[This is a recap of Sami’s Eberron, in the form of an in-universe journal written by my character, Vanivieve, a Gnomish cleric. She was an investigative journalist with a pathological inability to lie! She came to Sharn from Zilargo because she’d found a list of members of the Trust! It was a big, six-player group! Oh boy!]
From the Journal of Vanivieve ir’Corralyn d’Sivis
It has been something of a long day for me.
I awoke to my fourth Sharn morning, the sounds of traffic outside my hotel drifting up through the open window. I hadn’t quite reached the stage of paranoia where I’d prioritise security over night-time comfort, and the duvet – a feather-and-down behemoth thick enough to shield the bed from Detect Magic – was hot enough to fire clay. The breeze helped, but I still ended up wanting my shower cold.
I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in a nearby pâtisserie I’d been eyeing. The menu was nothing revolutionary, but then, there are only so many permutations of pâtisserie faire one can arrive at before each plate needs to be inlaid with dragonshards to keep the sauce aflame.
It was a pancake sort of morning. They arrived with mascarpone, honey, and a few mint leaves artfully perched atop the stack. They were light and fluffy, like you’d expect.
And then I found I couldn’t pay. My personal accounts had been frozen, or drained, or something. I’m still not sure. It’s an awfully big coincidence, though, considering the reason I’d come to Sharn in the first place. Luckily, I had a fair amount of my initial travel withdrawal leftover, and I left the pâtisserie with a few coins and my half-finished coffee on the table.
Of course, had that been the extent of the day’s misfortune, I wouldn’t currently be stranded in the Mournland, would I?
Someone was following me. He made no particular effort to conceal his pursuit; looking back it seems an obvious scare tactic, meant to frighten me into trying to hide away from the bustle of the main streets. I’m ashamed to say it worked. I ducked into an alley and tried to make myself invisible with the aid of a few barrels.
The man who’d been following me entered the alleyway. He stopped by the barrels I hid behind. His voice was rough; shabby, as was the gentleman it belonged to. ‘Alms for the poor?’ He rattled a tin cup down at me. It sounded surprisingly full.
It’s times like those that I miss having the capacity to bullshit. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any…’ Nausea interrupted me. I couldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. ‘I’m afraid I… ugh.’
The man seemed unoffended, which was good. But he’d produced a roughly gnome-sized sack, which was bad. At least I wasn’t just being paranoid, I suppose.
From my crouched position, I slid through my would-be kidnapper’s legs, and sprinted away as fast as I could manage. His shouts died down as the distance grew, and by the time I leant against a red brick wall, gasping for breath, lungs feeling like a portal to Mabar, I was quite confident I’d lost him.
I’d ended up in the lower city. The bricks were roughly cut and uneven, leaving a red dusty residue on my hands as I straightened up. I hastily wiped them on a nearby poster.
NEED COIN FAST? shrieked the poster. HARDY ADVENTURERS NEEDED RIGHT AWAY. Enquire at the Crooked Cat – Departing IMMEDIATELY.
I peered at it. An opportunity to get the hell out of town. I mean, I didn’t have access to my money – no doubt another arrow in the Trust’s sizeable quiver – so I wouldn’t be able to secure passage at short notice. I spoke a quick prayer to the Traveller in thanks, and peered at the poster more closely.
Below the high-impact title, it featured another line in a more reasonable font size: No questions asked, no answers given. Then a dotted line, as if one was supposed to sign. After a moment I realised the dots were, in fact, letters.
Not responsible for any loss of life.
*
And so, I found myself in the Crooked Cat, perhaps the most unkempt place I’d been in since my stay at the infamous and ill-fated Lhesh Haruuc’s Arms. The proprietor of the establishment, a Tabaxi by the name of He Who Cares Greatly for Cats, welcomed me to this ‘cat café’ and directed me to a table that had been set aside for those who had ‘come about the job, wink wink.’ Yes, he actually said ‘wink wink’.
Six chairs on one side. Two on the other. There was one person already at the table; a Shifter I soon learned was named Aster. She had the demeanour of a stranger in a strange land, as though she was admiring the very idea that there could be a building in this place. It was a look I’m sure I’ve worn myself on my travels, though in my case it would be closer to the ground.
I immediately mistook her for one of the employers. She was on the side with fewer chairs, after all.
Shortly after, another Tabaxi arrived. She introduced herself as Dancing Heart of the Mockingbird, and didn’t make any comment on the fact that her face was just COVERED in blood down one side. It seemed she’d had a fall (a fairly blatant lie, but it’s none of my business) and stitched up a gash in her face on her own. Without anaesthetic. Or a mirror. I offered to help, but as it turned out, she’d done a surprisingly competent job. Since then I’ve learned she’s happy to be referred to as just ‘Mock’.
Funnily enough, who should walk in next but Robyn ir’Viva-Kalistro? She hadn’t replied to any of my letters in some time, but here I am in Sharn and the Great Detective herself appears as if the city is no larger than a backwater village! It’s an awfully strange coincidence, and I found myself thinking back to my earlier muttered prayer to the Traveller.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when she feigned ignorance that we’d been in contact. It’s how she often acts with other chroniclers, and there’s no reason I would be any different, house and mark be damned. Still, if I was apprehensive before, Robyn’s presence got me feeling properly nervous about the place.
The next ‘HARDY ADVENTURER’ to arrive was a meek girl who couldn’t have been out of her teens. She seemed to mistake those at the table with fur for the cat café’s featured felines, and turned bright red when she had to be corrected. It did raise a fair point though: where were the cats? The Crooked Cat surely failed to live up to even the most meagre expectations.
