A Thousand Ships

28th of the moon umber

The city is empty. There are stray dogs and goats, scavenging seabirds, but no people to be seen. The most recent broadsheets we can find are dated 11th of the moon umber.

Something tumbles out of a doorway further up the street. An ancient, emaciated looking man with a blindfold around his eyes. Nanda addresses him in Taji.

“A voice! It’s not the buzzing. It’s stopped? The door was closed. Closed.” He holds up both hands, ragged, “I got out, but I couldn’t find the way, and - there’s no buzzing. It’s stopped. Have you water?”

Jess sorts him out. He’s wearing a spire pendant. Nanda tells him Jess is a priest in the church of spires. “Does he come from the spiral? Does he come to save us all from the buzzing? Where? Where are you?” He lays a bloodstained hand on Jess’s shoulder.

He switches into heavily accented ecclesiastical Strazi. “I couldn’t get into the temple. It’s still there. They made a grainstore of it but it still works.” He leads us there, with some difficulty given he can’t see.

What’s stopping him getting into the temple? “It’s barred. Barred. Locked. Can’t open it. Haven’t the strength.” Standard small temple. There’s a massive red seal on the door. Looks like an ethark’s seal.

Nanda: “Do you know what’s inside?”
“Old things.”

Same seal on the windows. It’s Oakenshield’s seal.

“Did you speak with the Ethark when he was here?”
“Briefly. They don’t pay much heed to me anymore. Too old. Sent me back in here to keep an eye on this place. Years ago. Hehe. To keep an eye. Shows what they thought. Send a blind man to keep an eye.”
“What happened with the buzzing?”
“it was after the Ethark, he came spoke with many people and he was angry. He didn’t call this place a granary or by Colman Lucas, he called it by Ervan.”

Ervan is a near-demonic figure. He was a man - or something - who claimed to be a herald and pulled it off for some time, such that for centuries there were churches dedicated to him. Somebody thought to enquire one of the other heralds about him, and was told there was no such herald. The churches were rapidly rededicated or demolished.

“Why was he in such a hurry to bar this place?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know it was barred until the buzzing. I came here to get away from the buzzing and I couldn’t get in. I think I lost it for a while.”

Vasco goes up on the roof. Good and solid. He says we should try and get in through the catacombs. Jess finds a way into a disused looking cellar. Musty and dry. Not really what we want. Some doors, and stairs going up to a bricked up exit. It’s a buried street, on which lies a corner of the church. We find a large arched door at what must be the foundation level of the church - with a seal on it.

Vasco attempts to meta-sewer. Miraculously, he finds it. A broken stone grating that he and maybe Nanda could probably squeeze into. It’s live too. Your correspondent chooses not to record his journey from there to the temple. He finds a grate, kicks it, and beside Jess the seal cracks and drops. Jess hauls him back out, and the results are even worse than on the way in. We go submerge ourselves.

We head down to the understreet to go through the now-unsealed door. Nanda listens through the door. At the very edge of her hearing is a distant scratching noise.

Vasco opens the door, revealing an empty cellar. Stone steps going up, and pounded down dirt (now disturbed) covering the grate. Vasco enters, and Nanda follows at his heel, listening carefully for scratching - that doesn’t sound any louder now she’s inside, but is definitely upstairs in the main part of the building. We head upstairs. Nothing to be seen. Steps going up to the upper part of the tower, where there’s a balcony. No altar, no statues. Remnants of grain, but the grain was in large part removed. Just a cupboard behind where the altar would have been. The scratching is coming from the cupboard. It’s continued not to get any louder at any stage.

We back away. The scratching seems fractionally louder.

Nagan arranges to collapse the cellar so no one else can use the same route.

Jess can still hear a scratching. Priest: “It’s the relics. There’s a box in there. And there are a few bones in it. Fingerbones, I’m told, tough I’ve never seen them. The box goes scratch scratch scratch all the time. If you open it, they lie still, but the scratching doesn’t stop. When they reconsecrated the temple they tried to take it back out, and the scratching got so loud they brought it back in. They say it keeps the rats out. That’s why it’s such a good granary.”

