Let me start this by saying hello to everyone. I've been running this campaign for quite a while now and finally got around to living up to my promise to my players and writting a story for it. As you can tell by the title it is based in Monte's fantastic Ptolus about which I can't say enough. I hope you all enjoy it.
Sunset in Ptolus. The rays of the sun, halfway below the horizon and bisected by the infamous Ptolus Spire, turned the clouds red and orange. Below those clouds and above the city a black raven flew looking for a snack, a bit of wire, or something shiny to snatch in his beak and hide in one of his catches, the location of which he told none.
Around the Spire he flew, scanning the mansions that bunched up around the Spire's base for something that glinted before the wind brought the smell of fish to his beak and the raven banked toward the ocean. The raven flew east over the Old City Wall, above South Market, threw the smoggy haze of the Guildsman District, until it spotted the Cliffs of Lost Wishes and turned north toward the docks. Ten seconds later the raven changed his mind and turned left again back inland. In the flea infested fire trap of the Warrens, where the rickety multi story tenements lean in on each other so close that sunlight strained to reach the ground, something had caught the raven's eye.
Erik Svenson sat with one hand in his lap and the other held out with his thumb up. From the top of the three story tenement rotting in the Warrens, the spires of the Imperial University appeared to be no taller than his digit. He moved his thumb a little to the right and those spires diapered. Erik gave a half smile.
"It is a lot larger up close Sesseth."
Across the small roof, underneath a lean-to reclined an Assari, one of the lizard folk, adorned in bright green scales, a pair of pants made from sailcloth, and little else. In his hand was a cigar that let off a caustic and sour smell, in front of him was a small iron fire pot over which roasted a skewered rat. The Assari were widely considered a race of lazy vagabonds who were content to sleep in the gutter, bathe in public fountains, and add nothing to society at all. Sesseth did his best to perpetuate this image. Sesseth flicked out his forked tongue.
"Yes it does. Many of the students there are foolish enough to feel guilty about their wealth, and give freely to a poor beggar" Sesseth's eyes met Erik's and grinned "but you didn't do that did you?"
Erik snorted. "My money belongs in my pockets. Besides, I wasn't there long enough to have the chance... You know Toridan Cran kicked the hel out of me when I was expelled. He called in a lot of favors to get me enrolled for my father's sake."
Sesseth closed his eyes and took a long, long drag on his cigar with lungs built for deep diving. When Sesseth opened them, the cigar was half burnt down and the eyeball to the left and right of his vertical pupils was bright red.
"And to sell Cran's shrivel"
"Yeah." Erik said simply. He picked up the wine bottle standing next to him and took a swallow. "I got this at the Pig today, you want a swig?"
The Assari waved the bottle away. The Pig was a hole in the wall tavern in the Warrens identified by the carved outline of a pig over its door. Efford Tarfoot, the halfling proprietor, insisted the tavern's name was the Whole Pig, but his customers had dubbed it the Pig's Hole.
"The thing is," said Erik "enjoying anatomy taught by the surgeons wasn't enough." Erik grimaced and took a large swallow of wine. "They want you to get grades."
"And not sell Cran's shrivel." said Sesseth.
"That too, how's the rat doing?"
Sesseth blinked his bloodshot eyes. Erik had learned at university how smoking Red Eye exploded the blood vessels in your eyes. Smoke a little and you only saw what you wanted too, smoke a lot or for long enough, and you went blind. The Assari pinched the skewer between two short claws, lifted it off the brazier, and sniffed.
"It needs another minute."
Erik stood up and walked to the edge of the roof, taking the bottle with him, and stared east out over the slum toward the sea. He imagined the buildings of the Warrens as rows of stained, broken, and askew teeth of some insane beast screaming as it rose out of the ground. Squinting his eyes at the red orange clouds turned buildings aflame, making fire pour out of the creature's mouth as though its brains were afire.
Erik drained the wine bottle. "There are no muggers, or pimps, or orphans, and little crime up there in Old Town. Nobody sneaking in your window to rob you at night. There are rich girls at the imperial university, who speak well, and don't have sores, and can afford magic to lose a baby, and you get them away from their parents for the first time in their lives and...." Erik abruptly stopped and hurled the bottle out over the slums. His heard his heart beat five times then the quiet tinkle of glass breaking.
Erik spoke in a quite voice. "I learned a poem, a very famous one, at university. It was about Saint Bealus's betrayal of Lothian, and how when Lothian discovered his treachery, he cast Bealus out of Heaven. The poem said it took three days for Bealus to land in Hel. Well, when I was cast out of Heaven it only took me three hours to end up back here."
