2020-12-22 – Come all ye faithful – Dwirhian
Jan 23, 2021 13:24:29 GMT
BB and Delilah Daybreaker like this
Post by Dwirhian on Jan 23, 2021 13:24:29 GMT
It’s called the Three-headed Dragon now, so you’ve heard, although they haven’t got round to changing the sign outside yet. Quite a few people have moved out already, though. The adventuring work will all be going to Fort Ettin now, they reckon, and it’s cheaper living there anyway. But you’re still here, for now, and so’s Dwirhian, who’s sitting across the table from you as you both tuck into lunch.
There’s free medical help there, too, she says. She explains that she was there a few days ago. There’s a tent in the courtyard and a human called Richart who bandages people up or gives them medicine for illnesses or even does healing magic for serious cases. He seems very stressed, or at least he did when she met him. Probably because most of his patients are adventurers who entertain themselves by fighting each other, then go to the tent to get patched up, and then just go out and start fighting again. There was another healer there, Dwirhian says, a halfling called Laurel, but they were just visiting. They seemed older and less uptight (though Dwirhian is a bit hesitant about this as she isn’t yet very confident at guessing human and halfling ages).
She mentions that there was a Candlenights market in the courtyard and the whole Fort seemed to be celebrating the festival, or getting ready to. That’s why she was there, actually (she says with a smile): to meet up with BB and go to the market together. They don’t have Candlenights where Dwirhian comes from, she says. What’s it all about?
You explain some of the traditions and typical activities – at least the ones you’re familiar with. They probably do it differently in different places, you say.
After listening with great interest to everything you can think of to say about Candlenights, Dwirhian asks whether it ever involves demons at all. Startled, you say no, as far as you’re aware demon stuff isn’t very compatible with how most people celebrate Candlenights. She explains that when she was at Fort Ettin there was some demon-worship going on but she couldn’t tell whether it was Candlenights-related or just coincidental.
You can’t let this casual remark pass without asking for the full story. You swallow your last mouthful of lunch, push your plate to one side, and lean forward. There was what going on? Well, says Dwirhian, if it’s story-time then I’m having dessert. You want any?
A little while later, between bites of cherrybread, Dwirhian tells you about the demon-summoner of Fort Ettin. BB was showing her the vertical flower-garden growing up one of the walls of the keep when they were greeted by an intriguing masked person called Delilah who made BB blush adorably by asking whether Dwirhian was her girlfriend.
Well at this point some in-charge type person got up on a box and blew a horn to get the attention of everyone who was milling around the market. Welcome to the market, he said, blah blah blah, and by the way the tabards (that’s what they call the invisible servants with visible clothes, Dwirhian explains) need some help dealing with ghosts. Well, she chuckles, that made a lot of people suddenly get interested in being somewhere else. But she and BB stuck around to help, and so did Delilah and Richart and Laurel, plus a red-haired half-orc called Kalta who seemed quiet but friendly. The in-charge man told the group to get more details from the tabards in the kitchen, and then immediately walked away, leaving the newly formed team puzzling about how to get information from invisible people who can’t talk.
You’ve learned by now that, much as Dwirhian loves telling and hearing stories, gossip, and all sorts of random information, she doesn’t like talk when she thinks it’s time for action. So you aren’t surprised when she says that after the others had spent a few moments trading ideas on the subject, she was the one to say, Why don’t we just go and find out?
She pauses while Bally clears away your plates, and as the halfling walks away Dwirhian leans closer to you and says, So do you think the new people are keeping all the old staff on? Bally’s still here, and I thought I heard Tiana’s voice earlier. Maybe, you say. Or they might just be working during the hand-over? Anyway, what happened with the ghosts? And what about the demons? You know ghosts are different than demons, right?
I know, Dwirhian laughs, I know! Although – a thought suddenly seems to strike her – could you have a ghost of a demon? Hmm… Okay, she says as you stir impatiently, okay, I’ll get back to the story. So basically the whole thing about ‘how do we talk to the tabards’ didn’t matter in the end because we talked to the chef, someone called Reki –
Wait, you say, Reki? A dragonborn?
