To: Mme Helva Longthews,
Kalsgard, Thanelands

Madame Helva,

I apologize for resorting to an advocate as an intermediary instead of personally delivering this package to you, but though we have never met I still feel I am bound by a promise that was made to you and I intend to keep it.

I know that this has been a difficult time. At the risk of salting fresh wounds, I felt it important for you to learn the full history of the events that led to your husband’s death. You may not find much solace in this, but you will at least find some answers both to questions you have, and to questions you didn’t know to ask.

There are two parts to this story. The first, you may think you know because it begins with your ring-giver, Snorri Stone-Eye.

Snorri was, of course, a rather famous Ulfen warrior, widely renowned and feared for his successful raids on the soft lands to the south. Of course, mounting such raids is, itself, an expensive undertaking as one must pay for provisions, equipment, men, and the time to train the latter with the former, with no guarantees of the returns. In his early years, Snorri’s prowess as a warrior with strong leadership skills and a keen eye for strategy was enough to convince investors to provide him with financial backing, and one of the earliest of these was an up-and-coming trade group named the Rimerunners Guild.

For years, the Rimerunners Guild financed Snorri’s increasingly successful raids, lining both their coffers and his, and allowing the Guild to expand their operations in the Thanelands and eventually beyond the Kingdoms across the Crown of the World into Tian Xia. As Snorri’s fame and fortune grew, so did his ambition for even more spectacular raids and more exotic returns. Unfortunately for Snorri, this constant drive to top his earlier successes took a heavy tool on both his body and his mind.

I know that this may be difficult to hear. Or maybe it’s not, and you had suspected this all along but did not say anything publicly out of respect for your lord. I don’t know. But this toll on Snorri Stone-Eye was punishing. He traveled to the farthest reaches of the Steaming Sea, into some of the most extreme and exotic locations in this part of the world, and the stresses of these endeavors proved too great even for him. I don’t expect you to take my word on this, which is in part why I have enclosed his personal diaries (the other part is because his immediately family hid his condition from the world, and sending these diaries to them would serve no purpose other than to suppress truths that you have earned the right to know). My intent is not to disparage Snorri’s reputation, but rather place the evidence of this in your care.

Snorri Stone-Eye believed that his false eye gave him the power to see across time, both into the past and the future. As he grew older, so did his obsession with his mystic, prophetic powers. He had visions of the end times, and in his diary he wrote this: “In the winter of the world, the gods will come down to fight, and the rough beast will be released”. Fearing that all civilization would be destroyed, he made increasingly desperate voyages to remote and dangerous corners of the Steaming Sea, searching for artifacts that would help him survive the fall and the period of desolation that would follow. His final voyage ended in an illness so foul that it would corrupt his soul.

You probably noticed Snorri’s decline in health over the last year. This disease was supernatural in origin. Afflicted with some unusual form of zombie rot, Snorri Stone-Eye died a slow death, gradually wasting away until he rose as a draugr: the walking corpse of a seafarer doomed forever to unlife.

You may find this difficult to believe, and once again I do not expect you to take me at my word. I will offer proof, or at least evidence that you can follow up on, to confirm my claims.

His immediate family and servants hid this condition from the public for obvious reasons, not the least of which was that it would taint the image of the legendary man who had earned the nickname The Mad Reaver. They went to great lengths to ensure his secret would not be discovered, even at his wake. His funeral ship, a longboat of otherwise unremarkable design, was modified to create a deck above the rowing positions and the draugr that was formerly Snorri Stone-Eye was chained inside the makeshift hold. To complete the illusion, a manikin was covered with a shroud and placed on the deck next to the funeral pyre. This would accomplish the task of destroying the undead abomination he had become while still maintaining the illusion of an ordinary funeral. The boat itself was heavily guarded not just to protect the grave goods from ambitious thieves, but also to protect his secret from public exposure. I am sure if you ask the right questions at the docks, you will find dock hands that could hear the faint sounds of dragging and rattling chains coming from the hull of his boat.

As I said earlier, there is a second part to this story. This part begins in Tian Xia, and the repercussions of it will soon be made very public. I can’t predict the accuracy and completeness of what will be said and what you will hear, so I will tell you what I know to be the truth.

Some years ago, a young Tian woman by the name of Kimandatsu came over the Crown of the World and into Kalsgard. She found her way to the Jade Quarter, and eventually into the auspices of the Rimerunners Guild. Over the years, Kimandatsu would grow to become a trusted friend and adviser of Ms. Thorborg Silverskorr. As Silverskorr’s influence in the Guild grew, Kimandatsu’s grew with it and when Silverskorr was eventually elected as chairman of the board, leading the operations of the Guild, Kimandatsu sat at her side.

On a fateful trading voyage at sea roughly one year ago, Silverskorr’s ship ran into severe storms and Kimandatsu was lost. Silverskorr was, of course, devastated by the death of her friend, and it forever changed her as a person, and as a leader of the Guild.

That is the story you have heard. This is the real story.

Kimandatsu was not human. She was, in fact, an ogre mage, one with deep maroon skin. Her reasons for coming to Kalsgard were to establish an organization of assassins backed by magic in order to increase her power and influence in the Thanelands and beyond.

As an ogre mage, Kimandatsu also had the power to alter her form. It was not Kimandatsu that perished at sea, but rather Thorborg Silverskorr. It is believed, though not proven, that Kimandatsu murdered the real Silverskorr and used the storms as a convenient cover for her action. She then assumed Silverskorr’s identity and returned to Kalsgard to take control of the Rimerunners Guild, and used it as a front for her underground operations.

It is here that Snorri Stone-Eye’s, Kimandatsu’s, and Asvig’s lives converge.

With his health failing, Silverskorr was now in need of a capable henchman, troubleshooter, and lieutenant. Snorri Stone-Eye’s most trusted subject was your late husband. When Silverskorr needed work done that neither she, nor the Guild by association, should be directly involved in, she turned to Asvig.

Unfortunately for your husband, Silverskorr made a demand of her trusted followers. In exchange for the rewards in both money and influence they would receive in her service, she used her magic to place each of them under a unique form of geas, a spell that bound willing subjects to certain actions and extracted a price in blood should its terms be broken. I would be remiss if I did not emphasize that Asvig agreed to this condition.

While the specifics of Asvig’s terms with Silverskorr may never be known, the penalty of the geas was triggered on the night of Arodus 11th, 4712, and it cost him his life.

Again, I do not expect you to take me at my word. As I said earlier, this information on Kimandatsu and the Rimerunners Guild will soon become public (if it has not already). I cannot offer proof of everything that I have written here, but you will be able to confirm much of this with the right investigations. Whether or not you choose to do so is, of course, up to you.

Shelyn teaches us that love is the greatest of all things. Nothing can ever replace your loss. But the coming months will offer a number of opportunities for a woman of your stature, particularly one that has the advantage of being armed with the truth. I can’t say that you and I would ever see eye to eye on certain matters, or that we would have ever called one another friends even before your husband was taken from you. I can say, however, that you have suffered because of a force outside your control, one whose sole purpose in life was to rain misery and hate on others, including those who supported and helped her. You have been taken advantage of and wronged.

No weregild has been offered as compensation for your husband’s death at Kimandatsu’s hand, and in accordance with your customs you are entitled to blood vengeance. Interested parties have saved you the trouble. Enclosed is a piece of her remains.

I will hang a prism for you and your husband on Crystalhue. May your heart, eyes, and mind be filled with the beauty of the world.

Respectfully yours,
K.

Tindertwigs. Chain shirt. Sword. Furs. Snow shoes. We knew, we knew, these were Ulf’s things and we knew he was here. We picked through the trunk some more, just to be sure. Axes. Climber’s kit. Check. Check check check. And then. Gods, and then. Leather armor. Rapier. Samisen. I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Hollowed out inside. Ameiko. I thought I was going to be sick right there.

I’ve felt real panic before. Dread. Fear. I mean, I thought I had. I grew up in Sandpoint after all. When I was eighteen we were trapped in our home when giants raided the town. We had heard the rumors for days, and were preparing that morning to leave but we weren’t fast enough getting out. And, BOOM. From the north gate, just a stone’s throw from our house, they were there. We weren’t ready. We hunkered down in the center of the house for what felt like hours, mom and dad lying to each other and to me that everything would be OK.

It’s one thing to feel fear and panic because your life is in danger, because you don’t have control over events around you. It’s another to know that you had basically one job, one gods-damned job, and you blew it. We hadn’t kept Ameiko safe. I hadn’t kept her safe.

My head spun. What had we done wrong? A thousand things. We left her with very little protection. She didn’t have Radella’s ring. The caravan was no secret. We’d been spied on for days. They probably knew what she looked like. The list goes on. What hadn’t we done wrong?

Of course she would go out on her own. We should have known. She just wanted more information about what lay ahead. About what should be her kingdom. And she’d been cooped up since we got here. Wouldn’t I have done the same? Hadn’t we both done this countless times when we were kids? At the very least we should have left her the ring. Stupid. Stupid! But maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. I don’t know.

Is this what mom and dad felt? Every time I came home with a bruise on my face, or a tear in my clothes? That they had failed me somehow?

They grabbed her they day we left. The very morning. She must have been brought here in the middle of the night while we were holed up in the cloak room. We had no idea. (Yet another failing. Why hadn’t we purchased a few scrolls so we could stay in touch with the caravan?) It explained how reinforcements had gotten here so quickly: they were already on the way, just a few hours behind us. They just didn’t realize that’s what they were when they left.

We got lucky. Ameiko wasn’t here long enough for Kimandatsu to do anything more with her than just throw her in a cell, more or less. I imagine just having the heir was not enough. Kimandatsu probably needed the Seal, too, as well as the scions. Us.

Well, she got us, just not in the way she was expecting. And now Kimandatsu is dead, and Ameiko is safe, and the Frozen Shadows are finished.

To get to Kimandatsu we had to push our way through Runecaster. He resisted. Violently. He put up quite the fight, too, despite being outnumbered. With some well-placed spells and quick thinking he was able to spread us out, taking us on just a couple at a time, but in the end it only delayed the inevitable. We caught up to him before he could get help, and that was that.

Runecaster was an odd creature, a half-troll of some sort. I’ve seen a number of breeds over the years, but nothing like him. The troll half was obvious, but the other? Not so much. I can’t help but feel saddened by how this turned out. I mean, the circumstances of his birth were probably not great (how could they be?) and I doubt he was a popular figure here or anywhere just by the nature of what he was. His life was probably difficult. The Frozen Shadows was likely one of only a handful of options for him, all of them bad. How much of this life had he chosen for himself? How much had been chosen for him, just by limiting what he could choose? Did that leave this place as the best of his options?

Kimandatsu I have less sympathy for. And by less I mean none. As Lute had claimed, Silverskorr was indeed the purple ogre–her skin was a dark maroon and two large tusks stuck up from her jaw–and as we had suspected she was an ogre mage and oni from Minkai who had come to Kalsgard for reasons unknown (almost certainly in pursuit of Ameiko’s grandfather), worked her way into the inner spheres of the Rimerunners Guild, and taken Silverskorr’s identity. We don’t have proof that she murdered the real Silverskorr at sea, but what other conclusions are there to draw?

