2020-11-19 - A conspiracy of ravens – Dwirhian
Nov 28, 2020 23:13:51 GMT
Igrainne (RETIRED), Osborin, and 2 more like this
Post by Dwirhian on Nov 28, 2020 23:13:51 GMT
Approaching the bar at the Ettin you find Mavunda teasingly interrogating Dwirhian. It seems that gossip passes quickly among staff at the town’s various inns. Bartholomew, who works at the Gilded Mirror, told Mavunda that he saw Dwirhian there the other day buying a drink for a half-elf who seemed rather interested in her. And Miriam, who works at the Four Fair Winds, told Mavunda that the half-elf in question is a musician called Osborin who stays at the Winds, and added that, later the same night, Dwirhian came to the tavern with an arm around Osborin and went to his room.
Dwirhian laughs at all this. Osborin was drunk as a skunk that night, she says, and wouldn’t have made it to his bed if she hadn’t held him upright all the way from the Mirror to his room at the Winds. Once he got there he wasn’t in a position to do anything but fall right to sleep!
Ah, you say, joining in the cross-examination: but that doesn’t explain why Dwirhian was buying him drinks in the first place. Well, that was… okay, she says, that story takes a bit more telling.
Nikja, Dwirhian’s friend with the white hair and horns, had a kind of a party for people who were interested in her project to set up a shrine to the Raven Queen. She put a lot of effort into it, there were loads of candles and there was that strange wine she likes and double-baked bread crusts and ‘dip’ that tasted a bit like cheese and a bit like the colour black. Dwirhian was there – she doesn’t really do religion, but she wanted to show support – and there were some other Raven Queen followers called Bones and Ulsar and Amelog, and Alenea and Bugloss from here in the Ettin, and a guy called Gestalt who wasn’t actually there for the party but has just come to visit the Lassitude memorial, and Osborin came too. Being a bit of a jerk, actually. Didn’t show any interest in the Raven Queen, said he’d only come for the free alcohol, and then when Dwirhian mentioned that death and the afterlife aren’t really such an issue for elves, he tried to use that as an excuse to leave by saying that if she didn’t want to be there, he would be willing to walk her home. The cheek!
Well, seeing that he didn’t want to be there, Dwirhian wanted to get him gone before he hurt Nikja’s feelings, so she agreed to walk with him to the cemetery gates – which didn’t go quite as planned because he took this as a sign that she was interested in him! Of course you and Mavunda both start asking the crucial question – and were you? – but not quickly enough, because Dwirhian has already started describing how she noticed a tomb glowing faintly as they passed it. No, she insists, this is important for the story, shush.
The tomb seemed a lot older than the town, which seemed a bit odd. And so did the indecipherable runes. And also the glowing. And the voice whispering ‘take the test’, although Dwirhian herself didn’t hear that so it could have been Osborin imagining things. Anyway at this point Dwirhian’s plan to get him to leave the party really fell apart because the two of them heard Nikja’s voice behind them shouting ‘Hey Osborin, come back, I’ve got wine’.
So they went back to rejoin the others and tell them about the glowing tombstone. Gestalt was pretty relaxed about it. According to him, glowing and whispering are things that some of the graves in Daring cemetery do sometimes. And indeed when Dwirhian led the others over to the tomb in question, Gestalt confirmed that it was one of the ones that ‘act up sometimes’. He even saw someone – a drow woman, apparently – vanish into it once and then get ‘spat out’ later. He didn’t seem to think that was especially strange.
Anyway everyone went to have a look at the tomb and Alenea and Nikja started prodding it and casting spells on it. Something about all this, or maybe the talk about the drow woman, seemed to make Ulsar and Amelog uneasy – they were drow themselves, Dwirhian explains, from Aeschira, they said, and they’d come to talk to someone called Glaxx who’s apparently this town’s ambassador there… anyway that’s all whatever, but the point is that they got uncomfortable and then Osborin got suspicious of them and started questioning them. They said they didn’t know anything about it but when the two of them went off on their own to get some more wine Alenea turned invisible and followed them. She soon came back and reported that they were saying things like I didn’t know the place for the test was here and we should tell the matron mother. Whatever that means.
It was then that Nikja blew up the tomb.
Dwirhian laughs lightly at your and Mavunda’s expressions of surprise. Yeah, she says, it was pretty bad. The tomb itself wasn’t really damaged but Nikja had found traces of some dark dried liquid where it had run down the tombstone to a patch of ground where there was a small sphere that had two runic dice in it. She decided it would be a good idea to cut her finger and drip a little fresh blood down the same line onto the globe and boom, flash, a wave of fire and force. Dwirhian herself was hurt very badly but was able to repair the worst of it with a little magic.
