Two more into this tangled web I weave...
Florian Schneider sat in the tap room of the Drunken Dabus, picking at his breakfast, his mind repeatedly returning to the events of the past year that had finally grown far too much to handle. Family. It was always about family. Such things you couldn’t simply handle by spells or swords, you had to either deal with them or run from them. Well, you –could- handle it by violence, but he wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. The Foe Hammer already had to be looking poorly on his servant’s inability to deal with relatives on the whole matter that had finally led him to throw up his hands and take his leave of them. He’d eventually return, at least that’s what he’d told himself at the time before he went through that portal in a back alley of Athkatla. To run off to the capital city from Esmeltaran hadn’t been enough since both his own family and the gaggle of harpies that seemed to compose the family on the other side of that arranged marriage had followed him there. Hell, if they managed to follow him here then he’d chalk it up to the will of the gods and face it all. Otherwise he needed some space and a time to reflect on it all. He shuddered for a moment as he contemplated having to look at, let alone do anything else to, that …
His internal debate was suddenly interrupted by the soft tapping of an ale mug being set down on his table. He glanced up into the smiling face a well dressed tiefling. “I do hope I’m not intruding sir…may I?” he motioned towards the empty seat across from Florian.
The stocky, sandy haired cleric of Tempus shrugged, “Be my guest. Can I help you with something?”
“Yes actually, though I can wait if you’re still eating your morning meal.” He took out a letter of sorts and fingered it softly in his hands.
“Don’t mind me, go right ahead, I’m almost finished anyways.” Florian took a few quick bites of eggs and ham before sliding the plate off to the side. The food at the inn was remarkably good this morning for some reason.
The tiefling nodded, “My employer has directed me to look for persons in the city who might be in need of either jink, diversion, escape, some mixture of them all. He requires interested persons to recover something of his along with a larger group he had already sent out on this task. They were partially successful but sorely lack certain skills that he foresees them needing in the immediate future. They lack a dedicated arcane and divine spellcaster. The temple of Tempus here in Sigil was gracious enough to inform us of your presence here in the city. And being that you’re new to Sigil and as of yet not serving in any official capacity with your church here, my employer felt you to be more than fitting his needs.”
“Interesting… I might be in need of a bit of work, if more to take my mind of some things than for the money. So what sort of thing is your boss looking for me to do exactly?” Florian bit down on another bite of his breakfast, all of it delicious. In fact he’d nearly cleaned the plate by that point. The tiefling smiled, looked at the letter he held, and then pointed with it at Florian’s food.
"And you should be aware as you consider my proposal for employment, that the food that you've just eaten was poisoned. Oh, it won't have any immediate effect, but without the antidote, or anything short of a wish, you'll be dead within 15 days. The toxin is very... specific… normal curative magic will quite simply fail in ridding it from your system. Without us, you will wither and die in the space of two weeks. That said, this letter is for you, I suggest you read it and do as asked." He smiled cordially and passed the letter across the table to the now sick looking cleric.
“What the hells? You could have just asked you know, I would have said yes!” Florian pushed his plate of food away and glared angrily at the unconcerned tiefling.
“Bluster all you like, you have two weeks at best before the poison runs its course. Take my employers offer or do not, it’s only your life at stake here, not mine, and frankly it matters little in the grand scheme of things. I have other people to see today if you’ll excuse me. Show up at the appointed time or do not. Good day to you cutter.”
And with that the tiefling tipped his hat, smiled and walked confidently to the door of the inn and vanished out into the street leaving the shocked looking cleric behind with only a sealed letter.
