A Visit with Adric Meriko
A warforged is approaching. It is carrying a large bag made of sackcloth, tied closed with rope.
Cardea, Cullen, and Teague recognize it, or think they do.
The halfling addresses Kamiel in a low voice. “That's Silent. He—it—is an assistant to Blue. This is who led us to him last time.”
Kamiel nods, registering his comprehension once he gets past the ambiguous-sounding identification.
The adventurers wait apprehensively as it steadily makes its way towards them without wavering. It finally stops dead before Cullen.
The warforged immediately turns and moves down the street. They follow as it turns into a major thoroughfare, heading north.
Cullen recalls that the previous rendezvous point with Adric was west and south of the pawn shop. “It seems Blue has relocated.”
Silent nods.
After a moment, Kamiel quietly queries his companions. “I take it this warforged is called ‘Silent’ because it does not speak,” he speculates.
“Correct,” Cardea replies. “It was apparent from our previous engagement, however, that this being knows some sort of sign language.”
Beyond that, there is little conversation. After the adventurers and their warforged guide have crossed a few skybridges, the buildings begin to get...weird. On one end of a skybridge, there is a spiky-looking structure with spires made of densewood. On the opposite end, there is a building that resembles nothing so much a lump, as if it were sculpted to evoke a candle that has burnt until it guttered.
Still following Silent, the party rounds a corner and heads down a ramp to a lower level. One prominent building, 100 feet wide, made of soarwood, and with many windows, dominates the area. There are many balconies on the upper storeys, and laundry is hanging from lines strung between it and opposing buildings.
Cardea finds the architecture to be reminiscent of the Hobgoblin Era in the North.
The company descends another level, crosses a plaza, and approaches a squat tower whose edifice appears to be carved entirely into faces. Many races are represented, and the visages are of varying sizes. Windows are set into eyes here, mouths there. Silent leads his charges into a particularly large mouth at “ground” level which serves as an entrance. It's difficult to see inside; the sun has long since set and the twilight is no more. Kamiel shudders. He finds something instinctively horrifying about walking into a huge, darkened mouth, as if setting foot in it would mean setting foot in oblivion.
Kamiel shakes off the feeling and follows his friends. Inside, the tower is hollow, and a ramp spirals up the interior. The face motif is not abandoned within; they ornament railings and door frames. No other body parts are carved anywhere—nothing but faces.
The group proceeds up the ramp two levels, then Silent stops before a door that is indistinguishable from the many others in this bizarre place. He knocks three times, pauses, raps out a complex pattern, pauses again, then knocks three more times. The door unlocks.
Silent gently pushes it inwards and all enter the premises. Cardea activates her detect evil power; not just prudent on general principle, she rectifies an oversight made when she, Cullen, and Teague previously encountered Meriko. Human, elf, half-elf, and halfling step into a comfortably spacious living area with ratty furnishings. It is clearly the abode of a scholar; books and papers, some fire-damaged, array the room in stacks—some tidy, some betraying traces of recent consultation.
Silent proceeds forward into the kitchen as those behind him file into the room but remain standing near the door, which remains open. Adric is indeed here, though everyone but Kamiel can tell that he's changed. His head is shaven. To Kamiel, he looks like he has been through a catastrophe. His eyebrows are singed off, and bright red patches on his face and hands, not completely concealed by white cloth padding, tell of recent exposure to fire. To the others, the man looks like he is beginning a long recovery. He is sprawled on a poorly-upholstered divan abutting the opposite wall, next to the doorway Silent went through. A long, low table with papers strewn atop it lies between him and the adventurers.
There is a third person in the room, who has has levelled a crossbow at the party. It is a changeling, about Kamiel's height, but of slighter build, with pale gray eyes, and skin of a similar shade. The being is clothed in a robe cinched about the waist.
“Kas, put down the weapon,” Adric says calmly. “These are my guests, Cardea, Cullen, and Teague. And this new one,” as he gestures at Kamiel, “he's a guest, too. Please treat them appropriately.”