Now who’s interrupting the story? Dwirhian smiles.
Yeah yeah, touché, you grumble, but Reki’s one of the chefs here! Or they were, anyway.
Oh! I hadn’t met them – them? – them before!
Well, I guess now we know not everybody’s still working here. Anyway, you say, story. Ghosts.
Dwirhian sits back, runs both palms over her shorn head, and resumes the tale. For the previous couple of days, the chef told the group, the tabards’ work had been disrupted by unseen forces knocking over boxes in the store-rooms, pulling books off shelves in the library, breaking decorations in the common room, and making ghostly noises in each place.
The common room was the investigators’ next stop, where a tabard showed them the broken baubles, a geographer told them he had heard at least two different sounds, and Delilah shrewdly found a scrap of torn fabric with letters written on it – giving off vibes of conjuration magic, Laurel noticed. Next, in the chapel, Delilah found another scrap with more letters, and BB took a moment to make a sweet little floral shrine to Iallanis. A third lettered piece turned up in the library, where another scholar told the team that he’d been working there when some invisible creatures came in and disarranged some books but, oddly, did nothing to interfere with him or his books or papers.
Piecing the three bits of fabric together, the group read ‘theos’ and Richart suddenly recalled a demon named Romitheos. After he tried and failed to get one of the tabards to look up information about Romitheos in the library, the scholar volunteered – Oh thirst! Dwirhian exclaims, suddenly sitting forward. We never went back! He said he’d look stuff up and we should come back in half an hour and we just… didn’t… She bursts into embarrassed laughter, covers her face with her hands, and then puts her head down onto the table with her arms folded on top of it. Well, says her muffled and still laughing voice, I guess I can never go back there ever again. That poor guy… My grandma’s soul must be absolutely boiling right now.
Eventually she finishes cringing and continues the story, describing how the group left the library and passed through the trophy room. As they noticed that nothing had been disturbed except the one item (a dragon’s skull) that could be moved without damaging anything, they all agreed what seemed to be happening here. It was like the most perfunctory haunting possible. But were the ghosts just being extremely lazy or were they deliberately trying to avoid any real destruction?
Answers came in the fourth of the fort’s corner towers, where the team found the store-room in mid-haunting. Dwirhian is a little vague about what exactly what happened after Delilah opened the door because it was at that point that BB accidentally cast a spell of stupefaction on herself and Dwirhian’s attention was focused on trying to help her snap out of it. By the time she looked into the room, three large but child-like floating apparitions were explaining sheepishly to Laurel and Delilah that they’d been summoned and ordered to scare people, destroy things, and place the scraps of fabric in the four corners of the fort. They couldn’t resist the commands they’d been given, the best they could do was to put as little effort as possible into the scaring and the destroying – which is what they’d been doing. They didn’t know who had summoned them but they said he was human and lived in one of the ground floor rooms on the north side, the second one along from the north-west tower.
Leaving the poor ghosts to very slowly and unenthusiastically ransack the store-room, the group (led by Delilah, with Dwirhian following close behind) went to the room they’d pointed out. Sure enough, the room contained a rather homespun shrine to Romitheos and an angry man who greeted Delilah with a crossbow bolt. She casually snatched it out of the air and threw it back at him (so cool! says Dwirhian), but things took a nasty turn as he dropped the crossbow and started doing some serious injuries to her with an axe. Then BB walked up behind Dwirhian and just pointed through the doorway at Tim and said: No. And he just stopped still and couldn’t move at all! (Isn’t she amazing! says Dwirhian.)
Once Dwirhian had disarmed the frozen demon-worshipper (who, the group later discovered, was called Tim) and Laurel had neutralized the magic of his shrine, there were cheers from the tower. The three ghosts swooped down, thanking the little band and wishing them happy Candlenights before swirling away into a glittering cloud.
What happened to, er… Tim? you ask. Someone from the fort took him away, says Dwirhian. Like, someone who works there. Called Sethrokah or something like that. Don’t know what happened after that. I guess they probably kicked him out. Or. Punished him? I don’t really know whether the fort is like… a hotel or… a village?
