You are reading the writings of Truck of the Deep Servos.
I was honored to receive the following invitation.
Addressed to the esteemed Truck of the Deep Servos.
The Landis Exalted Graduates invites you to our annual Symposium. We'd like you to present on the Legends of your homeland, the Servos Jungle. This year the Symposium is held in the Tisoara Ruins, the same location that the Throalic Adepts went to obtain information on the Invae and the place where diplomatic relations began between the surviving Landis denizens and Throal. The location has since been cleared of Horrors by a small group of Horror Stalkers who call Parland their home. The Tisoara ruins will be protected by the Reserve Militia from a Kaer in the Arkhazid Jungle. We'd also like you to extend a job offer to the Throalic Order of Engineers to build fortifications in Tisoara to establish a safe and defensible environment in which the Symposium can be held. The Symposium is expected to last 7 days, so please plan accordingly. Lodging will be provided, and vendors will be invited to provide meals. Feel free to bring along an entourage of up to four additional Namegivers.
With high regard, Jolene Griffin Dean, School of History The Landis Exalted Graduates
I was greatly excited by this invitation. There was no time to send a reply, there was barely time to extend an invitation to some companions and to arrange transport. The site of the Symposium was months walk away (and some of my companions STILL have not purchased horses), but fortunately there was an airship hired by some other attendees of the symposium that was going right there. Thus Dale, R'edtarian, Taras, Vallone, and myself all disembarked at the symposium site on the morning of its first day. The symposium guards had extraordinarily high standards, and at first only passed myself and one of my companions while the other three were given extra scrutiny. This did not sit well with Tarias Vanko, who almost got in a fight with the inspectors. Fortunately all sides eventually calmed down.
The Horror Stalkers who were handling the gate said that they had somehow learned that some mercenary troublemakers had been hired to disrupt the symposium's last day in an attempt to thwart the symposiums purpose of spreading peace, understanding, friendship and scholarship, and instead sow disruption and distrust among the parties that had traveled so far to reach it. They asked us if we would take over the task of preventing these crimes and apprehending the perpetrators.
They had learned (somehow) that there would be 5 attacks by 5 different methods, in 5 different locations, at 5 different times, and the perpetrators would be from 5 different races.
Methods: Melee-based Murder, Archery Assassination, Mystic Manslaughter, Beastmaster Battery, and Unarmed Theft.
Locations: Southern Barracks, Central Bazaar, East Gate, Library (symposium), Western Streets.
Times: Morning, Midday, Afternoon, Evening, and Nighttime.
Perpetrators: Elf, Ork, Human, Dwarf, Windling.
In addition to all that, I (personally) greatly wanted to attend at least one of the two symposium sessions per day, plus I needed to present my own paper on legendary persons and acts in the Servos over the last three and a half centuries. That was scheduled for the afternoon session of the 4th day.
We reluctantly agreed to take on the task, and asked a lot more details of the guy in charge of security. He told us that there were about 100 guests and their entourages, about 50 vendors, and about 80 militia present this week. We talked to the guards who had been searching luggage, and found that no dwarves or orks had brought in Grimoires. And that about 13 guests had tried to bring in Animal Companions, but no elves or windlings had. A brief check at the Southern Barracks and the Library in which the Symposium lectures were taking place disclosed that they were not suitable at all for an Archery Assassination. The Library was full of scholars in the Morning and Afternoon, but very sparsely attended the other times of day.
So we felt that we had narrowed it down greatly the very first hour even before we talked to a single person. That midday we went to the central Bazaar, and noticed a dwarf archer that seemed to be acting suspiciously. I went up to speak to him, and he said that his name was Jonghel and that he was part of an entourage of a Windling that was right now giving his presentation on the legends of the Meric Valley. However we later learned that the first session of the Symposium was the Afternoon session coming up. While I was talking to him, his eyes kept wandering and one of my companions who was observing noticed him pick out the rooftop from which he would be firing. After I left, one of our party kept him under observation and saw that he stayed in the bazaar all day, and frequently checked the wind conditions. We made note of wind conditions as well, and found that the worst wind conditions were at noon, and the best were in the evening. While a party member was keeping the dwarf under observation he witnessed him meeting with an ork and a human.
We kept checking various locations, and kept following the mercenaries we had identified, and we quickly filled in more information (and speculation) on the plot. We found their assigned sleeping bay, and rifled their belongings. We found a Nethermancy grimoire written in windling, and identified the Ork as a beastmaster and the human as a thief. We never did determine the Elf's exact discipline but figured it was melee based. We found that the very best time and place to steal lots of stuff was the barracks at midday. We found that the windling was spending all of his nights building a magical ward or trap above the doorway of the library. He was working at night when nobody was there, but we figured he most certainly would do his magical mayhem when the library was full of scholars, so either morning or afternoon. We found that the Elf had an interest in the Western Streets, and soon a rumor spread through the symposium that a major archaeological find had been made there, and that it would be revealed the night of the last day of the symposium.
It really only took us two days to figure out that the most likely combination was:
In the Morning, Mystic Manslaughter by the Windling Nethermancer in the Library.
At Midday, Unarmed Theft by the Human Thief in the Barracks.
In the afternoon, Beastmaster Battery by the Orc Beastmaster at the Eastern Gates.
In the Evening, Archery Assassination by Jonghel the Dwarf Archer in the Central Bazaar.
And at night, Melee-based Murder by the Elf in the Western Streets at the archaeological reveil. .
We spent the rest of the week confirming this, and reported all this to the guy who hired us, and we and his team were on hand to quash all the attempts. The only one that even got properly started was the beastmasters stampeding some Brithen into the East Gate, but we quickly put an end to that and there was roast Brithan at several of the vendor stalls at the final dinner of the Symposium.
As for myself, I attended most of the Symposium sessions, and my own presentation was quite well received. After defending my paper I was asked to join the ranks of Scholar and was initiated into the mysteries of the path.