“Only me…” Florian sighed and opened the letter angrily. It was sealed with an odd blue wax bearing the symbol of an open palm. Though the fingers seemed unnaturally long and possessed of an extra knuckle each. The letter read: “Greetings to you my newest employee. If you wish to find yourself free of the toxin now coursing through your veins you will meet another of my latest acquisitions this evening at the former location of the Ubiquitous Wayfarer. Once there enter the front door and proceed to the second floor and enter the fifth door on the right. Further instructions will be found there, as well as any others you will shortly find yourself working with. – Patriarch Dalmar Imshenviir”
Twelve hours previously and an entire plane removed, Tristol Starweather sat brooding in his parents’ tower in the southern Faerunian nation of Halruaa on the prime world of Toril. The wizard sat sullenly in a chair and rubbed the head of his familiar, a small twintailed fox who yipped softly up at its master. The unique little fox tilted its head to one side in that ever so typical canid manner of questioning. He didn’t understand fully why Tristol was upset.
The mage looked down and gave a weak smile mixed with more than its own share of arrogance. Certainly he’d shown that trait over the past week, all coming to a head that morning. An outsider might have found a curious dichotomy between mage and familiar, since both of them had black tipped fuzzy ears and fox tails…
Tristol Starweather was a bit of a rarity in his nation of mages, being not quite fully human but an odd little type of Aasimar, descended down from a type of celestial known as a Vulpinal. Reclusive beings found on the plane of Elysium that served as sages, inventors and artists of their kind. The aasimar heritage was passed down from his father, Kefnar Starweather, himself an aasimar. His mother, Lutra Starweather, was as purely human as you might find. How the mages who paired his parents together had made the match, Tristol wondered about it still since they were nearly opposites in so many ways. Ability came first over fondness in Halruaa, and under the laws of the land you didn’t easily shirk responsibility to produce the next generation of capable wizards.
Tristol pondered what exactly his parents were going to do with him. Whatever it was it wasn’t going to be pleasant, nor was it likely to be the idea of his father. Lutra was both the more powerful mage of the pair, and the dominant personality. Whatever happened he would likely be able to have his mother alone to thank. In fact what had started all of this coming trouble was his mother’s idea in the first place. Stupid illusion magic…
It had all started a month or so before. Tristol’s chosen area of magic was evocation; a perfectly respectable school of magic, but not at all one of the politically favored schools. Kefnar was an abjurist and Lutra was an illusionist, a powerful illusionist. This fact was apparent from the illusions that constantly flitted over the face of their tower and wandered around inside half of the rooms therein. The problem was that Tristol loathed the little wastes of magic with a passion. He didn’t find them useful, and they were one of the schools of magic that he’d forsaken in their entirety. His mother had never really gotten over that little snub. She’d wanted an illusionist or a diviner, not some hurler of flames and lightning.
“That’s what you got though, someone who uses real magic…” Tristol scoffed and thought back again. Lutra’s little figments were amusing to him as a child, but as he grew older and more skilled in magic they seemed like shadows of real spells, tricks without real use or substance. In time they grew to be very shallow seeming to him. As his open contempt for them grew his mother became displeased and put it upon herself to have her wayward son instructed in such things and made to understand that all magic had its place. And in Halruaa some magic had its place more than others.
To that end they had provided him with a tutor by the name of Jengo, the last in a long line of wizards that had instructed him in the various schools of magic to supplement the teaching of his own parents. It had been clear by that point that their son’s prowess was approaching the point where it would soon outstrip that of his father, and potentially that of his mother as well, and that it was aspected firmly opposite to her own. Tristol had resented being lectured over and over in tolerance for all forms of magic, being told that all magic was an equally powerful blessing that Mystra had granted her servants, and that illusions had real uses. He scoffed at the waste of magic he saw them all as, but still Jengo persevered in trying to mitigate some of his pupil’s more extreme views.
Everything had come to a head when Jengo had drug Tristol along to a mage fair and carnival of sorts on the other side of the city, specifically to guide him around a house of mirrors and illusions. It had been three hours of misery for the young evoker in which he’d been mocked by phantasms, stumbled through illusory doors just to hit his head on a real wall, all the while getting lectured on the positive aspects of illusion magic. Eventually he’d had enough. He looked in the direction of Jengo’s voice and shouted at the top of his lungs, “This is what I think of these lessons and this is what I think of this waste of magic!” His shouting hadn’t been for naught as he’d woven a greater dispelling incantation into his words and hurled them outwards into the illusions cloaking the room. Walls melted away, Jengo appeared from behind a suddenly dissolving stand of trees, and there was a shower of sparks from above them both.