There was silence for a time.
"Once," said Sesseth with an unsteady wave of the skewer "long ago, before you hot bloods ruled the world, when the Folk built to touch the sun, all the Men were rats, and all the Elves, and Orcs, and horses, and dogs were rats."
Erik turned and stared at the shrinking cigar in Sesseth's hand. "Go on."
"We built because we feared you rats would eat our eggs you see."
Sesseth lifted the skewer to his nose again but before he could sniff it there was a storm of flapping feathers, a series of mocking caws, and the rat, skewer and all, was being born into the sky by a large black bird.
Sesseth gave an angry hiss and jumped into the air, snapping his teeth, before crashing back onto the roof. He lay still for a second, then groaned and rolled onto his back. In his mouth was a single long tail feather. Sesseth spat it out.
"Unholy Hessa spawn. All the feathered are the enemy of the Folk, and all our Kin. We are forever at war. The raven heard me mention that old story, and wanted to offend me so that I wouldn't leave his part out of it." Erik watched Sesseth suck in on his cigar until there was little more than a stub.
"To keep our eggs away from the rats was not the only reason the Folk built high. The closer to the sun an egg was before it hatched, the mightier the child. In those days Hiuss was emperor and Hessa was empress, and the empress wanted nothing more than to see her children hatch ever higher in the sky. Hessa asked every greyscale and traveled to every oracle looking for a way to lift her eggs ever higher. One day Hessa called down into a volcano, and was answered."
"The voice in the volcano told Hessa to not eat so until her bones were hollow, to stretch her scales out and out so the wind would catch beneath them, and then she could take her eggs as high as she pleased. The empress did all this, and when the eggs hatched, they were not Assari, but raptor and raven and crow. When the emperor Hiuss saw what Hessa had done, he went to war."
"Some say Hiuss won, some say Hessa won, but what all say is that while the two fought the rats feasted on the Folk's eggs, and grew fat and many. When Hessa saw all her eggs eaten she went mad and cursed the Assari and all of those with scales that our kind would wither and fail. And the rats grew into Man, and horse, and dog, and orc, and all the other hot bloods of the world."
Erik scratched his chin. "Is there a point to this or was that just your way of telling me your high?"
Sesseth lifted his hand with the cigar stub into the air and smiled sleepily. "You can finish this."
Erik plucked the stub from Sesseth's claws. "Will it make me see crazy bird women?" Sesseth's answer was a soft snore. Erik sucked on the stub. Down below in the street he saw two small figures holding their arms and hurrying down Black Goat Lane. The two figures split into three, and reformed into one that stopped in front of Erik's building.
"That's Tel Tarfoot" Erik said to nobody in particular "and he's hurt his arm."
Erik put the lid on the fire pot and walked down one narrow set of stairs through and empty apartment, down another through the same, and a third to the ground floor, which was his operating room. A rapid pounding door made it rattle on its hinges. "Erik!" came a shrill voice, "Erik! Let me in its Tal!"
Erik's operating room was simple and bare. A chair and table with straps to hold a patient still, a chest, and a shelf with a few worn books with names like Eutar's Theory of Circulation and The Craft of Cuts and Seuters. Erik opened the door and a blond, fresh faced halfling wearing white pants and a red shirt with several noticeable lumps beneath both stumbled inside.
"I was attacked by an orc! The bloody beast cut my arm off!" squeaked Tal. Erik looked at the halfling's arms and saw that they were very much still on, although with the left had a bloody gash on the bicep.
"Take a seat in the chair and I'll sew it back on for a silver." Erik walked over to the chest, unlocked it, and removed a needle, a clamp, and some thread.
"A silver!" Tal complained as he sat in the chair "I could go to my mother and she'll do it for free."
"But you'd have to lie to her about how you got that cut. You'd have to tell her how you weren't in a bar fight, or you didn't get caught snatching this orc's money." Erik wrapped the leather restraints around the halfling's wounded left arm, holding it tight to the armrest.
"Awww come on Svenson, I thought we were friends."
"Friends... then why did I get the suspicion that last time you were in here with your "broken" leg you were casing my building? A friend would understand that I have two empty rooms, rent to kick up to Cran, and protection money to pay to the Seven Sins and not complain about one silver. Wait, are you wearing make-up?" Erik looked closer at the rosy hue on the halfling's cheeks. "And do I smell perfume?"
"No! Yes! I mean no I'm not like that, its just a disguise. For my girl. Job." The hafling glared at Erik "Do I smell Red Eye and booze?"