She was surrounded by over a half dozen of her Tian ninjas, having some absurd social gathering, and we cut through them like paper. Kimandatsu, herself, was the bigger challenge, first figuratively and then literally as she reverted to her true form, but Olmas had Suishen and I had my spells and enough of the others were able to hound her until she fell. She tried to hide using invisibility, but Suishen granted Olmas the power to see, and of course we had spent far too much time around these Frozen Shadows vaunters to not have learned that they only have two tricks. I had purposely prepared the same spell multiple times, and unleashed bursts of glittering dust into the room, coating her form each time Olmas called out her position. I exhausted all of my spells, bringing in a giant bat, and even drawing upon my own élan vital to manipulate a scroll to a more advanced summons, just as I had done at Brinewall. This last part was, I suppose, overkill but I felt like being thorough.

Ulf and Ameiko were held captive in a stinking cell filled with stagnant water, guarded in a manner of speaking by giant frogs with glowing eyes that nearly blinded us just as they had blinded their charges. Ulf looked particularly bad having been here for several days. We’ve given them healing and food, but only time will restore their vision.

While we wait, we’ve been discussing the future: both ours, and the Rimerunners Guild’s. The latter will almost certainly cease to exist. Once Lute returns and tells his story, backed by the physical evidence we will take from this place, they will either collapse on their own, or be crushed by the Crown. What little legitimate business they had will be overshadowed by the organization of assassins they had been unwittingly fronting (and I suspect the “unwitting” part will earn them very little sympathy).

As for our part, we are taking the money. That vote was almost unanimous, and though there were some objections raised about the money belonging to the Guild, it will almost certainly be seized if we don’t seize it first. When the objections continued, Suishen actually spoke up.

“You humans are terrible at managing your finances. I languished in a collector’s hoard instead of defending my family for decades because some idiot didn’t have enough money with him! I say get enough money to accomplish your mission this time.”

This did put an end to the brewing argument, I’ll grant it that. But. Fuck you, too. I manage my finances just fine, thank-you-very-much.

More problematic is the matter of  Ravenscraeg itself. Qatana insists on selling it as if it were our property just because we are standing in it. There was a legal sale, title transfer, and so on, making it formally property of the Rimerunners Guild. There is no skirting this. If the Crown does step in, which I am sure they will, there will be no finders-keepers rule. I’ve tried to explain that multiple times but she won’t hear it.

I eventually just dropped the subject. The realities of what we can and cannot do will become clear in due course.

(Ravenscraeg, noon)

Hard day, indeed. My hearing is returning, albeit very slowly. Everything is muffled and it feels like my ears have been filled with cotton. I can barely hear the others’ voices through it, and even when I do I can’t recognize who is speaking unless I am looking directly at them. Still, this is an improvement from half an hour ago when I couldn’t hear anything at all.

We learned about these stupid thunderstones during my studies but of course I never gave them much thought. The idea of exploring the remote corners of the world as part of some grand gest, facing off against man and monster, alike, seemed so ridiculous back when I thought the worst I would contend with in life would be the vagrants and vagabonds of the city, and yet here we are. Eudonius had said that arcane power is as much practice and experience as it is study, and that those who break from the solitude of the library, and the security and stability of civilization, will find themselves rewarded with power that flows faster and freer than they could imagine. He was certainly not wrong about that. But he was also quick to point out that the price of this path could be severe; that “countless numbers have paid it with their bodies, their lives, or their souls” and he does not appear to be wrong about that, either. I am making good progress on the first.

The others are not wasting the time it is taking for Etayne and I to recover. The pile of items to be analyzed and identified continues to grow as they search the numerous living quarters attached to the dojo. Between what they are turning up now and what we have found since last night, she and I will be busy for some time. I have taken a cue from their efficiency and given Lute parchment and quill, and he is busy scribbling down some history of the Rimerunners Guild. This isn’t strictly necessary but the distraction and focus seems to be calming his nerves. He said he wanted to stay with us, but it’s obvious we can’t keep him completely out of harm’s way, formidable though we are. As soon as I can engage in conversation again, I’m going to suggest that we use the eggs to hide him somewhere secluded until we are finished here.

I’m also going to suggest that we distribute the remaining stones among us, and turn them against our adversaries. As we weaken them, we strengthen ourselves. Why shouldn’t we put our gains to use?

When we are out of this place I think I am going to learn to speak some Giant. Not that Sparna didn’t do well bluffing our way past the trolls with some prompting (I thought suggesting he ask “Do you need more coal?” was a delightful touch), it’s just that I hate almost being able to do something. As much as I complain about mom’s insistence that I learn Thassilonian, it is either an ancestor to or component of Giant, Varisian, and Shoanti. Speak it and any one of its descendants and you can more or less follow what someone is saying in the others, though of course there are gaps. It’s those gaps that are frustrating, and they are the largest with Giant. That, and it just keeps coming up. As we head north towards the mountains, I suspect it will continue to come up, and perhaps at a faster pace.

It’s a shame the bluff didn’t hold. Well, I suppose it did hold, it was just spoiled when the monks in here called out for help. When the first troll burst into the room—literally bursting in by destroying the door—I thought we might be in trouble, but I was able to use a water orb to keep the others from following suit. Only fighting one at a time was still dangerous, but it was more of a battle of attrition than anything else and we had more resources at our disposal. I also learned that my little acid darts stops them from regenerating, which meant that I could contribute more directly to the effort.

I am not sure what to make of the Tian woman. She apparently stayed in her quarters, despite the loud and obvious skirmish happening on the other side of her door. If she had joined in we would have had a far more difficult time, but instead she bode her time, waiting for an opportunity to escape. It was obviously a miscalculation, but more importantly I think it is a sign of these peoples’ true loyalties, which are first and foremost to themselves. I am hardly surprised.

(Ravenscraeg, mid-afternoon)

We have found Suishen! And the raven with the red feathers is dead! For the first time I feel as though we have regained the upper hand here, and I am growing more optimistic that we will finish this before nightfall. We are closing in.

Lute is hidden away with a small stash of eggshells and a potion to render him invisible. When the former are expended, he will use the latter to escape out the front door. It is risky, but on the other hand there is no one left here to challenge him. That we know of.  I am not entirely comfortable with the situation, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances. But if our momentum holds, it won’t come to that.

His history of the Guild has been invaluable and it has fueled the speculation about Silverskorr. Though he was elected to the board fairly recently, he had known or at least been familiar with her for as long as she has been the head of the guild. About a year ago, she and one of her close friends and advisers, a Tian woman by the name of Kimandatsu, were on a trading voyage somewhere to the south. Their ship ran into a series of powerful storms and Kimandatsu perished at sea. Silverskorr was very shaken up by the experience, and after a long period of mourning she slowly became, in Lute’s words, more focused and driven. He describes her as a formidable opponent.

This is too many coincidences for me. On its own this story sounds perfectly reasonable, but when added to purple ogres or ogre magi, shape-shifting oni, Tian strangers, and everything else that has happened to us, we can make a good case that it was not Kimandatsu that died on that voyage, but rather the real Silverskorr. There is no way to prove this (not yet, anyway), but what other explanation makes sense?

You would think that we would have learned by now not to walk into the same ambush twice, but that is exactly what we did. This time, as we emerged from the cloak room we noticed a large number of ravens and crows gathering among the rafters in the main hall. I felt my hair standing up along the back of my neck and before we could react we were struck by a brilliant arc of electricity. Olmas spotted the bloodfeather raven among the flock and called it out. Ivan pulled out the slaying arrow we had found in the armory here, the one keyed to magical beasts, and nocked it while asking me, “Is that it?”

“Yes,” I replied. And he let it fly. Seconds later, the raven was lying dead on the floor below. The ravens and crows scattered through the smoke holes in the roof. And that was that.

It seemed so anticlimactic. After all that creature had done to us, after all the grief and misery it had caused, it died before the fight had even begun. Don’t get me wrong: I am not complaining. If anything, I see that arrow as a gift that was given to us to use. To use here. We’ll never know what circumstances brought it into the armory, but this sort of luck goes beyond coincidence. Desna’s hand, perhaps?

What especially caught my attention afterwards was that the raven was still a raven even after it had died. My (albeit limited) understanding of shape-shifting spells and abilities is that they expire when you do. Our prevailing theory had been that the raven was really a druid in animal form, but now we had proof, more or less, that this was not the case. I was troubled, enough that Nihali could feel it and she came to me in the hall.

“What do you make of this bird?” I asked her after she settled on my shoulder.

She looked it over and replied, “There is something not right about it. It’s a raven, but it’s wrong.”

“‘Wrong’ how? Other than its size?”

“It just feels inherently wrong.”

I don’t know what this means. Yet another mystery we’ll probably never solve.

Back when Uksahkka was kidnapped, Helgarval had floated the theory that the raven was Runecaster’s familiar. I am not convinced of it, though. Wouldn’t Nihali have been able to tell? I think so, but I don’t know for sure.

I am more confident in my belief that Runecaster is a sorcerer and not a wizard, and I mean that in the literal sense (to the common person, the terms are colloquial and interchangeable). We found his living quarters, and neither they nor his research lab said “wizard” to me. There are just certain items you need when you have to research and memorize spells, and such things were conspicuous in their absence: no spell books, no research tomes, no library at all in fact. It just had that feel of someone who has an innate connection to magic, and is working out spells through trial and error.

And this brings me back to the “raven is his familiar” theory: most sorcerers do not have familiars. It’s not unheard of but it’s rare, and those that do usually come from families with a legacy of traditional, arcane magic. It’s not impossible that Runecaster had a giant, innately wrong raven as a familiar, but it just doesn’t seem likely.

What Runecaster does have is hands. Giant, disembodied hands. As pets, or something. Gods, these people. They were apparently hiding under his bed, and scampered out to attack when the first of us entered the room. The smell was disgusting and it made several people ill. At one point someone said “blunt weapons only” so I brought in a small earth elemental to help. Blunt is more or less their whole thing.

When the skirmish was over I used the elemental to settle a disagreement I had with Qatana earlier. I wanted to return to the water room, but she insisted on looking for a back way in. In the end I relented. In part it was because her reasoning made more sense even if it meant putting an unopened door at our backs, but I also didn’t want to cause a problem. I feel like the others sometimes get irritated with me. When even Qatana is getting frustrated maybe that says I need to do a better job of picking my battles.

In the end, the elemental reported there was only one way in and that was the one we already knew. Behind that door was a narrow well, and lodged deep down in that well was an item that radiated powerful, powerful magic: Suishen. Silverskorr had apparently found herself at a loss for what to do with a sword she could neither use nor destroy, and settled on “toss it in a hole and hope no one finds it” as the answer. Her impatience may end up being a costly error.

As soon as it had cleared the top of the well, carried up by the force summoned by my spell, a booming voice echoed in our heads: “I SENSE AMATATSU SCIONS AT LAST.”

Just as our visions had implied, Suishen is an intelligent sword. Ecstatic to learn that an Amatatsu still lives, it announced that it considers us Ameiko’s protectors and will allow us to wield it (I remember Fynn saying that the sword “never felt right” to him, and according to the others Helva had said something similar). Assuming Ameiko doesn’t wish to carry it herself, Olmas has stepped forward.

