Post by Jaezred Vandree on Apr 22, 2023 18:28:08 GMT
(Following after Si vis pacem, para bellum and Secrets of the Season Parts 1 & 2. The sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Whisky. See also Mark of Darkness.)
“Excuse me, Dr. Haltuhr. I hear you’re looking for information about Drusilia?”
Archie’s shoulders flinch a little at the sudden voice and shadow looming over him from behind. But he is put a little at ease to recognise the voice.
Still, with some alarm to his own voice, Archie replies, “…Lord Vandree. Why yes. You have heard correctly,” and then with an almost fully regained composure, “…how do you do?”
Jaezred smiles as he folds his hands behind his back. “I’m well, thank you. How about yourself? I hope I didn’t scare you?”
“Oh no. Not at all,” he lies out of politeness and embarrassment. “I’ve been quite busy with matters in the Feywild. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Temple For All Seasons?”
Jaezred tilts his slightly to one side in curiosity. “No, actually. Hmm, shall we go to the Fiore Popolare to sit down? It’s close by. Unless of course, you’re sick of the Feywild by now.”
“If anything my recent exhaustive excursion has elevated my interest in the Feywild. A cocktail at the Fiore Popolare would be delightful.”
The drow nods, turns around, and beckons for Archie to follow him.
As the two gentlemen step into the fey-inspired cocktail bar, Jaezred almost immediately begins flirting with the young, red-haired woman behind the bar, the famed mixologist Leona Autumn, and orders a vodka martini for himself. Archie, for his part, orders a vieux carré.
“I feel I deserve this after yesterday’s exhaustive time navigating a trap in the temple. But first…” Holding his cocktail up and towards Lord Vandree, Archie offers a toast, “Thank you ever so much for your introduction to Master Veridian, and by extension his father. They have been very kind acting as my mentors for wizard matters. So, to ‘mutual aid’.”
“Hah, glad to hear that Veridian Pentaghast is helpful to at least one person. To mutual aid!” Jaezred grins and clinks his glass against Archie’s. He throws a wink at Leona as he slides a handful of silver over towards her, paying for the two of them, before leading Archie to an empty table.
“Now, to answer the question you’ve been asking the whole town, Doctor: yes, I have met Drusilia a couple of times before. Although, what’s this about temples and traps?”
“Well,” Archie begins, putting both palms flat on the table and leaning back, “I feel I should start at the very beginning of not how I came to know of the lady Drusilia, but how Kavel met her many months ago before the Winter Fayre. But, before diving straight in at the beginning let me just advertise what to expect.”
And Archie does just that. In order to raise interest in the tales he is about to tell, second-hand or otherwise, he lays out some highlights for his host:
- The offer to remove a Mark of Air & Darkness
- The temple and discovery of a hunting horn
- A curious interaction between a mouse and man
- The battle with a stone chimaera in the Summer Warrens
- The temple’s Seelie and Unseelie aspects
- A curious bird-like symbol
- A cold iron prison
“And now, Lord Vandree, unless any of those headlines particularly have piqued your interest, I’ll start with the offer made to a certain Watch Sergeant who was interested in removing what he didn’t realise at first was a rather awkward mark on his hand to be seen in a Seelie Court.”
“Wait… A bird-like symbol?”
“Ah. Very well then. Yes. I’ll draw it for you.” A multi-coloured luminescent, magical quill appears in the doctor’s right hand, and he begins to put quill tip to table. “…Worry not. My ink, I can erase it with ease. It is not my intention to permanently deface the proprietor’s table. Now, let me see…”
“What do you make of this? Have you seen it before?”
Jaezred’s eyes widen like saucers. “How could that be…? Where did you see this symbol, in the temple?”
“Yes. It was behind a very large secured door, on an elevated platform, beside what appeared to be the nest of a stone chimaera. The temple, I’m led to believe, is aeons old. Older than most present fey memories. I presume, therefore, that the symbol must be fey in origin. Where have you come across it, Lord Vandree?”
