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Cormyr: The Smile of Chauntea
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<blockquote data-quote="MulhorandSage" data-source="post: 226947" data-attributes="member: 751"><p><em>Part Two:</em> </p><p>19th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. </p><p></p><p>Dear Gevrael, </p><p></p><p>The time has come to discuss the fate of my comrade Kord… or should I say ex-comrade? While I am not completely displeased by the turn of events, they were messy, and therefore quite regrettable. </p><p></p><p>After having been subjected to the unpleasantness of politics in an era of Cormyte anarchy, our fellowship was all quite eager to experience the simple joy of swinging a blade and watching an enemy die. Kord the elf enjoyed the exercise more than the rest of us, provided that he could substitute “firing an arrow at eighty paces” for the proximity of a sword duel, (and provided that his quarry was facing away from him). For when it became obvious that we had to face a worthy adversary, Kord’s usual response was to run away as quickly as his feet could muster and leave his comrades to die. He was a very good scout, but a terrible companion-in-arms.</p><p></p><p>Once, when we were attacking an encampment of raiders near Ashenbenford, with Aron and Ulrick armed only with swords (and the raiders armed with bows), Kord came up with the inspired plan that if he was to cast a spell and entangle everyone on the battlefield, we could prevail. After the battle, when one of our comrades lay dead (after spending as much time fighting the writhing plants as the enemy), Kord insisted that the debacle was <em>our</em> fault because we were not carrying bows and crossbows. In other words, rather than observing the situation and adjusting his tactics to fit, Kord displayed true elven arrogance by insisting that whenever the world didn’t adjust itself to fit his perspective, the world was wrong. No wonder the elves whimpered and Retreated from the world. </p><p></p><p>Kord also had the annoying habit of lording the elves’ ancient achievements as examples of their superiority. I only shut him up once, when I reminded him that humans were one of the founder races of Faerûn and that elves were mere shoddy imports from some foreign realm. This did not sit well with him.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, getting back to the story at hand, our good paladin Ulrick wanted to kill something, preferably something that qualified under the category of “very evil”, and we were of like mind. Now Wheloon has eight lords who live outside the city who are foresworn as its vassals, and we reasoned that their loyalty could be quite useful to us in our current situation. We also learned that one of their estates had been overrun by a band of brigands (who were formerly the guards of Castle Wheloon, who made this career change after we arrived in the city). Kord was sent ahead to scout the area and discovered that the brigands had murdered the local lord and lady, and were now holed up in the lord’s keep. We needed to capture the keep, kill the bandits, and show the local lords that we would protect them (or at least avenge them).</p><p></p><p>Kord kept a vigil on the keep, and was rewarded when he spotted a crew of six young men, all of who had the demeanor of farmboys, building a catapult on the outskirts of the keep. Kord waylaid the head of the farmboys while he was attempting to relieve himself – it’s amazing how talkative people can be when a knife is held to their genitals – and learned that he was Sir Alfred, the son of the late local lord. Sir Alfred’s fiancée was still being held prisoner in the keep. The boys – who seemed to be wrought of the same reckless fabric as Ulrick – had the brilliant plan of using the catapult to launch themselves over the keep’s walls and then using potions of dove feathers to waft gently down to the roof before they splattered. When Ulrick arrived, he thought it was a brilliant plan (paladins!), but ordered Sir Alfred and his men to stay back and leave the assault to us.</p><p></p><p>Once we arrived at this quaint sitting, we immediately started debating our plan of attack. With Ulrick at hand (and with a deficit of stealth magicks at our disposal – I <em>never</em> have the proper spells to fit these lackbrains’ crazed schemes), we chose a frontal assault. We crept to the keep during the day and found it lifeless and deserted. Kord was sent to lurk in ambush should any bandit escape through the front gate, while the local farmboys flexed their muscles and deluded themselves into thinking they were important by keeping watch on the tunnel entrance of the castle’s bolthole. Their task would turn out to be far more fateful than I suspected, especially for Kord.</p><p></p><p>I suggested that we penetrate the keep at dusk, when the shadows were at their longest and our movements would be most difficult to spot. But we tarried a few minutes too long. The keep came alive at nightfall, and the sudden fear that we were facing something unnatural set us to pointless bickering, giving the enemy time to set torches along the castle walls. When we arrived, our approach was seen and they were ready for us. We climbed the manor walls to find several squads of archers waiting for us, perched on balconies surrounding the castle keep.