Give Me a Ring - Archie, Kem, and Mendal
Sept 28, 2024 18:10:12 GMT
Andy D, Nic, and 1 more like this
Post by Tom M on Sept 28, 2024 18:10:12 GMT
Co-written with Andy D along with willemf and Nic
Set immediately after the events of What is Hekrati?
There was a knock at Mendal’s door the day after the party.
Mendal huffed as he walked towards the front door. He couldn't believe that in a house of three people, he, as the eldest, was having to answer it. Tribute was not being properly paid!
Mendal reached the front door and muttered about tributes before opening it.
There was a heavily tattooed human in an open leather vest revealing dirty bandages strapped around his chest leaning by the wall of the porch.
“Hey Mendal, you look well. I hope I’m not interrupting something?”
Mendal looked Kem up and down before addressing him.
"Well you're not dead, Kem. Well done. I seem to get all the adventuring dead at my door these days."
Mendal made space for Kem to enter the house.
"Now get in. You look like a beggar."
“Not dead yet.” He said with a smile as he stepped inside, the door closing behind him.
"Let's go to courtyard, I'll heal you up..." Mendal looked Kem over one more time and narrowed his eyes suspiciously postulating a hidden problem that needed addressing.
"... nothing contagious under those bandages, is there? Or elsewhere?"
Kem raised an eyebrow, “What? Oh right. That’s just a new tattoo healing in. Don’t worry about it. I wanted to talk to you about something else.” He said as he reached into his pocket to retrieve a decorative ring.
Kem was just a little too quick to change the subject. A little too flamboyant pulling out the ring to provide a visual distraction.
Mendal squinted his eyes disbelievingly as he reached to take the ring from Kem.
Imbuing his words with the healing magic from the spell Healing Word, he said to Kem, "just a tattoo, hey?"
Before the Healing Word could go off Kem loudly and distractingly yelled out “HEY!” At the top of his lungs.
“I’ve been letting this settle in for weeks. If you fuck it up by casting spells on me without my consent you can see what happens next.”
Mendal's spell was interrupted. This made Mendal all the more suspicious as he stared up probingly at Kem's face.
With a cool ease, Mendal said, "Alright fine. No healing. Moradin won't hold a grudge against spurning his divine healing and neither will I." And then with suspicion embedded in his words, Mendal added, "Could have sworn there was a tattoo there already?!"
Kem held his stare angrily for a few seconds before looking away and back again. The face that returned was back to the usual cocky smirk.
“It wasn’t finished and I had some extra work done on it.” He smiled broadly and disarmingly, “It hurt like the hells and I don’t want to have to do it all again. I’m sure you understand. Sorry if I got a bit… touchy.”
Mendal suspected Kem was holding out on something, his eyes remained narrowed. But the ring had caught his interest. Mendal glanced at it and then back up at Kem. With a forced smile he said, "Alright Kem Skaragi, hold more of your secrets. Give me that ring, and let's go to the courtyard."
Kem rolled his eyes and handed him the ring, “Look if you’re going to say that like you know everything about me I can at least tell you how to use it right. My last name is Roşu. I am of the Skaragi people. Saying it the way you do is like me calling you ‘Mendal Dwarf’.”
The smirk came back, “And in return for me sharing something I’d like to ask for a little favour.”
"Favour?!" Mendal said with wide-eyed suspicion whilst taking the ring.
“Well, let me tell you a story. A story of a charmingly self centred young elf who has become engaged to someone who is very definitely a Hekrati agent who’s using him for his family’s money. A generous Skaraga who went along with him took the opportunity to do some… networking. In addition to getting some useful information from their high priestess, he met another mysterious and handsome tiefling gentleman who wouldn’t tell him his name, but gave him this ring that could be used to contact him once.”
Mendal paused to think for a bit then spoke. "No doubt who you are in that story. But this self centred elf? Doesn't happen to be an idiot from a wealthy family who brings half his possessions with him everywhere?"
Kem smiled, “Sounds like you’ve met, Rumoured to have proposed to a dragon?”
“I was there for that one.”
