The wrathbreakers find themselves standing over the battered body of a strange monster, deep in an old deepfolk mine in the Valley of Gon. They came to this mine to kill the monster as a favour to the Warlord of El, but rather than killing it they have beaten it into submission and now have a chance to try and question it. Once they have interrogated it and delivered proof of its death to the Warlord’s guard captain, they can hope for an audience with the warlord herself. The roster for today’s session:

  • Bao Tap, human stormcaller
  • Calim “Ambros” Nefari, human rimewarden
  • Kyansei of the Eilika Tribe, wildling barbarian
  • Ella, spume dwarf scoundrel
  • Xu, human weaponmaster from Ariaka

Their first task was to make a decision about the fate of this monster. The spell-casters discussed it briefly and decided they might be able to combine their powers and, using Calim’s salt, create a barrier around the creature that would be sufficiently harmful to it that it might answer their questions in order to shorten its suffering. Calim’s power might also be sufficient to grant them some ability to speak with it. But when the interrogation was done they would still need to kill the thing and, although they had taken its sword and depleted its magic, they knew it remained very powerful and dangerous. They decided not to question it further, and instead Xu hacked its head off with his halberd.

As soon as it died its body shriveled and turned to dust, then faded away to nothing, leaving behind just its huge sword and its armour. The armour held an embossed seal of a strange white material that radiated great power, and which Calim took for his own use. They searched its chamber and found nothing else except a strange fragment of white stone, perhaps the size of a human fist, which was completely unlike the rest of the stone in the cave complex. Some parts of it were rough, as if it had been broken from a larger piece, but one side was polished very smooth. They could make no sense of it except to think it must be part of some larger object – perhaps a statue or object of art of some kind – but they kept it anyway. They found a second entrance to the chamber, which was also blocked by a line of salt. On the far side of the line of salt lay another cave, and on each side of the door a grinning skull, much larger than the head of a human, balanced on a pole, its bleached eyes looking away from the cave they had come from and into the cave they had entered. These heads were nothing like the head of the creature they had just killed, and looked more like the heads of some kind of large deepfolk monstrosity. The walls of this room and of another connected room were covered with deepfolk writing, mostly a single rune of some kind. Calim copied the rune into his notebook and, finding no other exits, they left this strange place, dragging the beast’s armour with them as proof of their kill.

Of scholars and stars

As promised their kill gained them an audience with Elizabeth 4th, and the following evening they were led to the stronghold to meet her in the Shard Room. The stronghold was a squat, quite ugly building with three towers. The tallest of these had at its summit a small, domed room entirely made of glass, from which it was very easy to view the sunshard on clear nights, and it was here that they would have an evening meal with the Virgin Warlord.

In the shard room they found a pleasant, comfortable space, dimly lit with braziers and smelling pleasantly of good food and subtle incense. The centre of the room was comfortably furnished with divans, floor cushions and a wide, low table holding some appetizers. Guards stood to attention around the edges of the room, far enough from the centre to be unobtrusive but close enough to save their leader if she needed it. The Virgin Warlord herself lounged on a divan in a luxurious gown, sipping from a glass of red wine; when they entered she sprung to her feet and greeted them warmly, gesturing them to join her at the sofas. She was a strong, lithe-looking woman of early middle-age, perhaps in her mid forties, with the build and movements of a fighter but the grace and manners of a leader. She welcomed them into her room, apologized for the cloudy skies that would prevent them enjoying a view of the sunshard, and fussed over drinks and snacks as they made themselves comfortable.

During their meal they discussed various topics, including the nature of the creature they had killed for her, and she proved herself to be an eloquent and educated interlocutor. She had spent some time in Ariaka studying at Alpon, and had been called back only after the 3rd Elizabeth had died. The succession had been relatively orderly, although she had needed to show leadership and a little ruthlessness, and confirmed that the system put in place by the first Elizabeth had been well designed. The Freehold of El was now the only Freehold in Gon to have seen three leaders succeed a warlord without major social upheaval, and as a result was growing in strength while others had been constantly afflicted with conflict. Her plan was to unite all of Gon under her leadership, but she did not know if this would be possible in her lifetime. But it was good to dream, no?

