Serradus and the Grymoir:
We were unnerved at how much of the text in the grymoir suggests that Iblis is still out there. That idea is perfectly consistent with our experiences in Erebus and other places in the Shadowfell. Not only that, but Iblis's symbol much in common with an insignia we noticed on the elementals that invaded the Aon's game. In light of this information, we decided to get Serradus involved. Katja insisted on having our meeting in her domain, which I though was ballsy almost to be point of recklessness.
The moment Serradus arrived, Katja made it abundantly clear who was in charge. Outside of the game and in Katja's prison, Serradus seemed about as threatening as a box of kittens. He turned pale when we showed him our evidence about Iblis. He promised to take the grymoir to his superiors immediately. However, we wasn't very hopeful, since Iblis's death is canon among Aons. Apparently, Serradus is one of the youngest and lowest ranking Aons and his masters might not take this issue seriously coming from him. (Managing the Aon's game isn't a terribly prestigious role, it seems.) At any rate, we agreed to let him borrow the grymoir. After Serradus departed, Katja grumbled pessimistically about the odds of the Aons helping us.
Aons in other worlds:
According to Serradus, the further supernatural beings travel from their homeworlds, the weaker they become. The rule applies for shades, angles, Aons, etc., but NOT for mortals. I guess the downside for us mortals is that we're just not all the powerful, even in our homeworld.
The Trial:
We traveled, slaves in tow, to Nashik to meet our court date. The law in Nashik considers the relative rank of the two parties when setting penalties. I guess our mystic is about on par with Helmut, so we just had to pay some damages. We sold Helmut's thugs back to him and that covered half of the damage (I snicker every time I think about this) and the court gave us a month to come up with the other half. I was happy with the outcome, but disappointed Helmut didn't show up personally. I want to know what he looks like. I want to see fear in his eyes.
Shadar-Kai Legal system:
Given some stories from the mystic and our experience in court, it's obvious the Shadar-Kai legal system cares more about the law than about justice. There's also a 'keep-what-you-kill' mindset. That is, you can commit all sort of crimes to increase your status, but you'll only go to court if you are incompetent or unlucky enough to get caught.
Meeting the King:
The king of Nashik graciously granted us an audience. He praised us for causing Helmut so much trouble. The king promised, even though he wouldn't personally help us kill Helmut, he would look the other way if we killed the wizard. Given the Machiavellian politics in Nashik, I'm pretty sure it's a meaningless promise; he probably views us a threat, too. I'll bet we can use the Shadar-Kai's culture of keep-what-you-kill to our advantage against the Helmut and the King---Wizard first, King later.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Frei's Memories: Day 13
The sniper is acting strangely again today. I don't know if I should pity or envy the dark elf. The mystic has made some remarks that lead me to believe his case is the latter. My hypothesis is that shadar-kai just aren't black enough for the obsidian dragon.
Katja's Garden:
I guess while we were out waiting to ambush Helmut's men, Katja used that shadowstone fragment to make a nice flower garden, complete with a marble fountain. The fountain was, of course, a statue of Katja with artist's liberty taken quite liberally. Anyway, the curious thing about the fountain was that it had fish in the pool around it. We fed them some bread crumbs and they ate them. We asked Katja if she's had the fish brought in, but she insisted the shadowstone fragment created them. We had a look at them under the light of our paper lamp. The fish appeared as animated ink blobs swimming around in the water. How very, very strange!
Mastering the Ossuary Grymoir:
We made a nervous, brief trip back to Nebel to retrieve the Ossuary Grymoir in hopes it would have something we could use against Helmut. We managed to get it back to Katja's without incident. Katja shook her head and made a remark about our predilection for dangerous books. The priest and the mystic spent a few hours studying the grymoir. It is such a strange book . . .
The ancient, unliving book we found in the basement of the Nebel cathedral was easier to work with once we got it under control. The book must have at least four authors and two editors. It contains history, fiction, commentary and some rantings, ravings and ciphers we haven't unraveled just yet. More confusingly, there's a bunch of contradictory information. It's really more complicated than I'll record here, but I'll provide a gloss of what we know so far. The take home message though, is that a being named Iblis reportedly killed El. Iblis's symbol appears many, many times in the book. The scary part is that I recognize the symbol, or at least a variant---Victor had a whole reliquary of artifacts with that symbol.
The Ossuary Grymoir (Gloss):
Back in the day, some folks weren't happy living under El's rule and plotted an insurrection. Somehow they contacted Iblis, an being from another universe, who promised to help them murder El, the creator. Iblis and and El battled so fiercely, they tore toe world in two, creating the rift. Iblis struck El and cast him down into the rift, where presumably he died. The other deities succeeded in quashing the uprising and cast Iblis back into its dimension, though some parts of the book, report the deities eradicating Iblis. Unfortunately, before the deities could completely seal off all connections with Iblis's world, they started warring over who would become the new over-deity. That's when the Primordials attacked, starting a war that further shattered the world.
