“Sylvania Institute of Archaeological Research?” Toras shrugged and picked out the letter with his name on it.
He neatly removed the wax seal and teased open the envelope. “This better not be some fundraising drive.”
His eyes skimmed over the text and it was readily apparent that it wasn’t a fundraising drive, but honestly something quite the reverse of it: an employment offer. The fighter’s mind rattled back several months and he recalled a previous employment offer -maybe more than one- that they’d received from the same people. At the time they’d been uninterested or disgustingly busy dodging assassination attempts and the like, so employment by some random group of scholars hadn’t really registered as a valid issue.
“Pandemonium?” Toras’s eyebrows went up and his head bobbed side to side as he pondered the text. “They’ll pay me to shadow some scholars in Pandemonium and keep them safe. No. Wait. They’ll –pay- me to kill any fiends that threaten them while they’re there.”
Andros preserve him. That was like a paid vacation.
The grin breaking out of Toras’s face told his opinion on the matter even before he called the others down to take a look at the offer themselves.
***
“Apotheosis.” Nisha blurted out.
“Huh?” Florian asked, looking at the tiefling with a slightly confused look as she glanced up from her employment letter.
“I was just talking upstairs to Tristol about how I needed a vacation.” Nisha explained, twirling her hands and wiggling her fingers. “And lo and behold, the multiverse offers up a vacation.”
“And what does that have to do with ten jink words that Tristol seems to have rubbed off on your vocabulary?”
Tristol grinned.
“There’s only one answer: I’ve become a deity.”
Tristol whispered a spell and moved his shadow to cross over the tiefling’s.
Nisha’s tail drooped slightly and she looked over at him. “On second thought, I renounce my godhood!”
“Xaos aside.” Clueless said. “This is interesting here, this offer from this Sylvania Institute etc.”
“I get paid to have fun doing fun things.” Toras said. “I’m all for it.”
Fyrehowl got his meaning, and admittedly the notion of getting paid to kill a few tanar’ri wasn’t that bad of an idea. A strange vacation, a little dangerous, and certain out of the way of most rational tourist destinations, but it had its charms.
“Now pardon my relative ignorance, but what’s in Pandemonium?” Florian asked. “I’m not as familiar with that plane.”
“Wind, barmies, howlers, and more howlers.” Skalliska replied. “Oh, and more wind. Bring earplugs.”
“Nisha’s rubbing off on you now.” Tristol said. “I know we all need some time to relax, clear our heads of all the junk we’ve been through recently, and take a vacation completely unrelated to anything in the last year… but are you seriously considering going to Pandemonium for that?”
“Hon?” Nisha asked, leaning in close and putting her head on Tristol’s shoulder. “I’m contagious.”
“Yes, you’re all crazy now.” Tristol replied before whispering something into the tiefling’s ear.
Nisha smiled, blushed, and nuzzled his neck. “Me too.”
Skalliska shook her head. “Mammals… So did they quote a figure for anyone else in terms of payment?”
Well at least one person was acting perfectly normal for themselves.
“Looks like a sliding scale that’s up for negotiation.” Clueless said. “It’s not that much really compared to what we might make going out on our own.”
Money however wasn’t really a concern for any of them. The Portal Jammer was profitable enough that each of them could live comfortably –not in the lap of luxury perhaps- but comfortably for the foreseeable future even if they packed up their books, holy symbols or blades and retired. Still though, a meager profit and an exotic location, despite the danger, was an attractive combination for a group of people wanting to flush their minds of yugoloths, githyanki, and certain yugoloth archfiends.
“So…” Nisha said to Tristol. “We need a wizard to keep me from going barmy in Pandemonium. Willing to tag along?”
“Well if you put it that way…” Tristol replied. “Somebody needs to keep you from going crazy. So yes.”
“Besides, your tail makes for a great pillow.”
Florian chuckled, “The two of you are going to make the plane slide on account of the cuteness.”
