It\u2019s funny how some things always stay the same, until one day, they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Case in point. I was visiting Sera and we were talking about basically nothing, and out of the blue I said to her, \u201cI need to get out of this place.\u201d It is a familiar refrain. She got real quiet and we stared at the wall for a while before she said, \u201cYou and me both.\u201d And then we lamented the fact that it took quite a bit of\u00a0money<\/em>\u00a0to strike off on your own, and that was something neither of us had. It\u2019s a conversation we\u2019ve had dozens of times, and it\u2019s like we\u2019re reading off a script.<\/p>\n Diamond Lake isn\u2019t a strike-it-rich kind of town: it\u2019s more of the your-dreams-have-died variety. If you\u2019re lucky, you can work and make enough to stay afloat until you get sick and die. If you\u2019re\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0lucky, you can do that without resorting to living at Jalek\u2019s. For most folks, that means earning enough to stay trapped here. Getting out is so far out of reach that most don\u2019t even talk about it.<\/p>\n Sera and I like to buck the trend.<\/p>\n At least she\u2019s got an excuse for being an optimist: her family is better off than most. They\u2019re not going to give her money just so she can leave\u2014family businesses are their own sort of Diamond Lake\u2014but they could all go if they wanted to. I have to fund my own way, and that\u2019s not exactly panning out. Apprenticing for Osgood has paid okay (no one gets rich on barmaid money, and I certainly didn\u2019t), but there\u2019s not really a lucrative future there. I mean, I\u2019m no genius when it comes to figures, but even I can see that seven apprentices to one smithy is not great math.<\/p>\n So, it\u2019s an old conversation, one that dates back a couple of years, with the same beginning, middle, and end. At this point, I think Sera and I have it just because it\u2019s familiar and there\u2019s a twisted sort of comfort in the familiar.<\/p>\n And then it changed.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t like visiting The Feral Dog. For one, I used to work as a server there and going inside brings back memories that are better off repressed, and for two, it\u2019s run by Kullen, who somehow manages to be sleazier than the tavern. But his nephew Zhog works there, and I was dropping off a kukri for Zhog, so I was visiting The Feral Dog. And we got to talking, like we do, and it was deja vu: I was having that same conversation again, only substitute him for Sera.<\/p>\n Like his uncle, Zhog is a half orc, but that\u2019s both the start and end of the family resemblance. There is not much love lost between the two, either. Kullen has taken care of Zhog since the latter\u2019s parents died, and while I am sure he feels a familial obligation there, I don\u2019t doubt that his loyalty is influenced by having access to cheap labor. Kullen has what you might call a \u201ctransactional\u201d parenting style: as long as his nephew works in his tavern, Kullen provides a roof over his head and enough food to eat. Zhog wants out, but that takes money he doesn\u2019t have and isn\u2019t going to make working for food and lodging.<\/p>\n So, it\u2019s the same story, just with different actors.<\/p>\n Unlike Sera and I, Zhog actually had a shot at it, but he ended up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He received some sort of inheritance from his parents when he turned 17 and spent it getting equipped to get out of Diamond Lake and see the world. Zhog has been an acolyte of Desna for as long as I\u2019ve known him, and \u201csee the world\u201d is one of those Desnan things where you take a pilgrimage without a destination. Unfortunately, math wasn\u2019t his strong suit, either, and he spent his inheritance on the \u201cgetting equipped\u201d bit, and there was nothing left for the part where you \u201csee the world\u201d. And thus, he\u2019s still here. So, that\u2019s only\u00a0mostly<\/em>\u00a0the same story, I guess. I\u2019m calling it close enough.<\/p>\n One of the few things I miss about being a barmaid, or working in a tavern in general, is that you overhear a lot. People are pretty interesting, and by extension, taverns are interesting places\u2014even the seedy ones. While Zhog and I were bemoaning the state of our finances, our ears picked up the conversation at a three-top that was a group from Korvosa. I don\u2019t know why, but adventurer types from out of town always seem to end up in the Feral Dog, despite it being, literally, the worst of their options. It\u2019s like a magnet for people who like to complicate their lives. We could tell they were adventurer types because they were talking loudly and indiscreetly about exploring the Stirgenest Cairn.<\/p>\n Typical.<\/p>\n Diamond Lake is surrounded by ancient burial cairns from some long-dead culture, and all of them were picked clean years ago. That doesn\u2019t stop people from coming here to look for treasure anyway. For some reason, the Stirgenest Cairn is especially popular with visitors who haven\u2019t done their research.<\/p>\n There are no riches, hidden or otherwise. Listening to tourists dream about scoring it big in the Stirgenest Cairn is what passes for community entertainment in Diamond Lake, and it\u2019s probably the one thing we can all agree on. Admittedly, that\u2019s not particularly virtuous of us, but the way most people figure it: treasure hunters are here to exploit the town, anyway, and their money is good, so why not exploit them first? Also, Diamond Lake is one of the last places you go when seeking virtue.<\/p>\n \u201cToo bad all of those cairns are empty,\u201d Zhog said.<\/p>\n I almost agreed as an automatic response, but I cut myself off and just stared at him.<\/p>\n Were<\/em>\u00a0they all empty?