Of course the noise brought the two priests running back and they were not happy. But Osborin – Dwirhian rolls her eyes saying this – decided that because he’d heard the voice earlier, he must be ‘the chosen one’ to take the test, so he went right ahead and dripped some of his blood onto the dice-ball. Luckily his announcement of his special importance had given everyone else time to get out of the way before the second explosion.
The two drow were getting very agitated at this point, and this only got worse when Nikja and Alenea started accusing them of keeping secrets and trying to stop them leaving. But leaving is exactly what they did.
Well, Dwirhian says, she personally felt like that was a pretty reasonable thing for them to do. Sure, it seemed like they knew more about the tomb than they wanted to admit, but so what? She was as curious as anyone else – at least as much, she smiles, acknowledging that curiosity may be among her more prominent features. But, she says, someone you’ve just met a couple of hours ago doesn’t owe you everything they know. Still, Nikja had seemed so happy that two devotees of the Raven Queen from a far-away city had come to her party and been interested in helping her, so Dwirhian jogged after the priests to try to bring them around again.
It wasn’t an easy conversation, especially as the two men didn’t stop for it but kept striding out of the cemetery and into the centre of town as she walked and talked alongside them. They made their way from street to street, with Dwirhian apologizing and acknowledging the chaos and recklessness of what had happened, asking them not to hold Nikja’s friends’ actions against her and to focus on the good they could do together for the Raven Queen. By the time they were nearing the Portal Plaza, the priests had stopped threatening to report the whole business to the ambassador and making pointed remarks about it ‘not boding well for the signing of the Accords’, and had even grudgingly agreed that Nikja could meet them for a drink in the Gilded Mirror, along with any of her friends who would promise to behave themselves.
When Dwirhian got back to the cemetery she found a rather gloomy scene: Osborin and Bugloss talking quietly, Bones studying the now rather sooty tomb, Alenea rolling the dice again and again, and Nikja sitting sadly on the ground drinking wine straight from the bottle. A hug and a brief report of the drow’s partial change of heart cheered Nikja up quite a bit, and the whole group headed to the Gilded Mirror.
Which is why, says Dwirhian pointedly, she was buying Osborin – and Alenea, too – drinks at the bar of the Mirror in the early hours of the morning: to keep them occupied while Nikja, Bugloss, and Bones tried to mend fences with Ulsar and Amelog. And why Osborin was drunk enough to invite Dwirhian back to his room at the Four Fair Winds, and then drunk enough to need her help to get there himself, not to mention probably too drunk to be any good in bed and certainly way too drunk for Dwirhian to want to find out.
Mavunda gives her a sly smile. So if he’d been sober…?
Okay, okay, Dwirhian laughs. Look, he’s a smug jackass. He’s probably a terrible lay even when he’s sober. But… he is very pretty. So. She shrugs. Maybe just once.
Not as pretty as you though, she winks at Mavunda. You know where to find me.
Ah, go on with you, Mavunda chuckles. Now, you two want another drink or what?
Dwirhian laughs at all this. Osborin was drunk as a skunk that night, she says, and wouldn’t have made it to his bed if she hadn’t held him upright all the way from the Mirror to his room at the Winds. Once he got there he wasn’t in a position to do anything but fall right to sleep!
Ah, you say, joining in the cross-examination: but that doesn’t explain why Dwirhian was buying him drinks in the first place. Well, that was… okay, she says, that story takes a bit more telling.
Nikja, Dwirhian’s friend with the white hair and horns, had a kind of a party for people who were interested in her project to set up a shrine to the Raven Queen. She put a lot of effort into it, there were loads of candles and there was that strange wine she likes and double-baked bread crusts and ‘dip’ that tasted a bit like cheese and a bit like the colour black. Dwirhian was there – she doesn’t really do religion, but she wanted to show support – and there were some other Raven Queen followers called Bones and Ulsar and Amelog, and Alenea and Bugloss from here in the Ettin, and a guy called Gestalt who wasn’t actually there for the party but has just come to visit the Lassitude memorial, and Osborin came too. Being a bit of a jerk, actually. Didn’t show any interest in the Raven Queen, said he’d only come for the free alcohol, and then when Dwirhian mentioned that death and the afterlife aren’t really such an issue for elves, he tried to use that as an excuse to leave by saying that if she didn’t want to be there, he would be willing to walk her home. The cheek!
Well, seeing that he didn’t want to be there, Dwirhian wanted to get him gone before he hurt Nikja’s feelings, so she agreed to walk with him to the cemetery gates – which didn’t go quite as planned because he took this as a sign that she was interested in him! Of course you and Mavunda both start asking the crucial question – and were you? – but not quickly enough, because Dwirhian has already started describing how she noticed a tomb glowing faintly as they passed it. No, she insists, this is important for the story, shush.
The tomb seemed a lot older than the town, which seemed a bit odd. And so did the indecipherable runes. And also the glowing. And the voice whispering ‘take the test’, although Dwirhian herself didn’t hear that so it could have been Osborin imagining things. Anyway at this point Dwirhian’s plan to get him to leave the party really fell apart because the two of them heard Nikja’s voice behind them shouting ‘Hey Osborin, come back, I’ve got wine’.