When the buzzing came, he says, everyone was screaming. Merchants, invaders, everyone. It got inside your head and it rasped and it buzzed and made the very bones of your skull vibrate against each other. The only thing to do was get away from it. He couldn’t find his way out. He didn’t think anyone could think or concentrate or act, just go. They all went.

Nanda offers to take him (Kalif Asif Esif) away from here. Our next stop is Tomin. “I want to know what happened. You can see. Go at least to the top of the hill and see if anything can be seen.” Ok. He comes with us.

We arrive at the top of the hill, where we’d expect some administration to be, and find the hill has a flat plaza on top, which has a view down over the harbour on one side, and rolling countryside on the other, with more storms visible in the distance. A little way down the hill is something huge and metallic and spiked, like a mace head. Khalid: “Nagan, dwarf made?” Nagan: “Without a shadow of a doubt. I have no idea what it is, I can just tell you it’s dwarf made.”

We’re encircled by storm, and it looks like the shiny spikey thing is dead centre.

Nagan’s headed for the device. We can smell decay and rot, which turns out to be the bodies of several men - or man shaped things - in contact with it, fallen one over the next, dead, and one of them has gotten close enough to somehow open a hatch in the side of it and jam in a massive halbert.

Nagan: “It caused the buzzing until someone was foolhardy or brave enough to approach it. The storm is still there though. I don’t know how it does it. We have some weather control, but it’s not precise like this, and the the priests fell over? That’s not something I’ve ever seen or heard of.”
Khalid: “How numerous are your people?”
Nagan: “There are perhaps 2-2.5 million of us across the world, but a great many of us are gathered in Harkfast now.”
Khalid: “If there was one who had crafting abilities such as this, you’d know of htem?”
Nagan: “I don’t know what the master smiths, master artificers can do. I’m not privy to those secrets.”
Khalid: “But if there was one who amongst all others excelled..”
Nagan: “Then those are known. But it may be that this capability is something that is known to half a dozen more master artificers, and because they have not yet perfected it it is not known to the rest of us. None of the guilds will release anything until it is right, and that may take centuries.”
Khalid: “There would still be perhaps a limited number of people…”
Nagan: “Yes, but i don’t even know what guild’s domain this would fall under.”
Nanda; “Could someone be working with the dwarves? If you combine dwarvish ability and someone with a great talent for creating magical objects?”
Nagan: “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Nanda describes the scene to Kalif.

Vasco and Nagan climb onto a building. Nagan: “This did drop directly from above, but look, it has fully crushed at least one building here, completely.” Kalif, after some description, reckons it fell on one of the mage nobles’ workshops.

In the device, something clicks. Nagan stares at it. “That is some part of the mechanism trying still to move. Khalid. Can you see from your height if the blade of the halbert is bending?”

Khalid: “The metal is being torn. At least a third of it is left.” Nagan: “We should jam it more.” Khalid: “What I need is a long bit of metal.” Nanda: “Sand into the mechanism.” Khalid: “Or grain. Which we possibly have easier access to. We need a funnel of some kind, possibly from that roof.” Nanda looks up at a gargoyle speculatively.

We jam it up.

Before we go, we check the gates. Looks like 400 carts tried to get through all at once, and people climbed over the top to get out. Some dead horses and oxen. The gates are wide open. There’s a track leading directly away from where the device was. No people present, alive or dead. We’re half a mile down the road before we find a body. Whoever it was was trying to crawl away from the noise.

The storm looks around four hours away on land. Nanda speculates about going to find them. There’s general agreement. We take Kalif with us.

The trace of the people doesn’t follow the road - which is slightly windy - but is dead, ruler straight across the land. As we get closer to the storm, we notice an odd effect. The entirety of the island of Tajidar is farmed, but the farms have to be irrigated everywhere. Here though, close to the storm, it’s green, in much the same way that Elbenstraz is, from the rain. Grass long dormant is growing. It looks just like Elbenstraz.

Jess asks if anyone has a compass. Nagan takes his out - and stares at it. It’s going around. Khalid says the path is more than enough. We’re well into the thick of the rain and howling winds when Khalid and the priests start to feel the edge of a headache, all at once. Vasco and Jess go ahead, Jess as canary. The headache ascends to full on migrane in a matter of a few paces. He turns back.

