one that would be most likely was the Port Karn Agricultural Council, one part of which was a mage guild. Since they were connected to the government, a potential threat such as the Servitor might be of interest to them.
Walking into the reception room, a clerk greeted them. Taid held the head out. “Can you tell me anything about this?” he asked the stunned receptionist. The man, dressed in nice business attire, stammered a “Okay, let me get someone who might be able to help you!”, turned, and went through a door behind him. He emerged several minutes later, leading a robed middle aged woman.
“I’m Magistra Allasyn. What do we have here?” she asked, indicating the bulky, heavy object that the Dwarf held.
Taid showed it to her, saying it was the head of a servitor. “I…see,” she replied. She looked it over, a confused but intent look on her face. “Well, I will need a week or so to examine it.” Taid pulled it back, not wanting to give it up just yet.
“Maybe later,” he said.
“That’s fine. If you change your mind, let us know.”
“We do have something else you might be interested in,” Elitheris stated. She held out the staff with the two inch quartz orb on the end of it. Magistra Allasyn’s eyes glittered.
Eykit spoke up, spinning a tale about where the staff came from and how they got it. In the end, the Magistra offered $500 for it, mostly due to the size of the potential powerstone on the end of it. With enough enchantings, it could be a powerful tool for any mage. They took the deal. They showed her the Goblin spell book, but she didn’t offer enough for it, so they held onto it. They also showed her the page of notes found in one of the cultist’s rooms, the one with the thaumatological formulae on it.
After looking at it for a bit, the Magistra smirked, and said, “This was written by a hack. The formulas don’t make any sense. Almost as if an amateur who thought he knew what he was doing but had missed some of the basic fundamentals had attempted to derive equations, but got half the premises wrong, and misunderstood the other half. Here, let me explain….” This was followed by an uncomfortable, lengthy explanation of arcane mathaumatics that went over their heads and left them dizzy. Even Taid, with his training in magical theory, was at a loss to understand more than a quarter of it, and the explanation of thaumatological constants and variables made his head hurt.
During the meeting with Kylen, Homeless Jonn, the boy Eykit had seen take off when they got to town, pulled him aside and told him that Toren Ghent, the Guildmaster of the New Square Skulls, wants to see him. Eykit gulped, thinking he might be in trouble. He told Homeless Jonn that he would meet with Toren that evening. The kid ran off to relay the message to the head of the guild.
Later that day, Eykit went to the building the New Square Skulls used as a meeting hall. Toren was there, as were several other guild officers. They looked serious, and grim, but nodded at Eykit as he walked in. Eykit didn’t get the impression that he was in any kind of trouble, and he released a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding.
He was there simply to get some news about the current affairs of the guild. It would seem that the Flower Street Harrowers were thinking about gaining some territory, at the Skull’s expense. There had been some border skirmishes, but there hadn’t been any deaths…yet. Injuries, yes, but no deaths. And so far, the Skulls had been able to keep all of their territory.
“We think,” Toren said, “that these first forays into our turf were a kind of test. Of our resistance, and of our fighting prowess. A scouting mission, of a sort. But we are afraid it won’t stop there, and that they will want to pursue this war with us. If that is the case, and we fear it may be, I need you to stick around for a while. I may need your silver tongue to deal with the Harrowers, and try to stave off a war. I don’t need to tell you that it would be bad for business. If that fails, and we go to war, then I will likely need you to help convince the neighboring gangs to be our allies.” He looked squarely at Eykit. “So don’t go gallivanting off into the jungle again. At least not for a while. I will need you here. We will need everyone on their toes. Understand?”
Eykit gulped, and nodded. “Yes, sir.” This could be bad, he thought.
It was getting dark, and they went back to the inn. The next morning, they sought out Kylen Pelorus, going to the tavern where he said he would likely be found. He wasn’t kidding, and was waiting for them, sitting at a table, alone. His eyes lit up as he saw them, happy that they were still alive. He knew they had survived; he had talked to the escaped slaves when they had arrived in the city several days before. But he was still happy to see them. They had done as Mithras asked. Now he finally had a chance to find out what it was, exactly.
