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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1584649" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 149Mole closed the door softly behind her.  She didn’t want to wake Zenna; her friend had been sleeping poorly of late and she suspected that the tiefling would need every bit of rest she could grasp before what they had waiting for them tomorrow. The gnome was tired as well, but she was too keyed up to rest.  The hallway was dark, with only a tiny slit of a window at the far end, but her gnomish eyes enabled her to navigate its length without difficulty until she came to the landing where diffuse firelight from below allowed her to see more clearly.  The floorboards beneath her feet were old and had creaked earlier when her friends had retired for the night; under her light feet, however, they made not a sound.  After making a reflexive check for threats—a habit she could not easily break now, even here—she went downstairs to the common room.  At this hour, in that nebulous zone between when the latest reveler departed and the earliest laborer rose, all was quiet.  Flickering flames were visible in one of the hearths; the innkeeper Mikimax had built up the fire and left it to burn the night to warm the inn through the network of chimney ducts that rose up through the upper stories of the building.  The room was deserted; no, she saw, there was one person there, sitting in a comfortable armchair in the shadows beyond the fire.  She couldn’t clearly make him out, but she had a good guess as to whom it might be. She walked over to him, and as he looked up her guess was confirmed.  Dannel greeted her with a nod, and indicated another chair across from him.  She took the seat and sat there, looking at the fire.  For a long moment neither of them spoke.  “A long day tomorrow,” he finally said.  “You should get some sleep.”Mole shrugged.  She knew that the elf, like all of those of his race, did not need sleep as most races knew it, instead restoring his mind each night with a meditative trance.  But she knew Dannel well enough to know that he was troubled, and she wondered if he’d been able to complete his meditations this night. “She doesn’t hate you, you know.  She was just taken by surprise.”The elf nodded again, and for a moment, just a moment, he let his frustration show on his face.  “I cannot suppose I blame her,” he said. “She feels as though everyone she’s ever loved has let her down.”“You haven’t.”The gnome fidgeted in her seat.  She looked at Dannel, who simply met her gaze, waiting for her to say what she had to say. “Well...”The elf waited. “I just didn’t think it was right.  It wasn’t... I mean, I know that you may think I have a looser sense of the concept of personal property than some, and that’s fine, but it’s just... well, it wasn’t right.  I didn’t earn it...”“I understand,” Dannel said. "How did you manage to fool Zenna?  Surely she would have noticed that you were no longer carrying the pin."Mole managed to look a bit sheepish.  "I had a duplicate copy made, while we were in Tethyr.  Zenna never thought to cast detect magic on it, I guess."Dannel nodded. “You won’t tell Zenna?”“Your secret is safe with me.” Mole looked back at the stairs before leaning forward in her chair to narrow the gap between them.  “Good.  Because if she found out it was my fault that you...that they... found us, she’d... well, she wouldn’t be happy.”“Whatever Zenna thinks, your families don’t want to control you.  They are just concerned.”“Yes.  Well.” The gnome sat back, and a few more minutes passed in silence.  Finally, Mole leaned forward again, and asked, “May I see the plate again?”In response the elf drew out a flat, heavy object from the pack sitting beside his chair.  The firelight gleamed brightly on it; it was a square plate of silver, perhaps a foot across, etched with a finely etched but archaic design on one side, and a crude map scraped into the other.  They hadn’t been able to make much sense of the etching, which appeared to depict a six-armed creature overseeing some sort of construction project with what appeared to be humanoid slaves as laborers.  But the map, which had accompanying runes marked upon it in the Giant tongue, had proven more useful. The plate had been purchased by Dannel at a shop in Cauldron, just two days ago.  While the rest of the companions had pursued their meeting with Jenya Urikas, the elf had conducted his own investigation.  It turned out that Alec Tercival had sold a number of items won on his various expeditions in the region to the halfling owner of a local curio shop.  The plate had been a recent sale, and Dannel surmised that it might give them a clue as to where the paladin had been of late. Last night he had shown the plate to the leaders of the Chisel, and they had confirmed his suspicions.  Maavu told them that Alec had spent some time in the jungles to the southwest of Redgorge, in a dangerous region known as the Demonskar.  This locale, which was given a wide berth by most travelers, featured prominently in the legends of the town and its magic-using founder.  Apparently a powerful and terrible demon had lived in the region centuries ago, leading an army of his dread kind against the early settlers of Redgorge.  Surabar Spellmason had finally defeated the demon with the aid of a celestial ally named Nidrama, raising the walls whose remnants still surrounded the town today.  Maavu couldn’t say exactly what the paladin had been up to in that area, but Masht noted that there was a statue of a headless demon located several hours’ travel down the Red River; a landmark that had been identified upon the crude map scratched onto the silver plate. It wasn’t much of a lead, but with no one knowing the current location of the paladin, it was all that they had to go on.  Mole examined the design on the etched side of the plate.  As before, the strange sigils and unusual depictions there made little sense to her.  She didn’t like the look of the six-armed creature, though.  She handed the heavy plate back to Dannel.  “What do you think, of them?” Mole asked. She didn’t have to clarify of whom she was speaking; the enigma that was the Chisel had weighed heavily upon all of them, after their meeting.  After the official gathering had closed Masht had asked them to join him in a walk along the summit of the bastions that surrounded the town.  He had not spoken further of their mission or of Cauldron, instead talking to them of the natural wonders of the region, and of the struggles of Redgorge’s history.  She still remembered something he had said at the end, as he had stared out over the darkened jungle canopy that stretched out before them to the west and south.  “Surabar’s spells raised this wall in seven days.  But his guidance has failed to build a righteous society in as many centuries.”The thought stayed with her as she took her leave of Dannel, returning to her room to try and grab a few hours of sleep before the coming of the dawn.</blockquote>

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