I write to you on behalf of the Sylvania Institute of Archaeological Research with an offer of employment. Our group employs a substantial number of scholars, sages, and historians, and our work frequently takes us into planes and places therein with hostile environments and hostile inhabitants. Most of our scholars have little expertise in manners of swordplay or magic, and we contract out matters of security to persons as skilled in those fields as we might be in more scholarly pursuits.
Suffice to say, your name has come to our attention as being particularly suited to such for an upcoming research expedition to the plane of Pandemonium, specifically the plane’s second layer of Cocytus. The expedition will depart within the next month, for a period of no more than three weeks. Your time and expenses will be duly compensated for, as well as an upfront initial fee for signing on to join us. Clerics, wizards, and persons of races possessing innate spellcasting abilities will receive a premium on top of the standard range of pay dependant upon skill and experience.
We look forward to hearing back from you, and if interested, or if you have any specific questions about the offer you may contact us at either our Sigilian office, or our office in Arborea’s gatetown of Sylvania.
Sincerely,
Professor Cilret Leobtav
The matter was settled then, more or less. They were open to the letter’s offer. But two issues were running through various minds, Clueless with one of them, and Skalliska with another. A bit quicker, Clueless spoke first.
“So what do we do about you know…” Clueless asked, briefly unfolding his wings in a pantomime of Amberblue. “We can’t take a kid to Pandemonium.”
Nisha crossed her eyes, “Yeah, just imagine if
he went crazy.”
Florian’s head suddenly hurt from the very thought of an insane faerie dragon. By comparison, a tanar’ri wild-mage might have been positively tame.
“Let’s not even ponder the thought.” The cleric replied. “That’s frightening.”
“We can’t leave him here either.” Clueless said.
Florian shuddered, “Tempus forbid. We’d come back and find the inn singing and dancing and trying to waltz away down the street… and don’t even get that look on your face Nisha.”
The Xaositect stuck out her tongue and blew an emphatic raspberry, “No sense of fun.”
“But one of self-preservation.”
Tristol patted Nisha’s head and also grabbed her tail, keeping her firmly planted in place as she threatened to derail everyone else’s train of thought with her own ubiquitously Xaotic quarter on the tracks.
“Eeek!”
“Anyway, back to the issue at hand…” Clueless said. “What do we do?”
“Well where is he from in the first place?” Fyrehowl asked. “We found him locked up in a cage in Carceri, but before that he had to have come from somewhere else.”
Toras shrugged. “Good question. I don’t know where Shy…that ‘loth took him from. He hasn’t exactly opened up about a lot of his time there in Cathrys, not that I blame him at all for not wanting to revisit that.”
Nisha started to say something, then said something muffled as Tristol dropped a localized silence spell on her. A moment later and she was drawing in chalk on the tabletop and talking to herself soundlessly, “Hah! Silence this! But no, seriously, Amberblue doesn’t know either. He hatched there in Carceri, alone.”
Toras nodded, “That answers that then.”
“And it brings up another question.” Florian said. “Where are faerie dragons native to in the first place?”
“Mostly Ysgard and Arborea.” Tristol answered. “Though you might find them wandering around when they’re older, and sometimes they’ll pop up on the prime alongside actual fey.”
Fyrehowl nodded, “I suppose we could find some other faerie dragons and see if they won’t mind him tagging along. Either of those planes are usually pretty safe, and something tells me that faerie dragons in groups have very little to worry about.”
“Flocks of marauding faerie dragons…” Florian muttered. “That’s going to give me nightmares now.”
Clueless chuckled, “Barring going to either of those planes, I suppose that it’s possible that we could have him adopted, for lack of a better term, by another dragon of some other type.”
“Copper, brass, and bronze might fit well in terms of personality.” Skalliska said.
“True.” Toras conceded. “But I think that he’d be better off with his own kind.”
It was certainly true, but –Nisha excepted- none of the others were particularly keen on going to one of the chaotic upper planes to meet up with one of those “flocks of marauding faerie dragons” as Florian had put it. Still though, Toras’s heart was in the right place, and after a few minutes of pushing the point, he managed to convince the others that it was for the best.
“So when do you want to do all of this?” Fyrehowl asked.