“Recently, in Kundar and K’ul Goran, as a brooch being worn by people campaigning on anti-Dawnlands platforms.” He scrunches up his brow in confusion. “Alright, Doctor, please — tell your story from the beginning.”
“…K’ul Goran, you say? I’ve been there, it’s majoritively a minotaur society, not fey. Alright, let’s see if my tales aid either one of us piece together a puzzle…”
Archie takes a deep breath, and begins, “Kavel told me the mark of Air & Darkness on Derthaad’s left hand did not go down well with the sprite people of the Damphenite Tangle in the Summer Court. The sergeant wished to have it removed…”
The doctor comes to the end of his tale.
“…And no one. Not a single person. Artolos, Galan, any of the invited researchers from the entire Courts, no one seemed to recognise the symbol.”
Jaezred pinches the bridge of his nose, looking slightly exasperated. “Right. So a group of adventurers gave the horn found in the temple to Drusilia. Which may or may not have once belonged to Corellon. And no one you spoke to in the Court of Harmony knows what this horn does?”
“Exactly. Artolos and his research team didn’t know, or it might have been that they weren’t sharing their suspicions. Is the Horn of Corellon a famously lost artefact in the Feywild?”
“I don’t know, I’ve not heard of such a thing before. But well, according to our people’s stories, after the first elves were banished from Elvenhome by Corellon, some of them tarried in the Feywild whilst others moved on to settle in the Material Plane. ‘Our ancestral tears watered the earth of the Feywild,’ so sings the poet. So if this hunting horn truly belonged to Corellon, then it may be an artefact from that ancient age. But I am only speculating here. In any case, I think we can agree, Doctor, that giving an unknown artefact to an enigmatic being was…unwise.”
“I agree,” Archie says before tilting his head side to side and speaking for others, “in that party’s defence, they saw an opportunity to correct an earlier error of judgement. The bargain they struck did also appear to conclude amicably for both parties — the Watch Sergeant has a new and mark-less arm. Also, Ms. Oussviir was, I believe from Kavel’s account, teleported back to her home in the Witching Court without harm, upon her request whilst the others returned here.”
Archie straightens his back, before continuing, “Nothing I’ve said, of course, absolves Drusilia from suspicion. Perhaps you could tell me something of her character from your own encounters with her?”
Jaezred leans back against his seat as a waitress delivers his new drink — an old fashioned — to their table. He picks up the heavy glass and swirls it gently. “Drusilia is, as I said, an enigma. I have only encountered her in odd places in the Feywild, once in a party in the Wandering Court, and once in a desolate land destroyed by war. Doing gods know what. She is a red hag, much older than she looks. She uses black birds as her calling card. She has a daughter who was living in the Feythorn Forest but is now trapped in the Feywild for whatever reason. She is trying to save that daughter, though other forces are trying to thwart her. Are you familiar with a red-haired elf called Jasper?”
“…Yes. I believe this is the same Jasper who had the curious interaction with Omnis, the clothed mouse that sits on Artolos’s shoulder. The curious interaction happened at the Summer Warrens, just before the battle with the chimaera. Jasper and Omnis reached the chimaera before us — it was actually a surprise to find that the pair weren’t with us at the time. When we got there, a couple from my party saw the pair, and then witnessed Jasper teleport away. This was the last I saw of Jasper. Corilla swears he was rubbing or otherwise defacing a mark on the chimaera’s plinth. Now. Yesterday, at the Temple For All Seasons, Jasper was not present among Artolos’ research aids. Artolos informed us though that he had spoken to Jasper since the excursion to the Summer Warrens, and reassured us that Jasper was safe. I later checked with Galan, one of the other research aids, if he had heard from Jasper himself — he had not.”
Archie steeples his fingers. “I do not know what to make of this. Galan seemed uncertain himself. So, Lord Vandree, is there a relationship of sorts between Jasper and Drusilia?”
