The Dark Moon Rises (Prologue to Moonlight Shadows)
Mar 7, 2023 18:54:57 GMT
Anthony, Delilah Daybreaker, and 1 more like this
Post by Jaezred Vandree on Mar 7, 2023 18:54:57 GMT
Three months leading up to the ambush.
Vhaeraun’s Assassins had been watching him for some time now. Jaezred couldn’t say whether they followed him into the Witching Court or if they infiltrated the realm before he even stepped foot in it, but the fact is they are here now. Casting a long shadow over the small Church of Eilistraee and pointing poisoned daggers at the drow they deemed traitors to their own kind.
Queen Nicnevin was informed of this by Jaezred himself, and a task force was assembled to deal with it. Imryll, the spymaster. Yvonzara, the drow security specialist of the Mountain Palace. Gérard, leader of the werewolf pack that patrols the Witching Woods. Celia, the diviner, whose prowess had grown under the hag Lillian’s tutelage.
And Jaezred Vandree, the bait.
It was his idea to lay the trap with himself as the lure. As a former Chosen of Lolth who lived to tell the tale of his defection, he was a sumptuously high-value target in the eyes of the murderous rogues.
And thus, every week for three months, he shuffled into the hidden chapel to hear Sarin’s sermons, sitting down in the backmost pew with arms crossed, silent. The curious glances he drew from the other congregants were many and frequent, but no one dared to say a word to him. The beard he grew out for this purpose added to the sombre impression of a penitent sinner, in search of redemption from a violent past. Then, as expected, the gossip that Lord Jaezred is embracing the Dark Maiden’s faith was spreading like wildfire throughout the Mountain Palace. Certain to reach the ears of the assassins.
Inwardly, he tried to pretend that Sarin’s preachings mattered little to him. That it was all just an act.
Meanwhile, the rest of the task force had made frustratingly little progress in uncovering more about the assassins and their shadowy leader, a drow man known only as Oloth. Within the Court, Gérard and Yvonzara had been trying to keep a low profile and avoid scaring the already skittish drow worshippers of Eilistraee, fearing that if word got out there were assassins out for them, a good number might flee; the one or two careless infiltrators that they managed to pick off revealed nothing in interrogations. Imryll, who went out investigating leads in the wider Feywild, had similarly found little, though in confronting characters who asked a few too many questions about Eilistraeeans in the Witching Court, she managed to create a barrier that prevented further intrusion.
New arrivals to the Court reported being approached by tenebrous figures slinking out from the darkness, never giving names or details, only the promise of power and favour back home if they help “root out the unfaithful”.
The stalemate had gone on long enough, and Jaezred had heard (and seen) too much of Sarin. It was time for action.
A beautiful, moonlit spring, doubtlessly sacred to Eilistraee, had been discovered somewhere in the mist-shrouded Witching Woods. It was a fairly mundane little pond before this, but Sarin was pliable. “It seems,” Jaezred murmured a little too loudly after service one day, “to be a good place for that baptism we talked about.”
The gossip soon went out that Lord Jaezred and Sarin are holding a private ceremony in the woods. Just the two of them, under the full moon with barely a thread of clothing on their exquisitely muscled bodies. (A hint of scandal never hurt anybody.)
Everything was going as predicted. Now all he needed was a pack of heavily-armed adventurers and a fresh shave.
Seven days before the ambush.
Alone in a small, candlelit room, the air thick with fragrant incense-smoke, Jaezred shuffles his black-and-white cards. He ponders a single question to the spirits in his head, guided and formed by Celia’s previous divinations, as he lays out five tarot cards face-up in a cross-shaped arrangement on the table before him.
He blinks hard when he realises that the cards are all empty — within the illuminated frames where there ought to be illustrations of swords, cups, pentacles, or wands, there is nothing but blank space. The incense-smoke is growing thicker and thicker and soon clouded his vision entirely…
A shifting form of shadows lurks through dense trees, morphing between the shape of snakes and spiders, drakes and crawling humanoids, as it appears to be searching for something. Hunting.