“…Problem solved if you’d let me have him as a familiar…” Nisha mock pouted.
Tristol patted her on the head again. “Sometime before we go off on this
vacation, but I figure maybe after we meet with our prospective employers and see if we’re actually still up for it.”
“Fly by night archaeologists.” Nisha quipped, no longer pouting. “The bane of Sigil, I know…”
Clueless chuckled. “Well, not that I’d think they’re shifty or anything, but more that they’re prepared for a trip to Pandemonium, and it’s well put together and all that.”
Skalliska shrugged, “We’ll be fine. I’m not too worried about it really.”
The kobold paused for a moment and toyed with the feather sprouting off of her hat. She was feeling a little bit slower on her feet lately, and putting on some weight, but they wouldn’t be long in Pandemonium so it wouldn’t be an issue. Still though, it probably might be a good thing to mention to the others the whole deal with her being pregnant and all.
Another appropriately awkward moment was soon to arrive for her to spring that little tidbit of information.
“Well their address here in Sigil isn’t that long of a walk.” Florian said. “We don’t have anything else major to do this afternoon, so I figure we could just drop in on them now and see what they have to say.”
There were no objections, and frankly everyone was curious about what was down in Pandemonium to interest historians, and why they were on some stodgy institute’s list for prospective hires for such a trip. It would only take them an hour or so to walk the distance, assuming they didn’t find any portals to shorten the trip, but they didn’t get much past the door and out into the street when something stopped them dead in their tracks.
“By the way. I’m pregnant.”
Stunned silence.
Raised hackles.
Cringes.
Widened eyes.
More silence.
“WHAT?!” They all said in unison.
Skalliska shrugged. “I’d been meaning to tell you guys for a while now.”
“Oh and now’s the perfect time!” Florian said with astonishment. “When we’re about to waltz off to Pandemonium!”
“Who knocked you up?” Nisha asked, going for the blunt angle.
“Oh…” Toras said, holding up his hands. “There’s no way you’re going to Pandemonium if you’re pregnant.”
“How far along are you?” Florian asked, still in a bit of shock.
“A few months.” Skalliska said, shrinking down a little under the response she’d gotten to the ill-timed revelation. “And you don’t know the father. He’s a proxy of my deity. I’m sure that you’ll meet him eventually, but he’s usually pretty busy, and pretty secretive by default.”
Fyrehowl put a hand on Skalliska’s head and stopped her in her tracks, “You’re nuts if you think you’re going to a lower plane while you’re pregnant.”
“Even I’m not that crazy.” Nisha said. “Not that I’m pregnant.”
Tristol blushed.
“I’ll be fine!” Skalliska said. “Besides. I’ve been to Pandemonium before. I know more about the place than anyone else here. 9 Hells, my original world was filled with tunnels and I’m frankly more at home in the sort of environment you’ll find in Pandemonium than on any random street in Sigil. I’ll be fine.”
“You maybe.” Toras said before pointing to the kobold’s stomach. “But what about any kids you might have?”
"No. Absolutely Not!” Clueless protested, realizing in horror that she’d probably been pregnant when they’d encountered Shylara. “Back on the Astral. You realize if
she had killed you - there's no guarantee a raise dead would have brought
them back too? No way are you waltzing to any other lower plane.”
Twenty minutes of arguing later, they’d finally convinced Skalliska to stay home, at the very least until she’d laid her eggs. Still however, Skalliska wasn’t happy about that, and she wanted to feel somehow useful to them all, despite their adamant decision that she remain behind in Sigil.
Skalliska put her hands up in defeat. “If I can’t go with you, at least let me do something of use before you go off to get yourselves eaten by Howlers.”
***
24 hours later:
True to what she’d said, as a bit of a gift in lieu of her helping out in Pandemonium, or really doing much else for a minimum of 9 months or so, Skalliska had talked to people in the know about such things, she’d garnished a few palms and greased a few sages’ and clerks’ memories, and a day after her little social faux-pas about pregnancy, she’d come back with some details on their potential employer and his organization.
