subplotkudzu | Emirikol, Part III Scene 15

Knowing that the other pirates can't return until at least high tide they escort their prisoner back up the passage towards the library, stopping at the chamber where they rescued Johann and killed the guard-boar. Down the remaining passage of the sea caves, according to the rescued gnome, lay not just the implements of destruction and supplies for survival of his boar men captors, but also a ghostly hound that had been materializing from the shadows to kill the boar men but leave the timing gnome unharmed.

If timidity is the protection against such a beast then our heroes are ill-armored indeed, for the lady Floriane placed her safety instead in her magical education and her endlessly courageous heart - suspecting she knows a possible origin of the beast she leads her companions forward, lending her sinews to the task of pulling aside the boar men's supplies and the makeshift wall they had erected in their futile quest for protection to explore the area beyond. That dank and dismal cave held not just the stench fetid air but the subconscious scent of hunter and prey, the pheromonal warning that alerted the doe to feel from the unseen wolf. Refusing to show any trace of fear the sorceress drive the darkness to bay via her mystical might, and did not leap when the hound - golden of hue with a gray diamond on its chest - appears before them in an instant.

The creature growled at them, but then lowered its head in the face of their obvious nobility and sureness of purpose. "It's a blink dog," Cybele informs her companions, "They're the spectral hounds who hunt with our ancestors in the afterlife. Sometimes a mage will convince one to share souls, taking it on as a familiar." The dog, obviously able to understand her speech, nodded, and then with some urgency led them to a far corner of the room where some excavation revealed the skeletal remains of the last Loremaster, the librarian who sealed up the lost volumes and then attempted escape down the tunnels to the sea. Alas, instead, according to the great man's journal, which was buried with his body along with his spellbook, both damaged by the elements and the centuries, the caves had been taken and had suffered a dolorous wound before falling back to this location. There he spent the years unheralded, surviving on the energy his necromantic spells could drain from the lizards and other denizens of the cave before his infirmities did him in, unwilling to affect a more violent escape lest his reappearance galvanize the beast men to further explore these caves and thus locate the sealed chamber above.

Cybele pieced this together from his water stained journal while her companions directed Honesto Merin and the city guards to the locations of the pirates and helped oversee the removal of the stolen merchandise. The Loremaster Farin's touching final days, the scratched out poetry he left behind, and his obvious dedication to the city and the library brought tears to the young woman's eyes as the blink dog lay its amber-maned head on her knee in sympathy. As she stood to leave the dog extended its muzzle down to the sand beside Farin's remains, extricated a slender wand and extended it to her. As she took it, the beast vanished as if it had never been, leaving behind only the echo of the name 'Slate' in her mind and the confidence that she would see him again, when needed.

That transition, from the old empire to the new republic, from the gentle librarian to the daring swordswoman completed, Cybele oversaw the removal of Farin's remains, insuring that they reach Loremistress d'Ferrantino with as much dignity as possible. Portia accepted them gratefully, but pressed the spellbook back into Cybele's hands . . . with the tacit understanding that the library would want to make a cipy of any marginalia or unique enchantments it contained when time permitted.

To be continued

(and we're up to date, 2 days before game time!)