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by Sharkforce » Mon Oct 25, 2021 12:49 am
The Journal of Garak of Irondelve, Part 4: A Lady In Need May Pay Indeed
Note: if it seems like Garak is being a little vague about names or neglects facts that may serve to identify their ultimate employer, it is because he believes the employer expects him to be at least somewhat discreet.
I've been saving up to buy a proper bow for some time now, and saw a good opportunity to establish a working relationship with a firm of advocates in Throal known to work with the noble houses; Gajorvi, Jukse & Hvordan. It seems they wanted a more organized group, so Caesar and I gathered a team of ourselves and a few newcomers. Well, mostly he did the gathering. He's much better at talking than I. Joining us were Kelek, and Elven Weaponsmith, Kalandar, an Elven Thief, and Teyo, a Windling Swordmaster.
We showed up and saw that with the competition (if you can call it that) we would handily win the contract. We were ushered in, to my surprise, to meet Mr. Vostut Jukse himself. One of his clients who I should probably not name, but I shall say they were well-connected, had an urgent request that we look into matters relating to a hamlet to the north of my hometown of Irondelve, a place called Pheasant Hollow. I've heard of the place; the local fowl make a tasty meal, and every so often a caravan goes out that way to stock the only store.
We were provided some documentation detailing the events we were to investigate relating to the disappearance of some of the villagers, and sent on our way to join a courier to be provided for the town's needs, as well as some horses to get us there quickly as the matter was urgent. We were the initial response, with a more powerful team of Adepts to follow behind us while we gathered information and prepared the way. Our courier was most exceptional in every way, and brought us expertly to our destination.
Upon arriving, we were directed to "The Store" which was the site of the latest disappearance. Daphne was the only one left of what had been three people living there; her son Gerald had been among the earliest to disappear, and her husband Harald was the most recent. She sent for others to join, including the Elder and a retired guardsman who had been leading the investigation thus far. Not much had been found; each of the missing had disappeared in the night, with nobody noticing anything. They had not taken their day clothes with them. Searches had been conducted, but nothing had been found.
Some patterns did emerge however; to my eye, the disappearances were coming more quickly. When we initially received word, only 4 had gone missing. By the time we arrived, there were 12. All had been in their homes, except for the first, a young Orc forager by the name of Angie, who was presumed to have been in the jungle and not returned. My working theory at this point was that Angie had stumbled across something awful (but which I hoped was not a Horror), died, and then the thing had come after the village.
Also, when I said that nobody had seen anything, what that actually meant was that the locals refused to acknowledge the one person who knew something, a young girl named Kristy. Everyone seemed reluctant to get too close to her, as if they thought her to be rather eerie. A couple of us thought she had the makings of an Adept, which was quite remarkable as she looked to be very young (later discussion revealed she was 4 years old).
Also, she had heard strange flute-like "voices" singing in the night, including the night her mother had disappeared off to the west without acknowledging her presence while wrapped in cloth and having strange markings over her covered eyes (this did absolutely nothing to relieve my worries that this might involve a Horror). No clues my ass. These people had simply ignored what they didn't want to hear. In any event, what with her saying she saw her grandmother's spirit nearby, the fact that everyone seemed unsettled by her, and a seeming ability to notice seemingly spirit-related events, I had my suspiscions she had the makings of a Nethermancer (which were later confirmed). Her father had obviously not been caring for her since her mother disappeared, and seemed drunk and abusive. His name can remain unheard forever, so far as I am concerned.
We arranged for the girl's safety (and got her some food) to stay with the courier we had arrived with, at least for a day or two (she couldn't commit to longer, as she might need to leave). I'm not certain if Caesar did something to smooth things over with the villagers or if they just didn't care so long as nobody expected *them* to take care of the child, but if nothing else came of this I was determined that the child was not going to be left here to be neglected or perhaps killed as a scapegoat for every missing pet (a common event when you're almost on the borders of the Servos) or minor misfortune, and frankly I wouldn't have minded if we had to burn some bridges (figuratively or for that matter literally if necessary) to ensure her safety and education.
