darkbard
Legend
Readers, beware! The following tale contains spoilers from the adventure "The Forgotten Forge" published in the Eberron Campaign Setting. Components from additional published adventures are expected, but I'll try to give a heads-up in advance of such postings. In addition, the tone of the campaign is dark and mature and thus may be inappropriate for some readers.
Chapter 1: Death in the Upper City
The warforged held up its hand in the dripping night. “Something is not right,” it cautioned in its aspirated rumbles, gesturing ahead amid the streams running off the roof of the skybridge. “There. By the third bridge support on the right.” In spite of the rolling mist that often plagued the upper towers of Sharn, just visible some sixty feet away in the lemon incandescence of an everbright streetlamp lay a crumpled form near the skybridge balustrade amid the puddles of gathered rain.
“Careful, friends,” spoke Henharath from deep within his cowl. Or perhaps he only appeared to speak, for often enough the kalashtar’s words seemed to actualize in the minds of his companions without any movement of lips. If the warforged’s voice was basso winds, Henharath spoke in mellifluous strings. “Dark nights make for dark deeds,” he whispered.
Drake, the warforged, loosed a bow from its slip-harness and strung it with practiced ease. The other two, females both, pulled blades from scabbards.
“Elsa, seek,” commanded the taller of the two. She shook the wet from her long flame-colored mane and crouched as if to pounce. From behind her, the adolescent ghost tiger snarled and emerged to lope ahead. Knelle followed in her low crouch, her blade held outstretched and parallel to the paving stones of the bridge.
Even in the upper reaches of Sharn’s soaring towers, the wise did not go unprepared for danger. But two years had passed since the uneasy peace, and the city swelled with mercenaries, discharged soldiers, refugees—the desperate and the displaced formed in a world of blood and warfare. Drake was one of the displaced, a sentient warmachine forged under the auspices of House Cannith to serve as an elite sniper and scout in the armies of since-destroyed Cyre. The lower depths of the City of Towers were filthy, crowded and pervaded by a gloom cast as much by the mood of its inhabitants as by the shadows from above. This gloom did not settle in the lower depths but rather rose to meet and intermingle with the clouds and mist of the city’s upper reaches. Sharn’s elite did not travel alone once the cloak of night settled across the city. Those who could afford to do so traveled in the company of hired Denneith guards. Those who could not often wore mail or boiled-leather and carried a razor-sharp blade at shoulder or hip.
“This man has been slashed,” warned Knelle, the puddles about her feet stained black. She knelt beside the figure, probing for signs of life. Elsa sniffed the air beside her, a low growl echoing off the towers through the humid dark. “He is murthered,” Knelle pronounced.
“And we are not alone,” said Jax, the fourth of the night’s sojourners. Whereas Drake and Henharath had covered the Reacher’s investigations, Jax was leaning over the far side of the balustrade’s rail. A shower of sparks fizzled their brief existence and the ringing of metal on stone interrupted the night. Jax stumbled back from the balustrade, the blade of her stabbing sword epileptic as she swung her arms wildly to maintain balance. A cloaked figure was upon the rail now, its wicked-edged battleaxe cutting into the retreating Jax. With a sharp cry she fell, her sword clattering against the stones.
“Jax!” bellowed Drake as he whipped around and nocked an arrow to his bowstring. Drake was designed and constructed for war in the engines of the House Cannith creation forge. Sentience was part of the design, but the heirs of House Cannith had not accounted for the vagaries and caprice of magic. The warforged were birthed with the full range of “human” emotions, and Drake regarded the young hustler and prostitute with something akin to sibling love. He loosed the arrow, but it sailed wide of its mark, clattering against the rococo façade of Kelsa Spire.
The cloaked figure alighted from the balustrade onto the skybridge flagstones. Its hood fell back revealing the mithral-plated countenance of another warforged. It raised the axe menacingly. “Stand down, flesh-loving traitor.” Its voice was a rich alto. “This is none of your concern, and no one else need die at Cutter’s blade this night! You have been warned.”
Next was a blur of movement. From the right, a white and black shape sprung at the warforged, a fury of hisses and yowls. Cutter brought the shaft of its axe down between it and the ghost tiger, fending off the barrage of teeth and claws. Elsa’s attack was enough of a distraction, however. Knelle had pounced in feline mimesis, her scimitar cutting through the softer wood and organic compounds of the warforged’s torso. Henharath harried their attacker with the spear he had unstrapped from his backpack, and Drake had exchanged his bow for a weapon more suitable to close work, a heavy mace.
