Elsewhere in town, Vek had led the others to the keep of Rufus and Burne- the wizard and warrior who’d helped defeat the evil of the Temple the first time it had arisen. “I’ll warn you, I’ve met these men once,” Vek said. “They were friendly enough, but I’ve heard of an occasion before I joined the group, when the wizard was quite inhospitable.” He floated out across the moat to the closed drawbridge and knocked on it.
In a short time, a little peep-hole opened up. Bushy white eyebrows appeared in the darkness, over glittering, hard eyes. “What?”
“Burne,” Vek said politely. “It’s good to see you again. I am Sir Vek Mormont, if you recall. I was a part of the group, years past, that…”
“Mormont, eh?” Burne interrupted. “I remember. Why are you here now?”
Vek never faltered. “We have suspicions that some clerics of the Temple still live, and are somehow trying to…”
“What?? Those black scoundrels? They’re all dead or run off. Why would they come back? The Temple’s not even standing any more… It’s all been razed to the ground.”
“They once subverted worship to Tharizdun through innocents. Perhaps this ‘Fear’s Eve’ is some tool of theirs to do the same, now that the town celebrates its dark history.”
“Do you have any proof? What are you basing this on?”
“Well, nothing, yet. We just arrived, and are merely looking into the possibility. If you could tell us-“
“There’s nothing to tell,” he sneered. “The fools in town wear their costumes and taunt the spectre of death.”
“No one taunts the spectre of death,” Vek laughed. “May we speak to Rufus, then?”
His face saddened. “He died some years back.”
“Well, then… I guess we’ll be off. Thank-“ SLAM! The small hatched closed suddenly. Vek turned around and floated back. “Not much help from Burne. Seems he’s even more bitter than when last we met.”
Kizz adjusted her faerie wings and said “Perhaps we should just walk around town and keep our eyes open.”
They began walking around Hommlet. The number of attractions was staggering. There were numerous “Haunted Houses”. The concept of these was a walk through small winding tunnel. The tunnel was entirely covered in glamers and trickster spells to appear as though you were walking through certain parts of the Temple itself. “Clerics” in ochre robes and monsters would jump out at you.
Kizz saw this attraction and thought it might be interesting to feel what her mother and father had felt when they walked through the Temple. “I want to walk through the haunted house,” to which Vek chuckled and reminded her she lived in a haunted house.
A midnight walk through the Temple’s ruins was a popular choice with the townsfolk- but an expensive one, seeing as how the ticket cost had to cover a teleportation spell to the ruins (they were twenty-five miles away from Hommlet). Also, the brochure didn’t mention what Burne had told the Knights: the Temple had been completely demolished to rubble. You couldn’t walk through it… but the brochure was so cleverly worded that you wouldn’t know you’d just walk around the rubble under the moonlight. Surely it would still be terrifying, as the place- the very land- seemed to ooze evil.
Fortunetellings offering dark portents of one’s future could be found everywhere, and were all in questionable standing with the dark forces, Vek noted with some amusement.
They reached the center of town and walked by an enormous stone-carved statue. The statue’s base read “The saviors of the realm, the KNIGHTS OF THE SILVER QUILL.” Six figures stood atop it, carved each at twice the size they were, heroic, beautiful. A dwarf brandishing an axe stood at the fore with a fierce face. Vek Mormont himself stood there, with his hair flowing down his back. Vek admired the statue and noted that the artist had carved him with not enough character. Everyone recognized Dartan’s dark face. One of the statues was of a woman of passing resemblance to Kizzlorn- and one almost WAS Kizzlorn. The woman was Kizzlorn’s mother, Katya, and she stood beside her husband Rafflorn.
Kizz stared up at her parents’ faces. She’d been told she had her mother’s face, and believed it. She’d seen a few portraits in Spellforge Keep, and now looked upon her as she must have looked in life- except twelve feet tall and made of stone. Her face was almost entirely her mother’s, except slightly longer and angular- like her father. It meant so much to her now to be in an area that knew of her parents, and to see their great deeds evidenced in the town’s appreciation. In Greyhawk, she’d only been known as the pauper’s daughter. In Verbobonc, so many people held the Knights responsible for Acessiwal’s rampage that she’d never tell they cared for the good they’d done. Here, she finally saw their worth through the eyes of the people they’d saved.
“Hey, how’re you guys doin’?” Shade was walking towards them through the crowd.
“We’re not getting far,” Kizz admitted. “How did you make out?”
