A Thousand Ships

Later that day. Still stuck in Tomin.

Two people come into the inn, bedraggled, having arrived on foot. Fairly eager to eat. They go upstairs for a few minutes then return down. Khalid spots that they’re carrying concealed knives. They also look a bit different from when they went up - disguised? Nanda suggests we keep watches tonight. Then outside there’s the clatter of hooves and people, and a strazi man opens the doors and roars at the landlord that he’ll need bedding for 45 people. Landlord’s delighted. They look like merchants or something. And they want fed, now.

The couple have moved from one table another, and left behind a small leather envelope. Khalid goes to take a look. They pay no attention. He picks up the envelope. They don’t react, even though they can see him doing it. He returns to our table, flips it open and inside is a sheet of paper with closely written Strazi. Arkvanin takes it. “Um. It’s the title deed to a small estate in the mountains. I know roughly where this place is. It’s not the full title deed, but it says ‘the bearer is the owner of’ pretty much.

Jess: “We should tell them they left it behind.”
Khalid: “It’s like they wanted someone to take it.”
Jess: “Yes. I want to see how they react.”
Nanda: “Or we could give it to the landlord.”
Arkvanin: “The place is called Alscrow if that’s any help?”

Jess and Khalid decide to go upstairs to give it back, via the landlord to ask which room they’re staying in. Knock knock. No answer. Knock knock, “anyone there?” No answer. Khalid opens the door. Window open, candle flickering, no one there. No gear. It was briefly occupied. Two clear sets of footprints leading from below the window into the street. We close the window, blow out the candle and close the door behind us. We return downstairs. Jess tells the landlord that they’re gone, and left this thing behind. He doesn’t want it either.

We leave it on the table, go to our rooms and keep watches. Night eventually passes peacefully, bar the traders going to bed.

Next morning, one of the traders is asleep with his head on a table. The brown envelope is still there. We take a different table. As other traders rise, the landlord guides them to that table. One of them eventually opens it up, and the expected expressions cross his face. There’s a kerfuffle. The landlord is dragged back into it. They start to argue over it. The dude in charge of them eventually shuts them up. Jess casts a detect magic. There’s nothing magical about the envelope or piece of paper. One trader has a magical belt. No one reacted to the casting.

We head to take our boat on the tide, and before long are bound for Tamkizka.

On the third day at sea, we encounter what looks like a trading ship, overburdened with crew, bearing down on us. Nagan peers through his spyglass. “I’ve never actually seen a pirate ship before, but I would bet good money on that being one.” Jess looks trough. Oh dear. He starts barking directions at Nanda to try to outrun them. This brings us pretty close to the shore and funny winds, though. The other ship tacks repeatedly to try to get on an overtaking course, and as we’re making good ground their ship just stops dead in the water, like it run into a wall. People tumble off it and it skews around sideways. It’s taking on water and listing to one side. It eventually completely stops its motion with the rearcastle just above water at an odd angle, and doesn’t appear to be taking on more water. They’re all swimming directly away from the ship, some out to sea.

The oddly angled mast eventually disappears over the horizon. Jess checks the charts - clear deep water there. We sail on.

The weather takes a turn for the worse on the fifth day, and we arrive into Tamkizka in wind and driving rain. Tamkizka is a Strazi-ish free port, around twice as big as Thiemus.

We find a berth. The harbourmaster comes straight down to greet us, names a decent price and asks for news. He’s heard some odd stuff.

Nanda: “I presume you know about Kalmadiz?”
H: “Yeah, I’ve heard that one.”
Nanda: “There were some really strange goings on about magic and strange weather and not being able to..”
H: “What I heard is that it’s a bad time to be a pirate. The military in Elbenstraz have picked up maybe ten or twelve pirate ships in the last month, and nobody knows how. One bunch came in here, swear blind they saw a pirate ship abandoned, run around, in deep water.”
N: “Yeah. We actually saw something like that. We were heading out of Thomin and what seemed to be a pirate ship came after us. Why is beyond me.”
H: “Small ship, you look like a courier or a noble.”
N: “They were pursuing us and they seemed to run aground in fairly deep water. It’s more like they hit an invisible wall or something. And the mad thing was that the ship started taking water, the pirates jumped out, and some of them were swimming toward the open sea.”
H: “You were in sight of the shore?”
N: “Very close, some swam there alright.”
H: “Alright. How many nights are ye in for?”
N: “Hopefully only one.”
H: “In that case, speak with you in the morning, if you look like staying another then grand.”
We ask for a recommendation for an inn, but neither are up to much. Most of the nicer visitors go up and stay with the baron, and if he takes an interest we’ll be invited up anyway.