Dwirhian shrugs. Hey, but speaking of villages – she brightens as she says this – after that, BB took me to New Hillborrow! It’s very cute, have you been? She’s got this field all full of different kinds of flowers...
There’s free medical help there, too, she says. She explains that she was there a few days ago. There’s a tent in the courtyard and a human called Richart who bandages people up or gives them medicine for illnesses or even does healing magic for serious cases. He seems very stressed, or at least he did when she met him. Probably because most of his patients are adventurers who entertain themselves by fighting each other, then go to the tent to get patched up, and then just go out and start fighting again. There was another healer there, Dwirhian says, a halfling called Laurel, but they were just visiting. They seemed older and less uptight (though Dwirhian is a bit hesitant about this as she isn’t yet very confident at guessing human and halfling ages).
She mentions that there was a Candlenights market in the courtyard and the whole Fort seemed to be celebrating the festival, or getting ready to. That’s why she was there, actually (she says with a smile): to meet up with BB and go to the market together. They don’t have Candlenights where Dwirhian comes from, she says. What’s it all about?
You explain some of the traditions and typical activities – at least the ones you’re familiar with. They probably do it differently in different places, you say.
After listening with great interest to everything you can think of to say about Candlenights, Dwirhian asks whether it ever involves demons at all. Startled, you say no, as far as you’re aware demon stuff isn’t very compatible with how most people celebrate Candlenights. She explains that when she was at Fort Ettin there was some demon-worship going on but she couldn’t tell whether it was Candlenights-related or just coincidental.
You can’t let this casual remark pass without asking for the full story. You swallow your last mouthful of lunch, push your plate to one side, and lean forward. There was what going on? Well, says Dwirhian, if it’s story-time then I’m having dessert. You want any?
A little while later, between bites of cherrybread, Dwirhian tells you about the demon-summoner of Fort Ettin. BB was showing her the vertical flower-garden growing up one of the walls of the keep when they were greeted by an intriguing masked person called Delilah who made BB blush adorably by asking whether Dwirhian was her girlfriend.
Well at this point some in-charge type person got up on a box and blew a horn to get the attention of everyone who was milling around the market. Welcome to the market, he said, blah blah blah, and by the way the tabards (that’s what they call the invisible servants with visible clothes, Dwirhian explains) need some help dealing with ghosts. Well, she chuckles, that made a lot of people suddenly get interested in being somewhere else. But she and BB stuck around to help, and so did Delilah and Richart and Laurel, plus a red-haired half-orc called Kalta who seemed quiet but friendly. The in-charge man told the group to get more details from the tabards in the kitchen, and then immediately walked away, leaving the newly formed team puzzling about how to get information from invisible people who can’t talk.
You’ve learned by now that, much as Dwirhian loves telling and hearing stories, gossip, and all sorts of random information, she doesn’t like talk when she thinks it’s time for action. So you aren’t surprised when she says that after the others had spent a few moments trading ideas on the subject, she was the one to say, Why don’t we just go and find out?
She pauses while Bally clears away your plates, and as the halfling walks away Dwirhian leans closer to you and says, So do you think the new people are keeping all the old staff on? Bally’s still here, and I thought I heard Tiana’s voice earlier. Maybe, you say. Or they might just be working during the hand-over? Anyway, what happened with the ghosts? And what about the demons? You know ghosts are different than demons, right?
I know, Dwirhian laughs, I know! Although – a thought suddenly seems to strike her – could you have a ghost of a demon? Hmm… Okay, she says as you stir impatiently, okay, I’ll get back to the story. So basically the whole thing about ‘how do we talk to the tabards’ didn’t matter in the end because we talked to the chef, someone called Reki –
Wait, you say, Reki? A dragonborn?
Now who’s interrupting the story? Dwirhian smiles.
Yeah yeah, touché, you grumble, but Reki’s one of the chefs here! Or they were, anyway.
Oh! I hadn’t met them – them? – them before!
