[PF] Chaos is a ladder – 26 Feb. 2019 – Taffeta
Feb 28, 2019 22:52:59 GMT
Grimes, Varis/G'Lorth/Sundilar, and 2 more like this
Post by Malri 'Taffeta' Thistletop on Feb 28, 2019 22:52:59 GMT
1496 DR, 27 Alturiak
The ground is hard underfoot and the sky is grey and heavy overhead as Taffeta and Aila trudge north and west.
‘That Tabbytha was quite a good dancer, eh, Ma?’ says Aila after a long silence.
‘Hmm? Ha.’ Taffeta’s laugh is genuine but muted. ‘Yes, that she was.’
‘And that fellow Dave…!’
‘Oh dear. You know, love, you could’ve upset him, making fun of his dancing like that.’
‘I don’t think he even knew I was making fun!’
‘No, I don’t think he did – lucky for you.’
They go quiet again, and Taffeta thinks about luck. A month ago she learned that her daughter, Aila’s younger sister, has been chosen by the goddess of luck, Tymora herself, as a sort of emissary. But then, just as the family were getting used to this new reality, Taffeta’s routine hunting trip with Aila was interrupted by a magical message from the strange giant man Oriloki telling her that a terrible disease had struck Daring Heights and the town was – something. A word she didn’t know. It meant nobody could go in or out. Nerry, Idari, and Rose all stuck in there, maybe sick, and she and Aila forbidden to go home and see them. Some luck.
Unable to return home, they’d gone in stead to Port Ffirst in the hope of finding some kind of help – though Taffeta never had a very clear idea of what that help might involve. Anyway, they hadn’t found it. Just a small port town, barely more than a village, crammed to overflowing with stranded Darites and people who had come to the port intending to go to Daring but now had nothing to do but wait. Because of the overcrowding, every inn and hostel was full to bursting and if a person did have the luck to find an available room, the price was at least double its normal amount. An inn-keeper tried to explain to Taffeta that this was ‘normal’ and ‘economics’ but it seemed like extortion and cruelty to her.
On the point of giving up, and with Aila getting decidedly impatient, they’d found themselves in a dive called the Cavernous Seashank, which managed to be both the fullest and the gloomiest tavern Taffeta had ever seen. A slender fey-like elf was trying to enliven the atmosphere with a tune on their fiddle, and an armoured half-elf was trying, and failing, to dance along. A marmalade tabaxi got up and did a much better job, and Aila joined in too, with more irony than sincerity. At which point the whole business was interrupted by a fresh advertisement being hammered up on the door, promising free accommodation.
‘How did you know that elf, the one who snatched the job ad?’ asks Aila.
‘Oh, I didn’t really. I’d just seen him around town a bit.’
Taffeta had recognized the white-haired archer who pushed to the front of the crowd and tore the notice off the tavern door, shouting, ‘Anyone who wants the job, follow me!’ But Aila had been looking at the parchment rather than the people, and had glimpsed the name of Soros Lenoir at the bottom. Taffeta recognized Lenoir, too, at least by name: he was rich and influential and might be able to help with the plague somehow. So the two halflings had run off after the little cluster of job-hunters in the hope of talking to him.
Taffeta pauses to stomp her feet a few times on the ground, knocking the lumps of frosty earth off them. ‘Aila, love,’ she says, ‘what did you make of that man Lenoir?’
‘Didn’t like him.’
‘Same. D’you think we should’ve just left and not helped him?’
‘I don’t know, Ma. I mean, those sailors were stopping food coming into the harbour. People could’ve starved if we hadn’t helped.’
That was true. Probably. At least, it was true that the crew of the trading ship Isabella had blockaded the harbour with a chain of dinghies rigged with explosives.
‘They hadn’t been paid, though,’ says Taffeta, looking up to the edge of the forest ahead. ‘Lenoir owed them. They shouldn’t have stopped food coming in, but still…’
‘He said he didn’t have any money to pay them.’