Nanda’s reluctant to draw attention to us, but the local custom seems to be to go have a chat. We complete the pilgrimage step first. The temple here is dedicated to the Herald Eislint. Awesome. We chat. He asks what we’re up to. Pilgrimage to stop the war. He mentions that rumour has it that if the Tajis are going to kit anywhere in revenge for Kalmadiz, it’ll be Tomin. He also mentions the crazy pirate sinky ship story, and is surprised to hear it corroborated by Jess.

We head up to say hi to the Baron. The castle is a very impressive piece of fortification for a freeport. It’s big enough that the entire town could go in there and be safe. We’re sent inside where a steward sees us. “You haven’t been here before? In that case it is the baron’s custom to dine at least on the day of arrival with whatever visitors arrive, and he is going to be down for dinner for about eight o’clock. We shall provide rooms. The baron is a man of forceful personality and does insist on these things.”

One of the wall carvings which we’re led down by is a full map of this side of the straits. We’re led to a suite with a bell to call for room service. Eight bedrooms and a vast hall of a common room. Rannon thinks we’re in the afterlife.

We dress for dinner, and head down as the gong sounds. There are other travellers and some better-off natives here as well, including the priest we spoke to earlier. We’re guided to the high table where we stand around for a while. A few minutes later the Baron Mescrow is announced and enters, pulls out his seat, sits down and invites the rest of us to do the same. Big as Khalid, and a lot hairier. Looks like a big-ass dwarf.

Baron: “So, where are you in from?”
Nanda: “Started in Thiemus, recently came from Thomin.”
“What’s happening in Tiemus”
“There were apparently cursed ghost shiups travellign around.”
“is the duke dealing with them?”
“Yes”
“That’s alright then.”
“I forgot about the secret cabal of the free ports”
“if tehre wasn’t one we’d have to maintain the pretense anyway so we may as well have one. So Thiemus and then…”
“We’ve been around a fair bit.”
“So most recently Thomin you said?”
Jess: “Dreadful weather. We were stuck there for a few days.”
BL: “What kind of dreadful weather?”
N: “The most horrible storm i’ve ever seen inmy life”
B: “Nice to know it wasn’t just local then. Finished up abotu six days ago, and one wing is currently uninhabitable because it blew the windows out. And tehre were houses in the town flattened by the wind, not to emntion we had drifts of snow you could lose three patrols in.”
J: “That’s a remarkably widespread storm”
B: “That’s what i thought, I figured it had to be a local one”
N: “It could of course be two localised storms.”
B: “Two really really bad localised storms. Why do weather wizards never visit me here?”
Steward: “It’s becuase you interrogate them for days on end, my lord.”
J: “Very gracious of you to provide such warm hospitality”
B: “makes hte place opoular, entertains me and everyone else, and why not since I can”
N: “That’s veyr admirable. Course it helps you get travellers drunbk and get the stories out of them.”

A dog fails to sneak up on Khalid, nudging his elbow. He throws it a scrap.

B: “What re ayou travellign fo?”
N: “Pilgrimage”
B: “Which one?”
N: “Supposedly the war ending one.”
B: “You didn’t start from Thiemus for that. So are you on the ong slow one or the quick straight thorugh one?”
Arkvanin: “It’s a slightly different one, my lord. I’m a scholar of pilgrimages and I think this might work better. Not quite medium ground, but it should do what we need it to do.”
Baron nods thoughtfully. “Good, good. There’s another party thorugh on the quick route about three weeksa head of you. I assume there’s some points in common. They look like they meant business. Theyr’e four months into it now and going from here over to Tajidar and they’ve survived two battlefields so far and seem to be doing alright. If you’re ona similar course you might catch up with them. A larger party and distinctly well armed. They didn’t quite refuse outright to say who was funding them, but polite questions got me nowhere. THey were certainly funded by somebody who knew what they were at because they had a ship which was just this short of legally being a warship and confiscatable, and all of them were either heavilyt armed or heavily educated.”
K: “Tajidarian or Strazi?”
B: “Mostly strazi, a few isles and one gentleman making such an effort to be an islander that I’m pretty sure he was a Taji. Pretty nearly all of the partis who have anychance of succeeded have to have people frmo both sides. Negotiations if nothign else. I’ve asked some of the earlier ones going to write back from further along the route, and at best I’ve gotten three letters.”
K: “Is there a step that seems to be aproblem?”
B: “There’s one on one of the variants of the quick route that goes through kalmadiz. I think a lot fo epople got stuck on that one. That’s where I lost track of two fo them, and then the third one I’m not sure where they went missing. They didn’t get as far as Kalmadiz ‘cos I didn’t get a letter from them from there. But they may have run into bad waether.”
K: “Kalmadiz is not held by either side. The city is vacant.”
B: “What? Why?”
K: “it appears to be quite uninhabitable.”
B: “Um.”
K: “Magic I do not understand.”
B: “In that acse, describe teh suymptoms, please.”
K: “The strazi military cannot enter, and they prevent the taji from reentering.”
B: “So, what the gates are barred?”
K: “Magic. They cannot enter.”
N: “Like some sort of a forcefield.”
B: “So how far out is this field from the walls?”
K: “half a day’s walk?”
B: “Good… I see. Well unless all of the strazi army is camped around it, there’s no way they can guard that big a circumference.”
K: “It harms those who use magic.”
B: “I see”
K: “We do not know if the Taji military can enter.”
B: “Well if it’s empty, chances are not then.”
K: “it is a strange place. It may be useful to advise others how pass this way of that. It can be entered, but it taks great force of will to do so. And there is an artefact of sorts there. Tampering with it we think will mean certain death.”
B: “Waht kind of artefact?”
K: “A very large spiked ball.”
B: “A moment.”