Well, I guess now we know not everybody’s still working here. Anyway, you say, story. Ghosts.
Dwirhian sits back, runs both palms over her shorn head, and resumes the tale. For the previous couple of days, the chef told the group, the tabards’ work had been disrupted by unseen forces knocking over boxes in the store-rooms, pulling books off shelves in the library, breaking decorations in the common room, and making ghostly noises in each place.
The common room was the investigators’ next stop, where a tabard showed them the broken baubles, a geographer told them he had heard at least two different sounds, and Delilah shrewdly found a scrap of torn fabric with letters written on it – giving off vibes of conjuration magic, Laurel noticed. Next, in the chapel, Delilah found another scrap with more letters, and BB took a moment to make a sweet little floral shrine to Iallanis. A third lettered piece turned up in the library, where another scholar told the team that he’d been working there when some invisible creatures came in and disarranged some books but, oddly, did nothing to interfere with him or his books or papers.
Piecing the three bits of fabric together, the group read ‘theos’ and Richart suddenly recalled a demon named Romitheos. After he tried and failed to get one of the tabards to look up information about Romitheos in the library, the scholar volunteered – Oh thirst! Dwirhian exclaims, suddenly sitting forward. We never went back! He said he’d look stuff up and we should come back in half an hour and we just… didn’t… She bursts into embarrassed laughter, covers her face with her hands, and then puts her head down onto the table with her arms folded on top of it. Well, says her muffled and still laughing voice, I guess I can never go back there ever again. That poor guy… My grandma’s soul must be absolutely boiling right now.
Eventually she finishes cringing and continues the story, describing how the group left the library and passed through the trophy room. As they noticed that nothing had been disturbed except the one item (a dragon’s skull) that could be moved without damaging anything, they all agreed what seemed to be happening here. It was like the most perfunctory haunting possible. But were the ghosts just being extremely lazy or were they deliberately trying to avoid any real destruction?
Answers came in the fourth of the fort’s corner towers, where the team found the store-room in mid-haunting. Dwirhian is a little vague about what exactly what happened after Delilah opened the door because it was at that point that BB accidentally cast a spell of stupefaction on herself and Dwirhian’s attention was focused on trying to help her snap out of it. By the time she looked into the room, three large but child-like floating apparitions were explaining sheepishly to Laurel and Delilah that they’d been summoned and ordered to scare people, destroy things, and place the scraps of fabric in the four corners of the fort. They couldn’t resist the commands they’d been given, the best they could do was to put as little effort as possible into the scaring and the destroying – which is what they’d been doing. They didn’t know who had summoned them but they said he was human and lived in one of the ground floor rooms on the north side, the second one along from the north-west tower.
Leaving the poor ghosts to very slowly and unenthusiastically ransack the store-room, the group (led by Delilah, with Dwirhian following close behind) went to the room they’d pointed out. Sure enough, the room contained a rather homespun shrine to Romitheos and an angry man who greeted Delilah with a crossbow bolt. She casually snatched it out of the air and threw it back at him (so cool! says Dwirhian), but things took a nasty turn as he dropped the crossbow and started doing some serious injuries to her with an axe. Then BB walked up behind Dwirhian and just pointed through the doorway at Tim and said: No. And he just stopped still and couldn’t move at all! (Isn’t she amazing! says Dwirhian.)
Once Dwirhian had disarmed the frozen demon-worshipper (who, the group later discovered, was called Tim) and Laurel had neutralized the magic of his shrine, there were cheers from the tower. The three ghosts swooped down, thanking the little band and wishing them happy Candlenights before swirling away into a glittering cloud.
What happened to, er… Tim? you ask. Someone from the fort took him away, says Dwirhian. Like, someone who works there. Called Sethrokah or something like that. Don’t know what happened after that. I guess they probably kicked him out. Or. Punished him? I don’t really know whether the fort is like… a hotel or… a village?
Dwirhian shrugs. Hey, but speaking of villages – she brightens as she says this – after that, BB took me to New Hillborrow! It’s very cute, have you been? She’s got this field all full of different kinds of flowers...