We chat for a bit. Nanda and Vasco grab Jess and run with him, causing him to black out. He comes to ten paces later, and throws up. Further down through the rain, we can see tents. Nanda and Vasco go back to collect the others.

Khalid manages to run through it at speed, holding the blade of a knife to distract himself. He comes to a halt within thirty or forty feet of a rainsoaked Strazi sentry. He looks horrified. He frantically rings a bell.

About twenty assorted Strazi soldiers approach.

Nanda: “What is happening here?”
A guy with military captain’s insignia: (isles) “Who are you people?”
nanda: “We’re a random group fo people on a fool’s errand”
Captain: “HOw have yuo come from Kalmadiz?”
Nanda: “With great stubborness”
“Is the wall gone then?”
“No but it;’s thin, and any non magic user can get thorugh”
“not last time we couldn’t”
Vasco turns around, and it’s like walking into glass. But he got in there five minutes ago to fetch the others.
“What is happening there?”
Nanda: “Is Ethark Oakenshield still here?”
“No, he left soe days ago, back to Elbentraz as fast as he could. He was headed for Breem, if that’s of any aid to you. What is in there? What’s happening?”
“nothing”
“Nothing? No one? It’s empty?”
“Did you not come from there?”
“Yes, but it was such chaos hat nobody knew what was happening”
Nandal; “There is in the hillside a great big metallic device”
“YEs, it came from the sky. It hit, and there was a - a noise that got right into your head and the only thing you could do was get away from it.”
Nanda: “It was disabled by some very strong minded people on both sides and we helped it along.”
Captain: “Right. Right. I don’t understand any of this, I have to say. Not a damn thing.”
“Who’s in charge here?”
“Right here? Me. There is a general somewhere further round the circle who’s been sending orders this way”
“What’s the situation with fighting here?”
“We are holding this enforced perimeter against the Tajidarian armies that are camped–” points. “I have not been privy to any communicaitons wiht them, but the people of the city fled ahead of us. We stopped once we could stop and struck camp. But we are nigh on defenceless here. The rain stops a mile and a half that way, and just beyond that most of the Tajidarian army is camped. I think not knowing what’s happening is keeping them away, to be honest.”

Khalid walks back. The headache picks up just before he impacts with an impenetrable solid wall.

Captain: “You people are pilgrims, you said? Alright then. Go on your way then.”
Khalid: “One question. The object that dropped from the sky. Before that you were safely occupying the city? And there had been no warnings of anything?”
“Not a thing. The city had been taken, it was secured, the military and magical people that were still in it were under lock and key, and indeed in manacles that would not allow them cast spells.”
“What happened when the buzzing started?”
“They ran out ahead of us. We’re not barbarians, they were on parole.”

He marches back down and leaves us to it. The sentry takes a couple of steps back and takes a defensive posture.

Jess checks to make sure we can’t get back in. There’s no wall. We walk further away from the people who let us go free, around the circle, then once we’re out of sight, enter.

Arcvanin: “That perimeter is five or six miles from the centre of the city. It must be forty miles around. They can’t keep it watertight. Anyone who wants to get past it could. So it must be that anyone who was driven out of the city now can’t get back in.”

Nanda: “That leaves it right for a third force to take it. The non-herald fits with that oppsoites thing, Arcvanin.”

Arcvanin: “I’ve been thinking about that. The only reason he’s discredited is the word of the other Heralds. His deeds are documented and are good. Demonic figure is an inaccurate exaggeration, it’s for explaining to people who wouldn’t get it. But Ervan was not a herald, he may have been something else, but he wasn’t, and the churches dedicated to him were rededicated to other heralds.”

Khalid: “I think we have two things we need to do. The first is to finish our pilgrimage, the second is to find Oakenshield.”

We arrive back at the city, restock as best we can from the unspoilt goods, Kalif continues to hang around us, we go back to the ship, and leave Kalmadiz.

And part way through the storm, the magic users fall over again. Khalid stays awake for it, and just as he comes down from the white pain, he gets a clear image of a dwarven woman looking at him.

We wake, emerge from the storm, and head for Tomin.