| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| AJA |
Posted - 04 Nov 2018 : 06:57:13
(Or Silverymoon, or Irieabor or Westgate, feel free to change any proper nouns and place names)
quote:
Originally posted by OMNISCIENT DM VOICE
As you are shouldering through traffic on the High Road or lifting a jack of zzar in your favorite tavern, you look over and see....
Brief FRA-style blurbs of local Waterdhavians.
Entres are taken from a loose 1E - 3E timeframe.
These NPCs are obviously from my personal Realms; non-canonity abounds! "Published" NPCs that I've altered have their original references noted. Speaking of, I've also included reference notes for various minor official NPCs (published or "Ed Says,") for those who can use more Waterdeep lore but aren't interested in any of my natterings.
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Aaletha Emmara Raeena Margaster (CN HF Aris)
A noble of House Margaster. Perennial loser of the "Lady Frost" contest at Mother Tathlorn's Annual Snowbound Festival. "Letha" is well known among Waterdeep's high society for her scathing tongue, loud tantrums and black temper. She fled the city in Eleasias of 1370, eloping with the noble Bragaster Raventree and several stolen family heirlooms, but recently returned (without Bragaster or the missing items).
Abaldar Bambrusk (NE HM Aris2/War4/T2)
The Golden Captain. Patriarch of the Bambrusk merchant clan. The Bambrusks, much like their distant blood relatives the Urmbrusks, are plentiful in the eastern parts of Alaron and Gwynneth. They are allied to House Hawkwinter through the marriage of Lord Eremos Hawkwinter to the lady Kyrin Bambrusk. The Hawkwinters regard them as lesser, "rural" cousins, but admire their skill at fighting and forestry. Abaldar divides his time between Waterdeep and Alaron, and is often found at sea aboard the caravel Gloaming Sails, flagship of his small merchant fleet. He specializes in trading elaborate Moonshaen tapestries and floor carpets for good steel weaponry (swordblades, halberd heads, arrowtips, etc.). It is whispered that much of the Bambrusk fortunes were made through supplying Northmen raiders and Moonshaen highwaymen with weaponry, but such tales are best told outside the hearing of Abaldar or his family members.
Abbast el Ammarkhan (N earth genasiM Bar2/F6)
The Red Colossus, The Unbeatable Abbast. A native of Calimshan. Perhaps the most popular "dare-all" (martialist) at the Field of Triumph. These days he prefers unarmed contests of wrestling and brute strength, but in his prime was one of the greatest bloody-blades in Waterdeep. Owns a masterful suit of gold and red mail gifted by the Lord Baerom Thunderstaff, a highcoin patron.
Abradan Lardahar
A master weaponsmith of Silverymoon. Renowned as the crafter of Athar's Shining Blades, a collection of seven masterwork blades (four longswords, two long daggers and a single broadsword) highly sought-after by collectors. The blades are unenchanted (though they would take one easily), with a natural +1 to hit and damage. Their real value lies in their craftsmanship and in their appeal to collectors. Indeed Lord Hawkwinter, owner of the largest single collection, proudly displays his three Lardahar-blades (Righteous Cleave, Knight's Honor and Solemn Duty) on the wall of his private study. Each weapon is etched with intricate details of the life and legend of Athar the Shining Knight, father of the current Open Lord Piergeiron, and all seven are hilt-wrapped in Abradan's trademark white dragonhide.
Adaphra
The Golden Smile. Festhall downdancer, named for the impressive rows of glittering false teeth lining her mouth. Her originals were lost due to the blows of a brutally sadistic Amnian merchant. In return she took his life, his gaudy gold rings (melted down and re-fashioned into her current opulent dentition) and his vitals, which she also had dipped in gold and wore around her neck for a time until her employers claimed they were making customers ill, and demanded she remove them.
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Aaldric Talzon [ Source: "Arcane Lore: Spells of Defense," Owen K.C. Stephens, Dragon Magazine #271. Name/Description given ]
Adama Miiralin (CG HM P5 of Tymora) [ Source: "The Reports From Undermountain," Steven Schend, Dragon Magazine #227, p.15. Name/Description/Stats given ]
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| 30 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 02 Mar 2025 : 19:19:57
Butterleafcrimsonpetal
The true name of this treant is unknown, for the name by which he is remembered comes from ancient Uthgardt legends. This ancient treant is said to have possessed bark with an oddly golden hue, and he was said to sprout flowers of a brilliant red hue that could be boiled into a tea which produced an extremely euphoric and sometime hallucinatory state. But more importantly, this treant was a powerful priest of, oddly enough, a goddess of beauty, and some said that his grove was inhabited by dryads of his own fathering. Its rumored that he helped enact a ritual long ago which blessed a section of land, and in doing so, he drew upon the golden waters of the pool of Evergold shared by Sune and Hanali Celanil. In so doing, he created a small brook leaking from the realm of Brightwater to feed his home, and increased the number of fey beings that lived in the surrounding lands. It was a wonderful blessing, and it filled him with the greatest of joy. But, soon after blessing the land, or at least soon in the life of a treant, those who had worked with him to enact the ritual, died by the hands of a horde of orcs. These orcs also slew the dryads of his grove, awakening an anger in this treant that mirrored in the rage of the barbarians who also turned and slaughtered the savage orcs for killing their own kin. After this, the treant tried to teach the wild barbarians how to properly revere the land and its beauty, but the barbarians were too savage, and worse, they were despoiling his home. However, he did not want to kill them, so the treant brewed a tea of its own flowers, opened a door to another realm, and encouraged the barbarians to travel through it.
Unfortunately, the method by which Butterleafcrimsonpetal opened this doorway caught the attention of a powerful conclave of illusionists with a strange belief that "time magic", or Chronomancy as they referred to it, was just another advanced illusion. Soon after the great treant was captured and taken from its home, for these illusionists believed he held secrets of chronomancy that they must uncover. The illusionists, however, could not break the great tree, and in the end, he found a way to use his magic to end his own life. Not to let anything go to waste, its said that the illusionists then carved up its body into planks and used the remains to make paper with which to make powerful books and other magic items related to fey magic, including some say, the dreaming cabinet of Leira and a "fairy book" said to have been stolen by a theiving halfling known as Laughing Low. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 02 Mar 2025 : 16:43:09
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
The Festival of the Blue Goat
Celebrated most of the length of Snail Street, especially in the Hincellars and Sharp-Horn neighborhoods.
No one these days really remembers what the Blue Goat was all about; most sages suspect it was an ancient beast-cult or a fertility ritual from the earliest days of human settlement here. During the Festival a small herd of goats are drenched in blue paint and run through the crowds on Snail Street, sprinkled with holy fluids of Chauntea and Malar and then finally corralled for slaughtering and feasting once nightfall approaches. Sometimes one is spared by the calling of a god or goddess who deems them holy; once a mighty wizard even stepped forth to claim one as his chosen apprentice. The church of Mystra was quick to step in then and claim credit for the festival and proclaim that The Blue Goat was obviously a sign of their goddess all along, but they quieted down soon enough as all the locals began to cast fun at their goaty goddess and the strange fetishes of her mages.
It is also commonly whispered that such a goat was once even made a Masked Lord! – but that only well out of the hearing of any black-robes, of course.
Locals dress in vestments of blue and carry aloft torches and horned drinking instruments, while bards roam about strumming tunes and jesters dressed in goatskins (caps, cloaks and leggings) gambol and are chased about by local children. The adherents of the god Finder have recently begun to take this opportunity to break into storefronts or local merchant homes and deface their paintings and statuettes, or rearrange their displays or rugs or silverware in a most disturbing manner. What purpose this serves is known only to them.
The little known Uthgardt tribe of the blue goat can trace themselves back to a wychlaran who managed to reopen the portal that the Rus came through centuries ago. Unfortunately she did not understand what she did, and therefore found herself unable to return home. She wandered the north for some time before settling in the area that would eventually become Nimoar's Hold. Along the way, she gathered a collection of similar wandering souls seeking to explore the wider world, including the Korred, Shirakir Stoneblossom, and her husband, Eyontar the Satyr priest of Skerrit, and the centaur ranger, Ragtam Thunderchaser. She eventually found a small patch of land in which lived a treant and a trio of dryads, and she and her compatriots embarked upon a grand plan. They would enact a ritual of their own design that would link this land to "the spiritwilds". Its said that during this ritual, the avatars of Shiallia, Skerrit the Forester, Lurue, and Selune all appeared to bless the land. The ritual was powerful enough that they were able to sanctify a small patch of the land in such a manner that it became "spirit world adjacent", and she uncovered the ability to summon animal spirits (or telthors) to this section of land.
When a ragtab tribe of the Uthgardt was in retreat from a marauding force of orcs, they came upon the wychlaran and her friends. During the fight, the Wychlaran cast a spell to summon a small herd of giant goat telthors, and she and her friends led them into battle slaughtering orcs with abandon. But the orc horde was numerous, and her friends few. They were all slain in the onslaught, but their sacrifice turned the tide in the favor of the Uthgardt barbarians.
The Uthgardt took this as a sign from their god, and they took to calling themselves "the Blue Goat Tribe", and they took up residence upon the land. But they did not know the required rituals and sacrifices that were needed in order to keep the land sacredly bound to the "spiritwilds", and eventually the land reverted back to its normal status. These Uthgardt continued to live here for several generations, but its said that at some point they uncovered a portal and disappeared through it. Still, on certain nights, when the moon is "right", its said that the streets are filled with giant blue, ethereal goats, and some whisper that occasionally a ghostly figure appears amongst them (some say this figure is a masked woman, some a korred, some a satyr, and some even a centaur). These spirits are not seen in battle though, but rather enacting a strange dance of wild abandon. |
| AJA |
Posted - 02 Mar 2025 : 01:35:08
The Festival of the Blue Goat
Celebrated most of the length of Snail Street, especially in the Hincellars and Sharp-Horn neighborhoods.
No one these days really remembers what the Blue Goat was all about; most sages suspect it was an ancient beast-cult or a fertility ritual from the earliest days of human settlement here. During the Festival a small herd of goats are drenched in blue paint and run through the crowds on Snail Street, sprinkled with holy fluids of Chauntea and Malar and then finally corralled for slaughtering and feasting once nightfall approaches. Sometimes one is spared by the calling of a god or goddess who deems them holy; once a mighty wizard even stepped forth to claim one as his chosen apprentice. The church of Mystra was quick to step in then and claim credit for the festival and proclaim that The Blue Goat was obviously a sign of their goddess all along, but they quieted down soon enough as all the locals began to cast fun at their goaty goddess and the strange fetishes of her mages.
It is also commonly whispered that such a goat was once even made a Masked Lord! – but that only well out of the hearing of any black-robes, of course.
Locals dress in vestments of blue and carry aloft torches and horned drinking instruments, while bards roam about strumming tunes and jesters dressed in goatskins (caps, cloaks and leggings) gambol and are chased about by local children. The adherents of the god Finder have recently begun to take this opportunity to break into storefronts or local merchant homes and deface their paintings and statuettes, or rearrange their displays or rugs or silverware in a most disturbing manner. What purpose this serves is known only to them.
The Kings of Day (The Awakened of The Sun God)
Both mercenary company and religious zealotry of Lathander (Amaunator). The Sun is All, The Day is All. Formed – and fashioned – out of fanatics, those who have willingly knelt, eyes open, and gazed long into the blazing, inviolate, purifying sand-fields of the scarred and tortured Anauroch wastes. The Kings (The Awakened) will throw themselves – without question and without hesitation – against any enemy before them, so long as it advances the cause of Law (for whatever calculus their leader deems that to be). The Awakened do not wantonly slaughter downed or surrendered foes on the battlefield, seeking instead to keep them for later trial (after which they are, of course, found guilty and sentenced accordingly), and one of their most Holy Missives is to succor any and all children from areas of combat and surrounding homesteads. This is seen as Righteous and Lawful, and such children taken in are then adopted into the band and forcibly indoctrinated into the faith.
When not in active employment they often send bands to scour the ruins of Anauroch for relics of Burning Lathander. They are also commonly employed on specific side missions by the church of Tyr, who find them useful, if disturbing, crusaders for Law and justice.
Ammelthorn 'Flamebeard'
Commander and Divine Light of The Kings of Day mercenary company. 'He Who Would Never Lose The Light'. A very serious, wide-eyed, true believer of the tenets of Law and endless, cleansing Justice. He claims – and truly believes himself – to be a divine Servitor of the Sun, a reincarnated Great Hero of the Faith, or perhaps even a celestial Solar, surely, brought to Faerûn specifically to drive divine justice but he is, in truth, just a genasi (with, admittedly, a very impressive flaming beard) raised by religious heretics, indoctrinated in nothing but bloodshed and zealotry and released, upon adulthood, to advance The Awakened heresy upon Faerûn.