In the discussion of the beast they had killed they somehow stumbled onto a conversation about stars, and the various theories about what they represent. Bao Tap maintained that they were like distant suns, and that the sun itself was a ball of fire. Elizabeth 4th pointed out to him that scholars believed them to be holes in the sky through which light flowed, and that these holes moved in stable patterns through the sky that scholars believed repeated themselves over long periods of perhaps a thousand or more years. She surprised everyone by revealing that she had a small academy of scholars in El, and that in fact every Warlord maintained at least one scholar. These scholars often kept some knowledge of deepfolk lore – though she confessed she did not know if any of them had any understanding of what deepfolk thought of the stars – because their primary goal was to find deepfolk mines, to dig for whatever silver and other minerals was left in them. Gon was apparently riddled with deepfolk mines, which had been abandoned long ago for reasons no one understood. When they learnt that she had scholars with knowledge of deepfolk they asked if they could interview one and she, of course, agreed. Word would be sent.

After this conversation their meal ended, and the Elizabeth dismissed her guards. They gathered around the table with more drinks and discussed their plans. They needed to get into the Freehold of Ar to rescue Sara and find out what the Argalt knew about mysterious deepfolk interest in old elven documents. She wanted to make the Freehold of Ar into her tributary. She agreed to help them, though she would not do so openly, and revealed to them that she had a spy in Ar, a scholar named Emily. Emily’s face had been disfigured by the Argalt, who threw acid on her after she spurned him, but as one of his Freehold-bound chattel she could not easily leave him. So, she had to remain in Ar, researching deepfolk history for him, and she was deeply resentful. She had offered a deal to the Elizabeth some years ago, soon after the acid attack that ruined her face: she would reveal a secret way into the Argalt’s stronghold, and all she asked in return was that the Argalt’s balls be delivered to her on a silver platter after the job was done. She even provided the platter. The Elizabeth did not want to mount an open attack on Ar, because raising a siege was too risky – it would attract the attention of other Freeholds while she was gone. But if the Wrathbreakers were to sneak in, kill the Argalt, and open the gates, she would send a small force undercover – smuggled in in small numbers over the next few days – to help sieze the stronghold after Argalt’s death. She also had a claimant to replace him – a sniveling brat she had rescued from exile a few years ago, who would serve as a perfect leader of a tributary Freehold – who she would deliver to them once the castle was secured. It should then be a relatively simple matter to establish his claim, pacify his guards with a promise of continued service and survival, and set up the Freehold as a Tributary. In return she would allow them to gather whatever information they needed from the Argalt and his lackeys – though of course in the end they needed to put his balls on the silver plate she would give them.

They did not ask why this particular silver plate mattered to Emily. Instead they agreed to the plan, and moved on to discuss details. It would take about a week to set up, smuggling her small force to Argalt as travelers and traders. They had a week to prepare. They cast salt to pledge the deal, and took their leave.

The Catacombs of Ar

They spent a week or so in El, resting and recovering from injuries and making the most of their accommodation, which they discovered now the Virgin Warlord was paying for. After this week they took a ship upriver to Ar, arriving after a day and a night of travel. Ar was a desultory effort at a modern town, consisting of a couple of slums clustered around a small city of black stone buildings. Concentric walls of the same stone separated levels of the town from the rabble around the river, and higher up a small hill a grim, ugly castle glowered over the defensive walls. This tower looked like a thorntree made of black stone, with two twisted towers protruding from a sprawling, mishapen trunk-like structure. The combination of those multiple rings of stone around the town, and the solid, windowless walls of the castle itself certainly made the town appear impenetrable to standard assault.

They took rooms in the best inn they could find, within the first ring of walls, with a window looking across the river. After they had rested a little and eaten they went to meet Emily, who was expecting them that afternoon in a jumble of eel-drying racks a little upriver and outside of town. She was where they expected, waiting in amongst the grimacing corpses of thousands of eels, surrounded by their fishy stench. She wore leather armour under a dark brown woollen cloak, and when she pulled her hood back they could see a rough network of angry scars and pockmarks on one side of her face, the eyelid and edge of the eye melting into the mess of flesh around her forehead – the legacy of spurning the Argalt. They showed her the silver platter on which they would deliver her the Argalt’s balls and with a satisfied grunt she led them away from town, through mulberry orchards and thickets of blackberry to a small hill perhaps a kilometre outside of town. Here, amongst the stark bare brunches of winter hawthorns, she pushed something and a rock rolled aside to reveal a dark tunnel.