“Help!” a woman’s voice wailed over the din of parry and thrust. “Call the Watch! They’re murthering that man!” Several windows in Kelsa Spire were now illuminated in ambient glow, and figures leaned out into the veil of rain to observe what was going on below.
“Aye, stand with the weak-fleshed, traitor,” taunted Cutter. “Stand and die beneath my blade.” It brought the battleaxe around in a swinging arc that caught Drake squarely in the mid-section. Drake stepped back from the force of impact. But its swing had left the warforged’s flank exposed, the void quickly filled with the razor-tipped shaft of Henharath’s spear. The attack was true; the warforged dropped the axe to clatter against the flagstones. Almost immediately, Cutter itself crumbled atop the fallen axe. Then, something bizarre. A silver disk with intricate clockwork wings detached itself from the fallen warforged’s breast and hovered some Halfling-height above the puddled stones, humming like some fist-sized insect. In an instant it was gone, buzzing softly into the rain-soaked night.
“Drake,” Knelle gasped between draughts of breath, “you are struck!”
“See to Jax. My wound is not grave.” The warforged shouldered the mace and stepped back, peering into the gloom.
Knelle and Henharath knelt over their fallen comrade. Henharath smoothed the sweat-tangled knot of hair from her face, exposing the white line of an ancient scar across her cheek. “She breathes still, though shallow,” he said. “Can you heal her?”
Knelle nodded silently, the blue lightning strike tattoos on her face distorted in her frown. The Healing was the closest Knelle could come to transcending her mortal form and assimilating into Eberron entirely. She closed her eyes and exhaled. Falling away before her were the wet flagstones, the form of her fallen friend, the words of her lover. She retracted inward into a darkness that eclipsed the night. The abyss of the self, the void. Then an explosion of light, stars blurring trails, an expansion. Sense flooded Knelle’s returned consciousness, but she was no longer Knelle. She was wind and the falling rain, the geologic breathing of stone in the surrounding towers. The macrocosm of protozoan life in rain puddles, the flying weasels scampering in the broad-frond canopy of Skysedge Park. She was sundered bone knitting itself. She was frayed muscle reweaving, slashed blood vessels reattaching. And then she was simply Knelle again, looking down as the faint shimmering green between her fingertips faded and Jax’s long-lashed lids fluttered open like the delicate wings of a Q’barran angel moth.
“Ugh, what happened?” groaned Jax through dry lips. Just as a shrill whistle cut the night sky.
“Stand down and drop yon pokers and bashers,” a commanding voice resonated. “Now ye answer to the Sharn Watch, and I charge ye with murther!”
Chapter 1: Death in the Upper City
The warforged held up its hand in the dripping night. “Something is not right,” it cautioned in its aspirated rumbles, gesturing ahead amid the streams running off the roof of the skybridge. “There. By the third bridge support on the right.” In spite of the rolling mist that often plagued the upper towers of Sharn, just visible some sixty feet away in the lemon incandescence of an everbright streetlamp lay a crumpled form near the skybridge balustrade amid the puddles of gathered rain.
“Careful, friends,” spoke Henharath from deep within his cowl. Or perhaps he only appeared to speak, for often enough the kalashtar’s words seemed to actualize in the minds of his companions without any movement of lips. If the warforged’s voice was basso winds, Henharath spoke in mellifluous strings. “Dark nights make for dark deeds,” he whispered.
Drake, the warforged, loosed a bow from its slip-harness and strung it with practiced ease. The other two, females both, pulled blades from scabbards.
“Elsa, seek,” commanded the taller of the two. She shook the wet from her long flame-colored mane and crouched as if to pounce. From behind her, the adolescent ghost tiger snarled and emerged to lope ahead. Knelle followed in her low crouch, her blade held outstretched and parallel to the paving stones of the bridge.
Even in the upper reaches of Sharn’s soaring towers, the wise did not go unprepared for danger. But two years had passed since the uneasy peace, and the city swelled with mercenaries, discharged soldiers, refugees—the desperate and the displaced formed in a world of blood and warfare. Drake was one of the displaced, a sentient warmachine forged under the auspices of House Cannith to serve as an elite sniper and scout in the armies of since-destroyed Cyre. The lower depths of the City of Towers were filthy, crowded and pervaded by a gloom cast as much by the mood of its inhabitants as by the shadows from above. This gloom did not settle in the lower depths but rather rose to meet and intermingle with the clouds and mist of the city’s upper reaches. Sharn’s elite did not travel alone once the cloak of night settled across the city. Those who could afford to do so traveled in the company of hired Denneith guards. Those who could not often wore mail or boiled-leather and carried a razor-sharp blade at shoulder or hip.