Both Tristol and Jengo looked up to see a silver sphere come crashing down to the floor where it burst into a dozen sparking pieces. The sphere had been the focus for the entire house of illusions. Jengo looked on in horror as the dispelling spread outwards and entire rooms vanished like a house of cards tumbling down upon itself. They both scrambled for the exit before the physical sections of the building finally collapsed upon themselves in a cloud of all too real smoke.
Jengo looked aghast as he looked to the ruins of the building and back to Tristol, “I can’t believe what you did! Why did… how could…” The very act itself was shocking to him, but also the fact that his charge had hurled such a powerful spell on his own. All around there were the sounds of angry merchants, shocked and outraged wizards and the approaching sound of the city guard. Tristol had just a bit of a triumphant smirk on his face even as he was politely escorted away for detainment.
His parents bailed him out as soon as they heard what had happened from a shocked and apologetic Jengo. As Lutra teleported herself, Kefnar and Tristol back to her tower on the outskirts of the city, there was a palpable silence amongst them all. Walking down the halls of the tower towards a sitting room, Tristol was fully aware that a number of the wandering illusions in the tower looked down at him with disapproving stares, no doubt linked in to what his mother was clearly waiting to say to him. Once they arrived and shut the door on their son, Tristol sat and worried about the day’s events.
Back in the present he looked down at his familiar and simply stared out the window in the room, making a face at the illusions that danced over the window frame. Fifteen minutes passed before his parents returned. Lutra walked in and stood in front of her son before she launched into her tirade. Kefnar skulked behind her, not fully party to her rant and clearly feeling some sort of empathy for his son. Whatever might come, if it could be toned done, it was very likely at his doing and not hers.
"Tristol..." his mother began. "I arranged to have all that mess cleared up… but at a very expensive price I must say! However, you are not allowed to set foot in the town proper for at least year, or charges will be filed." She then took a long deep breath. "And your father and I have been discussing things. We both agree it would be wise to send you out on your own for a while, so that you can get into trouble and get yourself out. You might learn some lessons while you’re out there as well since you didn’t listen to half of those we’d paid to have you taught. I’m not quite sure where I went wrong as a mother but…"
Tristol’s father broke in suddenly, stepping out from behind his wife both figuratively and literally, “We’re going to be very hands off on this. We’ve packed some of your things up for you, anything that you’ll need, but please do let us know where you are and what you’re up to so we don’t worry. I hate sending you away, but your mother thought it might be best for all of us for a while.” His ears flopped sullenly to the sides in emphasis on the last part clearly being his wife’s idea entirely. Tristol wasn’t going to let it all seen like a bad thing though, or even a punishment…
"Finally... a chance to be on my own." Tristol said, breathing a sigh of relief. "Where should I go? Waterdeep? Amn? Cormyr? Zakhara?"
"We've arranged for you to get to Sigil. It’s a bit further away from where you’re thinking, but it’s really only a door removed from here you could say.” He tried to smile to make his son more at ease with leaving, “With your ability there should be plenty of opportunity for right... or wrong. Just remember, we won't be there to bail you out." Kefnar let out a sigh and motioned with his tail over towards a table next to Lutra stacked with Tristol’s spellbooks and a travel bag.
Tristol’s mother nodded, "We’ve prepared a small travel bag for you." She then hefted the small brown bag up from the table. "It has a few changes of robes for you, random scrolls, and a few rings to help protect you. We want you to take this opportunity to get to know yourself and find your place in the world. Come back to us when you've figured it out."
The next dozen or so hours were a whirlwind as he stepped through a portal to the Concordant Domain of the Outlands and from there teleported to the city of Trade Gate. It had taken him a few minutes to figure out how to use the portal to Sigil in that bustling city of traders, merchants, craftsmen and gnomes. In the end one of those same gnomes and approached him and handed him several links of silver chain before pointing to the archway and telling him to simply hold out the bit of chain, what he called a portal key, and he’d be in the City of Doors.