One more thing. We asked who threw it down in the well. The answer? “The oni.”

I just had to know. “A purple ogre?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Too many coincidences.

Arodus 15, 4712 (Ravenscraeg, early morning)

We spent the night holed up in one of the storage rooms. Or rather, in the extra-dimensional space created by destroying the eggshells. It was awkward setting them off among the shelves of wool, cloaks, and furs, but they only last a couple of hours each and we had to make do without being seen. That meant using an unlikely hiding place. I am told the guards here did at least think to look in the closet in the middle of the night, but it was apparently not an exhaustive search as the watches were otherwise uneventful. Either that, or they figured we’ll come out eventually so why bother? I am betting on the latter.

I was hoping our clandestine raid would stay clandestine a little longer than it did, but it seems our luck ran out rather quickly. At least we made it up the cliffs and inside undetected: that part of the plan went pretty well. What frustrates me is that we spent all that time preparing to get here, and none for what we would encounter once we arrived. I mean, it should have been obvious that we’d go up against poisoned weapons given how many of the damned things have been tossed around by these people—including the one the night before last—and yet here we are without a single defense against it, magical or mundane. Olmas nearly died because of it. This overnight stay will fix that, but the ultimate consequence of it is that we have lost whatever momentum we had. These people probably have a pretty good idea of what we are capable of, and now we have given them the time to prepare. It’s going to be a hard day.

I had a difficult time sleeping so I spent more time going over Snorri Stone-Eye’s diaries. He was known for his tremendously successful raids on settlements and colonies throughout the Steaming Sea, including within rival Linnorm Kingdoms and the occasional visit to northern Varisia, but it was the brutality of the same which would earn him the nickname “The Mad Reaver”. This proved to be somewhat prophetic in a different sense, as over the last several years he grew more and more obsessed with predictions of the end times. He wrote of a final battle between the gods and the freeing of Rovagug which would result in the ravaging of the world. His later entries are not so much diaries as they are the ravings of a madman in the grips of paranoia.

The gradual shift from rationality to mania happened slowly but it is clearly visible when read in one sitting. He really did believe his false eye turned him into some sort of seer with visions of the future. His last journey, the one where he apparently contracted his illness, was to a cluster of unnamed islands in the Steaming Sea. He was searching for something—he doesn’t say what—that would protect his fortress during the coming war, and that is where the diary ends.

I am not sympathetic to what happened to him. He was a thug who lined his pockets, and those of his backers, with coin and treasure taken from those slain by his own hand. Their only crimes were existing and possessing items of value. The man was a vile lunatic, and before that, just vile. He earned his fate.

(Ravenscraeg, mid morning)

They were waiting for us in the balcony when we emerged from the storage room and ambushed us as we made our way towards the tower. It goes without saying that they are good at hiding in the shadows, but amazingly we walked past two of them without even knowing they were there. Not one of us spotted them. It’s unsettling.

Did they know where we were? Or did they just guess that we were hiding somewhere on the upper levels? I suppose it would have been fairly easy to work out a likely where and when. They know where we had been and where we hadn’t, and probably worked out how we got in. We need so much rest, enough time to prepare spells, and so on. What this suggests is that we are easily predicted.

As impressive as the ambush was, the fight did not last long. As usual, it was brute force and magic, particularly healing, that made the difference. Few can stand up to Radella, Ana, Sparna, and Olmas face-to-face, and when Qatana, Etayne, or Ivan can tend to their injuries they are just short of implacable. When our adversaries called for reinforcements, I added to our own numbers by summoning a leopard from the Celestial realms. You would not think one large cat would have an impact but they are fearsome animals when they have the room to move. They charge their foe, leap onto them and attack with their teeth and all of their claws, all at once. It did this twice, and both victims fell in an instant.

I left a paper flower on one of the bodies, with a blessing to Shelyn and a message to those who would find it: it is not too late to abandon this place and this path. Life is a precious gift, and it should not be squandered by visiting hate and misery upon others.

Look, I am not naive. The main level appears to be mostly barracks and guard rooms, and the Tian ninjas had erected a shrine of sorts in theirs; a shrine to Yaezhing, the Minister of Blood, god of harsh justice, murder, and punishment. His followers are not going to suddenly grow a conscience. But I am compelled to reach out.

(Ravenscraeg, late morning)

A couple of days ago we had this discussion about whether or not the Rimerunners Guild was a legitimate business or just a front for the Frozen Shadows. Obviously, the guild has been around for far longer so they didn’t start out that way, but what about now? Could we consider the two organizations to be one in the same today?

It seems we can more or less put that question to rest. Meet Lute Haggersly: Ulfen merchant, elected member of the Rimerunners Guild board of shareholders, and prisoner of the Frozen Shadows. If Lute is to be believed—and again if this is some sort of ruse it is ridiculously elaborate—he committed the offense of refusing to support one of Silverskorr’s motions or proposals before the Board. When he would not be swayed by her arguments, she turned to bullying and threats. When he failed to acquiesce, she followed through by imprisoning him here. I am not an expert on the inner workings of either publicly held companies or criminal organizations, but I will venture a guess that most of the former do not routinely imprison dissenters and most of the latter do not outsource their governance. The rank and file of the guild may not realize it, but it is clear that they are now little more than a veneer of legitimacy over, and a source of funding for, something much uglier.

If that weren’t enough, he offered a rather jaw-dropping piece of news: this organization seems to be run by a purple ogre—purple—and he insists that the ogre is, in fact, Silverskorr. It sounded ridiculous at the time and his evidence was thin, based solely on having heard Silverskorr’s voice right before seeing the ogre enter his cell to taunt and threaten him, but then we stopped to think about it. Ogre mages have a place in Avistani legends, and in those stories they don’t seem to have a set description or appearance. Each story seems to describe them differently. Maybe there’s a reason for that, and purple skin would very much fit in with it.

And what about the oni? Maybe, like Kikonu, an ogre mage is a kind of oni, much like there are many forms of devils and demons. Kikonu could change his appearance and become almost human. Would it be so hard to believe that Silverskorr can change her shape, too? Assume the form of a human woman? And why stop there? If the ogre mage can change it’s shape, then maybe this isn’t even the “real” Silverskorr. Maybe the Silverskorr everyone knows is an imposter.

I know how this is starting to sound, but that is the thing about shapeshifters: they breed paranoia. You can’t trust what you see and hear.

We asked for Helgarval’s opinion and he had little to offer except to say that we have our work cut out for us. Thanks, but we had worked that out on our own. He then followed up with, and I am paraphrasing here, “I’m confident you’ll be victorious. And if you aren’t, then I’ll find another group.” Great. Thanks for that, too.

This room we are in is a prodigiously stocked alchemy lab. Etayne is the real expert here, of course, but I had enough instruction while in school to understand what I am seeing. I have no doubt that I could find just about any item I needed for casting a spell or brewing a potion, provided it wasn’t particularly rare or valuable. On top of that are all the flasks, vials, beakers, and other alchemical equipment one would need for creating infusions, brews, and, yes, toxins. According to Etayne, the plants here are all poisonous in some form, covering just about every plant-based poison known to man.

Etayne is searching through some lab notes, and it appears that all of this is Runecaster’s personal work and research space. This goes a long way towards explaining the glass box near the center of the room. The less said about that wasp-infested corpse the better. We watched it beat (ineffectually, thankfully) on the glass as it called out to us in what sounded like infernal. Etayne says he bought the wasps off of a Chelish wizard. What a surprise, right?

Gods. These people.

Arodus 14, 4712 (dawn, Kalsgard)

We camped last night at the caravan. This just seemed like a wise idea given what had happened at the inn. Of course I did not expect this to fool anyone, but the point was not to hide: it was to keep together as a group for our collective safety. Ameiko has, wisely, been sleeping in the covered wagon in order to stay out of sight. While not exactly spacious, there is room in there for as many as three to lay down comfortably so she and I have been sharing the space.

Given how much closer we’ve grown over the past couple of weeks—it almost feels like it did when we were growing up—you’d think we’d be awake until some ridiculous hour talking, but nothing could be farther from the truth. In all honesty, I am a lousy roommate and have been for some weeks. I am exhausted most evenings, and what time I do have before falling sleep is spent on research, study, or (like last night) copying spells from scrolls. Fortunately, she’s also been buried in books and maps on Tian-Xia and Minkai, and she knows we’re extending ourselves—overextending, really—for her, but it still feels like I am ignoring her.

In case we needed a reminder of what we have gotten into, one arrived last night around two o’clock in the morning, just as our watch was changing. Both Ameiko and I would have slept through it had Sparna not awoken us. Someone sent an arrow laced with poison into the side of the wagon where we were sleeping. We were lucky that it hit the frame instead of piercing the canvas. Or perhaps they were intending to send a message rather than trying to hit one of us (though that would not make a lot of sense). Whatever the reason, they spent a small fortune on the delivery. Etayne said it was coated with deathblade, a poison which is notorious for both it’s lethality and it’s expense. This admonition cost them nearly two thousand gold.

Admonition? Attached to it was a note, written in Tien.

It was foolish of you to wake a sleeping dragon. Return what was stolen. Abandon your hopeless quest now or you and your friends will be destroyed.

Ameiko looked lost in thought, staring blankly into the darkness after reading the note for herself. This was her life, her family, and her heritage so it seemed appropriate, if not prudent, to ask her opinion.

“I didn’t expect this journey to go unopposed. This is…grim, but not unexpected.”

These Frozen Shadows? We have rattled them. Yes, they started big that night at the Skalsbridge, but now they’ve been reduced to paying blind beggars to deliver spooky messages in alleyways, and sending warnings attached to arrows coated with exotic poison, all to convince us how scary and powerful they are. Because we have gotten close to them; hit them somewhere very personal. They are trying to bully us because they don’t know what else to do.

I dealt with bullies for much of my life, and they are all the same. They talk a lot, they intimidate and posture, they threaten, and occasionally they bloody your nose. But mostly? They posture and threaten. It’s how they make themselves feel better, and how they build their power base, convincing those around them how terrible and frightening they are. But really, they are just insecure and scared.

The people you really have to worry about? They don’t send messages. They don’t warn you in the middle of the night. They don’t play the game of appearances. They simply act, and that’s precisely how we’ll respond to this affront.

I spent some time this morning drafting a short letter to mom and dad. I promised them I would write, and that I would not hide the truth from them when I did. This has been far more difficult than I imagined. Over a decade of experience-turned-instinct screams at me to not say anything about what has happened in the past week, or what we are about to do, because no good ever came of it when I was a child. Things were better when they didn’t know.

Mom and grandma fought a lot back in those days (dad’s relationship with dadi and dada has never been strained to my knowledge, for whatever that is worth). They’d probably fight even more now if they saw each other as often as they did when I was growing up. It was years before I finally understood why, but now I know that, deep down, grandma does not approve of how mom chose to live her life. She wanted mom to be the scholar, the noble, the aristocrat, the what-have-you in the gilded city of her birth. Mom threw away a life that had been carefully crafted for her along with her savings to, of all things, work. And touch the world with her own hands. The horror.