Our next stop was out on the edges of the town towards the Servos. Tracking became much easier for me once we got away from the busier areas in the main village, and I quickly picked up a trail leading into the Servos (which we later found was a direction the locals had avoided searching for nearly a month, a piece of information which they really ought to have shared in my opinion; after all, if you have looked literally everywhere else, the remaining place is the obvious one to look).
This trail brought us to what appeared to be a war between the local monkeys and apes, the living against the undead, which further suggested we were going the right direction. The monkeys were not so hard to kill, but I could certainly do with never having rotting maggot-filled dung thrown at me ever again. We burned the corpses, cleaned ourselves off, got our second wind, and continued into the jungle until we found a cave which I could only wish had been more spacious. As if the jungle wasn't cramped enough, in a few places we had to squeeze through holes where the ceiling had collapsed (which was not very reassuring to say the least).
We quickly found Angie, who was dead and missing several organs in a spiked pit trap. In hindsight, the monkeys we had burned were also missing those organs. We decided we didn't have time to extract her safely and hoped she would not rise from the dead to kill us, then pressed on promising to properly put her to rest at a later date. Eventually we found a room filled with sand. Perfectly level, raked smooth sand. No dust, no footprints, no signs anyone had gone through. It was just on the other side of a tiny gap where what I hoped was a falling block trap triggered by something rather than an accidental collapse, so we crawled back through it and lobbed some stones on the sand; sure enough, the stones sank, and a horde of beetles the size of my head came crawling out looking for something to strip the flesh off of us (or so I suspect; we had come across a number of bones on our way in, all of them practically polished clean as if the flesh had been gnawed away).
Eventually a few undead wrapped in cloth came out. Some of them we recognized from a book the locals had put together with pictures, a timeline, names, and so forth. They sang a song in the astral which Teyo was able to learn, smoothed out the sand, and left. We made a note of where they walked, and sang the same song as we walked through. At this point I should mention that Caesar had earlier on looked into the Astral and it was quite unpleasant; dozens of slaves being marched into the cave, and a strong taste of blood magic did not bode well for them. I suspected this was a kaer which had been breached by a horror, and was frankly not looking forward to what we might encounter, but I wasn't about to retreat until I had done as much preparing for the second team as I possibly could. Still, this wasn't terribly good news for us, even though we had at least found some of the missing (sort of).
The area across the sand had statues, one of which had its heart clawed out by something highly unpleasant. And yes, I *did* just say the statue's heart had been clawed out, and no I don't particularly know why. Perhaps that was the source of a ward protecting this place. Perhaps the thing hated art. Perhaps it just liked desecrating whatever that statue represented. In any event, it wasn't my job, and it wasn't getting us any closer to our goal. Astral sensing suggested smaller statues to the side had "blood magic channels" leading off behind a wall, and as we had no better ideas I bled a little into one of the bowls they were holding.
That had an effect, so Caesar did the other one and the undead wrapped in cloth opened a wall and invited us in. Just what I always wanted: an invitation into a passions-accursed cave by the undead. Well, they didn't seem like they were trying to kill us, so we went in and I made a point of watching how they closed the wall up for later. There was some sort of knocking device as well, which Caesar was able to read about in the markings all over the room (which were apparently writing though I could make no sense of it; he said some parts were Theran, and I guess he could read some of those).
He went on for a long time, but the short version of all the writings he was able to read here and later: some rich jerk favoured by a "Creanon" monkey passion was buried here, making it a tomb rather than a kaer. Apparently it was standard procedure for rich jerks to murder all their slaves by removing their organs while they're alive, sometimes drugged, and turning them into undead slaves in the process to serve them for eternity in the afterlife and fill their tombs with beautiful artistic works representing all their rich jerk possessions so that they could have parties even while they were dead or something. The important thing is that it gave us somewhat of a layout of the tomb, which gets us closer to our goal.