Kas puts the weapon away, walks to a crude hutch, and begins to populate a serving tray with cups. In the meantime, Silent can be heard putting the sack down in the kitchen, and the sounds of meal preparation ensue.
Cardea perceives no evil from any of these people. She communicates this with a glance to her companions. Seeing no immediate threat, Kamiel permits the door to close.
Adric invites the group to be seated. Each party member fetches a chair, places it along the table opposite Adric, and takes a seat.
Their host turns to look at Kamiel.
“And what of you? How came you to join these good folks?”
“I am Kamiel,” the young man replies, “of Arcanix. I was in Wroat and received a letter from a relative, who knew a certain Morlis ir'Corvan,” Kamiel explains. “Apparently the old seer insisted I would be somehow involved in affairs of consequence surrounding this mysterious statue. I thought it madness until I encountered Cardea here, and her friends, as Morlis predicted. They have welcomed me into their company and we have lived and fought shoulder-to-shoulder for the past week and a half, though it seems longer.”
“Quite, quite,” Adric mumbles, distracted. He appears to be looking at his guests' packs, as if attempting to discern whether the adventurers have the statue piece with them, and if so, which one.
Kas brings the tray of cups over and places it on a clear spot on the table. The changeling does not serve anyone; the beverage has already been poured and five cups, each resting on a saucer, surround an ewer on the tray. Adric waits expectantly as his guests help themselves.
“And you are?” Kamiel asks, smiling at Meriko's absent-mindedness.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I am Adric Meriko. I teach and do research in linguistics at Morgrave University. Er, well, taught. And did research. Now I am in hiding,” he says glumly.
Kamiel sets his cup down and offers his hand for a shake. The scholar returns the gesture while smiling in a manner that is almost nervous in its distraction.
“I would not be alive it all were it not for Silent,” the scholar continues. “He pulled me from my home as it burned at the hands of these unknown...villains.”
Cullen attempts to lift Adric's mood with some good news. “As our message to you of a week ago said, our initial venture was a success,” he begins.
“You have the statue? The first piece?” The scholar's eyes brighten.
Cullen sips his tea before continuing. “Yes, the statue was broken into pieces just as your research indicated, and apparently long ago.”
“The piece of it we recovered was the left arm,” Teague adds. “It was entangled in the roots of a very old oak, in some kind of sub-basement of the ruins of the Fenalik manor house, and guarded by a sort of...” He is at a loss.
“Evil apparition that despoiled the light,” Cardea states.
“We were not long out of the ruins of the Fenalik manor,” Cullen says, “when we were given this letter by the local landowner.” He takes out the letter from Eodard Grameci of Korranberg, which was in the possession of Loren d'Jorasco, and hands it to Adric.
Meriko spends a minute reading it in silence, then returns it to Cullen.
“I see. I see. Well, I've no idea who this person is. This person or the one he claims is his grandfather. But I think you were right in acting with discretion. Did your companions tell you how those who seek this statue killed my friend Morlis, burned his home, burned mine, and nearly killed me?” He addresses his query to Kamiel.
“They did,” Kamiel answers.
“And you have the statue piece? You have it with you?”
Kamiel looks at Cardea. He's still not sure this man can be trusted. She registers his concern, but proceeds.
“Yes,” she says, unshoulders her pack, carefully removes the stone arm, and proffers it—enough to invite inspection, yet not enough to suggest a transfer of ownership.
Adric seems nearly beside himself with excitement. He bends forward, nearly bringing his face into contact with the statue. He spends long minutes inspecting it in minutest detail, staring it up and down and along its length, several times bringing his hands nearly in contact with it, but never quite doing so. Quiet vocalizations of elation issue from his throat every so often, but he never opens his mouth to speak.
Kamiel is fascinated by the man. His years of bardic life taught him a little bit about reading people's motivations, and this man is emoting like a waterspout. He expected to see avarice in the group's mysterious contact, but can discern none. Adric Meriko's manner insinuates nothing but effusive—even overwhelming—intellectual curiosity.
