Breachill

Afternoon

I am reasonably certain that my life is cursed. We didn’t make it five minutes into the Call for Heroes before someone literally tried to burn the building down. While I was still inside it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As the norns predicted, I met others carrying Harrow cards, and all six of them seemed just as confused about why they were sent here as I was. Of the seven of us, four received their cards from a fortune teller, one got his from a rat “that was probably sent by a dead goblin”, another one had his literally drop in the lap when he took up the family’s ancestral sword, and, of course, I was visited by towering fey beings of fate.

We are a rather colorful group.

The first person I met was Gath. This actually happened a couple of days ago, and I am pretty sure that Iskaryn set it up, because causing a scene in the middle of the Magdh-damned street in the middle of the Magdh-damned day is exactly the kind of shit she would pull when she thinks I need a nudge. He describes himself as a hunter and tracker of sorts, but the real kicker is that he speaks Sylvan, despite the fact that he’s a human that was raised by goblins. And, no, I am not making that up. He’s the one whose card was given to him by the rat.

Shortly after that, we both met Trip, full name Qantrip, who is a goblin woman and witch that refers to herself in the third person: “A witch is glad to meet you” and “A witch has pickled ears.” And, yes, she was glad to meet us. And yes, she had pickled ears. She offered me some. I politely declined.

This morning, the three of us met the other four.

Tarsius, another human man, is some kind of warrior priest of Nethys, and is “trained in weapon arts”. Which seems a sensible qualification for a warrior priest. He’s the one with the ancestral sword. When it was given to him, he unwrapped the cloths it was kept inside, and the Harrow card fell out.

Liberte is a half-orc gentleman—and yes, that is a deliberate word choice—and scholar—again, I swear, I am not making this up—that is researching Hellknights. There’s an abandoned Hellknight fortress, Citadel Altaerein, about a mile from town, hence why he’s here. His standout line was, “I do this and that. I can usually find a solution other than hitting someone with a morningstar, but there are times when that’s what works best.” Which was kind of an odd way to answer the question, “What do you do?”, but it got the message across.

Marcus, our third human man, is what you might call a mystic or miracle worker. A person marked by the gods, both blessed and cursed. He says he speaks a strange tongue when his blood heats up, whether that be a fight or just a great deal of stress. He’s been living here a while, working as a lumberjack. Because I guess there’s a call for mystic lumberjacks in a town founded by amnesiacs.

Last was Kyira, a half-elven woman from Kyonin, who somehow ended up smuggling refugees out of Galt, a country that seems to be in a state of perpetual revolution. She’s a second mark Firebrand and champion of Milani, which is even more extraordinary for someone who grew up where she did. I imagine her life choices are not especially popular with her elven ancestors.

And then there was me: “I sing and play music.” I have never felt so fucking out of place.

The day started in the Wizard’s Grace, because of course the tradition is for the “heroes” to gather there ahead of the call so they can all eat a hearty bowl of boar stew and lentils, which I could not really afford. There’s something about a tradition where you are expected to pay before you have earned anything that really rubs me the wrong way. (The server actually said to me, “And perhaps afterwards, you can come here and buy a grand meal, when fame and fortune are yours.” Nine Hells. I feel like I’m back in Druma.)

While we’re sitting at this table, looking at each other’s cards, I saw a flash of blue and looked up just in time to see Iskaryn land in the middle of everything. How did she get inside? I have no idea. But she’s never cared about rules before, and there’s no reason for her to start now.

She was studying the cards, so I asked, “What do you see?”

“It’s hardly a coincidence,” she said.

“I didn’t think it would be. We knew to expect this.”

She looked like she was going to say something, but then she saw the server heading over with a broom, clearly intent on chasing her off, and she took the hint.

The others found this curious, and it’s not like it wasn’t going to come out later, anyway, so I hastily explained that she was my familiar. Then the obvious question came.

Tarsius, the warrior priest, asked me, “So you’re a wizard then, too?”

“No.” He didn’t look convinced. “I don’t really understand it, either.”

“The bird seems tame.”

If only. “You keep thinking that. Go ahead and tell her that and see how it goes.”

We continued talking, trying to get to know one another, and it was going as well as you’d expect, which is to say, awkwardly, when Marcus tosses out this gem:

“So, did any of the rest of you have visions of this town burning?”

Um, no? But he’s a mystic, and well, maybe that’s the sort of thing we should pay attention to. Especially when he added “At the hands of Dahak.” The god of all the vile, ill-tempered dragons of the world.

So definitely not an agriculture problem, then.

When the Call time arrived, we headed to the town hall where there was a crowd of townsfolk waiting outside for the doors to open, because people actually attend town hall meetings here. And that’s where we met Warbal, a goblin woman wearing a white dress and what I swear was a mortarboard—by Magdh this town is weird—with silver jewelry, including a butterfly necklace very much in the style of Desna. She was pacing back and forth in fits of worry, almost to the point of outright panic.

We talked to her, and learned she’s the ambassador to a local goblin tribe named the Bumblebrashers (all goblin tribes have names like that), who get along pretty well with the town. They live in the old citadel on Hellknight Hill, because no one else does. The last time Warbal went to meet with them, they didn’t show. So she went all the way out to the citadel herself, and saw red smoke rising from the battlements and interpreted it as a distress signal.

It didn’t take long to figure out that Warbal was at the Call to ask for someone to check on the Bumblebrashers. Especially after she told us as much.

