A Thousand Ships

Breakfast is eggs and bacon, toast and coffee. Awesome.

Some strange wizard off the cost of Belkora is causing concern, and the oncoming winter seems to be utterly horrible. The wizard is selling his services to all and sundry, which the powers that be there probably don’t like, and he appears to run away the moment anyone mentions his past, up to and including the question “where are you from?”

We get more reports from a Taji-looking boy in Strazi servants’ robes. The man arrived confused and dishevelled, it is said. He took up residence in an inn until the landlord asked where he was coming from, at which point he paid up his bills and moved to another inn. There it was two days before anyone asked, at which point he paid up and moved to a third inn. The third landlord has avoided asking. He’s selling spellcasting services at a remarkably knock down price, so people are flocking, much to the delight of the landlord and apparent confusion of the wizard. The local guilds and authorities are said to be considering taking action. We ask the boy to see if he can find someone who can provide a physical description. Vasco tips him.

We spend a little time getting supplies, to sail out next tide. The kid returns with a swarthy merchant. Looks like a Taji man, not great of stature but of noble bearing and has a nose, such a nose. When he originally arrived, he was dishevelled, his robes might once have had a noble demeanour. Reclothed he tends toward the eclectic. He appears to have bought them, but his modus operandi appears to be to go into the less reputable providers of used clothing, and buy stuff at random. So he ends up wearing items that will fit. His magic appears to be considerable.

Said swarthy merchant had some boxes enchanted for the storage and keeping fresh of herbs and spices. Vasco reckons we should pick some up for the priests’ stuff for the long voyage ahead of us. (20 days in good weather, and it took Confidante Cordwainer 52 days when he did it at around this time of year.)

Turns out, while Cordwainer is earwigging on a conversation between Vasco and Khalid where they talk about asking Anastasia to mutiny, or get her and Oakenshield to the cache, that Cordwainer knew Oakenshield some time back. He was a few years ahead of Oakenshield in the seminaries, maybe three years if pushed. “He was occasionally teased as being a slow reader. Funnily enough, no one ever teased him about it twice. Amazing the things you remember. And an inhuman capability to drink. This thing does come back to you because I do remember one attempt by the cadets who were attending some of the lectures - I wouldn’t say they took the same lectures since they didn’t pay attention - but there was a drinking challenge issued, they drank, and drank, and fell over, and Oakenshield carried them home, one over each shoulder.” He’s surprised to hear he’s still running around on ships and hasn’t been made to settle down.

We buy all the merchant’s boxes for a quarter royal. This is so cheap that it’s enough to make you doubt their efficacy. There’s speculation about how the wizard is churning out this stuff hand over fist and not collapsing from exhaustion. Could be a geas. We check the boxes - no blue flame - and Nanda decides we should check ourselves near flame from time to time.

We arrive in Belkora. More small boats clustered in and around the harbour than seems at all reasonable. There’s a crowd of people standing shoulder to shoulder around the inn. Word got out, evidently. Vasco goes into crochety old man with pointy elbows man. He gets about two thirds of the way in until it’s so dense that stick and elbows doesn’t really work. He comes out.

We chat. There’s a bell in at the inn, and the crowd gradually quiets down. There’s a large old woman hanging out an upstairs window, banging on a gong and yelling at people to go home, he’s sleeping. Some people drift away, but the hardcore are evidently settled in for the night. Someone’s trying to push the door closed from the inside. Khalid resolves to assist this measure. “Let me help you, Sir.” He starts picking people up bodily and moving them out of the way. Eventually he comes up against a belligerent fellow who elbows him in the jaw. Vasco: “Want to take somebody on your own size?” He tries to home back in on the door. There’s a fight with brass knuckles. He knows what he’s at too. Vasco puts a blade to his throat and threatens him. He pisses off.

He’s gonna come back, with friends. That said, the crowd is really starting to dissipate now. Only one more belligerent in the crowd, who is dealt with, and we’re eventually at the door, which is firmly closed. The windows have furniture pressed up against them.

Behind Khalid, the shutter opens.

