Snowblind
06-24-2006, 06:50 AM
Here's the campaign background, introducing some of the backstory, hints of the plot to come and some important NPCs.
It's set in Athkatla, in Amn. Character details to follow in the next post.
The Guilt of the Grey
Jerudai Half-Elven ran his fingertips along the surface of the scroll. On one level he enjoyed the feel of the ancient parchment, at least three hundred years old. On another level entirely, he felt a silent thrill at his fingers sliding across the runic symbols of one of the most powerful spells ever committed to paper.
A knock at the door drew his attention from the desk. He knew who stood outside before the handle turned. Jerudai had been expecting company for some time.
“Master.” He was soft-spoken; an aspect of his elven blood. “I noticed you’ve been studying the Scroll of Ajithika. Hardly bedtime reading, even for one of your talents.”
“Quite,” was the clipped reply. Jerudai’s master was attired as his apprentice, wearing the same cloak of think, dark grey silk laced with runes of black cloth. The only visible difference between human and half-elf here was that the former had a short beard of silvery-white, and the latter was only a day unshaven. All other differences, facial or physical, were concealed by the hoods that each man wore up over his head, setting faces in shadow.
“You sent for me over an hour ago.” Jerudai allowed a touch of reproach to slip into his soft tones. “I have been waiting here for you. Master.” This last was added after a moment’s pause.
Jerudai knew his master loathed his presence. He knew also that he had surpassed the elder human some months ago in regards to arcane power. His subservience now was born out of patience and respect, rather than inferiority.
“I am sorry for the delay.” The master’s smirk made it clear he was anything but apologetic. “Tell me, why have you visited the deviant we captured last week?”
Jerudai could’ve sworn the temperature dropped in the room as his master asked the question.
“Curiosity,” was all he answered.
“Curiosity.” His master sneered. “You fool nobody, half-blood, least of all me. Come, we will go to Spellhold now and pay a visit to this deviant.”
Jerudai gathered his white-wood staff in his smooth-fingered hands. His palms were hidden under fingerless gloves, which he wore to conceal the burns scars from a fire spell gone awry many years ago. He could have had the injury healed permanently, but the visual reminder always stirred his caution in dealings now.
“To Spellhold, then.”
* * *
Cries of pain, panic and delirious laughter rang through the halls of the asylum. It was a building of cold marble, luxurious carpets and grand windows – except for the cells which resembled any gutter-prison in the Forgotten Realms.
With a burst of blue-white magical energy, Jerudai and his master appeared in the great hall of the asylum. Half a dozen mages speaking amongst themselves paid this sudden apparition no mind at all, as if such sorcery-born arrivals were commonplace. In truth, they were.
Jerduai’s staff clacked on the marble floor was he walked alongside his master. They passed a line of cells, each no more than a bare room barred by a magically-reinforced oaken door. At one of these, a young woman stood, staring out from the small square hole in the door’s face. Her hair was matted with dirt, forming accidental dreadlocks. A cut on her lip showed where she had been beaten recently, though the violence was not inflicted upon her by her Cowled Wizard captors.
“Marissa,” spoke Jerudai’s master. “And how are we, today?”
Her answer was a mouthful of spit that disappeared under the master’s hood. Jerudai silently congratulated her on her aim.
“I think you will find that was exceptionally ill-advised.” The elderly mage said in tones almost as soft as his apprentice’s.
“Let me out.” Marissa said, her voice broken from days of poor food and exhaustion. “I’ll get the damn license. Just let me out. All I did was defend myself.”
The master chuckled. “It was an unsanctioned use of magical energy, my dear. The rules cannot be broken. You are a deviant. Now you are here, for your own safety and the safety of others. Magic is for the enlightened, not for the masses.”
Jerudai reached up to pull back his hood. It was the first time Marissa had seen his face since he had captured her a week ago. In his visits since, he had always kept his features concealed.
He was a handsome man, which was one of the many reasons his master loathed him. His cheekbones were defined, his skin pale and unblemished with only a dusting of dark stubble along his elven chin and jaw-line, and he had light grey eyes with a tendency to look right through people. Atop his head was a loose, scruffy tangle of nut-brown hair which he usually kept styled by running his fingertips through it when it was still wet from washing.
“We can allow you to leave,” he began, ignoring the startled turn made by his master, “If you can tell us where the Kallian’s Blade is bound.”
“We will not –” the master began, but found himself silenced by Jerudai’s raised finger.
“Tell us.”