Maybe part of my fear about sending this letter is that mom (and dad) won’t approve of my life. That I, too, am throwing away everything that was carefully laid out for me, only I am upping the ante by making the risk to my life a literal one. I am worried I am destined to quarrel with my mom the way she does with hers. I’ve seen my parents twice since this all began, and the first of those led to an ugly fight over concerns about the exact sort of thing that is happening right now. It does not bode well. But I promised I would tell them, and for better or for worse I will see it through.

(noon, Thanelands, south of Kalsgard)

The road we are following isn’t so much of a road at this point as it is a lightly-traveled dirt path. Wagon tracks and hoof prints are our guides.

It was here, about half way to Ravenscraeg where the path ran through a bog, that we apparently missed a turn. As we passed one of the stagnant ponds, a pair of slimy pseudopods shot out at us from the water’s edge and struck at Etayne and Ivan on their horses.

This skirmish would have been unremarkable except for what it was that we were fighting: giant, amorphous blobs, yellow-brown in color, that oozed and flowed as they advanced, and burned flesh like acid. Attempts to harm them with edged and pointed weapons merely split them in two, each half functioning as an independent, albeit smaller, blob.

According to Etayne they are called ochre jellies, a name that is as literal and descriptive as it is unoriginal.

The bog seems an appropriate home for them. Bogs are stagnant wetlands, with pools filled by rainfall over peat-layered soil. Very little grows in them save for the trees, moss, and fungus. Like a swamp, only without a source of running water. And in contrast to a marsh, which is a swamp only with grass instead of trees.

Bogs, marshes, swamps. We’ve spent far too much time in wetlands.

We have another five or six hours ahead of us.

(evening, Thanelands, Near the Grungir Forest)

The crags from which Ravenscraeg gets its name are a line of cliffs among the rocky hills that form the border between the southern edge of the Thanelands and the Grungir Forest beyond. The hills, and the sheared northern faces of the crags, rise and fall along their length. We can see the small fortress nestled in a fissure where two neighboring cliffs meet, sitting slightly lower than the surrounding rock but still a good hundred-plus feet straight up. A series of wooden stairs form switchbacks with landings, climbing to meet what we assume is the main entrance.

We are not going that way because we are not idiots. Half of our cache of scrolls, purchased yesterday evening in Kalsgard, will allow us to literally walk up the vertical rocks as easily as spiders climbs walls and walk on ceilings. We’ll have thirty minutes to make the ascent to one of the neighboring cliffs and then drop down into the dell which Nihali tells us lays just behind the structure. This is more than enough time, even with delays. We’ll go after dark, when the quarter moon has disappeared behind the ridge to the south west, because we also don’t want to be seen. This is where the second half of our cache of scrolls comes into play: the spells on them will allow us to see in the dark.

The bloodfeather raven

One more thing. Nihali also said the hills and trees behind them are filled with ravens and crows. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. Dozens of them are roosting on the fortress’s tower.

If there was any question before about this being the right place, there isn’t any longer.

(night, Ravenscraeg)

We made it inside an upper-level window of sorts without being detected. This late at night the great hall we found ourselves in was unoccupied, and we were able to slowly and quietly work our way around. Right now, I am sitting in one of the store rooms, hurriedly taking notes as the others explore.

This store room contains an enormous quantity of raw wool, furs, cloaks, and other cold weather clothing. Tucked away in a chest among them was a stack of scrolls written in Skald. Sparna looked them over briefly and said they appeared to be diaries. He was about to put them away when I stopped him.

“Can I see those?”

“Why? They’re diaries.”

“This place was once owned by Snorri Stone-Eye. They may be important.”

“We don’t have time for this right now.”

I hate these arguments. I understand that there is a time and a place for research, and that the middle of a break-in is generally neither, but they may have information we need about where we are at this moment. Thankfully, Sparna relented on the condition that they continue to explore while I stay here and read.

Fine. Whatever. Just go.

It turns out I was right. Snorri stashed something of value—something that would help protect him “against the coming winter” (had he lived)—in one of the upstairs flues. Now we know to look for it.

This is the abridged version of Snorri Stone-Eye’s final years: He believed his stone eye gave him the sight to see the past and future (it’s a magical stone, all right, but all it really does is protect the possessor from the physical effects of aging, though it doesn’t protect them from aging itself). He became obsessed with prophecies of the end of the world, and he believed that “in the winter of the world, the gods will come down to fight, and the rough beast will be released”. These prophecies of the end times and Rovagug were enough to push him over the edge from sanity, and he was already close to the edge as it was. The diaries end with his last voyage across the sea to find an artifact that would help him survive the end of the world. What he found instead, as we learned from personal experience, was an affliction that would slowly turn him into a draugr.

(midnight, Ravenscraeg)

I don’t have much time because we’ve been discovered. We fought with and killed a lycanthrope in his quarters, but not before he shouted an alarm that has alerted everyone here to our presence.

Two raven swarms descended on us as we headed back to the great hall but we quickly dispersed them. I summoned three, small air elementals and sent them up to the roof to scatter the rest of the birds but I was not specific about how to get there, and they (logically, I suppose) chose the stairs to the tower. That’s when we heard a huge ruckus on the floor above us. It turned out that the air elementals were not terribly discriminating about what constituted a “raven”: they were harassing six tengu guards when we came up the stairs.

The tengu were tough and well-trained. Olmas nearly died from a poison dart; deathblade again. Each of them carried it. One nearly struck me.

We found what we believe to be the nest for the bloodfeather raven. I don’t know if it will come back here, but just in case it does we left a nasty surprise for it: one of the deathblade-coated darts, hidden in the nest with the point sticking out. It’s a long shot, but it would be poetic justice.

Arodus 12, 4712 (evening)

This is the second time in my life that I’ve watched someone destroy a shrine to Shelyn.

I was barely 12 years old when the Cathedral in Sandpoint burned to the ground. My bedroom faced the cluster of chapels and I remember being woken in the middle of the night by the glow of the flames and shadows flickering on the walls. I just sat there in bed, paralyzed with equal parts fascination and fear, watching as the fire spread and engulfed the entire complex. It was maybe a hundred feet away, but I could feel the heat of it through the open window. Then dad burst into my room and pulled me out.

The rest is a jumble of memories, but I do recall quite vividly the stables catching fire, followed by the White Deer. The flames encircled the homes along our block, raining hot embers into the sea as it spread. Dad said it was pure luck that so few buildings burned (and that our house was one of those spared), though I supposed those more directly impacted, like Ana, would have a different opinion.

At the time, the entire town thought it some terrible accident. Years later we learned the truth, and it was far uglier than most could imagine. Nualia was consumed by hatred. Hatred for a father that presumed to choose her life for her, and believed that years of emotional abuse somehow qualified as parenting. Hatred for a town that simultaneously deified and vilified her (I still remember the words she spoke to me on the cliffs that evening). Hatred for a lover that abandoned her. Hatred for even her celestial ancestry. That sort of hate does terrible things to a person, and it was a crack that Lamashtu exploited. Nualia was far from blameless, of course. It’s just that all this history made Lamashtu’s job easier.

You can at least look at that fire—at Father Tobyn’s murder, for that’s what it really was about—and trace it back to her anger, no matter how distorted or misguided her thinking had become. This business in Kalsgard, though, was just a callous decision of convenience. What was the best way to slow us down, and preoccupy Uksahkka’s protectors? Destroy the shrine that sheltered her, of course. What a fine distraction.

It was also very personal. A child of twelve isn’t a devote follower of anyone (and regardless, back then I was still struggling with the teachings of Irori); today was much different. This really hurt.

Two enormous earth elementals stood in the rubble and were pounding on what remained of the temple. I didn’t even stop to think: I just acted. Before the others could move¹, I had conjured a sphere of water ten feet across and engulfed the nearest of the two. While my friends moved in to attack the second, I rolled the ball with it’s prize out into the street and as far away from the shrine as the spell would allow.

I heard a strange bird call and saw the remaining earth elemental turn its attention to us, abandoning its demolition. Radella pointed out that the large raven with the red feathers was there, and that it dissolved into smoke before her eyes (but not before she put an arrow into it). Etayne and I exchanged a silent conversation, and then we both said “druid” at the same time.

Soon after, I saw the priest, Lin-Po, lying in the street, unconscious. I summoned a lantern archon to assist, first to aid him, and then to help us with the fight. These earth elementals were big, much bigger than what I could summon with my relatively-meager spells, and the one that engaged us absorbed tremendous punishment while dealing out the same. It took nearly all of us to bring it down. A thought occurred to me then: What if I hadn’t been able to stop the first one? What if we had to fight both at the same time? It makes me shudder thinking about it, but fortunately we didn’t have to find out.

We barely had to do anything with the second. The summons that was keeping it here expired shortly after my own spell did. Good enough. The point was to save Yin-Po and what was left of Shelyn’s shrine, not to have some epic battle to the death in the streets of Kalsgard. Besides, none of us wanted to be here long enough to face questions from the city guard. Yes, everyone in this city seems to walk around armed to the teeth (even the foreigners), and there were plenty of witnesses that could establish that we were helping, but after last night’s mischief I was not excited by the prospect of city officials probing into our affairs.

I guess I wasn’t shocked when Uksahkka turned up missing. Remember that part about destroying Shelyn’s shrine as a convenient distraction? The door to the cellar that served as her safe house had been forced open. Inside, Radella found a dart laced with poison and a black feather much like the ones we saw all over Brinewall. Much like the ones from Kikonu. We had a brief exchange about this with Yin-Po and he suggested we may be dealing with something called a Yamabushi Tengu. They are a type of Oni; apparently the Tian demons take many forms, much as they do here. What that told me was that we have some research to do. All we’re missing is the time to do it.

I guess we hadn’t experienced enough surprises for one day, because the helmet we looted from the funeral ship chose that moment to reveal it’s true nature to us: an angel named Helgarval, in the form of a winged helmet, because, sure, why not? He described himself as a servant of Desna, sent here as a familiar for a master that has long since passed on. Stuck on the material plane with no way to go home, he was simply “doing good where he can”.

It’s not often that surprises go our way, so this one was a welcome change. He had snuck on to Snorri Stone-Eye’s funeral ship as part of his own investigation into something called the Frozen Shadows, a criminal organization that has been gradually infiltrating Kalsgard over the last few years. Apparently they have a reputation for carrying out almost supernatural assassinations—which to me just says that they use magic to get away with it, and are good at telling stories—and the late Snorri was up to his stone eye with them. And the Rimerunners Guild? They are almost certainly a front. A well-connected front, with ties possibly as high as the Linnorm King for the Thanelands. Which is more or less a hint that we should be careful.

I’ll be honest here: I almost wasn’t.

Qatana and I loitered just up the block from the Rimerunners Guild building, located in the Jade Quarter along the riverfront, as Radella and Ivan broke in under the cover of invisibility. It was a long, long wait, and I kept thinking of ideas that could help distract the guards inside should something go awry. The longer I waited, the more aggressive my planning became, morphing from a distraction in case of trouble to just a way to wreck part of the building for good measure. At the top of the list was earth elementals since that seemed like poetic justice. Though mine would be considerably smaller and weaker than what we faced earlier, two or three of them could still make fast work of the masonry. Another idea was letting air elementals inside to play whirlwind, just to mess up the place. And the list went on.

