The Liberation of Tenh (updated April 24)
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Patchwall 22, CY 593
82—Consolation prizes so rarely do.
Jespo Crim is inconsolable. He returns from Chendl after a week-long absence, looking even more miserable than when he left. Gwendolyn is the first to see him, and when confronted by his wretched countenance, she softens and becomes almost tender. She leads him into the sun-room, where Prisantha and Heydricus are having a quiet meal together.
“Jespo!” Heydricus jumps up. “We missed you . . . say, where’s the little lady?”
Jespo cries.
“Um.” Heydricus puts his hands on his hips, and looks courageous.
“Oh, Jespo, Whatever is the matter?” Prisantha asks. She stands up and takes Jespo’s arm, patting his hand.
Gwendolyn turns away from the sobbing conjurer and coughs into her hand, then mutters the somatic component to a detect thoughts spell. After a moment, her eyes widen and she covers her mouth.
“Did the resurrection not take, Jespo?” Heydricus asks with a worldly air.
“No, no.” Jespo says. “The resurrection went well. Too well.” Jespo cries again.
“Um, okay.” Heydricus is not one to surrender in the face of either death or enigma. “How can someone be too alive?”
Jespo looks up, his bleary red eyes pleading for understanding. “When she . . . when . . . well, when he was ressurected, the spell undid a certain curse.”
At this, Heydricus squints suspiciously, but Gwendolyn only nods. “Go on, Crim,” she says.
Jespo is warming to the story, his upper lip growing stiffer by the moment. “His name is Redgar, and he is a man. He’s always been a man, but he’s been under a curse. Something to do with trying on a girdle, in a witch’s lair.”
Heydricus gapes, Prisantha’s nose twitches, and Gwendolyn nods. No one laughs, except for Lucius, who until now was lurking unseen in the doorway. Heydricus shoots him a warning glare.
“You’re just unlucky in love, Jespo.” Heydricus puts his arm around the smaller man. “Maybe next time, kid.” Heydricus considers chucking Jespo’s chin, then decides it would be too much.
“So, is your wedding off?” Prisantha ventures.
“Of course it’s off!” Jespo blusters. “He’s a man!”
“Well, men and men get married all the time,” Gwendolyn says. “And men who were women but are now men again, or vice versa.”
“They do?” Jespo says.
“Really?” Prisantha asks incredulously.
Gwendolyn rolls her eyes. “Don’t be so provincial. Of course they do.”
Heydricus crosses his arms and arches his eyebrows meaningfully. “So, was he . . . you know, a big fella?”
Jespo starts. “Well, I don’t . . . I wouldn’t know. What does that have to do with anything?”
“So who was the cow, and who was the milkmaid?” Lucius asks. “Before.”
“Well.” Jespo sniffs. “We were going to be married first.”
Gwendolyn is determined to find the Bright Side. “You know, Jespo, you could always just wish her back. Or wish yourself into a woman, if you’d rather.”
“Well, I’d rather not!”
Gwendolyn shrugs. “What did Regda say when you talked to her?”
“Redgar,” Lucius corrects her. “It’s a boy fighter.”
“He said that he was sorry, and that he wished that I’d never found out. That he liked being a woman, but it wasn’t meant to be. He said that did love me, and that it was his fault, and nothing to do with me.”
Lucius rolls his eyes.
“He wanted us to be friends,” Jespo says. “I told him I didn’t know if . . .” he begins to sob again.
“Oh, Jespo,” Gwen says. “I’m sure Prisantha here would be happy to wish him back into the old Redga.”
“Hell, you could make her better looking!” Heydricus interjects.
Gwendolyn narrows her eyes. Prisantha elbows him.
“I don’t want her back,” Jespo says. “It isn’t about the curse, it’s about the lying.”
Prisantha and Gwendolyn murmur agreement.
“No,” Lucius says slowly. “It’s about the money. Look at you, the lot of you—clucking like barnyard hens,” Lucius says. “F-ck your principles, where’s your stuff, Crim? All the magic items you crafted for her?”
“Well, he has them, of course,”
“’Of course’, hell! Why don’t you straighten up and act like a Liberator? Thrommel robbed you blind, and now this lying, cheating fraud of a woman is going to do the same?” Lucius moves very close to Jespo. “Look, I’ll help you get your stuff back. I think somebody should pay for this, and I think you do too.”
-----
Jespo is packed off to his room with several cups of mulled wine, and a very soothing illusion originally crafted by Gwendolyn for when Belvor couldn’t sleep. After Pris and Gwen lead Jespo away, Heydricus confronts the assassin.
“Lucius, I don’t like you tearing into Crim like that.”
Lucius laughs and walks away. Over his shoulder, he says, “Lighten up, Heydricus, your own f-cking angel called him a pussy.”