<\/p>\n Zhog was looking at me funny. \u201cYou okay?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not normally known for sitting quietly with my mouth gaping. The opposite, really. I feel like Mom is being polite when she says I have a way of \u201cfilling the gaps in conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah. I just\u2026I think I have an idea.\u201d I told him I\u2019d be back in a couple of hours and left him standing with a puzzled expression while I went to find Sera.<\/p>\n When I was twelve, I started hanging out with a group of teens that called themselves The Night Walkers. Sera was one of them, and along with our friend Alina, she encouraged me to join. We did all sorts of crazy, irresponsible things that only teens would do, and that only parents from Diamond Lake would ignore. It was more than just irresponsible, really. It was, like, irresponsibility taken to staggering heights. We ran around in the night, literally, like a cult of survivalists. The group was actually quite fun, even exhilarating at times, and a good diversion for a town that\u2019s all dead-ends. I learned a lot of useful stuff that is not so easy to learn on your own, but we should still call it what it was: a bunch of kids being reckless in the dark.<\/p>\n And we also visited a little-known and well-hidden cairn that became an open secret among the Night Walkers and other kids in town. At the time, it probably wasn\u2019t known to anyone over eighteen. We all called it The Whispering Cairn, named after the strange sounds that echoed inside when the wind blew in just right. We even spread rumors that it was haunted (an easy sell just on the sounds alone) which both elevated it to legendary status among Diamond Lake youth, and kept the casually curious ones away.<\/p>\n I am not sure who discovered it\u2014probably Sergiu or Alina, our de-facto leaders at the time\u2014but regardless of its origins, the Night Walkers kind of claimed it as our own, and we used it for our initiation ritual. A brave or foolhardy few, like Sera and myself, even spent the night in it as a test of our mettle. But what we\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0do was explore the thing, because we all knew at some deeper level that it was dangerous. You could see animal tracks leading in and out, and sometimes footprints from something larger and bipedal. You went in not knowing if you would be alone, or if you would stay that way.<\/p>\n About five years after I joined the group, our collective luck ran out. Another friend of mine, Masildi, went in to spend the night, and she never came back, and that was the end of the Night Walkers. A couple of years later, another idiot kid tried to do the same thing, because one disappearance wasn\u2019t enough, and we got him out before he could bleed to death. As far as I know, no one has been back since.<\/p>\n No one has ever talked about the Whispering Cairn outside of that group of friends. The Stirgenest Cairn was emptied years ago, and people\u00a0still<\/em>\u00a0can\u2019t shut up about the thing. If the Whispering Cairn had been explored and looted, you would think we\u2019d have heard about it. We\u2019d probably never\u00a0stop<\/em>\u00a0hearing about it.<\/p>\n What if it hadn\u2019t ever been explored? What if it wasn\u2019t empty, like the others?<\/p>\n I needed to talk to Sera.<\/p>\n There were seven of us in all. Sera and I have been friends for practically ever, Zhog and I may as well be brother and sister, and I worked with Snagsby back in my serving girl days. As for the others? I had seen them around, and no\u00a0one is really a stranger in a town of a thousand people.\u00a0Snagsby works with Viore, and also knows the newcomer Varin. Most of us probably knew Viktor at least casually.<\/p>\n \u201cFor those who don\u2019t know me well,\u201d I said, starting us off, \u201cyou can call me \u2018Bel\u2019. Seriously,\u00a0just<\/em>\u00a0call me \u2018Bel\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n I always need to get that out of the way, because while I don\u2019t ever use my full name, it\u2019s far from being a secret. I want to say that my parents have a sense of humor, but I really think they were being serious when they named me Belessandralena, especially since they use it\u00a0all the time<\/em>. They\u00a0never<\/em>\u00a0shorten it: not out in public, not in private with friends and family, and not even casually at home.\u00a0Never<\/em>. Most kids\u2019 names get longer when they get in trouble with their parents. Mine just got more enunciation.<\/p>\n Dad has labored in one of the mines for as long as I can remember, and he\u2019s always been close with the local gnome community since several of them are in his same work crew. That is the super-abridged story of how I got my name. Once, when I was younger and feeling particularly feisty, I argued that it\u2019s gnome\u00a0men<\/em>\u00a0that have the long names, while the\u00a0women\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0names tend to be really\u00a0short<\/em>. Dad just said that I was missing the point. I was so vexed by this response that I didn\u2019t even think to ask what that point would be. I still haven\u2019t, under the theory that some mysteries are maybe better left unsolved.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all here for the same reason,\u201d I continued. \u201cThe \u2018why\u2019 is different for each of us, but we all are looking for something that is outside of Diamond Lake. A better life. A chance to see more of the world. Connecting with our past. But getting out, and staying out, takes money, and none of us have enough of it to survive for long on our own. Sera and I have an idea that might just change that.