“This man has been slashed,” warned Knelle, the puddles about her feet stained black. She knelt beside the figure, probing for signs of life. Elsa sniffed the air beside her, a low growl echoing off the towers through the humid dark. “He is murthered,” Knelle pronounced.
“And we are not alone,” said Jax, the fourth of the night’s sojourners. Whereas Drake and Henharath had covered the Reacher’s investigations, Jax was leaning over the far side of the balustrade’s rail. A shower of sparks fizzled their brief existence and the ringing of metal on stone interrupted the night. Jax stumbled back from the balustrade, the blade of her stabbing sword epileptic as she swung her arms wildly to maintain balance. A cloaked figure was upon the rail now, its wicked-edged battleaxe cutting into the retreating Jax. With a sharp cry she fell, her sword clattering against the stones.
“Jax!” bellowed Drake as he whipped around and nocked an arrow to his bowstring. Drake was designed and constructed for war in the engines of the House Cannith creation forge. Sentience was part of the design, but the heirs of House Cannith had not accounted for the vagaries and caprice of magic. The warforged were birthed with the full range of “human” emotions, and Drake regarded the young hustler and prostitute with something akin to sibling love. He loosed the arrow, but it sailed wide of its mark, clattering against the rococo façade of Kelsa Spire.
The cloaked figure alighted from the balustrade onto the skybridge flagstones. Its hood fell back revealing the mithral-plated countenance of another warforged. It raised the axe menacingly. “Stand down, flesh-loving traitor.” Its voice was a rich alto. “This is none of your concern, and no one else need die at Cutter’s blade this night! You have been warned.”
Next was a blur of movement. From the right, a white and black shape sprung at the warforged, a fury of hisses and yowls. Cutter brought the shaft of its axe down between it and the ghost tiger, fending off the barrage of teeth and claws. Elsa’s attack was enough of a distraction, however. Knelle had pounced in feline mimesis, her scimitar cutting through the softer wood and organic compounds of the warforged’s torso. Henharath harried their attacker with the spear he had unstrapped from his backpack, and Drake had exchanged his bow for a weapon more suitable to close work, a heavy mace.
“Help!” a woman’s voice wailed over the din of parry and thrust. “Call the Watch! They’re murthering that man!” Several windows in Kelsa Spire were now illuminated in ambient glow, and figures leaned out into the veil of rain to observe what was going on below.
“Aye, stand with the weak-fleshed, traitor,” taunted Cutter. “Stand and die beneath my blade.” It brought the battleaxe around in a swinging arc that caught Drake squarely in the mid-section. Drake stepped back from the force of impact. But its swing had left the warforged’s flank exposed, the void quickly filled with the razor-tipped shaft of Henharath’s spear. The attack was true; the warforged dropped the axe to clatter against the flagstones. Almost immediately, Cutter itself crumbled atop the fallen axe. Then, something bizarre. A silver disk with intricate clockwork wings detached itself from the fallen warforged’s breast and hovered some Halfling-height above the puddled stones, humming like some fist-sized insect. In an instant it was gone, buzzing softly into the rain-soaked night.
“Drake,” Knelle gasped between draughts of breath, “you are struck!”
“See to Jax. My wound is not grave.” The warforged shouldered the mace and stepped back, peering into the gloom.
Knelle and Henharath knelt over their fallen comrade. Henharath smoothed the sweat-tangled knot of hair from her face, exposing the white line of an ancient scar across her cheek. “She breathes still, though shallow,” he said. “Can you heal her?”
Knelle nodded silently, the blue lightning strike tattoos on her face distorted in her frown. The Healing was the closest Knelle could come to transcending her mortal form and assimilating into Eberron entirely. She closed her eyes and exhaled. Falling away before her were the wet flagstones, the form of her fallen friend, the words of her lover. She retracted inward into a darkness that eclipsed the night. The abyss of the self, the void. Then an explosion of light, stars blurring trails, an expansion. Sense flooded Knelle’s returned consciousness, but she was no longer Knelle. She was wind and the falling rain, the geologic breathing of stone in the surrounding towers. The macrocosm of protozoan life in rain puddles, the flying weasels scampering in the broad-frond canopy of Skysedge Park. She was sundered bone knitting itself. She was frayed muscle reweaving, slashed blood vessels reattaching. And then she was simply Knelle again, looking down as the faint shimmering green between her fingertips faded and Jax’s long-lashed lids fluttered open like the delicate wings of a Q’barran angel moth.
“Ugh, what happened?” groaned Jax through dry lips. Just as a shrill whistle cut the night sky.
“Stand down and drop yon pokers and bashers,” a commanding voice resonated. “Now ye answer to the Sharn Watch, and I charge ye with murther!”