-----
Despite his recriminatory words, or perhaps in support of them, Lucius takes Jespo under his wing, and over the next few days shadows the wizard everywhere, shepherding him from one drinking-hole to the next. The selection of locations in Nevond Nevnend for soul-rending alcohol binges isn’t what it was during the height of the Stonefister occupation, but Lucius has a local ace-in-the-hole; a grizzled dwarven ex-soldier, ex-adventurer, ex-a-lot-of-things by the name of Hastur.
Initially, Hastur is paid to keep an eye on the supremely drunken (and supremely rich) wizard during his “grieving process” in the gutters of the shattered Tenh capital. Over time, Hastur and Jespo develop a mutual fondness based on crushing self-pity and bitter regret.
Jespo wears a lot of black.
-----
Lucius scouts Wintershiven as requested, and gathers intelligence on the Pholtan splinter-sect. Or, to be precise, he hires out the job, and spends the rest of the time in Stoink, cross-checking Elenthal and C’min’s information, and making contacts of his own. In short, he establishes a coven of interested business leaders, rogues, thieves and thugs, and sets himself above them all. He instructs them on how to organize themselves, and assures them that when the time comes, they will be called upon to Run the City.
That settled, he returns to Wintershiven, de-briefs his informants, kills a few Pholtans, and returns (via teleportation) to Nevond Nevnend.
“Tau’s story checks out,” he reports. “But no one knows much else. It was a slow month.”
-----
“Are you really a conjurer?” Lucius isn’t drunk, although he is pretending to be. Jespo is drunk, a state that he has spent most of his time in since his return from Chendl. The two Liberators are sitting on the bench outside Jespo’s favorite watering-hole, drinking the house bitters from dirty mugs and watching the first snowfall of the year. “I mean, really?”
Jespo stiffens, and sits up straight. “I am, in fact, the Dean of Conjuration at the Willip Wizard’s Community College.”
“I didn’t ask about your job, Jespo. I asked if you were actually a conjurer. Do you specialize in conjuration magic or not?”
Jespo squints. This seems like a fairly personal question, and one that flirts entirely too close to the border between what non-wizards are allowed to know and what they are not regarding the Craft. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question,” Jespo lies. “In my career, I have made a specialty of summonings, yes.”
“That’s not what I asked, Crim, and you know it.” Lucius leans forward. “Are you or are you not barred from other schools of magic?”
“Well. As you know, I do not cast spells of the evocation type.”
“But could you?”
Jespo sighs. “I suppose I could.”
Lucius rolls his eyes. This gesture of disrespect provokes a startling reaction from the frail wizard. Jespo seems to deflate almost two full sizes, his chesty braggadocio evaporating.
“Then why don’t you, Crim?”
“There are more . . . well. Subtlety is vital to the practice of wizardry.”
“No, seriously, Jespo. You spend most of your spell-casting time killing people, or trying your damndest to do so. I know because I’m there. Explain to me where subtlety enters in to that picture.” Lucius is sneering now, reducing Jespo a sheath of flaccid skin dangling from bone. “Do I look stupid, Crim? Do I look like Regda?”
Jespo’s eyes moisten. “No, you do not,” he mutters, his eyes on his hands.
Lucius continues. “Then don’t f-cking lie to me. Why don’t you cast evocations?”
Jespo is whispering. “I . . . I’m frightened of them. When I was an apprentice, I set my familiar on fire with a botched burning hands. That was the first Fräs, you never knew her. My master had her regenerated, but . . .”
“What happened to that familiar, Crim?”
“She died in the Temple.”
“She burned to death, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And it was the best thing to ever happen to you. You should have been issued a sack with rocks in it when you graduated to wizard. Now look here, I know you’ve had a hard life—but your life ain’t got nothin’ on mine, are we agreed?”
“I suppose,”
“’I suppose’ is a pussy way to say ‘no’, Crim. Do you or do you not think that my life has been six shades of trouble?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then do you or do you not think that I know a thing or two about a thing or two about pulling your own ass out of a fire?”
“I . . . I do.”
“Good. Then trust me on this one. I’ve arranged for a real mentor for you, Jespo. His name is Nystul. He’s a very famous man, and he could probably take out Prisantha’s candy-ass wizard’s academy single handed. He’s agreed to teach you evocations, Jespo, and you’re going to learn them and say thank you.”
“I don’t think . . .”
“A smart wizard says, ‘thank you.’ Say it.”
Jespo looks down. “Thank you.”
“Good. We go to Chendl tomorrow, you start your training, and when you’re finished we’re going to get your goddamned stuff back.” Lucius stands up. “Stop crying, Crim, makes you look like a woman. Besides, I just put you on the winning side. If I were you, I’d be whistlin’ like a halfling.” Lucius leans in close to Jespo’s ear. “And a smart wizard keeps his mouth shut about where he’s going.”
82—Consolation prizes so rarely do.
