subplotkudzu | Emirikol, session 15 part 1

For your amusement, I'm posting Emirikol write ups again. This one picks up right after Hiram was shanghied by imperial constables ast part of a plot by his uncle and dragged out of the city to be tried at the most notoriously evil city in the empire....

Cybele, Dietrick and Melas, having been informed by Rudolph Eisenwald that constables of the city of Encial – the notorious ‘hanging city’ where the law is applied swiftly and without mercy – had arrested Hiram on a (hopefully) false charge of murder and impersonation of a nobleman, saddled their horses and began a midnight run on the roads to the south in hopes of catching up with constables carriage. Aware that time and distance were against them – the constables having had at least a day’s worth of head start – Melas and Deitrick took the time while their horses were being saddled by the servants to peer over what maps they had in hopes of finding a shortcut too perilous for the carriage that they might use to steal a march. They did find evidence of a road literally scratched off of the maps that took a more direct route than the main highway (which spent much of its time hugging the Rheel river) before vanishing into a forest, and then reappearing on the far side. Surely such a path would buy them some time.

But why had it been scratched off? Melas recalled that the forest used to be home to a modest sized city that rebelled against the empire some 125 years ago. That was shortly after the last emperor ascended into godhood, and was the first official challenge to his final decree that no one claim the throne and the republic he had constructed be allowed to govern itself. The noble family who controlled the city took offense to being governed by commoners and raised arms – much to their dismay. The republic, wary of just such a power grab, responded with overwhelming force as a means to show the rest of the empire how it would handle such issue. The city was eliminated: under the republic’s decree no stone was to be left lying upon stone, the nobles were killed to the last issue and the city’s name was eliminated from official records.

Deitrick was able to add some more once his memory was jogged: that the commoners were removed to other parts of the empire so that none remained within the upstart family’s lands and nature priests were called in to raise a forest over the area, eliminating it completely from the eyes of mortals. It was to be as if it had never existed. The divine last emperor decreed that this was lawful, but taken to an extreme that was not just, and this action (along with a few others of the young republic) led to his empowering of the Paladin order, so that Law and Good might be enforced hand in hand.

“Capital!” Cybele decided, “Shouldn’t be anything to bother us as we pass through there!” The trio trade their horses in at a hitching post for a fresh set and push onward through the night to the point of exhaustion, finding themselves off the main road and just at the outskirts of the forest in question. They opt to rest there long enough for all of them to be able to push past the city center in one go – if they spelt for just 4 hours they would no doubt pass through the city remnants exhausted, and despite Cybele’s voiced confidence they were sure that something would await them there. Deitrick cared for the horses before joining the others in slumber, with Rene, Cybele’s serpentine soul, keeping watch over them during the morning hours.

What they don’t know is that the carriage to Encial is running day and night, with the constables replacing the horses with their imperial writ at every hitching post, with two sleeping overhead, one directing the coach and one riding alongside. Hiram is in an enclosed space with water and hardtack for a few days and a slops bucket for necessities. Hardly fitting for a nobleman. In addition, their rush to get him out of the city and desire to surprise him the guardsmen did not ask him to surrender his weapons. Therefore, the young actor feels no qualms about plotting his escape even as he has no clue what’s going on. He does his best to get some sleep and piece together how the de la Bellasteros family could have gone to such lengths to capture him, and what their aims might be.

With the sad remnants of light that filter through the curtains of the coach, abetted with a dancing lights cantrip cast with some effort around his manacles, Hiram makes an exploration of the coach and his bonds. He is hopeful that with a heroic effort and some loss of skin he might be able to slip free of the manacles. The doors and the carriage body as a whole were just too touch – perhaps with by bracing himself and repeating kicking one of the doors with both legs he might be able to unhinge it, but that would be several very loud minutes of work with no certainty of result. His keen eyes locate both the slider that the guardsman had opened to point a pistol at him earlier as well as the one way cloth mesh and trapdoor combination that allowed him to look into the coach and aim without being observed. Hiram had worked with such contrivances before on the stage, and knew that a good slash with his dagger would separate its strands. The question is whether he could fit through the trap before being peppered with holes. That would take some planning.

The carriage halts in what Hiram thinks is a rural area based on what he can see through the cracks around the door. There are sounds of padding beasts, a lion’s roar, a dogs bark and a conversation between his captors and being with a gnomish accent. Apparently the gnome is a bounty hunter of some sort who led the constables to Hiram but couldn’t enter the city with his pets. To Hiram’s shock he nears that the gnome was employed by his uncle Lucian! “Where did Lucian get the money for such an elaborate scheme?” he wonders. And then he hears his destination, Encial, and his blood runs cold. Still, there was no point for him trying to escape in the woods to be pursued and eaten by gnome-trained lions. He’d have to wait till they hit a city or town and make his move there. He spends some time separating the stones from his ring and hiding them about his person so that he might have some finds if he cannot escape before they strip him of his belongings.