Ammelthorn has the innate wild talent of fire paralysis (keeps a single target immobilized for a length of time, unable to move but fully conscious and tormented with the continuing sensations of being burned alive. Both immobility and pain end when his concentration does), which he again regards as further proof of his divine righteousness. Where this ability originates from, and whether it is truly innate or divine, is, again, an unanswered question.
Laughing Low
[ 'low' rhyming with 'cow' or 'brow' ] Halfling folk legend. Laughing Low stole a fairy-book from the Grey-Mother Meerscar while she was busy tending to her garden of princesses in their silken sheafs, and he used that faerie magic to travel in the sunlight that shifts through the trees, to any and all the lands that lie beneath the sun (to Griefstones, home of the tear-spotted orcs; Lerella, where the crimson peaches grow; Tastaar, Land of the Loppy Hats; Loropid, of the Loropids; and so on and so on – these are all tales in their own right). Eventually Laughing Low came to the coast that had no end, and fell in love with a sea-maid of Settle-Bottom, and from there she took him out far and far from shore ('where there were no trees or sunlight, and he never was seen no more').
But the fairy-book is still out there, still waiting to travel to all the lands that lie beneath the sun. And any time a young hin lad or lass suddenly ups-and-offs from their village out into the wider Realms it is said that they had found Laughing Low's book, right there where the sunlight shifts through the trees.
Teldrûvae
Half-elven songstress, incurable romantic, and stage-hand at Mother Mallodril's Good-Stage, Trades Ward (she helps with set dressing and sometimes joins in on the chorus, if needed). Teldrûvae found herself in possession of The Dreaming Cabinet of Leira this past Kythorn, acquired from a rather spindly and sallow Chondathan elf upon a chance afternoon stroll in the Market. She remembers the elf quite clearly, and even some of the words that were exchanged, but how she got that great wooden thing home through the crowded streets and up to her fifth-floor rooms is not even the haziest blur in her memory.
Nevertheless, she has since made great use of the Cabinet, dreaming deeply and often, availing herself of trade investments and romantic interludes and even, perhaps foolishly, the chance to reconsider just the right barb to a social rival – and once to drag herself, bloody and disembowled, back within its doors to find that other ending that was not on the spear of a rampaging sahuagin invader.
But despite all of her sudden successes she feels herself drawing increasingly thin, as if sometimes the reach of her arms exceeds her grasp, and her eyes sometimes see people and things where they shouldn't otherwise be. And there are now always whispers and murmers that sound so familiar, but those who would have made them are always just beyond the turning of her head. Always, always, whispers and murmers.
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The Dreaming Cabinet of Leira
Carved of Sune-wood in a confusing variety of motifs of the old Calishite style; of wave and cloud; delicate flowers and bubbling fountains; peopled by naiads with long tresses and dryads on wooded branch and nereids among the surf. And inlaid everywhere with patterned geometric mosaics of dazzling lapis and serene jade and the blazing yellow citrine of the sun, and the white enameled longitudes and latitudes of the moon in her phases.
Within the Cabinet there is a low bench piled with cushions of grey and white and rose cross-hatch, all stuffed with such a heavenly down. The interior surrounding the bench is ill-defined and hard to describe. Confining, endless; plain, swirled, smoky. Echoing, whispering. It makes ones' stomach drop as if from a sudden fall. Best to just lie down among the cushions and have a rest. Really, the longer you lie there, the clearer things become. So many things become clear.
Of The Dreaming Cabinet of Leira
There are many realities that stretch forth before us all, like invisible strings of endless pearls. Those pearls on their strings are fixed in time and locked down by the absolute Law of Mystra's temporal bans. But, just as with a physical string of pearls, there falls between each of them a gap; in this case the metaphorical gaps of possibility, the boundary between Is and Is-Not, eager voids open to be occupied by realities of what could be. These then are the domains of Leira, the Lady of The Mists. The Dreaming Cabinet is pregnant with such possibilities, and one enclosed within it might have their dreams entwined with the consciousness of the goddess herself and, in the manufacture of their own dream-spaces, may choose to step forward through one such gap and emerge instead in what was once The Could-Be, but now is just, forevermore, The Is.
But The Is does not come without a price. There is no Is without the Is-Not. Every mortal who has lived their life can attest to that. The Mistress of Illusion can guide you through the ways between Is and Is-Not, but not even she can predict what cost those ways will incur. Nor would she ever even care to.
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| sleyvas |
Posted - 17 Feb 2025 : 23:29:10
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Several ghosts seemingly encased in blueflames also seem to be interested in finding Gobold alive, and some believe these individuals to be the former "Knees of the Mountain".
The Knees of The Mountain are Blueflame ghosts. There are twelve Knees of the Mountain and there are twelve Mountains of The Moon. Coincidence? I think not!
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Much like Ilsabra, he is obsessed with oysters and clams, for he was raised on the shores of the Northern Sea of Selune's Toril facing side. His family were avid pearl divers from the giant clams near their home
Savrel Clamseeder's family practiced a method of dying pearls during their development by "feeding" their giant clams with special dyes. The Death Moon Orb created by Larloch was a sphere of black and violet, shifting and shimmering like oil on water. Like a pearl that been specially dyed with colors. Coincidence? I think not!
Savrel enlisted Ilsabra to travel to the Plane of Radiance from a Celestial Staircase somewhere in the region of the twelve Mountains of The Moon. He was in the company of a lillend name Neyleirea. Lillends are celestial servitors of Selûne. Did you know that both Selûne and Mystra share the magic book of all the rainbow hues and lights and darks that visit Faerûn – including upon the singular surface of the pearl? Even a Death Moon pearl? Coincidence? I think not!!
Mystra refused her clergy to interfere with Larloch and his Blueflame schemes. Selûne was under no such restrictions. Mystra was murdered in Tarsakh of The Year of Blue Flame and the Death Moon Orb detonated in exactly the same instance of her death. Coincidence??
I think not. The Year of Blue Flame was an inside job. Cyricism was just a red herring. Dweomerheart exploded back and to the left. What did Selûne know and when did she know it. Wake up, rothéeple!
NIIIIICCCCEEEEEEE! I love that linkage of the death moon orb to a giant pearl from the seas of the moon... and the linkage of blueflame items, Larloch, and the noting that it exploded in the spellplague. Also, those rothéeple that think that dweomerheart actually exploded just didn't know that it was detached from Toril and went to Abeir. So, was all of this a way to strip the shadow weave from her sister goddess, Shar?
Was it a way to drive Szass Tam to leave his former ways and turn darkly evil, via the curse of the death moon orb... make him jealous of his rival that became not Zulkir of Necromancy, but GOD of Necromancy.... a way to get him infected by a book (Tome of Fastring the Delver) full of lies about how to become a god and remake the world (a book that some believe was Leira).... that would ultimately lead to a immortal monk betraying Tam, enacting the ritual, and releasing a large amount of magical energy.... that did something noone expected. |
| AJA |
Posted - 16 Feb 2025 : 07:17:29
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Several ghosts seemingly encased in blueflames also seem to be interested in finding Gobold alive, and some believe these individuals to be the former "Knees of the Mountain".
The Knees of The Mountain are Blueflame ghosts. There are twelve Knees of the Mountain and there are twelve Mountains of The Moon. Coincidence? I think not!
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Much like Ilsabra, he is obsessed with oysters and clams, for he was raised on the shores of the Northern Sea of Selune's Toril facing side. His family were avid pearl divers from the giant clams near their home
Savrel Clamseeder's family practiced a method of dying pearls during their development by "feeding" their giant clams with special dyes. The Death Moon Orb created by Larloch was a sphere of black and violet, shifting and shimmering like oil on water. Like a pearl that been specially dyed with colors. Coincidence? I think not!
Savrel enlisted Ilsabra to travel to the Plane of Radiance from a Celestial Staircase somewhere in the region of the twelve Mountains of The Moon. He was in the company of a lillend name Neyleirea. Lillends are celestial servitors of Selûne. Did you know that both Selûne and Mystra share the magic book of all the rainbow hues and lights and darks that visit Faerûn – including upon the singular surface of the pearl? Even a Death Moon pearl? Coincidence? I think not!!
Mystra refused her clergy to interfere with Larloch and his Blueflame schemes. Selûne was under no such restrictions. Mystra was murdered in Tarsakh of The Year of Blue Flame and the Death Moon Orb detonated in exactly the same instance of her death. Coincidence??
I think not. The Year of Blue Flame was an inside job. Cyricism was just a red herring. Dweomerheart exploded back and to the left. What did Selûne know and when did she know it. Wake up, rothéeple!
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| sleyvas |
Posted - 10 Feb 2025 : 14:15:13
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Gobold
Brownish-black scales with dark coppery ribs and undersides, and golden markings on his chest and belly, elbows, knees, undertail and shins. Large bright red eyes and olive-green horns, the right of which sticks out just a bit further than the left (it's not that obvious, but once you see it you can't help but keep noticing). The apprentice of the master alchemist Irrym Sulanheer, of Castle Waterdeep.
Gobold is a kobold. Gobold the Kobold. Yes, he has heard all the jokes about his name. But he remains quite confused, because it doesn't rhyme in his native tongue. Also, he regards himself as quite fluent in both the human Common and Tethan, and he is pretty sure its' not supposed to rhyme that way there, either. Maybe its a Northern thing.
He was the apprentice of the Cauldron King, of the Understreets of Irieabor, before the Old Master angered the Night Skulls and was found, bloated and purple-faced, unalive in the muck near to the Thousandeyes Trading Coster. Fortunately for Gobold he had earlier drawn the wise eye of the mage Ambraddon, who strongly recommended him to the service of the Blackstaff of Waterdeep. Lord Khelben saw no need for him at his Tower, but made arrangements instead to apprentice him to the newly-titled "master alchemist" Irrym Sulanheer. But not out of the goodness of his heart.
Gobold is now under strict instruction to keep an eye on his master, and report immediately if the former "Master Mage of Mintar" does any backsliding into allying with tyrants or priests of dark gods (or both, or any other unsavory characters instead). In return for this service he has been promised that he will be strongly considered for admission at the Tower, the next time such a position opens up. Whenever that may be.
Rumors are that Gobold has been seen carrying a strange white urn which stands almost as tall as himself, with an elaborate red wax stopper on it. He seems exceptionally engrossed with this item, even whispering to it as though carrying on a conversation with someone or something that isn't there. It is said that in one situation, a group of orcs who had previously bullied him and taken his coins which were meant to buy groceries, were found brutally torn into many pieces after Gobold was seen carrying the urn outside of the tavern in which the orcs had chosen to spend Gobold's coin.
There are rumors that Gobold has recently been contacted by Niskanauldra, a cross planar spell merchant, though what the trader is interested in none are sure. Several ghosts seemingly encased in blueflames also seem to be interested in finding Gobold alive, and some believe these individuals to be the former "Knees of the Mountain". |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 10 Feb 2025 : 13:25:33
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Irrym Sulanheer
The former "Master Mage of Mintar". His ambitions were always greater than his self-given title and his mastery of the Art was always far less. Irrym at one point discovered an ancient series of terrible wards under the city called The Seventeen Seals, and leveraged this knowledge to insert himself into the entourage of the ambitious Baneite, Teldorn Darkhope.
On Midwinter's Eve 1362DR, when Teldorn launched his conquest of the city, Irrym's sole duty was to safeguard The Seventeen Seals and ensure their stability through the chaos above, but the rioting mobs and the sudden appearance of an adventuring company called the Knights Errant panicked him, and the Seals, home to such wretched horrors as The Red Threshers, Ninilnurr the Mockery That Dances, The Once-a-Man, and The Knees of The Mountain (that mountain being the titanic Azozuz of the Red Angularities, and the Knees his mighty lieutenants, who knelt before him and swore to serve him in death as in life), were sundered and their inhabitants released into the city above. "The Master Mage of Mintar" quite suddenly recanted his position and his title, and begged succor from the Knights as they concluded their business in the city and made a hasty return to the safer confines of Waterdeep.
Irrym has since weaseled his way into a position at the Castle as the head of their alchemists, where he oversees the crafting of the greenfire (Greek fire) used by the specialized Guard gauntlets known as The Moor Burners. He has also, to his credit, managed to stay clear of either grasping ambitions or self-serving alliances with priests of dark gods. What Teldorn Darkhope (or Ninilnurr the Mockery That Dances or the handful of Knees of The Mountain who survived the seizing of Mintar) think about his new situation (if indeed they do at all), is so far unknown.