“They’re certainly at odds with each other, but Jasper’s motives are as vague as Drusilia herself. Tell me more of this chimaera. It was a living statue? What was it doing in the Summer Warrens?”
“Unclear. Artolos invited us to the Summer Warrens to help with research into the temple — we were, to be honest, invited more for our manual efforts in regards to protection than our intellectual contribution. Whilst Artolos consulted the leaves of trees as if they were pages in a book, he found something related to the temple — this led us to a location in the Warrens where we found the stone chimaera as a statue, before it came to life. In the temple, however, we found what appeared to be the chimaera’s nest, where we also found the bird-like symbol. How the chimaera came to reside in the Warrens is, as I’ve mentioned, unclear.”
“A statue does not need a nest, now would it? Perhaps it was not always a creature of stone?”
The corners of Archie’s mouth lift ever so slightly before he responds, “…The Feywild is a wondrous place to us non-fey. Who am I to assume a stone creature of the Feywild couldn’t have a nest? But, yes. The chimaera once being organic is a strong possibility. I agree.”
“It sounds to me, from the animal-headed ‘keys’ that the first party had to collect to open the door, that the chimaera was an integral part of the temple,” Jaezred points out. “You said there was a cold iron prison behind the doors — whatever they were keeping in there, it frightened the fey enough to use their most hated substance to create a prison. Perhaps the chimaera was a guardian, an extra measure of protection? Perhaps someone led it away from the temple to delve into the dungeon?”
Jaezred pauses to take a large swig from his glass and contemplates further. “But what does the symbol have to do with current events in Kantas and Joran? Some shadowy entity is trying to turn the Dawnlands’ allies against it and is using this symbol to identify each other. This Jasper fellow knows something, I’m sure of it.”
“I only met him in the company of researchers. Who is Jasper?” asks Archie.
“I’ve only met him briefly myself, at the same party where I met Drusilia. Look, if you wish to find out more, my good friend Lady Oziah Daybreaker is looking into this whole deal with Drusilia, her daughter, and Jasper. I would suggest getting in touch with her ladyship if you’re interested. Although…” Jaezred tips the glass into mouth, finishing the bourbon drink before saying, “…if I were you, I would be careful to not trifle too much with Drusilia. She has the power of an archfey.”
“Archfey?” Archie looks to the side. “Well, she detached and reattached a new arm for someone without any trouble. Perhaps she is too much for a wizard who has yet to create a clone of himself…”
He turns back to face Jaezred. “I might focus my attention more on the mysteries of the symbol as far as they relate to the Temple of All Seasons. Perhaps, you, Lord Jaezred, could inform Lady Daybreaker of the news you’ve heard from me, if you feel it was relevant to her?”
“Yes, I shall do that… If you do learn more about this temple, please share it with me, Doctor. I will keep an eye on the Dawnlands’ neighbours for any new developments. It’s a good thing that spiders have many eyes, eh?” He shoots Archie a small grin. “Speaking of, do you or your roommates know anyone from the dwarven city of Vorsthold?”
“Mendal thinks he’d receive the warmest of welcomes there on accounts of his clan crafter talents, but otherwise he’s never mentioned the place. Are you wishing to know if the bird-like symbol has been seen there? I do not mean to speak ill of my dear friend, but he’s long overdue an adventure.”
“Yes indeed — more broadly, whether there is a political movement to distance Vorsthold from the Dawnlands as well. Unfortunately I’d never managed to make a good friend there on account of my people being their lifelong enemies. Perhaps Mr. Vultan can gather up an interested party and have a little holiday?”
“I’ll have a word with him.”
Archie picks up his drink and downs the remaining drops.
“Thank you ever so much for the drinks, Lord Vandree. If I discover more information, I’ll… Well, I’m sure you’ll contact me. Is there anything more I could do for you?”