The woman drew breath to speak.
* * *
Vallek shifted his grip on the sword, trying in vain to keep the blade held high. The storm was howling around him now, with the wind ripping at his ruined cloak and blowing his hair into his face. The rain scythed into the soil under his boots as he staggered. Blood loss was making him dizzy.
The pain was fading, slowly eroding into a dull ache that was like a low-burning forge fire in his bones. Finally, the knight’s family sword slipped from his slack fingers. It landed in the mud with a splash, the rain making the blade shimmer in the moonlight as it cleansed the steel of its bloody sheen.
As Vallek crashed to his hands and knees, kneeling in the soil under the weight of his armour, he watched red trickles leaking through the joints in his punctured breastplate.
A boot resting on the back of his head finally drove him to the ground, face crushed against the waterlogged soil.
“Well now, Lord Vallek. How about you start seeing things our way? We’ve a holy man who can seal those wounds, quick as you like. Just say the oath. Just speak the words.”
Vallek whispered something unintelligible through lips that were mashed into the cold and wet earth.
“What was that, my lord? Didn’t quite catch it, what with you eating mud and all.” The pressure eased up off his head, and Vallek raised himself tremblingly to all fours again, seeking to stand up. When he finally raised his head, he stared his attacker in the eyes.
“Go to Hell.” Thunder punctuated his defiance, as if the gods were enjoying the poetry of the moment.
“Lovely sentiment.” Vallek’s tormentor leaned closer, whispering in the dying knight’s ear. “It’s not so hard to fall, Vallek. Torm isn’t answering your prayers any more. We will. Just say the words.”
* * *
King Garathak Broken-Tusk slouched on his throne. Before him, in the unclean chaos that made up his court, two of his warriors were settling a blood feud. As with all dealings in Garathak’s tribe, it was a loud and belligerent affair. The king himself sat watching, absently stroking his chunky green fingers over the haft of his colossal axe, which rested against the edge of his throne.
He was very bored.
A cheer went up as one of the orcs died. The victor, bathed in greasy sweat and spatters of green blood, took his enemy’s head and held it up to show the gathered greenskins. Orcs and their lesser goblin cousins howled and cheered. King Garathak patted his axe haft in applause but showed no further sign of approval.
With a lazy gesture to one of his other warriors, Garathak summoned his shaman.
* * *
Jerudai hissed the final syllable of his spell. For a moment, his heart thundered, almost like it was heating up his blood. Then his bones began to burn. With a curse that was half-elven, half-Chondathan – much like his own heritage – he raised his hand at the moment he was sure his eyes were cooking in their sockets. From extended fingers, a head-sized bolt of liquid fire shrieked towards his enemy. The other mage babbled over the words of his counterspell. Jerudai met the man’s eyes at the last moment, seeing the stabbing realisation within as the mage failed to harness his own sorcery. The grey-cloaked wizard turned away as the other spellcaster went up in flames.
The near-deserted street emptied of folk completely just as the brief magical duel came to a finish. Without looking, Jerudai whispered a few syllables in draconic and waved a hand at the howling, burning figure as it ran in panicking, dying circles. Suddenly there was quiet. Blessed quiet. Jerudai was thankful he’d memorised a silence spell earlier that day. He waited until the other mage had finished burning, and finally walked over the cobblestone road to stand above the corpse. With a second wave of his hand, the silence was dispelled. Natural sounds returned to the street.
“That…” Jerudai said to the corpse, “…was an unsanctioned use of magical energy.”
A portal opened in the road, crackling with energy and displaced air. Jerudai’s former master emerged, out of breath. He gestured with the tip of his gnarled oak wand at the smoking blackened body.
“I came as soon as I heard. Was this one of the pirates we were seeking?” the old human enquired, still breathless.
“No. Just a deviant. But I have a lead into the piracy problem. Fear not.”
* * *
The orc spat into a clay bowl full of elf blood. Human finger-bones floated on the surface, bobbing as the shaman stirred the contents with a dagger. Charms and holy devotions to Gruumsh One-Eye, Lord of Orcs, rattled and jingled with each of the shaman’s movements. He was a walking collection of bracelets, necklaces and rings, each formed from the bones of his victims and carved into shapes considered aesthetically pleasing only by greenskins.
“Signs are bad.” The shaman looked up from where he knelt before the hulking form of King Garathak. The king, for his part, stood impassively and stroked his jaw, absently touching at his snapped lower tusk.