Katja's Garden:
I guess while we were out waiting to ambush Helmut's men, Katja used that shadowstone fragment to make a nice flower garden, complete with a marble fountain. The fountain was, of course, a statue of Katja with artist's liberty taken quite liberally. Anyway, the curious thing about the fountain was that it had fish in the pool around it. We fed them some bread crumbs and they ate them. We asked Katja if she's had the fish brought in, but she insisted the shadowstone fragment created them. We had a look at them under the light of our paper lamp. The fish appeared as animated ink blobs swimming around in the water. How very, very strange!
Mastering the Ossuary Grymoir:
We made a nervous, brief trip back to Nebel to retrieve the Ossuary Grymoir in hopes it would have something we could use against Helmut. We managed to get it back to Katja's without incident. Katja shook her head and made a remark about our predilection for dangerous books. The priest and the mystic spent a few hours studying the grymoir. It is such a strange book . . .
The ancient, unliving book we found in the basement of the Nebel cathedral was easier to work with once we got it under control. The book must have at least four authors and two editors. It contains history, fiction, commentary and some rantings, ravings and ciphers we haven't unraveled just yet. More confusingly, there's a bunch of contradictory information. It's really more complicated than I'll record here, but I'll provide a gloss of what we know so far. The take home message though, is that a being named Iblis reportedly killed El. Iblis's symbol appears many, many times in the book. The scary part is that I recognize the symbol, or at least a variant---Victor had a whole reliquary of artifacts with that symbol.
The Ossuary Grymoir (Gloss):
Back in the day, some folks weren't happy living under El's rule and plotted an insurrection. Somehow they contacted Iblis, an being from another universe, who promised to help them murder El, the creator. Iblis and and El battled so fiercely, they tore toe world in two, creating the rift. Iblis struck El and cast him down into the rift, where presumably he died. The other deities succeeded in quashing the uprising and cast Iblis back into its dimension, though some parts of the book, report the deities eradicating Iblis. Unfortunately, before the deities could completely seal off all connections with Iblis's world, they started warring over who would become the new over-deity. That's when the Primordials attacked, starting a war that further shattered the world.
Frei's Memories: Day 12
The Ambush:
After we picked up our imitation (trapped) tome and headed back to Katja's, we decided it was time to set our trap for the wizard of Nashik. Katja generously gave us some unguents to mask us from magical spying and helped us send Helmut a (rather nastily worded) letter to tell him where to meet us. We put the book in a bag and buried it a short distance away from the portal in the petrified forest so it would take Helmut a while to claim his prize, giving us the opportunity to strike. We hid in some brush on some nearby hills and started the long, boring stakeout.
Just as night began to fall, some Shadar-kai appeared, an important-looking mage among them! The mage commanded his minions too start digging. There were lots, and lots of minions, forming a group intimidating enough we wanted to believe the mage was indeed Helmut. None of us had ever actually seen him, so we couldn't have been sure. One of the more important looking Shadar-kai eventually ended up with the book. I started feeling the pins and needles of adrenaline. He offered the book to the mage. I held my breath. The mage shouted angrily at the soldier and he moved away. My whole team gave a crestfallen sigh. Then, the soldier opened the book and it detonated, paralyzing him and some of his buddies where they stood. Even though the mage hadn't been neutralized, we launched ourselves from our position and attacked.
It turned out to be the hardest fight, yet. I got blasted right off of the priest's shoulder by a thunderlance and scampered around the grass trying my best not to be underfoot. There's got to be away to make me human again. I'm getting fed up! After I got my ride back, the mage counter-sniped our sniper and started retreating. We sure as hell weren't going to let a single one of them get away, so we chased him. The cowardly bastard died begging and we captured most of his underlings. We interrogated some of them and finally got one to admit that the dead mage was Helmut's apprentice. They really didn't know much. I take that to mean that Helmut (wisely) keeps his underlings in the dark.
Katja looked unenthusiastic about having unwanted guests in her domain, but she perked right up when we let her borrow the the shadowstone. She took an alarming amount of pleasure crafting custom (and uncomfortable!) prison cells for them. It seems to me about every other time we visit I am reminded of just how much we don't want to piss her off.
After we picked up our imitation (trapped) tome and headed back to Katja's, we decided it was time to set our trap for the wizard of Nashik. Katja generously gave us some unguents to mask us from magical spying and helped us send Helmut a (rather nastily worded) letter to tell him where to meet us. We put the book in a bag and buried it a short distance away from the portal in the petrified forest so it would take Helmut a while to claim his prize, giving us the opportunity to strike. We hid in some brush on some nearby hills and started the long, boring stakeout.
Just as night began to fall, some Shadar-kai appeared, an important-looking mage among them! The mage commanded his minions too start digging. There were lots, and lots of minions, forming a group intimidating enough we wanted to believe the mage was indeed Helmut. None of us had ever actually seen him, so we couldn't have been sure. One of the more important looking Shadar-kai eventually ended up with the book. I started feeling the pins and needles of adrenaline. He offered the book to the mage. I held my breath. The mage shouted angrily at the soldier and he moved away. My whole team gave a crestfallen sigh. Then, the soldier opened the book and it detonated, paralyzing him and some of his buddies where they stood. Even though the mage hadn't been neutralized, we launched ourselves from our position and attacked.