He did just that and spent the rest of the day wandering through what he had been told was the ‘Market Ward’ of the city. He’d also been called a number of other things ranging from berk, to clueless, to sodding berk, to spellhurler, to things in languages he’d never heard of before. All of it seemed to relate to his penchant for stopping in the middle of the streets, even the crowded ones, and looking around to stare at most everything in sight.
Eventually he’d wandered into a nicer area of the city filled with mansions and fancier buildings, even a few towers. A few more instances of asking for directions led him out of what those people had called the ‘Noble’s District’ into the other half of The Lady’s Ward. By this point he’d been wandering for hours and was getting somewhat tired and more than a bit hungry. Another person stopped and asked for directions, a few blocks walked, and Tristol noticed a sign for what seemed to be some manner of inn. The oversized sign was decorated with a large golden colored wheel above symbols of food and drink. If nothing else it would be a place to sit down and digest all of the things he’d seen so far.
Walking in the front door he was surprised by the number of people in the esblishment that was now clearly both an inn and a gambling and Festhall as well. The sounds of dice cups, shuffling cards, and from somewhere a but more removed, the sound of some snarling animal clouding through the air and mixed with the more mundane sounds of people dining and talking. The occasional shout and groan would be the rare winners at the gambling tables and the much more frequent losers.
Tristol walked to a large desk opposite the entrance and looked up into the face of a large green colored dragon’s head that was either affixed to, or coming out of, the wall over the desk and extending out over a bar to the side. His ears lay flat and his tail jumped for a brief moment when the dragon’s head tilted and smiled a toothy grin at him. “You look new here, can I help you find anything?” the dragon said.
“You don’t look like a green dragon… and you’re nice…” Tristol asked a bit impertinently.
“Well, I’m green today. Tomorrow I’ll be something else likely.” The dragon shrugged, as well as it could do without shoulders anyways. In fact he looked more like a gold dragon, or some odd looking silver. But regardless of his exact species, he continued, “Something to drink? Eat? A room for the evening? Oh, and if you’ll be so kind to sign the guestbook there to your left.”
Tristol smiled back, “Right now a room for the evening. It’s been a long day and I just need to rest for a bit to handle everything this city has tossed at me. Yeah, I’m new here if you couldn’t tell from the way I act, if not for my looks.”
“Very well. If you’ll go up those stairs to your right back there you’ll find the inn over top of the Fortunes Wheel here, properly called the Azure Iris Inn. I warn you it’s a tad expensive, but its very nice. You’ll find a very pleasant wood elf up there, her name’s Verden. Tell her that the big green scaly thing by the bar downstairs sent you up to her. She’ll give you a little bit of a discount.” The dragon, or at least what looked like part of a dragon smiled again and pointed its snout in the direction of the stairs near the back of the common room.
“Well thank you, I think I’ll do that.” His tail twitched happily behind him, kicking up his robes slightly as he dipped the pen on the bar into the ink well and hunted for a place to sign his name in the registry. “Hmm… might be a little cramped. Some Marauder person signed their name over half the page…”
But Tristol signed his name, smiled up at the dragon once more and walked up the stairs to the Azure Iris inn. As he left for an evenings rest, his never saw the well dressed tiefling who emerged from a spot at one of the card tables to walk over and examine the latest name in the registry. The tiefling smiled and knocked a dash next to it as the dragon’s head hovered over him with an altogether disapproving look on its face. The tiefling simply looked up and smirked wickedly at the dragon, but both of them said nothing and the tiefling vanished back into the crowd in the gambling hall.
The night came and went and Tristol Starweather slept soundly in his room at the end of the hall in the Azure Iris Inn. The owner, Verden was a nice enough woman, if seeming a bit cold. Maybe all elves were that way, but he wouldn’t have known since Halruaa had very very few of them within its borders. But she did give him his discount after he mentioned the dragon. As he slept his mind was growing to appreciate in some ways this little excursion from his family. Freedom was sweet as he slumbered that evening. But that, like all things, would soon change.