“Well, first thing first.” Skalliska said as she thumbed through a stack of papers with a claw. “They’re pretty solid and legit.”
Nisha paused and sniffed the air, wrinkling her face into a strange expression. “I detect the unwelcome aura of a Guvner. Please tell me I’m wrong.”
“Ex-Guvner actually.” Skalliska explained. “The current director of the institute, one Professor Leobtav, seems to have spent a stretch of years as a factotum within the Fraternity of Order, including three years in Mechanus within the archives of the Citadel of Enlightened Discipline.”
“Did he leave or did they boot him?” Nisha asked. “Make him awesome for some massive drama involved in that.”
The kobold shrugged. “Nothing big. He was involved with the Mathematicians sect, but it looks like he just felt that he could do more for his field of study on his own, rather than working within the framework of the larger faction. No drama involved.”
Nisha made some noncommittal mutter and shrug.
Skalliska continued. “The Institute itself existed before he joined; it’s maybe around two hundred years old, started by an elven loremaster by the name of Marius Glenshadow. And as far as I can tell, they don’t have any history of not paying people, and they’ve been generous in cases where people ended up getting killed on hostile planes.”
All in all, they sounded legitimate. No fly-by-night archaeologists as Nisha might have phrased it. Nothing to really be worried about, but still a number of questions to get answered that only a conversation with someone in charge at the institute might settle.
***
Later that afternoon, the group tidied themselves up and walked from the Portal Jammer in the Clerk’s Ward across the Cage, eventually stopping in the Guildhall Ward at #210 Greenglass Avenue. It wasn’t a particularly impressive building, and it was obvious from the multiple doors and signs above them at ground level that more than one tenant occupied the place. One of those small signs pointed towards a stairwell at the side of the structure, labeled “Sylvania Institute of Archaeology” in common, celestial, and elven.
Walking up the stairs and passing through a door led into a small reception room, where the group was met by a smiling earth genasi secretary dressed in a stereotypical assemblage of earthy, almost drab colored clothing.
“Good afternoon to you cutters.” Marlene Brittlestone said in a pleasant, but slightly rumbling voice.
“Well met.” Tristol said as he stepped inside. “We’re here about a letter we received. We were hoping to speak to someone about more information if possible.”
Outside of the genasi and her desk, the room was decorated with an eclectic assortment of objects, everything from a marble leomarsh, a stuffed Elysian thrush, and a collection of coins from a dozen prime material worlds. Several doors branched off from the reception room, several of them unmarked, but two of them with small nameplates: Prof. Leobtav, and Prof. Highsilver.
“Ah!” The genasi said. “Professor Highsilver is still in Sylvania, but Professor Leobtav is here if you’d like to speak with him.”
Tristol’s tail swished happily from side to side. “That would be great.”
“If you’ll wait just a moment I’ll see if he’s available.” Marlene said. “He’s a bit bookish, and I’m not sure if he went home last night. Hopefully he’s prepared for guests.”
Nisha stuck out her tongue. “Guvners…”
The genasi walked over to the office door and knocked, opened the door and exchanged a few muffled words with someone inside. A moment later she turned back to the group, chuckled slightly and closed the door.
“The dragon says he’ll be awake in a minute, and to give him a moment to clean his desk off, then he’ll be happy to see you and handle any questions you had.”
“The dragon?” Clueless asked.
The genasi nodded as the door’s latched clicked. “Ficklebarb, his familiar.”
“He’s got a dragon as a familiar?” Florian asked.
The genasi chuckled again. “Pseudodragon.”
A few minutes later the professor, or at least his familiar, seemed ready to receive them.
“Ok! Come on in!” Called out a mildly high-pitched and distinctly draconic voice from inside the office. It was similar to Amberblue in terms of tone and enunciation, but while the faerie dragon sounded like the hatchling he was, the voice from the office was obviously older and more mature, reflecting its role as a familiar to a late middle-aged man.
