A Thousand Ships

Jess goes to chat to the harbourmaster (Halad Korahagorad) about the dead Siartin. Nanda joins him. They go into a side room. Jess spills. Nanda gets fate points to get Jess out of there. The Harbourmaster may do something massively unwise. She resists. The harbourmaster notes that the point of free ports is that no one from either side gets killed here.

Halad tells Nanda to take the body out before the place wakes up and drop it overboard so that it washes up somewhere else.

The Marmosets meets us outside the door to the harbourmaster’s office. “Mountain?” We have work to do. “Mountain.” He heads back toward his hut.

Vasco prepares a rubbish cart, and he and Nanda go to get rid of the body. It’s on the beach before she gets back. Someone picks up the body and brings it to the temple. Jess organises a burial and goes to tell the harbourmaster that a body washed up on the beach after a fight.

Jess tells off Vasco and Khalid, who argue, and there’s a thump on the temple door. A merchant, with military bearing. It’s the merchant who went over to talk to the harbourmaster this morning after Jess went to visit the second time. He’s Strazi. Looked Taji earlier. He asks for a description of the body. Jess asks a bit about why he’s asking. He lost a crew member (different description), whose particular arrival was rather sudden and was only on board half a day. He had displayed some attitudes that interested him. He’d intended to ask about it, then they were caught in a storm and he went overboard. (Suspect he press-ganged someone and is a bit nervous about who it was.)

Nanda’s body language: selective truth.

Jess asks about contact info. He (the questioner) is Andam Harrow, captain of the Ivory Chest. He heads off, tipping generously. Jess closes the door.

We head off on our pilgrimage. We get lost in the mountains. Khalid invokes “Servant of Prophesy” aspect. It gets steadily cloudier, like there’s a storm coming down from the mountains. There’s a bolt of lightning that shatters rocks due east of us. We dive sideways, and the rocks rumble to a halt a meter from where we’re standing. Three chunks of rock point in a perfectly straight line eastward. We follow.

At the crater where the lightning hit, there’s a gap in the rock showing a cave the next valley over. We go there. There’s someone, and a herd of goats and sheep, in the valley. He’s staring at us. We chat to him. He doesn’t want to tell us where Creomor is, by the sound of things Creomor’s a bastard. “Just keep on your way.” So we do. We find the cave, but he ate’nt there, so we look for a decent campsite nearby.

Jess calculates a pilgrimage to purify the temple. Looks pretty simple, but tedious and long. Six or eight sites, most of which are outside the islands.

Next day - still no Creomor. We pick a compass point and walk. Khalid and Nanda spot in the southeast a shape in the horizon of a tower or part of a keep. It’s some fair distance away. Jess finds the goat herd again, doesn’t bother pressing him. We meet back, and Khalid decides to have a civilised word. “Creomor’s a seriously smelly old hermit. If he knows anything, it’s how to run down to a goat, usually one of mine, and rip it to bits.” He decides, however, that if he doesn’t answer then he’s not going to get any peace for days. “The little fella with the twitchy nose send you up here? Had a thing like a giant rat on his shoulder?” That’s the bunny. Do you know him? “He was the last one up here looking for Creomor. Alright, look, if Creomor asks you, you never met me. Right? I was somewhere else and you didn’t see any goats here either. Head that way” - points - “there’s a big fuckoff dwarven thing out that way. Creomor’ll be poking around near it somwhere.” That’s the tower we saw earlier.

‘course, Khalid’s never heard of dwarves. He returns and tells us what he learned from the man who wasn’t there. Wander wander. The terrain is very heavy going, you spend more time going sideways around sheer cliff faces and the like than you do going forward. Could be four days away.

The following day, Jess spends a fate point and makes the journey a lot shorter. We have to get back to the floor of the valley though, and we’re 100 feet up. Khalid finds a safe way down, and reckon we could go back up the same way. Providing there isn’t an earthquake or anything prophetic like that.

This is so easy walking, it’s practically a highway. 15-20 metres wide, the length of the valley. wtf? It becomes a gently rising ramp toward a massive castle, built part way into the mountain.

The entire of the archipelago was dwarven property a very long time ago, before humans arrived here. Clink clink of hammer on stone somewhere in the deserted building ahead. The gate here is slightly ajar. Way down in the valley below we can see another gate, snapped in two. Odour of goat and slight rot ahead. Through the gates is, well, a killing ground, you walk your army in here and it’s dead. On the other side, another set of gates, also slightly ajar.

Every nomad instinct in Khalid’s body is going “no” and he pays a fate point to resist this.

There’s a rope dangling over the top of the gates, and a hammer hanging on it. That’s what’s clinking against the stone. Something’s tugging on it on the far side of the gate. Vasco takes out a mirror and looks around the door with it. There’s a goat tied and trying to free itself. The goat sees Vasco and sounds the alarm.

