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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenrir" data-source="post: 652693" data-attributes="member: 401">From Shadows of the Past: The Collected Memoirs of Arundel Berethani (Abridged):It began, as many things do, as an accident.    A cold day in the month of Hammer, a shortage of supplies, inexperience- whatever the reason, many wanderers came upon the village of Howlett that day, knowing not that some of their actions would one day change the very face of Toril forever. Kantral tells me that all he was looking for was a bowl of hot soup. Harami sought inner peace. Karl lusted to live up to his mentor’s legacy, and I, Arundel n’Tesseline s’Berethani, chased after the dream of exploration, away from the oppressive walls of Evereska.     Ironic, that I would soon be trading one set of walls for another, and another, and even another, but that is later.    I myself never reached Howlett. I was captured in the woods several miles from the village, cold and hungry, by a patrolling group of orcs. My voluminous historical knowledge told me that a horde had invaded this region, near the Western outskirts of the Silver Marches, and I had the sinking feeling that these orcs were leftovers, refugees from a failed war, desperate and alone.    I did, however, have the honor of experiencing the curious tyranny of the Prefect of Howlett, one Prefect Arlis, who had my future companions marked as “miscreants” upon entering the village. My companions report poor treatment, and a curious proliferation of the ubiquitous Black Guard, a group of eerily unresponsive watchmen who always seemed to have one eye cast at the marked ones.    Brought before the Prefect, my friends were accused of violating a clear blockade of the area, and as punishment, all “miscreants” within the village would be forced to attempt to deal with the cause of the blockade- the same tribe of renegade orcs that had taken me and apparently a keep too near to Howlett for the Prefect’s tastes. Two groups left Howlett that day, and one would be almost completely decimated before the day was done. My companion Harami, the noble Cali<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />e monk, was among the two survivors of the first group found by the second. The other was Jelifer, a lovely young elven girl who had suffered some atrocities at the hands of the orc raiders.    Among the group that rescued me, in the end, was Karl the Red, Kantral Searthan, Harami, Jelifer, and a gnomish girl named Loopinda Tumbleberry. I never met “Loopy,” as she was slain shortly after the keep was stormed. While the rest of my group was gathering their strength after the initial failed charge, I was hung from a wooden plank in a basement filled with corpses, similarly bound. Minutes before my salvation, the keep shook with some unseen force, and my plank fell upon my orcish guard. My future friends saved me, and I lent them my hand as reward.    Jelifer was slain by a man found reading on the second floor, after slaying the apparent chieftain of the tribe. What we found in the next room, however, was even more chilling- a man named Tarkis, a brutal tower of a man, was controlling the keep, and he was in league with the Prefect. We fought with Tarkis, slew him, and raided his desk to find letters between the Prefect and himself, among other correspondence. The names on the letters meant little to us then: “Lorken, Darius, Karnak...,” but we knew that our enemy had been given a name.    Returning to Howlett, we confronted Arlis, and were joined by one Jack Valgardsen, a Howlett native with a foul tongue and even fouler breath. Arlis, it was found, had created the Black Guard through the help of an orb that allowed the user to raise vengeful undead. We were sent to the keep to be harvested as soldiers in the Prefect’s yet undiscovered cause. The undead were too many to hold back, but after Karl shattered the orb with a lash from his weighted whip, the Guard turned upon their tormentor and tore him limb from limb before collapsing into dust.     Among them was one Golin Vend, an innkeeper who had befriended Karl and Kantral days earlier with an amiable card game. Moreover, the undead had set fire to the building, and the fire quickly spread throughout much of the town, razing most of the buildings to the ground.    Once again, we found similar letters as those lifted from Tarkis’s desk, and all signs now pointed to Waterdeep as a potential base of operations for whatever group had caused this destruction. We committed ourselves to track this Conspiracy, so that we could properly finish what we started. Needless to say, our appreciation of the treatment we had received was left wanting.    Sometimes, I regret that decision. It was a choice that would change the course of our lives and those of many others. I still cannot say with total confidence that I prefer the way things ended up. A simple life never called me, but this...this was something else entirely.    Our journey to Waterdeep was marked by a near-death experience with a youthful green dragon. I am still proud to say that it was I who, in the end, severed the beast’s head, and I kept it for some time afterwards, until I gave it to Belmer Bowman.    