Of course, few know that The Seventeen Seals were some of the first blueflame magic items which held the spirits of blueflame ghosts within them. They used a special form of salt glazed pottery, containing the essence of salt mummies which were created and destroyed for this purpose (whom some mistakenly referred to as "salt liches") from the salt mines relatively near the Desertsmouth Mountains. These pieces of pottery were sealed with elaborate seals combining intricate metal seals mined from astral metals, enwrapped in salt glazed pottery, and sealed with bloodwax mixed with demonic blood. Of The Seventeen Seals, all but seemingly two had been destroyed, primarily because they were not all in one place (though there were rumors that at least three were taken away). The remaining two were believed to hold the spirits of Azozuz of the Red Angularities (also known as "The Mountain", a red horned tiefling minotaur believed to be of the blood of Baphomet himself and once said to be a mighty mercenary general in the armies of Narfell, under the command of the ruler of the enclave of Jiksidur. These last two seals were said to be deep in the ruins of Mintar, and some believe that they guarded a portal that opened into the Illythiiri ruins deep in the heart of Dun-Tharos beneath the Rawlinswood. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 10 Feb 2025 : 12:51:58
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Astralbarre
Netherese lich. Sits in his hidden fastness and sends his agents out into Faerûn with one singular urgent purpose; to seek out any shards or whole pieces of Netherese salt-glazed pottery, as originated in the town of Torlhauk that he ruled over, on the receeding shores of the Narrow Sea, and gained a widespread popularity in the dying days of the Empire there. The secrets of this salt-glazing process have been rediscovered again in the modern Realms, but their craftwork pales in comparison to those of Astralbarre's times (and, even if they didn't, he wouldn't bat an eyeless eye at them anyhow, inferior as they must be). The shelves and displays of his abode groan with white and cream-colored vessels, accented with the barest splashes of color, and in the corners the shard-piles tower into a voluminous majesty only approachable by the coin-hoards of full-grown wyrms but still, he seeks more. There must be more, there needs to be more.
His agents are familiar among the Bedine, who refer to him as The Meaningless Man, the one who trades valuable foodstuffs and materials for worthless scraps of ceramic. His agents are less familiar, but still known, among the Black Network, as they sometimes find themselves scouting or squatting among the same ruins or oases, for very different reasons.
One day Astralbarre will achieve his true goal, to find the ruins of Torlhauk, long lost to the sands and shifting fortunes of the Anauroch, and restore the ancient kilns there, and rebuild the mighty potters' wheels, and sit back and laugh as all Faerûn trembles, brought to their knees by the mighty glory of Netherese salt-glazed pottery!
Larloch knows of Astralbarre but considers him just another one of those decayed and deluded unfortunates, too uselessly insane for his own purposes. He does keep an eye on the enchantments the lich has created, the ones that allow his agents to efficiently sift through large quantities of earth and sand in search for even the tiniest desired items, and also the ones that knit back together an object from even the smallest individual parts, on a level of flawless integration that no other mages' mending spells have ever managed to match.
Of course, none truly understand WHY Astralbarre truly seeks what he seeks..... for in truth, his original phylactery is believed to be held in an urn of salt glazed pottery of seemingly nondescript manufacture in the town of Torlhauk. He had once been a simple mortal netherese arcanist of modest power. Then came the day when he was assaulted by a rival, forced to become a lich using one of his own urns. This rival then stole his phylactery and placed spells upon it to hide it even AND ESPECIALLY FROM the lich whose soul was entrapped within it. His rival then hid this nondescript phylactery, which he had protected against destruction with numerous magics which would last centuries, but which would obviously be failed by this time. and cast his rival into a form of astral prison which allowed him to be questioned, tortured, and even forced to perform magics. Sadly, he never knew WHO his rival was, nor why he had been enslaved as a lich servitor to him. Then came the day when the wards on his magic prison fell apart, decades after the netherese enclaves fell from the sky and when the mythallar empowering his prison finally failed due to the actions of looters. Why Larloch never reseized control over his once prisoner is little known, for in truth Astralbarre (who had been made to forget his own name and many facts of his own life, whilst maintaining all of his mastery of magic) simply took the name by which he had been called "Astral Bar", after the name of the specific spell which Larloch had created to entrap the lich. |
| AJA |
Posted - 09 Feb 2025 : 01:23:19
Astralbarre
Netherese lich. Sits in his hidden fastness and sends his agents out into Faerûn with one singular urgent purpose; to seek out any shards or whole pieces of Netherese salt-glazed pottery, as originated in the town of Torlhauk that he ruled over, on the receeding shores of the Narrow Sea, and gained a widespread popularity in the dying days of the Empire there. The secrets of this salt-glazing process have been rediscovered again in the modern Realms, but their craftwork pales in comparison to those of Astralbarre's times (and, even if they didn't, he wouldn't bat an eyeless eye at them anyhow, inferior as they must be). The shelves and displays of his abode groan with white and cream-colored vessels, accented with the barest splashes of color, and in the corners the shard-piles tower into a voluminous majesty only approachable by the coin-hoards of full-grown wyrms but still, he seeks more. There must be more, there needs to be more.
His agents are familiar among the Bedine, who refer to him as The Meaningless Man, the one who trades valuable foodstuffs and materials for worthless scraps of ceramic. His agents are less familiar, but still known, among the Black Network, as they sometimes find themselves scouting or squatting among the same ruins or oases, for very different reasons.
One day Astralbarre will achieve his true goal, to find the ruins of Torlhauk, long lost to the sands and shifting fortunes of the Anauroch, and restore the ancient kilns there, and rebuild the mighty potters' wheels, and sit back and laugh as all Faerûn trembles, brought to their knees by the mighty glory of Netherese salt-glazed pottery!
Larloch knows of Astralbarre but considers him just another one of those decayed and deluded unfortunates, too uselessly insane for his own purposes. He does keep an eye on the enchantments the lich has created, the ones that allow his agents to efficiently sift through large quantities of earth and sand in search for even the tiniest desired items, and also the ones that knit back together an object from even the smallest individual parts, on a level of flawless integration that no other mages' mending spells have ever managed to match.
The Dead-Marchers
("those born into the grave, and those who choose to rise from it") Mercenary company. All members enter into contracts allowing the necromancers of the company to step in and raise their fallen corpses as undead, to continue to serve and fight alongside their living fellows. Some sign on for the guarantee of continued payment to loved ones after their death, some simply have no other place to turn to and regard an extended stay alongside their brothers as an honor worth being retained for. Others only know battle and relish the thought of their mortal remains continuing the fight on Faerûn, while their souls go onwards to raise havoc in the Halls of Tempus.
The Dead-Marchers strictly honor their contracts, and their contracts alone; they take great care to separate their fallen from the battlefield, and never randomly raise the corpses of enemies or unaffiliated dead. It is this strict adherence to their own personal rule of law that ensures their acceptance, however distasteful it may be, even to those potential employers of Lawful or Good alignments.
There are a few other companies of similar make scattered across Faerûn, most notably The Illustrious Bones (based among the city-states of the Tashalar and into Lapaliiya), The Coffin-Crowned (who find ready employment in Chessenta) and The Ones For Whom Myrkul Must Wait (active in Semphar and Murghôm).
Irrym Sulanheer
The former "Master Mage of Mintar". His ambitions were always greater than his self-given title and his mastery of the Art was always far less. Irrym at one point discovered an ancient series of terrible wards under the city called The Seventeen Seals, and leveraged this knowledge to insert himself into the entourage of the ambitious Baneite, Teldorn Darkhope.
On Midwinter's Eve 1362DR, when Teldorn launched his conquest of the city, Irrym's sole duty was to safeguard The Seventeen Seals and ensure their stability through the chaos above, but the rioting mobs and the sudden appearance of an adventuring company called the Knights Errant panicked him, and the Seals, home to such wretched horrors as The Red Threshers, Ninilnurr the Mockery That Dances, The Once-a-Man, and The Knees of The Mountain (that mountain being the titanic Azozuz of the Red Angularities, and the Knees his mighty lieutenants, who knelt before him and swore to serve him in death as in life), were sundered and their inhabitants released into the city above. "The Master Mage of Mintar" quite suddenly recanted his position and his title, and begged succor from the Knights as they concluded their business in the city and made a hasty return to the safer confines of Waterdeep.
Irrym has since weaseled his way into a position at the Castle as the head of their alchemists, where he oversees the crafting of the greenfire (Greek fire) used by the specialized Guard gauntlets known as The Moor Burners. He has also, to his credit, managed to stay clear of either grasping ambitions or self-serving alliances with priests of dark gods. What Teldorn Darkhope (or Ninilnurr the Mockery That Dances or the handful of Knees of The Mountain who survived the seizing of Mintar) think about his new situation (if indeed they do at all), is so far unknown.
Gobold
Brownish-black scales with dark coppery ribs and undersides, and golden markings on his chest and belly, elbows, knees, undertail and shins. Large bright red eyes and olive-green horns, the right of which sticks out just a bit further than the left (it's not that obvious, but once you see it you can't help but keep noticing). The apprentice of the master alchemist Irrym Sulanheer, of Castle Waterdeep.
Gobold is a kobold. Gobold the Kobold. Yes, he has heard all the jokes about his name. But he remains quite confused, because it doesn't rhyme in his native tongue. Also, he regards himself as quite fluent in both the human Common and Tethan, and he is pretty sure its' not supposed to rhyme that way there, either. Maybe its a Northern thing.
He was the apprentice of the Cauldron King, of the Understreets of Irieabor, before the Old Master angered the Night Skulls and was found, bloated and purple-faced, unalive in the muck near to the Thousandeyes Trading Coster. Fortunately for Gobold he had earlier drawn the wise eye of the mage Ambraddon, who strongly recommended him to the service of the Blackstaff of Waterdeep. Lord Khelben saw no need for him at his Tower, but made arrangements instead to apprentice him to the newly-titled "master alchemist" Irrym Sulanheer. But not out of the goodness of his heart.
Gobold is now under strict instruction to keep an eye on his master, and report immediately if the former "Master Mage of Mintar" does any backsliding into allying with tyrants or priests of dark gods (or both, or any other unsavory characters instead). In return for this service he has been promised that he will be strongly considered for admission at the Tower, the next time such a position opens up. Whenever that may be.
Niskanauldra
A cross-planar spell merchant. Wheels and deals in many of the lesser-known designments of arch-mages of note, obscure works such as Bigby's Comfy Handpillow and Otiluke's Frozen Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Sphere, and Elminster's It Was A Balmy Afternoon In April. Accepts payment in unique souls, pigeon holes, certified-rational calculations, and intellectual sheep or goats. Genial, ironic, definite and verifiable – at least, that's what her enchanted call-forth card says (and also, 'all those things that impress and startle, but never falsehoods or wanton exaggerations'). Visited by Elminster and several of the Seven Sisters on numerous occasions, warned repeatedly against abusing the rules on Mystra's otherplanar permissions.
Niskanauldra used to keep a parlor in Sea Ward but now spends most of her time down in the warrens of Skullport, where folk don't find her trade so odd. And there are more unique souls and pigeon holes. And less unannounced visitations from annoying Mystra-spawn.
She has recently become a convert to The Golden Talbo, a risen cult-god worshiped for good fortune in the local number-lotteries and investment roundshields, and all those kinds of general get-rich-quick schemes which even the priests of Waukeen raise their eyebrows at and the clergy of Tymora won't touch with an adventurer's ten-foot pole.
Niska has her own personal Talbo investment tied up in a scheme called Paladinplate, a coin-venture that claims to sell plates of steel each individually stamped and numbered from various suits of armor that the Open Lord and other bold and valiant paladins of Waterdeep have worn and fought in in the past. As everyone knows, gold and silver are brought up in ever-greater quantities from the depths of the Undermountain and from the Far Lands of Maztica, and so their value will only decrease, leaving only the limited and righteous Paladinplate as the new currency to take their place (yes, they have many very-rich merchants and former advisers to the Open Lord himself to vouch for these claims and offer their insider knowledge to fellow investors!).
Listen, its just like her card says, never falsehoods or wanton exaggerations. Why would it say that if it weren't true. And she has crossed to other planes, people! She has seen a world where this sort of thing works, trust her.
|
| sleyvas |
Posted - 01 Feb 2025 : 15:07:56
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
"Pearl divers on the moon'? I think someone has been breathing too deeply of the halfling's weed!
What will you try to fool me on next, "goodly drow on the North Pole"?
Well there be rumors.... along with some rumors of some "jungle drow" as well.... 'twould seem that the lost lands of Katashaka, rumored to have so recently returned, hold many a mystery much as the moon. |
| AJA |
Posted - 01 Feb 2025 : 03:07:33
"Pearl divers on the moon'? I think someone has been breathing too deeply of the halfling's weed!