The form reaches a clearing in the woods, bathed in silver moonlight, and stops in the centre, looking around the edges at the wall of trees encircling it. As it idles, there is a loud crack as a rope suddenly came taut. A snare rips up from the foliage covering the floor and binds itself around the now-writhing shape.
Faceless hunters storm the clearing. Featureless as they are, instant recognition sparks in Jaezred’s mind when he makes out their silhouettes: Oziah, Delilah, Toothy, Carnán, and himself. Their weapons are raised ready to attack. They rush from the trees to surround the form, then stop suddenly.
The snare is empty.
Despair and frustration ripples out among the faceless hunters, having been foiled in their careful planning.
As they sheath their weapons and turn to leave the clearing, Jaezred’s attention is brought back around to the figure of shadows, watching from the wings, a malevolent grin on its ever-shifting face. A long, clawed talon whips out from the shadows and swipes at the hunters…
When his eyes flutter open, the room is pitch-black. The flames on the candles have been snuffed out, the burnt incense has stopped smoking, and the tarot deck is no longer in his left hand. It sits in the centre of the table, the cards that were previously laid out having been returned to it, looking so neat it seems untouched.
Six days before the ambush.
Jaezred paces slowly around the fire pit in the reception side of Imryll’s chambers, rubbing his chin in thought. Imryll, Celia, and a sleepy He’lylbreia in panther form, swishing their tail back and forth, are seated on the plush sofas surrounding the fire pit, their gazes following him.
“I could say nothing and let this vision play out, and it’d be our best chance of capturing these assassins yet, but that could result in my companions getting seriously hurt,” he says.
“Perhaps… But they are the hardy sort, dear, I have no doubt they can look after themselves.”
“It seems to me that it only needs to seem that the plan has failed,” Celia chimes in. “You’re arranging this and are expecting it not to work, right?”
Imryll cocks an eyebrow at Celia as she continues pondering. The half-elven woman shuffles in her seat awkwardly.
Jaezred smirks. “You’re much more cunning than I thought. Is that what you picked up from being around me?” he teases Celia. “Yes. I like how you think, my dear. Besides, the last time I withheld information about a future I knew was happening, I almost killed two of my friends…”
He glances down at his body for a brief, silent moment. Some tiny part of his mind needs to be assured that there is not a spider’s abdomen down there.
“Well, if seeming is all that’s needed then we only need to play our parts, correct?” Imryll takes a sip of a deep red wine from a fluted glass that she wasn’t holding a couple of seconds ago. Her vibrant green eyes lock in place, calculating for a moment, before they flash with her usual charm. “In that case, I suppose it’s up to you, dear. Do you think they can save face during the ceremony and sell it, or would it be better keeping them in the dark? Either way, it appears you’ll be alone.”
He stops pacing and turns to look at her. “What do you mean, I will be alone?”
“Look at it like this… From what you’ve seen, we can assume they know this is a ruse to try and catch them out. Otherwise, why would we be holding this farce of a trap only for it to knowingly fail? Excluding the lovely skin show, of course,” she adds with a flirtatious smirk. “That means we need to act as though we had a plan and were expecting company. But when that ‘plan’ fails…what would we do? We wouldn’t all just hang around. They’ve been watching us, dear. For months now. They know our movements better than we know theirs. As soon as this plan fails, my love, I might linger long enough to lay my hands all over you, but I would be off on another errand for our magnificent Queen within the hour. I’ve no doubt if such a ‘plan’ were to fail, Gérard would turn sour and take his leave to bark at someone…or something. That means, I would need to leave — on an actual errand, mind you; who knows how thorough they are being. Gérard would need to return to his pack, and Sarin… Well, actually, he is a wild card here, who knows what he would do. Beyond stripping off, of course. That leaves you…and your friends.”
“Right… They would be waiting for you lot to leave, and making sure of it too,” Jaezred mutters. Imryll has a point there: if he lets his friends know of this, they may not be convincing enough in feigning disappointment, and if Vhaeraun’s Assassins suspect something is not right, they may very well call off the attack. On the other hand…letting these highly-trained, highly-skilled professional killers get the jump on them could have severe, even lethal, consequences.