“Sit, sit,” he said to them, indicating seats across the table from him. He ordered them drinks. “Tell me everything!” They did, leaving out only the details about the loot they gathered. They told him about the temple, the cult, and the servitor. Whose head Taid laid on the table. Other patrons in the tavern looked over at the table when they heard the loud “thump” it made as it hit the wood planks.
“By Mithras, what is it?”
“The cultists called it a ‘Servitor’,” Eykit said. “That’s only its head. The rest of it is still stuck in the crystal. Most likely.”
“Never seen its like. This was the ropy black thing?” The three people across from him nodded, as one. “And the cult was freeing it?” He shook his head. “Why would they do such a thing? At least it explains the dark dream. I was wondering what that one was all about. The others seemed straightforward in comparison. That last one was just a jumble of feelings more than anything else. Wish I knew what the hell that thing was, though.”
“You don’t know?” Taid asked, surprised.
“Nope. Never seen its like before. But everything you told me matches what the slaves told me. Some still haven’t recovered, by the way. It must have been horribly traumatizing for them. Thank you for rescuing them. Oh, and I have this for you. It isn’t much, but it was all I was able to gather.” He held out a pouch full of coins, $420 in all, in mostly copper farthings and silver pieces. “Oh, and thank you for bringing Clyde back to me. I missed him, these last several days.”
Taid, Elitheris, and Eykit left, wanting to head to the Shrine of Seshat. They had several books they wanted the librarians there to take a look at. Eykit and Elitheris both paid the entrance fee of $25, while Taid stayed outside in the covered waiting area, out of the hot sun.
Seshat was the goddess of knowledge and books. Her shrine was, in effect, the city library. Elitheris and Eykit were met by Laurenz Rohr, one of the librarians who knew both Lurkash and Mekiitagi, in addition to Imperial. They showed him the book about the Orcish gods first. “Ah!” he said, “This is a copy of the ‘Treatise of the Higher Gods’, written by the poet-warrior Krahndur the Left-Handed, a famed skald of the Orcs, who lived several centuries ago.” Laurenz then goes on to give a summary of the contents, which amounted to descriptions of the main gods of the Orcish pantheon, how they were worshipped, what their spheres of influence were (fuzzy and overlapping as they were), and some “personal” details about them, their relationships, and motivations. Basically, it was the Orcish equivalent to Bullfinches’ Mythology.
They then showed him the old journal. He carefully flipped through the pages, noting that it was very, very old. At least hundreds of years old, perhaps older. Pages were missing, writing was effaced by age and moisture. What was there was written in a shaky hand of only moderate writing skill. He could tell it was in Lurkash, but it would take a while to decipher the writing. “Check in on it in an eightday. I might have something for you then.”
The last book was the tome that Eykit called “The Nipple Book.” Laurenz took it gingerly, obviously not liking the fact that it was bound in human skin. As he flipped through it, a look of intense discomfort flitted over his face. “It’s old, but not as old as that one,” he indicated the tattered journal. “But I will have to research this writing. I don’t know what it is. It’s not a writing form I am familiar with. But the images in the book are disturbing. I’ll try to have something for you by the time you come back.”
Then they described the servitor, and Elitheris described what was on the bas reliefs in the temple. Laurenz eyes widened. He had heard of something like this, at least in form, if not in action. “That sounds similar to how Ghebbiloth is described. Ghebbiloth is a chaos god of destruction, nihilism, and callousness. And you say you killed this ‘servitor’?”
Eykit nodded. “So it was this Ghebbiloth? A chaos god?”
Laurenz shook his head, sadly. “I’m afraid not. Just a part of it, maybe, but not Ghebbiloth itself. You’d likely be dead if it had been the chaos god itself. This might have been its spawn, or its fingertip, perhaps. I really don’t know. Ghebbiloth may not even be aware of this fraction of itself, if that is the right way to think about it. Or it could resent the fact that it’s been killed. Who knows where the chaos gods are concerned? For all we know, the chaos gods shed servitors like a dog sheds hair.”