What will you try to fool me on next, "goodly drow on the North Pole"?
|
| sleyvas |
Posted - 24 Jan 2025 : 13:53:42
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Ilsabra
A Sage of uniquely singular purpose. Dedicates her studies to the mystery of pearls. Pearlescence, in particular, that swirling enchantment that must be nothing more than the mortal personification of the otherplanar glories of the Positive Radiance. Spring Magic, never the same swirl twice, an endless variety of little enchanted worlds! And why oysters and such, laid hidden from view in the watery vasts? Is it the unexpected withdrawals and fresh beginnings of the tides that power their secrets? What gods are then responsible for expanding The Ten Proper Colors* into such a bewildering mother-of-all-splendors, and what manner their reasonings? Did you know that both Selûne and Mystra share the magic book of all the rainbow hues and lights and darks that visit Faerûn in three moods – reflecting on the bright face of the moon, in the fae wilds where all the worlds rainbows arc forth from, and upon the singular surface of the pearl? And other such things.
Author of The Dazzlements and Puzzlements of The Pearl (1361DR)**, Tides and Tidings Among the Pearl Fishers of The Shining Sea (1365), and The Pearl; or, A Mystery Teased Forth From Many Slow and Careful Studies (1368). She had announced a fourth intended volume in her oeuvre, Into A Great Discovery, a 'true-tell-all' of her imminent explorations of the Plane of Positive Radiances, but that was quite some time ago and she has not been heard from since.
* not to be mistaken for The Three Truths (Known to The Artist and The Art), the base colors of red (the aspect of Chaos) blue (the house of Law) and yellow (the scheme of Neutrality); and The Sisters (black, associated with The Dark Arts, and white, the domain of The Healing Arts)
** the foreword of which takes quite particular offense to the author Volothamp Geddarm and his (highly-controversial, it should be acknowledged) Guide to All-Things Magical, in which he asserts the claim that 'most pearls in the Realms are white'. It is a rather lengthy and well-sourced rebuttal, but, "stupidity and foul ignorance of the highest order" was the most directly relevant quote, I believe
Ilsabra is said to have been recently surprised to have met a resident of "the great pearl of the sky" .... another term for the moon known as Selune. This fey priest, Savrel Clamseeder, seemingly worships both Leira and Selune and seems to be obsessed with travel to the plane of radiance and their ties to the stars in the sky of realmspace. Much like Ilsabra, he is obsessed with oysters and clams, for he was raised on the shores of the Northern Sea of Selune's Toril facing side. His family were avid pearl divers from the giant clams near their home, where they practiced a method of dying pearls during their development by "feeding" their giant clams with special dyes mixed with pieces of fish left over from cooking. Unfortunately, they were accused of "fishing" during a period of night and consigned to work in the mines beneath Selune's surface. Savrel was left to live with his aunt, but he found her to be flighty and obsessed with her own self, so he ran away to return to his unoccupied family home.
Savrel is said to have contacted Ilsabra to discuss a venture to the plane of radiance via a celestial staircase discovered in the ruins of an ancient Selunian city near the molten mountaintops of one of the 12 highest mountains recently. Savrel is said to have visited Ilsabra in the accompaniance of a strange snakewoman with brightly colored feathered wings, said to be a lillend name Neyleirea. |
| AJA |
Posted - 19 Jan 2025 : 00:56:08
The Golden Talbo
A risen cult-god worshiped for good fortune in the local number-lotteries and investment roundshields, and all those sorts of questionable get-rich-quick schemes which even the priests of Waukeen raise their eyebrows at and the clergy of Tymora won't touch with an adventurer's ten-foot pole. Presents as a miniature beholder with a pleasant cat-face, and eye-stalks that all end in gleaming Waterdhavian gold dragons. The Golden Talbo is no cult-god at all, but just another opportunistic cash-grab hatched by the Xanathar to separate fools from their coin, and to ensnare degenerate (and desperate) gamblers in his web, and hide his activities from the Watch behind the cloak of legitimate religion. But just because Tymora and Waukeen aren't interested, doesn't mean that no one is. Somewhere in the depths of the former Melairbode the ever-greedy Abbathor begins to stir, his interest awakened.
Haundra
Wanders the Market with her trays of Haundra's Tooth-and-Mouth Treatments ("designed for better teeth, firmer gums and sweeter breath. Made with scents from the elves and salts from the dwarves. Delightful and effective!"). Always on the look-out for anyone with above-average teeth to force into an impromptu showcase, especially those of an adventurous bent. After all, adventurers are a generally sturdier folk and always seem to have such perfect dentition, in spite of the fact that they spend most of their time getting bashed directly in the face and eating just the worst foodstuffs that can be crammed into a waxed wrapper and called an iron ration. She has no idea how that makes sense but, no matter. They're perfect for her advertisings!
What that means in practice is that your adventurers may find themselves suddenly accosted and slathered with a mouthful of gritty paste of doubtful provenance, while Haundra loudly sells her sales pitch and gesticulates wildly until a crowd gathers round and begins gawking.
….But honestly, its' not the worst thing they've ever tasted. Probably better than whatever they forced down their gullet on their last stone-delve. Maybe there is something to this "healthy tooth treatment" stuff. Ooh!, and is that a minty aftertaste?
Ilsabra
A Sage of uniquely singular purpose. Dedicates her studies to the mystery of pearls. Pearlescence, in particular, that swirling enchantment that must be nothing more than the mortal personification of the otherplanar glories of the Positive Radiance. Spring Magic, never the same swirl twice, an endless variety of little enchanted worlds! And why oysters and such, laid hidden from view in the watery vasts? Is it the unexpected withdrawals and fresh beginnings of the tides that power their secrets? What gods are then responsible for expanding The Ten Proper Colors* into such a bewildering mother-of-all-splendors, and what manner their reasonings? Did you know that both Selûne and Mystra share the magic book of all the rainbow hues and lights and darks that visit Faerûn in three moods – reflecting on the bright face of the moon, in the fae wilds where all the worlds rainbows arc forth from, and upon the singular surface of the pearl? And other such things.
Author of The Dazzlements and Puzzlements of The Pearl (1361DR)**, Tides and Tidings Among the Pearl Fishers of The Shining Sea (1365), and The Pearl; or, A Mystery Teased Forth From Many Slow and Careful Studies (1368). She had announced a fourth intended volume in her oeuvre, Into A Great Discovery, a 'true-tell-all' of her imminent explorations of the Plane of Positive Radiances, but that was quite some time ago and she has not been heard from since.
* not to be mistaken for The Three Truths (Known to The Artist and The Art), the base colors of red (the aspect of Chaos) blue (the house of Law) and yellow (the scheme of Neutrality); and The Sisters (black, associated with The Dark Arts, and white, the domain of The Healing Arts)
** the foreword of which takes quite particular offense to the author Volothamp Geddarm and his (highly-controversial, it should be acknowledged) Guide to All-Things Magical, in which he asserts the claim that 'most pearls in the Realms are white'. It is a rather lengthy and well-sourced rebuttal, but, "stupidity and foul ignorance of the highest order" was the most directly relevant quote, I believe
Josbril
South Ward copper-caster (hedge-mage). Makes her living twining floral enchantments such as elven starred roses and two-lavenders and black lace ladies (the kind of pretty nonsense that adorns the parlor tables and highsun rooms of nobles who feel that the natural splendors of Faerûn are beneath them), and sells them at the service doors of the various villas of Sea and North Wards. There are occasional servant's whispers that her adornments are sometimes paid extra by rival nobles to carry debilitating or embarrassing poisons, or are enspelled to carry forth echoes of conversations in the room they are placed in. Of course, if those tales are true it bears asking why the servants know of them, and not their noble masters.
Rueskla
Trades Ward bread-maker (The Wide Way, off the Court of the White Bull). Native of Ruathym. Hardy, hairy, balding, animated. Loves to regale anyone (willing or otherwise) who comes into his shop with his version of the "as my wife was coming back from the well" joke. He changes the details every time he tells it, but his versions are always extra inappropriate, and they always involve at some point a pair of donkeys – but never a sheep ("what a good joke, eh! Eh?"). He never takes offense if the listener does not appreciate his storytelling; in fact, he may just start all over again with an entirely different version instead. Well, his breads are good even if his jokes are not. Maintains ongoing and generally one-sided feuds with the nearby bread-makers Marleskdra the Moon-Baker and Tymorla of the Sourdough Delights (not even because they compete for the same pool of customers, but mostly because they've both repeatedly rejected his romantic advances – and he even sent them both a sheep!).
|
| sleyvas |
Posted - 28 Dec 2024 : 14:57:40
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
I like the terminology for a duel. "Aneshk Rath" sounds suitably Thayan and fits along with "Alavaerthae".
High praise! (also worth noting, the "red" in Red Greeting isn't about the color, but is again reference to Woberyl himself; the actual connotation is more along the lines of, "may your scarrings be greater than mine")
As for the rest, I don't know enough about the East, unapproachable or otherwise, to build on your comments but I still always enjoy reading through your ability to weave various random thoughts into something greater. Especially how quickly it often seems to come together for you!
Ah, to throw out some clarity. Escalthar "The Black Star" was the mage who caused the formation of the Zulkirate of Thay. He brought about the "Council of the Black Star" which convented to get multiple "red wizards" together and agree of a method of ruling Thay (because it went for about a century before there was the Zulkir hierarchy, and during this time much bloodshed as wizard killed wizard). Escalthar is believed by many to have been tied in some way to Azuth.
Escalthar developed the idea of the "Chairmaster" (hate that term)/"Ustakir"/"Master of Thrones". Since its semi-canon that this exists per "The Simbul's Gift" novel, I like how George limited it, in that this being just has some kind of power over the Zulkir's thrones that are used when the Conclave of Zulkir's meet... to keep things civil. This power may have been less of a "power" and more of a "agreed upon law" that this individual would work as an intermediary/tiebreaker. The thrones themselves were of Netherese origin and provided by Escalthar as a part of the Council of the Black Star, and they rebuffed magic in some undocumented way to protect those who sat in them. He also provided regalia of the Zulkirs that used bits of the Athora.
Escalthar "The Black Star" was also known for his special curse, Escalthar's Everlasting Curse, which would make a person shapechange randomly every few seconds for the rest of their lives. Its actually rumored that he had to use this as the Council of the Black Star on at least one individual.
I literally only tied your NPC to Halruaa/Thay because of your thoughts that he was human-centric (common to red wizards) and that he worshipped Savras (not uncommon to Halruaa), so it would fit if he was one of the Halruaan "red wizards" that was exiled and went to Thay and started the uprising. Then of course, "servant of stars" being opposed by an individual calling himself "the black star", with one being Azuth's follower and the other Savras'... well, that just seemed fun. In fact, it could be INTERESTING if the "star gem" that I mentioned as being used as Hindaurl's eye "got infected/affected by" the Athora mentioned in George's article AFTER Escalthar stole it from Hindaurl... and turned it "black". Thus, Escalthar may not have been known as "the Black Star" until he had attacked Hindaurl. In fact, it could be even more interesting if they had been investigating the Athora together as allies and something involving the athora happened that caused the two to come to conflict, turned the star gem black, and ultimately Escalthar ended up "controlled" by the Athora... and it was the Athora that wanted him to create the Zulkirate. Maybe even to this day Hindaurl is trapped somewhere near the Athora... maybe in some way similar to how Ythazz Buvarr was entrapped as a demilich. Having Hindaurl be a weaveghost or watchghost or spellstitched mummy that attacks those who would assault the Athora is one such idea.
To note, some of this comes from Ed's original handout about the formation of the Zulkirate. Some comes from George's Tyrants in Scarlet article available on DM's Guild, which built from Ed's material. |
| AJA |
Posted - 28 Dec 2024 : 01:26:00
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
I like the terminology for a duel. "Aneshk Rath" sounds suitably Thayan and fits along with "Alavaerthae".
High praise! (also worth noting, the "red" in Red Greeting isn't about the color, but is again reference to Woberyl himself; the actual connotation is more along the lines of, "may your scarrings be greater than mine")
As for the rest, I don't know enough about the East, unapproachable or otherwise, to build on your comments but I still always enjoy reading through your ability to weave various random thoughts into something greater. Especially how quickly it often seems to come together for you!
|
| sleyvas |
Posted - 22 Dec 2024 : 16:08:15
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Hindaurl, The Servant of Stars, Infalliable Glare of Savras
Hindaurl was quite the human supremacist, and it shows up often in his writings. He was also an adherent of Savras in an age when the latter was not in active godhood, having been imprisoned by Azuth, and as a result the church was scattered and largely idiosyncratic – which is why Hindaurl was free to title himself something so silly as, "The Infalliable Glare of Savras."