It turned out to be the hardest fight, yet. I got blasted right off of the priest's shoulder by a thunderlance and scampered around the grass trying my best not to be underfoot. There's got to be away to make me human again. I'm getting fed up! After I got my ride back, the mage counter-sniped our sniper and started retreating. We sure as hell weren't going to let a single one of them get away, so we chased him. The cowardly bastard died begging and we captured most of his underlings. We interrogated some of them and finally got one to admit that the dead mage was Helmut's apprentice. They really didn't know much. I take that to mean that Helmut (wisely) keeps his underlings in the dark.
Katja looked unenthusiastic about having unwanted guests in her domain, but she perked right up when we let her borrow the the shadowstone. She took an alarming amount of pleasure crafting custom (and uncomfortable!) prison cells for them. It seems to me about every other time we visit I am reminded of just how much we don't want to piss her off.
Frei's Memories: Day 11
After recovering from our trip to Grandma's house, we headed back to Eibelstat to claim the rest of our reward. Vel paid us in full. She noticed the soulstone we were carrying and offered us citizenship in exchange for it. I thought it would be a go way to protect us against our problems in Nashik, but the rest of the group really, really wanted the soulstone. Vel seemed disappointed---she curtly told us Albrecht had no more work for us and she sent us on our way. The offer is probably still open, but I don't think they'll want anything to do with us otherwise.
I could tell immediately on arrival that Katja wanted our new shadowstone and I was frankly surprised she didn't just demand it. Instead, we overpaid the dragon to enchant some more of our equipment. I think that made her happy enough to forget about the shadowstone for a while.
Soulstones II:
We asked Katja what she could do with the soulstone. She said the easiest way is to use it to recharge other magical items, but they have to be serious equipment. That is, there's an appreciable chance the energy from the soulstone will obliterate a garden variety enchantment. It is possible to make a piece of equipment out of the stone, but Katja warned us that the item would have a mind of it's own. I wonder what Eibelstat does with them.
Weary Elves:
We ran into Nico and friends while we were poking around Berlitz. The seemed in ragged shape so we gave them a cut of the money we received from our collusion against Herrick---the elves did deserve it, after all and it did make them considerably happier. They reported falling into the Shadowfell in the woods East of Keening. I suppose that explains how those thugs from Nashik tried to ambush us around there. They elves lucked out, though. They had a close encounter with the crawling city in Neth. Nico said it seemed to be stalking them. They managed to escape through the mountain portal to Letherna with Ark's help.
Herrick's Request:
We got a letter from Herrick requesting a meeting with us. He wasn't clear about the purpose, but we went anyway. We were treated well when we arrived a Herrick's place and later had a secretive meeting with the mining tycoon. He offered us a large reward if we could tell him how Katja refines the essentia ore. He didn't seem to know much about her and (luckily) he was unaware of our relationship with the dragon. He told us we might start with Ward, since he's Katja's representative to the outside world. We accepted the job and acted enthused about it. Herrick was happy. Katja was livid, but not surprised. She told us not to worry about Herrick; she would have a nasty plan ready soon enough.
I could tell immediately on arrival that Katja wanted our new shadowstone and I was frankly surprised she didn't just demand it. Instead, we overpaid the dragon to enchant some more of our equipment. I think that made her happy enough to forget about the shadowstone for a while.
Soulstones II:
We asked Katja what she could do with the soulstone. She said the easiest way is to use it to recharge other magical items, but they have to be serious equipment. That is, there's an appreciable chance the energy from the soulstone will obliterate a garden variety enchantment. It is possible to make a piece of equipment out of the stone, but Katja warned us that the item would have a mind of it's own. I wonder what Eibelstat does with them.
Weary Elves:
We ran into Nico and friends while we were poking around Berlitz. The seemed in ragged shape so we gave them a cut of the money we received from our collusion against Herrick---the elves did deserve it, after all and it did make them considerably happier. They reported falling into the Shadowfell in the woods East of Keening. I suppose that explains how those thugs from Nashik tried to ambush us around there. They elves lucked out, though. They had a close encounter with the crawling city in Neth. Nico said it seemed to be stalking them. They managed to escape through the mountain portal to Letherna with Ark's help.
Herrick's Request:
We got a letter from Herrick requesting a meeting with us. He wasn't clear about the purpose, but we went anyway. We were treated well when we arrived a Herrick's place and later had a secretive meeting with the mining tycoon. He offered us a large reward if we could tell him how Katja refines the essentia ore. He didn't seem to know much about her and (luckily) he was unaware of our relationship with the dragon. He told us we might start with Ward, since he's Katja's representative to the outside world. We accepted the job and acted enthused about it. Herrick was happy. Katja was livid, but not surprised. She told us not to worry about Herrick; she would have a nasty plan ready soon enough.
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