{"id":2390,"date":"2016-10-22T11:30:57","date_gmt":"2016-10-22T18:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/?p=2390"},"modified":"2016-11-09T22:23:19","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T06:23:19","slug":"kalis-journal-arodus-15-4712-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/kalis-journal-arodus-15-4712-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Kali’s Journal, Arodus 15, 4712 (Part 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>indertwigs. Chain shirt. Sword. Furs. Snow shoes. We knew, we knew<\/em>, these\u00a0were Ulf’s things\u00a0and we knew he was here. We picked through the trunk some more, just to be sure. Axes. Climber’s kit. Check. Check check check<\/em>. And then. Gods, and then<\/em>. Leather armor. Rapier. Samisen.\u00a0<\/em>I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Hollowed out inside.\u00a0Ameiko<\/em>. I thought I was going to be sick right there.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0rumors for days, and were preparing that morning to leave but we weren’t fast enough getting out. And,\u00a0BOOM<\/em>. From the north gate, just a stone’s throw\u00a0from 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, and you blew it. We hadn’t kept Ameiko safe. I<\/em> hadn’t kept her safe.<\/p>\n

My head spun. What had we done wrong? A thousand things. We left her with very little protection. She didn’t have Radella’s\u00a0ring. The caravan was no\u00a0secret. We’d been spied on for days. They\u00a0probably knew what she looked like. The list goes\u00a0on. What hadn’t<\/em> we done wrong?<\/p>\n

Of course she would\u00a0go 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\u00a0times when we were kids?\u00a0At 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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

They grabbed her they day we left. The very morning<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n

We got lucky. Ameiko wasn’t here long enough for Kimandatsu to\u00a0do 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\u00a0the scions.\u00a0Us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0spread 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0I mean, the circumstances of his birth were probably not great (how could they be?) and\u00a0I 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.\u00a0How 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?<\/p>\n

Kimandatsu I have less sympathy for. And by less I mean none. As Lute had claimed,\u00a0Silverskorr 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<\/em> that she murdered\u00a0the real Silverskorr at sea, but what other conclusions are there to\u00a0draw?<\/p>\n

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,\u00a0first 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.\u00a0She tried to hide using invisibility, but Suishen granted Olmas the power to see, and of course we\u00a0had spent far too much time around these Frozen Shadows\u00a0vaunters to not have learned that they only have two tricks. I had purposely prepared the same spell multiple times, and\u00a0unleashed bursts of\u00a0glittering dust into the room, coating her form each time Olmas called out her position.\u00a0I exhausted all of my spells, bringing in a giant bat, and even\u00a0drawing upon my own \u00e9lan 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0looked particularly bad having been here for several days. We’ve given them healing and food, but only time will restore their vision.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0collapse on their own, or\u00a0be 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).<\/p>\n

As for our part, we are taking the money. That vote was almost unanimous, and though there were some\u00a0objections 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.<\/p>\n

“You humans are terrible at managing your finances. I languished in a collector\u2019s hoard instead of defending my family for decades because some idiot didn\u2019t have enough money with him! I say get enough money to accomplish your mission this time.”<\/p>\n

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

More problematic is the matter of \u00a0Ravenscraeg 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.<\/p>\n

I eventually just\u00a0dropped the subject.\u00a0The realities of what we can and cannot do will become clear in due course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tindertwigs. Chain shirt. Sword. Furs. Snow shoes. We knew, we knew, these\u00a0were Ulf’s things\u00a0and 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.\u00a0I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Hollowed […]<\/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-2390","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\/2390","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=2390"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions\/2409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}