“Anyway, you and I know that hiding a name matters and that once you know a name someone doesn’t want you to know you’ve got an advantage.” Kem continued with significant side-eye before nodding toward the ring, “Are you following me?”
"Hmmm," Mendal mused out loud. "If I can't help you, Archie old boy might be able to. Plus I'm sure he'd like to hear about his viol instructor's recent foolishness."
***
Mendal led Kem into the courtyard and introduced him to Archie, his older, human wizard friend, who was writing in his journal.
"Kem says your idiot viol instructor's gone and proposed again, this time to a Hekrati member," Mendal said, updating Archie on current affairs. "And there's this ring," Mendal held up the ring for Archie to see whilst offering Kem a seat, as he himself sat down to join Archie at the courtyard table.
"What can you tell us about who you... acquired the ring from?" The elderly wizard asked his guest.
Mendal butted in before Kem could answer, "and how did you get it?"
Kem nodded to Archie with a smile as he entered and took the seat, waiting politely.
“Oh the big news isn’t the proposal: this one accepted.” He leant forward and stage whispered before sitting back up. “But gossip aside I was given it as a gift from a sexy, mysterious, tiefling vampire who wouldn’t tell me his name. You two know how it is.”
"Why would he give you a ring? Has he got what Zaspar's got and proposes to everyone?” Mendal asked, or better yet, interrogated.
“Because it has a single cast of Sending stored in it and he wanted to control the means by which I could contact him. That Sending goes straight to him so somewhere in the magic… stuff…” Kem waved a hand around a little dismissively,“ is his name. Right?”
Mendal looked at Archie for the answer.
Acknowledging that the floor was his, Archie voiced his opinion on Kem's assessment of the Sending spell. "I'm afraid, Kem, there may be nothing that identifies the caster's name in that spell. Either one of us could verify for you if the ring indeed has the Sending spell imbued into it, and if it has more than one charge to cast said spell. We should also be able to identify if any other spell is affecting the ring too. The caster's name though, I don't see how we would determine that."
Kem shrugged with a sigh, “That’s disappointing, but I suppose any information you could give me I might be able to make use of.”
Mendal volunteered Archie to cast Identify, and so he did.
The spell washed over the small simple ring, strangely enough the ring was dull, mundane, but the wizard’s identify spell caught something inside the ring, a loop of... something. It reminded Archie of a spell scroll.
"Well this is slightly unusual," Archie said to both Kem and Mendal. Then addressing Kem in particular, Archie continued, "the owner of this house Kem, Kavel, he has one half of a Sending Stone pair he shares with his fiance who lives in the Feywild. The way the Sending spell is crafted into the ring is not like how it is in our friend's Sending Stone. It's more like a spell scroll, which, if I do say so myself, I'm rather good at making those."
“Well that’s good to know as I’m in the market for a couple of scrolls actually.” Kem mused, “So does that mean you can reverse engineer it?”
"Well. I'll see what I can see," Archie replied and then focused hard on the ring he held between his fingers as Mendal touched his shoulder and guided him with Moradin's divine power. Archie additionally found himself inspired by Kem’s tentative request for spell scrolls.
Focusing on this magic, Archie felt the small band inside, felt the magic the item is laced with. Pulling it apart he began to note each section of the spell and how the weave fits together around it and with incredible care and skill began to pull it apart to view its components. It was Sending, for sure, the colours and tone of the magic within told him that much, and he could see that it had already been cast in a way, the spell already resonating, only seemingly caught and detained by this item partway through its finishing.
The target though, the target seems ill-defined, but there was some guidance from the item itself, a name, or at least a signifier, but for all Archie's magical acumen, he could not understand what he had found. What he had found was written in abyssal, a language he did not understand, and which the spells Tongues or Comprehend Languages would not help him with.
Archie closed his eyes for a second, and reopened them slowly before looking up at Kem. "I was able to pull apart the weave of the spell and was following where the target of the Sending was located, which is quite extraordinary really. I feel I was getting close to a name, sort of. But, abyssal has been my undoing here! I can repeat what I heard whilst pulling on the weave, but I can't guarantee I'll get it right."