The tunnel led them down into the cool darkness of ancient catacombs, large enough for them to walk two abreast and upright, and obviously well made and ancient. They guessed these tunnels might be deepfolk origin, though they could not be sure. They sensed they might have traveled down a little, and then they wandered randomly for a little, Emily occasionally seeming to be confused or even lost. She seemed edgy and nervous, but they assumed this was because she was betraying the warlord who owned her. They did not realize it was because she was betraying them until it was too late.

She led them into a newer, obviously human-built chamber, a space too large to see the edges. Steps led down from the old catacomb tunnels to flagstone floors, and she told them that the far end of this hall had another set of stairs leading up to an entrance to the castle itself. They were halfway across the hallway and heading to the middle of the hall when Itzel decided to expand her werelight to brighten the room, and Ella got the first sense that something was going on. Sensing movement in the shadows, she reacted to warn people, and at that moment Emily sprang away from their group, dashed her lantern to the ground and disappeared into the shadows. Moments later a hail of arrows emerged from the darkness, and the ambush was sprung.

From the shadows on each side of them emerged archers similar to those who had attacked them in the Freeport of Gon. Ahead of them a woman in robes, carrying a staff, emerged onto a platform that looked suspiciously like an altar of some kind. Behind them a squad of goblins emerged from the shadows, led by an Orc. The Orc had skin so pale it glowed under Itzel’s werelight. Its tusks protruded through scars in its cheeks and reached almost up to its eyes, its face was pierced with chunks of dull metal linked by chains, and it wore a necklace of human bones. It charged towards them with a scream of rage, and at the same time the human fired a bolt of darkness at them.

They had stumbled onto a cult of humans who used deep magic and worked in alliance with deepfolk. Such a heresy was unheard of in all the annals of human history, and was considered such a dark and terrible betrayal of the human condition that it was beyond the imagining of most ordinary mortals. Bao Tap had long suspected such treachery lay behind the events connecting Siladan the Elder, the Freeport of Gon and the deepfolk, but no one had been willing to give any credence to his suspicions. Here now in the dark halls beneath the Stronghold of Ar they were revealed to be true, and worse than even his most cynical imaginings. Humans wielding deep magic! All those gathered here would have to die.

They joined battle. It was vicious and chaotic. Bao Tap summoned a giant worm, which slithered out of the darkness and cut the Wrathbreakers off from the goblins and a newly-arrived group of Grigg archers. Xu and Bao Tap attacked the archers while Kyansei took on the orc and Calim healed. Ella disappared into the darkness to take shots at the cultist leader, who was casting spells to drain the will of the fighters, with the ultimate aim of dominating their minds and turning them against their fellows. At one point Calim was knocked unconscious and had to be revived so that he could heal Kyansei, and as the tide of battle turned against the cultist leader she reanimated her dead fellows as zombies, so that the Wrathbreakers had to kill them all over again. Finally, though, Kyansei felled the Orc captain and Ella was able to deliver a good shot with her crossbow, bringing the cultist leader down. Bao Tap’s giant worm smothered and crushed the remaining goblins, and the battle was done.

They stood in the darkness beneath the Stronghold of Ar, surrounded by death and blood, looking at the vanquished cultist. She was unconscious but alive. Should they keep her alive to question, or should such terrible treachery be exterminated without further consideration? What horrors had they uncovered here under Gon? Connecting the details of their journey so far, they began to think that great, dark forces were moving in their world, and they had uncovered a dark and sinister plot that extended far beyond Gon. But here, unconscious at their feet, was their first chance to begin piercing that darkness, and learn the truth about whatever secrets they had begun to uncover in their journey to Estona last year.

What was going on, and what were they going to do about it?