{"id":2096,"date":"2016-05-21T11:30:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-21T18:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/?p=2096"},"modified":"2017-01-01T14:33:29","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T22:33:29","slug":"kalis-journal-arodus-12-4712","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/kalis-journal-arodus-12-4712\/","title":{"rendered":"Kali’s Journal, Arodus 12, 4712"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arodus 12 (small hours, Kalsgard)<\/h4>\n

I<\/span>t 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\u00a0to 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\u00a0never\u00a0had\u00a0any interest in piloting them).\u00a0He even told me once that “One day you will regret not having learned”.\u00a0And here we are.<\/p>\n

The definition of adulthood is realizing your parents were right about everything.<\/p>\n

Suishen was not at Asvig’s farmhouse, and any\u00a0hope 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\u00a0his wake at dawn. I missed the interrogation of Helva and Asvig—I was more concerned with who\u00a0had escaped from the hall at the time—but Helva suggested this possibility to us.<\/p>\n

Snorri was Asvig’s Lord, or ring-giver as they are called here, and Snorri was even more closely tied to some shady dealings\u00a0and 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.\u00a0Putting that sword on his lord’s funeral ship\u00a0in tribute would accomplish\u00a0two things\u00a0at once: getting rid of it for good, and honoring the late Snorri, himself.<\/p>\n

Except for the part where it just\u00a0doesn’t make any\u00a0sense.<\/p>\n

Neither does the idea that Ulf might be imprisoned on that ship, too. At first it seemed like a real\u00a0possibility, but now that I have had time to think on it, what would be the point? Asvig\u00a0didn’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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>\u00a0being held there—which just puts a capstone on this perfect day.<\/p>\n

And the raid had started so well. With the death celebration (who\u00a0are<\/em> 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\u00a0of us put our heads together and reconstructed\u00a0the rune that bypassed\u00a0the summoning trap, then we quietly moved to the\u00a0rear entrance and\u00a0got into position.<\/p>\n

That’s\u00a0when we heard the muffled protests of one or two women, and the much louder, drunker, lecherous advances of some of the party-goers,\u00a0through\u00a0the door. Etayne, Radella, Qatana…they all\u00a0tried 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\u00a0accosters. They didn’t even have time to cry\u00a0for help. Or beg for their lives.<\/p>\n

After checking on\u00a0the startled and frightened serving girls, we asked them about the layout of the house and where we would\u00a0find Asvig. One of them actually\u00a0asked us, “Are we being raided?” her eyes going wide with panic.\u00a0No, dear, it’s not\u00a0a raid. We’re just here to kill everyone.\u00a0Gods.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0benefited both from the chaos spread by\u00a0our 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\u00a0startled revelers\u00a0were 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\u00a0he took off running almost immediately.<\/p>\n

I took that as a cue that it was time to shut the door. And bar it.<\/p>\n

In the main hall, it sounded like Sparna and Qatana\u00a0had subdued the Longthews\u00a0and forced an end to the fight, so I ran to\u00a0the 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\u00a0out 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.\u00a0I called for Olmas in Elvish, and used a spell and the pearl to conjure\u00a0two horses for us to ride.<\/p>\n

\"Origami<\/a>“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.<\/p>\n

After the initial confusion of holding a conversation with\u00a0an invisible Vudrani woman speaking in Elvish from behind a horse that wasn’t there when we arrived finally wore off, Olmas mounted up\u00a0and we rode around back to look for survivors. This was a bad idea. The survivors were two very angry lions,\u00a0and they were staring right at us.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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..<\/p>\n

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\u00a0and\u00a0asked me what my\u00a0backup plan had been. “To\u00a0continue\u00a0down the road and run them into the approaching party. And let them<\/em> deal with the lions.”<\/p>\n

Sometimes I have good ideas. I was almost disappointed that we didn’t get to try\u00a0it out. Almost.<\/p>\n

Nihali came to me then. I asked if she had seen anyone escape from the house. She had, “But they were mauled by leopards.”\u00a0Leopards? That’s when I noticed something odd about the lions prowling around the wooden\u00a0posts: they had spots.\u00a0That 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.)<\/p>\n

If anyone made it off the property\u00a0they 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’\u00a0hooves weren’t as loud, until we were almost too close to the approaching group to safely stay out of sight. Not having found\u00a0anyone,\u00a0we headed back to the house—the lions or leopards or whatever they were had now vanished—and ran into our friends on their way\u00a0out.<\/p>\n

