- David Van Stone - 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Celestial Patron) - Former Aneman army officer.
- Van Darkholme - 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Sentinel Patron) - Vigilante crime fighter and former (?) Aneman city planner.
- Wellston Plumbago - 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Great Old One Patron) - Rake, roustabout, and the world's only known Drow ambassador.
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| David Van Stone (L), Van Darkholme (C), Wellston Plumbago (R) |
A map of Eloran, for reference.
Northern coast of Pirra - Early Winter
The three papal kidnappers debated between the western or eastern route from Libussa back to Salera.
Although the total time at sea was roughly equivalent, the eastern trek involved sailing through the edge of the moonshadow, down the full length of the eastern Pirran coast, through the strait of Chernik and potentially encounters with Chernikan privateers or Jhil corsairs, and around the full southern coastal face of the Imperial Diaspora.
The western route, by comparison, involved tracing the length of the western Pirran coast and the floating cannon batteries meant to repel Temenite raiders, dodging the Temenite raiders themselves, and potentially making landfall at any Aneman town once the border was crossed.
The party opted for the western passage and set sail for the warm embrace of His Dread Majesty.
The Angel Wings was not a large vessel, and ship stores of water and food required frequent refreshment. The party was able to procure a large quantity of fresh fish with the help of their invisible familiars, and buckets of sea water were easily rendered potable by the party's basic magic. The ship's passage along the Pirran coast was unremarkable for the first week, but the seventh day at sea threatened the two-masted yawl with a looming storm large enough to give the first mate pause. First Mate Rashad ul'Hatim, a tall Jhil man, was so nervous that the party opted to consult Wellston's magical patron for advice on braving the storm or risking discovery by putting in at a Pirran harbor.
After completing his divinatory ritual, thick black oil full of broken teeth welled up from between the top deck planks. Wellston assured his companions that this was what the ritual was intended to do, and that it was an ill omen for passing through the storm. They took the matter to Captain Hans, who insisted that the Angel Wings would hold against the gale--but that the party, as his employer, was welcome to take command of the vessel for the remainder of the journey (at which point Captain Hans would retire to his stateroom until their travel was entirely complete).
Wellston considered the Archpriest's feelings on the matter. "Can you swim? And if not, can you hold your breath for three to four months?"
The party opted to trust the captain. To his credit, the Angel Wings held together with only minor damage. Not wanting to put into a harbor for repairs and unable to meaningfully do so while under way, Van mounted his broom and did the best he could magically, using a mending spell to repair small cracks and rips in the ship one excruciatingly small patch at a time.
~
The days following were mercifully calm. After entering the cargo hold every morning to deposit the honey that he had been magically creating with his jug of alchemy, David was selected to regularly bring the Archpriest food and drink. The two began to play daily games of dragonchess. David had a slight suspicion that the Archpriest was allowing him to win, but the conversation stayed airy and polite--the Archpriest didn't seem interested in berating his kidnappers, only enjoying a small amount of pleasant chatter as a break in the monotony of cold days at sea in the ship's lamp-lit hold.
Day nine at sea found them closest to the horn of Launin on the northern Pirran coast. The sun rose early in such northern latitudes, and the Archpriest asked David if his captors would allow him to perform a benediction over the crew each dawn. This prompted fierce debate in private; all three men were aware of the eagerness of the gods to answer prayers, and placing the Archpriest of a sun-worshipping religion in full view of his god at the moment of its appearance each day seemed somewhat hazardous.
Van: "Can you trick the Archpriest with an illusion of the sun?"
Wellston: "Van, that would be lying, and lying is wrong."
The three Warlocks ultimately agreed that the Archpriest would be allowed to perform a daily benediction over the crew at dawn, but only within the hold of the ship. Everyone seemed satisfied with this arrangement, and the next morning, the four crew and David Van Stone lined up shoulder-to-shoulder among the scents of old sweat, wet rope and honey to receive their blessing from the highest-ranking member of the Church of Iades. The service was brief, but heartfelt, and David reported back to Wellston and Van that the Archpriest didn't seem to be fomenting rebellion or inciting mutiny.
David felt so inspired that he was able to magically cure a large goiter on the neck of one of the crew. Possibly in response, Wellston allowed himself to be caught by David on the Archpriest's lap, bemoaning their "doomed, impossible love," and insisting to David and Van that "Archpriest" was old Imperial for "Top Daddy".
~
Day 12 saw the Angel Wings pass under the gaze of the Pirran cannon battery at the Steschal inlet. 120 feet from stem to stern and bristling with turreted guns, the battery guarded the inland Pirran sea from Temenite raiders and served as a major stronghold of the Pirran navy. Currently, the navy was floating customs frigates beside the battery and running cutters out to search and interrogate every ship that passed the inlet.