With that news, they went back to the inn, enjoying a night of drinking, eating, and song (there was a bard playing a lute who was actually pretty good, with a nice voice suited to the humorous songs he sung).
The next day was the day that William had said their refitted and repaired armor would be ready, so the three of them went to go pick up their gear. Taid got his mail shirt and steel corselet, Eykit got his now much lighter mail shirt, and Elitheris, with the help of Eykit and Taid, got Mr. Wiggles fitted for some gambeson armor with a mail overvest. She didn’t want him injured so badly again. It would be ready in a few days. They also visited an alchemist’s shop, and stocked up on a few healing potions.
Their next stop was back to the Port Karn Agricultural Commission, to visit the enchanters they have there. They seemed to be the only mage guild in town with enchanters at all. Enchantment was difficult, with a long learning curve, that also required a level of natural talent that many mages just didn’t have. Even PKAC, effectively the largest and richest of the mage guilds in town, only had two actual enchanters, plus a bunch of assistants.
It was Harald Darkstone that met them in the reception hall. Harald was a mature Dwarf, with long blond hair and skin actually tanned, indicating that he was one of the Dwarves that actually saw the sun frequently. Usually Dwarves just sunburned; it was rare for a Dwarf to actually have the ability to tan. To Taid, it looked weird and off somehow, but Harald didn’t seem to notice his sidelong glances.
Eykit commissioned some Fortify enchantments on his gambeson armor, to provide more damage resistance. He also wanted to get the mail shirt lightened. It had started off at 25 lbs of linked metal, but the armorer had shorn that down to a bit over 16 lbs, and the Lighten enchantment would further reduce it to about 10.5 lbs. It would be much easier to move around in. Eykit wouldn’t really be able to use it in his thieving work, as it was noisy, but if he had to go toe to toe with foes again, it would come in very handy, and not slow him down nearly as much.
Taid wanted to get his steel corselet Lightened as well. That would take the 35 lbs of steel and reduce it to a bit over 26 lbs. He also picked up a pair of Bless +1 rings. Only one could be used at a time, but at some point the enchantment would burn out, and he would need a replacement.
The enchantments would take about an eightday. And they had Shards. While Elitheris didn’t really have an idea what to do with them, having lived as a hermit in the woods and jungle for the last 80 years or so, both Taid and Eykit knew what people did with them. They played the Game of Shards. On a more or less weekly basis, tents would be set up or spaces rented in which to set up tables, where the Game of Shards would be played. These were called “Shardmeets”.
Most of the time, these venues were organized by the Church of the Awakening, who preached that the Shards were tools to open the mind, awaken one’s inner eye, and generally become a better person. They were sort of a cross between new age crystal gazers and Scientologists, except without the enforced monetary donations or mysterious alien forces. They focused on the self, and while they accepted (and asked for) donations, they didn’t make anyone pay anything they couldn’t afford. They did enjoy Shards, though, and if no one else ran games in their area, they would organize one.
At this time, they didn’t need to organize one, because Bardem’s Crystal Palace was in town. Bardem Amir was an itinerant traveler who would set up a Shardmeet in whatever building he could rent. He was currently in a warehouse down by the docks. “Palace” was something of a misnomer, but it was his trademark, and he had been through Port Karn before. He charged admission, and usually ran various side bets, like many other people: whose Shards would join, if any Shards would join in a specific game, and, occasionally, whether the joining Shards would have a beneficial effect, or a negative one. He made a lot of money, and was known to play the Game of Shards himself on occasion.
