The Sunstone is just beginning to glow. It is dawn in the city. The dark peals of the Temple bells ring through the great central atrium of Naedur. The tones are familiar. Ordinary. The night before had been anything but.
Rumors spread about a very strange Council meeting... Eladrin are in the city! A cabal of sorcerers who had demolished the city's Wards and were demanding the city's surrender! A dozen courtiers from the Eladrin King beyond the Veil! No, not Eladrin at all, but a mated pair of phoenixes reincarnated by the Council to renew the Sunstone! Hargwash! Nothing had happened, the Adversary had invented the whole tale to scare folk, trying to force the Council's hand. No, not the Adversary, it's the Goldhelms.
It is clear something is afoot. The city's curiosity is piqued. The storytellers sleeping in the breasts of Naedur's long-cloistered inhabitants are stirring. Uncomfortably. And whispered pronouncements of doom follow each new tale and rumor.
Earlier...
Zlatan
[sblock]The Adversary had you and the other apprentices fending off formidable inquiries from formidable folk all evening. In the wee hours you had finally collapsed in his chamber only to wake at the Adversary's boot in your ribs. The night-oil had barely burned two marks. "You've been called to serve Stone."
The Adversary called out as you left, "You know, young Zlatan, you're going to have to choose. Adversary or Temple. So long as the Temple has its hooks in you, you are of limited use to me."
It was hard to know if he meant it or not. Sometimes the Adversary said things to test your resolve. To provoke an argument. Sometimes? Most times. But that didn't mean he was insincere. The Adversary had seemed tired. Worried.
As the quarter bells rang, you arrived at the Hall of Duty. It was abustle with the scrape of stylus on metal as the clerks logged requests and counted out Stones. A clerk looked up and quirked a brow at your disheveled appearance, "Zlatan, good, good. Prompt." He dug through several satchels and selected one. He then pulled a strip of metal with several runes on it from a stack. On it, the duty you'd be serving Stones for and the areas of the city to which you'd be serving them.
The clerk had looked you hard in the eye, his hand pressing the metal strip firmly into your palm. Something flashed in his eyes. "A Duty done for All is the greatest Honor." He let go of your hand and left the strip.
The strip read, 'Harvest - Emerald, Hammer, Gray, Rys-galar - Dawn.'
A shadow fell across you from behind. The clerk gestured over your shoulder, "Your accompaniment." His gesture indicates a dragonborn soldier towering over your shoulder. Heskrash.[/sblock]Heskrash
[sblock]"First position!" the Deacon barked. Three acolytes moved in unison, bringing their axes up, crosswise across their bodies, a block, poised to strike. The Deacon stalked up and down the line adjusting arms and repositioning feet. He growled. The acolytes had only been under your wing for the better part of three weeks, but Deacon Seshka saw only perfection or failure. In this case he had, unsurprisingly, seen failure. Though, there were fewer adjustments this week.
A Novice pushed through the heavy curtains, he spoke quietly, "Your pardon, Deacon. Novice Heskrash, you've been called to serve Stone. You are to be at the Duty Hall at the quarter bell."
The Deacon had barely flicked a glance at the other Novice. He'd barked, "Second Position!" and growled more as he'd moved again down the line. And on and on for the remainder of the hour. Oiling down after the brutal session another Novice, Orshek, had sidled up and quipped, "Surprised you've got any scales to oil, Hesk. Say, you hear about the Council? Mur says it's Demons. I don't think it's Demons. If it was, they'd have called us." He bowed up his chest, grinning broadly showing an impressive array of pointed teeth. Bells tolled the three-quarter hour. You didn't have time to chit chat. You had to finish getting dressed and get to the Duty Hall to escort the Stone server.
The Duty Hall was busy. A number of young dwarves in apprentice garb moved purposefully up and down the aisles. One apprentice, wearing the seal of the Adversary on his tunic, stood near the entrance, his head is bowed. Zlatan. An older dwarf, a duty clerk, looked up at you and gestured.
"Best get your own drawing over with. I'll witness," the clerk held the satchel in front of him up and out. You reached in and withdrew a stone from the cool round pebbles in the satchel. A flip of your hand had revealed a... red stone. "Duty and Honor," says the clerk. He holds the satchel out to Zlatan. The young dwarf reaches into the bag and also pulls out a red stone.
"Duty and Honor to you both." The clerk turns back to his ledgers. He jerks his chin at the entry way, "Better get on, your list is short, but you've got a lot of ground to cover before the dawn bell."
Zlatan looks at the metal strip with your assignments on it, "Emerald first."[/sblock]Belleros and Mask
[sblock]The time since your arrival in the Council chamber was a blur. Several more hours of, 'Who are you?', 'What is the Keystone?', 'How were you able to pierce the City's Wards?' And finally the Adversary had seemed to run out of steam. He got up and paced the floor. Great distant bells tolled, their dark tones eerie and haunting. They tolled the quarter hour. The half hour. The Adversary looked exhausted and answered questions only distractedly.
"This is the Emerald Hall of the city of Naedur."
"Shimmerflower juice? I'm afraid I don't know what that is."
"That was the Council chamber."
"No, he wasn't angry. The Council has serious matters before it. Your... appearance has only complicated those matters."
