The Last Words of Klorpeim

By Hope and PJ

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The surgeon had done all he could for Klorpeim. When asked about Klorpeim’s chances for survival, he did not need to say anything. His look told everything.

In a moment of consciousness, Klorpeim, weak from loss of blood, looked about him as best he could from the cot where he lay. 

“Amsotha,” he said feebly. “Amsotha.”

Looking over in Klorpeim's direction, Amsotha pushes himself up and limps over to Klorpeim's bed. He collapses to his knees and puts a hand on Klorpeim's shoulder.

"With you still holding on to life, it seems that we were successful in our endeavor," he says with a weak smile on his face. Realizing Klorpeim's wound, Amsotha mourns, "I was not wanting to have to pay for it with my best friend's life though."

“It seems a fitting payment. I was the one to convince them to leave the fort to go after Onerama, so I must pay with my life to get it back. But I am willing to make it if it means the overwhelming tide of the Nalshbori are held back, if not just a little longer.” Here Klorpeim paused as he struggled to catch his next breath.

"Fitting Payment?", Amsotha answered quizzingly,"My friend, for all we could have known, Onerama could have attacked us while the Nalshbori lay siege to the Fort. Don't blame yourself for today. Your actions kept the Nalshbori from taking the fort. I regret not being able to take any of the archers down." Amsotha picks Klorpeim up, trying to get him in a more comfortable position. And watching as Klorpeim's soaked bandage tried to stop the bleeding.

“I am...I am sorry about your sister.” Klorpeim said once he had regained his breath. “I know you will find her.”

Amsotha sighs, "Sister missing, best friend slipping into the afterlife, this world is a cruel place," coughing up blood he continues, "I am not positive either one of us will make it to tomorrow." Amsotha chuckles a little and asks, "Tell me my friend, is there anything you want sent back to the family?"

Klorpeim could not help a half smile. He found Amsotha’s bedside manner lacking somehow. “You may send all my things to them. I will not need them beyond the Final Night where mortals may not look.”

Laughing enough to cough again, Amsotha replies with a fool's smile, "Well, we prefer to send you clothed. Nonetheless I shall see to it that  your dagger is sent  back, and if you so wish, the sword by which a thousand Nalshbori fell. If it so happens that death does not favor me, I will take it to your family myself."

Klorpeim grasped Amsotha’s hand in his. “My time grows near that Death shall come and make the Sign of Death. You are a good friend. In parting from you, I part from a brother.”

With the other Amsotha holds his friend’s head, “May you find your way to the gates where all will be judged, May Nankienala find favor in you, may He take in account your bravery that turned the tide on this day, and when your name is spoken let it bring fear in the hearts of Nalshbori. Let evil remember that on this day, it found an adversary worthy of fear!!” Unable to hold the tears back Amsotha gives his last goodbye to Klorpiem.

And with that, Klorpeim breathed his last breath.

Far beyond the Northern lands, across the Plain of Ice,

Where the wintry air chokes out the sun and all is cold and white,

Across that plain he wandered and came to earth no more.

But the stories say he came at last to another sunlit shore.

And taking there a coracle, he rowed across the gulf

And passed beyond the Final Night where mortals may not look.

Sessions 43-44: Shadows of the Past

When last we left our heroes...

The companions made their way North to the village of Kor-Paurja, a copper mining village about a week north of Cheykor. Along the way, they managed to run into almost every conceivable hazard:

• Amsotha, the party's scout, fell down an abandoned well and was stuck there for several hours until the rest of the Company eventually found him.
• Feiala, the party's Guide, nearly led them into a dangerous landslide before realizing her mistake.
• Artana found what looked like a good, safe place to rest--but it turned out to be the hideout of some army deserters and highwaymen, who ambushed the party while they slept. Fortunately, Thoranrai noticed their danger and awoke the party in time. 

Just after the latter episode, Feiala noticed what appeared to be strange animal tracks--great cloven hoofs--which, however, vanished in the sunlight. Thinking back, she recalled the story that had begun to circulate a year or two ago of a party who had been ambushed by the Arjagbori (the Horned Things) of legend, on their way to Ralakarr from Sencankarr. All trace--including the bodies and even the tracks--of the Arjagbori were said to vanish with the rising of the sun, though most considered these fanciful details to be mere superstitious rumors, like the rest of the story.