“Not at the moment. Thank you, Dr. Haltuhr, this has been a very interesting conversation. Until we meet again…”
Co-written with the intrepid Andy Davy
“Excuse me, Dr. Haltuhr. I hear you’re looking for information about Drusilia?”
Archie’s shoulders flinch a little at the sudden voice and shadow looming over him from behind. But he is put a little at ease to recognise the voice.
Still, with some alarm to his own voice, Archie replies, “…Lord Vandree. Why yes. You have heard correctly,” and then with an almost fully regained composure, “…how do you do?”
Jaezred smiles as he folds his hands behind his back. “I’m well, thank you. How about yourself? I hope I didn’t scare you?”
“Oh no. Not at all,” he lies out of politeness and embarrassment. “I’ve been quite busy with matters in the Feywild. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Temple For All Seasons?”
Jaezred tilts his slightly to one side in curiosity. “No, actually. Hmm, shall we go to the Fiore Popolare to sit down? It’s close by. Unless of course, you’re sick of the Feywild by now.”
“If anything my recent exhaustive excursion has elevated my interest in the Feywild. A cocktail at the Fiore Popolare would be delightful.”
The drow nods, turns around, and beckons for Archie to follow him.
As the two gentlemen step into the fey-inspired cocktail bar, Jaezred almost immediately begins flirting with the young, red-haired woman behind the bar, the famed mixologist Leona Autumn, and orders a vodka martini for himself. Archie, for his part, orders a vieux carré.
“I feel I deserve this after yesterday’s exhaustive time navigating a trap in the temple. But first…” Holding his cocktail up and towards Lord Vandree, Archie offers a toast, “Thank you ever so much for your introduction to Master Veridian, and by extension his father. They have been very kind acting as my mentors for wizard matters. So, to ‘mutual aid’.”
“Hah, glad to hear that Veridian Pentaghast is helpful to at least one person. To mutual aid!” Jaezred grins and clinks his glass against Archie’s. He throws a wink at Leona as he slides a handful of silver over towards her, paying for the two of them, before leading Archie to an empty table.
“Now, to answer the question you’ve been asking the whole town, Doctor: yes, I have met Drusilia a couple of times before. Although, what’s this about temples and traps?”
“Well,” Archie begins, putting both palms flat on the table and leaning back, “I feel I should start at the very beginning of not how I came to know of the lady Drusilia, but how Kavel met her many months ago before the Winter Fayre. But, before diving straight in at the beginning let me just advertise what to expect.”
And Archie does just that. In order to raise interest in the tales he is about to tell, second-hand or otherwise, he lays out some highlights for his host:
- The offer to remove a Mark of Air & Darkness
- The temple and discovery of a hunting horn
- A curious interaction between a mouse and man
- The battle with a stone chimaera in the Summer Warrens
- The temple’s Seelie and Unseelie aspects
- A curious bird-like symbol
- A cold iron prison
“And now, Lord Vandree, unless any of those headlines particularly have piqued your interest, I’ll start with the offer made to a certain Watch Sergeant who was interested in removing what he didn’t realise at first was a rather awkward mark on his hand to be seen in a Seelie Court.”
“Wait… A bird-like symbol?”
“Ah. Very well then. Yes. I’ll draw it for you.” A multi-coloured luminescent, magical quill appears in the doctor’s right hand, and he begins to put quill tip to table. “…Worry not. My ink, I can erase it with ease. It is not my intention to permanently deface the proprietor’s table. Now, let me see…”
“What do you make of this? Have you seen it before?”
Jaezred’s eyes widen like saucers. “How could that be…? Where did you see this symbol, in the temple?”
“Yes. It was behind a very large secured door, on an elevated platform, beside what appeared to be the nest of a stone chimaera. The temple, I’m led to believe, is aeons old. Older than most present fey memories. I presume, therefore, that the symbol must be fey in origin. Where have you come across it, Lord Vandree?”