But before they could take advantage of Bardem’s Crystal Palace, Elend Rabbitfoot, the Robbery Chief of the Skulls came to visit Eykit. Eykit had a job. He had to steal the portrait of the Harrowers’ leader’s daughter. No one was to be killed, or injured, and nothing else was to be stolen. It was to send a message to the leader, a Human named Lenin Kraite, that it would be in their best interest to not attack the Skulls. The portrait was also not to be destroyed. Just stolen, a sort of proxy for their daughter, and to show the Harrowers that they were vulnerable and to not mess with the New Square Skulls. As of three months ago, the portrait was in the dining room. Hopefully it hasn’t been put away somewhere, and Eykit won’t have to spend time searching for it in hostile territory.
Needless to say, if the job goes pear-shaped, it would be really, really bad, and likely start the war that Toren is trying to avoid. Elend also mentioned to Eykit that while it would be okay to have his new friends’ help, it would likely be a really bad idea to have them go into or even get too close to Kraite Manor. Elend was of the opinion that they wouldn’t likely be sneaky enough to pull it off without alerting the guards that Kraite has to have.
Arriving at the southern outskirts of the great city, the roads filled with people, horses, and carts going into and out of the city, Eykit noticed a young boy run off, into the city. He seemed familiar. Elitheris had seen him too, but it seemed normal to her. Kids ran around all the time. Eykit, his streetwise senses alert, noted the kid for later.
Their first order of business was to get a room or two at an inn, one with a stable for the two equines, Clyde the mule and Wilbur the horse. Then it was time to take Clyde to an armorer, to sell off the heavy gear they had him carrying. Taid knew of an armorer that he had used before, and trusted.
William “Bill” Gerrard, the armorer, was working at his forge, working on a pauldron when they entered his workshop. He looked up, and nodded at Taid, who he knew, but didn’t know well enough to have remembered his name. Taid was carrying a bundle of swords. Likely the result of looting some battlefield, Bill thought wryly.
“Hey, Bill,” Taid said, “we have some gear we would like to sell.” He indicated his companion, a Goblin wearing an oversized mail shirt that, on him, looked more like a nightshirt, as it hung down to his calves. It looked uncomfortable. “Eykit here, will explain.”
Eykit stepped forward, a twinkle in his eyes. He loved bartering, and he was talented at it. He sold the bundle of swords, a bundle of spears, and a brace of knives. Following that, he also sold the brigandine, the emerald-pommelled dagger, and a fine knife. All for a bit more than the price they expected to get. In a way, they got lucky: the gear had been well taken care of, even if it wasn’t new.
Taid thought about contracting to get his mail shirt repaired; it still had the hole eaten through it from the attack by the reek. But he figured that since he was planning on getting the steel corselet repaired and properly fitted, he didn’t need to. He would just sell it when he got his breastplate. Bill fingered the hole in the back plate. “Your work?” he asked Taid, who nodded, dipping his halberd to indicate the spike on the back of the axe blade. There was still a bit of blood on the edges of the hole.
Eykit doffed the expansive amount of mail, asking Bill to adjust it to fit him. “Adjust? Or do you mean ‘radically cut down to size?’” He grinned, to take any sting out of the remark. “You were practically swimming in it, and looked lost in a sea of metal!”
Fixing and adjusting the armors was going to take a couple of days. Money changed hands, and the trio, dog, and mule moved on. The next step was to find a jeweler. Eykit came up blank, the days in the jungle fuzzing his memory. Bill gave them a few names, and they went on their way.
They had to walk a few blocks to get to Khlem’s Gems, one of the names that Bill gave them. There, they sold a bunch of gems and jewelry. There was some talk of keeping the rings in case they wanted to get them enchanted, but in the end, money was more important.
The last stop was a mages’ guild, preferably one that might be interested in the Servitor’s head. Eykit felt that the one that would be most likely was the Port Karn Agricultural Council, one part of which was a mage guild. Since they were connected to the government, a potential threat such as the Servitor might be of interest to them.