</p><p></p><p>Nonetheless, although they were prepared for us, they were not prepared for the Thayan wand of fire that I wielded. Our cousin Caecason would have been delighted with the result, given that he once burnt down a manor house too (albeit through malice and not magic). Two squads of archers were burned alive, screaming for only a fraction of a second before their charred husks fell to the ground, and once I lit their pyre, the enemy resistance crumbled. After a half minute of battle had elapsed, I contented myself to watch Aron and Ulrick flounder as they attempted to corner the enemy (which they did after some effort), and tried to dispel the enchantment that barred the door. The latter was a task beyond my power to affect; the door held firm even though my countermagic was more puissant than any I had ever cast. (Of course, Ulrick and Aron were scornful that I had but one such countermagic prepared. As gratitude would require humility, it is excluded from the list of Cormyrean virtues, which may go far in explaining this kingdom’s sorry state.)</p><p></p><p>So we broke through into the stables, which adjoined the main house but did not benefit from its protections; here Aron showed his stabling skill by releasing the horses and keeping them under his control so we were not trampled to death as they were herded through the main gate. Then, we turned our attention to the main house. Using an anvil or some other heavy implement (I cannot quite recall what instrument we chose - Ulrick’s head perhaps) we broke through weak points in the burning wall and strode into the manor house. It was already well on its way to becoming a flaming ruin. </p><p></p><p>The defenders had fled; no doubt they had gone through the bolthole that Lord Alfred had mentioned. We did indeed find Alfred’s betrothed inside the keep – but alas, she was dead, she lay alone in the castle bath with her throat slit, wearing a bloody wedding gown. This was a most appalling sight, for she was fair and strong of frame, so if she had lived she would have been likely to bear very strong children, if she possessed no ambition for higher things. Such a doleful waste – why those animals killed her, when they could have bound her and dragged her through the bolthole to be kept as a useful bargaining chip, is beyond my comprehension. But I have always found evil difficult to fathom – especially when it’s wasteful, so dreadfully wasteful.</p><p></p><p>Our attention was now turned to the bolthole, to whose outer exit Kord had retreated once it was obvious that no raiders would be coming through the gate. This, too, was a very sad sight. Kord had left no brigand alive – but Lord Alfred and the farmboys were also dead. Our lanterns revealed a trail in the grass, which we followed to discover another dead farmboy, lying facedown on the ground about thirty yards from the bolthole with an arrow-hole in his back. I was fearful that more raiders were lurking in the woods, but Kord assured us that this fear was groundless – <em>he</em> had killed the farmboys.</p><p></p><p>We stood agape in the Cormyrean night, listening with disbelieving ears to Kord’s explanation. The elf had parked himself at the bolthole when the brigands began to pour out. He had cheerfully began to slaughter them, but when he took a step back to find better footing, Lord Alfred decided to rush in and win glory for himself. Believing that Lord Alfred was a pup who was about to be cut to pieces, Kord grabbed him and was trying to throw him out of the fight when one of the brigands thrust a longsword through the young lord’s chest, killing him before he could draw another breath.</p><p></p><p>From their vantage point, fighting behind them in the dim light of a half moon, Lord Alfred’s braintrust of farmhands perceived Kord as having grabbed their liege-lord to assist in his death. So they attacked Kord, who calmly drew two blades and killed both brigand and farmhand – the only blood on his clothes belonged to his foes. One of the farmhands wisely decided that it would be prudent to flee from this elven threshing machine, but Kord does not believe in allowing an enemy to live, so he drew his bow and calmly shot the farmboy in the back, killing him instantly.</p><p></p><p>“So he did not stop when you called for his surrender?” I asked, trying to find some way to allow him to wrest himself from the situation. Kord was bewildered by the question and by our concern; the idea that anyone would object to killing this poor farmboy, merelh because he had stopped posing an immediate threat, was beyond the elf's comprehension. </p><p></p><p>“Warning? Why would I give a warning?” he replied.</p><p></p><p>Ulrick was troubled, and debated what needed to be done. He was loth to punish the elf, but clearly Kord had done a grievous wrong, and Ulrick had no allowances to let it go unpunished, either as liegelord of the land, or as a paladin of Torm. According to the laws of chivalry, once the elf insulted Lord Alfred by laying hands on him, his vassals had no choice but to avenge the insult, and the fact that Lord Alfred had died had made it even worse.