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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3254311" data-attributes="member: 143">Heh, normally I post between 5-6 p.m. Pacific, but I'm home today, so here you go.  <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=":)" /> Book 2 takes us beyond the dungeon, but Rappan Athuk is still the "star" of the story, and the main focus for our plot. The boxed set provides more of a snapshot in time than a real plot, so I have fleshed out some of the elements therein to create a full setting. Camar is my own creation. Expect plot twists and unexpected curves ahead, as always.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> * * * * * The “Doomed Bastards” in the Dungeon of GravesBook 2Chapter 73THE SCARLET JEWELThe city of Camar was known as “The Scarlet Jewel,” from the way that the morning sun rising over the Great Eastern Sea shone upon the city’s red tile roofs in a blaze of glory.  Travelers said that the sight of a sunrise over Camar was an experience that changed you forever.  Residents of the city tended to scoff at such tales, but they happily took the gold that the travelers brought to their city.Camar sat adjacent to the mouth of the River Nalos, around a wide bay sheltered from the storms that frequently blew in off the sea five months out of twelve.  The city was arranged like a spiral staircase, rising up from the low ground near the bay, up onto a hill that rose up in a gentle slope to the northwest.  The top step of the stair was the High Quarter, looking down over the city, home to the estates of Camar’s noble families, and the palace of the Grand Duke.  The Gold Quarter was populated by those who made their business through the trading of wealth.  Gold didn’t literally pave the streets here, but by anyone’s reckoning there was more of the stuff—along with generous helpings of platinum, silver, jewels, and anything else of value to men—in the quarter’s vaults and counting houses than anywhere in the world.  The quarter also housed the Great Square, with the Cathedral of the Shining Father at one end, and the notorious Wall of Regret on the other.  The bodies hanging from the Wall were a constant presence, now, replaced by fresh corpses at a regular interval.  It was a sad counter to the majestic aura of the grand church, but the thousands who conducted business in the square learned to ignore the grim sight. The Trades Quarter bustled with almost as much activity as the Gold.  It was one of the oldest parts of the city, and in some places, the buildings were built in layers that had been added slowly over four or even five different centuries.  It was said that the craftsmen of Trades could manufacture any item known to man.  The city’s renown University was also located here, with five thousand students crowded into a campus tucked neatly into a niche along the city’s outer wall.  The Docks Quarter was as big as the rest of the city combined, sprawling out around the crescent shaped bay.  Ships from all over the world came into that bay during all but the very worst months of winter, disgorging people and goods from every nation known to the mapmakers of Camar, and occasionally from one that was not.  Four times in the city’s history the outer walls of the city had been extended outward, and four times a new flood of people had surged in to fill the space.  The Docks were a chaotic, crowded, dangerous, and lively place, and one hundred thousand people lived their entire lives here, sometimes never leaving the place from the moment they first drew breath, to the moment they took their last.  “Why leave?” diehard Dockers would ask.  Everything in the world that one could think of wanting could be found there. Licinius Varo, disguised as a swarthy Eremite sailor, might have been thinking the same thing as he made his way down Minter’s Alley, one of a thousand dingy, crowded back streets that twisted throughout the Docks.  A mule, loaded with covered wicker panniers, followed obediently behind him.  Off the main boulevards, where the Duke’s heavily-armed soldiers kept order, the city seemed like a different place entire, exotic and menacing.  A half-dozen back-alley merchants and toughs had challenged Varo since his entry.  The former lost interest when they saw the cut of his clothes and the lean lines of his face, while the latter took one look at the man’s eyes before deciding to look elsewhere for prey. He’d almost reached the end of the alley before he turned into a side passage so narrow and crowded with junk that a casual passerby would have probably missed it.  The mule followed along, its panniers scraping against the close walls.  The side-alley opened onto a tiny plaza.  Tired old buildings surrounded it, sagging inward so much that the sky was just a tiny square above.  Sounds echoed here; a shouted argument in a foreign language, the bawling of a child, the barking of a dog.  Varo saw what he was looking for.  The boy, barely in his teens by the look of him, was sitting in a recessed doorway, regarding him with a look that combined boredom with shrewd evaluation.  “Armides?”“Who’s askin’?” the boy said.  Varo leaned in, and whispered a name, so softly that no one but the boy could have heard.  His demeanor changed at once, and he sprang up, bringing both man and mule into the building so quickly that the place seemed to swallow them up.  