“Bad?” The king finally said. His growling voice was more like thunder than speech.
“Bad for the humans. Bad for the elves. Not bad for us. A long summer ahead for them, I think.” The shaman eyed his warlord’s massive axe, with its mammoth-tusk ivory haft and spell-enhanced bronze blades. He’d made that axe himself as a gift for Garathak. He knew exactly what each black orcish rune acid-burned into the bronze blade meant. “A very long and bad summer for the humans,” he added.
* * *
Deep in the cargo hold of a ship far out to sea in Faerun’s serpent-infested waters, something stirred. The hold was lightless but for the tiniest cracks of moonlight piercing the edges of the wooden boards that made up the ship’s skin.
A lone soul, an elven sailor with a curved sword at his hip, ghosted through the cargo room, weaving between the boxes the crew had plundered from another pirate vessel only that afternoon. He knew which box he was going to. His keen senses could detect the faint scent of decay.
Within one of these coffin-sized crates, wrapped in the rotted garments it had died wearing, a skeletal form – withered to black by age and potent sorcery – opened its eyes as it sensed its newest mortal servant approaching.
It was a small thing, to touch the minds of those that still breathed. To reshape their thoughts and desires was no more effort for the dead creature than it would be for a child to make a ball out of a lump of wet clay.
Open the crate.
The elf felt the words in his mind like a pair of grey lips hissing behind his eyes. As he eased the nails from the wood of the crate, all his thoughts were of the treasures he would find within.
Yes. Open the box. The creature could have opened it with ease, tearing it apart with its considerable magic. But that would deplete precious energy, and the creature was still coming to its senses from a long slumber.
The treasure that awaited the elf turned out to be the skull-grinning corpse of a man that had died six hundred years ago and had rotted with supernatural slowness the whole time since. The last thing the sailor saw was the corpse’s red eyes turn to him and the age-blackened body leap out of the crate. He never opened his eyes again, and died relying on his other senses for information.
The last things the elf felt were cold, bony hands crushing the life out of his throat. The last things he heard was the wrenching snaps of his own vertebrae giving way one by one.
* * *
Jerudai’s light grey eyes flickered as he looked over at his former master. The other mage looked back at him, equally alarmed.
“You felt it, too.” The half-elf did not make it a question.
“He’s awake.”
Jerudai nodded. “We have a problem.”
It's set in Athkatla, in Amn. Character details to follow in the next post.
The Guilt of the Grey
Jerudai Half-Elven ran his fingertips along the surface of the scroll. On one level he enjoyed the feel of the ancient parchment, at least three hundred years old. On another level entirely, he felt a silent thrill at his fingers sliding across the runic symbols of one of the most powerful spells ever committed to paper.
A knock at the door drew his attention from the desk. He knew who stood outside before the handle turned. Jerudai had been expecting company for some time.
“Master.” He was soft-spoken; an aspect of his elven blood. “I noticed you’ve been studying the Scroll of Ajithika. Hardly bedtime reading, even for one of your talents.”
“Quite,” was the clipped reply. Jerudai’s master was attired as his apprentice, wearing the same cloak of think, dark grey silk laced with runes of black cloth. The only visible difference between human and half-elf here was that the former had a short beard of silvery-white, and the latter was only a day unshaven. All other differences, facial or physical, were concealed by the hoods that each man wore up over his head, setting faces in shadow.
“You sent for me over an hour ago.” Jerudai allowed a touch of reproach to slip into his soft tones. “I have been waiting here for you. Master.” This last was added after a moment’s pause.
Jerudai knew his master loathed his presence. He knew also that he had surpassed the elder human some months ago in regards to arcane power. His subservience now was born out of patience and respect, rather than inferiority.
“I am sorry for the delay.” The master’s smirk made it clear he was anything but apologetic. “Tell me, why have you visited the deviant we captured last week?”
Jerudai could’ve sworn the temperature dropped in the room as his master asked the question.
“Curiosity,” was all he answered.
“Curiosity.” His master sneered. “You fool nobody, half-blood, least of all me. Come, we will go to Spellhold now and pay a visit to this deviant.”
Jerudai gathered his white-wood staff in his smooth-fingered hands. His palms were hidden under fingerless gloves, which he wore to conceal the burns scars from a fire spell gone awry many years ago. He could have had the injury healed permanently, but the visual reminder always stirred his caution in dealings now.
“To Spellhold, then.”