</p><p></p><p>Ulrick fumbled over the appropriate punishment, even though it was painfully obvious that whatever judgment he decided upon, Kord was too self-important and willfully amoral to accept it. Ulrick was muttering something about naming Aron as the deceased farmhand’s champion in a trial by combat, when I finally moaned to him: “You know what needs to be done. Just have at it and be done with it.”</p><p></p><p>So Ulrick arrested Kord for the farmhand’s murder, and (as expected) the elf immediately bolted. I could have tried to strike him down with a spell, but I doubt even my best lightning bolt would have killed him in one stroke, and I would rather not have given him reason to further begrudge my life, so I let him go. He ran into a copse of trees where the moonlight was beshadowed, and faded from human sight, and we did not see him again.</p><p></p><p>Alas! Kord was an elven swaggerer of a kind that had not been seen since the fall of Myth Drannor, but he was also a true arrowsinger with one of the steadiest hands and eyes I have ever witnessed, and because of that he was often useful to us. But the fool's bloodthirst and his lack of understanding of the virtue of forebearance frequently made him a curse, so it is good to be rid of him. Unfortunately he knows secrets about our discoveries (particularly the ones we made in Galath’s Roost), that I do not want to set loose in the open world. But there is not much I can do about it now, I forsook the chance to cast a spell, and so Kord is gone, and we are not likely to see him again. I trust you now understand why I view his absence with a mix of emotions.</p><p></p><p>So our tattered fellowship returned to Wheloon, not at all elated by what we had seen and done. Ulrick half-heartedly placed a bounty of five hundred gold coins on Kord’s head, with the provision that the elf was to be delivered to us alive. Ha! As if any local bounty hunter could catch him! And thus the farce ends in a bigger farce, and is true to itself; though I would wager heavily that if Kord the Wolfhead knew just what a niggardly price Lord Ulrick had been set for each of his fine pointed ears, he might feel so grievously wronged that he'd return to bedevil Ulrick just to see how high the paladin would be willing to set the price.</p><p></p><p>No matter. It is done, and the sole benefit of this affair is that Kord’s misdeeds overshadowed mine, so I will not have to endure an endless stream of petty jibes about the fire at the manor house. I hope Kord is gone forever. We have too many enemies as it stands.</p><p></p><p>So that is all for today. The dream of the dracolich, and our subsequent (if understandable) panic, will have to wait until my next correspondence.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and don’t spend too much on potions. You never know when you’ll need the money.</p><p></p><p>Warm regards,</p><p>Your Loving brother,</p><p></p><p>Ascarin Nevermoon</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MulhorandSage, post: 226947, member: 751"] [I]Part Two:[/I] 19th day of Uktar, in the Year of the Standing Stone, 1372. Dear Gevrael, The time has come to discuss the fate of my comrade Kord… or should I say ex-comrade? While I am not completely displeased by the turn of events, they were messy, and therefore quite regrettable. After having been subjected to the unpleasantness of politics in an era of Cormyte anarchy, our fellowship was all quite eager to experience the simple joy of swinging a blade and watching an enemy die. Kord the elf enjoyed the exercise more than the rest of us, provided that he could substitute “firing an arrow at eighty paces” for the proximity of a sword duel, (and provided that his quarry was facing away from him). For when it became obvious that we had to face a worthy adversary, Kord’s usual response was to run away as quickly as his feet could muster and leave his comrades to die. He was a very good scout, but a terrible companion-in-arms. Once, when we were attacking an encampment of raiders near Ashenbenford, with Aron and Ulrick armed only with swords (and the raiders armed with bows), Kord came up with the inspired plan that if he was to cast a spell and entangle everyone on the battlefield, we could prevail. After the battle, when one of our comrades lay dead (after spending as much time fighting the writhing plants as the enemy), Kord insisted that the debacle was [I]our[/I] fault because we were not carrying bows and crossbows. In other words, rather than observing the situation and adjusting his tactics to fit, Kord displayed true elven arrogance by insisting that whenever the world didn’t adjust itself to fit his perspective, the world was wrong. No wonder the elves whimpered and Retreated from the world. Kord also had the annoying habit of lording the elves’ ancient achievements as examples of their superiority. I only shut him up once, when I reminded him that humans were one of the founder races of Faerûn and that elves were mere shoddy imports from some foreign realm. This did not sit well with him. Anyway, getting back to the story at hand, our good paladin Ulrick wanted to kill something, preferably something that qualified under the category of “very evil”, and we were of like mind. Now Wheloon has eight lords who live outside the city who are