Session 15 & 16: Fire on the Moors & Library Inspections

When last we left our heroes...

We began with the party's Fall Fellowship Phase:

• Tanurendal spent it with Yuralesh, the smith of Cheykor, learning the basics of the trade [and trading his Cheyth-lore specialty for Smithing]
• Vanera visited the Sacred Well hoping to learn something about the journey ahead of him, and ended up learning something about himself. He also received some cryptic advice about his journey. [For the next adventuring phase, rolls the Feat Die twice on Corruption Tests and takes the better result]
• Reiana took Sir Ralus officially as party patron. She was visited by Lieutenant Samlon, who brought letters from Sir Ralus for Master Norkur. Samlon also indicated he looked forward to Reiana's return to the Marches of the North in the Spring.
• Tengelbur attempted to craft to clear some Shadow, but was unsuccessful. He was, however, approached by Talarja the Scarlet Sister. She attempted to convince him one more time to trust to the Sisterhood rather than Norkur, but seeing he was firm in his plans, she gave him a means to contact the Scarlet Sisters in Sencankarr should the need arise: He is to go to the Shrine of Nanalon's Sons, located outside the Eastern wall of the Holy City. There, he is to offer fresh-cut lilies for the memory of those who died in the Grove of Bent Trees, and someone would reach out to him again within a day.

With preparations made, the party began their journey westward across the moors.

Your journey takes you up and out of the Cheyth River Valley, up a pass through the hills, and out onto the high northern moor beyond. Immediately ahead of you is the Kanbojar Kjanavar, the "King's Road," which you cross in due time. Laid during the reign of Fanhal the Great for the swifter passage eastward of the king’s arms and errand riders, the Kanbojar Kjanavar is a work of great craft and skill, running eastward from Ralakarr, capitol of the Northern district, to the crossings of the Cheyth, and thence across the Wanlecheyth and to the very foothills of the Black Hills. In better days, the King’s Road boasted waystations at regular intervals, but unlike the road these have not stood the test of time, and most of them have now crumbled into ruin, or had their stones hauled away for use in other buildings. The rolling hills of the Cheyth River Valley level out onto a long, level expanse of upland, full of sudden valleys and misty canyons, where dark streams flow by strange and winding paths towards the sea.

The occasional breeze or gust of wind wafting up from the South, and a faint blue twinkling in the distance, all remind you that you are still near the coastland--but the temperate clime of the wood is gone, replaced with an autumn wind which sends a chill into your bones. Now you have to be more careful of your way, for any level expanse of ground may give way quite unexpectedly to a sheer precipice or canyon, and the strange mists which rise up from these glacial valleys at morning and evening can mislead even the wariest traveler. You choose sheltered places for your rest each evening, and during the night you can hear the distant howling of the Great Maned Wolf, the shaggy-haired and solitary predators of the Moor. Overhead huge birds can be seen wheeling at times--the hawks and vultures of the Moor. It is said that the Cheybori, the men of the North, capture some of these birds while they are young and raise them as companions for hunting, and even warfare.

The Company continued on for four days, until they saw something burning in the distance. Running ahead, they found the remains of a merchant caravan, evidently headed East before the Northern Winter made the roads completely impassable. The caravan's beasts were missing entirely, its wagons overturned and shattered as if by some great force, and the caravan-goers themselves piled in a mound of burning and twisted flesh. Investigating the remains of the caravan, the party found a single survivor, pinned beneath one of the shattered wagons. He was Laran, a young man of some forty or so years (still quite young for the Ambori), who, after coming into a small inheritance, had set out for Cheykor with his sister Kjanle in the hopes of making a new life for themselves on the Marches of the Cheyth. Laran frantically searched for his sister, aided by the Company, but to no avail. The company then decided to build up the fire so that the bodies of the slain might be burned, and not fall prey to the carrion creatures that haunt the moors. The bonfire was brought again to a blaze with the splinters of the wagons, and the Company sang a lament as the sun fell in the West.

After two days of looking for Kjanle (the bodies were by now too mangled and burned to ascertain their identities, but a count of them indicated there might be one other missing--in which case the sister could still be alive), the party decided to continue on to Ralakarr. Laran hoped the governor would be able to raise the garrison to look for his sister. But the Company, at least two of whom had already met Governor Neratsoan, were less hopeful.

Arriving in Ralakarr some nine days after they left Cheykor, the Company obtained accommodations at a hostelry known as the Crossed Candles, where an innkeeper named Barra told the party tall tales, including one about a "cyst" in the earth, on the west side of the river, that some miners had broken into a few weeks ago. The miners had supposedly died of the pestilence, but one of them had made it back to town before he expired, his eyes burning with a black fire.

As this was going on, the governor's soldiers entered the inn and, after making inquiries, escorted Laran back to the Governor's Palace. The Governor, it seemed, had some questions about the fate of the caravan. Suspecting something was off, Reiana and Tengelbur decided to accompany him, while Vanera and Tanurendal followed at some further distance back.

Arriving at the gate, Reiana managed to intimidate the Governor's steward (a put-upon man named Verekan), which had the unintended effect of getting a direct audience with the governor himself rather than accompanying Laran to where he was being questioned. Reiana and Tengelbur found the Governor even more corpulent and decadent than he had been a year ago, and they were treated to a recounting of various feasts the Governor had enjoyed in Sencankarr last (and were able to watch the Governor eat a couple of plumb doormice, fed to him by a half-dressed but perceptive young woman who remains so far unnamed). They managed to extricate themselves only by agreeing to come to dinner that evening, where they would learn "something to their advantage," and were then able to reunite with Laran, who seemed shaken from his many ordeals, but seemed more hopeful that he would see his sister again.

In the meantime, Vanera and Tanurdenal attempted to gain entry to the palace. Vanera tried to bluff his way in by claiming to be there from Sencankarr for a surprise "library inspection," an idea which gravely insulted the aging librarian, a near-sighted man by the name of Neryaleth. But Vanera's bluffing quickly gave way to genuine interest as Neryaleth described (with great vehemence) the immaculate condition of his library. With a little pleading, Vanera managed to convince Neryaleth to show him around, and the two gained entrance to the courtyard outside the Governor's Palace.