Bowman was a flagrantly flamboyant caricature of a man; a short, fat, balding figure who spoke in endless crescendos and lifts in pitch, almost squealing by the time he had finished his sentence. He had quite the quandary, as well- his new enterprise, the Northern Lights Trading Coster, was in danger of bankruptcy. Bowman had come to Waterdeep with two emissaries in order to negotiate the terms of a financial agreement with one Keldan Gobinda, a local aristocrat with a lustful cousin who he adored. Bowman’s emissaries were to woo the cousin, Alayna, henceforth earning Gobinda’s trust and securing the arrangement. Karl, ever the man to love attention, responded to Bowman’s frantic cries on the Waterdhavian streets. It seemed that Bowman’s emissaries had encountered some trouble in the town, and had been arrested by the watch- not a desirable characteristic in a representative supposed to be apt at garnering trust. After a brief “test” of Karl’s skills that I found particularly amusing, it was decided that Bowman would pay us to act as replacements.    What followed was quite a farce. Karl’s flagrant tastes in fashion led us to our first of many journeys to a professional tailor. Looking back, I can’t help but laugh- somehow, someway, we always ended up at a new clothier. Our fortune, I suppose. Purchasing a heap of fineries, Karl began to anxiously await the social event of his life, a mere two tendays away.    Those tendays were not without excitement of their own, however. Karl was also eager to renew one of his oldest contacts in the city, an aging fence by the name of Yosef, the man who had used a younger Karl as an errandboy during his time as an orphan. Karl was overjoyed to find Yosef still intact and still practicing his old profession, but I can’t say I was positive that Yosef remembered Karl at all. Still, he made much use of the tall man’s enthusiasm, lending us a task to track down whatever it was that had been plaguing the tunnels beneath his shop that he used for his illicit deals. He had lost a great deal of men in the last few days alone, and was more than willing to offer a suitable reward.    Our fortunes recently wasted on the trifle of fancy clothing, we agreed, and the next day slinked down into the tunnels. After some searching, we came upon some sort of twisted, intelligent fish who had taken a young girl as his thrall. We made short work of him, although Jack would not have agreed with me. The girl revealed herself as one Laena Kylith, an unusual figure with equally unusual powers. She claimed that this abomination of a fish had killed someone close to her, and she tracked him all the way to these sewers before he finally got the best of her. With nowhere else to go, she readily accepted Karl’s rather pointed offer to join our motley band.    Knowing Karl, it wouldn’t take long for him to woo the poor girl. I was right. Even lost in reverie, I didn’t get much rest that tenday.    In this same time span, Karl’s dreams came true as he was reunited with his old mentor, Jordan Dane. The old man’s wanderings had eventually led him to the City of Splendors, where his journey had begun.    The time of the party arrived, and we assembled our baubles and took the ornate carriage rented for us by Bowman. In his squealing pig voice, he wished us the best of luck, gave us a few tips, and sent us on our way. Arriving there, I found the whole thing to be a rather trite affair. But it was a learning experience, much like watching a fine play- everyone was an actor, and played their part superbly- all save Laena. Her jealousy over Karl’s persistent attention to Gobinda’s attractive cousin almost cost me whatever face I had at the sordid soiree.    I kept close observation on Karl’s diplomatic meanderings with Gobinda, especially the interference of a middle aged man who a nearby guest identified as Anthalus Lorken, a wealthy wizard from the North. Immediately, the flare went off in my mind- Lorken was one of the names on the letters we found in Howlett. I tried to warn Karl, but in his boundless ignorance, he missed the hint. By the time I finally managed to speak to him, Lorken had already seen the futility of words and had taken Gobinda’s cousin hostage, dragging her up the stairs and demanding Gobinda come alone.    Karl wouldn’t hear any of it, and bounded up the staircase after him. We were obliged to follow. A spell from Lorken nearly burned us all to a crisp and the building with us, but a well placed spell from Kantral and Karl's puissance in grappling subdued the wizard. He managed to inflict some more damage to his surroundings before we finally got a gag around him.     Ever grateful for saving his cousin, Gobinda agreed to Bowman’s offer and granted him the financial backing he desired. We took Lorken into our own custody, eager to question him. Taking him back to Bowman’s residence, Karl summoned Jordan and we began our interrogation.    Needless to say, Lorken’s reaction to Dane was unsettling. He cursed him in a number of languages, and then began foaming at the mouth, apparently releasing some sort of poison stored in a false tooth. Jordan explained that he had crossed Lorken earlier, since they moved in the same circles.    I found his explanation to be fundamentally flawed, but I kept my reservations to myself. I had more troubling things to worry about.    Earlier in the month, in one of my many meditations, I stumbled upon a source of magic that was both terrifying and yet seductively inviting. A void, the space between the strands of the Weave, subtle, insidious. Each day I had explored it further, followed it’s voice as it spoke to me, drinking in the power and reveling in the uniqueness that it had presented me. My subconscious began to spit things at me, make me say and do things I would have never done otherwise. I began to feel myself grow more secretive, more bitter about the world, as if something was telling me that everything sought my destruction. By the time Lorken lay dead before us, it had gripped me and I had begun to delve into its deepest secrets.    I can’t say it was the worst time of my life, that would come later...but the things I saw, the things I thought every day, are things I will never forget.</blockquote>

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