Walking into the reception room, a clerk greeted them. Taid held the head out. “Can you tell me anything about this?” he asked the stunned receptionist. The man, dressed in nice business attire, stammered a “Okay, let me get someone who might be able to help you!”, turned, and went through a door behind him. He emerged several minutes later, leading a robed middle aged woman.
“I’m Magistra Allasyn. What do we have here?” she asked, indicating the bulky, heavy object that the Dwarf held.
“Maybe later,” he said.
“That’s fine. If you change your mind, let us know.”
“We do have something else you might be interested in,” Elitheris stated. She held out the staff with the two inch quartz orb on the end of it. Magistra Allasyn’s eyes glittered.
Eykit spoke up, spinning a tale about where the staff came from and how they got it. In the end, the Magistra offered $500 for it, mostly due to the size of the potential powerstone on the end of it. With enough enchantings, it could be a powerful tool for any mage. They took the deal. They showed her the Goblin spell book, but she didn’t offer enough for it, so they held onto it. They also showed her the page of notes found in one of the cultist’s rooms, the one with the thaumatological formulae on it.
After looking at it for a bit, the Magistra smirked, and said, “This was written by a hack. The formulas don’t make any sense. Almost as if an amateur who thought he knew what he was doing but had missed some of the basic fundamentals had attempted to derive equations, but got half the premises wrong, and misunderstood the other half. Here, let me explain….” This was followed by an uncomfortable, lengthy explanation of arcane mathaumatics that went over their heads and left them dizzy. Even Taid, with his training in magical theory, was at a loss to understand more than a quarter of it, and the explanation of thaumatological constants and variables made his head hurt.
During the meeting with Kylen, Homeless Jonn, the boy Eykit had seen take off when they got to town, pulled him aside and told him that Toren Ghent, the Guildmaster of the New Square Skulls, wants to see him. Eykit gulped, thinking he might be in trouble. He told Homeless Jonn that he would meet with Toren that evening. The kid ran off to relay the message to the head of the guild.
Later that day, Eykit went to the building the New Square Skulls used as a meeting hall. Toren was there, as were several other guild officers. They looked serious, and grim, but nodded at Eykit as he walked in. Eykit didn’t get the impression that he was in any kind of trouble, and he released a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding.
He was there simply to get some news about the current affairs of the guild. It would seem that the Flower Street Harrowers were thinking about gaining some territory, at the Skull’s expense. There had been some border skirmishes, but there hadn’t been any deaths…yet. Injuries, yes, but no deaths. And so far, the Skulls had been able to keep all of their territory.
“We think,” Toren said, “that these first forays into our turf were a kind of test. Of our resistance, and of our fighting prowess. A scouting mission, of a sort. But we are afraid it won’t stop there, and that they will want to pursue this war with us. If that is the case, and we fear it may be, I need you to stick around for a while. I may need your silver tongue to deal with the Harrowers, and try to stave off a war. I don’t need to tell you that it would be bad for business. If that fails, and we go to war, then I will likely need you to help convince the neighboring gangs to be our allies.” He looked squarely at Eykit. “So don’t go gallivanting off into the jungle again. At least not for a while. I will need you here. We will need everyone on their toes. Understand?”
Eykit gulped, and nodded. “Yes, sir.” This could be bad, he thought.
It was getting dark, and they went back to the inn. The next morning, they sought out Kylen Pelorus, going to the tavern where he said he would likely be found. He wasn’t kidding, and was waiting for them, sitting at a table, alone. His eyes lit up as he saw them, happy that they were still alive. He knew they had survived; he had talked to the escaped slaves when they had arrived in the city several days before. But he was still happy to see them. They had done as Mithras asked. Now he finally had a chance to find out what it was, exactly.
“By Mithras, what is it?”
“The cultists called it a ‘Servitor’,” Eykit said. “That’s only its head. The rest of it is still stuck in the crystal. Most likely.”
“Never seen its like. This was the ropy black thing?” The three people across from him nodded, as one. “And the cult was freeing it?” He shook his head. “Why would they do such a thing? At least it explains the dark dream. I was wondering what that one was all about. The others seemed straightforward in comparison. That last one was just a jumble of feelings more than anything else. Wish I knew what the hell that thing was, though.”