What does he value more here? Can he trust in his friends?
Jaezred sighs and plops down on the sofa in between Celia and He’lylbreia, who let out a big, feline yawn. “It seems, at the end of the day, no matter what, it will be up to my little party of adventurers to capture these assassins. Then I might as well warn them. Toothy will certainly not be able to follow, but, well, he’ll do as I say nonetheless.”
They are about to ambush a group of assassins who know about the ambush, and are planning a counter-ambush of their own, but they know that they know and thus are prepared to do a counter-counter-ambush. He rubs his temples — it’s like an overly complicated game of sava. “Takes me back to Menzoberranzan. Everyone’s always fucking scheming…”
One day before the ambush.
It is the night before the big day, during dinner on the balcony overlooking the Witching Woods, when Imryll casually mentions that she will be heading to the Anuhlin Shambles after the ceremony, to meet with someone who could give her information on Vhaeraun’s Assassins.
Jaezred frowns, putting down his knife and fork. “Who is this contact, exactly? This sounds suspiciously like a lure.”
“Possibly, but then most sound that way. I don’t know who it is, someone that a friend of ours has spotted asking around about places to worship ‘alternative gods’.”
“Right… And they’re requesting to meet you on the day of our plan, in a town so isolated and defenceless that when an evil wizard put all the residents to sleep, nobody noticed for a whole month. Is there a way to get me to your side quickly in case it is a trap?”
“Oh no, dear, I will be meeting them! They just don’t know it yet…”
“I see…” he replies, the last syllable of the word lingering on his tongue. For all his glibness, he could not keep the worry from creeping into his voice. Perhaps it’s just paranoia, or perhaps his upbringing as a Menzoberranyr noble has made him proficient in detecting deadly schemes. Whatever the case, this is ringing every alarm in Jaezred’s head. Better to be safe than sorry.
He says nothing more on the matter, not wanting to make it seem like he’s doubting his beloved partner’s abilities. But he’ll need to find out later whether the Anuhlin Shambles has a teleportation circle…
(Continued in Moonlight Shadows.)
Co-written with the legendary Anthony
Vhaeraun’s Assassins had been watching him for some time now. Jaezred couldn’t say whether they followed him into the Witching Court or if they infiltrated the realm before he even stepped foot in it, but the fact is they are here now. Casting a long shadow over the small Church of Eilistraee and pointing poisoned daggers at the drow they deemed traitors to their own kind.
Queen Nicnevin was informed of this by Jaezred himself, and a task force was assembled to deal with it. Imryll, the spymaster. Yvonzara, the drow security specialist of the Mountain Palace. Gérard, leader of the werewolf pack that patrols the Witching Woods. Celia, the diviner, whose prowess had grown under the hag Lillian’s tutelage.
And Jaezred Vandree, the bait.
It was his idea to lay the trap with himself as the lure. As a former Chosen of Lolth who lived to tell the tale of his defection, he was a sumptuously high-value target in the eyes of the murderous rogues.
And thus, every week for three months, he shuffled into the hidden chapel to hear Sarin’s sermons, sitting down in the backmost pew with arms crossed, silent. The curious glances he drew from the other congregants were many and frequent, but no one dared to say a word to him. The beard he grew out for this purpose added to the sombre impression of a penitent sinner, in search of redemption from a violent past. Then, as expected, the gossip that Lord Jaezred is embracing the Dark Maiden’s faith was spreading like wildfire throughout the Mountain Palace. Certain to reach the ears of the assassins.
Inwardly, he tried to pretend that Sarin’s preachings mattered little to him. That it was all just an act.
Meanwhile, the rest of the task force had made frustratingly little progress in uncovering more about the assassins and their shadowy leader, a drow man known only as Oloth. Within the Court, Gérard and Yvonzara had been trying to keep a low profile and avoid scaring the already skittish drow worshippers of Eilistraee, fearing that if word got out there were assassins out for them, a good number might flee; the one or two careless infiltrators that they managed to pick off revealed nothing in interrogations. Imryll, who went out investigating leads in the wider Feywild, had similarly found little, though in confronting characters who asked a few too many questions about Eilistraeeans in the Witching Court, she managed to create a barrier that prevented further intrusion.