Varo found himself in a dingy inside room lit only by a struggling tallow candle.  The boy efficiently started unloading the mule, laying the panniers out in a row on the dusty floor.  “What happened to Davos?” Varo asked.  “Taken,” the boy said, without interrupting his work.  Varo nodded.  It had been the same everywhere he’d checked since his arrived in Camar.  Bravik, Jathen, a dozen more names, all swept up in the Duke’s net.  Even Patrides, it seemed.  The first three safeholds he’d visited since arriving in Camar had been traps, exposed by the Duke and left to snare one such as him.  It seemed as though his own arrest and trial had only whetted the Duke’s appetite for squashing the cult of Dagos in his city. Worship of Dagos had always been frowned upon in Camar, where the tall spires of the Cathedral of the Shining Father dominated the city skyline.  But since the ascendancy of the current Grand Duke, those who served the entity commonly known as the Dark Creeper had been persecuted with more vigor, and more success than Varo would have liked to admit.  Those like him were expert at hiding in the shadows, but the Duke, it seemed had grown adept at seeing into the places where the Creepers liked to hide. It occurred to Varo that he was almost certainly the most powerful cleric of Dagos left alive within a thousand miles. The boy started to unlash the fastenings on one of the panniers, but Varo stopped him.  “Take the mule, do with it as you wish,” he said.  “Leave me alone here.”The boy nodded obediently and departed with the creature, closing the door behind him. It took Varo about a minute to find and open the secret door; the building had settled some, it seemed, straining the mechanism.  When he finally got it open, it revealed a staircase that dropped precipitously into darkness below. Leaving the candle, Varo took out the stub of wood that still bore Aelos’s continual flame upon its end.  He tucked the stick into his belt, leaving his hands free.  It took him several trips and a bull’s strength spell to get the panniers into the lower chamber, but he managed it. The underground chamber showed no signs of intrusion, but Varo had no intention of remaining here.  If the Duke had penetrated the cult to the extent of seizing Patrides, then none of their secrets were safe.  There was an entrance here to the sewers that ran under the city, but while that might make him harder to find, it was hardly security.  The Dark Guild ruled the undercity, and while they shared a hatred of the Duke with the Creepers, they welcomed no one into their realm. He piled his cargo in the middle of the room, and opened one of the cases.  The preparation for the ritual took about twenty minutes, and ended with Varo sketching a series of designs upon the floor with a slab of chalk.  That was followed by a more careful application of powdered silver from a tiny bag he carried.  When it was done, there were two circles upon the floor, one containing Varo and his gear, and the other empty.This course, while necessary, was not without risks of its own.  If Patrides had somehow been coopted—difficult, but possible given the resources apparently commanded by the Duke—then the final safehold might have already been compromised.  But if that was the case, then he was finished anyway.  He could have fled the city; the length of the Duke’s reach was limited, and there were those who looked to Dagos in other lands.  But there was no time.  He’d felt the sands falling through the hourglass in his thoughts since leaving Rappan Athuk, and he often wondered if he was already too late.Making an effort, he calmed his thoughts.  The last time he had been in a place like this, he had not had sufficient power to complete the ritual.  Patrides had shown him, though, had given him the knowledge that he would need later.  Had he known, what would befall him and his kin?  Varo squelched that thought as well, locking it in a box within his mind.  He needed his full concentration to focus upon the ritual.  What he was doing was easier due to the preparation of those who had come before him, but it was not simple by any definition of the word.  The words had been etched into his memory, and came at his call.  He had to sacrifice a good part of his spell power, and a small bit of his own personal power as well, to fuel the ritual.  It took less time than Varo had expected, the power surging in answer to his summons.  Looking up, he saw that he had been successful.  “I seek entry into the Farthest Hold, by the terms of our compact,” he said. You are the last, the slaad said, its deep croaks overlaid with meaning as the creature’s words echoed in his mind.  Your kin have fallen, one by one.  Your time grows short upon this world, mortal.Varo met the creature’s alien gaze calmly.  “That is true of all men,” he said.  “I may be the last, but you are still bound to obey.  I will command you if necessary, but you need only comply.  Open the way, and I will presume upon your time no further.”Your master compels me, the slaad’s voice sounded in his head.  I will comply...And then everything swirled around Varo, and he was enfolded in a chaotic surge of power that blacked out everything, including his awareness.A heartbeat later, the hidden chamber was empty once more.</blockquote>

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