Elderly large woman: “Hello? Thanks, but uh, who the hell are you?”
Nanda: “We are pilgrims who learnt that you had a little bit of trouble here so we came to see if we could do a good did.’
“Pilgrims? Like in Elbenstraz?”
“we are a mixed group.”
“I’ve got no rooms left”
“that’s alright. We just heard about hwat was going on, came here, noticed you were trying to close the place up, figured you’d be happy if these people would leave”
“You can say that again. Ok. I’m gonna open the door, you folks get in quick, you” (Khalid) “come in last so no one will try it on, and I’m gonna close the door again. I can offer you a meal at least.”

The guy who was pushing the door closed is so tall and broad and hunched he must be part ogre. Arms like treetrunks.
Vasco: “Your mother must have fed you a lot of cabbage and potatoes.”
Woman: “I’m his mother. He takes after his father.”

The wizard’s slumped asleep in the corner. Nanda recognises him as Nahesh, the wizard we, er, met in Tomin. He’s wearing a strazi military coat and a variety of stuff so he looks like a jester. Dark circles under his eyes. Vasco checks him out. Chronic exhaustion. Vasco: “It’s killing him.”

Nanda: “how sorry would you be to see him go?”
Woman: “We’re not doing normal business here, and the rooms are paid up for a month, but that was just an excuse to get in here. If you can take the man– do yo know where he comes from? In that case, take him home. The man can’t be reasoned with.”
We bring him to sleep over by the fire. He doesn’t twitch.

Arcvanin’s poking around the table where he was. “There’s no book here. Strazi wizards have spellbooks.” Khalid asks Vasco to take a look around his room. Woman: “he didn’t have anything else with him. A pile of clothes dumped in a corner.” She goes to get us some food. People are trying to peer in the windows. Someone’s banging on the door. The son comes over to the door, slides the shutter, “we’re closed”, slides it back. There’s more banging. “Ma, can I hit him?” Vasco: “Let’s not hit people.” Son: “He’s bangin’ on the door. It’s bad. It upsets ma.” She says yes. He opens the door, holds out his fist, and the guy outside runs onto the end of it. While he’s staggering, he takes the other fist in and it knocks him back thirty feet into the water. Door closed. “I hit him.”

Nanda notes that the guys in Taelcard thought there might be some effect around the dwarven artefacts that would make anyone who discovered too much about them wander off and forget. Jess gives him a rudimentary check, there’s something magicalish wrong with him and not much he can fix.

After a while, there’s a yelp, and he sits up. “Do you want something cast?” Vasco: “Ale, wine.” “Wine, please sir. Do any of you want anything enchanted or cast or made?” Nanda: “No, not at all. You don’t need to hurry with that wine.” We give him food. “The enchanting is rather tiring.” Nanda: “You should take more breaks.” “I really should. I don’t know why it doesn’t occur to me.”

Vasco lights a pipe. Orange flame.

He looks at Nanda. “Were you here before?” “No, we haven’t been here before.” “Mm. Not that I’m looking much at people I suppose. Alright. I’m going to go to bed I think.” He stands up and starts to fall over. Nanda helps him up. “That would be good. A night’s sleep and I’ll be fine I’m sure.”

Outside, there’s a body being hauled up out of the harbour water. No sign of the guy with the knuckledusters, though it’s dark out there. We’re reluctant to use the disc inside the inn, want to get him on the ship first. Plan is more or less for Khalid to carry him to the boat in a hurry. Arcvanin will give him something to make him sleep. Son says next tide is 32 minutes after sunrise. Vasco and Khalid go up to the attic to look through a hatch. There’s a lot of junk up there, including a sword about twelve feet long. At Khalid’s request, Vasco goes to find out what boats are out there between the pier and open sea.

For a moment, the lantern above one guy’s head has a blue tinge to it. He’s coming toward Vasco. There’s a brief exchange of nods, and he continues up the street. Vacso continues down the quays, pretending to be a bit drunk. There’s a nominally clear pathway down the middle, but full of rope, netting, detritus like that. He gets to the end, pees into the sea and takes a good look around. He eventually arrives, bubbles emerging, at the door of the inn and is let in by Khalid. Describes the run, and the possible possessed. Seems like a good idea to get rid of him.