Taffeta doesn’t reply but adjusts her pack and starts walking again.
‘I suppose it isn’t him I’m angry with,’ she says after a few dozen steps. ‘It’s those others. Why couldn’t they just listen?’
The ‘others’ were the fiddle-player Faye, the white-haired elf who turned out to be called Keriss, Dave the bad dancer and Tabbytha the good dancer, and a hooded fellow called Traavor. They had all taken up Lenoir’s job offer, which was to ignite the explosives on the blockade boats and so let the supply-ships bring more food and drink into the port. Which no doubt Lenoir would resell to the desperate townsfolk at eye-watering prices, because of economics. To be fair to him, Taffeta reminded herself that Lenoir had not actually asked the group to kill any of the Isabella’s crew. That had been the others’ idea, especially Faye’s.
‘I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I’ve met those elves from the feywild, and they have some… strange ways. When they’re in a summer mood, they can get very aggressive. But Dave and the others… And then Traavor just taking off on his own...’
The memory makes Taffeta frustrated all over again. As hard as she tries, she still keeps finding herself in the same situation. She can travel the planes, she can fight dragons and vampires, but when faced with supposed allies proposing to kill other people in cold blood, she can never seem to articulate her thoughts or avoid being misunderstood or talked over. What do you say to someone who says ‘those people are bound to attack us so we should attack them first,’ as if the difference between aggression and self-defence doesn’t matter? What do you say to someone who says ‘why are you here if you aren’t prepared to fight?’, as if you haven’t fought and killed many times to protect your family and community, as if there’s no difference between that and solving every problem with violence? What do you say to someone who says ‘they’re bad people’, as if being a bad person is a death sentence and being a good person means being an executioner?
These things are so obvious to her that she doesn’t know how to say them. So she gives up, and decisions are made, and people are killed, and she blames herself.
‘What… what did happen on the ship?’ asks Aila hesitantly. ‘You seemed pretty upset afterwards.’
Taffeta sighs, remembering Traavor turning his back on the urgently whispered conversation and slipping into the shadows towards the ship; the others one by one doing the same, giving up on any attempt to agree a plan and simply disappearing into the night to pursue their own ides; herself almost taking Aila’s hand and leading her away, almost leaving her infuriating new companions to their fates; shaking her head and telling Aila to wait out of sight.
‘Well, I don’t know exactly where they all went. I saw Traavor and Keriss heading to the right, near the, er, the pointy end of the ship, so I went that way. Keriss jumped onto one of those slabs of ice floating in the harbour, and then suddenly people were shooting arrows at him and Traavor from up on the ship. They started firing back, but before I could do anything, one of the others must’ve got up into the ship from the other end, because there was some shouting and scuffling up there. I climbed up and there was Tabbytha fighting one of the lookouts. Then I saw Dave climb up further along the side of the ship and attack the other one with his sword, and then that one got an arrow in the back – must have been Keriss or Traavor down on the dock. That was the end of that sailor.’
‘That’s when the captain came out. I told him to call off his men and no one else needed to get hurt, but he didn’t listen. Tried to attack me and Dave. It was all getting very messy but Faye must have finally got their act together –’
‘The explosion!’ says Aila. ‘I saw it!’
‘Yes, the blockade went up in flames. I didn’t see how but I guess Faye used their fire magic to light the explosives.’
‘And… the blue flying things?’
So Aila saw them too. Taffeta has been half-suspecting she imagined it. The force of the exploding dinghies shattering the icebergs either side of them, and then a stream of fiendish-looking little blue creatures swirling up into the air, screeching and cackling, and then the whole flock of them turning a diving into the water without even disturbing its surface. Taffeta may not have much experience of the sea – not enough to be confident that the strange frozen waves in the harbour were unnatural – but she’s fairly sure that sea-ice shouldn’t be full of tiny demonic creatures.