After I politely let the girl – Shiira Mahimahi, she said her name was – know that I was a gnome, not a human child, the final member of my current companions made her way past the table to stand in the corner.
There were scuffs on her clothes, like she’d been climbing, and her eyes kept darting to the door. Her name was Jaqueline, and of all of us, she was the one I thought had least business being at that table. She seemed afraid.
A short while later we did get to meet the cats, which in all honesty was cute but not conducive to a comfortable dining experience.
And then we met our would-be employer. I must say, I’d been expecting some seedy pirate type with fewer teeth than toes. Instead, we were joined by two women: a Kalashtar with that serene expression so common to those from Sarlona, and an unkempt Human bearing the Mark of Making on her scowling face.
Daja d’Cannith. That Daja d’Cannith.
Considering the poster that had led me here, it seemed the Mark of Making granted no special mastery in the field of Graphic Design.
A brief interview followed – we were asked if we’d done this type of bodyguarding work before, could we wield a weapon, were we allergic to oranges… the usual. Well, except the last part there, but who was allergic to oranges? (As it turned out, Shiira was allergic to oranges. She won a special bracelet as a result.)
*
We were bundled onto a ship of d’Cannith’s own design, a vessel held together with blackberry jam and the wishes of children that she’d christened The Investigator. Robyn informs me that it functions similarly to the Lightning Rail, projecting a track before it and simply riding along it. She says it’s quite ingenious, and I’d have to agree, albeit through gritted teeth.
‘Some safety guidelines,’ announced d’Cannith. ‘Don’t fall off.’
After a time travelling – I’m not sure how long as I believe I went into a kind of fugue state when the ship took off – Daja and her companion, Asrasri, ran through a quite obviously rehearsed exchange on how ‘Oh no, there’s something wrong with the engines, where is all this smoke coming from, oh no we appear to be about to crash land in the Mournland right on top of Whitehearth’.
Of course, just because something appears to be scripted, that doesn’t stop it being terrifying, does it? My throat is still raw from the descent.
As far as the sliding scale of crash landings goes, this one was certainly skewed more to landing than crash. When we ventured forth from the still mostly-intact ship, we found we’d arrived at the estate of the late Starrina d’Cannith. Shiira had gotten separated in the crash, but ostensibly whisked away by a Fey entity named ‘the Bleeding Heart’, who offered to join us and help navigate the Mournland.
Something about the Mournland I feel I should make particular note of: it is beautiful.
Cyre was always a picturesque land, and of course the grounds of a Dragonmarked House estate would be kept and cared for with the utmost respect, but I was ill-prepared to find it likely just as it was. The scenery, obscured as it was by pervasive fog, had a serenity that one would be hard-pressed to find in even the most remote points of Khorvaire.
Crystalline flowers dotted the gardens (surely these would not have been present before the day of mourning, though?), and there was a subtle scent in the air, as if the land had just enjoyed its first rains after months and months of drought.
Oh, and the Bleeding Heart was wearing a special bracelet exactly like the one Shiira had received. Presumably citrus allergies are more common than I thought.
Daja seemed very interested in making a ‘detour’ to investigate the estate. No doubt this was the whole reason for our hiring. Though it seemed unwise to plunge headlong into this oddly-intact mansion, I certainly didn’t want to stay outside, alone. I may have been impressed with the beauty of the place, but beautiful things can kill you just as easily as ugly ones.
That’s not me waxing poetic; I once saw a marble sculpture of Lady Miravella Uruvai d’Thuranni fall and crush a goblin.
The front doors – massive oaken things, the kind you’d use as a roof on a lesser building – swung open to reveal… a small cupboard. It wasn’t quite as grand as I’d expected. D’Cannith explained, with no small degree of exasperation at having to talk us through such a simple concept, that the estate must have gotten confused in the Mourning, and the rooms no longer knew where they were supposed to lead to.
So the cupboard took us out onto a comfortable lounge, complete with roaring fire, record player, and the ghost of Starrina d’Cannith with a glass of brandy and a cigar. I didn’t recognise her at first, I’d only really seen pictures of how she used to look; fortunately she was quick to introduce herself.
And she wasn’t a ghost, she was a memory. ‘It’s the estate itself that’s remembering me,’ she explained when we pressed for details. ‘I can’t move from this chair. I can’t do anything. But I can have as many cigars and glasses of brandy as I like.’ Something was eating away at the memory, though. Something that eats knowledge.
She answered Daja’s enquiry about the location of something called a Wavelength Amplifier (though I could be mistaken about the specific name, I’m not technically-minded) in a somewhat condescending manner. Daja didn’t seem to care as long as she got the information she was after.
And then the image of Starrina reset itself, and welcomed us to the mansion again.
The next room was a dining hall of some sort; figures at the table had been frozen in crystal mid-meal. A spirit sat at the head of the table, and invited us to eat, drink, be merry. It was a trap we narrowly avoided. Aster demonstrated just how dangerous she was, flashing forward and dropping the ghost before anyone else could even move, and frankly, I’m impressed.
And terrified.
We’re going to be moving on soon, but now seemed like a good point to update my journal. I’m hoping I can keep adding to it frequently, especially as we’re in such a dangerous place. I don’t know whether any given entry will be the last.
If there’s no more entries after this one, I’d ask whoever is reading it to turn to the last page of this journal. The list of names there are all the current members of the Trust as of the time of writing. It’s dangerous knowledge, but I suppose you’ll be used to danger if you’re finding my writing.
Do what you will with the list. I’ve so far kept it to myself, and if I make it out of this alive, I’m going to rethink what I do with it.
Thank you for reading this.
Roll History 