"Guest Right? It means you are under my protection until the High Priest comes for you and takes you to the Temple."
"Wizards...? Yes, yes we d--"
A gong sounded and the Adversary's eyes leapt over to it, as if the shivering brass surface could tell him the identity of the caller. He stepped out of the study motioning you two stay put. He stepped back in, his face studiously blank. Behind him were a young dwarf and a dragonborn who seemed enormous in the close confines of the Adversary's study. The Adversary glowered at the young dwarf and thumped him on the shoulder. That dwarf held out a bag and the Adversary reached inside and withdrew a red stone. He squinted at it suspiciously.
"Honor and Duty," said the young dwarf to the elder. The dragonborn's face was in shadow, he was looking at you, but his features were difficult to make out.
The Adversary spoke, biting off each phrase, "Now you. Reach into the bag and draw out a single stone. If you draw out a black stone, you will not serve today. If you draw out a stone of any other color, you are called to serve the City."
The young dwarf held out the bag. You took turns drawing stones... red and... red.
The dwarf with the bag made a nodding bow and spoke quietly, "Duty and--"
"Are there any black stones IN that bag, Zlatan?" the Adversary had bellowed.
"--Honor. You are to be in the growing Cavern at the dawn bell," continued the young dwarf.
"The growing Cavern? It's not harvest time..." a worried look had flashed across the elder dwarf's face before vanishing. He waved the young dwarf away, "Go, serve Stone. I'll... I'll see you at the dawn bell."[/sblock]Krik
[sblock]Gunna tripped lightly down the shallow, streambed, her claws crunched wetly in the gravel. She hummed quietly to herself, a hymn, by the cadence. The Balash were always on about their psalms and their hymns. Gunna has all the difficult qualities of the Balash, but she also has very keen eyes and, down here in the Rys-galar, keen eyes counted for a lot.
Diplomatic duty had turned out to be less glamorous than initially expected. Teaching the citizens of Naedur the ways of the wild caverns beyond their safe and snug stone halls. Gunna, of all those you'd seen, was particularly apt at the lessons taught.
Today, the four of you had been scouting out new caches of fungus for the City. Gunna and Iirilis had found a new passage. They thought it had a better than average chance of leading to a mushroom cave. Gunna stepped out of the shallow stream and wove between some stony columns, stopping at a crevice.
"Here." She turned and waved Iirilis forward. "Iirilis, then Mek, then Krik. I'll go last." She ducked her eyes shyly as you had passed.
The scouting foray was fruitful. At the end of the long, twisting tunnel was a cave an armspan across and very tall. Up and down its height were shelves on which grew a wide variety of fungi. A treasure trove. The trek back had seemed much shorter. Once back at the hub of the Rys-galar, other foraging parties were preparing to leave, others were eating a midday meal.
Conversation had died off as the foragers had spotted a dwarf and a dragonborn being lowered into the cavern. An officious looking dwarf and a Balash Bahamuti Warrior. Quiet hisses had flickered across the cavern. Dwarves were infrequent visitors to the Rys-galar. A dwarf with a Balash paladin meant odds were good they were serving Stone. As if the Dragh weren't already working enough for the City's Good. The basket touched down and the two passengers stepped out.
Very quietly and muffled by fathoms of stone, Naedur's bells can be heard tolling. It was approaching dawn in the City.[/sblock]And now...
In the cavern at the bottom of the atrium, polished discs reflect and amplify the dim light of the dawning Sunstone. The dark bells cease their tolling and as the clanging fades into silence, a Priestess begins to sing prayers in a deep droning alto over those assembled. Few are paying any attention to the blessing. They are, instead, looking at the strangers - two eldadrin - in their midst. Some with simple curiosity, others with open distrust and even anger.
The Priestess ceases her droning prayer and with a gesture, a whisper to an acolyte amongst the assemblage, and a curious glance of her own, she withdraws to the tunnel-stair that leads back up to the city proper.
A heavily muscled dragonborn, stripped to the waist, a slight metallic sheen in his scales beginning to shimmer in the growing light steps to the front of the assemblage. He is flanked by four others, two dragonborn, a human and a dwarf.
He addresses the shifting crowd, "All right! Group up. You two - you're with me." He points at the two Eladrin. Some of the crowd move toward him, others away. He points and calls others to him. "You, you, you..." he points at one 'volunteer' after another. His lieutenants begin calling groups of their own.
He leads you all to a large basket with a hammer painted on its side. "I'm Korask. We will be gathering the plots under the Hammer pillar." He points down into the great cavern to large slab of stone that stands up from the cavern floor. "Grab a sling. Once you touch down on the pillar, climb down to the plots, fill your sling, climb back up. Empty the sling into the basket. At the noon bell we'll break. If we've gathered three baskets at that point, then after the break, we'll start planting." He looks skeptical that the crew he'd picked would accomplish even this simple task.
"Move!"
OOC: Skill Challenge - Dark Harvest
Goal: Gather 3 Baskets of rock fruit before the noon bell.
Level 1, Complexity 3 (8 successes before 4 failures)
Primary skills: Diplomacy, Endurance, Nature, Perception.
)