foresworn as its vassals, and we reasoned that their loyalty could be quite useful to us in our current situation. We also learned that one of their estates had been overrun by a band of brigands (who were formerly the guards of Castle Wheloon, who made this career change after we arrived in the city). Kord was sent ahead to scout the area and discovered that the brigands had murdered the local lord and lady, and were now holed up in the lord’s keep. We needed to capture the keep, kill the bandits, and show the local lords that we would protect them (or at least avenge them). Kord kept a vigil on the keep, and was rewarded when he spotted a crew of six young men, all of who had the demeanor of farmboys, building a catapult on the outskirts of the keep. Kord waylaid the head of the farmboys while he was attempting to relieve himself – it’s amazing how talkative people can be when a knife is held to their genitals – and learned that he was Sir Alfred, the son of the late local lord. Sir Alfred’s fiancée was still being held prisoner in the keep. The boys – who seemed to be wrought of the same reckless fabric as Ulrick – had the brilliant plan of using the catapult to launch themselves over the keep’s walls and then using potions of dove feathers to waft gently down to the roof before they splattered. When Ulrick arrived, he thought it was a brilliant plan (paladins!), but ordered Sir Alfred and his men to stay back and leave the assault to us. Once we arrived at this quaint sitting, we immediately started debating our plan of attack. With Ulrick at hand (and with a deficit of stealth magicks at our disposal – I [I]never[/I] have the proper spells to fit these lackbrains’ crazed schemes), we chose a frontal assault. We crept to the keep during the day and found it lifeless and deserted. Kord was sent to lurk in ambush should any bandit escape through the front gate, while the local farmboys flexed their muscles and deluded themselves into thinking they were important by keeping watch on the tunnel entrance of the castle’s bolthole. Their task would turn out to be far more fateful than I suspected, especially for Kord. I suggested that we penetrate the keep at dusk, when the shadows were at their longest and our movements would be most difficult to spot. But we tarried a few minutes too long. The keep came alive at nightfall, and the sudden fear that we were facing something unnatural set us to pointless bickering, giving the enemy time to set torches along the castle walls. When we arrived, our approach was seen and they were ready for us. We climbed the manor walls to find several squads of archers waiting for us, perched on balconies surrounding the castle keep. Nonetheless, although they were prepared for us, they were not prepared for the Thayan wand of fire that I wielded. Our cousin Caecason would have been delighted with the result, given that he once burnt down a manor house too (albeit through malice and not magic). Two squads of archers were burned alive, screaming for only a fraction of a second before their charred husks fell to the ground, and once I lit their pyre, the enemy resistance crumbled. After a half minute of battle had elapsed, I contented myself to watch Aron and Ulrick flounder as they attempted to corner the enemy (which they did after some effort), and tried to dispel the enchantment that barred the door. The latter was a task beyond my power to affect; the door held firm even though my countermagic was more puissant than any I had ever cast. (Of course, Ulrick and Aron were scornful that I had but one such countermagic prepared. As gratitude would require humility, it is excluded from the list of Cormyrean virtues, which may go far in explaining this kingdom’s sorry state.) So we broke through into the stables, which adjoined the main house but did not benefit from its protections; here Aron showed his stabling skill by releasing the horses and keeping them under his control so we were not trampled to death as they were herded through the main gate. Then, we turned our attention to the main house. Using an anvil or some other heavy implement (I cannot quite recall what instrument we chose - Ulrick’s head perhaps) we broke through weak points in the burning wall and strode into the manor house. It was already well on its way to becoming a flaming ruin. The defenders had fled; no doubt they had gone through the bolthole that Lord Alfred had mentioned. We did indeed find Alfred’s betrothed inside the keep – but alas, she was dead, she lay alone in the castle bath with her throat slit, wearing a bloody wedding gown. This was a most appalling sight, for she was fair and strong of frame, so if she had lived she would have been likely to bear very strong children, if she possessed no ambition for higher things. Such a doleful waste – why those animals killed her, when they could have bound her and dragged her through the bolthole to be kept as a useful bargaining chip, is beyond my comprehension. But I have always found evil difficult to fathom – especially when it’s wasteful, so dreadfully wasteful. Our attention was now turned to the bolthole, to whose outer exit Kord had retreated once it was obvious that no raiders would be coming through the gate. This, too, was a very sad sight. Kord