The group took the invitation and stepped into Leobtav’s office, noting its disheveled appearance and very lived-in character. Books were overflowing from sagging bookshelves on each wall, rising a foot or two above the room’s single window that overlooked the street, partially obscuring the view. A few plates and a trio of half-filled coffee cups still sat on the edge of a large, antique mahogany desk and a pile of clothing was stuffed into the drawer of a filing cabinet. Papers, documents and maps sprawled over the surface of the desk, looking utterly disorganized but given the professor’s background, more like than not they were simply arranged in a manner too complex for anyone but himself to make heads or tales of.
“Sorry for the mess.” A small, red-scaled pseudodragon chirped from atop his perch on a marble bust of Lariset the Inescapable. His corner of the room was distinctly less cluttered than the rest of the professor’s office.
“I hope I didn’t keep you bloods waiting too long.” Professor Leobtav said as he hastily cleared his desk of the dishes and all but one of the mugs. “As Ficklebarb said, my apologies for the clutter. It’s more a working environment than anything else. Doran usually handles interviews.”
Leobtav was human, somewhere in his fifth decade of life, and looked every bit the stereotypical absentminded professor. His clothes were a bit wrinkled, his balding hair a bit unkempt, and his goatee a bit out of style, but behind the clutter and his unstylish appearance, behind his circular, wire-framed glasses, his eyes glittered with an intelligence that rivaled that of any archmage.
Tristol noted that while they were fewer in number than the more mundane history books and tomes on obscure languages and cultures, there was a respectable collection of actual spellbooks on the man’s bookshelves. They hadn’t been moved and read recently, given the thin layer of dust they’d collected, but at some point the professor had studied the arcane.
Leobtav paused and adjusted his glasses, glancing at his guests and running a mental tally. “Fey-blooded, lupinal, cleric, tiefling, fighter, aasimar… I take it this is about the letters we sent out?”
“That’d be correct.” Clueless said as they all took a seat wherever they could find a chair, or a stack of books, or anything else that might serve the purpose. “And I can’t say we were completely surprised to get your letter.”
“A few months ago.” Toras said. “I remember you sending us a previous offer.”
Ficklebarb looked up from where he’d been munching on an apple and having a staring content with Nisha. “Yeah, you never replied to it either.”
What followed was a momentarily awkward silence before Leobtav cleared his throat.
“I take it that your schedules are considerably more open at the moment then?” He asked. “Forgive me for saying so, but you’re here in my office a day after we sent the letters out to yourselves and a few other people.”
“Couldn’t have come at a better time actually.” Tristol said.
Ficklebarb swallowed a chunk of apple. “Maybe they’re broke.”
Nisha broke out into a grin. “I like you!”
“I take it that you’re interested?” The professor smiled and reached for a stack of papers and a vial of ink. “Though I don’t see the kobold. Did she not get her letter?”
“She won’t be able to go.” Clueless said.
Fyrehowl shook her head. “Not for a lack of wanting to however.”
Leobtav nodded, looking reassured. “I was worried that our offer wouldn’t be enough for her. Understandably, our resources aren’t massive, so we aren’t able to offer as much as say the Mercykillers, or the fiends, or the Planar Trade Consortium.”
“Money isn’t really an issue actually.” Tristol said. “Frankly we’re looking for a vacation.”
“Vacation?” Leobtav asked, slightly confused. He looked to his familiar and the dragon gave a shrug in reply. “Well for money, that was a bit of a worry for me. Given that you were all staying at a rather nice inn, it seemed like you had more than a bit of jink to your names as it was.”
“Actually, we own the place.” Clueless said.
“Oh… I didn’t realize that.” The professor looked disappointed and more than a little embarrassed. “I understand that inn, your inn, is doing rather well. The money we’re able to offer really can’t compare. I apologize for wasting your time, I really do.”
The pseudo-dragon tapped the stinger at the end of his tail against the marble bust of the old Guvner factol. “They already said they were interested.”
“What he said.” Toras replied. “Money isn’t that big of a deal.”
“Well in that case, what questions might you have?”
Nisha was back to making faces at Ficklebarb, and the pseudodragon was happily returning them. Meanwhile Tristol was making a mental catalog of just what sort of things the dragon’s master was a professor of.