Archie did his best to repeat the word to Kem.
"Are you familiar with this word?"
Kem repeated the word over and over to fix the sound of it in his brain as best he could whilst he dug through his pack for his tinderbox, flicking it open to write the word out phonetically in soot on his forearm with his finger. "Nope, but I know someone who might be.“
Drawing a ruby pomelled dagger from his belt he spun it on its tip as he cast Sending.
“Hey Spiders. Send your new little teddy bear out the room before you reply. Does [word] mean anything in Abyssal? Might be more like [tweaked pronunciation]?”
Kem can almost hear the eye roll as Lylara'din receives the message. "Brzzt'Gtka'Gaa, invisible and outside!" There's a brief pause before the message continues. "Maybe I could tell you, but it seems names and their pronunciations escape you. Try again."
Kem glanced from Archie to Mendal and sighed.
“Lylara’din of House Khalazza, I would greatly appreciate your help…” he paused, “…and I will let you slap me in the face next time we meet.”
Mendal let out a laugh, "ha!"
Archie was more restrained in his reaction, and merely commented to Kem that he had peculiar arrangements with other adventurers. He did, however, joke that, "you need not make the same offer in this household."
"Speak for yourself!" Mendal interjected, "I'll slap Kem if he says I can, haha!"
The response from Lylara'din comes back. "Now now, no need to be so melodramatic. The word is 'Locus'. Might mean something to you."
Kem’s face lit up as the reply came in. He looked to Mendal with a wink, “Oh come on I haven’t been that much of a problem for you. Other than the rats thing. In any case ‘Locus’ is at least an alias and one I can use so thanks.” He put his finger on the dagger, casting the spell once again and adopted a cheery tone, “Thanks Spiders!”
It was Archie who let out a giggle this time, at the mention of the rats - to maintain a charade, Mendal had the Seeming spell cast on him, and was made to look like a giant rat. To maintain the pretence, Mendal had to crawl on his hands and knees for an hour. Kem, who was also there at the time, however, was made to look like a drow, and did not need to crawl around during the hour. The charade was mostly all Kem’s idea.
Mendal was not happy remembering that moment.
"That's good that you got the word translated, Kem," Archie commented, both to voice how glad he was to hear that the abyssal word got translated, and to cut Mendal off from suggesting, quite likely Archie assumed, that Kem should offer him a freebie punch for the rats thing.
“Well I certainly came to the right place and I’ll be sure to use this information responsibly.” Kem said with a wink to Archie, pretending not to have noticed Mendal gently fuming.
"Glad to have been of help," Archie responded with a smile before shifting his gaze to Mendal and then having to nudge him with a hand to get him to respond as well.
"... sure," Mendal said whilst doing a poor job pretending not to be fuming with his arms crossed, jaw clenched and looking away from his guest. Mendal then, despite not wanting to see that perma-smirk Kem always seemed to have, looked at Kem and asked, "So you good? Definitely don't need healing? And you haven't gotten yourself into any trouble with this Hekrati lot... not gonna get the shit kicked out of you like Pyrin had done to him for poorly following them? Or does your secret association protect you from getting clobbered by them?"
"Far from it. I've found them very friendly so far." Kem said, momentarily lost in a pleasant memory, "Come on, what do I owe you for the help today? Gold? Or maybe a favour down the road if you need it?"
Archie made a motion to begin waving his hand and assure Kem that it was quite alright. But, Mendal got there first.
"I'll take a favour, thank you," Mendal said, liking the idea that maybe he could shaft Kem at some later date for the rats business.
"Sounds good to me." Kem said as he stood up to leave, still smiling, but knowing that his welcome with Mendal was wearing out. "I'd love to stay, but I might need to do a little research on that name. How about we meet up for drinks some time?" He turned to Archie, leaning in with a conspiratorial eyebrow raise, "A man with those cheekbones is going to have more than a few stories from his younger years that I want to hear."
Archie let out a chuckle, "oh you're very kind, Kem!" And he stood up to shake Kem's hand, "do take care now, and if you need further magical assistance, you know where we live."