* * *
Cries of pain, panic and delirious laughter rang through the halls of the asylum. It was a building of cold marble, luxurious carpets and grand windows – except for the cells which resembled any gutter-prison in the Forgotten Realms.
With a burst of blue-white magical energy, Jerudai and his master appeared in the great hall of the asylum. Half a dozen mages speaking amongst themselves paid this sudden apparition no mind at all, as if such sorcery-born arrivals were commonplace. In truth, they were.
Jerduai’s staff clacked on the marble floor was he walked alongside his master. They passed a line of cells, each no more than a bare room barred by a magically-reinforced oaken door. At one of these, a young woman stood, staring out from the small square hole in the door’s face. Her hair was matted with dirt, forming accidental dreadlocks. A cut on her lip showed where she had been beaten recently, though the violence was not inflicted upon her by her Cowled Wizard captors.
“Marissa,” spoke Jerudai’s master. “And how are we, today?”
Her answer was a mouthful of spit that disappeared under the master’s hood. Jerudai silently congratulated her on her aim.
“I think you will find that was exceptionally ill-advised.” The elderly mage said in tones almost as soft as his apprentice’s.
“Let me out.” Marissa said, her voice broken from days of poor food and exhaustion. “I’ll get the damn license. Just let me out. All I did was defend myself.”
The master chuckled. “It was an unsanctioned use of magical energy, my dear. The rules cannot be broken. You are a deviant. Now you are here, for your own safety and the safety of others. Magic is for the enlightened, not for the masses.”
Jerudai reached up to pull back his hood. It was the first time Marissa had seen his face since he had captured her a week ago. In his visits since, he had always kept his features concealed.
He was a handsome man, which was one of the many reasons his master loathed him. His cheekbones were defined, his skin pale and unblemished with only a dusting of dark stubble along his elven chin and jaw-line, and he had light grey eyes with a tendency to look right through people. Atop his head was a loose, scruffy tangle of nut-brown hair which he usually kept styled by running his fingertips through it when it was still wet from washing.
“We can allow you to leave,” he began, ignoring the startled turn made by his master, “If you can tell us where the Kallian’s Blade is bound.”
“We will not –” the master began, but found himself silenced by Jerudai’s raised finger.
“Tell us.”
The woman drew breath to speak.
* * *
Vallek shifted his grip on the sword, trying in vain to keep the blade held high. The storm was howling around him now, with the wind ripping at his ruined cloak and blowing his hair into his face. The rain scythed into the soil under his boots as he staggered. Blood loss was making him dizzy.
The pain was fading, slowly eroding into a dull ache that was like a low-burning forge fire in his bones. Finally, the knight’s family sword slipped from his slack fingers. It landed in the mud with a splash, the rain making the blade shimmer in the moonlight as it cleansed the steel of its bloody sheen.
As Vallek crashed to his hands and knees, kneeling in the soil under the weight of his armour, he watched red trickles leaking through the joints in his punctured breastplate.
A boot resting on the back of his head finally drove him to the ground, face crushed against the waterlogged soil.
“Well now, Lord Vallek. How about you start seeing things our way? We’ve a holy man who can seal those wounds, quick as you like. Just say the oath. Just speak the words.”
Vallek whispered something unintelligible through lips that were mashed into the cold and wet earth.
“What was that, my lord? Didn’t quite catch it, what with you eating mud and all.” The pressure eased up off his head, and Vallek raised himself tremblingly to all fours again, seeking to stand up. When he finally raised his head, he stared his attacker in the eyes.
“Go to Hell.” Thunder punctuated his defiance, as if the gods were enjoying the poetry of the moment.
“Lovely sentiment.” Vallek’s tormentor leaned closer, whispering in the dying knight’s ear. “It’s not so hard to fall, Vallek. Torm isn’t answering your prayers any more. We will. Just say the words.”
* * *
King Garathak Broken-Tusk slouched on his throne. Before him, in the unclean chaos that made up his court, two of his warriors were settling a blood feud. As with all dealings in Garathak’s tribe, it was a loud and belligerent affair. The king himself sat watching, absently stroking his chunky green fingers over the haft of his colossal axe, which rested against the edge of his throne.
He was very bored.
A cheer went up as one of the orcs died. The victor, bathed in greasy sweat and spatters of green blood, took his enemy’s head and held it up to show the gathered greenskins. Orcs and their lesser goblin cousins howled and cheered. King Garathak patted his axe haft in applause but showed no further sign of approval.
With a lazy gesture to one of his other warriors, Garathak summoned his shaman.