Ah, but few knew the truth behind the naming of Hindaurl. Most thought him exceptionally audacious, but in truth, his glare came from the fact that one of his eyes was a glowing gem that seemingly fell from the sky on the night that Savras was imprisoned. Its thought that this "falling star" held some portion of the intellect of Savras. When Hindaurl would set his gaze upon an individual it was said that at times the eye would fire a ray of light that would surround an individual with a glowing, faerie fire like aura of golden light.... and when such occurred, Hindaurl would seemingly go into a trance and speak in a prophetic voice of mysteries that would only be found to be true years later. Sadly, Hindaurl was run out of Halruaa centuries later, along with several other powerful mages, including the infamous Velsharoon the Vaunted, and he became embroiled in the Thayan uprising. Exactly what happened to him is little known, other than he had some relationship with Escalthar "The Black Star", that mirrored the competitive nature of Azuth and Savras, and that he disappeared soon after the forming of the Zulkirate. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 22 Dec 2024 : 15:46:58
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Woberyl the Red, Zulkir of Evocation
Woberyl was the second Zulkir of Evocation, coming to power after the long successful reign of Dlueae Sharshyndree. "The Red" referred not to his robes or his station, but to the masses of great angry red scar tissue that covered much of his body. He was a master at spell duels, and indeed they were how he built his name and fearsome reputation, but they did not come without cost. By the time he ascended to Zulkir his knowledge of combat magic was unmatched but his body was failing him, and was the main reason for his short time in office. A demand for a duel or lethal redress for slight or grievance among all ranges of Thayan society is still informally known as aneshk rath, a Red Greeting.
I like the terminology for a duel. "Aneshk Rath" sounds suitably Thayan and fits along with "Alavaerthae". |
| AJA |
Posted - 22 Dec 2024 : 02:08:43
Woberyl the Red, Zulkir of Evocation
Woberyl was the second Zulkir of Evocation, coming to power after the long successful reign of Dlueae Sharshyndree. "The Red" referred not to his robes or his station, but to the masses of great angry red scar tissue that covered much of his body. He was a master at spell duels, and indeed they were how he built his name and fearsome reputation, but they did not come without cost. By the time he ascended to Zulkir his knowledge of combat magic was unmatched but his body was failing him, and was the main reason for his short time in office. A demand for a duel or lethal redress for slight or grievance among all ranges of Thayan society is still informally known as aneshk rath, a Red Greeting.
Maeslaura of Eveningstar
Maeslaura never received much recognition for her talents as a poet or bard but was instead a decorated member of the local Evenor militia, one honored enough to carry a Loyalist banner in a regiment during the War of the Regency. She survived the skirmishing at the Bloodwater Brook but later died, along with a great many others, at the Battle of Hilp.
Malladon the Wanderer
Malladon was once quite the accomplished far-wanderer and travelogue author, and even an Ambler Emeritus of The Society of Most Unusual Perils (of Irieabor, a way more prestigious club than The Society of Stalwart Adventurers of Cormyr, with way more impressive feats of adventure and way more academically recognized publications!) Unfortunately, like many of the rest of the Most Unusuals, Malladon found himself assaulted and both out-monied and completely slandered by the way more noble and wealthy members of the Stalwarts, and so interest in his wanderings soon came to a dark and dismal end. He later re-invented himself under the quill-name of Orlusk, author of such lurid chapbooks as Talos, His Roars, Throbs, and Thunders (1333DR), The Selûnes of Delight (1335), and The Scents of The Fruit-Sellers (1339), but such things only served to pay the basest of his bills and otherwise only shamed him as a true Wanderer, and so he died not long thereafter, of what the disapproving representative of the Silent Hall noted as, "copious amounts of soured wanders and unsocial wines."
Hindaurl, The Servant of Stars, Infalliable Glare of Savras
Hindaurl was quite the human supremacist, and it shows up often in his writings. He was also an adherent of Savras in an age when the latter was not in active godhood, having been imprisoned by Azuth, and as a result the church was scattered and largely idiosyncratic – which is why Hindaurl was free to title himself something so silly as, "The Infalliable Glare of Savras."
"it seemed to want to engage in conversation as a human but it did not have the gift of language, which to me was what made it the most awkward, indeed."
The Awkward Man would have found the idea that it did not have "the gift of language" quite amusing, as would the various rangers and servants of the forest gods it often met and conversed with, in various places under the eaves of the nearby woods. It would also most likely say that incurious children, such as Roldarra definitely was, did not have the gift of a great many things, including the ability to tell when one is seeking to draw forth conversation from one willing to expand their understanding of the world, versus when one is biting ones' lip and resisting the urge to swat a paw at a child who doesn't understand that ones' buttons are there to keep ones' coat in proper alignment, and not carnival trinkets free for pulling or twisting at whenever the mood takes them.
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| AJA |
Posted - 22 Dec 2024 : 02:05:52
MISC'LLANEA
I Just Change The Scene! Edition
"Most of the little stories I tell are not the fruit of my imagination; the substance is true: I just change the scene - the actors."
Jean-Charles Laveaux, Les Nuits Champêtres, 1783
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"The use of the Art is to elevate oneself against the Gods. Through the Art, mages have ever set their ambitions above the Faerûn that the ordinary man sees. Reality is banished from the life of the true worker-of-art, who regards all things as means instead of contemplating them as ends.
And then who, even the Gods, can tell him otherwise?"
Woberyl the Red, Zulkir of Evocation
Certain Kinds of Wisdom
Year of Cold Speech, 1078DR
Where the forget-me-nots of battles long-gone gather in the woods beyond, and their one triumphant wish the lark's wild trill, written in celestial flame, "Hail!"
'A Song of Steel'
Maeslaura of Eveningstar
My Delvings In The Dragon's Woods,
Poems In Honor of Elf And Man,
Year of the Manticore, 1280DR
"On the third rise past the hamlet the field-walls suddenly converge on all sides, a vantage point offering the best views of all the lands leading down to the coast. There is an ancient tree that stands here alone on this height, shrunken in on itself and scarred repeatedly by the heavenly tantrums of Talos. Its limbs are most all bowed with age, now aimed more towards the ground than the sky overhead. To the sunward side of this tree near the road tilts a simple plinth, which simply reads, 'from storms defended, from frost denied'.
It is said this tree was once the home to the eminence of a dryad, in the days when these lands were far more forest than field. Where the dryad went, and why the tree still lives has become a mystery, one entangled with the standing of the plinth and the reverence shown through it. The locals say that the stone safeguards the tree's ancient power of earth and root and thereby stability and prosperity, and so they come in their masses, on days of praise and nights of power, with flowers and berries, and song and apology. So much effort and faith, for such a single solitary tree, that stands nowhere and shades nothing.
I wonder if the locals had always known the true fate of the dryad, and if they had always held her home in such a reverence."
Malladon the Wanderer
Finding My Way To Teziir Town
Year of the Great Harvests, 1325DR
"A Planar Realm is 'endless' not because it has no true boundary; rather, it is 'endless' because to place limits on the very Planes of Existence is akin to placing limits on the uncapped ambitions and desires of Men. Indeed, the very existence of Mankind is proof echoed in the Planes; overwhelming, infinite. Endless."
Hindaurl, The Servant of Stars, Infalliable Glare of Savras
The Anorned Book of Leaves
Year of the Wizard's Chalice, 822DR
"Seeing the children play on the rise near the great oak brought back a memory, of a time when a stranger presence was to be found there, the one the elders in their wisdoms always called The Awkward Man. This was not a man at all, but instead a rather tag-rag bear which stood upright upon its hind legs and always overlooked the gatherings on the green. The bear wore a great coat and cap, and it doffed the cap as one would pass by, and it seemed to want to engage in conversation as a human but it did not have the gift of language, which to me was what made it the most awkward, indeed.
It also carried a great bow which it always held as if it were a fiddle, and allowed the village children to hang from as much as they wished, and to swing to and fro, so long as they did not disturb his cap or try to steal the buttons on his great coat.
The one time the Awkward Man did ever string his bow and hold it properly was during the Wolf Winter of 1104, when it shot dead a dozen warg and their goblin riders that had gotten into the green, after which it removed its hat and coat and ambled off on all fours into the eaves of the forest without so much as a backward glance. To this day, I do believe that was the last anyone in the village ever saw of The Awkward Man."
Roldarra Llundharp
Red Larch: A Reminiscence
Year of the Remembering Stones, 1153DR
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| AJA |
Posted - 27 Nov 2024 : 15:57:40
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
"best damn permanent illusion I've ever cast, though how someone cast awaken illusion on it amazes me."
Deseptif Textimuny of Nimbral
"If I had bela for every permanent illusion that was awakened, went living, absorbed enough audience reverence or fused with a random wild magic surge I'd have... well, not much. But that's why I only accept payment in proper Waterdhavian gold coin or pre-appraised gemstones. People always like to say that 'wizards are just the worst', creating their owlbears, thouls, flumphemoths and such, but don't sleep on illusionists. You can look at any of the more absurd folk tales or impossible myths of legend, I guarantee you there's an illusionist or the eventual results of their labor behind it.
Truth is, there's more fey-fables, hero-deities, and local place-spirits that owe their existence to Leira and her flock than all the other gods combined."
Roziphur Imdroon, "The Sage That Stirs The Pages",
in lecture to the Lady's College of Silverymoon,
Year of the Bright Blade, 1347DR
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| sleyvas |
Posted - 26 Nov 2024 : 15:23:05
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
The Juggler of Jephandar
The court jester of the legendary land of Jephandar (found somewhere in the South according to the northerners, and somewhere in the East according to the southerners) who was given six balls of solid gold by the despotic and cruel king Rothkhor, who told him that if he dropped even one heavy golden ball he would have him drownt and hung, and then laughed cruelly and sent him off to juggle (the king died the very next day, face-down in his morning porridge of meadow-barley, but the poor Juggler was so terrified of being drownt and hung that he kept on juggling forever-and-ever-after).
There are often sightings of The Juggler in various parts of the Realms, when the nighttime sky lights up with the bright flashes of his spinning golden orbs (what some high-nosed and over-learned sages call star-showers or starmetal-strikes). Some have even claimed to have traced such golden lights and found one of the Juggler's dropped orbs, and fame and fortune thereby, but those nighttime sky lights keep occurring which obviously means that The Juggler keeps up with his eternal torment, and juggles his way among the Realms Afar to this very day.
"best damn permanent illusion I've ever cast, though how someone cast awaken illusion on it amazes me."
Deseptif Textimuny of Nimbral
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| AJA |
Posted - 23 Nov 2024 : 02:25:16
Essek Ruskro
Gnomish metalworker. Proprietor of Wrought Before The Gods (forge and front-shop, Rivvon Street, Trades Ward). Specializes in ornate ironwork of the sort that decorates and protects open flames and open windows, as well as houses entry-way bells and covers bird-seed basins. Essek was once a senior student of the master armorer Hilmer, but decided to follow his whimsy into wrought ('delightfully overwrought', as he declares) finework, instead. He can still mend and strengthen armor or shield just as precisely as he was trained, but such things terribly bore him (unless you've got some ornate ironwork to buy, in which case he'll give you a discount on your repairs!).
There is one bit of knowledge that Essek never managed to learn from Hilmer, that of the ways to create animate constructs from inanimate creations. Like the ones old Hilmer has guarding his shop. He has since reached out to other gnomish artisans and mages in the hope that their combined talents might provide a solution, but the best they have yet managed is to convince a wrought-iron lampstand to shuffle from one side of a den to another, so that the daily broadsheets might be better read. Regardless, their work continues.
The Juggler of Jephandar
The court jester of the legendary land of Jephandar (found somewhere in the South according to the northerners, and somewhere in the East according to the southerners) who was given six balls of solid gold by the despotic and cruel king Rothkhor, who told him that if he dropped even one heavy golden ball he would have him drownt and hung, and then laughed cruelly and sent him off to juggle (the king died the very next day, face-down in his morning porridge of meadow-barley, but the poor Juggler was so terrified of being drownt and hung that he kept on juggling forever-and-ever-after).
There are often sightings of The Juggler in various parts of the Realms, when the nighttime sky lights up with the bright flashes of his spinning golden orbs (what some high-nosed and over-learned sages call star-showers or starmetal-strikes). Some have even claimed to have traced such golden lights and found one of the Juggler's dropped orbs, and fame and fortune thereby, but those nighttime sky lights keep occurring which obviously means that The Juggler keeps up with his eternal torment, and juggles his way among the Realms Afar to this very day.
Rolavvra Rose-Hips
Favored Fortune-Sword of Tymora. An adventuress as famed throughout The Vast as any to have come before her. Author of Wild As Candle-Flame ("'Tomorrow' is not a thing. It may come, but you are not promised it. Embrace what matters to you today."), 1218DR.
Skorlstone
A clanless dwarf, well-known in Waterdeep and the region of the Sword Mountains. Close-mouthed, stubborn and sour. Reddish-brown skin and extremely hairy, even for a dwarf. His left eye is scarred and closed, and his right is very near-sighted and squinted.