Mendal sniggered, but rose just the same to see Kem out, and gladly closed the door on him. Mendal felt he'd had enough of smirking bards for one day.
Set immediately after the events of What is Hekrati?
There was a knock at Mendal’s door the day after the party.
Mendal huffed as he walked towards the front door. He couldn't believe that in a house of three people, he, as the eldest, was having to answer it. Tribute was not being properly paid!
Mendal reached the front door and muttered about tributes before opening it.
There was a heavily tattooed human in an open leather vest revealing dirty bandages strapped around his chest leaning by the wall of the porch.
“Hey Mendal, you look well. I hope I’m not interrupting something?”
Mendal looked Kem up and down before addressing him.
"Well you're not dead, Kem. Well done. I seem to get all the adventuring dead at my door these days."
Mendal made space for Kem to enter the house.
"Now get in. You look like a beggar."
“Not dead yet.” He said with a smile as he stepped inside, the door closing behind him.
"Let's go to courtyard, I'll heal you up..." Mendal looked Kem over one more time and narrowed his eyes suspiciously postulating a hidden problem that needed addressing.
"... nothing contagious under those bandages, is there? Or elsewhere?"
Kem raised an eyebrow, “What? Oh right. That’s just a new tattoo healing in. Don’t worry about it. I wanted to talk to you about something else.” He said as he reached into his pocket to retrieve a decorative ring.
Kem was just a little too quick to change the subject. A little too flamboyant pulling out the ring to provide a visual distraction.
Mendal squinted his eyes disbelievingly as he reached to take the ring from Kem.
Imbuing his words with the healing magic from the spell Healing Word, he said to Kem, "just a tattoo, hey?"
Before the Healing Word could go off Kem loudly and distractingly yelled out “HEY!” At the top of his lungs.
“I’ve been letting this settle in for weeks. If you fuck it up by casting spells on me without my consent you can see what happens next.”
Mendal's spell was interrupted. This made Mendal all the more suspicious as he stared up probingly at Kem's face.
With a cool ease, Mendal said, "Alright fine. No healing. Moradin won't hold a grudge against spurning his divine healing and neither will I." And then with suspicion embedded in his words, Mendal added, "Could have sworn there was a tattoo there already?!"
Kem held his stare angrily for a few seconds before looking away and back again. The face that returned was back to the usual cocky smirk.
“It wasn’t finished and I had some extra work done on it.” He smiled broadly and disarmingly, “It hurt like the hells and I don’t want to have to do it all again. I’m sure you understand. Sorry if I got a bit… touchy.”
Mendal suspected Kem was holding out on something, his eyes remained narrowed. But the ring had caught his interest. Mendal glanced at it and then back up at Kem. With a forced smile he said, "Alright Kem Skaragi, hold more of your secrets. Give me that ring, and let's go to the courtyard."
Kem rolled his eyes and handed him the ring, “Look if you’re going to say that like you know everything about me I can at least tell you how to use it right. My last name is Roşu. I am of the Skaragi people. Saying it the way you do is like me calling you ‘Mendal Dwarf’.”
The smirk came back, “And in return for me sharing something I’d like to ask for a little favour.”
"Favour?!" Mendal said with wide-eyed suspicion whilst taking the ring.
“Well, let me tell you a story. A story of a charmingly self centred young elf who has become engaged to someone who is very definitely a Hekrati agent who’s using him for his family’s money. A generous Skaraga who went along with him took the opportunity to do some… networking. In addition to getting some useful information from their high priestess, he met another mysterious and handsome tiefling gentleman who wouldn’t tell him his name, but gave him this ring that could be used to contact him once.”
Mendal paused to think for a bit then spoke. "No doubt who you are in that story. But this self centred elf? Doesn't happen to be an idiot from a wealthy family who brings half his possessions with him everywhere?"
Kem smiled, “Sounds like you’ve met, Rumoured to have proposed to a dragon?”
“I was there for that one.”
“Anyway, you and I know that hiding a name matters and that once you know a name someone doesn’t want you to know you’ve got an advantage.” Kem continued with significant side-eye before nodding toward the ring, “Are you following me?”