Vasco and Khalid go hunting, Vasco wearing his new pyjamas. Khalid removes his sword and does some hippy meditation shit. (Uses Crescent Lightning aspect.) It turns in his hands in a definite manner, but pointing right back the way he came. They boot it back to the inn.

Arcvanin’s just applied the potion, and his headed down the stairs. Stops. Points Nanda at one of the candles on a table, no one near it, burning clear blue. “Guys.” The innkeeper stares at it in complete befuddlement. “Is it burning blue? I’ll go and put out.” Nanda tells her sternly to sit down. Nanda goes back up to where Nahesh is.

Vasco crashes back into the common room. Nanda’s lighting candles upstairs, all orange. From the roof, Khalid can see a guy pressed up against the wall of the building, trying to eavesdrop. The eaves drop on him, or rather Khalid does. His victim explodes. Inside, the wall caves in, propelled by a ball of blue fire. The innkeeper is slightly upset. Vasco gives her a half royal. “Get him. We’re leaving now.” Arcvanin’s half way down the stairs with him. Nagan catches him. Nagan pelts toward Khalid, who’s picking himself up some distance away. He pelt afterwards. Into a boat. Nagan doggy paddles into the water, which seems to work. We pick up our own longboat, return the, er, picked-up one, and get to the ship. There’s some running along the piers where we were seen absconding. We get the hell away, then a small incredibly high speed boat comes pelting out of the harbour after us. We fire a ballista through its sail. It slows down a touch. There’s a figure on board gesturing in our direction with something like spellcasting. What’s on the boat is clearly undead. Out of range for dispel. Nanda takes evasive manoeuvres. The next bolt goes out and straight through the hull of the boat. There’s another blue fireball explosion. Nothing’s left but little bits of wreckage floating on the water.

We peel it out of the harbour.

Khalid: “Did they ever explode before?”
Nagan: “I’m pretty sure I would have noticed.”

We head back to Narbellow.

Khalid: “Both of them tonight have died at my hand. It could be just me. I think the best way to experiment with this is to kill more of them.”

We arrive in Narbellow well ahead of any possible pursuit at about 10:30 the next morning. Nahesh is still asleep. We bring him up to the temple.

Cordwainer’s impressed at how fast we got back. “We didn’t sleep much.” “This gentleman is the wizard?” “We’d appreciate if you didn’t broadcast that.” “We take in sailors all the time. The infirmary’s this way.” We explain the state we found him in, and that when he woke his first words were “is there anything you want done?” “That sounds like compulsion. My library is historical rather than magical, and I’m not that skilled a caster myself. You’d really want someone from one of the more hospitaler orders really.” At Nanda’s request, he leaves us alone to chat for a bit. Nanda proposes that she and Jess use the disc to travel to Taelcard and explain his state. The rest stay and guard, and Arcvanin can dose him up again if he awakes in the meantime.

Jess and Nanda step out and use the disc. There’s the sensation of wind rushing past us, this time without being yanked to one side. We land in the room we were accommodated in last time, and Horen is just coming into the room as we arrive.

Horen: “Good day” in perfectly calm tones.
Nanda: “We found Nahesh. He’s not well. Jess had a look at him, he thinks he’s suffering some sort of a compulsion, which is basically making him channel all the power in him into enchanting items.”
Horen: “Enchanting items.”
Nanda: “He’s putting all his effort into it. He’s looking unwell, uncomfortbale, and if anyone asks him about who he is, where he’s from, he moves away. He’s currently under sedation.”
Horen: “If you have managed to put him under sdation he’s not in his right mind. How many encxhantments has he aid?”
Jess: “HUndreds at least”
Horen: “Where did you find him?”
Nanda: “A place called Belkora in Pehlevi. He arrived wearing rags. He’s now wearing all sorts of things.”

She explains the stuff about possession. “We heard” “We found one in Belkora as well. They exploded in blue fire.” “That was not in the reports. The fast moving ship you saw before, I believe you said, off one of the isles.” “We didn’t bring him because we were afraid to move him through magical means in that state that he’s in.” We explain about the compulsion and that it’s probably from the dwarven artefact.