Finally making it to the village, they were able to find the beggar Yuralesh, who was known to have a local reputation as a swindler and was even rumored to be working in concert with a group of local highwaymen and deserters in the area--probably the same ones the Company had encountered and killed a few days earlier. In any case, Yuralesh promised he could show the Companions the "old mine" where the girls were being taken, in exchange for half of the treasure they retrieved (Artana clarified that this would only be half of her own cut) from the mine. Asking around, the Companions learned that the hills north of town had been believed by the locals for several generations back to have been haunted, and there were stories of those who became lost in the hills after dark being kidnapped, eaten alive, or witnessing strange and gruesome sacrificial rituals--like seeing a headless figure stirring a great brass cauldron full of limbs. 

A few hours before sundown, the Company met Yuralesh on the north side of town, and followed him into the hills. Some time later--just as the red sunset in the West was giving way to an eerie twilight--he brought them to a crack in the side of an ancient mount which appeared at sundown and which seemed to widen as it grew darker. This, Yuralesh told them, was where the girls had been taken. The Companions lit torches and proceeded inside, only to be attacked by two Arjagbori--in fact, the very Horned Things of legend--who were guarding the entrance. The heroes triumphed narrowly, with both Thoranrai and Amsotha having taken the brunt of the fighting, the latter bleeding heavily due to a wound inflicted by one of the deadly scythes wielded by the horned monsters. Moving forward, they followed a long, snaking tunnel, adorned on either side by bas reliefs which portrayed Amborian history--or rather, an alternate version of it. It showed, for instance, the feud that broke out between the Treianraal and the Sothbori at the wedding of Lanenomen and Alyeitalya, as actually having been between the Treianraal and the Serpent-folk, the latter of whom it portrayed as the rightful natives of the lands around the Sea, driven off and oppressed by the coming of the folk of Starland. At the end of the tunnel they entered an antechamber, guarded by two enormous serpents of stone, who watched them motionlessly with huge eyes of glowing gems. Feiala tried to destroy the eye of one of the stone guardians, but only shattered her longsword in the process. Moving past the guardians--a task which daunted more than one member of the party--they pushed on through carven bronze doors and came at last to the great, central hall of what they had now realized must be an underground palace or temple complex.

There, arranged in a semi-circle around the base of a throne, were some two-dozen or so girls, all of them young, all of them arrayed in white, all of them laid out upon slabs of stone. A strange, twisted figure of a woman with serpentine eyes and a red amber crown upon her head, stood over them, seemingly drawing something from them, when the Companions entered. Pointing to them and uttering a word of command, the Serpent-woman sent forth four of her Gaunt Men to oppose the Companions, while she herself fled the scene...

Session 42: Little Girl Lost

When last we left our heroes...

We began with a funeral for Klorpeim, who had died during the desperate (and, thanks to him, successful) attempt to retake Leil Yalir. Feiala, the party's Well Woman, presided over the funeral, after which a local bard sang the "Ballad of Klorpeim."

When this was over, the Company undertook various fellowship phase undertakings for the end of Winter 452. Among these, the most noteworthy was Amsotha, who visited Sencankarr to deliver word to Klorpeim's family of Klorpeim's death. While there, he visited one of the city's countless shrines, and spoke with a Well Woman, who revealed to him a vision of his missing sister: she was lying on a slab, somewhere underground, surrounded by many other maidens similarly disposed, all dressed in white. The Well Woman saw pain, terror, and evil in her vision -- but what it meant she could not say.

In the Spring of the following year, Thoranrai received a summons by the Scarlet Sisterhood to bring the Company to the house of a Njeitbori merchant-woman by the name of Artana [Hope's new character following the death of Klorpeim], who lived in Cheykor. The Company, now including Artana, was commissioned by Talarja (a Scarlet Sisterhood Priestess the Players have encountered before now) to investigate the disappearance of an acolyte of their order, which coincides with the disappearance of several other young women in the area around the Cheyth (especially those travelling along the old King's Road). According to Talarja, the disappearance have been traced to the village of Kor-Paurja, a mining village some miles north of Cheykor. The Sisterhood has already spoken to a half-mad beggar there, one Yuralesh, who claims that they were taken into an old, abandoned mine somewhere in the hills...