* * *
Jerudai hissed the final syllable of his spell. For a moment, his heart thundered, almost like it was heating up his blood. Then his bones began to burn. With a curse that was half-elven, half-Chondathan – much like his own heritage – he raised his hand at the moment he was sure his eyes were cooking in their sockets. From extended fingers, a head-sized bolt of liquid fire shrieked towards his enemy. The other mage babbled over the words of his counterspell. Jerudai met the man’s eyes at the last moment, seeing the stabbing realisation within as the mage failed to harness his own sorcery. The grey-cloaked wizard turned away as the other spellcaster went up in flames.
The near-deserted street emptied of folk completely just as the brief magical duel came to a finish. Without looking, Jerudai whispered a few syllables in draconic and waved a hand at the howling, burning figure as it ran in panicking, dying circles. Suddenly there was quiet. Blessed quiet. Jerudai was thankful he’d memorised a silence spell earlier that day. He waited until the other mage had finished burning, and finally walked over the cobblestone road to stand above the corpse. With a second wave of his hand, the silence was dispelled. Natural sounds returned to the street.
“That…” Jerudai said to the corpse, “…was an unsanctioned use of magical energy.”
A portal opened in the road, crackling with energy and displaced air. Jerudai’s former master emerged, out of breath. He gestured with the tip of his gnarled oak wand at the smoking blackened body.
“I came as soon as I heard. Was this one of the pirates we were seeking?” the old human enquired, still breathless.
“No. Just a deviant. But I have a lead into the piracy problem. Fear not.”
* * *
The orc spat into a clay bowl full of elf blood. Human finger-bones floated on the surface, bobbing as the shaman stirred the contents with a dagger. Charms and holy devotions to Gruumsh One-Eye, Lord of Orcs, rattled and jingled with each of the shaman’s movements. He was a walking collection of bracelets, necklaces and rings, each formed from the bones of his victims and carved into shapes considered aesthetically pleasing only by greenskins.
“Signs are bad.” The shaman looked up from where he knelt before the hulking form of King Garathak. The king, for his part, stood impassively and stroked his jaw, absently touching at his snapped lower tusk.
“Bad?” The king finally said. His growling voice was more like thunder than speech.
“Bad for the humans. Bad for the elves. Not bad for us. A long summer ahead for them, I think.” The shaman eyed his warlord’s massive axe, with its mammoth-tusk ivory haft and spell-enhanced bronze blades. He’d made that axe himself as a gift for Garathak. He knew exactly what each black orcish rune acid-burned into the bronze blade meant. “A very long and bad summer for the humans,” he added.
* * *
Deep in the cargo hold of a ship far out to sea in Faerun’s serpent-infested waters, something stirred. The hold was lightless but for the tiniest cracks of moonlight piercing the edges of the wooden boards that made up the ship’s skin.
A lone soul, an elven sailor with a curved sword at his hip, ghosted through the cargo room, weaving between the boxes the crew had plundered from another pirate vessel only that afternoon. He knew which box he was going to. His keen senses could detect the faint scent of decay.
Within one of these coffin-sized crates, wrapped in the rotted garments it had died wearing, a skeletal form – withered to black by age and potent sorcery – opened its eyes as it sensed its newest mortal servant approaching.
It was a small thing, to touch the minds of those that still breathed. To reshape their thoughts and desires was no more effort for the dead creature than it would be for a child to make a ball out of a lump of wet clay.
Open the crate.
The elf felt the words in his mind like a pair of grey lips hissing behind his eyes. As he eased the nails from the wood of the crate, all his thoughts were of the treasures he would find within.
Yes. Open the box. The creature could have opened it with ease, tearing it apart with its considerable magic. But that would deplete precious energy, and the creature was still coming to its senses from a long slumber.
The treasure that awaited the elf turned out to be the skull-grinning corpse of a man that had died six hundred years ago and had rotted with supernatural slowness the whole time since. The last thing the sailor saw was the corpse’s red eyes turn to him and the age-blackened body leap out of the crate. He never opened his eyes again, and died relying on his other senses for information.
The last things the elf felt were cold, bony hands crushing the life out of his throat. The last things he heard was the wrenching snaps of his own vertebrae giving way one by one.
* * *
Jerudai’s light grey eyes flickered as he looked over at his former master. The other mage looked back at him, equally alarmed.
“You felt it, too.” The half-elf did not make it a question.
“He’s awake.”
Jerudai nodded. “We have a problem.”