He heads out. People look concerned at this. The steward asks wtf? K: “He said he woudl return.” THe baron returns a couple of minutes later witha wooden box in his hands. He takes outa miniature of the very device we saw.

N: “Where di dyou get that?”
B: “It was found on the body of a man who washed up on the shore here around two, three days after mindsummer. He had tools attached to a belt which the smith in the town below could identify maybe three of out of perhaps twenty, dwarven all of them, and this in this box right beside him. It wasn’t attached to the belt or anything.”
N: “Did it do anything?”
B: “No, as best we can determine. I am told by various sources that sometimes it rattles in the box of its own accord, but I’ve not heard this and the maids who pass teh wtory around would not be all that relibale.”

Nagan reaches out for the ball. The baron follows this. “Do you know what it is?”
Nagan: “No, well apart from being a scale model of something somebody intended ot build. I imagine if you poke it just the right way you’ll be able to open hatches and looka t the miniature mechanism inside. I just don’t know what you’d poke to do so.” He puts it back in the box. The baron stares at him and seems to realise he is a dwarf.
Nanda: “That device seems to have driven the peopel in Kalmadiz mad. The peopel we eventually spoke to spoke of ringing sounds that got into your skull.”
J: “What happeend to the body?”
B: “We buried him. His belt and his tools are in my storng room.”
Nanda: “He wasn’t wearing jewelry?”
Baron: “To be honest, I never thought to ask but I didn’t hear of anything. If you are inclined to deal with an old lady who’s not entirely - at home - then you can speak to the person who found the body. She’s been this way for at least a decade.”

Dinner finishes and the Baron brings us to reach said woman.

We head out into the courtyard with him. Each of the dogs we pass by thump their tails precisely once as the Baron walks by. We reach the home of an old woman with a walking stick. “Oh. It’s you. Well, I suppose then. Go on, what do you want.” He explains carefully and politely that we’d like to know a little about the body that she found, and if she doesn’t mind could we all ask some questions. She says that might be acceptable and invites us in. The baron stands outside, a good idea because all the cats are focused toward the baron with fur standing on end.

Nanda asks if the man was waering jewelry.
“No. Absolutely not. No pendant. Absolutely not. We don’t have that kind of thing around here.”
“So you didn’t find a thing like this for instance?”
She hisses inhumanly at the shaft pendant.
“What did you do with it?”
“There wasn’t any pendant”
“if there had been one what would you have done with it?”
“Burnt it”
“Would it have burnt?”
“oh yes. In blue and green flame. You should burn that too. They follow you on those things. Follow you around.”
Khalid: “Let them follow. It’s hardly as if we’re being subtle.”
Nanda: “Well we are. It’s not like we’re wandering around carryign a sign saying this is what we’re doing. Can they really track?
“yes’
Khalid: “How do you know?”
“Everyboyd knows. When I was a girl we were taught these things.”
Jess: “When I was young I was taught that this was a joke.”
“Yes, btu you’re from the mainland>”
Nanda: “Maybe she has something abotu burning it.”
“RIght in the fire. There. Throw it in. Burn it.”
Jess agrees. Nanda throws it in. The metal pendant burns, in low-burning wood, with blue and green flame. Within seconds there’s nothing left but a small pile of white ashes and the traling of the leather bit it was hung on.
The woman nods. “Gone. Burnt. No more follow.”
Khalid: “Can you tell us anything else you were taught as a child?”
“I wasn’t the best student. But. Close the door.”
The baron’s standing outside with his back to the door. Khalid does so, with the acknowledgement of the Baron. The cats calm a bit.
“When these people come, they do things backward to the way that your folk” - to Jess - “do, but it’s not a silly backward. It’s an evil backward. Malevolent. That’s what they said. And they take people away, and they’re not seen again. And sometimes, they said, a long time ago, there were villages where everybody there wore the pendants wrong ways and when word of this got out, the other villages around would just go there, all at once, sometimes someone would arrange it sometimes they’d just know, and they’d burn the whole thing to the ground, and they’d salt it, and that would be it. The thing is, the rituals of your people, and their travels, they have power, and you don’t have to have understanding to make that power go. It’s not like magic. You don’t have to know what you’re doing. You know that. You send people on pilgrimages, you write it down for them, they don’t know what they’re doing but it works. And when you take that and twist it and do it backwards, you still don’t need power and it still works. That’s why they burn them. That’s why they should be burnt. And salted. And if they don’t teach this anymore, they should.”
Khalid: “Thank you.”
“If you see them, burn them”
Nanda: “is there anything we can do for you?”
She pauses. “Outhouse could do with movin’. Hole’s a bit full.”
Nanda: “I’m sure we can manage that tomorrow.”
“Send someone down from the castle. That’s what he does.”
Nanda: “Why are the cats afraid of the baron?”
Pause. “That’s for him to tell you.”