A rock comes hurtling out from beyond the gate and hits Vasco in the middle of the forehead. Jess pulls him to safety. Nanda calls out to Creomor. Another stone. “You goat fucking bastard, stop that and come out to talk to us.” A larger stone comes out. Vasco tries the mirror trick again. It gets shattered by a rock.

Khalid confronts the rocks head on, using his Nomad aspect. Vasco tucks himself into Khalid’s shadow. The mountain man is crouching by a massive pile of rocks. There’s a few more goats here, and he’s clad in rags, leather and goatskin. Man, this place stinks. Vasco creeps out from behind Khalid and points his crossbow at the hermit. Without looking at him, the hermit throws a rock at Vasco, which glances off his shoulder.

His stench is clearly his greatest weapon. Khalid’s starting to feel faint. He grabs his arms so he can’t throw any more rocks at least. “We just wish to talk to you.” There’s a slappy fight. He has halitosis even worse than his B.O. “Fuck off! Die! Die screaming!” Nanda tells Khalid to show him the tattoo. Khalid does so. Creomor stares at it for two seconds. “Fuck off further! Much further!” Do you know what it means? “No. Die! I said DIE!” Suddenly, Khalid feels very ill. Vasco cracks him across the back of the skull, and the ill feeling passes.

Oh dear. His words had power.

So, unless we bungee jump, we’re a couple of hours away from the rivers we saw below the ramp. Khalid ties and gags the hermit, and in the process sees something glowing about his person. We explore a bit and find a fountain some massive halls away.

Jess reckons he’s using a style of magic known as Charismatic Divining. Untrained, or pure raw talent, form of priestly magic.

The goats are just trying to get away from the smell.

Nanda’s undressing him as best she can, and she finds, on a single chain, a very finely formed spire pendant, and a glowing piece of amber. Pendant’s better than Jess’s. The amber doesn’t seem to be magical.

He comes to very suddenly. Vasco and Khalid take opposite sides, and Khalid starts to politely ask some questions.

Khalid to Jess: “Does your magic require you to wear your symbol?” Jess: “Um, no.” Khalid: “Then return his symbol.” Jess does so. Hermit growls.

Khalid sits down, legs crossed, sword on legs. That gets a glance.
“I’m going to remove your gag now. If you do what you did earlier, we’ll have to silence you again. I am only here seeking wisdom, then we will leave.”
Khalid reaches out and carefully removes the gag. Hermit stretches his neck.
“This is not the traditional behaviour of those who come seeking wisdom”
“IO attempted to ask politely, you tried to kill me.”
“I am not one to whom people normally come seeking wisdom.” Educated Strazi accent.
“I walked in here bare handed telling you I was here for wisdom. That is why we are hre.”
“I have left all that behind.”
“That appears to have caught up with you.”
“Did the marmoset tell you I was here?”
“The marmoset said you were in the mountains.”
“If you see the marmoset before i do, tell him to run away.”
“I would think less of you if you were to harm him. He has been helpful to us and i owe him a debt”
“Do i look like that botehrs me all that much? Ask whatever question ti is you wanted to ask”
“The mark on my blade, and on my chest. You looked at them with interest, possibly recognition. What do you know of them.”
“I have seen markings like them before”
“Where?”
“Among the possessions and writings of a contact. Someone I once met.”
“Do you have a me? location?”
“Location is a long way form here and not relevant, the man moves. He was a Darushan.”
“Does this Darushan have a name?”
“He gave me a name. I do not know if it is his proper one.”
“any name is more useful than none.”
“Rannon Rana Gehr.”

Rana Gehr is the name of one of the nightrunners/prostitutes in the inns.

Hermit glances down rapidly.

“So you think this man wl be able to hlpe me?”
“Maybe. hE had markings like that, mogn the things in his possession:
:And he wanders?”
“Yes. All his order do.”
“Then I have more to seek”
“You do now know of tem?”
“No”
“You are not a Taji?”
“I am”
“Then how…”
“…from the desert, far away. Not these Taji who live on boats and islands.”
“Well.” to Nanda. “You look Taji. You know of the Darushan, or whatever thei rproper name is”
N: “I’ve herad of them”
“Tell him what they are.”
N: “place for another discussion”
K: “we have time. thank you.”
“Will you untie me now?”
K: “There was also the matter of ghosts, on a ship, brought back time and time agian to the oprt because of a betrayer.”
“This is the stuff of stories”
“It happened these last days in Thebes.”
“That is the port town”
N: “An inverted spire. Do you know anything of that?”
He hunches forward so the beard covers the pendant. Vasco chucks Nanda the inverted one.
Hermit: “The church of shafts. Untie me. I won’t hurt you.” Vasco does so.
He straightens up. Vasco laughs, uncocks crossbow. wtf? “Just seems to be an awful lot of people running away.”

He goes over to the pile of skins and starts re-covering himself in bits of them.