"Yeah you do. Wine actually, your father's." Erik twisted up a leather strap and tied it around Tal's head. "Bite on this."
"Mmmghhh mhuum gh."
Erik threaded his needle and examined the wound. It was an index finger long and maybe fingernail deep. Erik pinched the wound shut, ignoring the blood that flowed over his hand, and ran the needle through both sides of the gash.
"MMMGhhh hck!"
"Hush."
"MMMMMGAAH!"
"YOU! Your DEAD you cheap thieving whore!" Erik jumped out of his chair and turned toward the new voice. In the open doorway stood female orc in sailor's clothing brandishing a cutlass. Blood from a cut on the orc's forehead ran down her face and stained her white and blue shirt.
"AUUGAH" screamed Tal through his gag as his hand reached under his shirt and pulled out a small crossbow. With a "cathunk" the bolt sunk into the orc's leg. As the orc stumbled Tal tried to get out of the operating chair but forgot his left arm was still strapped down. Three quick strides took Erik back his chest and he dug out an old pistol which he then aimed at the orc. Their eyes met. Long black hair framed a wide face with wider eyes above an upturned pig-nose and a rather dainty mouth. The orc's red eyes were surprisingly bright.
"Stay out of this" said the orc. Erik opened his mouth and then closed it. He surprised himself by saying "Everybody calm down and nothing permanent needs to happen here."
The orc and halfling didn't pay his words any heed. The orc had staggered to close enough to Tal to swing her cutlass but the halfling ducked and it sunk into the back of the chair. Tal pulled out a dagger and thrust it toward the orcs stomach but found his wrist caught in the orc's crushing grip.
"Swaaaooth Ur!" garbled Tal though his gag.
"Get off the halfling" said Erik, but he was ignored.
The orc and the hafling struggled over the dagger for a second, then Tal's wrist turned and the dagger fell out of his hand, into the orc's other, and then it entered twice into Tal's eye. Tal let out a croak, trembled a second, and then was still. The orc leaned on the chair breathing heavily while Erik watched her over the barrel of his gun. Erik looked at Tal's body, then at the orc's wounds. Tal... Tal had never been a friend... just a friendly theif thought Erik.
"Take a seat on the table. I'll stitch you up your head, and take that bolt out of your leg for five silver."
The orc smiled at him and between deep breaths nodded. "You'll find my money in my purse, on this rogue's corpse."
Sunset in Ptolus. The rays of the sun, halfway below the horizon and bisected by the infamous Ptolus Spire, turned the clouds red and orange. Below those clouds and above the city a black raven flew looking for a snack, a bit of wire, or something shiny to snatch in his beak and hide in one of his catches, the location of which he told none.
Around the Spire he flew, scanning the mansions that bunched up around the Spire's base for something that glinted before the wind brought the smell of fish to his beak and the raven banked toward the ocean. The raven flew east over the Old City Wall, above South Market, threw the smoggy haze of the Guildsman District, until it spotted the Cliffs of Lost Wishes and turned north toward the docks. Ten seconds later the raven changed his mind and turned left again back inland. In the flea infested fire trap of the Warrens, where the rickety multi story tenements lean in on each other so close that sunlight strained to reach the ground, something had caught the raven's eye.
Erik Svenson sat with one hand in his lap and the other held out with his thumb up. From the top of the three story tenement rotting in the Warrens, the spires of the Imperial University appeared to be no taller than his digit. He moved his thumb a little to the right and those spires diapered. Erik gave a half smile.
"It is a lot larger up close Sesseth."
Across the small roof, underneath a lean-to reclined an Assari, one of the lizard folk, adorned in bright green scales, a pair of pants made from sailcloth, and little else. In his hand was a cigar that let off a caustic and sour smell, in front of him was a small iron fire pot over which roasted a skewered rat. The Assari were widely considered a race of lazy vagabonds who were content to sleep in the gutter, bathe in public fountains, and add nothing to society at all. Sesseth did his best to perpetuate this image. Sesseth flicked out his forked tongue.
"Yes it does. Many of the students there are foolish enough to feel guilty about their wealth, and give freely to a poor beggar" Sesseth's eyes met Erik's and grinned "but you didn't do that did you?"
Erik snorted. "My money belongs in my pockets. Besides, I wasn't there long enough to have the chance... You know Toridan Cran kicked the hel out of me when I was expelled. He called in a lot of favors to get me enrolled for my father's sake."
Sesseth closed his eyes and took a long, long drag on his cigar with lungs built for deep diving. When Sesseth opened them, the cigar was half burnt down and the eyeball to the left and right of his vertical pupils was bright red.