The doors to the town hall opened, and everyone filed in, including Iskaryn because rules don’t apply to her, and when the meeting started, that is exactly what Warbal did. Except she didn’t get a chance to finish, or hardly even get started, because a guard burst into the hall from a side door and yelled, “Fire!”, and flames erupted into the room from behind him. Then panic set in.

Lots of people froze. And I understand that. I’ve been in a situation I’d rather not remember, and I froze, too. The best thing you can do for people who freeze up like that is what was done for me, then: tell them what to do.

So I stood and yelled, “Everybody out the main hall door!” And I even cast a spell to light up the exit, because it solves the problem of people looking around in a panic, and because panic makes even obvious exits hard to see, especially once the smoke sets in.

Then a fiery elemental creature came in through the open doorway, and then a door from the back of the hall opened up and a second one came in, and they were spreading flames everywhere they moved. And then the real panic set in.

Our newly formed group of fated heroes, or whatever you want to call us, split into two. Half of us helped get people out of the building before they died from smoke inhalation (and directed them to form a bucket brigade), and the other half went to confront both the fire and the elementals that were spreading it. The first went well. The second? Did not. 

Fortunately, the fire creatures were the result of a summoning, because weapons and spells weren’t really accomplishing much. They disappeared, and the water buckets were able to extinguish the fires before the whole building went up.

Outside the hall, in the aftermath of all this chaos, someone—I think it was a town guard—identified a halfling named Calmont as the arsonist, and said he ran off towards the citadel. Which is enough of a coincidence to raise questions. We were deputized on the spot, given a paltry sum of money that might last me another week if I forwent luxuries like food, and tasked with bringing Calmont back alive for questioning and, I assume, a trial.

Who is Calmont? An excellent question, since we didn’t really know many people in town. Prior to his career in arson, he was an assistant to the local book seller, Voz Lirayne. We all agreed we should pay her a visit before heading out to Hellknight Hill.

I like to multitask, by which I mean, I like to use Iskaryn for something other than giving me a hard time. So I asked her if she would be willing to scout the citadel for us. And, naturally, because there was an audience, she gave me a hard time.

“Do you think these are things that are going to shoot at me?” she asked.

“You look like every other bird, right?”

“I might look like dinner.”

I decided to call her bluff and said, “Yeah.”

“So that’s what you’re saying, then?”

“Yeah.”

“You take a lot of risks with me,” she said in her best, disapproving tone. “Sure. I’ll go scout the dangerous castle for you.”

When she gets like this, it’s best to just be polite. “I appreciate it.”

“You don’t pay me enough for this.”

And then I lost my temper. “I don’t pay you at all.”

“That’s my point!”

“You cost me more—”, I started, then cut myself off as I realized we were getting into an argument in the middle of the Magdh-be-damned street. Again. “Never mind.”

“You know,” she said, “I don’t want to hear about it.”

Fine. Whatever. Just go.

I turned to the others and said, “Iskaryn has agreed to scout out the citadel for us.”

Gath said to me, “You know you two do sound like a married couple, right?”

“Let’s go visit the bookseller.”

The Reliant Book Company turned out to be a seller of rare and magical books, and Voz was exactly the sort of pretentious proprietor one expects to find running such a place. Back in Druma, this sort of thing is a familiar sight. I used to think that was the mark of a good merchant. A lot has happened since I left that life behind, though, and now I mostly find it insulting.

Still, we were here to get information, not adjust her attitude.

“Can I help you?” she asked as we filed in.

“Hello! My name is Aemi. We were just at the town hall, and a gentleman by the name of Calmont was directly implicated in trying to burn it down. While people were still inside.”

She took this news about as well as you would expect.

“What?!”

“Yeah. Including us, by the way. We were inside, too. We’re just hoping to learn a little bit more about Calmont. The city has tasked us with the investigation.”

“Maybe that’s why that little fool didn’t come to work today.”

Uh-huh, maybe.

Calmont worked for her doing, as she put it, “menial tasks”, which included cleaning, rearranging books, and even some simple book repair. He was a relatively new hire. Lately he’d become unreliable, though we never got a good explanation for what that meant. With a little more questioning, and a bit of “encouragement” from Liberte—who implied that he might actually solve this problem with the application of a morningstar, just in not so many words—Voz agreed to let us search the room he was renting from her.

We didn’t find anything particularly damning, just some scribbles that suggested he was under a great deal of stress, and that his only way out was to “find the ring”. That sounded like desperation more than a plan.

And what ring would that be?

No idea.

Iskaryn returned not long after with her report on the citadel. There were goblins up on the battlements, cowering in fear of something, but she couldn’t see who or what. There were no obvious watchers or guards.

And I could tell right away that she was still in a mood. We were discussing some logistics, including what we’d want to take with us and who would carry what, when she said, “I’m not carrying anything.”

“I don’t expect you to. I don’t even want you in there,” I said.

“Suits me just fine. I’m just glad I didn’t get shot at.” 

This again. I rolled my eyes. “You know, you were a scout for a couple of weeks.”

“I’m not forgetting that either.”

We agreed to meet up in half an hour, which would give us time to gather what we needed for the trek up the hill. I went back to my space at The Dreamhouse and grabbed my armor, being sure to give Iskaryn the stink eye on the way out because she deserved it.

Petty of me? Yes. Satisfying?

Also yes.