K: “So what do you know of hte church of shafts?”
“It’s the outcome of a theory. have you been here long enough in these lands to know pilgrimages?”
“I’ve heard talk of them”
“A pilgrimage is a jojurney of power. One sets forth with a particualr event or aim in midn. By visiting the right places in the right order, with the right devotion, one can achieve one’s aim. Determining what are the right places, the right order, is a preceise eskill, takes years to learn, many more years ot master. The church of spires hold the jnoledge ogf this skim and very few otehrs laern it. The church of shafts is something that can be done if you follow through the logic. Pilgrimage is something that is undertaken willingly and involves movement from one place to aqnother, several places by one person. It is possible to reverse many of these elements.”
As he talks he straightens up and apces a little
“…so that you arrive at a form of power which is directly related to the pilgrimage but opposing, as fire to water in the elements of magic, or as up to down.”
V: “So burying somebody”
“Yes. You would need to find an unwilling person who is not a believer in teh court of spires and bury them alive. Thi sis a logical extension of pilgrimages. I tis not usually arrived at, not taught, not talked about. But you can extrapolate it. The church of shafts is a label fo rthose who would follow this practice.”
N: “Wh would anyoen do that?”
“because it is more powerful. You take an aim, same you would a pilgrimage, and you do this to soem unbeliever at points of that pilgrimage, and you achieve your aim. The thing that is most disturbing for anyoen who si s abeliver in the court of spires is that it is still founded upon belief in those carryign out the scarifiuce. They have to be stnorg in their belief in the gods of the court of spires to achueve any pow3er in this. But when it is done it is immensely more powerful simply because it invovles a death. It is a final thing, a step from which tehre is no turning back. A pilgrimage can be abandoned half way throug, but once someone is dead that is it.”
K: “So someone is undertaking htis through these islands.”
“Did you find sucha burial? then yes.”
K: “Woud such an act cause bad magic about it?”
“Undoubtedly. THis is where your ghosts come from. The next betrayal, fistfight, evil thing, the next strike in anger will pick up that power and echo it, and shape things about it. It will certianly bring back ghosts, that;’s almost trivial for it. It will bring the dead form out under teh ground - not the body buried, that one’s dead dead, but it could cause deaths, diseases, plagues, earthquakes, fires. It isa murder done as magic. It is a murder done for power. It will nto last long. This one event wil absorb all that power and use it. But following sucha thing there will be a consequence:”
N: “If you conduct such things enoug, surely that much pick up the pilgrimage string the same way pilgrimages in several places do, and the visits to several places would magnify the power then even when exhausted in one place, the subsequent events would echio it.”
“Yes. I tdepends on how complex the pilgrimage the original route was calculated for. If it was something simple, then there would not be much of a chance for resonance acrosss it. For something greater, say more than 6 or u8 sites, there would after a time be resonance, yes. The evnts would get worse as tehy progress.”
K: “How does one stop this?”
J: “I think i know.”
“I doubt you’lll be abl eot do it form one point in one ceremony. It owuld need two or three at the minimum. UNless this port town occurs on only one pilgrimage route, which is almost, almost impossible.”
K: “So tehre are people undertaking to do evil in the world”
“The end need not be evil. They aer seeking to do some thing”
K: “bit they are doing it thorugh murder. Then it is evil”
“By my reasoning, yes. By theirs perhaps not.”
J: “The ceremony was for the start of a pilgrimage, done backwards. Did we encounter the end of this journey?”
“No. It is part of the reversal. There is an eneding there, therefore the ceremony is for a starting. But it is not the ending as such.”
J: “How do you stop the echoes, the ripples?”
“Hvae the sacrifice not take place. If yo have seeng host and disposed of them, then it is over there. That is what happened. That is all there will be. For other places on this route, it wil have already ahppened there or be yet to happen there. Have you heard enough?”
Mumbled agreement.
“So go then”
N: “Anything w can do for you?”
“Go. Send more goats.”
K: “And i would think less of you if the marmoset were to come to any ill”
“Do I look like that worries me?”
K: “If you think that such things and their doing, then a man pointing us on a road towards good which points to you is an act to be thanked, not to be punished.”
“Go”
Hmm, that pendant is still a point of interest for Nanda. He’s crouching by the rockpile, tossing a rock in his hand.
Vasco stops.
N: “Creomor?”
“What?”
N: “the pendant”"
“piece of amber you have?”
N: “I dont’
‘what is it then?”
N: “you have a spire on your pendant, yes?”
He delves under his beqrd. Pulls out the pendant. There’s only the spire.
N: “Alright, never mind. Thank you.”

Vasco reckons he was in the war, proper like. Why? Did you do fighitng? “No, I did something far worse. So I’m keeping myself out of sight.” Um. So how did you think that that man was an officer? “After the war, the Strazi empire doesn’t really look after its own.”

We head down to one of the rivers and camp. Fishing here is spectacularly good.