New arrivals to the Court reported being approached by tenebrous figures slinking out from the darkness, never giving names or details, only the promise of power and favour back home if they help “root out the unfaithful”.
The stalemate had gone on long enough, and Jaezred had heard (and seen) too much of Sarin. It was time for action.
A beautiful, moonlit spring, doubtlessly sacred to Eilistraee, had been discovered somewhere in the mist-shrouded Witching Woods. It was a fairly mundane little pond before this, but Sarin was pliable. “It seems,” Jaezred murmured a little too loudly after service one day, “to be a good place for that baptism we talked about.”
The gossip soon went out that Lord Jaezred and Sarin are holding a private ceremony in the woods. Just the two of them, under the full moon with barely a thread of clothing on their exquisitely muscled bodies. (A hint of scandal never hurt anybody.)
Everything was going as predicted. Now all he needed was a pack of heavily-armed adventurers and a fresh shave.
Seven days before the ambush.
Alone in a small, candlelit room, the air thick with fragrant incense-smoke, Jaezred shuffles his black-and-white cards. He ponders a single question to the spirits in his head, guided and formed by Celia’s previous divinations, as he lays out five tarot cards face-up in a cross-shaped arrangement on the table before him.
He blinks hard when he realises that the cards are all empty — within the illuminated frames where there ought to be illustrations of swords, cups, pentacles, or wands, there is nothing but blank space. The incense-smoke is growing thicker and thicker and soon clouded his vision entirely…
A shifting form of shadows lurks through dense trees, morphing between the shape of snakes and spiders, drakes and crawling humanoids, as it appears to be searching for something. Hunting.
The form reaches a clearing in the woods, bathed in silver moonlight, and stops in the centre, looking around the edges at the wall of trees encircling it. As it idles, there is a loud crack as a rope suddenly came taut. A snare rips up from the foliage covering the floor and binds itself around the now-writhing shape.
Faceless hunters storm the clearing. Featureless as they are, instant recognition sparks in Jaezred’s mind when he makes out their silhouettes: Oziah, Delilah, Toothy, Carnán, and himself. Their weapons are raised ready to attack. They rush from the trees to surround the form, then stop suddenly.
The snare is empty.
Despair and frustration ripples out among the faceless hunters, having been foiled in their careful planning.
As they sheath their weapons and turn to leave the clearing, Jaezred’s attention is brought back around to the figure of shadows, watching from the wings, a malevolent grin on its ever-shifting face. A long, clawed talon whips out from the shadows and swipes at the hunters…
When his eyes flutter open, the room is pitch-black. The flames on the candles have been snuffed out, the burnt incense has stopped smoking, and the tarot deck is no longer in his left hand. It sits in the centre of the table, the cards that were previously laid out having been returned to it, looking so neat it seems untouched.
Six days before the ambush.
Jaezred paces slowly around the fire pit in the reception side of Imryll’s chambers, rubbing his chin in thought. Imryll, Celia, and a sleepy He’lylbreia in panther form, swishing their tail back and forth, are seated on the plush sofas surrounding the fire pit, their gazes following him.
“I could say nothing and let this vision play out, and it’d be our best chance of capturing these assassins yet, but that could result in my companions getting seriously hurt,” he says.
“Perhaps… But they are the hardy sort, dear, I have no doubt they can look after themselves.”
“It seems to me that it only needs to seem that the plan has failed,” Celia chimes in. “You’re arranging this and are expecting it not to work, right?”
Imryll cocks an eyebrow at Celia as she continues pondering. The half-elven woman shuffles in her seat awkwardly.
Jaezred smirks. “You’re much more cunning than I thought. Is that what you picked up from being around me?” he teases Celia. “Yes. I like how you think, my dear. Besides, the last time I withheld information about a future I knew was happening, I almost killed two of my friends…”
He glances down at his body for a brief, silent moment. Some tiny part of his mind needs to be assured that there is not a spider’s abdomen down there.