See what I mean? I was letting what happened at Shelyn’s temple get the better of me, and the waiting and doing nothing was not helping.

Then Uksahkka emerged from the rear entrance and I came to my senses. As we suspected, she had been shot with a poison dart to render her unconscious and then kidnapped. She woke up shackled in chains in a locked room in the Rimmerunners Guild. Ivan and Radella had tended to her and engineered her escape without being detected, which is part of why their little foray was taking so long. I had Nihali send word to the others that we would be delayed. (As it turns out, they were dealing with their own problems: someone had implicated us in the poisoning death of a hunting dog, and that led to a very drunken confrontation with the dog’s owner in the pub where they were waiting for us. I got the short version of that story, and it was enough to convince me that the less I know about it, the better.)

Some time later, Radella and Ivan made their exit and in their hands was an impossible prize: the complete contents of the Rimerunners Guild’s secret vault. All of it liberated without raising a single guard’s suspicion that anyone had even entered the building, much less spent an hour inside looting it. I was, and still am, stunned. I’ll admit that the bouillon is nice (I like to think of it as partial compensation for the grief these people have caused us) but the real treasure was a ledger and other business documents detailing a number of sketchy affairs. Combined with what Uksahkka overheard while being prisoner, Helgarval’s own investigations, and what we have learned ourselves, we were able to form a fairly complete picture of the Frozen Shadows’ dealings in and around Kalsgard, as well as confirm most of our suspicions.

We are now looking for a place named Ravenscrag. It’s a castle or keep of some sort, purchased from Snorri Stone-Eye three years ago, presumably while he was still living. The ledger details very large sums of money being transferred to Ravenscrag on an ongoing basis, marked as “development expenses”. Kelda volunteered to discreetly dig around for information on Ravenscrag (we warned her to be careful, though I think she has figured that out already) which should help since she knows the city and we don’t.

I am tired. It took hours to comb through those documents, even with Radella’s help. But I am writing because I can’t sleep. My thoughts keep returning to the shrine today. Was there something we could have done to prevent it?

I think there was. We deliberately took time to rest. We could have gone there directly after leaving the ship but we were tired. Very, very tired. I understand the argument, and I didn’t disagree with it, but still…would that attack have happened if we had been there hours earlier? Even minutes earlier?

Part of me says that it wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe they didn’t know where Uksahkka was and they were following us (though that wouldn’t make me feel any better, as it would mean that we led them to her). Maybe they were going to raid the shrine anyway, and we just happened to have good timing (though not good enough). Or maybe they were just keeping an eye on her, and were forced to move because we did.

Those are all logical arguments, but they may also just be rationalizations. It’s hard to shake the feeling that we screwed up here.

Arodus 13, 4712 (evening)

No one tried to kill us today.

The morning did not start particularly well. On our first full day in Kalsgard, Etayne spent most of her time in the Bone Quarter, keeping an eye on the caravan while also providing her services to the community. One of the people she befriended was a young Tian boy who she eventually learned was paid to spy on us. She offered him some money to try to find out who it was that was doing the asking, but he never returned. I made an offhand remark that night that our clumsy probing around had probably gotten him killed.

It turns out I was prescient. His body was found lying in the street by the river in the Jade Quarter, just after sunrise. Someone had cut his throat.

On a lighter note, Kelda returned with some solid information on Ravenscrag. It is located in the cliffs bordering the Grungir Forest, a days ride south of Kalsgard. It’s named Ravenscrag because “only the ravens and crazy people can get to it”. I suggested we head there for some surveillance by air—specifically, by raven, which seemed apropos—but we all agreed to take a day to prepare first. We’ve been going too long without any breaks.

This meant I got to spend some time with Ameiko, which we hadn’t had much of together since Losthome. We borrowed Radella’s ring so she could move about the city without being an obvious target (which was weird because it was almost like sharing intimate details of your life with a complete stranger) and spent the day shopping with Koya for everything from art paper to clothing to some magic gear. Clothes shopping with Koya is a whole experience. Just ask Ivan.

We made three stops on the way back. The first was at a wizard academy so I could pick up a new spell we might need. The second was at what remained of the Shrine of Shelyn where the rebuilding effort was already underway. Yin-Po was pleased to hear that we had found Uksahkka more or less unharmed and freed her from her captors, but less so to learn that the Rimerunners Guild was where she was being held. I suggested he not make this detail known.

The third stop was at the inn where we were supposedly still staying, despite having spent the last two nights with the caravan. I should have quit while we were ahead. Despite the lousy start, the day was actually going quite well but I ruined it by insisting that we check on the rooms. To make sure the innkeeper hadn’t, say, assumed we had abandoned them and decided to sell off our stuff. Sometime in the last 24 hours, an estimation based on when the rooms were last cleaned, intruders had forced their way in to each one of them and searched them front to back, leaving a huge mess in their wake. Fortunately, none of us were stupid enough to leave anything valuable in them so it was basically just our clothes that got tossed, but still. It soured my mood.

With the money raised by liquidating Snorri’s funerary treasure, I and three others were able to purchase rings that magically sustain their wearers with only minimal sleep, and without the need for food. It will take a week for them to attune, but once they do they will be a boon for our pending trip over the Crown by reducing the number of provisions we’ll need to take with us. I am also learning to craft magic items of my own, and this will allow me to work at night, essentially giving me more hours in the day.

Speaking of food, even with the rings we were still short of our goal. Then Ivan suggested “Why not have multiple cooks?”

It was such an obvious idea that I can’t believe I had overlooked it.

¹This is Kali spending a Hero Point.^↵

Arodus 12 (small hours, Kalsgard)

It has been a long night and I do not see an end to it any time soon. In a few hours we meet Uksahkka at Spear-shaker’s Point for, of all things, kayak lessons (and in the dark, I might add). Dad would be proud. Or, perhaps instead, he’d lecture me for resisting his attempts to teach me anything involving paddles or sails years ago (as much as I enjoyed being a passenger on boats and ships of all sizes, I never had any interest in piloting them). He even told me once that “One day you will regret not having learned”. And here we are.

The definition of adulthood is realizing your parents were right about everything.

Suishen was not at Asvig’s farmhouse, and any hope of this coming to a quick conclusion has evaporated. Our only lead now is that it may be sitting on Snorri Stone-Eye’s funeral ship, scheduled to burn during his wake at dawn. I missed the interrogation of Helva and Asvig—I was more concerned with who had escaped from the hall at the time—but Helva suggested this possibility to us.

Snorri was Asvig’s Lord, or ring-giver as they are called here, and Snorri was even more closely tied to some shady dealings and this Rimerunners guild than Asvig, himself. Asvig, it seems, was just the go-to man for anything needing done that was not strictly legal (or even remotely so in some cases, I suspect) so that others would not be directly involved. Putting that sword on his lord’s funeral ship in tribute would accomplish two things at once: getting rid of it for good, and honoring the late Snorri, himself.

Except for the part where it just doesn’t make any sense.

Neither does the idea that Ulf might be imprisoned on that ship, too. At first it seemed like a real possibility, but now that I have had time to think on it, what would be the point? Asvig didn’t seem the type to play stupid games like this, especially when simply killing the man on the spot would get the job done and with a great deal more certainty. And just how hard would it be to make a body disappear in the Thanelands? We sent forty men to the bottom of the river with barely a trace, and we’ve had less practice at it. Asvig may have been a lot of things, but nothing we’ve seen suggested that he was incompetent or a fool. His only mistake seems to have been underestimating us, and to be fair, even then he was working on no information save for the fact that we existed.

So I am skeptical that we will find anything on this funeral ship save for Snorri Stone-Eye’s corpse, but it’s the only lead we have. Especially since Ulf wasn’t at Asvig’s farm, either—not that we knew to look for him at the time, but it was obvious there were no prisoners being held there—which just puts a capstone on this perfect day.

And the raid had started so well. With the death celebration (who are these people?) well under way we probably could have set the yard on fire without being spotted, so we had plenty of time to do this right. At the posts that surrounded the house, several of us put our heads together and reconstructed the rune that bypassed the summoning trap, then we quietly moved to the rear entrance and got into position.

That’s when we heard the muffled protests of one or two women, and the much louder, drunker, lecherous advances of some of the party-goers, through the door. Etayne, Radella, Qatana…they all tried to rush that door at the same time (I wanted to be right there with them, too) and within seconds we had burst through it and pounded the three accosters. They didn’t even have time to cry for help. Or beg for their lives.

After checking on the startled and frightened serving girls, we asked them about the layout of the house and where we would find Asvig. One of them actually asked us, “Are we being raided?” her eyes going wide with panic. No, dear, it’s not a raid. We’re just here to kill everyone. Gods.

There were over a dozen of Asvig’s henchmen in the main hall, and the battle there was short but bloody. We had timed this right, though, and benefited both from the chaos spread by our spells and their half-drunken stupor. Ivan and I threw back-to-back confusion into the room with a cloud of fog and a burst of glittering dust, and then our fighters charged in and did what they do. A few seconds later, I could hear the faint sounds of doors opening in the back of the hall where startled revelers were either escaping or trying to circle around behind us to counter attack. I summoned a wolf—the choice seemed appropriate for the setting—just outside the back entrance and he took off running almost immediately.

I took that as a cue that it was time to shut the door. And bar it.

In the main hall, it sounded like Sparna and Qatana had subdued the Longthews and forced an end to the fight, so I ran to the far end under the cover of invisibility—I hadn’t been seen yet and felt it was best that this remain the case—to look out the front door for any sign of the fugitives. That’s when I heard the sounds of lions roaring, and the screams of more men outside. So a few had gotten away, or at least tried to. I called for Olmas in Elvish, and used a spell and the pearl to conjure two horses for us to ride.

“We need to find anyone who escaped, and make sure they don’t reach the others who are approaching from down the road,” I said as he came up to the doorway.

After the initial confusion of holding a conversation with an invisible Vudrani woman speaking in Elvish from behind a horse that wasn’t there when we arrived finally wore off, Olmas mounted up and we rode around back to look for survivors. This was a bad idea. The survivors were two very angry lions, and they were staring right at us.

“Let’s go!” I called to Olmas, and quickly turned my mount around and fled to the front of the house. Olmas got the message and was right behind me. The lions, of course, bounded after us.

“Between the posts on the road, where we etched the rune!” I didn’t wait for his response, I just took my horse to a full run and bolted through. Fortunately, he had gotten the message..

The lions stopped just a few feet beyond the perimeter. I was hoping for that, but what if it hadn’t worked out? Olmas had the same thought and asked me what my backup plan had been. “To continue down the road and run them into the approaching party. And let them deal with the lions.”

Sometimes I have good ideas. I was almost disappointed that we didn’t get to try it out. Almost.

Nihali came to me then. I asked if she had seen anyone escape from the house. She had, “But they were mauled by leopards.” Leopards? That’s when I noticed something odd about the lions prowling around the wooden posts: they had spots. That explained why the lion figures on the armbands, and on the ones on the wooden posts, and even the summoned lions themselves didn’t look so much like lions; that isn’t quite what they were. (Note to self: ask Etayne about this later.)