The party opted to play things straight--the Angel Wings was fast, but not fast enough to outrun a Pirran customs frigate at full sail, let alone the outrunners the Pirrans would dispatch to hound anyone trying to flee. Van bound and gagged the Archpriest, settled him into a ship's hammock tied underneath his Broom of Flying, rendered them both magically invisible, and soared off to observe the Angel Wings from a distance measured by several minutes' flight. As long as the customs inspection took less than two hours, there was virtually no way Van could imagine anyone discovering the presence of their captive.
The cutter approached them backlit by the setting sun. The deck was a sea-glare smear of movement and the shouts of marines as lines were tossed between vessels and the two ships secured starboard-to-port. Three figures stood unmoving among the marines--a shaven-headed, furtive young man in the greasy robes of a Libussan journeyman mage, and behind him, two burly men in mismatched brigandine lightly cradling hand mortars. The marine captain lightly stepped aboard the Angel Wings and droned through standard exclamations of the navy's intent to search the hold to confirm both cargo and the absence of the kidnapped Archpriest. The formalities seemed as if they would carry the day until the young man blurted his concern from the deck of the cutter, only to be dismissed by the marine captain's attempts to complete the inspection.
"I have SEEN this before. WILL see it. I WILL HAVE SEEN IT. There is..." The young man leered at David. "...a UNICORN among these men. I have seen HONEY and HORN here. I KNOW this. I WILL HAVE known this."
David darted a glance at Wellston, who had shifted from his usual insouciant stance into something colder and harder. Wellston's usual bawdy persona was absent, utterly replaced with the gaze of a shepherd deciding which of the flock would be most valuable for wool or for meat. Currently, Wellston seemed to regard the disruptive young mage only as meat.
The mage took several unsteady steps toward the edge of the cutter's deck, and his armored gunmen followed behind with level, practiced steps. The young man's eyes tracked the passage of unknowable things through the open air. Up close, the stains on his sleeves--and the smell clouding him--resolved as burns and the scent of heavy wood smoke. Wellston asked the marine captain if this man represented the Pirran navy's procedures, pointedly speaking directly past the mage at the scowling marine over his shoulder. The captain grit his teeth and responded that the mage was not a customs official.
It was clear that Wellston was deliberately antagonizing the strange man. The sailors visibly tensed as the mage's insistent shouting peaked--but the marine captain cut him off.
"I don't care HOW much your father is paying to station you aboard my ship, Cadex! You'll return to the hold immediately!"
Water lapped against the hulls. The young mage turned back toward the marine captain, revealing an arcane rod tucked into the belt within the inner folds of his scorched robes--a magical weapon of brutal force. Hands twitched toward hilts. Breath was held.
A seagull's idiot caw broke the frozen moment, and the shaven-headed mage stomped back into the hold of the cutter, spitting oaths as he went. His bodyguards followed without comment.
The marine turned to Captain Hans. "I'll need your ship's log before we can be done with this. How many aboard and what are you hauling?"
"Four crew, three passengers, sir, and a cargo full of honey."
The captain angrily scrawled a few lines in his notes and handed back the ship's log.
"Fine. Be on your way."
The marines cast off. It was only after Van landed back on deck with the Archpriest that they realized the captain's mistake--only two passengers had been visible after an extremely thorough search of the ship. Swearing sulfurously, Captain Hans ordered all their sail unfurled. It was the wind as much as the universal dread of the battery's booming report that drove the Angel Wings toward the lip of the inlet and the utmost range of the Navy's gentle touch.
~
Cadex remained unsatisfied. Almost a full day later, the party spotted the single mast of a small ship in pursuit. Invisible observation revealed that the crew consisted of four Pirran sailors, the young mage Cadex, and his heavily armed bodyguards. The wind was unfavorable for the Angel Wings; Cadex's cutter would eventually catch up with them, even if it took several days. Captain Hans and the party convened privately in the Captain's stateroom. They couldn't outrun Cadex, and they couldn't attack and burn the ship to the waterline--the smoke plume would be seen, and the navy would begin patrolling the coastal waters in their faster ships to investigate the attack. They weren't close enough to Temen to blame it on raiders, either. The Captain looked deeply concerned, but Wellston suddenly perked up.
"You know, I could Open the Gate." Wellston reached into a pocket and placed a small glass jar between them all. Inside the jar was a small sliver of pickled octopus tentacle.