had left no brigand alive – but Lord Alfred and the farmboys were also dead. Our lanterns revealed a trail in the grass, which we followed to discover another dead farmboy, lying facedown on the ground about thirty yards from the bolthole with an arrow-hole in his back. I was fearful that more raiders were lurking in the woods, but Kord assured us that this fear was groundless – [I]he[/I] had killed the farmboys. We stood agape in the Cormyrean night, listening with disbelieving ears to Kord’s explanation. The elf had parked himself at the bolthole when the brigands began to pour out. He had cheerfully began to slaughter them, but when he took a step back to find better footing, Lord Alfred decided to rush in and win glory for himself. Believing that Lord Alfred was a pup who was about to be cut to pieces, Kord grabbed him and was trying to throw him out of the fight when one of the brigands thrust a longsword through the young lord’s chest, killing him before he could draw another breath. From their vantage point, fighting behind them in the dim light of a half moon, Lord Alfred’s braintrust of farmhands perceived Kord as having grabbed their liege-lord to assist in his death. So they attacked Kord, who calmly drew two blades and killed both brigand and farmhand – the only blood on his clothes belonged to his foes. One of the farmhands wisely decided that it would be prudent to flee from this elven threshing machine, but Kord does not believe in allowing an enemy to live, so he drew his bow and calmly shot the farmboy in the back, killing him instantly. “So he did not stop when you called for his surrender?” I asked, trying to find some way to allow him to wrest himself from the situation. Kord was bewildered by the question and by our concern; the idea that anyone would object to killing this poor farmboy, merelh because he had stopped posing an immediate threat, was beyond the elf's comprehension. “Warning? Why would I give a warning?” he replied. Ulrick was troubled, and debated what needed to be done. He was loth to punish the elf, but clearly Kord had done a grievous wrong, and Ulrick had no allowances to let it go unpunished, either as liegelord of the land, or as a paladin of Torm. According to the laws of chivalry, once the elf insulted Lord Alfred by laying hands on him, his vassals had no choice but to avenge the insult, and the fact that Lord Alfred had died had made it even worse. Ulrick fumbled over the appropriate punishment, even though it was painfully obvious that whatever judgment he decided upon, Kord was too self-important and willfully amoral to accept it. Ulrick was muttering something about naming Aron as the deceased farmhand’s champion in a trial by combat, when I finally moaned to him: “You know what needs to be done. Just have at it and be done with it.” So Ulrick arrested Kord for the farmhand’s murder, and (as expected) the elf immediately bolted. I could have tried to strike him down with a spell, but I doubt even my best lightning bolt would have killed him in one stroke, and I would rather not have given him reason to further begrudge my life, so I let him go. He ran into a copse of trees where the moonlight was beshadowed, and faded from human sight, and we did not see him again. Alas! Kord was an elven swaggerer of a kind that had not been seen since the fall of Myth Drannor, but he was also a true arrowsinger with one of the steadiest hands and eyes I have ever witnessed, and because of that he was often useful to us. But the fool's bloodthirst and his lack of understanding of the virtue of forebearance frequently made him a curse, so it is good to be rid of him. Unfortunately he knows secrets about our discoveries (particularly the ones we made in Galath’s Roost), that I do not want to set loose in the open world. But there is not much I can do about it now, I forsook the chance to cast a spell, and so Kord is gone, and we are not likely to see him again. I trust you now understand why I view his absence with a mix of emotions. So our tattered fellowship returned to Wheloon, not at all elated by what we had seen and done. Ulrick half-heartedly placed a bounty of five hundred gold coins on Kord’s head, with the provision that the elf was to be delivered to us alive. Ha! As if any local bounty hunter could catch him! And thus the farce ends in a bigger farce, and is true to itself; though I would wager heavily that if Kord the Wolfhead knew just what a niggardly price Lord Ulrick had been set for each of his fine pointed ears, he might feel so grievously wronged that he'd return to bedevil Ulrick just to see how high the paladin would be willing to set the price. No matter. It is done, and the sole benefit of this affair is that Kord’s misdeeds overshadowed mine, so I will not have to endure an endless stream of petty jibes about the fire at the manor house. I hope Kord is gone forever. We have too many enemies as it stands. So that is all for today. The dream of the dracolich, and our subsequent (if understandable) panic, will have to wait until my next correspondence. Oh, and don’t spend too much on potions. You never know when you’ll need the money. Warm regards, Your Loving brother, Ascarin Nevermoon [/QUOTE]
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