If anyone made it off the property they didn’t go down the main path or stay on it. We rode a bit, just off to the side in the grass where our horses’ hooves weren’t as loud, until we were almost too close to the approaching group to safely stay out of sight. Not having found anyone, we headed back to the house—the lions or leopards or whatever they were had now vanished—and ran into our friends on their way out.

Hiding from the approaching revelers was easy as they were already drunk or well on their way to it. From the bits of conversation that we could hear they were going for the free food and spirits, not because they had any love for Snorri Stone-Eye. They were in for a number of surprises, not the least of which was the recent change in management.

Apparently, Asvig died while being questioned, suddenly and spontaneously, by choking on his own blood. It gives me the shivers just thinking about it. Etayne and Qatana saw it happen and said it looked like some sort of geas, but not one that they had ever seen or heard of. Want proof that Asvig was mixed up with some very, very bad people? There it is.

Which is, I think, part of why Helva was willing to accept a detente. She knew Asvig was guilty. She knew Fynn had been wronged and that his claim of blood vengeance was valid. What she didn’t know was exactly deep the hole was. She didn’t have to like what happened to her husband, but we had exposed something very ugly about him that she hadn’t known and it certainly gave her pause. She clearly wanted to rebuild their little fiefdom with far fewer surprises; one where she would be making the decisions. More power to her, I guess. In a strange way, I am happy for her.

If she is true to her word, there will be no retributions against us or Fynn, on one condition: that we never come around these parts again. It sounds like a ridiculous cliche written out like that, but it really was her only demand. Fair enough. In due time we won’t even be on this continent. It won’t be a difficult promise to keep.

And for our part? We had made good on Fynn’s request as his proxies, gruesome as it was, but there was no sword (and no Ulf). At least I didn’t have to walk back to Kalsgard.

I won’t have to walk to Spear-shaker’s Point, either.

Arodus 12 (dawn, Rimeflow River)

Either we have been set up, or Uksahkka is being watched. Someone knew we would board that funeral ship before it lit, and they obviously wanted us to be on it as it burned.

Aside from Etayne’s kayak capsizing—Ling did not seem too thrilled with this development—getting over to and onto the ship was relatively easy. It was getting off shore that proved more interesting: we had just gotten our gear packed up when an enormous crab came looking for its next meal. It took us all by surprise, but we recovered quickly and brought it down. Afterwards, I believe Qatana actually suggested that we cook it and have it for dinner. She was being completely serious.

We intercepted the ship just as it drifted past Spear-shaker’s Point and tied up our kayaks on both her port and starboard sides. The funeral ship itself was a longboat that had been converted into a barge. A deck had been built over the rowing benches, forming a cramped hold along the hull underneath. The funeral pyre and coals that served as a timer was up top. We threw the latter into the sea to prevent any accidents and then got to work.

It is no surprise that the raiders arrived within minutes of us. There was a narrow window in which we could pull this off, and there were only so many points along the river from which one could launch to reach the ship before the pyre was lit. That meant they knew where we would be and when, and the ninjas they sent after us only had to worry about being seen. Unfortunately for them, all that has happened today instilled a healthy dose of paranoia in the group so we had four pairs of eyes plus Nihali scanning the water for exactly this sort of interruption. Even in the foggy twilight, Olmas sighted the approaching canoes running 5 knots at 100 fathoms off the port stern. We had nearly a full minute to prepare for their arrival.

Down below, the other half of us had discovered that Snorri Stone-Eye had not died a peaceful death. His rotting, undead, and all-too-mobile corpse was chained up in the hold, smelling of decaying marine life. He had succumbed to some supernatural disease, perhaps a form of zombie rot or ghoul fever, and it seems his friends and family had gone to great lengths to keep this development a secret. On the funeral pyre, they maintained the illusion by covering a wooden manikin with a shroud.

What our friends didn’t find was any sign of Suishen or Ulf. Surprise. They emerged from the hold with the bad news just as the canoes were coming into range of spells and arrows.

We had two nasty surprises in place for the would-be boarders. The first was the downpour of rocks and dirt that had served me well just a few days earlier (it was all I had that could reach from this distance). The second was Nihali, who enthusiastically agreed to try dropping a vial of alchemist’s fire on one of the approaching vessels. Turns out, she has pretty good aim. I could feel her excitement as the boat caught fire.

Only one of the attackers made it to within arm’s reach of the ship, and that’s where he died.

While Suishen and Ulf weren’t on board, the morning was not a total loss. Snorri must have been well loved as he had a rather large pile of treasure to see him off to his afterlife.  We took a more practical viewpoint and figured he wouldn’t be needing it where he was going. We helped ourselves to a rather generous serving and stuffed it in the bag Sparna has been carrying. I estimated a haul of about 12,000 gold in coins, jewelry, and artwork on top of what they had already looted earlier.

I also learned something interesting about Ivan. Before Uksahkka left, she gave him a small clay token and said to present it at the shrine of Shelyn in the Fire Quarter when we were ready to make contact with her again. Naturally, the mention of my goddess caught my attention, and when I looked at the token I saw the unmistakable image of a songbird on one face.

“Ivan, would you mind if I held on to that?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Because it has a holy symbol on it. That songbird is the symbol of Shelyn.”

“You mean this?”

And he pulled back his tunic to reveal a tattoo of a songbird on his shoulder blade.

“I didn’t know what this meant.”

I think everyone was shocked, but none more so than I. We shared a kayak on the way out to the funeral ship, and I told him as much about her as I could in the time that we had.

One kayak over, I could hear Qatana doing the same with Olmas, only of course she was spreading the word of Groetus. She was really giving him the hard sell. It was all I could do to keep from laughing.

Arodus 8 (Night, Ullerskad)

We left the Skalsbridge behind us, a picturesque scene of tranquility belying the night’s events. Few traces remained of the dead men that littered the bottom of the Thundering River: scars along the riverbank where their boat came ashore, trampled grass and soil, the occasional boot print in the dirt. We covered up what we could, using both labor and magic, but there were too many of them and there was too little time to be thorough. If someone looked close enough they’d probably see the signs, but it was good enough for the casual eye. The last thing we needed was for some random travelers to spread the story of a terrible battle scene in the heart of the Thanelands. We have enough troubles as it is.

The raven flew off shortly before the attack began last night, and as far as we know it hasn’t returned since. This is fine by me. It implies that news of the failed ambush won’t travel much faster than we do. They, whoever they are, won’t know something is wrong until the Aril’s Hammer fails to put into port.

We are spending the night in Ullerskad, just a day and a half east of Kalsgard. It is a significant trading city for its size, and apparently the home to numerous wealthy merchants both still in business and retired. Mom and dad would feel at home here if it weren’t so gods-be-damned cold in the winter. Perhaps this is why our only trip to the Kingdoms, which happened when I was about 8 years old, was our only trip to the Kingdoms.

Arodus 9 (Noon, Ullerskad)

One of the notable landmarks in Ullerskad is the temple to Gorum. I have virtually nothing in common with the Lord in Iron, god of battle, but there is no denying the strength and ferocity his followers show on the battlefield, and there are times when these qualities are needed. And, it is said that Shelyn is on good terms with all of the major deities (except, perhaps, her brother, though that relationship is complicated) so it seemed appropriate to at least visit, even if only briefly.

I was not sure what to expect, of course, but I am sure I was not expecting what I saw. The temple itself—a large, gold-adorned building—stood next to a grove of trees, and from these trees hung the corpses of both animals and men. I asked an acolyte about their significance. He said, “The animals are sacrifices to Gorum. The men are enemies of Ullerskad who fell to our warriors in battle.”

At the center of the grove was a massive yew tree, the largest I have ever seen, it’s expansive branches covered in lush, green leaves. The acolyte added, “These leaves stay green all year long, even through the harshest winters. It is a very sacred place.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

Shalelu seemed less impressed. When asked for her opinion, she replied, “I have seen this kind of thing before.”

I couldn’t argue with that, either.

Sandru and I spent some time researching the Crown of the World. The real experts are in Kalsgard, but there are enough knowledgeable people here to give us a picture of what we are facing, and that picture is sobering. The trip is some 3,000 miles, with nearly half of that over what is called the High Ice. While no part of the journey across the Crown is for the faint of heart, it is the ice that is the most treacherous: 1,500 miles of frozen desert. One thousand, five hundred miles!

Caravans measure cargo capacity using an amalgamation of weight and girth, approximated and simplified to a standard measurement known as the cargo unit, or just unit for short. At our most efficient, we travel just shy of 50 miles in a day and consume six units of stores in every five. But that is with scouts working alongside us, supplementing our provisions with hunted game and food foraged off the land. We don’t know how realistic that will be on the high ice, and so I have to assume our consumption will increase by half. It simply can’t be done. The math doesn’t lie: we need more provisions than we have room to carry!

Even more troubling is the weather. It is called the High Ice because it is an arctic plateau. At that altitude, the temperatures rarely rise above dangerously cold in the summer and are much worse in winter. We have been advised to wait until next year to start our journey: the season for crossing the Crown begins in early spring and lasts only a few weeks. Leave during that window, and you are on the ice now while the conditions are at their best. We are simply three months too late (or nine months too early) to set out.

At least we will have plenty of time to find a solution to our looming food problem.

Arodus 10 (Night, Kalsgard)

We arrived in Kalsgard just as the sun was setting. The city is the largest in the Linnorm Kingdoms, and also its oldest. Its shipyards are well known throughout Avistan and have a reputation for producing some of the finest longships money can buy, almost certainly including the one sitting at the bottom of the river under the Skalsbridge. The city itself is divided into nine Quarters—a Quarter in this context meaning a district of a city and not a mathematical one-fourth of something—separated by walls that are more permeable than they appear. In contrast to the rest of the Thanelands, and pretty much all of the Linnorm Kingdoms save for the Grungir Forest, it’s also strikingly cosmopolitan with a richly diverse population. Though it’s been nearly 15 years since I was last here, it is the latter (and the shipyards) that I remember.

Kelda pointed us towards the Bone Quarter. It is the poorest district in the city but it also has the most open space, and that combination makes it an attractive place to put things that no one wants to see or deal with. Caravans, especially those from Varisia, very much fall into that category. That level of anonymity and disregard is fine with us. We are staying the night here tonight, but tomorrow some of us will find lodging in a nicer Quarter so that we can come and go without drawing unwanted attention to the caravan.

Speaking of Kelda, she has chosen to return home in the morning and won’t be continuing on with us. I am not surprised; she signed up originally to share the spoils from looting an abandoned colony, not to be an heir to a kingdom she has no connection to (not that we signed up for that, either, but we all have ties to Ameiko in some fashion). And after what has happened in just the past couple of weeks? I can’t say that I blame her.

I’ll miss having her with us, of course, but I won’t miss Etayne’s antics. So there is that to look forward to.

Arodus 11 (Mid-day, Kalsgard)

The day is barely half over and already it has been a huge mess. We are being followed, we are seeing flocks of crows everywhere we go, people are asking questions about us, and we are being harassed by street urchins paid in copper. It is unsettling and grows more so with each hour.