So they went back to rejoin the others and tell them about the glowing tombstone. Gestalt was pretty relaxed about it. According to him, glowing and whispering are things that some of the graves in Daring cemetery do sometimes. And indeed when Dwirhian led the others over to the tomb in question, Gestalt confirmed that it was one of the ones that ‘act up sometimes’. He even saw someone – a drow woman, apparently – vanish into it once and then get ‘spat out’ later. He didn’t seem to think that was especially strange.
Anyway everyone went to have a look at the tomb and Alenea and Nikja started prodding it and casting spells on it. Something about all this, or maybe the talk about the drow woman, seemed to make Ulsar and Amelog uneasy – they were drow themselves, Dwirhian explains, from Aeschira, they said, and they’d come to talk to someone called Glaxx who’s apparently this town’s ambassador there… anyway that’s all whatever, but the point is that they got uncomfortable and then Osborin got suspicious of them and started questioning them. They said they didn’t know anything about it but when the two of them went off on their own to get some more wine Alenea turned invisible and followed them. She soon came back and reported that they were saying things like I didn’t know the place for the test was here and we should tell the matron mother. Whatever that means.
It was then that Nikja blew up the tomb.
Dwirhian laughs lightly at your and Mavunda’s expressions of surprise. Yeah, she says, it was pretty bad. The tomb itself wasn’t really damaged but Nikja had found traces of some dark dried liquid where it had run down the tombstone to a patch of ground where there was a small sphere that had two runic dice in it. She decided it would be a good idea to cut her finger and drip a little fresh blood down the same line onto the globe and boom, flash, a wave of fire and force. Dwirhian herself was hurt very badly but was able to repair the worst of it with a little magic.
Of course the noise brought the two priests running back and they were not happy. But Osborin – Dwirhian rolls her eyes saying this – decided that because he’d heard the voice earlier, he must be ‘the chosen one’ to take the test, so he went right ahead and dripped some of his blood onto the dice-ball. Luckily his announcement of his special importance had given everyone else time to get out of the way before the second explosion.
The two drow were getting very agitated at this point, and this only got worse when Nikja and Alenea started accusing them of keeping secrets and trying to stop them leaving. But leaving is exactly what they did.
Well, Dwirhian says, she personally felt like that was a pretty reasonable thing for them to do. Sure, it seemed like they knew more about the tomb than they wanted to admit, but so what? She was as curious as anyone else – at least as much, she smiles, acknowledging that curiosity may be among her more prominent features. But, she says, someone you’ve just met a couple of hours ago doesn’t owe you everything they know. Still, Nikja had seemed so happy that two devotees of the Raven Queen from a far-away city had come to her party and been interested in helping her, so Dwirhian jogged after the priests to try to bring them around again.
It wasn’t an easy conversation, especially as the two men didn’t stop for it but kept striding out of the cemetery and into the centre of town as she walked and talked alongside them. They made their way from street to street, with Dwirhian apologizing and acknowledging the chaos and recklessness of what had happened, asking them not to hold Nikja’s friends’ actions against her and to focus on the good they could do together for the Raven Queen. By the time they were nearing the Portal Plaza, the priests had stopped threatening to report the whole business to the ambassador and making pointed remarks about it ‘not boding well for the signing of the Accords’, and had even grudgingly agreed that Nikja could meet them for a drink in the Gilded Mirror, along with any of her friends who would promise to behave themselves.
When Dwirhian got back to the cemetery she found a rather gloomy scene: Osborin and Bugloss talking quietly, Bones studying the now rather sooty tomb, Alenea rolling the dice again and again, and Nikja sitting sadly on the ground drinking wine straight from the bottle. A hug and a brief report of the drow’s partial change of heart cheered Nikja up quite a bit, and the whole group headed to the Gilded Mirror.
Which is why, says Dwirhian pointedly, she was buying Osborin – and Alenea, too – drinks at the bar of the Mirror in the early hours of the morning: to keep them occupied while Nikja, Bugloss, and Bones tried to mend fences with Ulsar and Amelog. And why Osborin was drunk enough to invite Dwirhian back to his room at the Four Fair Winds, and then drunk enough to need her help to get there himself, not to mention probably too drunk to be any good in bed and certainly way too drunk for Dwirhian to want to find out.
Mavunda gives her a sly smile. So if he’d been sober…?
Okay, okay, Dwirhian laughs. Look, he’s a smug jackass. He’s probably a terrible lay even when he’s sober. But… he is very pretty. So. She shrugs. Maybe just once.
Not as pretty as you though, she winks at Mavunda. You know where to find me.
Ah, go on with you, Mavunda chuckles. Now, you two want another drink or what?