politik - session mike 26/5/22 nadine

i had expidited my journey through the portal using a old guild badge from the 'clear steel traveling smithy' , one off the many things i still hold dear from my time with my late husband, kantas was a place we both wished to visit before our ailments had interfered - i dont know if using a expired guild badge to skip the red tape of portal travel was imoral, however the stories i'll be able to tell my dearest Forest on the alps of mount celestia will be worth it . Being thouroughly surprised by this invitation to adventure i attended this meeting at the designated destination , to hopefully be illuminated on all the information the invitaion did not impart.

in any new town or city you may find yourself endlessly turned around whenever you step foot outside' , luckily the meeting place was not too far from my inn .

our small party assembled piecemeal ,untill a large ornate carriage swooped infront of us and beckoning us to enter was a striking woman with platnium white hair and a stern yet etheral visage .

if there were a contest our employer , lady von wald, would remain the most remarkable out of our collection of comrades; though adventureres seasoned or new have an air about them and none of my companions fell short.

ivoreth duskrider , an eladrin man of inditerminate age who may have experience as a battlemage , Glint a confident fire genasi , and leonida an curt teifling ,all took in their surrondings and the stately woman amoungst them . at first i , the short statured harengon toting around the large quilted toolbox-weapon in my winter coat , wouldve thought to be the only anachronistic element , even aesthetically , but as our journey unfolded it was filled with ever more mystery .

outside the windows of the oppulent carriage the citscape left our view unnaturally fast, and we began to travel through mist and air . Lady von wald explained her employment proposition as we rode journey towards a large manor beyond anywhere i vaguely knew as some part of kantas , or by reaction of others may not have always been a part of kantas at all .

she explained that she was in contest for succession of the von wald estate but currently her brother , an unworthy mad brute , was in line for the inheritance . she wanted us to find someway to persuade her father, an ineffectual grieving widower, to her support or disinherit her brother ; her second sibling an aloof , lacksidasical and tormented soul was of no consequence to the contestment for inheritance ; out of a family cursed by madness ofcourse she was most deserving if only her father could be lucid enough to see . the means of succession , a debate , coup , or otherwise , didnt matter to much to lady von wald , she refused to debase herself even to persuade us of her merit but gave us leave to explore the grounds untill dinner where her father would be present .

gothic granduer permiated everything here , almost impossible for Kantas a plane so recently discovered ;

doors opened and things moved by the unseen hands of some ghast bound to the von walds service , vorst.

with a few hours till dinner we were able to explore the manor and as some additional request see if the youngest sibling might come to dinner if someone would ask them - their particular malady convinces them that they are surounded by ghosts or facsimilies of people they knew and has driven them into prolonged isolation up in their tower. 


locating this tormented tertiary child wasnt difficult, laid out on a chaise lounge surronded by candles and parchment the tower room was remarkbly romantic. another platinium haired beauty in their own gaunt way , their responses never seemed too surprised, but the presence of new people was novel and clarification that we were in fact corporeal was always met with a open impassive gaze. they spoke of poetry , people , loneliness and longing , the pained and strained relations in the family, maybe they could be persuaded to attend dinner even if they believed they were dining with the dearly departed .

getting slightly turned around but eager to explore everything the alter to ilmater at the grounds chapel was destroyed , the damage looked quite old though. a howl in the distance bolstered us to get to safer places like the animals we could not see.

with more rooms than people we met neither the ineffectual lord or the brutish inheritor for sometime while we explored the lower floors and grounds . a series of silent and empty rooms greeted each of us as curious hands opened doors and crossed many threshholds. somewhere on the second floor that curiosity was not saited but further ignited as we came upon a room so wholey and intentionally destroyed ,with a large ingraved slab and remnants of magical paraphenalia ; reclaiiming shredded parchment imparted to us a mix of schools of magic , evocation , transmutaion , necromancy ; whose magic was this, to what ends , and further more what exactly happened here .


off down the hall a muffled murmuring tipped off party members that perhaps we werent as alone on the floor as we had thought . glint elected to turn invisible and spy near the door what he could see or hear , i did not learn for some time what was in that room exactly as coming to the door ,after a quetionable distraction , was a tall well built man comparable in age to the lady ,and the platinum hair and etheral gauntness that belied the von walds as family, along with a widely unimpressed and expectant face looking towards a space of plain air - most likely where glint was standing poised to slip past him if the ruse had been sucessful. a conversation ensued between the young lord and the air for a moment before glint dropped the invisibility and openly spoke to the young lord about the family dinner , his face remaining genial though i could imagine his internal landscape at that moment.

we pointedly all escorted eachother to the dinning hall to hide any alterior inclinations we may have had ; at that point i had thought all , but do believe someone had slipped away back into the mystery room the young lord had left. while we walked we tried to talk about family and the importance of connection , i myself feeling empathy and sorrow for the youngest sibling . the youngest had earned this brothers ire with the escapade in the broken room , an unholy ritual to bring back their mother. the young lord living up to his brutish discription discribes with derission and vigor how he destroyed everything in that room . with some effort there was a wistful moment where he thought about mending that relationship , being kinder 'before the end'. he explains with a clear conviction that when he assends to lord he will level the house kill all the members of the family , including the monster in the woods , a presumed incurable family member , to free their souls - then follow those acts by errecting a temple to his god and then sacrifice himself to atone for his own acursed soul .

unsure where to steer the conversation we followed in silence and filed into the dinning room while letting the information of this premeditated familicide sink-in .

the dining experience devolved at a rate i cannot accurately describe , the yougest sibling , though , avoided most of it since they made some greetings and left quite quickly. but to explain the cause of the incident , i must return us , in our minds ad time , to the mystery room the young lord emerged from. soon after many in the party had began to escort the young lord ivorveth duskstrider returned to the room and saw more clearly what glint had only gleaned through a crack - a cicle of lit candles carefully placed in a dark room , surronding a podium , and in that center also a rosary with the insignia of ilmater. 

sitting down the current duke often turned to an empty seat to his left , still set for a person ; i dont know any approprriate ettiqutte but i would assume that is where his late wife sat at meal times. the behaivour seemed to perturb the lady and sadden the youngest sibling , the younglord sat with a stern countenance ignoring the behaivour. 

ivoreth had managed to sit down to eat without notice , show the rosary to the party a backup plan to provoke the young lord due to inherit , but also encouraged glint to conjure an illusion of the late lady von wald in her designated seat to maybe support the argument we would field in the young lady von walds favor. once the illusion was in place conversation became heated as many things were said , both insults from the young lord and our own support for the oung lady to limited useflulness , the current lord taking no offence to how the young lord treats geusts or the severity of his plans for familicide - even when utilising that last resort ivoreth brazenly donned the young lords rosary to start an argument unbecoming of a lordthe young lord begane to chase him across the table and room with murderous intent. glint at this comotion changed the visage of the late lady von wald to be tear stricken and upset as glint imploried the lord to think of the lady's values , it was a good effort however only slightly taken out of his own stupor the lord became transfixed on this image of his wife with an avalanche of emotion only held back by his continued inability to act or live in the here and now. 


ivoreth was mortally wounded twice in the fight , at some points the lord von wald did look between the emotional illusion and his surroundings , taking it as a good sign the young lady van wold shouted at us to leave for our own safety as she interfered with her brothers persuit of ivoreth; we may have done enough for her schemes , vorst would give us our pay and send us on our way . 


i wonder for the fortunes of this fragile family .