The crew of the Isabella seemed to agree. ‘I don’t know what that was, but the captain was scared stiff when he saw it. Surrendered right away.’
They’re getting near the edge of the forest now. Taffeta wonders whether she’ll be able to find her way to Estel and the dryads. Whether they’ll be able to help. Whether Estel will even remember her.
‘So only one of the sailors was killed in the end?’ says Aila.
‘Yes, only one,’ her mother replies. It could have been worse. Taffeta remembers Faye holding a knife to the throat of the trembling captain as he insisted he knew nothing about the little blue creatures, but eventually sheathing the blade when they were satisfied he was telling the truth. It certainly could have been worse. Indeed it would have been very lucky to break the blockade with any less life lost. But still the whole business left Taffeta despondent. When she’d found Idari in that bedroom in Castle Dawnsend holding Tymora’s emblem and calling her a hero, she’d left like there might at last be an end to the ugly moral uncertainty that she’d felt trapped in ever since Raxivort and Nowhere. Where had that clarity gone?
‘What d’you think will happen to the others?’
‘I expect they’re sleeping soundly in the Flourished Hook,’ says Taffeta. ‘And one day Soros will give them the money he promised too, I suppose.’ She and Aila hadn’t gone with the rest of the party to hand the captured sailors over to Lenoir. She’d been so frustrated with the whole affair that she’d taken Aila out of Port Ffirst without trying to collect any reward, and the two of them had set off across country to find the only other people she could think of who might help reunite them with Idari and Nerry.
‘No,’ says Aila, ‘I mean the other sailors.’
‘Oh. I don’t know, love. I expect they’ll be treated as criminals. Whatever that means in Port Ffirst.’
No grand hearing in front of the town council like Nowhere had in Daring Heights, she supposes. Maybe the Lenoir brothers will just decide what happens to them. What kind of justice do wealthy businessmen dish out, she wonders. Lock them in a dungeon? Not very cost-effective, they’d have to be fed and watered. Maybe they’ll be executed. Or put to work as slaves, if they’re lucky.
Lucky! Ha. If that's what passes for luck these days – thinks Taffeta as she and Aila enter the forest – what has Tymora got in store for us?
The ground is hard underfoot and the sky is grey and heavy overhead as Taffeta and Aila trudge north and west.
‘That Tabbytha was quite a good dancer, eh, Ma?’ says Aila after a long silence.
‘Hmm? Ha.’ Taffeta’s laugh is genuine but muted. ‘Yes, that she was.’
‘And that fellow Dave…!’
‘Oh dear. You know, love, you could’ve upset him, making fun of his dancing like that.’
‘I don’t think he even knew I was making fun!’
‘No, I don’t think he did – lucky for you.’
They go quiet again, and Taffeta thinks about luck. A month ago she learned that her daughter, Aila’s younger sister, has been chosen by the goddess of luck, Tymora herself, as a sort of emissary. But then, just as the family were getting used to this new reality, Taffeta’s routine hunting trip with Aila was interrupted by a magical message from the strange giant man Oriloki telling her that a terrible disease had struck Daring Heights and the town was – something. A word she didn’t know. It meant nobody could go in or out. Nerry, Idari, and Rose all stuck in there, maybe sick, and she and Aila forbidden to go home and see them. Some luck.
Unable to return home, they’d gone in stead to Port Ffirst in the hope of finding some kind of help – though Taffeta never had a very clear idea of what that help might involve. Anyway, they hadn’t found it. Just a small port town, barely more than a village, crammed to overflowing with stranded Darites and people who had come to the port intending to go to Daring but now had nothing to do but wait. Because of the overcrowding, every inn and hostel was full to bursting and if a person did have the luck to find an available room, the price was at least double its normal amount. An inn-keeper tried to explain to Taffeta that this was ‘normal’ and ‘economics’ but it seemed like extortion and cruelty to her.