"And to sell Cran's shrivel"
"Yeah." Erik said simply. He picked up the wine bottle standing next to him and took a swallow. "I got this at the Pig today, you want a swig?"
The Assari waved the bottle away. The Pig was a hole in the wall tavern in the Warrens identified by the carved outline of a pig over its door. Efford Tarfoot, the halfling proprietor, insisted the tavern's name was the Whole Pig, but his customers had dubbed it the Pig's Hole.
"The thing is," said Erik "enjoying anatomy taught by the surgeons wasn't enough." Erik grimaced and took a large swallow of wine. "They want you to get grades."
"And not sell Cran's shrivel." said Sesseth.
"That too, how's the rat doing?"
Sesseth blinked his bloodshot eyes. Erik had learned at university how smoking Red Eye exploded the blood vessels in your eyes. Smoke a little and you only saw what you wanted too, smoke a lot or for long enough, and you went blind. The Assari pinched the skewer between two short claws, lifted it off the brazier, and sniffed.
"It needs another minute."
Erik stood up and walked to the edge of the roof, taking the bottle with him, and stared east out over the slum toward the sea. He imagined the buildings of the Warrens as rows of stained, broken, and askew teeth of some insane beast screaming as it rose out of the ground. Squinting his eyes at the red orange clouds turned buildings aflame, making fire pour out of the creature's mouth as though its brains were afire.
Erik drained the wine bottle. "There are no muggers, or pimps, or orphans, and little crime up there in Old Town. Nobody sneaking in your window to rob you at night. There are rich girls at the imperial university, who speak well, and don't have sores, and can afford magic to lose a baby, and you get them away from their parents for the first time in their lives and...." Erik abruptly stopped and hurled the bottle out over the slums. His heard his heart beat five times then the quiet tinkle of glass breaking.
Erik spoke in a quite voice. "I learned a poem, a very famous one, at university. It was about Saint Bealus's betrayal of Lothian, and how when Lothian discovered his treachery, he cast Bealus out of Heaven. The poem said it took three days for Bealus to land in Hel. Well, when I was cast out of Heaven it only took me three hours to end up back here."
There was silence for a time.
"Once," said Sesseth with an unsteady wave of the skewer "long ago, before you hot bloods ruled the world, when the Folk built to touch the sun, all the Men were rats, and all the Elves, and Orcs, and horses, and dogs were rats."
Erik turned and stared at the shrinking cigar in Sesseth's hand. "Go on."
"We built because we feared you rats would eat our eggs you see."
Sesseth lifted the skewer to his nose again but before he could sniff it there was a storm of flapping feathers, a series of mocking caws, and the rat, skewer and all, was being born into the sky by a large black bird.
Sesseth gave an angry hiss and jumped into the air, snapping his teeth, before crashing back onto the roof. He lay still for a second, then groaned and rolled onto his back. In his mouth was a single long tail feather. Sesseth spat it out.
"Unholy Hessa spawn. All the feathered are the enemy of the Folk, and all our Kin. We are forever at war. The raven heard me mention that old story, and wanted to offend me so that I wouldn't leave his part out of it." Erik watched Sesseth suck in on his cigar until there was little more than a stub.
"To keep our eggs away from the rats was not the only reason the Folk built high. The closer to the sun an egg was before it hatched, the mightier the child. In those days Hiuss was emperor and Hessa was empress, and the empress wanted nothing more than to see her children hatch ever higher in the sky. Hessa asked every greyscale and traveled to every oracle looking for a way to lift her eggs ever higher. One day Hessa called down into a volcano, and was answered."
"The voice in the volcano told Hessa to not eat so until her bones were hollow, to stretch her scales out and out so the wind would catch beneath them, and then she could take her eggs as high as she pleased. The empress did all this, and when the eggs hatched, they were not Assari, but raptor and raven and crow. When the emperor Hiuss saw what Hessa had done, he went to war."
"Some say Hiuss won, some say Hessa won, but what all say is that while the two fought the rats feasted on the Folk's eggs, and grew fat and many. When Hessa saw all her eggs eaten she went mad and cursed the Assari and all of those with scales that our kind would wither and fail. And the rats grew into Man, and horse, and dog, and orc, and all the other hot bloods of the world."
Erik scratched his chin. "Is there a point to this or was that just your way of telling me your high?"
Sesseth lifted his hand with the cigar stub into the air and smiled sleepily. "You can finish this."
