I was barely 12 years old\u00a0when\u00a0the 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\u00a0of the\u00a0flames and shadows flickering on the\u00a0walls.\u00a0I just sat there in bed, paralyzed with equal parts fascination and\u00a0fear, watching as the fire spread and engulfed the entire complex. It was maybe a hundred\u00a0feet away, but\u00a0I could feel the heat\u00a0of it through the\u00a0open window. Then dad burst into my room and pulled me out.<\/p>\n
The rest is a jumble of memories, but I do recall quite vividly the stables catching fire, followed by\u00a0the White Deer. The flames\u00a0encircled the\u00a0homes along our block, raining hot\u00a0embers into the sea as it spread. Dad said it was pure luck that so few buildings burned\u00a0(and that\u00a0our\u00a0house was one of those spared), though I supposed those more directly impacted, like Ana,\u00a0would have a different opinion.<\/p>\n
At the time, the entire town\u00a0thought it some terrible\u00a0accident. Years later we learned the truth, and it was far\u00a0uglier than most\u00a0could imagine.\u00a0Nualia was consumed by hatred. Hatred for a father that presumed to choose her life for her, and believed\u00a0that years of emotional abuse\u00a0somehow qualified as\u00a0parenting. Hatred for a town that simultaneously\u00a0deified 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.\u00a0That sort of hate does terrible things to a person, and it was a\u00a0crack that\u00a0Lamashtu exploited. Nualia was far from blameless, of course. It’s just that all this history\u00a0made Lamashtu’s job easier.<\/p>\n
You can at least look at that fire—at Father Tobyn’s murder, for that’s what it really was\u00a0about—and trace it back to her\u00a0anger, no matter how distorted or misguided her thinking\u00a0had become.\u00a0This 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\u00a0distraction.<\/p>\n
It was also very personal. A\u00a0child 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.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Two enormous earth elementals stood\u00a0in the rubble and were\u00a0pounding on what remained of the temple. I didn’t even stop to think: I just acted. Before the others could move1<\/sup><\/a>, I had conjured a sphere of water ten feet across\u00a0and engulfed the nearest of the two. While my friends moved in to attack the second, I rolled\u00a0the ball with it’s prize out into the street and as far away from the shrine as the spell would allow.<\/p>\n I heard a strange bird call and saw the\u00a0remaining earth elemental turn\u00a0its attention to\u00a0us, abandoning\u00a0its demolition. Radella\u00a0pointed out that the large raven with the red feathers was there, and that it\u00a0dissolved into smoke before her eyes (but not before she put\u00a0an arrow into\u00a0it). Etayne and I\u00a0exchanged a\u00a0silent conversation, and then we\u00a0both said “druid” at the same time.<\/p>\n Soon after,\u00a0I 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.\u00a0These earth elementals were\u00a0big, much bigger than what I could summon\u00a0with my relatively-meager spells, and the one that engaged us\u00a0absorbed tremendous punishment while dealing\u00a0out the same. It took nearly all of us to bring it down. A thought occurred to me then:\u00a0What if I hadn’t been able to stop the first one? What if we had to fight both at the same time?<\/em> It makes me shudder thinking about it, but fortunately we didn’t have to find out.<\/p>\n We barely had to do anything with the second. The summons that was\u00a0keeping it here expired shortly after my own spell did. Good enough. The point was to save Yin-Po\u00a0and what was left of Shelyn’s shrine,\u00a0not 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\u00a0questions from the city\u00a0guard. Yes, everyone in this city seems to walk around armed to the teeth (even the foreigners), and there were plenty of witnesses that could\u00a0establish\u00a0that we were helping<\/em>, but after last night’s mischief\u00a0I was not excited by the prospect of\u00a0city officials\u00a0probing into our affairs.<\/p>\n I guess I wasn’t shocked when Uksahkka turned up missing. Remember that part about\u00a0destroying Shelyn’s shrine as\u00a0a convenient distraction? The door to the cellar that served as her safe house\u00a0had 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.\u00a0We had a brief exchange about this with Yin-Po and he suggested we may be dealing with something called a Yamabushi Tengu. They are\u00a0a type\u00a0of Oni; apparently the Tian demons take many forms, much\u00a0as they do here. What that told me was that\u00a0we have some research to do. All we’re missing is\u00a0the time to do it.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0as a familiar for a master\u00a0that has long since passed on. Stuck on the material plane with no way to go home, he was simply “doing good where he can”.<\/p>\n It’s not often that surprises go our way, so this one was a welcome change. He had snuck\u00a0on 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\u00a0over the last few\u00a0years. 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\u00a0stories—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\u00a0the Thanelands.\u00a0Which is\u00a0more or less\u00a0a hint that we should be careful.<\/p>\n I’ll be honest here: I almost wasn’t.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0in under the cover of invisibility. It was a long, long wait, and I kept thinking of ideas\u00a0that could help distract the guards inside should something go awry.\u00a0The longer I waited, the more aggressive my\u00a0planning became, morphing from a distraction in case of trouble to\u00a0just 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\u00a0of them could still make fast work of the masonry. Another idea\u00a0was letting air elementals inside to\u00a0play whirlwind, just to mess up the place.\u00a0And the list went on.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Then Uksahkka emerged from the\u00a0rear\u00a0entrance and I came to my senses.\u00a0As we suspected, she had been shot\u00a0with a poison dart to render\u00a0her 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\u00a0was 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<\/em> problems: someone had implicated us in the poisoning\u00a0death 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.)<\/p>\n Some time later, Radella and Ivan made their exit and in\u00a0their hands was an impossible prize: the complete contents of the Rimerunners Guild’s secret vault. All of it\u00a0liberated\u00a0without 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\u00a0as 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.\u00a0Combined 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> sums of money being transferred to Ravenscrag on an ongoing basis, marked as “development expenses”. Kelda volunteered\u00a0to discreetly dig around for information on\u00a0Ravenscrag (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.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n Part of me says that it wouldn’t<\/em> have made a difference. Maybe they didn’t know where Uksahkka was and they were following\u00a0us<\/em> (though that wouldn’t\u00a0make me feel any better, as it would mean that\u00a0we led them to her). Maybe they were going to raid the shrine anyway, and we just happened to\u00a0have good timing (though not good enough). Or maybe they were just keeping an eye on her, and\u00a0were forced to move because we did.<\/p>\n Those are all logical arguments, but they may also just be rationalizations. It’s hard to shake the feeling that we screwed up here.<\/p>\n N<\/span>o one tried to kill us today.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0was 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,\u00a0but he never returned. I made an offhand remark that night that our clumsy probing around had probably gotten him killed.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n On a lighter note, Kelda returned with some solid\u00a0information 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.<\/p>\nArodus 13, 4712 (evening)<\/h4>\n
![\"Origami](\"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/DSC_0032-300x240.jpg\")
<\/a>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\u00a0like sharing intimate details of your life\u00a0with 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\u00a0experience<\/em>. Just ask Ivan.<\/p>\n