So apparently whatever thing was ripping out statue hearts (in the astral as well, apparently, not that I had any way of knowing) had a beef with this rich jerk I guess? Frankly, I don't really care what happened to the damned slaver and murderer anyways, but seeing as how this still suggested the place we were in had been breached by a Horror it still counted as bad news. Bad news with a silver lining, to be sure (as Teyo remarked, "It couldn't have happened to a better person"). Still no sign of that horror just yet, and we hadn't found the missing people (other than the two that we saw had been turned into undead).
We went into the next room, which had more writing and a large worm-shaped hole with jagged stone teeth ringing it the whole way down, a good 60 feet after we dropped a torch in. Again, my "this looks like a Horror's work" sense was tingling. Teyo flew down and reported that we were going to need my rope for the last 20 feet as there was nothing more than flimsy vines to climb, the hole dropped out of the ceiling. I really didn't want to climb those teeth, but shockingly it wasn't some Horror's gullet and we didn't all die. This was apparently where the rich jerk and his family had been buried, and also where their burial sites had been desecrated. Don't care. Next!
We pushed onward and found Kristy's mother as well as another missing person, also undead, working on the walls in this unfinished part of the tomb. Still no sign of hostility (they even bowed to us, and at least it seemed they were not created by a Horror), so we pushed into a network of caves filled with dead ends (as I recall, these were supposed to be places for more people to be buried later, but apparently the entire family had died at once, meaning that there would be a shortage of rich jerks to murder their slaves. Boo-hoo, I'm soooooo sad for them. What a shame that they couldn't stick around to make the world a worse place).
Eventually we found the place where slaves were murdered and turned into eternal undead slaves. Some monkey was cutting up living people (including some of the ones we were looking for, not all of whom had been murdered yet) and sticking monkey brains in their heads, apparently, to bind them into servitude. Makes no sense to me, but that's just fine. A stone through an undead monkey surgeon's head apparently has about the same effect as putting it through the head of most anything else. Caesar said some jars nearby held the spirits of the poor souls who had been enslaved by the whims of some ancient dead jackass so he could have a prettier hole in the ground for his rotting carcass, so we brought those out with us. More importantly, we also freed the unlucky few who had to watch others be slowly transformed into undead slaves before their eyes, knowing their turn was coming. We also brought out the undead slaves' bodies (that was tricky, they didn't want to go and we had to tie them up and drag them out, an experience I could've done without).
When the second team showed up, it was our good fortune that they had a Nethermancer with them. He was able to figure out a way to give the poor souls who had been trapped a final rest (except one who chose to be made into a thread item. Different strokes, I guess. I'd hate to be stuck in a bow, no matter how nice it is, and not be able to move about freely). The Nethermancer, Gupta, also agreed to take on Kristy as an apprentice, so that's sorted. Doubt any of the townsfolk will give him any trouble, even her drunken useless father.
Also, apparently we had made the arr-key-oh-law-ji-cuhl find of the century or something. I think the scholars mean it's important history stuff. They went on and on about how the rich jerk was famous and helped design kaer defenses. I say he's still a rich jerk who enslaved and murdered others for his own gain, which makes him no better than a criminal in my eyes. Should've took the opportunity to relieve myself in his tomb while I had the chance.
Anyways, I practiced my tracking skills some more hunting down the remaining undead monkeys (or most of them, anyways... the jungle will claim any that we missed, since we destroyed their ability to make more). I hate unfinished business.
Apparently there's some big thing with a Horror that hates the monkey passion and attacks dead people from the place the monkey passion comes from out of spite? I'm not too clear on it, I was mostly there to finish my job. The people had been rescued, the undead had been dealt with, all the rest of that stuff is just extra distractions I don't need keeping me from my goals.
(note to Drew: I, the player, enjoyed the background information. Garak is an Ork Archer going the shortest distance between two points and is in a hurry to accomplish all the things he wants in his life, and as such he payed less attention to the parts that weren't directly related to finding the missing people than I did. Which means that I got a bunch of backstory, and he got "okay, there should be a hidden door there and at the end of that room a concealed hole leading down to more stuff", for example).