Hiding from the approaching revelers was easy as they were already drunk or well on their way to it. From the bits of\u00a0conversation 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\u00a0number of surprises, not the least of which was the recent\u00a0change in management.<\/p>\n

Apparently, Asvig\u00a0died while being questioned<\/em>, suddenly and spontaneously, by choking\u00a0on his own blood. It gives me the shivers just thinking about it. Etayne and Qatana saw it happen and said it looked like\u00a0some sort of geas, but not one that\u00a0they had ever seen or heard of. Want proof that Asvig was mixed up with some very, very bad people? There it is.<\/p>\n

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 <\/em>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.\u00a0She 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.<\/p>\n

If she is true to her word,\u00a0there 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\u00a0really 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.<\/p>\n

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).\u00a0At least I didn’t\u00a0have to walk back to Kalsgard.<\/p>\n

I won’t have to walk to Spear-shaker’s Point, either.<\/p>\n

Arodus 12 (dawn, Rimeflow River)<\/h4>\n

E<\/span>ither we have been set up, or Uksahkka is being watched. Someone knew we would board\u00a0that funeral\u00a0ship before it lit, and they obviously wanted us to be on it as it burned.<\/p>\n

Aside from Etayne’s kayak capsizing—Ling did not seem too thrilled with\u00a0this development—getting over to and onto the ship was relatively easy. It was getting off shore<\/em> that proved more interesting: we\u00a0had 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\u00a0Qatana actually suggested that we\u00a0cook it and have it for dinner. She was being completely serious.<\/p>\n

We intercepted the ship just as it drifted past Spear-shaker’s Point and tied up our kayaks on both her\u00a0port and starboard sides.\u00a0The funeral ship itself was a longboat that had been converted into a\u00a0barge. A deck had been built over the rowing benches, forming a cramped hold along the hull underneath. The funeral pyre and coals\u00a0that served as a\u00a0timer was up top. We threw the latter\u00a0into the sea to prevent any accidents and then got to work.<\/p>\n

\"Origami<\/a><\/p>\n

It is no surprise that the raiders arrived within minutes of us. There was a narrow window\u00a0in which we could pull this off, and there were only so many points along the river from which one\u00a0could launch to reach the ship before the pyre was lit. That meant they knew where we would be and when, and\u00a0the ninjas they sent after us\u00a0only had to worry about being seen.\u00a0Unfortunately for them,\u00a0all that has happened today instilled a healthy dose of paranoia in the group so\u00a0we had four pairs of eyes plus Nihali scanning the water for exactly this sort of interruption. Even in the foggy twilight, Olmas\u00a0sighted\u00a0the approaching canoes running 5 knots at 100\u00a0fathoms off the port stern. We had nearly a full minute to prepare for their arrival.<\/p>\n

Down below, the other half of us had discovered\u00a0that 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\u00a0marine 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\u00a0a secret. On the funeral pyre, they maintained the illusion by covering a wooden manikin with a shroud.<\/p>\n

What our friends\u00a0didn’t<\/em> find was any sign of Suishen or Ulf. Surprise.\u00a0They emerged from the hold with the bad news\u00a0just as the canoes were coming into range of spells and arrows.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0of 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.<\/p>\n

Only one of the\u00a0attackers\u00a0made it to within arm’s reach of\u00a0the ship, and that’s where he died.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0of treasure to see him off to his\u00a0afterlife. \u00a0We took a more practical viewpoint and figured he wouldn’t be needing it where he was going. We\u00a0helped 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\u00a0artwork on top of what they had already looted earlier.<\/p>\n

I also learned something interesting about Ivan. Before Uksahkka left, she gave him a small clay token and said to present\u00a0it 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.<\/p>\n

“Ivan, would you mind if I held on to that?” I asked.<\/p>\n

“Why?”<\/p>\n

“Because it has a holy symbol on it. That songbird is the symbol of Shelyn.”<\/p>\n

“You mean this?”<\/p>\n

And he pulled back his tunic to reveal a tattoo of a songbird on his shoulder blade.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t know what this meant.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

One kayak\u00a0over, I could hear Qatana doing the same with Olmas, only of course she was spreading the word of\u00a0Groetus. She was really giving him the hard sell. It was all I could do\u00a0to keep from laughing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-2096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-kali"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2096"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2582,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}