We head out. Baron: “Was that any use?” Nanda: “Yeah.”
Baron: “And was there then a pendant?”
Nanda: “Yeah. Burned in green and blue flame.”
Baron: “oh right. So what the hell does that mean?”
Nanda: “is it safe to talk here?”
baron: “Pretty much.”
Nanda: “it means that it would appear that people known as the church of shafts are moving around.”
Baron: “I didn’t think that really existed?”
Nanda: “well if you talk to her…”
Baron: “I can’t get within twenty yards - we don’t get on that well close up.”
Jess: “She takes it quite seriously. To be frank, having heard her, I’m inclined to as well.”
Baron: “You see, she knows things that went on here years before any of the rest of us were born. I don’t know how old she is. She either doesn’t know or won’t tell anyone. I’m in my fifties and she was old when I was very small and sometimes I think that she grew up in a completely different place to this. She’s lived here all her life afaik, but it was clearly a different place back then. So much has been lost since then you’d think somebody deliberately changed things.”
Hmmm.

We head back inside. He offers to show us the tools. They’re pretty unidentifiable. Nagan is watching this with measured curious interest. When all twenty are piled on the table, he says “I can identify this lot” - around twelve. “I don’t know what these are but I’ve seen things very like them in the workshops of the master mechanists. And they’re all mechanists’ tools. Now if these were found on the body of a human, then somebody’s not just been providing the output of the technology but the actual teaching of it as well, because to be perfectly honest if any human knows how to use any of these things, something has gone really badly wrong somewhere. This is the stuff they don’t tell other dwarves, let alone non dwarves. I’m pretty sure these guys have a long chain of learning, twenty years to call yourself apprentice, and I’m pretty sure humans don’t live long enough to pick up that. But if this guy had them, either he stole them and got away with it, or he knew what he was doing. I don’t know which I dislike more. However, honoured Baron, if you’ll permit me I’m going to render these inoperable.” The Baron, with reluctance, nods. Nagan picks up each one and bends the steel. He’s wincing a bit by the end. “I don’t like breaking tools but I like even less leaving them where anyone could use them.” He’s not going to send another msg - unnecessary and too risky.

Baron: “I wonder where else things like this have appeared then.”
Nanda: “There was a person found with the same kind of pendant in Thiemus. There seems to be an incidence of somebody buried alive.”
Khalid: “however I do hope that things like the object at Kalmadiz are, they must be incredible undertakings.”
Baron: “I hope so. Master Dwarf?”
Nagan: “I believe that they are. I had not heard of such things before but that doesn’t necessarily indicate much. They could be known and not made public. But I would think that they must be massive and complex undertakings. I hope they are.”
Jess: “If they were not, they would be everywhere.”
Nagan: “No, you seem, they wouldn’t. The guilds hold secrets like this. The dwarevs don’t let secrets out until we’re sure they can’t do too much harm, and there are secrets that every guild holds that they’ve been holding onto for eight, ten, twelve thousand years, for the simple reason that it’s something that should be known by somebody, but it’s not safe to tell other people because they’d use it. And now some mechanist is telling people. Telling non-dwarves those secrets.”
Khalid: “so is it one dwarf or…”
Nagan: “If he entirety of the mechanist’s guild decided to tell the secrets, that would be a madness.”
Nanda: “Could they have been blackmailed?”
Nagan: “All things are possible, but I would think, knowing the masters of my own guild, if you ask them to reveal something like that by threat, they would attempt to kill you with their bare hands there and then and that is that. Being old strong dwarves they’d succeed.”
nanda: “I’m thikning it would be reallty useful to speak with the Ethark agian.”
Baron: “Which Ethark?”
Nanda: “Oakenshield”
Baorn: “He’s a reasonable regular visitor here. due about June again if he’s on his usual schedule.”
Nanda: “Probably won’t be.”
Baron: “Well if you want to get a msg to him I can hold it here until such time as he arrives.”
Nanda; “I’m afraid of leaving anything written down”
Khalid: “Thank you for the offer, we’ll consider it.”
We decide to turn in for the night.