On the point of giving up, and with Aila getting decidedly impatient, they’d found themselves in a dive called the Cavernous Seashank, which managed to be both the fullest and the gloomiest tavern Taffeta had ever seen. A slender fey-like elf was trying to enliven the atmosphere with a tune on their fiddle, and an armoured half-elf was trying, and failing, to dance along. A marmalade tabaxi got up and did a much better job, and Aila joined in too, with more irony than sincerity. At which point the whole business was interrupted by a fresh advertisement being hammered up on the door, promising free accommodation.
‘How did you know that elf, the one who snatched the job ad?’ asks Aila.
‘Oh, I didn’t really. I’d just seen him around town a bit.’
Taffeta had recognized the white-haired archer who pushed to the front of the crowd and tore the notice off the tavern door, shouting, ‘Anyone who wants the job, follow me!’ But Aila had been looking at the parchment rather than the people, and had glimpsed the name of Soros Lenoir at the bottom. Taffeta recognized Lenoir, too, at least by name: he was rich and influential and might be able to help with the plague somehow. So the two halflings had run off after the little cluster of job-hunters in the hope of talking to him.
Taffeta pauses to stomp her feet a few times on the ground, knocking the lumps of frosty earth off them. ‘Aila, love,’ she says, ‘what did you make of that man Lenoir?’
‘Didn’t like him.’
‘Same. D’you think we should’ve just left and not helped him?’
‘I don’t know, Ma. I mean, those sailors were stopping food coming into the harbour. People could’ve starved if we hadn’t helped.’
That was true. Probably. At least, it was true that the crew of the trading ship Isabella had blockaded the harbour with a chain of dinghies rigged with explosives.
‘They hadn’t been paid, though,’ says Taffeta, looking up to the edge of the forest ahead. ‘Lenoir owed them. They shouldn’t have stopped food coming in, but still…’
‘He said he didn’t have any money to pay them.’
Taffeta doesn’t reply but adjusts her pack and starts walking again.
‘I suppose it isn’t him I’m angry with,’ she says after a few dozen steps. ‘It’s those others. Why couldn’t they just listen?’
The ‘others’ were the fiddle-player Faye, the white-haired elf who turned out to be called Keriss, Dave the bad dancer and Tabbytha the good dancer, and a hooded fellow called Traavor. They had all taken up Lenoir’s job offer, which was to ignite the explosives on the blockade boats and so let the supply-ships bring more food and drink into the port. Which no doubt Lenoir would resell to the desperate townsfolk at eye-watering prices, because of economics. To be fair to him, Taffeta reminded herself that Lenoir had not actually asked the group to kill any of the Isabella’s crew. That had been the others’ idea, especially Faye’s.
‘I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I’ve met those elves from the feywild, and they have some… strange ways. When they’re in a summer mood, they can get very aggressive. But Dave and the others… And then Traavor just taking off on his own...’
The memory makes Taffeta frustrated all over again. As hard as she tries, she still keeps finding herself in the same situation. She can travel the planes, she can fight dragons and vampires, but when faced with supposed allies proposing to kill other people in cold blood, she can never seem to articulate her thoughts or avoid being misunderstood or talked over. What do you say to someone who says ‘those people are bound to attack us so we should attack them first,’ as if the difference between aggression and self-defence doesn’t matter? What do you say to someone who says ‘why are you here if you aren’t prepared to fight?’, as if you haven’t fought and killed many times to protect your family and community, as if there’s no difference between that and solving every problem with violence? What do you say to someone who says ‘they’re bad people’, as if being a bad person is a death sentence and being a good person means being an executioner?
These things are so obvious to her that she doesn’t know how to say them. So she gives up, and decisions are made, and people are killed, and she blames herself.
‘What… what did happen on the ship?’ asks Aila hesitantly. ‘You seemed pretty upset afterwards.’