“Well, if seeming is all that’s needed then we only need to play our parts, correct?” Imryll takes a sip of a deep red wine from a fluted glass that she wasn’t holding a couple of seconds ago. Her vibrant green eyes lock in place, calculating for a moment, before they flash with her usual charm. “In that case, I suppose it’s up to you, dear. Do you think they can save face during the ceremony and sell it, or would it be better keeping them in the dark? Either way, it appears you’ll be alone.”
He stops pacing and turns to look at her. “What do you mean, I will be alone?”
“Look at it like this… From what you’ve seen, we can assume they know this is a ruse to try and catch them out. Otherwise, why would we be holding this farce of a trap only for it to knowingly fail? Excluding the lovely skin show, of course,” she adds with a flirtatious smirk. “That means we need to act as though we had a plan and were expecting company. But when that ‘plan’ fails…what would we do? We wouldn’t all just hang around. They’ve been watching us, dear. For months now. They know our movements better than we know theirs. As soon as this plan fails, my love, I might linger long enough to lay my hands all over you, but I would be off on another errand for our magnificent Queen within the hour. I’ve no doubt if such a ‘plan’ were to fail, Gérard would turn sour and take his leave to bark at someone…or something. That means, I would need to leave — on an actual errand, mind you; who knows how thorough they are being. Gérard would need to return to his pack, and Sarin… Well, actually, he is a wild card here, who knows what he would do. Beyond stripping off, of course. That leaves you…and your friends.”
“Right… They would be waiting for you lot to leave, and making sure of it too,” Jaezred mutters. Imryll has a point there: if he lets his friends know of this, they may not be convincing enough in feigning disappointment, and if Vhaeraun’s Assassins suspect something is not right, they may very well call off the attack. On the other hand…letting these highly-trained, highly-skilled professional killers get the jump on them could have severe, even lethal, consequences.
What does he value more here? Can he trust in his friends?
Jaezred sighs and plops down on the sofa in between Celia and He’lylbreia, who let out a big, feline yawn. “It seems, at the end of the day, no matter what, it will be up to my little party of adventurers to capture these assassins. Then I might as well warn them. Toothy will certainly not be able to follow, but, well, he’ll do as I say nonetheless.”
They are about to ambush a group of assassins who know about the ambush, and are planning a counter-ambush of their own, but they know that they know and thus are prepared to do a counter-counter-ambush. He rubs his temples — it’s like an overly complicated game of sava. “Takes me back to Menzoberranzan. Everyone’s always fucking scheming…”
One day before the ambush.
It is the night before the big day, during dinner on the balcony overlooking the Witching Woods, when Imryll casually mentions that she will be heading to the Anuhlin Shambles after the ceremony, to meet with someone who could give her information on Vhaeraun’s Assassins.
Jaezred frowns, putting down his knife and fork. “Who is this contact, exactly? This sounds suspiciously like a lure.”
“Possibly, but then most sound that way. I don’t know who it is, someone that a friend of ours has spotted asking around about places to worship ‘alternative gods’.”
“Right… And they’re requesting to meet you on the day of our plan, in a town so isolated and defenceless that when an evil wizard put all the residents to sleep, nobody noticed for a whole month. Is there a way to get me to your side quickly in case it is a trap?”
“Oh no, dear, I will be meeting them! They just don’t know it yet…”
“I see…” he replies, the last syllable of the word lingering on his tongue. For all his glibness, he could not keep the worry from creeping into his voice. Perhaps it’s just paranoia, or perhaps his upbringing as a Menzoberranyr noble has made him proficient in detecting deadly schemes. Whatever the case, this is ringing every alarm in Jaezred’s head. Better to be safe than sorry.
He says nothing more on the matter, not wanting to make it seem like he’s doubting his beloved partner’s abilities. But he’ll need to find out later whether the Anuhlin Shambles has a teleportation circle…
(Continued in Moonlight Shadows.)
Co-written with the legendary Anthony