We secured rooms at an inn in the Amber Quarter and made arrangements to be able to call upon Kelda (and her upon us) if needed, and then split up to cover as much ground as we could. Only Ana and Etayne stayed behind, choosing to keep a close eye on the caravan in case anyone came nosing about.

Qatana and Shalelu went seeking information about the armbands. Koya wanted to explore Kalsgard and do some shopping for fabrics and other sundries, and since this represented an opportunity to look for the merchant Fynn Snaevald, Ivan and Spivey joined her both for protection and to make those inquiries. Radella and Sparna opted for the undercity, or whatever it is they called it, which was apparently accessible via tunnels along the docks. Sandru and I also set off to try and find Fynn, but coming at the problem from the other direction: the merchant guilds that may have traded with him. And, finally, Ameiko wished to learn what she could about her homeland and chose a visit the Jade Quarter, with Olmas serving as her escort. According to Kelda, the Jade Quarter is home to a rather large Tian population.

It was the latter that presented something of a problem. Ameiko does not always think things through. “Are you sure it’s wise to just wander around the city with people watching for us?” I asked her before she set out.

She chuckled. “What are you worried about? No one here knows who I am.”

“Someone arranged that ambush, and we’ve been followed by a giant raven for days. They may know quite a bit about us.”

“Well, what do you suggest?” she asked, clearly a little irritated with me. She was eager to explore the city, especially after having missed out on the action in Brinewall. There would be no talking her out of the idea, and to be honest, I wasn’t going to try and stop her, either. What she proposed actually made a great deal of sense. It’s just that we needed to be cautious about it.

“Why not borrow Radella’s ring? Then you won’t have to look like you.” With that she could alter her appearance essentially at will.

I occasionally have good ideas.

That little success was soon overshadowed by my attempt to get information from the Seven Lands Guild in the Ivory Quarter. Sandru was not happy with me. He’d never say it, of course—he’s too much of a gentleman—but I could tell. Though I looked my part and certainly knew enough about the business, I was not at all prepared for the game of pretending to be something I am not. Afterward, he gave me a quick summary of what I had done wrong.

“It’s not enough to know how to be a merchant. You have to know the part you are playing. They aren’t going to quiz you on your knowledge; they are going to ask questions about you, your business, and what you want from them. You need to anticipate those questions and have answers, and you need to engage with them confidently.

“Think about who you are, where you are from, what it is you need, why you need to speak to them, and what they can do for you. Also, try and relate that to what you really want to find out from them: in this case, how did you know Fynn, and why did it make sense for you to ask about him?

“Also, next time, don’t use your real name.”

So, just those issues, then.

Fortunately, the people in the Guild did not seem to be directly related to whoever has been keeping tabs on us, and being the exotic foreigner woman was sufficient distraction from my clumsiness. In the end, we got an offer to have some of their guards escort us to Fynn’s house. Of course, an escort is not what we needed (nor did we have a desire to meet with Fynn by ourselves), so instead we asked the guards for directions and left it at that.

On the way back to the inn, we noticed the crows. They were all over the city, of course, but while they were just scenery before, now they were flocking near us in numbers that seemed unusual. As the others straggled in over the next hour or two, they had similar observations: crows appearing in increasing numbers, lining up on rooftops to follow their progress across the city. I brought Nihali in and asked for her opinion.

“They are just crows,” she said. This was obviously not helpful.

“Are they being controlled, somehow? Is there anything unnatural about them?”

Her reply was immediate. “No. They are a normal flock of crows. The only thing that is unusual is that they are following you and your friends.” I asked her what she meant by a “flock”, and she elaborated, “Like any flock of birds. They are a social group. Nothing more.”

“Do they pay attention to you? Or make you nervous?”

“No. They ignore me.”

The crows were just the beginning. Radella and Sparna were on their way back to the inn when they happened to spot Koya in one of the markets (Koya dresses in colors so vivid she stands out even in Varisia), only she was being watched and followed by a young Tian boy. They managed to discreetly get word to Ivan and together they arranged a clever ambush to confront him. When cornered and questioned, he confessed that he had been paid to tail us, gather information about our activities, and leave his notes at a drop elsewhere in the city. He had descriptions of everyone, including Ameiko (though undisguised, so the ring would at least keep her identity safe). They followed him discreetly with hopes of catching his handler, but he or she had been alerted somehow and they came back empty-handed.

Qatana and Shalelu, meanwhile, had learned that our armbands belong to one “Asvig Longthews”, but only after spreading a lot of gold around. Why? Because almost no one wanted to talk about arm bands, lions, or Asvig himself, even after we had learned his name. They practically backed away from her.

At the caravan, Etayne learned from another Tian boy that people had been asking questions about us, and knew we had been making inquiries and dropping coins around the city to get answers. So, our attempts to gather information we’ren’t just attracting attention, they were actively alerting the people who were watching for us.

All these eyes on us, the constant spying, the mind games…it is unnerving. As a precaution, we have sent word to Kelda that we need to see her so that we can warn her. After all, they have her description, too.

At least we learned what we needed to learn. We have Asvig’s name. We know where we can find Fynn. And, as an added bonus, Ivan has a fabulously stylish new traveling outfit, courtesy of Koya (the old woman knows clothing, and Ivan was absolutely in need).

We leave for Fynn’s residence shortly. Hopefully, he will agree to see us. We could use the change in fortune.

Arodus 11 (Late afternoon, farmlands south of Kalsgard)

Asvig’s farmhouse sits just a short distance from us. Inside, we can hear the sounds of a loud, almost raucous, celebration and feast that is just getting underway. It provided a convenient cover while we scouted the grounds and came up with our plan.

The house is surrounded by a ring of wooden posts, each one bearing a stylized lion’s head that has been etched into it. The engravings match those on the armbands, though being much larger it’s now obvious that the artist had probably never actually seen a lion before, which I suppose is hardly surprising given where we are. More interesting is the magic aura that each one radiates: a conjuration spell, almost certainly a form of summoning. Our suspicion is that whoever breaches the perimeter will find themselves face to face with one or more angry cats.

I offered that the armbands are important, but we also found markings on the road running between two of the posts on the way to the house which suggest that someone had drawn a rune of some sort in the dirt, and then hastily (and sloppily) scratched it out. Sparna thinks that the rune might allow someone to pass without triggering the spell. It’s a good idea, and one that we’ll try first.

We aren’t moving in until dusk, though. The revelry ensures our advance won’t be heard, but while the sun is up we can easily be seen should someone choose to step outside for a break from the noise. It’s a chance we can’t take. Besides, the longer we wait, the less prepared the dinner guests will be for a fight. With any luck, some of them will even be drunk (and from the sounds of it, a few are well on their way there). There’s also a certain symmetry in ambushing Asvig and his men after dark.

We are not the only ones with a grievance against Asvig. He has been a busy man.

One of the few things that went right today was our meeting with Fynn. He wasn’t just home: he answered the door and invited us in. Who would have thought? I would have expected him to be more guarded, but I guess at his age you have seen a lot and if you weren’t a good judge of character then you wouldn’t still be around to avoid those mistakes. As soon as we mentioned Suishen, he took a closer look at Ameiko and then made the connection.

He remembered purchasing the sword from her grandfather—sure, it had been 60 years ago, but you don’t forget a unique event like that—and he had kept it on his mantle ever since. (Apparently he had tried to use it, himself, but it had never felt right in his hands.) Then, about two weeks ago, he came home to find his house broken into, his servants dead or dying, and Suishen stolen. He didn’t think much of it at the time, but one of his servants had said something about “paying the lion’s due” before succumbing to his injuries. We showed him one of the armbands, and suddenly we had a second connection to Asvig.

Who is Asvig? A local clan leader of sorts. Known to have a large number of henchmen, followers, guards, or hired thugs. You can take your pick from those as any or all of them seem to apply. The farm itself was supposed to be well fortified, something that we more or less have confirmed just by looking at it.

We told Fynn the story of our ambush at the Skalsbridge. He recognized the name of the boat. He said the Aril’s Hammer belongs to the Rimerunner’s Guild which is located in the Jade Quarter. So Asvig either rented it for the attack, or was hired directly and given use of it.

Traditions of the Ulfen people include that of the weregild, a value placed on people or property. If any harm comes to a member of your family or trust, or if any of your possessions are stolen, you are entitled to compensation from the transgressor. If no weregild is paid, then you may choose to seek a blood vengeance, which is a fancy way of saying that you can legally kill them. It’s a ridiculously barbaric way to resolve disputes, especially since all that is required to seek blood vengeance is to simply say that you are seeking blood vengeance and believe that you are right—though I suppose if you are later proven to be wrong, the victim’s family can always seek blood vengeance—but I digress. Fynn had not been offered a weregild, and given the enormity of the crime, he was ready to jump straight to the end, anyway.

You don’t see too many nonagenarian humans, Ulfen or otherwise, pursuing a blood vengeance, and that is where we come in. In exchange for Suishen, assuming we recover it, we are acting as Fynn’s proxies in this matter. I am still wrapping my head around it: we have the quasi-legal authority to just barge in there and execute Asvig and anyone who stands in our way. And people call Varisia a wild frontier.

Not that I am going to lose a lot of sleep over this. Some bad things have happened and Asvig seems to be in the thick of it.

I am getting worked up now just going over this all again, and that’s not even all there is. On the way to Fynn’s, we received an anonymous threat. From a blind beggar, no less! How did he know we were passing by? There are only three possibilities I could think of: someone alerted him (say, by magic), he recognized our voices, or he picked up on a scent that was unique to us. The first two I couldn’t do anything about, but the third? I wiped everyone down with the same spell I use for Qatana. Everyone.

While I was doing that, Etayne confronted him. He was paid to deliver this little warning when “someone who smelled like cabbages” walked by. So that’s number three for the win. Turns out, Etayne had spent the bulk of the morning in the Bone Quarter within a stone’s throw of a cabbage cart. I am sure we noticed the smell at one point, but it’s cabbages, so who cares, right? Gods!

And then there were the crows. They followed us out of Kalsgard on the way here and showed no signs of giving up. I had finally had enough of it and suggested that we get rid of them. How were we supposed to raid Asvig’s farm with these harbingers flying about? Qatana was more than happy to oblige. She sent out a sound burst that blew a good number of them out of the trees and onto the ground, either stunned or dead. A few arrows were enough to scatter the rest. I hated that this was the answer, but I won’t deny that it was satisfying.

It’s getting dark now. We should be moving soon.

Erastus 27 (Late Afternoon, Riddleport)

Koya seemed excited by the cache of maps that I brought back from my excursions. I found her early in the afternoon packing up some items in her wagon (just like her mother, she is showing few signs of slowing down at her age). She invited me inside and I unrolled them on top of some crates. I had picked up several Varisia maps, from Sandpoint up through the Nolands, and a smaller set showing parts of the Linnorm Kingdoms (in addition to what I had found on my own, Kelda and I had gone shopping together in Riddleport earlier this morning, looking for anything that covered our route up to Kalsgard). There were three or four dozen in all.

“What’s all this?” she asked.

“I think we’re going to need some mementos from this trip, don’t you? And what better way to start than with some maps of where we’ve been, and where we’re going? Pick out what you like from these; I’ll keep the rest.”