Kamiel sits back and lets go of a little bit of his tension regarding this encounter. There are far worse things than acute inquisitiveness.
Eventually Meriko breathes deeply in apparent relaxation. Since the man is evidently done looking at it, Cardea places the item back in her pack.
Kamiel shares some of their other findings with the man. “The statue arm betrays no aura of evil or magic.”
“Maybe it's only magical when the whole is joined together,” Cullen speculates.
Kamiel continues. “Where it entwined with the roots of the tree, strange and unnatural flowers grew in the absence of sunlight. The petals glistened like gemstones, but we didn't notice that until after we eliminated the...the presence in the room.”
“Fascinating,” Meriko observes.
“The letter from Grameci is just one of several leads we have on the statue parts and related items. Just a moment...” He hastily fishes a bundle of parchment leaves out of his pack and flips through them.
“Here we go. The statue wasn't auctioned off as a unit. I suppose it had already been disassembled when the crown got a hold of it, and its representatives either didn't know or didn't care what they had.”
“Or perhaps they knew exactly what they were doing, and scattered it deliberately,” the scholar counters.
“Ah.” This gives Kamiel some pause, and he chews his lip for a second before returning to his notes. “At any rate, the, uh, the head went to Arcanix, the torso to Flamekeep, the left leg to Korth, the right leg to Korranberg, and the right arm to Metrol. Of course this was a hundred and fifty years ago. Much might have changed, and while leads this stale are better than nothing, they are pretty stale.”
“And a hundred and fifty years ago there was no Mournland,” Adric says, referring to the name of the land now surrounding Metrol.
The entire party shifts uncomfortably in their seats at the mere mention of the place. They all know they haven't the might to survive, let alone fulfill their aims, in that dread place.
“That aside,” Kamiel continues, “we've learned that three sets of so-called miscellaneous documents were also auctioned off from the estate. One set came here to Morgrave, another went to the University of Korth, and a third went to Korranberg, to the same person who obtained the right leg of the statue. It's not clear if that's who still has it, though. Maybe it changed hands to the grandfather of this Grameci who wrote the letter we just showed you.”
“Many gnomes in Korranberg. In the whole nation of Zilargo, really, it being their homeland,” Adric muses. “A century and a half and this ancestor, only as distant as a grandparent, is the one who obtained part of the statue. I suggest you're expecting to find—or avoid—a gnome in Korranberg, not a human.”
“Assuming the letter is not very old, and that it came into the hands of the elder Grameci shortly after its arrival in Korranberg,” Kamiel says.
“It wasn't dated, but it doesn't look very old,” offers Teague.
“According to Loren's daughter, it was delivered to the Jorasco chapter house several months ago,” Cullen adds.
Kamiel attempts to wrap up the conjectures he provoked. “Thus, the parsimonious assumption is that it is no older than that. The statue piece and documents could have changed hands at any time, though. We just don't know.”
“Gnomes, then!” Meriko is manifestly prepared to educate his guests whether they're ready or not. “You'll find the gnomes of Zilargo polite and welcoming. But they are known for finding out information and using it to their advantage. Mayhaps we're observing a bit of that with this letter, no? Sometimes this practice is a defensive measure, for they are small creatures in a big, hostile world”—the scholar flicks his glance over at Cullen—“but sometimes it is done for gain.”
“Which could also be the case here,” Kamiel says.
Adric shrugs to indicate his uncertainty, and continues. “There is no overt police force among gnomes. However, an organization called ‘the Trust’ keeps the peace from behind the scenes.”
The party takes a moment to absorb all this, girding themselves for their Korranberg venture. They help themselves to more tea, and Kamiel attempts to sate his curiosity about another subject.
“You're a professor of linguistics, sir. What was your area of focus?”
“My specialty was Xen'drik languages and hieroglyphs. Kas is a student of mine. Quite talented, quite talented. Yes.”