“Recently, in Kundar and K’ul Goran, as a brooch being worn by people campaigning on anti-Dawnlands platforms.” He scrunches up his brow in confusion. “Alright, Doctor, please — tell your story from the beginning.”
“…K’ul Goran, you say? I’ve been there, it’s majoritively a minotaur society, not fey. Alright, let’s see if my tales aid either one of us piece together a puzzle…”
Archie takes a deep breath, and begins, “Kavel told me the mark of Air & Darkness on Derthaad’s left hand did not go down well with the sprite people of the Damphenite Tangle in the Summer Court. The sergeant wished to have it removed…”
The doctor comes to the end of his tale.
“…And no one. Not a single person. Artolos, Galan, any of the invited researchers from the entire Courts, no one seemed to recognise the symbol.”
Jaezred pinches the bridge of his nose, looking slightly exasperated. “Right. So a group of adventurers gave the horn found in the temple to Drusilia. Which may or may not have once belonged to Corellon. And no one you spoke to in the Court of Harmony knows what this horn does?”
“Exactly. Artolos and his research team didn’t know, or it might have been that they weren’t sharing their suspicions. Is the Horn of Corellon a famously lost artefact in the Feywild?”
“I don’t know, I’ve not heard of such a thing before. But well, according to our people’s stories, after the first elves were banished from Elvenhome by Corellon, some of them tarried in the Feywild whilst others moved on to settle in the Material Plane. ‘Our ancestral tears watered the earth of the Feywild,’ so sings the poet. So if this hunting horn truly belonged to Corellon, then it may be an artefact from that ancient age. But I am only speculating here. In any case, I think we can agree, Doctor, that giving an unknown artefact to an enigmatic being was…unwise.”
“I agree,” Archie says before tilting his head side to side and speaking for others, “in that party’s defence, they saw an opportunity to correct an earlier error of judgement. The bargain they struck did also appear to conclude amicably for both parties — the Watch Sergeant has a new and mark-less arm. Also, Ms. Oussviir was, I believe from Kavel’s account, teleported back to her home in the Witching Court without harm, upon her request whilst the others returned here.”
Archie straightens his back, before continuing, “Nothing I’ve said, of course, absolves Drusilia from suspicion. Perhaps you could tell me something of her character from your own encounters with her?”
Jaezred leans back against his seat as a waitress delivers his new drink — an old fashioned — to their table. He picks up the heavy glass and swirls it gently. “Drusilia is, as I said, an enigma. I have only encountered her in odd places in the Feywild, once in a party in the Wandering Court, and once in a desolate land destroyed by war. Doing gods know what. She is a red hag, much older than she looks. She uses black birds as her calling card. She has a daughter who was living in the Feythorn Forest but is now trapped in the Feywild for whatever reason. She is trying to save that daughter, though other forces are trying to thwart her. Are you familiar with a red-haired elf called Jasper?”
“…Yes. I believe this is the same Jasper who had the curious interaction with Omnis, the clothed mouse that sits on Artolos’s shoulder. The curious interaction happened at the Summer Warrens, just before the battle with the chimaera. Jasper and Omnis reached the chimaera before us — it was actually a surprise to find that the pair weren’t with us at the time. When we got there, a couple from my party saw the pair, and then witnessed Jasper teleport away. This was the last I saw of Jasper. Corilla swears he was rubbing or otherwise defacing a mark on the chimaera’s plinth. Now. Yesterday, at the Temple For All Seasons, Jasper was not present among Artolos’ research aids. Artolos informed us though that he had spoken to Jasper since the excursion to the Summer Warrens, and reassured us that Jasper was safe. I later checked with Galan, one of the other research aids, if he had heard from Jasper himself — he had not.”
Archie steeples his fingers. “I do not know what to make of this. Galan seemed uncertain himself. So, Lord Vandree, is there a relationship of sorts between Jasper and Drusilia?”