She looked up at me, astonished. “You’d give these to me?”

“It’s much less than you’ve done for me over the years.” Which was an understatement. Ameiko had a talent for finding healing potions, but she couldn’t mend clothes. Koya could do both.

As she started leafing through them I added, “There’s a mixture in there of practical, artistic, and fanciful. Some are city maps, some regional, others are wider. And we’ll get more along the way, of course.”

My next stop was Sandru, who I found tending to the horses not too far from Koya’s wagon. “I was thinking that we need a little celebration tonight. Some special food and drink to see us off on our trip.”

“A fine idea!” he beamed, “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, that’s why I wanted to see you: I need a little help. The food I can manage. Do you think you can help me pick out some spirits?”

“Of course! I would be delighted!”

Here’s a tip: if you ever find yourself with too much money, teaming up with Sandru to buy alcohol for special occasions is one way to solve the problem super-gods-be-damned-fast. It sure was fun, though. And we got personalized service everywhere we went.

Erastus 28 (Velashu River below the Celphiac Mountains, Evening)

We broke out our celebration last night after making camp a few miles out of Riddleport. Though it certainly wasn’t on par with the dinner Ameiko threw back when this all began (I had less to work with after all) it was still the surprise I was hoping it would be. I admit that I splurged a little too much, but honestly, how often do you get to try things like a 40-year-old brandy or a cheese made from buffalo’s milk?

It will take us roughly two weeks to reach Kalsgard and the first half of that will be through the wilderness and the Nolands. The experience with the trolls over a month ago, and I guess with Zaiobe more recently, is why I pursued the spell Thadeus had grilled me about. I admit that I don’t like it, but what are my alternatives? I am just not any good outdoors otherwise. I can’t get close enough, fast enough, and many of the effects I can manifest? You can just walk around them. Easily. It is one thing to be in a city, but another to be in the open plains of the Uplands. But then again, I never thought that this is where I would end up.

And as for the Nolands, they have a nasty reputation that is well deserved. Rulers in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings have used it as a dumping ground for centuries, sending the worst of their worst into exile there. Given that the natives, and I use that term loosely, are known (or at least suspected) to have such pleasant hobbies as cannibalism, it makes for a proving ground for aspiring warlords. I won’t endanger myself or my friends. Sometimes ideals have to give way to reality.

On a more pleasant note, I’ve been learning some Skald, courtesy of books (of course) and some time in the wagon Kelda is driving. I was not the only one with this idea, either: this morning I overheard Sparna talking to her about the very same topic. So, it seems Kelda has quickly become one of the more popular members of our group.

This clearly hasn’t sat well with everyone, though, as one of us has taken to messing with her food. Hopefully, whatever the hell that is about, it will end soon. Or at least not spiral out of control.

Erastus 30 (Noon, Velashu Uplands)

Last night Ivan was talking about magic items and how they could be created while we were traveling. His idea was quite ingenious. The process, as I understand it, takes several full days of work depending on the item, which is, of course, hard to do while traveling. He suggested that a shortcut would be to buy an item (he said they are typically rings) that allows you to go with minimal sleep and rest, thus making it possible to work most of the night. Of course, the catch is that you must first find and pay for such a thing, but it’s an interesting idea and I’m going to pursue it.

Arodus 2 (Evening, The Nolands)

We’ve crossed into the Nolands. The landscape and the wildlife are radically different north of the river (which I guess should not be surprising) and we’ve even seen a few bears. So far, though, we’ve been left alone and there’s not even been any sign of Nolander tribes. Our only company has been flocks of birds probably scavenging for scraps of food. Nihali says they are mostly ravens and she is “not impressed” (that is an actual quote).

Someone continues to mess with Kelda’s meals. I am beginning to feel a spiritual bond with Sparna and Olmas.

Arodus 3 (Evening, Jol)

Our first encounter on this leg of our journey was not what I was expecting. When Nihali landed on my shoulder this morning, she was pretty agitated. I asked her what’s wrong and she said, “Just a raven. But I’ve never seen one that big before.”

When Nihali is concerned, I am concerned. “How big is it?” I asked.

“It’s right there. You can see for yourself.”

And I looked up and there it was. A raven. A huge raven, about the size of a small dog. Just hanging up in the sky, lazily following us much like the flock that had been with us since we crossed the river. It was still with us when we stopped for lunch, and I discreetly started spreading the word.

Unsurprisingly, a couple of the others had seen it, too, but it hadn’t reached the level of “alarming”. But they aren’t Nihali. This is what she does.

Then Ivan pointed out something interesting. “I saw a flash of red. Maybe red feathers on its wings.”

Ravens with red feathers? Etayne and I talked it over. It’s not unheard of, but the peculiarities were starting to mount. So I went to see Koya for her opinion. I mean, this is precisely why Varisian caravans have fortune-tellers, right?

At first, I got the Varisian answer: blood feather ravens are an omen. Specifically, an evil omen (are there any omens that aren’t?), and it’s bad luck to have one following the caravan. And so on. But I pressed her on it because I wanted something more concrete than spookism. “What should we do about it?”

Koya pulled out her cards and I let her work. After a few minutes, she said, “The cards are hard to read. We should continue our journey, but there is evil stalking us.”

Right. That’s what I needed to know. We were probably being spied on, and that would not do. I went to the others and, speaking in Elvish, suggested that we get rid of it. Permanently. It was flying too high up for weapons, but I could send an air elemental after it. But when I went to find it in preparation for the spell, it was gone. I told the others, “I can be better prepared for it tomorrow, anyway. I can send several air elementals at it.”

We reached Jol late in the afternoon. Mom actually knew something about Jol, as it was built on top of the ruins of an old Thassilonian city called Torandey. That fact officially makes it her business, and one of the bits of trivia she shared with me is that new construction (and reconstruction) occasionally breaks through into some previously-unknown vault down below, unleashing whatever random magic or horror lay dormant inside. Must be fun to be in the construction business there.

It’s also densely packed. The southern expanse of Southmoor, in particular, can be quite dangerous and Jol’s walls are arguably the main reason why the city has a reputation for being the safest (human) settlement in the region. But rather than expand its borders, it has stubbornly increased its density. It is the most tightly packed city I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of cities. And, it stinks. I mean it literally smells bad. Fortunately, we aren’t staying inside the city walls.

Arodus 5 (Evening, Grungir Forest)

For two days we didn’t see the raven with the red feather, and when we emerged from the northern edge of the Grungir Forest to make camp it was there, waiting for us. It flew off as soon as we spotted it, far too quickly for me to take action. This thing is pissing me off.

The forest itself was pleasant enough, but only because we knew to stay on the road, or if straying from it to at least keep it in sight. Grungir is the domain of the fey. This far to the east there is some human encroachment and it is well-traveled, but it’s still best not to tempt the descendants of the First World. When asked what we might find here, Kelda replied, “Fey. Gnomes. Wild animals. A linnorm if you’re unlucky.” And I think that about sums that up.

Tomorrow morning we’ll take a side trip across the river into Losthome, a brief visit to trade, find updated maps and get some information about the way ahead, but we’ll return to the road by early afternoon.

Oh, and I suspect that Etayne is our prankster. I don’t know what she has against Kelda, but as long as it’s just stupid tricks? I am staying out of it. For one, Kelda can take care of herself. For two, Kelda would probably just get pissed off if someone intervened on her behalf, anyway. It sure does bring back some shitty memories, though.

Arodus 7 (Noon, Thundering River, Eldentre)

We haven’t seen the raven since the forest. If it holds to its previous pattern, it should appear tonight or sometime tomorrow.

OK. I was growing really concerned and starting to fret over this, so I just now went to ask Koya for advice. “What is it you want to do if you see it again?” she asked.

“I’m going to summon air elementals and send them after it. To attack it, and kill it if they have to. It’s spying on us, I’m sure of it.”

She thought for a moment and then pulled out some cards of a design I had not seen before. “I have something I can try…if you are willing?” I said yes, and she cast a lengthy spell I did not recognize and then drew some cards from the deck.

I can feel the effects, and they are strange, almost as though a blessing of Desna is on me.

She says this will only last for a few days, or until I have my chance to go after the bird, whichever comes first.

Arodus 7 (Night, The Skalsbridge)

We were attacked tonight and thus my suspicions have been confirmed: the raven had been spying on us. I wish now I had taken action when Nihali had first come to me, but logically I get that there was no way to have known at the time. I don’t want to be the kind of person who attacks someone or something on just suspicion alone, although taking this stance means we must suffer such affronts as being ambushed while we sleep.

I am pretty sure no one took me seriously when I called out, “I’ll soften them up!” (I mean, really, when had I ever softened anything up? So I guess I don’t blame them.) Ivan was right next to me fiddling with the necklace he picked up in Brinewall and said, “That’s what I’m going to do,” as he pulled off one of the orbs and flung it, hard, into the moonless night. A tremendous burst of fire lit up the advancing hoard, and several of the raiders dropped in a chorus of screams.

And then my spell hit. I won’t mince words here: it was pretty horrible. I didn’t see the torrent of stones and dirt, but I heard a sound worse than any hailstorm, a roar of sickening, dull thuds against earth, armor, and flesh, followed by more screams. It lasted only seconds. I reminded myself, They are here to kill you. Because it helps to keep perspective when people are dying by your hand.

At the edge of our camp light, the surviving attackers met us and were savaged. More spells, more fire, and flashes of steel. At one point in that fight two of our foe, which I could now see to be Ulfen raiders, descended on Kelda to outflank our defensive line, but Radella took one of them down and I used a spell to grease the other’s weapon, buying Kelda some time to reposition and seize the advantage. After that, we went on the offensive and the stragglers dropped like flies.

When the battle was over, there were forty dead. Gods, forty of them! Forty! Kelda remarked, “It’s unusual for Ulfen warriors to attack in mass just randomly on the road.”

Yeah. About that. There was obviously nothing random about this. Kelda said she spotted the raven on the Skalsbridge, just barely making it out in the dim light from our camp. It flew off as soon as it knew it had been spotted (Damnit! Again!), or perhaps just as the longboat was coming ashore. Fortunately, Kelda was able to alert Qatana, who woke us all in time. But only barely. We had maybe a minute to get ready, if that. It was that close.

Kelda examined the bodies, pulling a gold armband off of one. Engraved on it was a stylized lion’s head which she did not recognize. It was very convenient for them to all be wearing such an obvious marker, of course, which meant they were either fools or overconfident in their victory (the latter, of course, implying the former). So we had a lead which we could pursue.

Their boat, which was named the Aril’s Hammer, was beached just west of the bridge. It was over fifty feet long with nearly two dozen oars. Someone had a made significant financial investment in trying to do us harm. Another lead we could follow if needed.

We decided it would be best if our assailants simply vanished. We scuttled the boat, and weighed down the bodies before dumping them in the river.

I am trying very hard not to say anything. When we made camp, I objected to doing so right next to the bridge given that something had been spying on us. Why couldn’t we camp in the middle of nowhere like we had been doing? “It’s an obvious landmark. We’ll be easy to find!” I kept saying, but my complaints fell on deaf ears.