“You don’t know?” Taid asked, surprised.
“Nope. Never seen its like before. But everything you told me matches what the slaves told me. Some still haven’t recovered, by the way. It must have been horribly traumatizing for them. Thank you for rescuing them. Oh, and I have this for you. It isn’t much, but it was all I was able to gather.” He held out a pouch full of coins, $420 in all, in mostly copper farthings and silver pieces. “Oh, and thank you for bringing Clyde back to me. I missed him, these last several days.”
Taid, Elitheris, and Eykit left, wanting to head to the Shrine of Seshat. They had several books they wanted the librarians there to take a look at. Eykit and Elitheris both paid the entrance fee of $25, while Taid stayed outside in the covered waiting area, out of the hot sun.
Seshat was the goddess of knowledge and books. Her shrine was, in effect, the city library. Elitheris and Eykit were met by Laurenz Rohr, one of the librarians who knew both Lurkash and Mekiitagi, in addition to Imperial. They showed him the book about the Orcish gods first. “Ah!” he said, “This is a copy of the ‘Treatise of the Higher Gods’, written by the poet-warrior Krahndur the Left-Handed, a famed skald of the Orcs, who lived several centuries ago.” Laurenz then goes on to give a summary of the contents, which amounted to descriptions of the main gods of the Orcish pantheon, how they were worshipped, what their spheres of influence were (fuzzy and overlapping as they were), and some “personal” details about them, their relationships, and motivations. Basically, it was the Orcish equivalent to Bullfinches’ Mythology.
They then showed him the old journal. He carefully flipped through the pages, noting that it was very, very old. At least hundreds of years old, perhaps older. Pages were missing, writing was effaced by age and moisture. What was there was written in a shaky hand of only moderate writing skill. He could tell it was in Lurkash, but it would take a while to decipher the writing. “Check in on it in an eightday. I might have something for you then.”
The last book was the tome that Eykit called “The Nipple Book.” Laurenz took it gingerly, obviously not liking the fact that it was bound in human skin. As he flipped through it, a look of intense discomfort flitted over his face. “It’s old, but not as old as that one,” he indicated the tattered journal. “But I will have to research this writing. I don’t know what it is. It’s not a writing form I am familiar with. But the images in the book are disturbing. I’ll try to have something for you by the time you come back.”
Then they described the servitor, and Elitheris described what was on the bas reliefs in the temple. Laurenz eyes widened. He had heard of something like this, at least in form, if not in action. “That sounds similar to how Ghebbiloth is described. Ghebbiloth is a chaos god of destruction, nihilism, and callousness. And you say you killed this ‘servitor’?”
Eykit nodded. “So it was this Ghebbiloth? A chaos god?”
Laurenz shook his head, sadly. “I’m afraid not. Just a part of it, maybe, but not Ghebbiloth itself. You’d likely be dead if it had been the chaos god itself. This might have been its spawn, or its fingertip, perhaps. I really don’t know. Ghebbiloth may not even be aware of this fraction of itself, if that is the right way to think about it. Or it could resent the fact that it’s been killed. Who knows where the chaos gods are concerned? For all we know, the chaos gods shed servitors like a dog sheds hair.”
With that news, they went back to the inn, enjoying a night of drinking, eating, and song (there was a bard playing a lute who was actually pretty good, with a nice voice suited to the humorous songs he sung).
The next day was the day that William had said their refitted and repaired armor would be ready, so the three of them went to go pick up their gear. Taid got his mail shirt and steel corselet, Eykit got his now much lighter mail shirt, and Elitheris, with the help of Eykit and Taid, got Mr. Wiggles fitted for some gambeson armor with a mail overvest. She didn’t want him injured so badly again. It would be ready in a few days. They also visited an alchemist’s shop, and stocked up on a few healing potions.