David looked baffled. Van looked equal parts intrigued and horrified. The Captain grunted and left the warlocks to their "witchcraft". A terrible plan was put into effect just after sundown.
As Cadex's 20-foot cutter came within a bowshot of the Angel Wings, Wellston and Van invisibly took to the night sky on their brooms. With Cadex, his bodyguards, and all of his crew visible among the ship's running lights, Wellston opened a gateway to the unknowable gulfs between the stars directly over the deck of Cadex's ship.
A howling wind picked up, and the sound of distant, echoing flutes filled the air. The sea groaned and flash-froze for a stone's throw from the ship. A tarry darkness frothed and boiled over the sides of the vessel. The obfuscation was merciful--the sounds of wet slurping, the crunch of bones being wrenched from sockets, and the sizzle of dissolving flesh and wood wafted up from Cadex's ship and across the water toward the Angel Wings. David blanched, and the crew near him turned away from the noises--several making warding signs and whispering prayers.
Van Darkholme was forced to observe, however. He alone among the three eldritch companions could see through the depths of supernatural night. He watched Cadex, his bodyguards, and his sailors get torn apart like hot roast chickens jointed by careless hands. To his supernatural vision, the thick tentacles reaching through the tear in space were the color of spoiled whey. Whatever they touched--gently, almost lovingly--was destroyed. Flesh melted, bone crumbled, blood instantly boiled to a thick vapor. Wood and iron rotted, splintered, and broke. Finally, when the screaming had guttered out, the spray of blind tendrils swept slowly through the blackened, icy water. They gathered the remains of body and ship like a mother gathering her children to her breast, and drew the undifferentiated bolus toward Wellston's open gate before pulling the pool of darkness behind them like a trailing skirt. The last notes of distant flutes echoed over a sea dotted with nothing more than melting fragments of black ice and splinters of corroded wood.
The crew would not meet their eye when Wellston and Van returned to the Angel Wings. David sat on deck, his jug of alchemy turned from producing an alibi of honey to jack after jack of frothy beer, which he drank and freely shared with harrowed purpose.
~
In private, the three Warlocks debated the potential reprisal of Cadex's family. As the night wore on and the beer took hold, the topic wandered.
Wellston: "You saw how much the marines feared his father. Powerful, important fathers don't care about their sons. We'll be perfectly safe."
David: "Did someone hurt you? Who made you this way?"
And later:
Dave: "What if a child saw you? Would you kill it?"
Wellston: "No, the proper thing to do at that point would be to kidnap the child and give it a *proper* upbringing."
~
Two days later, the crew had largely recovered from the horror they'd overheard (as well as the brutal hangover produced by David's honey-sweetened magical beer) when they were caught between an unescorted Pirran merchant convoy heading north up the Pirran coast and a Temenite raiding fleet sailing over the western horizon. Unable to outrun either group, Wellston invoked one of his many rituals to twist the clouds overhead into the words "IT'S BAIT". Either no Temenite aboard the war fleet could read Imperial Common or they simply didn't care, as their course remained unchanged--but the merchant convoy abruptly swept around and made for the nearby port of Haunauberg. Hoping that the Temenite fleet would try to wait out the valuable merchant convoy instead of their tiny vessel, the party opted to continue south--a gambit which paid off as the Temenite fleet weighed anchor in the port's bay for as long as they dared before the navy would arrive.
David: "I feel bad about leaving the merchant ships to the Temen fleet."
Van: "You feel bad about everything! You need to get a handle on having emotions and stop it."
~
Day 24 found the Angel Wings closing in on the Aneman-Pirran border with a violent storm chasing them. The winter weather had been worsening, and the storm had been building for several days. Captain Hans, normally stoic, was pacing the deck and shouting orders in a whip-crack cadence. The thunderhead loomed like a black hammer. The charts showed it would fall just as the ship crossed the border--too far to turn back and make for Pirran Etnauhau, too far to push forward and find safe harbor in Aneman Hofsbach just on the other side of the skirmish lines. No safe landing to be found on the shores between.
A plan was hatched--the trio's flying brooms would be lashed to the front of the ship like sled dogs to scrape whatever extra speed they could from the hull. Any non-essential cargo would be jettisoned. All sail available would be run up the mast. Anyone keen to pray would be encouraged to do so. The hammer fell.
14 brutal hours later, the Angel Wings--all hands worked to exhaustion, hull battered, sails torn, mast cracked, but vitally intact--limped into Hofsbach harbor. Nobody stood at the docks to greet them, or even take note that the ship had arrived and charge a slip fee. What few lights shone from the rain-blasted windows seemed to fill one in three houses at best. Ruined ships rotted along the tiny quay. Shell craters marred the streets. The border war had not been kind to Hofsbach.