"Hmmm," Mendal mused out loud. "If I can't help you, Archie old boy might be able to. Plus I'm sure he'd like to hear about his viol instructor's recent foolishness."
***
Mendal led Kem into the courtyard and introduced him to Archie, his older, human wizard friend, who was writing in his journal.
"Kem says your idiot viol instructor's gone and proposed again, this time to a Hekrati member," Mendal said, updating Archie on current affairs. "And there's this ring," Mendal held up the ring for Archie to see whilst offering Kem a seat, as he himself sat down to join Archie at the courtyard table.
"What can you tell us about who you... acquired the ring from?" The elderly wizard asked his guest.
Mendal butted in before Kem could answer, "and how did you get it?"
Kem nodded to Archie with a smile as he entered and took the seat, waiting politely.
“Oh the big news isn’t the proposal: this one accepted.” He leant forward and stage whispered before sitting back up. “But gossip aside I was given it as a gift from a sexy, mysterious, tiefling vampire who wouldn’t tell me his name. You two know how it is.”
"Why would he give you a ring? Has he got what Zaspar's got and proposes to everyone?” Mendal asked, or better yet, interrogated.
“Because it has a single cast of Sending stored in it and he wanted to control the means by which I could contact him. That Sending goes straight to him so somewhere in the magic… stuff…” Kem waved a hand around a little dismissively,“ is his name. Right?”
Mendal looked at Archie for the answer.
Acknowledging that the floor was his, Archie voiced his opinion on Kem's assessment of the Sending spell. "I'm afraid, Kem, there may be nothing that identifies the caster's name in that spell. Either one of us could verify for you if the ring indeed has the Sending spell imbued into it, and if it has more than one charge to cast said spell. We should also be able to identify if any other spell is affecting the ring too. The caster's name though, I don't see how we would determine that."
Kem shrugged with a sigh, “That’s disappointing, but I suppose any information you could give me I might be able to make use of.”
Mendal volunteered Archie to cast Identify, and so he did.
The spell washed over the small simple ring, strangely enough the ring was dull, mundane, but the wizard’s identify spell caught something inside the ring, a loop of... something. It reminded Archie of a spell scroll.
"Well this is slightly unusual," Archie said to both Kem and Mendal. Then addressing Kem in particular, Archie continued, "the owner of this house Kem, Kavel, he has one half of a Sending Stone pair he shares with his fiance who lives in the Feywild. The way the Sending spell is crafted into the ring is not like how it is in our friend's Sending Stone. It's more like a spell scroll, which, if I do say so myself, I'm rather good at making those."
“Well that’s good to know as I’m in the market for a couple of scrolls actually.” Kem mused, “So does that mean you can reverse engineer it?”
"Well. I'll see what I can see," Archie replied and then focused hard on the ring he held between his fingers as Mendal touched his shoulder and guided him with Moradin's divine power. Archie additionally found himself inspired by Kem’s tentative request for spell scrolls.
Focusing on this magic, Archie felt the small band inside, felt the magic the item is laced with. Pulling it apart he began to note each section of the spell and how the weave fits together around it and with incredible care and skill began to pull it apart to view its components. It was Sending, for sure, the colours and tone of the magic within told him that much, and he could see that it had already been cast in a way, the spell already resonating, only seemingly caught and detained by this item partway through its finishing.
The target though, the target seems ill-defined, but there was some guidance from the item itself, a name, or at least a signifier, but for all Archie's magical acumen, he could not understand what he had found. What he had found was written in abyssal, a language he did not understand, and which the spells Tongues or Comprehend Languages would not help him with.
Archie closed his eyes for a second, and reopened them slowly before looking up at Kem. "I was able to pull apart the weave of the spell and was following where the target of the Sending was located, which is quite extraordinary really. I feel I was getting close to a name, sort of. But, abyssal has been my undoing here! I can repeat what I heard whilst pulling on the weave, but I can't guarantee I'll get it right."
Archie did his best to repeat the word to Kem.
"Are you familiar with this word?"