“So,” Tristol asked. “Maybe tell us a little about yourself and what exactly this expedition will be looking for in Pandemonium?”
“Well, I’m primarily a linguist, with a bit of expertise on lost and dead languages.” Leobtav explained. “And the expedition that we’re planning relates to something from one of our previous trips, a series of trips over the last three years actually. I think one of my previous employment offers might have actually been for the last of those that we took.”
“And where were those going to?” The aasimar asked.
“Minethys.” He replied. “Carceri’s third layer.”
Fyrehowl frowned. She’d had far too much of Carceri in the past six months, regardless of what layer a group of historians might be interested in.
Tristol’s head tilted to the side. “So how does something on Minethys relate to this upcoming trip to Pandemonium? They’re a plane separated from one another.”
Asking Tristol about magic or Nisha about Xaos was on the same order as asking a career historian to explain the connection between two obscure points of his chosen field. Leobtav and his pseudo-dragon both perked up at the invitation.
“I’m glad you asked!” He said, spreading out a hand-drawn map of Carceri, the Abyss, and Pandemonium, with a series of bizarre glyphs or pictograms penned into the margins.
A few locations in Carceri’s third layer were circled, labeled Expedition 1: Mesrikoth Tor, Expedition 2: Voornoth of the 9 Pillars, Expedition 3: Subsumed periphery of Kholesh?” along with several question marks drawn atop one specific location in Pandemonium: Howler’s Crag.
“During our previous work in Carceri, we’ve been searching for samples of Gautish, the dead written language of the Gautiere. They were originally known as the Tiere, natives to another plane, possibly a world on the prime material, but they’re long extinct. Some number of their race ended up imprisoned on Carceri’s third layer of Minethys, and we’d hoped that the cities buried beneath its sands might have been constructed by them. Had they been, we might have found enough samples to construct a working lexicon of the tongue, its structure, and perhaps gather some detail about their history and original nature.”
“I take it that your work in Carceri didn’t provide you with what you were looking for?” Clueless asked.
Leobtav shook his head. “No, it didn’t. It’s unfortunate. We did find quite a number of samples of the language, but without some dual text there’s nothing to use to decipher what the language actually says. It’s not even clear if it’s a syllabic alphabet or pictograms.”
“What about magic?” Tristol asked, pointing to the Gautish text on the map. “I’d think that you’d be able to decipher it fairly quickly with some relatively simple spells.”
“You’d think so, and so did we.” Leobtav replied with a sigh. “The spells uniformly fail. I’ve tried it, my colleague Doran has tried it, and we’ve even had some clerics attempt a divine version of the same spells. Still, it hasn’t gotten us any closer to knowing what any patches of the text say, or much about the underlying language itself.”
Fyrehowl’s whiskers twitched, “Why wouldn’t they work?”
Normally it would be a simple task to gain some rudimentary understanding of a written language via magic. It might not tell you what each letter or glyph said, but it would let you understand what a given body of text said in your own language. That sort of magical translation, while imperfect in many ways, was often the first step to unlocking a language’s secrets in its native form. Only innately magical tongues –and those were few and far between- might reasonably resist such attempts.
“Good question.” Leobtav replied. “The Gautiere on Mithethys, who’ve woefully lost effectively every trace of their former culture, were imprisoned there either by a deity, or a divine curse issued upon the death of a god. The precise nature of those events is muddied, and the Gautiere themselves are incredibly xenophobic, but even so, the evidence suggests some divine anathema placed upon their language. Perhaps it was keep them severed from what they’d been, like some sort of mandated fall from grace.”
Clueless bit his lip and pondered the situation, while Tristol scanned over the alien text on the maps. A moment later they’d arrived at the same question, and they were both pointing at the single circled location in Pandemonium.
“So what’s Howler’s Crag?” They both asked.
Again with the asking of scholarly questions to a scholar: the floodgates poured open.
“Would you like some tea?” Ficklebarb chirped. “This may take a while.”