“There are compulsions and contingencies laid in on us so we can’t be controlled, and turned against Tajidar. Those are very effective and it is virtually certain - well, hitherto I could not have thought of a way around them, but to compel him to enchant things is a thing guaranteed to exhaust him and eventually kill him by draining his power. If he has already enchanted hundreds of things then it must be getting close to the stage where his power must be dwindling.”
Nanda: “There must be something can be done”
“We can shut down his power temporarily. But to do that I’m going to have to give you a device and you’re going to have to attach ti to him in a way he can’t take it off. I don’t know, if we had to do it here we could do it using magic which binds, but you’re going to have to tie it to him or something in such a way that he can’t get it off, and it will reduce him, just dispose of his power entirely temporarily. It will render him powerless.”
Jess: “Where would you have him brought after this?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”
Nanda: “What about the others?”
“Ahabad is not here and Zehanna is not disturbable. I’m going to bring Ahabad back.”

After a few minutes, there’s the sound as if someone had dropped a battlefield into the room below us. It stops. Ahabad appears in the doorway brushing himself down. “Good day. Horen has given me a summary of events. I am not entirely certain how to approach this and I must return fairly soon to what I was doing, but I think I can at least provide you with, as Horen said, a device to render him powerless and a potion that will hopefully return his memory. He may be able to explain something aboiut what happened at that stage, and we will be keeping a close eye on you. At that stage we will give you some further instruction. There are som eprocesses being undertaken by Zehanna and some of the others. Were he to be brought here and were that to spread to some of the others– you understand.”

He takes a small brass disc from a cupboard. Feels cold. “Tie that to him in some way that he can’t get it off. Even just tie it tightly around the chest, a loop so that he cant’ get at the knots will suffice, then give him this.” A small glass jar, stoppered up.

Nanda asks for a travel disc. We get a job lot of three.

“The place you came from is warded. Not heavily, but I would have to break the wards to put you in there. I can put you nearby?” We materialise outside the front door of Cordwainer’s house. He watches us pass by in confusion from his study. We return to the infirmary.

Arcvanin’s in charge of feeding him the potion. His eyes pop open and he screams. It gradually abates. He’s staring up wildly at Khalid.

Nanda: “Nahesh?”
Nahesh: “I am going to assume that my having no power is due to a depowering disc and not to my having exhausted it all enchanting things.”
Nanda: “It’s the disc.”
Nahesh: “Good. Can I sit up?”
Nanda: “You going to explode at us?”
Nahesh: “I can’t explode at you. I can’t sit up either.”
Vasco: “Please don’t take off the device.”
Nahesh: “No, I’m not going to, because it’s currently depowering the compulsion as well. I’d like that tea please.”

He sits up slowly and carefully, takes the tea, and drinks it slowly and carefully.

“After I spoke with you, I was on my way back to Taelcard thinking about what I had seen, and I came to a realisation. I’m not going to tell you this realisation, because I think it will have the same effect on you as it did on me, which was to compel me, getting around all the wards and contingencies, to go about depowering myself as rapidly as physically possible, without killing myself because that would have triggered the contingencies. It used my own knowledge to find the most efficient way of getting rid of my power. There was no spell cast on me. I was mid transit spell when it happened. I have been in a lot of places since, and every person that I met I offered to help enchant something. There are going to be a lot of problems cleaning up the things I have enchanted for some stupid purpose. IN the meantime I’m going to continue wearing this disc. You’re going to have an irritable depowered mage prince travelling with you for a while until such time as we work out a way to get this thing off me permanently. And yes, it’s transmitted not by contact but by understanding the concept, so I’m not going near the others in case they get the idea from something I let slip.” To the ceiling: “Folks, check in occasionally, but the constant scrying, turn it off.”

Nanda: “You’ll be delighted to know we’re sailing to Tomen tomorrow.”
Nahesh: “I assume that rather ferocious lady with the weapons is not going to be there waiting for me?”