Erik plucked the stub from Sesseth's claws. "Will it make me see crazy bird women?" Sesseth's answer was a soft snore. Erik sucked on the stub. Down below in the street he saw two small figures holding their arms and hurrying down Black Goat Lane. The two figures split into three, and reformed into one that stopped in front of Erik's building.
"That's Tel Tarfoot" Erik said to nobody in particular "and he's hurt his arm."
Erik put the lid on the fire pot and walked down one narrow set of stairs through and empty apartment, down another through the same, and a third to the ground floor, which was his operating room. A rapid pounding door made it rattle on its hinges. "Erik!" came a shrill voice, "Erik! Let me in its Tal!"
Erik's operating room was simple and bare. A chair and table with straps to hold a patient still, a chest, and a shelf with a few worn books with names like Eutar's Theory of Circulation and The Craft of Cuts and Seuters. Erik opened the door and a blond, fresh faced halfling wearing white pants and a red shirt with several noticeable lumps beneath both stumbled inside.
"I was attacked by an orc! The bloody beast cut my arm off!" squeaked Tal. Erik looked at the halfling's arms and saw that they were very much still on, although with the left had a bloody gash on the bicep.
"Take a seat in the chair and I'll sew it back on for a silver." Erik walked over to the chest, unlocked it, and removed a needle, a clamp, and some thread.
"A silver!" Tal complained as he sat in the chair "I could go to my mother and she'll do it for free."
"But you'd have to lie to her about how you got that cut. You'd have to tell her how you weren't in a bar fight, or you didn't get caught snatching this orc's money." Erik wrapped the leather restraints around the halfling's wounded left arm, holding it tight to the armrest.
"Awww come on Svenson, I thought we were friends."
"Friends... then why did I get the suspicion that last time you were in here with your "broken" leg you were casing my building? A friend would understand that I have two empty rooms, rent to kick up to Cran, and protection money to pay to the Seven Sins and not complain about one silver. Wait, are you wearing make-up?" Erik looked closer at the rosy hue on the halfling's cheeks. "And do I smell perfume?"
"No! Yes! I mean no I'm not like that, its just a disguise. For my girl. Job." The hafling glared at Erik "Do I smell Red Eye and booze?"
"Yeah you do. Wine actually, your father's." Erik twisted up a leather strap and tied it around Tal's head. "Bite on this."
"Mmmghhh mhuum gh."
Erik threaded his needle and examined the wound. It was an index finger long and maybe fingernail deep. Erik pinched the wound shut, ignoring the blood that flowed over his hand, and ran the needle through both sides of the gash.
"MMMGhhh hck!"
"Hush."
"MMMMMGAAH!"
"YOU! Your DEAD you cheap thieving whore!" Erik jumped out of his chair and turned toward the new voice. In the open doorway stood female orc in sailor's clothing brandishing a cutlass. Blood from a cut on the orc's forehead ran down her face and stained her white and blue shirt.
"AUUGAH" screamed Tal through his gag as his hand reached under his shirt and pulled out a small crossbow. With a "cathunk" the bolt sunk into the orc's leg. As the orc stumbled Tal tried to get out of the operating chair but forgot his left arm was still strapped down. Three quick strides took Erik back his chest and he dug out an old pistol which he then aimed at the orc. Their eyes met. Long black hair framed a wide face with wider eyes above an upturned pig-nose and a rather dainty mouth. The orc's red eyes were surprisingly bright.
"Stay out of this" said the orc. Erik opened his mouth and then closed it. He surprised himself by saying "Everybody calm down and nothing permanent needs to happen here."
The orc and halfling didn't pay his words any heed. The orc had staggered to close enough to Tal to swing her cutlass but the halfling ducked and it sunk into the back of the chair. Tal pulled out a dagger and thrust it toward the orcs stomach but found his wrist caught in the orc's crushing grip.
"Swaaaooth Ur!" garbled Tal though his gag.
"Get off the halfling" said Erik, but he was ignored.
The orc and the hafling struggled over the dagger for a second, then Tal's wrist turned and the dagger fell out of his hand, into the orc's other, and then it entered twice into Tal's eye. Tal let out a croak, trembled a second, and then was still. The orc leaned on the chair breathing heavily while Erik watched her over the barrel of his gun. Erik looked at Tal's body, then at the orc's wounds. Tal... Tal had never been a friend... just a friendly theif thought Erik.
"Take a seat on the table. I'll stitch you up your head, and take that bolt out of your leg for five silver."
The orc smiled at him and between deep breaths nodded. "You'll find my money in my purse, on this rogue's corpse."
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