\u201d<\/p>\n My \u201cwhy\u201d fell into the last category. A few months after I turned seventeen, I started developing the ability to see in the dark. By \u201cin the dark\u201d, I mean, \u201cin the complete absence of light\u201d. Once I was done having a panic attack\u2014I didn\u2019t understand what was happening to me, and it\u2019s pretty terrifying the first time the lights go out, and you realize you can still clearly see the room\u2014I went to see Sera. She\u2019s been able to see like this since, I dunno, the womb, I guess, and I thought maybe she could help me figure out why it was happening. She suggested that there was something in my ancestry that wasn\u2019t human.<\/p>\n That turned out to be an understatement. And following the trail to the end was going to require leaving Diamond Lake. Preferably with enough money to survive the attempt.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s common knowledge,\u201d I continued, \u201cthat all the old cairns around here have long since been looted and emptied, but there\u2019s one that\u2019s about a half day from town that we\u2019re pretty sure has never been explored. Because almost no one knows it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n \u201cSera and I were part of a group of kids that used to go inside this cairn from time to time. She and I even spent the night in it once. We called it The Whispering Cairn because of the sounds it makes when the wind blows, and for a while we spread stories among the other kids in town that it was haunted so we could more or less keep them away and have it to ourselves.<\/p>\n \u201cThe few people that\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0know about it don\u2019t go there anymore. About five or six years ago, a friend of ours tried to spend the night inside, and she never came back out. We\u2019re pretty sure she died in there. And then a couple of years after\u00a0that<\/em>, another kid tried to do the same, and he got hurt, bad. That was the last time I knew of anyone going there.\u201d<\/p>\n I paused to take a deep breath. Talking about what happened to Masildi is never easy. It doesn\u2019t help that she and I parted on such a bad note.<\/p>\n I swallowed my guilt and pushed ahead.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though we\u2019ve been inside it, none of us went in very far. Just down the entry hall to a junction with alcoves on either side. That\u2019s less than a hundred feet in. But the cairn goes back a lot farther than that, and we don\u2019t know what\u2019s there.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re proposing is that we band together and explore The Whispering Cairn. I won\u2019t deny that it\u2019s potentially dangerous. Sometimes there are animals living in there, and it\u2019s possible we\u2019d need to deal with that. But we are a group of seven, and we aren\u2019t kids anymore. We\u2019re also armed, and not without some skill.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs it\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0haunted?\u201d Snagsby asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know. It might be? But we never saw anything that suggested it was. The most dangerous things we came across were animals and other people.\u201d<\/p>\n There was some discussion after that, and to my surprise and relief, no one got up and walked out. So that was a start.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s more. If we want to do this, there\u2019s an abandoned mine office near the cairn that we could maybe use for a place to stay. It wasn\u2019t in great shape when we found it several years ago, but if it\u2019s still standing, we could maybe fix it up a bit so it could keep us dry and give us a place to work out of that is away from prying eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n This was another Night Walkers discovery, and we used it as our private hideaway for a couple of years. It had already been in bad shape then, and seven years probably hadn\u2019t improved it, but if it was still standing, it would beat sleeping outdoors. As long as it didn\u2019t come crashing down on us.<\/p>\n Snagsby asked, \u201cHow much do you think we might get out of this? I need to know if I should quit my job.\u201d<\/p>\n And that was the rub. I didn\u2019t know. Abadar wouldn\u2019t allow me to mislead them, either, even if I wanted to. \u201cThere\u2019s no guarantee. This isn\u2019t like a secured investment. The cairns around here that\u00a0have<\/em>\u00a0been looted have held phenomenal treasures, but that doesn\u2019t mean this one will, too. And though we are reasonably confident it hasn\u2019t been explored yet, it\u2019s still possible that someone else has already cleaned it out. I wouldn\u2019t quit your job until after it\u2019s paid out.\u201d Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, and so on.<\/p>\n \u201cGreat! I\u2019m quitting my job then,\u201d Snagsby replied. And, I might add, completely ignoring my advice.<\/p>\n After that, everyone else threw in, too. We were officially signing up to be squatters and grave robbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Toilday, Desnus 3, 4722 \u2014 Midday Diamond Lake It\u2019s funny how some things always stay the same, until one day, they don\u2019t. Case in point. I was visiting Sera and we were talking about basically nothing, and out of the blue I said to her, \u201cI need to get out of this place.\u201d It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-4676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aow-journal","tag-bel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676","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=4676"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5754,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676\/revisions\/5754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Toilday, Desnus 3 \u2014 Evening<\/h3>\n
Diamond Lake<\/h4>\n