Skorlstone is the main supplier to the wizards of the Watchful Order and the greater Waterdeep area of bat guano (a spell component necessary among other things for the fireball enchantment, one of the most sought-after offensive spells in any mages' spellbook). He also does a brisk business with trade factors from the granary of The Goldenfields, who value it instead for its properties as a fertilizer.
There are of course other local purveyors of guano but their supply is of poorer quality, due to high levels of local rainfall and humidity that act to reduce its potency. This works well enough for the base variety fireball, but has proven to increase the chance of spell failure when utilized in more powerful enchantments such as the Greater, Improved, Delayed Blast, or Daleron's Dancing variations.
Given that, Skorlstone is extremely secretive and circumspect about where his materials come from. Part of his arrangement with the Watchful Order guarantees his safety from rivals and hired assassins, and it is whispered that he has several warding enchantments placed on him, to fend off attacks and attempts to track him. This is true, although it should be noted that by casting the spells that render him invisible to the tracking efforts of others, the Lady Master Mhair Szeltune has also laid down a condition, unknown to Skorlstone, that allows herself to find him wherever he goes, and so she knows exactly where the source of his supply is located, and would not hesitate to use that information for the good of the Order, if the dwarf should ever become too impossible in his trade demands (the reason she hasn't anyways is that she is well aware that such a seizure in the name of the Order would not exactly sit well with the priests of the Goldenfields, or the independent mages of the city – several of whom are either close to, or are actual members of The Lords).
The Treachery of Lanterns
If you ask any native Waterdhavian where they were on the moonless night of 18 Uktar, they will tell you without fail that they were there to witness firsthand The Treachery of Lanterns.
It was just long enough after that darkened Uktar sunset that lamps and glow-glasses across the city had all been engaged, and folk were huddled around their evening sources of illumination. Supping, sewing, reading the daily broadsheets, tallying the day's take. Enjoying an evening drink. And then, everywhere, all at once, everything illuminant began to go wrong.
Should have seen it coming really, given that on the previous night the bright tiles on the roofs of the House of the Moon turned a tomb-darkened purple, and that many of the days' divinations returned repeated findings of soot and sot.
Most went out at the most inopportune moments (or came alit, in quite embarrassing situations); some changed color or grew queer odor; some fizzled, popped, nickered, nackered, or even burst out into snippet of song; a terrible few spouted forth into raging bonfire or enraged will o' wisp; a whole selection of glimmer-glasses of the houses and street-lamps along Snail Street even grew legs and marched out down the road single-file, bobbing and weaving into the night before disappearing down a sewer hole near to Waterdeep Way. They remained an illuminant-yet-illusive menace to crews from the Cellarers Guild for quite some time thereafter.
The Treachery itself ended not long after the first light of dawn-gleam hit the city, as lamps and lanterns across the city suddenly returned to normal, although the Guard and fire-brigades and Watchful Order firewards remained active for some time afterward extinguishing various awakened blazes. In the days and months since, some of the more dubious land-crows have claimed their suddenly burnt-down buildings to be the renewed work of The Treachery, for which they must be richly recompensed, but the Order and the blackrobes have made a swift dismissal of all such ridiculous claims.
As to what or who was the cause of the night's misfortune?
Theories abound. Chapbooks and sages' tomes alike have been penned with all sort of lurid conjecture. Stage plays have been performed, the wildest of which have open flames on pulley systems, descending far enough into the audience at dramatic moments that hats and hair alike have been set aflame. Every registered wizard in Waterdeep has been queried, the temple of Lathander and the church of Beshaba have made repeated statements denying any involvement, and even the hero Belterym Vhost has had to step forth and vow that his enchanted sunblade was in no way to blame.
No, the gnomes of the city haven't been asked. Nor have they stepped forth to volunteer any information. But then again, why would they?
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| AJA |
Posted - 08 Sep 2024 : 03:22:19
MISC'LLANEA
I Aways Think of It as, I Like To Write the Sidebars! Edition
"I always think of it as, I like to write the sidebars. They're almost like little short stories in a larger story where you're telling something else"
Eric L. Boyd, Mages & Sages podcast 'A Night With Ed And The Gang', Oct. 2021
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"Do not think. Do not reason. That way lies nothing but folly and confusion. Obey. Follow the Word of Bane, and there will be only Order and Purpose.
Simplicity. Strength.
One mind and one triumph. So Saith Bane."
Hurlemdra of the Iron Will
The Absolutes of The Black Fist
Year of Embers, 1201DR
"'Tis done, 'tis done, said in cadence sweet
Yet here he lies
Your bloody handywork, at our feet"
Jeskro the Landcrow to Arsduin the Spurned Lover
excerpted from the play, An Urgent Need For Haste
penned by Brilliant Maratha,
Year of the Bright Blade, 1347DR
"It was towards the end of this great silent complex that I squatted in the shadows and took a moment to treat the burning wounds I had just suffered. While so occupied I kept a keen watch on the great door, grey and devoid of detail, that dominated the far end of the hall and the silent guardians that flanked it. Two living statues draped in tattered scarlet cloaks stood guard before that silent portal, immobile and patient until the exact moment of their alotted time, when they clicked their marbled heels and spun smoothly left and right and switched their positions, a silent ceremony of changing the guard that happens for no dead skeleton of man but of a King.
And a King was precisely what I had delved here for. Such a regal eminence, frozen in tomb and in time, and outfitted for the afterlife in nothing but the finest, most glittering and golden regalia. The fact that these leisurely statues still stood and spun, still draped in their rotting finery, confirmed to me that the King and his riches lay unplundered within. I reflexively rubbed the fresh bandages on my aching arm and ruined hand and grinned eagerly in the shadows."
Jelbandro the Rock-Delver, The Eight-Fingered Thief
A True Tell-All of My Adventurings In The Dead-Lands
Year of the Catacombs, 1308 DR
"The record of a war is written in the ash and grease of its' corpse-pyres."
Halder the Patient, Silent Witness of Ilmater
What I Have Been Given To See
Year of Riches Afar, 1004DR
"As I made my way through the endless rows of stalls and carts I remembered the story of a friend who went to the Market out of curiosity, and came away unexpectedly in his return down Mendever Street with the skeleton of a priestess. Well, someone's skeleton. And I could believe it, for the joy of sudden, unexpected things seldom fails. He always had a fascination for strange skeletons, you see. I longed for something like this to happen to me, just walking along thinking about meeting with a skeleton. That must have been most wonderful.
Oh not particularly a skeleton, no, especially not one that smelled quite so ill-cured and had tusks that looked more hobgoblin than holy. But I always had a fancy instead for meeting with a princess. One as in the old stories, lithe and laughing, dark-eyed and fingers covered in rings. Just standing there awaiting a rescue, one of the many things, boots and bedsteads, travel-trunks and turret-tops, among the endless aisles of oddments, small-stuffs, and second-hand castaways.
I strolled on, trying not to expect anything so wonderful would come my way. But then, past two stalls offering for sale cheap gnomish saucepans and those odd lengths of cloth which attic-witches across Waterdeep accumulate, I saw her. Centered among a pile of boots which looked as though they had walked every single step of the road to ruin I saw, poised tall and upright, my princess. She stood there, rendered in ivory and darkstone, her countenance lithe and laughing, dark-eyed with her fingers covered in rings.
It was in that moment, most unexpected and indeed most wonderful."
Maerlond, Master of The Scarlet Pages
A Princess For Ten Dragons
Ch. I, 'I Take To The Market On A Whim'
First published in the pages of the Waterdhavian chapbook Buckle-Board Fancies,
Year of the Helm, 1362DR
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| AJA |
Posted - 25 Aug 2024 : 03:54:25
Arlthror Barrusk
A Waterdhavian bravo, born illegitimate of the Hawkwinters. A rival of the legendary Sraece Telthorn. He too fell to the strong wrists and the unmatched blade-work of The Blade Whisperer, although their acknowledged bouts went to three before "the fact was proven," an unheard-of number for Sraece at the time. Chose that moment to kneel and become his understudy. Arlthror has since opened his own school of bladework and is especially eager to take on the training of any adventuring warriors, though he has nothing but contempt for raging barbarians and simple brute-force fighters and will immediately refuse their coin. Author of The Hundred Excellent Methods ("The truth of the sword is this; it is not the cut, but the intention"), 1370DR.
Juulqua the Pale
The one who was born on the rocks near the Dancing Stones which surround the Salmon's Eye, and was ever-after partly a spirit of the waters (a genasi, in southern sage-speak). In her youth she delved the Salmon's Eye and so travelled down and down and far and far away, to the great kelp-forests of the Caeltanon where resides the sweet Flower of Sashelas, Najrimauthra Beloved Beyond the Blue, 'she who looks up from the water and stares down the sky'. Juulqua became the hand-maid of Najrimauthra and learned from her a great many things, including how to stare down the sky.
Then came the day when the Flower of Sashelas told her to leave the Caeltanon and instead seek out the weather-walker Olohauk, high on the mount called Vision, far above the bleakness of Auril's Scything Grounds (the top-most tree line, above which anything that dares to grow is claimed by the Frost Maiden as her Lawful harvest). Juulqua did not like it there, as the cold burned her feet and stung her eyes, and any coal she tried to put in the hearth was instead floated up in the air and thrown down the mountain by the goddess Auril. But there at the edge of the sky Olohauk taught her a great many things, including what it meant to be a weather-walker.
Then came the day when the weather-walker cut off his long hair and beard and the sky descended, and he told Juulqua that her learning was at an end. And the sky split in two and Olohauk was delivered up and Juulqua was carried down, and it was at the rocks near the Dancing Stones which surround the Salmon's Eye that she arrived.
But when she met with her people they did not know her, for her skin was part salmon and part kelp and part frost besides, and even her own mother and father tried to strike her with axe and spear before they recognized the necklace of beaded copper and lake-frost she had always wore. And so her father took her and buried her in the snowdrifts until the kelp had frozen and fallen away, and then her mother took her and lifted her high in the heavy rains until the salmon scales were washed completely off, and then all that was left was the frost-tinge to her skin, but that would never warm and color no matter how long she sat by the fire, and so she came to be called Juulqua the Pale.
And so Juulqua was then a Mage of Two Masteries, of water and of sky, and from her learnings she taught a great many others and from her spirit of the waters (genasi, in southern sage-speak) she birthed many more like her, who grew to populate the region known as the Ice Lakes, and they sang many stories of her legend.
Unfortunately, in the age after her passing her people warred continuously with the monstrous population of the region, which kept their numbers low. And then from that, they were largely done in by a repetition of orc hordes streaming down from the bleak Spine of the World. Some say the survivors merged with the waters of the lakes and that their spirits still reside there. Others, that they gathered instead on the Dancing Stones which surround the Salmon's Eye and called to their gods, and their gods came to them and carried them down and down and far and far away.
The Ice Lake of Daern's Copper once bore her name but that was a long time ago, before it was called Julidiskrae or even Loroloth. The Uthgardt tribes of the area have co-opted bits and pieces of her legend into their own myths but again, that was so long ago that their origins have been largely forgotten. The Caeltanon still exists in the waters near to Evermeet and there is a Flower of Sashelas that still resides there, but her name is not Najrimauthra and has not been for quite some time.
Kolaskro The Red
Formerly an officer of Cordell's Legion, later established his own Faerûnian mercenary company he called The Red Rollathros ('rollathro' being Amnian slang for the goblin subtype of bugbear). Sturdy, black-bearded. Flat, narrow, uncaring black eyes, "like slits of darkness". Wielded the Gond-gunne called Horrid Janglery, which he had enchanted during his time in The Far Lands, turning it equal parts iron flame and feathered barbarism. Eventually driven insane by the deafening sound of his own weapon, driven sick and nervous mad, and so ousted from his command. He now lounges listless on the streetcorners of Velen, broken and insensate to all but the sound of random temple bells or the blown horns of ships incoming to the harbor. What became of Horrid Janglery after his madness is unclear. Probably best to follow the smell of charred flesh and burning horse-hair on the battlefield to find out. And listen also for the bursting sobs of broken Gond-gunners.
Nathchloë
(Nath-KLOH-ee) A Sunite heretic of the Beautiful Woundings, a splinter branch of the Most Thankful ('imperfections are a beauty in disguise') who have corrupted their teachings in a most violent and demanding manner ('happiness cannot be, without first being made imperfect'). For the Beautiful Woundings the more scarred or broken one is the more beautiful, and the more beautiful the closer to the goddess. And those who claim they would not want to be closer to the goddess are just so beautiful. They just haven't been shown that they are yet. They must be shown.
The Beautiful Woundings consider mongrelfolk to be the most exalted servants of Sune. The mongrelfolk consider the Woundings to be gross and dangerous fanatics. Some sages believe Loviatar to be behind the corruption of the Woundings. Those more well-versed in such matters agree instead that a demon-lord is involved, although they tend to differ on which one in particular.