Captain Hans assessed the damage and informed the trio that the Angel Wings would require weeks of repairs to be seaworthy again. The party opted to remain aboard for the evening to retain their low profile, then look for a train in the morning. The trio mumbled something about disguising the Archpriest as a bank debtor being transported back to Salera, realized that they didn't actually know where they were meant to drop off their captive, and fell to brooding. With no plan emerging from their exhausted conversation, all hands quickly seized what rest they could find while the implications of their final delivery haunted them.
~
The party woke to the sounds of hammers and saws. The storm had passed overnight, and the captain had hired locals to refit and tar the damage to his ship as quickly as possible. Van, realizing that the fiction of transporting a debt defaulter across all of Anem would require the permanent presence of his masked, nocturnal vigilante persona, "The Obsidian Skull", put on his leather armor and full face mask in preparation of wearing it for the next several consecutive weeks. Wellston aggressively pretended not to notice that The Obsidian Skull was very obviously Van Darkholme.
With the crew out purchasing provisions and supplies for repairs, the party found themselves alone in the hold of the Angel Wings with Thomasz I, Archpriest of Iades.
The Archpriest had been pleasant, cooperative, understanding, and polite for the entirety of their 24 days at sea. He had blessed the crew and their voyage at every opportunity. He'd played about 20 excellent games of dragonchess with David.
The Archpriest addressed the trio in a steady, gentle voice.
He'd overheard their plan for transporting him to Salera, as well as their consternation that they didn't have any idea where they were meant to leave him. He asked why they thought things had turned out like that. The party concluded that they were the dog that had caught the carriage. They'd been compelled with threats of death or a lifetime of slavery to attempt an impossible task with no support. They'd never been meant to succeed.
The Archpriest asked why they were working so hard for His Dread Majesty, who was clearly planning to kill them on their return with their captive. The party didn't have an answer.
The Archpriest repeated the offer he had made weeks earlier, when Van had slapped irons on him and flown him across the holy quarter of Libussa: Switch sides. Turn their backs on someone who would discard and ruin them without a thought and work for the Archpriest--and not for free. Titles, property, land, and a true payment ten times the value of the false offering made by Isaac Bacterian would be theirs--along with the Archpriest's personal favor--if they would escort him back across the border and safely return him to Libussa.
David sighed deeply. "Well, today's another beer day, gentlemen." He pulled out the alchemy jug and began producing more honeyed beer. It was a day for drinking. Everyone, including the Archpriest, accepted a full mug and drank deeply.
Wellston commented that the titles held no draw for him--he was already an ambassador.
David: "A GOVERNMENT PAYS YOU TO REPRESENT THEM?! Were you chosen by lottery?"
The Obsidian Skull seemed deeply perturbed. He was ready to refuse the offer, but it seemed his companions were swayed. He apologized to the Archpriest--he was compelled to honor his word to the city and the king.
The Archpriest thought for a moment. "Do you serve the city, or do you serve the king?"
"The city," replied Van.
"Does the king serve the city?"
Van had no answer.
Asking for time to think, he removed his disguise ("Oh my god, The Obsidian Skull is VAN DARKHOLME!" "Shut it, Wellston.") and walked into the battered port town to commune with his patron.
Van Darkholme's patron was neither god nor demon, but the First City, a genius loci of an archetypal metropolis. Civic duty was as important to his relationship with his patron as the daily solar benediction was to the Archpriest. Lacking a position on a council or the means to build a curtain wall, Van Darkholme found a bucket of tar and some gravel, and with his magical capacity to shift earth and stone began repairing the craters and potholes in Hofsbach's main street. Hours passed in walking, working meditation. He felt a potent presence, and asked what he should do.
"What the hell has been going on over the past three months? I'm so confused. What I knew has been betrayed."
The answer came like dawn over a skyline, or birds alighting on a fence, or a market gathering people until the moment arrived when it shifted from random carts and workers to a living, breathing thing.
"Support civilization and progress. The people matter less than the institutions. You are an agent of the First City as much as the First City is your patron. Your choices matter."
~
When Van returned to the Angel Wings, everyone--Wellston, David, and the Archpriest--was royally drunk on David's magic beer. Wellston was in the process of trying to convince David that His Dread Majesty was an outright nut job while simultaneously trying to explain magical philosophy. David continued to hand out brimming mugs, which Van accepted. The knot of turmoil drained from his face as quickly as he finished his drink.
They were agreed. It was to be treason.