Kem repeated the word over and over to fix the sound of it in his brain as best he could whilst he dug through his pack for his tinderbox, flicking it open to write the word out phonetically in soot on his forearm with his finger. "Nope, but I know someone who might be.“
Drawing a ruby pomelled dagger from his belt he spun it on its tip as he cast Sending.
“Hey Spiders. Send your new little teddy bear out the room before you reply. Does [word] mean anything in Abyssal? Might be more like [tweaked pronunciation]?”
Kem can almost hear the eye roll as Lylara'din receives the message. "Brzzt'Gtka'Gaa, invisible and outside!" There's a brief pause before the message continues. "Maybe I could tell you, but it seems names and their pronunciations escape you. Try again."
Kem glanced from Archie to Mendal and sighed.
“Lylara’din of House Khalazza, I would greatly appreciate your help…” he paused, “…and I will let you slap me in the face next time we meet.”
Mendal let out a laugh, "ha!"
Archie was more restrained in his reaction, and merely commented to Kem that he had peculiar arrangements with other adventurers. He did, however, joke that, "you need not make the same offer in this household."
"Speak for yourself!" Mendal interjected, "I'll slap Kem if he says I can, haha!"
The response from Lylara'din comes back. "Now now, no need to be so melodramatic. The word is 'Locus'. Might mean something to you."
Kem’s face lit up as the reply came in. He looked to Mendal with a wink, “Oh come on I haven’t been that much of a problem for you. Other than the rats thing. In any case ‘Locus’ is at least an alias and one I can use so thanks.” He put his finger on the dagger, casting the spell once again and adopted a cheery tone, “Thanks Spiders!”
It was Archie who let out a giggle this time, at the mention of the rats - to maintain a charade, Mendal had the Seeming spell cast on him, and was made to look like a giant rat. To maintain the pretence, Mendal had to crawl on his hands and knees for an hour. Kem, who was also there at the time, however, was made to look like a drow, and did not need to crawl around during the hour. The charade was mostly all Kem’s idea.
Mendal was not happy remembering that moment.
"That's good that you got the word translated, Kem," Archie commented, both to voice how glad he was to hear that the abyssal word got translated, and to cut Mendal off from suggesting, quite likely Archie assumed, that Kem should offer him a freebie punch for the rats thing.
“Well I certainly came to the right place and I’ll be sure to use this information responsibly.” Kem said with a wink to Archie, pretending not to have noticed Mendal gently fuming.
"Glad to have been of help," Archie responded with a smile before shifting his gaze to Mendal and then having to nudge him with a hand to get him to respond as well.
"... sure," Mendal said whilst doing a poor job pretending not to be fuming with his arms crossed, jaw clenched and looking away from his guest. Mendal then, despite not wanting to see that perma-smirk Kem always seemed to have, looked at Kem and asked, "So you good? Definitely don't need healing? And you haven't gotten yourself into any trouble with this Hekrati lot... not gonna get the shit kicked out of you like Pyrin had done to him for poorly following them? Or does your secret association protect you from getting clobbered by them?"
"Far from it. I've found them very friendly so far." Kem said, momentarily lost in a pleasant memory, "Come on, what do I owe you for the help today? Gold? Or maybe a favour down the road if you need it?"
Archie made a motion to begin waving his hand and assure Kem that it was quite alright. But, Mendal got there first.
"I'll take a favour, thank you," Mendal said, liking the idea that maybe he could shaft Kem at some later date for the rats business.
"Sounds good to me." Kem said as he stood up to leave, still smiling, but knowing that his welcome with Mendal was wearing out. "I'd love to stay, but I might need to do a little research on that name. How about we meet up for drinks some time?" He turned to Archie, leaning in with a conspiratorial eyebrow raise, "A man with those cheekbones is going to have more than a few stories from his younger years that I want to hear."
Archie let out a chuckle, "oh you're very kind, Kem!" And he stood up to shake Kem's hand, "do take care now, and if you need further magical assistance, you know where we live."
Mendal sniggered, but rose just the same to see Kem out, and gladly closed the door on him. Mendal felt he'd had enough of smirking bards for one day.