As for Nathchloë herself, she is regarded by most as quite the Sunite beauty. Her curled bronze hair is always arranged in the latest fashion and her wide bronze eyes blaze with mystery. Her dark southern skin is flawless and quite well-scented. She always wears a veil over her lower face in public, fashioned of the finest cloth and patterned in a variety of colorful gemstones.
Beneath that veil lies a chin a bit too strong, a bit too cleft for the perfections of a Sunite. But that alone was not enough for her to consider herself as Most Thankful. No, there must be something that would make her more imperfect, more happy. For her, it was her lips, full and perfect and always the center of attention.
They are no longer full now, no longer perfect. She saw to that. But when she unveils them to those she is intending to welcome into the embrace of the Beautiful Woundings, well, they are still definitely the center of attention.
Olonebro Toljaskra
Master (captain) of The Latitude of Fancy, a southern free-trader. Author of Curious Ventures On The Golden Water ("There was once a great sea-jamt that came down to me while I was alone one night behind the helm, and told me something quite surprising. 'This is the history of it', the jamt said, 'I am the only one who knows anything about it, and by the time the day has dawned I would be sure to forget'."), 1303DR.
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| AJA |
Posted - 11 Aug 2024 : 02:17:42
The Sentence That Sits In The Woods
In the northeastern High Forest, in the old wood of pine and oak, tall and dense, there is the slightest break in the forest where only the occasional shaft of sunlight penetrates the deep shade. And right in the middle of that occasional shaft of errant sunlight sits a squat, weathered, ancient plinth. It may have once been precisely carved, it may have once been quite ornate, but all that remains now is an irregular, slightly-slumped plug of moss-cloaked stone. And deep and direct into that stone, even to this very day, are carved the words,
"and the deeds of my age shall be known by the echoing screams in eternity, limned in eldritch fire and molded in the blackness of death"
The name engraved beneath is simply, 'Karsus', same as the Failed God that brought about the Fall of the grand empire of Netheril. These words are not loross, as the Neth and their children used, they are some alien tongue that requires the casting of a read languages spell to comprehend.
There is no enchantment upon the plinth, there is no magic in the words. There is nothing to tie Karsus the Mad to this region of the Tall Trees. There is, literally, only The Sentence That Sits In The Woods.
On Grim-Sides
High on Uldarin, the westwardmost-leaning peak of the Sword Mountains, there is a steep rock face on whose steep grim sides grow neither pine nor purchase. On the impossible rock here rests a woman, a most ancient woman, sitting with her hands folded together in her lap. She wears a black robe and the pale streaks of the stars run in her hair, and the cormorants of the sea come to nest upon her shoulders.
Now and again the woman raises her eyes and looks out over the sea; now and again she sighs and looks back down to her folded hands. Where she looks is not known. What she sighs for is unrecorded.
The tides run on the same, regardless.
The One-Hundred and Fifty Storm-Shivers
A scattering of bleak wave-lashed rocks and fearful storm-battered peaks deep in the Trackless Sea (sometimes referred to in older legend as 'the emaciated bones of Antaskrou, the Great Witch of The Unshrouded Seas'). There are not exactly one hundred and fifty Storm-Shivers. There may be more, there may be less, it depends on how you count such things. The Great Witch Antaskrou certainly had more than one hundred and fifty bones in her body when she finally laid down in the waters and died, emaciated or not.
The Shivers were host to the arch-mage Nathaunt in his miserable exile, and later the lonely cell of the Ilmataran monk Halarro Ilbrim, who buried there all the suffering and sorrow of the great butchery of the Salmmath, and sat and kept vigil over it until the end of his days. In more recent times "The Citrine Storm Over The Sea", the topaz wyrmling Sorlislarsharr, has re-populated the rocks with colonies of squatting faejatha and flippered jeskla, aiming to turn it into the center of his new territory and his own personal larder.
No telling what Antaskrou, who always considered topaz as 'a most unlovely gemstone', would have thought of such a development.
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| AJA |
Posted - 29 Jul 2024 : 04:02:17
MISC'LLANEA
That's Not Why I'm Writing These Books! Edition
"That was the thing I wanted to put in and the editor at the time said, 'oh, this has nothing to do with the main plot. Out it goes!' I was like, that's not why I'm writing these books! I'm not writing these books to get from 'A' to 'B'....I'm writing a story here"
Ed Greenwood, Mages & Sages podcast 'A Night With Ed And The Gang', Oct. 2021
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"I have spent my quiver," Deneir said to Oddalroar with a sly smile," and all that is left for me now is to re-feather my quills, and to re-imp my feathers. The festhalls of the Human Realms are for that sort of thing. Feathering, that is."
"Imping, on the other hand" The Lord of Literature paused briefly as he gathered himself and re-adjusted his well-acquainted hat, "That is best reserved with a bottle of good wine and the wildest fancies of dreamers all across the Nighttime Realms."
The god Deneir to Oddalroar of the Bent Verses
excerpted from the play, For All The Whimsies
penned by Mimbrusk Mellethorn
Year of the Waking Wrath, 1214DR
"The potatoes in the pot
And a little piece of pork
This will keep our bellies hot
This is how we fight like orc!"
Traditional hunting-camp song of the Bitter Breathings orc tribe
who till and farm the deep river valley known as The Iron Foamings, one of the origins of the River Rauvin
where pork and pork-like things run wild through the upper reaches of the Stone Dreads
in the Rauvin Mountains, east of Felbarr
The gathered parted and drew back as a great fisher blent, grim and red-feathered, with breast of birch and burnished brass feet, came forth to counsel Shylryyr in their own otherworldly fashion. "Human. Manling. The red violet sprays / in the woods where / the white bride lies waiting. This. It has been heard."
Shylryyr looked upon the blent and thought it had such an odd, wrinkled, youthful face. She had never seen one in person before. 'In the woods where the white bride lies a-wait'. There was a memory there. That was a song her mother would sing to her in her youth. Her mother never spoke to her otherwise.
The gathered drew back in, their subdued conversations resumed. The fisher blent had gone. Shylryyr's head pounded and her vision swum as more memories suddenly descended towards her.
Amleskra of Tauntorl
The Meanings of White Hawthorns and Red Cows
Year of the Persuasive Voice, 1133DR
The night lay clear across the fields. Goodness No lay clear across the farmhand she had just finished bedding, nestled deep in a haystack which was just witness to the thrill of a lifetime. She looked up at the spangled sky overhead, the stars rocking to and fro in time to the heaving breaths of the body beneath her.
"I wonder, is this what the bards mean when they say that 'Sune warms even the coldest night'"? he asked.
"Well, I suppose that depends on what kind of nights you are accustomed to", she replied.
Maddyl of Old Covenant Hall
The Glorious Adventures of Goodness No
Year of the Wandering Maiden, 1337DR
"And so the son of the White Bear Ukammu travelled to the strange southern lands and returned with the horns and antlers of many strange southern creatures, of purple and gold and blue and crystal, and decorated his lodge with such trophies as no one had ever seen before. And his most prized possession from those wanderings was a horn unlike any other, all bright and glittering, and as silver as the moon. He proudly claimed it forfeit from a mighty god of the southern lands, an eminence which bore the great horn of Father Narwhal but walked the earth on four legs as did Mother Bear, and he afterwards fashioned it into a great spear and carried it as his weapon.
And Enkannu's reign was long and satisfactory, and it grew to include a number of other lodges and it brought prosperity and health, until one day a stranger came to his lodge from the far south. And this southerner was tall and graceful and terrible, and her hair was as silver as the moon. She sat herself in his lodge and told Enkannu of her bond to the horn-goddess he had slain, and of how irreplaceable a loss to the great uskumé, the great green cradle, it was, and of how his life was so now forfeit. And Enkannu heard her and trembled, for he alone saw upon her brow a crown of dark horns, the gift of foresight he had been given from his mother the White Bear Ukammu, and he alone knew that the one before him now was a vessel for the dark powers of the land.
But Enkannu was a warrior foremost and he was a true son of the White Bear, and so he settled his heart and rose from his antlered chair, and he drew forth his great spear and answered to her challenge."
excerpted from 'Enkannu, Lord of Many Horns',
faithfully transcribed from the oral histories of the Ice Hunters, and published courtesy of the Waterdhavian chapboook Buckle-Board Fancies
by Haelausk Maurrn, Shivering Scribe of the Northern Realms
Year of the Sword, 1365DR
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| sleyvas |
Posted - 15 Jul 2024 : 18:12:17
ooo... multiple linked entries... I need to read this when I'm less sleepy, but color me intrigued with the red lion stuff. |
| AJA |
Posted - 14 Jul 2024 : 02:26:24
quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Danthaldara
Danthaldown
Ruined Selûnite monastery on the banks of the Jesseleor (the Fairy Dancer of the elves, a rattling, stony, iridescent tributary of the Rauvin) in the northeastern reaches of the Evermoors, near to Red Lion's Harrow (a low-lying area of woody marsh and thick, impassable copses of stunted, twisted trees where Red Lion once roamed, before Red Tiger and his powerful cultists finally cornered him, and severed the sinew from his bones).
The Down, Danthaldara's Down, was originally the private hold of the adventuress Danthaldara, built near to the Star-Top Tor ('where on clear nights the moonlight gathers, and spatters, and dances all along its' pointed crest') and held by her against all enemies. Danthaldara moved on after she considered her daughter Mogarna sufficiently reared, leaving her instead in the care of the supplicant Selûnites that had gathered around her, come to ponder and praise the mysteries of the starlit tor. Those Selûnites then raised the walls higher and expanded the orchard, creating a holy redoubt of the faith and swelling the ranks of their initial dozen with more than a hundred new faithful, each one more starry-eyed and eager than the next.
The moonpriests ably defended their isolated home just as Danthaldara had, against troll and giant and fell moor-beast, until a massed orc attack in 1066 finally overcame the walls and put the monastery, and the orchard, and many of the faithful to the torch. Danthaldaras' collection of Lost Years was destroyed by the invaders, as were the starry walls and moonfish the child Mogarna had painted along the original kitchen and dining hall, burnt and charred beyond recognition. The Year of Untied Robes and The Year of The Inspired Sendak, in particular, were singled out as 'a loss most terrible' by no less an eminence than the lady Alustriel of Silverymoon. The priestess Laeruna Moonstar and her husband Palduran Hunthund were among those slain in the attack. Their child Raelorna, a paladin of the White Order, fought and survived and shepherded many of the others to safety, down the banks of the Jesselor and on across the Rauvin towards the settlement of High Hold.
[ ref: Prayers From The Faithful p.64, "Danthaldown (a now-vanished Selûnite monastery)"; Silver Marches p.23, "Another, called Startop due to the way moonlight dances on its distinctive pointed tip on clear nights" ]
Laeruna Moonstar [b.1013/d.1066]
(lay-ROONA) Second child of Valadorn/Sharthaea. Faithful of the Moonmaiden. Acolyte at the Waterdhavian temple for a time before journeying to serve at Danthaldown. Married Palduran Hunthund (HUN-thunnd) [b.?/d.1066] in 1040DR, 2 children – Palduran Talmost and Raelorna. Killed in an orc attack on the monastery.
Raelorna Moonstar [b.1044/d.1076]
(rey-LORN-na) Second child of Laeruna/Palduran. A paladin like her father (the White Order, The Knights of Selûne Argent). Two devoted lovers, Jarlarra (died to wyvern attack), and Aumadros (died in the Amnian Moneytrader's Plague), no children. Passed her holy blade on to the aasimar Nelquaera "Etherial-Born", also of the White Order, upon her mortal wounding in combat during the The Battle of Winter Fields against the Black Boar tribe (The Battle of Deep Drifts, The Battle of Two Day's Snowfall).
Red Lion
Most modern legends, although not those of the Uthgardt, conflate Red Lion and Red Tiger as the same being. It would be more accurate to say that Red Lion was to orc beast-cultists as Red Tiger is to human beast-cultists. Danthaldara seized the land that she built her home on from the orc Lion cultists, which is why they finally returned in force, in 1066, to regain their sacred ground near The Harrow. They had hoped that by restoring their claim to the land and to the Star-Top Tor (The Lion's Sharp-Stone, in their telling; 'ozheg-zheg, ozheg-zheg hiss his talons across the tor, raising sacred sparks far in the night, a challenge unveiled before the stars') Red Lion would return to guide them. Unfortunately for them Red Lion was long dead by that time; lessened by Tauraven and less his fang, then cornered and conquered by Red Tiger, and without his divine aid the orc tribe, greatly weakened in their assault on the monastery, were soon attacked, scattered, and slain in turn by raiding giants.
