Goriel and beyond, part 6

[Drusia]

"About ten miles southeast of here, in the farm country, there is a small town called Rosteriel. The people there have no love for the clans of Goriel, and they have ample means to keep the Gibazovs and Duravskys from getting too nosy in their town. I suggest we head there."

Brad looked dubious. "Southeast? But doesn't that take us away from Goriel? How is that going to solve our problem?"

"Have faith. Rosteriel is not exactly what it seems. We have used Rosteriel to help get those women whom we rescue away from the clutches of the clans. One might call it a terminal on the underground railroad to freedom." Another mysterious smile. "Literally. I just hope that none of you are skittish about old, ruined dwarven technology that may not be quite as broken-down as it is believed to be."

Wait, I thought we wanted to get away from Goriel. Why do Brad and Tim keep talking about going back there?

I must have missed some tactical issue again. Oh whatever. Practical issues first.

"I like the idea of going to Rosteriel," I say - as if anyone cares, I know, but this might be an opportunity to find somewhere where Anfisa might feel more comfortable. However, I have another idea.

"And as far as the wagon goes... couldn't we disguise it? I mean, we have all these tents, and some decorative cloth, and Lillith is really good at sewing and crafts and stuff. We could make our wagon look like anything - well, any other kind of wagon, anyway." Plus, we might be able to make some sort of secret compartment or trunk or something for Anfisa to hide in if there are any patrols. There's no link between her disapearance to us - if a patrol checks us, and she's well hidden, then they won't find anything unusual. I don't mention this part outloud, yet, as I don't want to upset Anfisa.

-- Desiree

[Graybeard]

Therese thought about Desiree's suggestion. "Good idea," she said. "We should at least reduce the chances of running into someone who remembers us. Let's get on it."

The group started working industriously on modifications to the wagon (where's Harker when you actually need him? Lillith thought, whimsically), but it wasn't long afterward that Brad noticed something out of the ordinary.

"Hey," he said, pointing to a shape on the distant horizon. "Isn't that our military airship?"

--------------

"Luminosita rest his soul," Sister Rose whispered as they reached the mountain top where (most of) Blaise's body lay, for Blaise's body it was.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Alberich tells me he may be out of pocket for a couple of days -- hope your surgery goes well, A -- so following some offline stuff, here's a bit about what he has planted at the ridge top:]

"At least I think it's Blaise," Sister Rose said, noting that the body had no head. Well, that would figure. Certainly the robes were those she'd seen him wearing on earlier occasions, and the general physique of what remained seemed right, although she was sickened at the realization that the scavengers were starting to get at him. Well, some magic could fix that if there was a reason for it, at least for a short time.

She took in the scene. Blaise's body hadn't been placed here in quite as respectful, nay, reverential a fashion as that other burial site they'd seen earlier, but it was still obvious that someone had taken some care over this site. She noticed that one of those death tokens lay alongside the body, and probably had lain on top of it before a raven arrived. (Now that she looked at it ... well, yes, it would be a good idea to cast a ward on this body, at least for long enough to keep further violations of the flesh from happening. Magic flared from her fingertips and sank into the corpse.) A few, highly incongruous artifacts and insignia of the Orthodox church surrounded the body; most likely those who placed them there had little idea of their significance, and just tried to arrange them in a way that might have been consistent with his alien (to the bandits who had hosted him) religious practices.

Except that the worship of Luminosita hadn't been part of Blaise's real religious practices for some time, to all appearances.

There was something itching at the back of Rose's mind as she turned to Argus. "For all that this man seems to have violated the basic trust of our church," she said, "I still can't help but feel a little sorry for him. This was no place to die, and no way to do it. I wish we could have got him home, with whatever it was that killed Bree ..."

... And she stopped, suddenly realizing what was bothering her: the things that weren't there. "Get an enhanced Barrier ready," she said. "I'm going to do some detecting, even though I'm not sensing a bit of magic here ... even though there ought to be."

[Jack Rothwell]

"Some was coming from cave." Tamina said quietly, her gaze fixed unwillingly on the remains of the man. "Magic. Something.. bad, don't know what it was."

[Alberich]

"Well, then" said Udo, "Once we're through up here with Mr. Empty Pockets, we can go down, find out what it is, and knock its teeth out." And hope they've got gold fillings.

[OOC: Surgery now postponed 'til next month - so anyway I'm around.]

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose didn't respond at first, being deep in concentration on her various detection spells (and wishing that a real specialist like Brother Miguel was casting them instead). However, the fact of the matter was that there was simply nothing to detect, other than the simple ward that she'd applied to the body to keep scavengers away until they were done with the site. Not a shred of magic was to be found among the effects of the late Father Blaise. And that was disconcerting, because Rose knew that there'd been plenty on and around him earlier. Where had it all gone? And who had wound up with it?

"I guess we'd better go look at that cave you found, Tamina," she said, not at all happy with the proposition.

-------------

Therese was impressed: by the time Lillith, Desiree and colleagues were done with the wagon, she couldn't tell that it was the same contraption that had hauled them up into the mountains. "That should give us some added security against being identified by the patrols," she said approvingly. "Nothing is guaranteed, but we will be heading outside their usual zone of operations." The wagon set off.