“They’re certainly at odds with each other, but Jasper’s motives are as vague as Drusilia herself. Tell me more of this chimaera. It was a living statue? What was it doing in the Summer Warrens?”
“Unclear. Artolos invited us to the Summer Warrens to help with research into the temple — we were, to be honest, invited more for our manual efforts in regards to protection than our intellectual contribution. Whilst Artolos consulted the leaves of trees as if they were pages in a book, he found something related to the temple — this led us to a location in the Warrens where we found the stone chimaera as a statue, before it came to life. In the temple, however, we found what appeared to be the chimaera’s nest, where we also found the bird-like symbol. How the chimaera came to reside in the Warrens is, as I’ve mentioned, unclear.”
“A statue does not need a nest, now would it? Perhaps it was not always a creature of stone?”
The corners of Archie’s mouth lift ever so slightly before he responds, “…The Feywild is a wondrous place to us non-fey. Who am I to assume a stone creature of the Feywild couldn’t have a nest? But, yes. The chimaera once being organic is a strong possibility. I agree.”
“It sounds to me, from the animal-headed ‘keys’ that the first party had to collect to open the door, that the chimaera was an integral part of the temple,” Jaezred points out. “You said there was a cold iron prison behind the doors — whatever they were keeping in there, it frightened the fey enough to use their most hated substance to create a prison. Perhaps the chimaera was a guardian, an extra measure of protection? Perhaps someone led it away from the temple to delve into the dungeon?”
Jaezred pauses to take a large swig from his glass and contemplates further. “But what does the symbol have to do with current events in Kantas and Joran? Some shadowy entity is trying to turn the Dawnlands’ allies against it and is using this symbol to identify each other. This Jasper fellow knows something, I’m sure of it.”
“I only met him in the company of researchers. Who is Jasper?” asks Archie.
“I’ve only met him briefly myself, at the same party where I met Drusilia. Look, if you wish to find out more, my good friend Lady Oziah Daybreaker is looking into this whole deal with Drusilia, her daughter, and Jasper. I would suggest getting in touch with her ladyship if you’re interested. Although…” Jaezred tips the glass into mouth, finishing the bourbon drink before saying, “…if I were you, I would be careful to not trifle too much with Drusilia. She has the power of an archfey.”
“Archfey?” Archie looks to the side. “Well, she detached and reattached a new arm for someone without any trouble. Perhaps she is too much for a wizard who has yet to create a clone of himself…”
He turns back to face Jaezred. “I might focus my attention more on the mysteries of the symbol as far as they relate to the Temple of All Seasons. Perhaps, you, Lord Jaezred, could inform Lady Daybreaker of the news you’ve heard from me, if you feel it was relevant to her?”
“Yes, I shall do that… If you do learn more about this temple, please share it with me, Doctor. I will keep an eye on the Dawnlands’ neighbours for any new developments. It’s a good thing that spiders have many eyes, eh?” He shoots Archie a small grin. “Speaking of, do you or your roommates know anyone from the dwarven city of Vorsthold?”
“Mendal thinks he’d receive the warmest of welcomes there on accounts of his clan crafter talents, but otherwise he’s never mentioned the place. Are you wishing to know if the bird-like symbol has been seen there? I do not mean to speak ill of my dear friend, but he’s long overdue an adventure.”
“Yes indeed — more broadly, whether there is a political movement to distance Vorsthold from the Dawnlands as well. Unfortunately I’d never managed to make a good friend there on account of my people being their lifelong enemies. Perhaps Mr. Vultan can gather up an interested party and have a little holiday?”
“I’ll have a word with him.”
Archie picks up his drink and downs the remaining drops.
“Thank you ever so much for the drinks, Lord Vandree. If I discover more information, I’ll… Well, I’m sure you’ll contact me. Is there anything more I could do for you?”
“Not at the moment. Thank you, Dr. Haltuhr, this has been a very interesting conversation. Until we meet again…”
Co-written with the intrepid Andy Davy