Even the tumbled stones of Danthaldown are now largely gone, disappeared into the undergrowth or gathered up and thrown at passing trolls by the giants of the moor, in their idle sporting amusements.
Tauraven (re-posted from 09 Apr 2019)
A northern slayer of legend. Said to have been raised in the northern wilds by a pride of crag-cats (from whom he learned his mighty battle roar). A popular subject of high-adventure Waterdhavian chapbooks (Tauraven the Terrible, Tauraven Triumphant, and Tauraven and the Lost City of Orphar, to name a few), in which he is floridly (and near-constantly) described as "mithril-thewed." It is also claimed that he fashioned the legendary Red Coat of Tauraven from the pelt of Red Lion, after he defeated the Uthgardt totem god in single combat.
The Red Coat of Tauraven
A magnificent furred crimson cloak hooded by a bejeweled lions head, said to have been fashioned from the pelt of the beast-god Red Lion by the northern slayer Tauraven. It is not known where exactly the lions head itself came from, as Red Lion was known to have kept his even after his humiliating disrobing.
Tauraven was blunt and direct in all things, and the crafting of his cloak was no different. The Red Coat is indeed magnificent as befit his mighty status as a slayer, but its enchantments turned out to be quite utilitarian; resistance to all wind and weather-related discomforts up to the dedicated divine wrath of a deity such as Auril; concealment from the eyes ears and smell of man and all natural, dire, or were- beasts when the wearer wraps themselves up in it and takes their sleep; and certain fighting, tracking, and endurance enhancements when blood (of the wearer or their opponents) has been spilled in combat. These abilities suited Tauraven quite well, but sages learned in such things almost universally lament what they consider the waste of such a potent item, for such underwhelming returns.
Lionsfang (re-posted from 14 Jan 2023)
In some folk tales, after Red Lion loses his pelt to the slayer Tauraven he retreats to Ithûval to lick his wounds and recuperate. He begs a cauldron of fish stew from the lord's wife, giving her as payment his right foremost fang. This is later forged into the bastard sword called Lionsfang (The Lion's Bite in some older sources), still the prized and most sought-after relic of House Cassalanter, descendants of the lords of Ithûval and greatest proponents of this tale. Needless to say, it is best told away from the hearing of any Uthgardt of the Red Lion tribe.
Milkily translucent, like moonstone. Retains inherent memory of the blood and taste of every species and race ever bested by Red Lion, and hungers and strikes accordingly. Growls and grumbles when stalking or having sampled afresh the blood of such prey, bringing terrors of death and sharply increased fear to those so marked.
Ithûval
A mighty castle located 'somewhere' (tales vary) in the North, on the threshold of the Bracken Wilds, the dense, ferny thickets of emerald and crimson and bronze and deep, shadowy places "where the goblinfolk creep and scuttle", whose many sons and daughters, the collected Lords of Ith, roamed the land and did battle and great deeds, as are told of in bard's songs to this very day.
"Ithûval, Ithûval, where the star-light shone fair" (Of Ith and Uth, and Other Kingdoms of Old, Zeltabbar Iliphar, 1347DR)
House Cassalanter likes to claim descent from the mighty Ith Lords, but this is based largely off of nothing more than their former ownership of the legendary sword Lionsfang and their long years of trying to 'brightshine' their humble origins as fisherfolk and (later) moneylenders, arrived to the city from somewhere far to the south of wherever Ithûval and The Bracken Wilds may have been.
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quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Mogarna was her child and painted the most vivid paintings
Mogarna
Mogarna was eight when her mother left her in the care of the moon-priests, and fifteen when she decided that she had had enough of temple life and was old enough to seek out her own way in the world. She was certainly her mother's child, in that regard. On her trek across the Evermoors she was captured by some giants and held for cooking at a grand feast when a visiting cloud giant, the honored guest in whose name the feast was being held, caught sight of her passing the time before her roasting by painting otherworldly images upon the walls of her cell. This giant, known to all across the North as the legendary Great Blue Lotos (Ancient of Water and Stone, Gnasher of Mountain and Sky), was so taken with her talents that he granted her freedom, and swore that he would take her anywhere in the Realms she wished to go. Mogarna said to him that she wished to be taken to one who knew to use colors the way that she imagined them in her mind, and so Great Blue Lotos took her upon his dragon mount and delivered her far to the South, to the giant-blooded magician Naulonga of Ormpur (who bore a thin slot upon her neck where her evil eye came to leer, but kept her canvas clean and smooth, and brushed her colors in such enigmatic angles that even the pixies and darkling in their most chaotic moods came to sit and watch in silence as she crafted).
After her tutelage Mogarna travelled to Amn, where she honed her craft and made her name, and many came to learn at her feet and took to calling themselves the Radiant Mogs. Of this, much has already been written. There are many tomes dedicated to the subject in the libraries of Candlekeep and Calimport and, as such, I will not bother to recap it here.
That, of course, was all a very long time ago. But Mogarna still lives today. She still has her talent, if not her burning passion, and now spends entirely too much time instead in the festhalls of Almraiven, drinking and betting on sarlgo slug-racing.
She still paints, but such things are perfunctory and done only to pay for the most egregious of her outstanding debts, just enough to take the sting out of her tabs for rent and for the bar-bills rung up largely through buying wine for her fellow drunks and gamblers. One day her hands will fail to properly hold a brush and deliver a painting, and then those who have long waited will come to collect from her. The demons who would avidly watch her work through the evil eye, in the thin slit upon the neck of Naulonga, or the resident beholder Crown-of-Mauve, to whom most of her sarlgo-debts belong to, to name a few.
But before that happens, she is still available for your adventurers to commission just the most marvelous mural to christen their new digs up on Trollskull Alley. All you need to gain her attention is a breathless tale of adventure and the seed of an inspiration.
A grand inspiration, of course. Probably best to have the bard describe it, if you've got one in your party. An attractive priest of Selûne or Tymora couldn't hurt, either. Oh, and a few potions of longevity, she definitely likes those. And the repayment of a couple of her outstanding sarlgo debts… mostly just the ones that require a bit more than a sum of gold to make good.
In return, you will receive a masterpiece like no one has seen in a generation, if not more. Perhaps Ordoth Towering Above The Clouds, or Ashruth Calling Hawks From The Sky, maybe even Jelaith Giving Life To Sunflowers. It will be the talk of the city for absolute months. No guarantee on which one you will get though, and definitely no take-backsies if a certain vengeful arch-fey should come a-calling, seeking to rip the colors out of your walls. And also the unworthy eyes out of your skull.
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| AJA |
Posted - 07 Jul 2024 : 01:29:29
Danthaldara
Stole into the Garden of the Cloud-Shadows where is hidden the Loom Colossal, which once wove the deepest vasts of the midnight sky, and broke the ancient seals on fey Maealda's iridescent horns and filled her pockets full of patches of color, before slipping down the mountainside which ever-after bore hues of red, yellows, and pinks. Arsmund sung of her. Mogarna was her child and painted the most vivid paintings, some of which can still be viewed today in the Glorious Tower of Amn and inspired the Radiant Mogs, the school of muralists that arose in her lifetime and still persists. Fey Maealda still persists as well, and has made it her one remaining dread to recover every drop of not only those colors which were stolen from her, but every tint later inspired from them.
Neirorla, Night-Terror of Shar
She Who Lids The Eye ('for when night makes the eye useless, then come the goblins'). A priestess of Shar currently gaining status (and notice) in the heirarchy. Neirorla travels to towns and villages across the trade-roads of the North under guise of a road-wise tinker – Nebla, sometimes, or Tierla or Annathete. She sets down her blanket in inn or hayloft for a few weeks or so at a time and lids her sorcerous eye, sending out nightmares and near-sleep visions; deaths of loved ones, loss of harvests, financial ruin and other vivid hauntings. From the sweats of these terrors she gathers to her essences of fright and fear, tinctures and toxins of hopelessness and despair.
She donates such foul materials to her senior Nightseers and trades them to warlocks and lower-planar beings in exchange for sorcerous enchantments, binding favors, and rare abyssal goods. She is said to be guarded by two shadow fiends that she can call forth as it pleases her. These may be her servants or they may be the means by which she trades through the Lower Planes. Believed to be the current favorite to one day replace the existing Nightseer of the Dessarin, Emharthla The Dolorous Mystery, in their office.
Pelphlorn the Great Obscurity, Lord of the Reborn Age of Netheril
One of the first archmages to gain power after The Fall, in the new arcane order under the Risen Mystra. He gathered many of the roving bands and scattered settlements around him and declared a Reborn Age, one where he would seek out the New Ways and raise himself and his followers back into the skies as was their destiny. To prove himself thus he sought counsel from Shashandrae Ruil, The Last Witch of Dreaming Selûne (Netherese Selûne, the Selûne of the Prophecies), and was sent forth on his trials but lost his way to the riddles of the beholder-kin Gomburr and Nalgo (one of whom always lies and one of which always tells the truth). He and his entourage disappeared there into the porphyry desolation under what was once the Nalvron Marsh – the Flailtails Marsh, where both the cattails and the cat-kin once flicked their spikey tails in the lazy summer hazes that no longer lie there. Nalgo sometimes claims he ate the last cattail of the marsh, there at the last dying pool where the waters bled away into the dust; Gomburr says that he ate the last cat-kin, instead.
Without his guiding vision and arcane might Pelphlorn's 'Reborn Age' quickly withered and vanished like all else in the Anauroch wastes; his successor was his least apprentice, Lord Drelmarr of Great Zurr, who was assassinated three times (his guards weren't very effective, but his resurrectionists certainly were) and then that was the end of that. His name was widely known in Anauria and Asram for a time, but is almost entirely forgotten today. The beholder-kin Gomburr and Nalgo may still remember him, but then again they may claim to not.
Raeoriel
A mystic of Mystra and self-professed 'rejecter of waking reality'. "For I have touched the reaches of sleep and dream, awake behind the spaces of future nights". Travelled the Realms, gifting black cats strength and tenacity and transforming iris into butterflies, banded with blue and orange. On the eve of her death she joyously chose to be reborn as a wingless wonder, her only demand of her goddess to be graced with twelve tentacles, instead of nine.
Whelkspur
A purveyor to the Watchful Order of Waterdeep, specifically in the fields of artifice and arcane alignments. Specializes in crafting or sourcing obscure oddiments of the trade, geometric instruments like spell mitres and helical amberines, engines of elemental deburring, even the occasional extremely rare replica of Osmelgo's chamfer. It is not known where his workshop is located, but he can be contacted by leaving notice at the Tower of the Order or at the private Turnback Court parlor of the sage Méthos of Neverwinter.
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| AJA |
Posted - 04 Jul 2024 : 00:42:11
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
"So officious and preoccupied with contracts was he that he earned the name 'Paper Tyrant' behind his back."
"I imagine he was not fond of that appellation."
"No, he was not. Soon enough the mouths that mocked most learned that even paper can cut."
Namarda looked down at the scroll before her.
The contents were odd enough, but the seal at the bottom was one she had not seen before. It was very purple and very pronounced, fashioned like a series of overlapping circles, and it threatened to obscure the entire lower half of the document.
And the contract itself. This was just a standard bond between an outgoing caravan and a financing moneylender. The usual six paragraphs of fiduciary outlay and assumed risks along with seven statements listing all known deferments of cause, monstrous or deific or otherwise, and then three more to line out all gate polls and tax-related obligations from city to city. This was the established format that had been in use for ages, since the caravanserai were united under the Seltaph and The Great Trade Road was born.
So why was it so… officious? It was overwrought and overwritten, the simple standard speech turned as purple as the color of the seal that overlapped it. She had never read anything like it. Of course, she had only been here at the Tower for a short amount of time but she had plenty of training and this was just, well, just…
"Absurd," she said aloud, as she held the scroll up and began to turn in her chair. Absolutely absurd. The Overseer must be made to look at this.
The scrape of her turning chair leg stopped with a startled squeak as her attempt to rise met with sudden, unexpected resistance. Namarda flinched with the suddenness of it and jerked around to see what had obstructed her.
A short, squat man stood behind her, his arms clasped behind his back and his sandaled foot wedged up against the leg of her chair. A pleasant, practiced smile dominated the lower half of his face, while just above his eyes were hidden behind a rather large pair of spectacles.
He wore the carefully pleated robes of the Underwriters.
The Underwriters were employed on the Floor below, and by rule were almost never seen among the Reviewers. Namarda wondered what he was doing here, and for one startled moment wondered if it were she herself who had somehow ended up on the wrong Floor.
"Excuse me," the man said, as he leaned down quite close over her and adjusted the overlapping lenses of his glasses. From where she sat they looked very round, and very purple. His smile had not changed in the slightest, but to Namarda it had somehow grown very wide and quite predatory.
"Is there an issue here?"
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