It didn't take long before Brad noticed, however, a down side to the modifications they'd made. "Look at the airship," he pointed. "They look like they're flying a search pattern, looking for something. I bet what they're looking for is the wagon from the consulate, and we don't look like that any more." Well, they'd just have to make do, on the hour-plus trip into the small town of Rosteriel. [OOC: Which I propose we fast-forward this part of the group to.]

[Alberich]

[OOC: Fine by me to fast forward - if it's only an hour then they could be lucky enough not to meet any Gibazov patrols, which is good as the thorough searching done by those patrols -- which the group experienced before -- would get past any disguise put on the wagon...]

Tamina led the way to the cave below but was exceptionally reluctant to enter it. Udo made a light on his staff and led the way. While he didn't have Rose's bag of subtle special operations tricks, nor Argus' exreme power with rocks, sometimes a basic battlemage competency was enough for the purpose. There was a normal bad smell in here -- acutely offensive to the kobold's sensitive nose, and acting in synergy with the effects this place had on her magical senses.

The cave itself was a dirty little low-ceilinged thing that didn't go too far back. In a rear niche was some kind of crude camp bed, doubtless the former resting place of mad Carloc, with a few of his possessions boxed and bundled nearby. Not many - he had not appreciated much in life. In the middle of the room was the "idol" - no one with the slightest magical instincts could doubt it.

To look at it was just a lump of blocky black rock, not higher than Argus' waist. not over a cubit square. It would be heavy but not unmaneuverable - if anyone cared to touch it. On closer examination, though, it proved to bear writing of a sort. A crudely-hacked runic script that at first looked unfamiliar. But Argus had studied runes extensively -- some of his magic was based on them -- and after pondering with furrowed brow, waving the others to silence, he realized he knew these. The words were archaic but not entirely foreign to the tongue they spoke, and the message was simple enough that he could grasp it through the fog of strange script and long-dead dialect:

"COMFORT TO THE DYING."

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose's blood ran cold.

"Don't touch that, anybody," she warned, her eyes growing large. "No detection magic, either. If that was what Blaise had, it can kill you in your tracks."

However, when she started to inspect the sinister object with the Mark I eyeball, some things didn't fit well with the idea that this was Blaise's lethal artifact. Dust had piled around its base in a way that made it look like it had been sitting there for quite a long time. Smudges on its surface made it clear that it had been touched, repeatedly, and in some cases, recently. Those same smudges suggested a thin veneer of dust on the top surface as well, enough to reinforce the impression that the thing had been sitting there for a while.

Rose permitted herself a long sigh of relief. "No, I don't think this is Blaise's. At the same time, it's pretty disturbing. If it was what was keeping that undead mage alive --" Her voice trailed off, and then she got to the key question.

"So what, if anything, do we do with it?"

------------

Therese had guessed right: the trip into the small farming town was uneventful, although the airship continued to putter about aimlessly above them. That didn't keep her from producing her own sigh of relief once they were inside the town. The bloodthirsty clans of Goriel city wouldn't follow them here. If they did ... well, Rosteriel didn't care much for the city clans, and they could take care of themselves, to put it mildly.

"Next, we visit the compound of Clan Vatnikov, the outfit that runs this place," she said, turning the wagon onto a street at the edge of town -- and drawing an alarmed look from both Anfisa and Desiree. She held up a hand to forestall questions. "Not to worry," she continued. "The Vatnikovs are a Gorielian clan, with all that that entails, but they are too busy trying to scratch a living out of this farm country to get involved with those idiots in Goriel and their childish posturing. To my knowledge, they have no geteroi, at least by that name. At the minimum, they certainly don't engage in exchanges of geteroi with anyone in Goriel. If they did, I think I would know about it." She turned to Brad with an ironic smile playing around her lips. "They are still Gorielian, though, so it would be best if the senior man present drove us there -- your lordship."

Flustered, Brad started to stammer his unwillingness, but at the same time, he could see that the compound was already visible, just a few blocks down the street. Even he couldn't get lost going there. But still ... "But what are we going to do when we get there?" he asked. "You know these people, apparently. I don't. What am I supposed to tell them?"

Therese (who, an observer might have noted, had been smiling more with this group than in her previous six weeks put together) replaced the ironic smile with a mysterious one. "Leave that to me. I think you will find the Dowager Lady Vatnikov to be -- not what you expected."

[Jack Rothwell]

"So what, if anything, do we do with it?"

Tamina had eyed the artifact with an unblinking stare that contained both fear and hostility. At Rose's question, the kobold snatched up a sizeable rock and began padding towards the object with intent.

"Bad magic. Gotta be destroyed." She hissed, raising her own stone as she bore down on it.

[Drusia]

"Leave that to me. I think you will find the Dowager Lady Vatnikov to be -- not what you expected."

"So, should Anfisa and I present ourselves as getera, or... something else?" I ask Therese.

-- Desiree

***

Drusia:

I look on with only partial interest. I know enough not to mess with any strange magic rocks. If Tamina thinks she can handle it, then there isn't much I can do. I just hope she doesn't get herself killed.

I take a few steps back in any case. For all I know, the thing might explode. Then again, for all I know, it might shower us with candy and small denomation coins.

-- Drusia