Post
by Sharkforce » Tue Nov 16, 2021 2:11 am
The Journal of Garak of Irondelve, Part 5: Copper Red As Blood
Ugh, my head. Worst. Success. Ever.
So a lady Elf Named Keel (a Sky Raider apparently) was looking for some new faces to bring along on some sort of job. Seems one of the big shot merchant houses around Throal has been a whole new brand of sleazy in how they exploit the mine workers which really grinds my tusks, the miner's guild is in on it which is all kinds of sick, and some reporter handed Keel a stack of papers with a whole maze of information full of not many details and a vague call to action. Lucky for them I got a soft spot for miners.
She came looking for those of us who had recently helped with that kree-an-in tomb nonsense, and lucky for her most of us were together at that headache-inducing candy shop Teyo calls a tavern. Kelek and Kalandar were there as well, maybe Elves just have a bigger sweet tooth than I thought, and I was wondering how Cesar managed to sneak away the lucky git. Personally I was mostly busy trying to keep from getting crayon all over my stuff, but the good news is we got to go someplace with proper drinks. 'Course I had to go there surrounded by three Elves and a Windling, but at least Keel made a good showing of herself and chugged down an entire tankard of the house special.
Anyways, we got to talking to some of the local mine workers and apparently they've been grieving and... sewing? Granted, I was never the most interested in hearing Gram's old mining stories, but that didn't add up to me. Anyways, This was a bit of a side-track, I guess, we were trying to find out more about the time and place we'd been sent to by that reporter lady and we didn't really even know what the job was yet... I just wanted to make sure we were going to be sticking it to the snobs that've been screwing the miners before taking the job, not sure what the others were hoping for.
Anyways, it wasn't a total bust (like I said, it got us someplace with real drinks, and good food at that), but we were still pretty much in the dark. We decided to check out the place the reporter had said we'd need to go, and long story short, the families of miners who had been caught in a collapsed mine a few months back had been pouring their grief into art that they wanted sent to the grave site. Specifically, the grave site that they couldn't visit 'cause the highborn trash wouldn't let anyone go to, even though it was supposedly no longer good for anything after they abandoned the place after poisoning the land and leaving the workers to rot without even a proper burial, after stealing the money they owed the workers' families. Like I said, a real piece of work. House Ueraven can kiss my hairy ass if they ever want me to so much as lift a finger on their behalf, I say. I'd gladly watch the lot of 'em fall off a cliff and have a grand old time laughing every time they crash into a rock on the way down.
Anyways, that wasn't what the gathering was about, they just wanted someone to take the grave goods to their lost family and give a proper send-off as best as could be done, and while I had been really looking forward to busting open some skulls it didn't feel right to say no. Didn't feel right to demand money for it either, so I was figuring I'd just conveniently "forget" to take their money afterwards, 'specially since this didn't seem like that hard of a job. These folks didn't need any more kicking while they were down, that's for sure, and frankly I don't think they could afford it.
So we took a few mule-loads of art and headed off towards the general direction of the mine (apparently it was some sort of secret, which is odd for a played-out abandoned copper mine that is less than worthless on account of the land is all toxic and the nature spirits in the area are madder than a nest of hornets after their nest has been set aflame, in both senses of the word mad). Not much happened along the way, just a bit of a tussle with some local wildlife that gave us fresh meat instead of travel rations for dinner, up until we got close. Plus it helped work off some of my Gahad hangover from getting so excited about busting some highfalutin scum's heads and then finding out that wasn't the plan at all.
There was a pretty nasty fight when we saw a good lookout spot we figured would give us a good idea of where to go, and we got ambushed by some spirits. Nasty business, that; the river was poisoned, which meant the land was poisoned, which meant they were poisoned as well, it took a couple days resting next to a spring we were lucky to stumble across so we could clean out our wounds (and our clothes, and ourselves) after being covered in all manner of sludge and slime from the polluted land. The main takeaway is that the spirits all seemed to be acting at the behest of some "Grandfather" spirit. I'll come back to that in a minute.
Anyways, we found the mine, looked like some fire spirits had gotten loose and burnt the whole place while some earth spirits must've collapsed the entrance real good. We weren't going to be able to get in there to a proper grave site any time soon, so we had a little ceremony at the mine entrance for the deceased. I was pretty distracted because I was pretty angry too, but apparently that was already starting to clear up the astral a little I'm told. I went and poked around trying to look for some way to at least hit the rich bastards in their pocket book when I noticed the records in the mine office looked like they'd been burnt twice, which was suspicious to say the least.
More importantly, remember when I said I'd come back to "Grandfather"? Well, the mountain woke up and told us to go in "the pipe" and rescue his grandson, who based on context was a Purifier who was understandably upset about the fact that the land was being turned into a barren waste where nothing could grow. Seems he was stuck in the mine somehow, with copper spears(?) stabbed through him, according to the spirit (I don't speak mountain, so I wasn't clear on all the details). Anyways, he said we could live if we rescued his grandson, which was a pretty persuasive argument to my way of thinking.
Sure enough we found a pipe still spewing corrosive waste from the mine, big enough to crawl in, and a ways in "Grandfather" must've opened up a shaft to climb which we were able to thankfully reach before another wave of filth dissolved us to nothing. Thankfully I had my new light quartz lantern with me and I could tie it to my belt, because I needed both hands. Eventually we came out to a large cavern filled with some wild contraptions, all of which led back to the Purified we'd been sent to help, who was pierced by far too many copper pipes and being bled dry by them, slowly. I'm not sure how the mountain figured we were going to rescue him from that, personally: I for one was fresh out of any sort of magic that could bring back the dead, and I don't think pulling out those pipes was going to leave him alive.
That turned out to be rather a moot point however, as the rest of the cave was filled with angry enslaved spirits, nearly-dead enslaved miners, and a madman turning blood into copper or some such thing. Later I'd find out he was called "Renfield" and had worked for an Elementalist who had come here to enslave the angry nature spirits, according to the miners. We got there just in time to prevent his orders to the nature spirits to kill all the remaining miners (about half of them were still in the mine after all this time being worked to death), but not in time to keep him from bleeding the last of the Purifier's life into more copper, turning into some sort of fiery thing, and burning a hole through the top of the cavern out into the sky as he escaped.
At this point, I'm a little hazy on the details. "Grandfather" didn't take the death of "Grandson" very well, and after a whole lot of stuff I'd rather not remember too closely, we wound up outside the mountain in a heap with all the surviving miners, and the mountain told us to leave in no uncertain terms and we could live. It was not a less persuasive argument than the first time, so we left.
The good news is that we actually did some good for the families. Also, as much as I hate to take anything from house garbage fire (which so far as I am concerned is both their name and my dream for the future of their vile cesshole of a family), I'd rather they didn't have it, and I didn't have to take money from a bunch of grieving widows and orphans who had no money to give, so I did get paid after all. The bad news is that it feels like my stomach decided to fill up with the poisonous waste from the mine, crawl up into my skull, and vomit all over everything.