Taffeta sighs, remembering Traavor turning his back on the urgently whispered conversation and slipping into the shadows towards the ship; the others one by one doing the same, giving up on any attempt to agree a plan and simply disappearing into the night to pursue their own ides; herself almost taking Aila’s hand and leading her away, almost leaving her infuriating new companions to their fates; shaking her head and telling Aila to wait out of sight.
‘Well, I don’t know exactly where they all went. I saw Traavor and Keriss heading to the right, near the, er, the pointy end of the ship, so I went that way. Keriss jumped onto one of those slabs of ice floating in the harbour, and then suddenly people were shooting arrows at him and Traavor from up on the ship. They started firing back, but before I could do anything, one of the others must’ve got up into the ship from the other end, because there was some shouting and scuffling up there. I climbed up and there was Tabbytha fighting one of the lookouts. Then I saw Dave climb up further along the side of the ship and attack the other one with his sword, and then that one got an arrow in the back – must have been Keriss or Traavor down on the dock. That was the end of that sailor.’
‘That’s when the captain came out. I told him to call off his men and no one else needed to get hurt, but he didn’t listen. Tried to attack me and Dave. It was all getting very messy but Faye must have finally got their act together –’
‘The explosion!’ says Aila. ‘I saw it!’
‘Yes, the blockade went up in flames. I didn’t see how but I guess Faye used their fire magic to light the explosives.’
‘And… the blue flying things?’
So Aila saw them too. Taffeta has been half-suspecting she imagined it. The force of the exploding dinghies shattering the icebergs either side of them, and then a stream of fiendish-looking little blue creatures swirling up into the air, screeching and cackling, and then the whole flock of them turning a diving into the water without even disturbing its surface. Taffeta may not have much experience of the sea – not enough to be confident that the strange frozen waves in the harbour were unnatural – but she’s fairly sure that sea-ice shouldn’t be full of tiny demonic creatures.
The crew of the Isabella seemed to agree. ‘I don’t know what that was, but the captain was scared stiff when he saw it. Surrendered right away.’
They’re getting near the edge of the forest now. Taffeta wonders whether she’ll be able to find her way to Estel and the dryads. Whether they’ll be able to help. Whether Estel will even remember her.
‘So only one of the sailors was killed in the end?’ says Aila.
‘Yes, only one,’ her mother replies. It could have been worse. Taffeta remembers Faye holding a knife to the throat of the trembling captain as he insisted he knew nothing about the little blue creatures, but eventually sheathing the blade when they were satisfied he was telling the truth. It certainly could have been worse. Indeed it would have been very lucky to break the blockade with any less life lost. But still the whole business left Taffeta despondent. When she’d found Idari in that bedroom in Castle Dawnsend holding Tymora’s emblem and calling her a hero, she’d left like there might at last be an end to the ugly moral uncertainty that she’d felt trapped in ever since Raxivort and Nowhere. Where had that clarity gone?
‘What d’you think will happen to the others?’
‘I expect they’re sleeping soundly in the Flourished Hook,’ says Taffeta. ‘And one day Soros will give them the money he promised too, I suppose.’ She and Aila hadn’t gone with the rest of the party to hand the captured sailors over to Lenoir. She’d been so frustrated with the whole affair that she’d taken Aila out of Port Ffirst without trying to collect any reward, and the two of them had set off across country to find the only other people she could think of who might help reunite them with Idari and Nerry.
‘No,’ says Aila, ‘I mean the other sailors.’
‘Oh. I don’t know, love. I expect they’ll be treated as criminals. Whatever that means in Port Ffirst.’
No grand hearing in front of the town council like Nowhere had in Daring Heights, she supposes. Maybe the Lenoir brothers will just decide what happens to them. What kind of justice do wealthy businessmen dish out, she wonders. Lock them in a dungeon? Not very cost-effective, they’d have to be fed and watered. Maybe they’ll be executed. Or put to work as slaves, if they’re lucky.
Lucky! Ha. If that's what passes for luck these days – thinks Taffeta as she and Aila enter the forest – what has Tymora got in store for us?