Their next stop was back to the Port Karn Agricultural Commission, to visit the enchanters they have there. They seemed to be the only mage guild in town with enchanters at all. Enchantment was difficult, with a long learning curve, that also required a level of natural talent that many mages just didn’t have. Even PKAC, effectively the largest and richest of the mage guilds in town, only had two actual enchanters, plus a bunch of assistants.
Eykit commissioned some Fortify enchantments on his gambeson armor, to provide more damage resistance. He also wanted to get the mail shirt lightened. It had started off at 25 lbs of linked metal, but the armorer had shorn that down to a bit over 16 lbs, and the Lighten enchantment would further reduce it to about 10.5 lbs. It would be much easier to move around in. Eykit wouldn’t really be able to use it in his thieving work, as it was noisy, but if he had to go toe to toe with foes again, it would come in very handy, and not slow him down nearly as much.
Taid wanted to get his steel corselet Lightened as well. That would take the 35 lbs of steel and reduce it to a bit over 26 lbs. He also picked up a pair of Bless +1 rings. Only one could be used at a time, but at some point the enchantment would burn out, and he would need a replacement.
The enchantments would take about an eightday. And they had Shards. While Elitheris didn’t really have an idea what to do with them, having lived as a hermit in the woods and jungle for the last 80 years or so, both Taid and Eykit knew what people did with them. They played the Game of Shards. On a more or less weekly basis, tents would be set up or spaces rented in which to set up tables, where the Game of Shards would be played. These were called “Shardmeets”.
Most of the time, these venues were organized by the Church of the Awakening, who preached that the Shards were tools to open the mind, awaken one’s inner eye, and generally become a better person. They were sort of a cross between new age crystal gazers and Scientologists, except without the enforced monetary donations or mysterious alien forces. They focused on the self, and while they accepted (and asked for) donations, they didn’t make anyone pay anything they couldn’t afford. They did enjoy Shards, though, and if no one else ran games in their area, they would organize one.
At this time, they didn’t need to organize one, because Bardem’s Crystal Palace was in town. Bardem Amir was an itinerant traveler who would set up a Shardmeet in whatever building he could rent. He was currently in a warehouse down by the docks. “Palace” was something of a misnomer, but it was his trademark, and he had been through Port Karn before. He charged admission, and usually ran various side bets, like many other people: whose Shards would join, if any Shards would join in a specific game, and, occasionally, whether the joining Shards would have a beneficial effect, or a negative one. He made a lot of money, and was known to play the Game of Shards himself on occasion.
Needless to say, if the job goes pear-shaped, it would be really, really bad, and likely start the war that Toren is trying to avoid. Elend also mentioned to Eykit that while it would be okay to have his new friends’ help, it would likely be a really bad idea to have them go into or even get too close to Kraite Manor. Elend was of the opinion that they wouldn’t likely be sneaky enough to pull it off without alerting the guards that Kraite has to have.
Rewards Granted
None, really. This session was a "relax in town, sell some loot, buy some stuff" kind of session.
Taid got the scavenged steel corselet repaired, fitted, and enchanted with the Lighten spell. He also got a pair of Bless +1 rings.
Eykit got his mail shirt fitted properly, and enchanted with the Lighten spell. He also got his gambeson armor enchanted with the Fortify spell, giving him more damage resistance.
Mr. Wiggles got some gambeson armor, and a mail overvest.
Taid got the scavenged steel corselet repaired, fitted, and enchanted with the Lighten spell. He also got a pair of Bless +1 rings.
Eykit got his mail shirt fitted properly, and enchanted with the Lighten spell. He also got his gambeson armor enchanted with the Fortify spell, giving him more damage resistance.
Mr. Wiggles got some gambeson armor, and a mail overvest.
Missions/Quests Completed
They wrapped up the Orc Temple adventure. There are a few threads left to tie up, but only from a curiosity standpoint.
Report Date
13 Mar 2022
Primary Location
Secondary Location
Related Characters
Comments