“Just fine. I met the woman and passed on her husband’s ring. Now I’m free for the evenin’, and was considerin’ enjoying the festivities with you good people.” He smiled. Lem sneered. “Oh,” Shade said. “I asked a few questions about your situation, and I didn’t find out much, but I did learn that there were suspicious deaths among city council members some years ago… around the time the Fear’s Eve festival came to prominence, in fact.”
“What could that mean?” Kizz asked.
“I don’t know, but the woman I spoke to felt ‘er husband knew something about the deaths, and that’s the reason he was murdered. She says he never told ‘er what he suspected.”
They thought about this for a while, and eventually decided the best thing to do would be to continue walking about, looking for signs of trouble. “Look,” Lem said. “A wax museum.” A creepy place like that would suit his taste almost as much as Vek’s. They each paid five silver pieces and entered.
The Hommlet Wax Museum was, like everything else, themed by the Temple. The walls were flagstone, and torches lit the way as they wandered from room to room. The waxworks were frighteningly realistic. The eyes all twinkled… it was quite unsettling. As they walked, magic mouths opened around them and talked briefly about the history of the Temple. “Madness and murder,” one mouth said. “Darkness and death,” another said. “To be a cleric in the service of Tharizdun is to take these things in hand and use them to drown all that is good in the world. Come with us, now, and meet the forces behind the Temple of Elemental Evil that very nearly set the dark god loose upon Oerth.”
In the first room they found a wax man in wizard’s robes holding his hands up in a spellcasting gesture. A magic mouth opened on the wall behind them and began to speak. “This is Falrinth. He was a wizard in the employ of the clerics, and a deadly opponent. He faced the Knights of the Silver Quill twice in combat, and died the second time.”
The next room was familiar. It was a model of the sitting room of the Inn of the Welcome Wench, where the Knights had checked in earlier in the day. At the bar was seated a filthy, unkempt man on a barstool. One arm rested on the bar, one held up a mug of ale. His smile was full of brown teeth and treachery. “This man,” the voice said, “Was Chatrilon Unosh. He was a spy for the Temple, and regularly staked out the bar at the Inn of the Welcome Wench for adventurers foolish enough to try to investigate the goings-on. He led many to their deaths. He himself died later that year, as he plummeted to his doom on New Year’s Eve. Fear’s Eve, however, still feels his ghost…”
In the next room was a middle-aged man in orange robes. One hand was reaching up and pulling back the hood to reveal a proud, evil face. “This man was known as Hedrack. He was once the high priest of the Temple’s fanatics… but when the Temple arose again, he merely oversaw the Doomdreamers in the Inner Fane of the Crater Ridge Mines. It is believed to be his influence, however, that bent many regional faiths to the Elemental Eye. Famously, he posed as a holy man named Ok Ulmok when he formed the splinter faction The Eye of Heironeous. He disappeared as the War of the Eye was won. He has not been seen since.”
Everything was black in the next room, except for the poorly-lit and horrible form of wax standing there on thin glass rods. It was a giant fishlike creature with tentacles creeping from its slime-coated face. Around it was a rippled bubble. “The Second, as it was known, was an aboleth: a horrid water creature with a devil’s mind. It floated about through the halls of the recovered Temple, overseeing the reconstruction. It died in a violent struggle in the Temple’s very heart, a room shaped like a demon’s skull.”
In the next room was a man who could have passed for Vek, in ghastly black armor covered with runes and symbols of the Elemental Eye. He wore a shield on his left arm bearing the symbol of the Eye of Heironeous. Vek smirked to himself at the waxwork. “Korgan was a powerful paladin in Heironeous’ service. He fell under the control of Ok Ulmok, who was truly Hedrack, and unknowingly did his evils. Korgan was even sent out to murder his own son, who was venturing to destroy the Temple at the time. He failed to complete the deed, and was freed from bondage when the Glaring Eye was used to win the war. He now is a member of the Penitent, and resides in the Lortmil mountains.”
“No wonder Dartan disliked him so strongly,” Kizz mused. They walked on.
In the next room a figure made of fire stood brandishing a great fiery sword over miniature figures at its feet. “This is Imix, prince of fire. He was the first of four princes to be summoned to the Temple. If the other three had come, Greyhawk would all have perished. Imix was slain in combat just before the end of the war.”
“Recognize that sword, Kizzlorn?” Vek asked.
She did. “Hey, yeah, why is that?” Then it struck her. It was the sword mounted on the wall in her dining hall. Its fiery heat was even now used to warm the walls and water. She laughed and they walked to the next room.
She stopped laughing as her heart froze within her chest. The next waxwork was standing amidst a half-dozen bodies. His head was down, and he stared up at them with a menacing glare that burned with malevolence, even though the thing wasn’t really him.
Jamison Crow.
More to come...