The morning light slowly crept across Tristol’s face as he blinked at the hazy yellow light breaking in a line across his bed and into his eyes. “That’s daylight? You’d think they could do something about the haze out there.” He yawned and got up out of bed to splash a bit of water on his face to feel a bit more alive. Back on the bed his familiar pounced the now vacant pillow and happily claimed it as its own with a sharp bark of triumph as it curled up atop it.
“Well fine, sleep there all day and I’ll just have to leave you here while –I – go eat breakfast. Hmm?” Tristol chuckled as he brushed out his hair and smoothed the fur on his ears and tail. The fox, at the mention of breakfast, was already at the door and waiting impatiently. Various suggestions of what he wanted to eat were already starting to filter into Tristol’s mind through the telepathic link they shared. Along with it, his own appetite was growing.
“That’s not fair and you know it. Now stop, you’re making me hungrier than I am. Next time I go drinking I’ll do the same to you, and I can hold my liquor more than you can.”
The mage changed into a fresh set of robes and made his way back down to the fest hall area of the Fortunes Wheel. He found an unoccupied table and took a seat. The fox barked at him from on the floor impatiently. “Oh? Mr. ‘I’m making the wizard hungry’ wants his own seat, does he?” The fox barked again in a just so fashion and Tristol stood up and slid out a chair for his vulpine companion.
“What can I get you sir?” one of the servers, a cute looking aasimar of Eladrin heritage, asked.
“Hmm… anything that might qualify for breakfast. It’s my first morning in the city and I’d like to try something I might not have before. But some sort of sausage for the fox over here.” The fox barked softly and wagged his oversized tails.
“Anything to drink sir?” she asked as she jotted down the food order.
Tristol thought for a moment, “Something to wake me up?”
She grinned puckishly, “I can handle that, it’ll be out shortly.”
Several minutes later a different server walked out and placed a shot glass of some fiery reddish alcohol in front of the aasimar. Tristol look at it and the fox hopped up on the table to sniff. It snuck out its tongue to lap at it before its master shooed it away. As he did so, the fox got a single slurp and a small puff of smoke shot from its nose. The familiar looked slightly dazed and flopped down on its side with a surprised yelp. Tristol himself paused and shook off the shared effects of the alcohol.
“Wow, just what the hell is this stuff?” he pondered as he tentatively took a swallow of it, with an almost equal effect to himself. A short period later after he recovered from the bite of the wine he flagged down yet another server and asked them what it actually was.
“Ah… that would be Baatorian firewine sir.” They said matter-of-factly. “What the hell indeed, not bad. Certainly woke me up, that’s for sure.” Tristol said to himself as he looked back towards the still slightly stunned fox. “You alright over there, or just buzzed? I told you I could handle my drink more than you could. Might have to put you in an extradimensional pouch later if you’re too drunk to walk.”
Tristol sat back and watched the various dozens of planar and prime races that populated the taproom that morning as he waited for his food to arrive. Half of the patrons eating breakfast or getting and early start on their day’s allotment of hard drink he’d never seen before outside of some of the books he’d studied when he was learning conjuration spells. He marveled at the existence of such a place where mortals, celestials and fiends walked in shared space, as well as beings such as him with a trace of at least one of those planar races mixed in with their own prime material bloodline.
Soon enough the same server who had brought the alcohol arrived with a tray of food and placed several dishes in front of Tristol and a second, smaller dish in front of the familiar. “I thought your companion here might appreciate a plate of his own. Is there anything else that I can get for you sir?” the tiefling serving girl asked with a smile.
“No no, this all looks very wonderful. Thank you.” He returned her smile and hungrily launched into his breakfast, mouthful after mouthful. The fox was finished with its own smaller plate and sniffing towards Tristol’s food a few minutes later. “Fine fine, you want some more?” Tristol thought as he pushed a few links of sausage over to his familiar’s plate.