“Then perhaps you can help us with a transcription we don't understand.”
“Indeed?” Adric is intrigued to be offered a problem well within his ken.
Cullen takes from his pack the copy he made of the hybrid scroll from the document lot at Morgrave University yesterday.
The scholar takes it eagerly. “Oh, my. Oh, my. Yes, you've found this, too. I encountered it myself when researching this most mysterious statue.”
He is, to the party's surprise, able to offer only a little more than they had already deduced. Part of the document is in archaic Common, up to the point where it transcribes an inscription the author found on an obelisk at Xed'ef'kar. The Rite of Enactment is indeed in an old dialect of Giant called Xir'da. That tongue was spoken at the height of the culture of the city of Xed'ef'kar. However, there are two points in this rite that aren't in Giant at all, but an effort at transcribing a third, unknown language phonetically. Kamiel, who can speak Giant, gleaned from the juxtaposition of glyphs that there were some phonemes that had to be crudely approximated, as they simply didn't exist in the Giant tongue.
The young arcanist brainstorms as his companions and the scholar look on indulgently. A rite is a ritual or ceremony, and an enactment is a statutory or legislative practice. Could this scroll reflect an event of no more import than the effectuation of law or regulation? In some cultures, ancient languages are spoken during the investiture of religious or political figures, and can comprise part or the whole of the formality. Such a scroll would be of historical and linguistic interest, certainly, but hardly the sort of matter which provokes portents of doom and acts of arson.
Alternatively, the Rite of Enactment could be as the party originally suspected—an invocation of some sort of power beyond the temporal. Kamiel and Adric go back and forth over numerous hypotheses. Do the phonemes make sense when read backwards? No. Was an attempt made to decipher the text using a common wizards' divination of comprehension? Yes, and it failed.
Kamiel scratches his beard. “That suggests to me,” he says slowly, “that the phonemes don't represent a mundane language at all. Perhaps...perhaps it is a transcription of magical command words, or even an effort to record the sounds of a spell recitation.”
Meriko nods. “Possibly! Possibly! Or perhaps it is a corruption, or merely an example of drift. Take the name of the site of this statue's origin: ‘Xed'ef'kar’. That rendering is today antiquated. Recall how Grameci referred to it in his letter, which we presume is quite recent? ‘Sedefkar’. Same place. Same word even. But different orthography and pronunciation. Time does not stand still. Nor do languages.”
Frustratingly, at this point, everyone seems to be stuck. Kamiel feels sure that a comprehend languages spell would not be rendered ineffective by linguistic drift. He knows the incantation is capable of revealing the meaning of ancient languages, modern writings, and everything in between. Still, his surety is impotent for the time being, as he himself does not possess the dweomer in question.
After a few moments of silence broken only by the sipping of tea and the tucking of the copied scroll back into Cullen's pack, Kamiel remembers another question they had.
“We believe we've identified the works that constituted the Fenalik document lot auctioned off to Morgrave. Part was the Rite of Enactment scroll. But there was also a travelogue in the library here, describing a scholar's journey to Xed'ef'kar, we think on the same expedition that produced the scroll.”
“Oh?” Adric arches an eyebrow in surprise.
“It was in the stacks, but hidden, tucked away spine-down behind other volumes several shelves away from where it should have been. You didn't happen to hide it like that, did you?” Kamiel asks.
“Certainly not!” The man's pride of scholarship appears to have been bruised.
“Okay, in that case”—Kamiel hastily moves on to spare the poor man's feelings—“in that case, I suspect our rivals have preceded us there. I don't know if they got a hold of the scroll with the Rite of Enactment, though. According to the librarian, you were the last person to sign it out for examination.”
Meriko is a bit alarmed. “They're not supposed to tell you that!”
The party emits a few nervous coughs.
“Putting that aside, I suspect you're right. I suspect you're right. Other forces are one or more moves ahead of us in this race.”