Engrossed in his meal, the wizard failed to notice the tiefling approaching his table till the well-dressed man had tapped a small cane on the chair opposite him. “Excuse me sir, I apologize for interrupting your breakfast, but I was hoping that I might have a word with you.”
Tristol started to reply then remembered his manners and swallowed his mouthful of food. “Umm… certainly. Please have a seat.”
“Thank you.” The tiefling sat down and placed a small sealed letter on the table in front of him. “Where to begin, where to begin… again I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, it’s not everyday that one gets to meet a wizard from Halruaa.”
“Wait… did my mother set you up for this? If she went out of her way to have people keep tabs on me while I was here in Sigil, I’ll…” his ears were suddenly a bit flat against his head before the tiefling waved off his concern.
“Nothing of the sort sir, I’m personally not familiar with your family. I was however told that you were in Sigil and staying up in the Azure Iris. Another colleague of mine by the name of Tripicus keeps tabs on prime material residents from a few select spheres, it’s an honest curiosity in him. He studies people from the various primes. But I get ahead of myself.”
The tiefling waved over the server and ordered himself a drink. “My own employers have been looking for help with certain matters, and specifically are in the need of arcane expertise. I was having an evening meal with Tripicus the other day and he mentioned you, and being from a nation of wizards on a prime world noted for wizards, I figured I might as well meet you and see if you might be interested in what my employers have to offer.”
“Hmm… well I might be open to it. What sort of work would I be doing? Let me finish up the last of my breakfast here and we can talk about the details.”
“All of the finer points are in the letter I have here if you’d like to look over it.” He slid the letter across the table to the wizard and took a sip of his own drink as it arrived. A moment after his shot of whiskey he paused and pointed towards Tristol’s plate, “And I believe that I would be remiss if didn’t inform you that your meal was poisoned…”
Tristol stopped, blinked and looked up at the tiefling. “What was that you said?”
“I’ll repeat it again in case you misheard me. I said your food was poisoned, every scrap of your breakfast in fact. The effect will be slow and subtle at first, but without the antidote, or anything short of a wish, you'll be dead within two weeks time. The alchemical toxin is quite rare and has the peculiar ability to resist clerical healing spells that would normally purge it from the body. So I’ll spare you a trip to a temple of Mystra and just tell you now that they can’t help you, but my employer can. Do exactly as this letter spells out and you will be given the antitoxin before it kills you. Choose not to agree to those terms and you’ll have two weeks, at most, to find yourself a cure without knowing what the specific poison was…”
The tiefling stood up, tipped his hat towards the mage, and tossed the letter in front of him. “You’ll be wanting to read that. Good day to you.” And with that, he turned and walked off, vanishing into the crowd and leaving Tristol stunned and staring at the letter.
His familiar looked at the empty plates in front of them both and whimpered softly, its two tails gone limp and curled between its hind legs. With trembling fingers, Tristol opened the letter that was sealed with a shimmering blue wax, impressed with an image of an open palm with an extra digit to each elongated finger. The letter read: “Greetings to you my newest employee. If you wish to find yourself free of the toxin now coursing through your veins you will meet another of my latest acquisitions this evening at the former location of the Ubiquitous Wayfarer. Once there past the front door, proceed to the second floor, and enter the fifth door on the right. Further instructions will be found there, as well as any others you will shortly find yourself working with. – Patriarch Dalmar Imshenviir”
“Lady of Mysteries preserve me…” Tristol put down the letter and help his familiar in his lap as he contemplated just what exactly he would do. Assuming the food was poisoned and what that arrogant prick of a tiefling had said was true, he didn’t have much of a choice but to do what he was being forced to do. First he’d confirm that he was indeed poisoned and see if normal curative magic could heal it, unlikely but he could try in case it was all an elaborate bluff. But for the moment he sat, suddenly quiet, his own ears and tail matching the sullen and worried attitude that his familiar displayed.
And two more were thus snared into the plot, wrapped in the same webs of guile, treachery and lies as the others they would soon meet…