Jespo Crim is inconsolable. He returns from Chendl after a week-long absence, looking even more miserable than when he left. Gwendolyn is the first to see him, and when confronted by his wretched countenance, she softens and becomes almost tender. She leads him into the sun-room, where Prisantha and Heydricus are having a quiet meal together.
“Jespo!” Heydricus jumps up. “We missed you . . . say, where’s the little lady?”
Jespo cries.
“Um.” Heydricus puts his hands on his hips, and looks courageous.
“Oh, Jespo, Whatever is the matter?” Prisantha asks. She stands up and takes Jespo’s arm, patting his hand.
Gwendolyn turns away from the sobbing conjurer and coughs into her hand, then mutters the somatic component to a detect thoughts spell. After a moment, her eyes widen and she covers her mouth.
“Did the resurrection not take, Jespo?” Heydricus asks with a worldly air.
“No, no.” Jespo says. “The resurrection went well. Too well.” Jespo cries again.
“Um, okay.” Heydricus is not one to surrender in the face of either death or enigma. “How can someone be too alive?”
Jespo looks up, his bleary red eyes pleading for understanding. “When she . . . when . . . well, when he was ressurected, the spell undid a certain curse.”
At this, Heydricus squints suspiciously, but Gwendolyn only nods. “Go on, Crim,” she says.
Jespo is warming to the story, his upper lip growing stiffer by the moment. “His name is Redgar, and he is a man. He’s always been a man, but he’s been under a curse. Something to do with trying on a girdle, in a witch’s lair.”
Heydricus gapes, Prisantha’s nose twitches, and Gwendolyn nods. No one laughs, except for Lucius, who until now was lurking unseen in the doorway. Heydricus shoots him a warning glare.
“You’re just unlucky in love, Jespo.” Heydricus puts his arm around the smaller man. “Maybe next time, kid.” Heydricus considers chucking Jespo’s chin, then decides it would be too much.
“So, is your wedding off?” Prisantha ventures.
“Of course it’s off!” Jespo blusters. “He’s a man!”
“Well, men and men get married all the time,” Gwendolyn says. “And men who were women but are now men again, or vice versa.”
“They do?” Jespo says.
“Really?” Prisantha asks incredulously.
Gwendolyn rolls her eyes. “Don’t be so provincial. Of course they do.”
Heydricus crosses his arms and arches his eyebrows meaningfully. “So, was he . . . you know, a big fella?”
Jespo starts. “Well, I don’t . . . I wouldn’t know. What does that have to do with anything?”
“So who was the cow, and who was the milkmaid?” Lucius asks. “Before.”
“Well.” Jespo sniffs. “We were going to be married first.”
Gwendolyn is determined to find the Bright Side. “You know, Jespo, you could always just wish her back. Or wish yourself into a woman, if you’d rather.”
“Well, I’d rather not!”
Gwendolyn shrugs. “What did Regda say when you talked to her?”
“Redgar,” Lucius corrects her. “It’s a boy fighter.”
“He said that he was sorry, and that he wished that I’d never found out. That he liked being a woman, but it wasn’t meant to be. He said that did love me, and that it was his fault, and nothing to do with me.”
Lucius rolls his eyes.
“He wanted us to be friends,” Jespo says. “I told him I didn’t know if . . .” he begins to sob again.
“Oh, Jespo,” Gwen says. “I’m sure Prisantha here would be happy to wish him back into the old Redga.”
“Hell, you could make her better looking!” Heydricus interjects.
Gwendolyn narrows her eyes. Prisantha elbows him.
“I don’t want her back,” Jespo says. “It isn’t about the curse, it’s about the lying.”
Prisantha and Gwendolyn murmur agreement.
“No,” Lucius says slowly. “It’s about the money. Look at you, the lot of you—clucking like barnyard hens,” Lucius says. “F-ck your principles, where’s your stuff, Crim? All the magic items you crafted for her?”
“Well, he has them, of course,”
“’Of course’, hell! Why don’t you straighten up and act like a Liberator? Thrommel robbed you blind, and now this lying, cheating fraud of a woman is going to do the same?” Lucius moves very close to Jespo. “Look, I’ll help you get your stuff back. I think somebody should pay for this, and I think you do too.”
-----
Jespo is packed off to his room with several cups of mulled wine, and a very soothing illusion originally crafted by Gwendolyn for when Belvor couldn’t sleep. After Pris and Gwen lead Jespo away, Heydricus confronts the assassin.
“Lucius, I don’t like you tearing into Crim like that.”
Lucius laughs and walks away. Over his shoulder, he says, “Lighten up, Heydricus, your own f-cking angel called him a pussy.”
-----
Despite his recriminatory words, or perhaps in support of them, Lucius takes Jespo under his wing, and over the next few days shadows the wizard everywhere, shepherding him from one drinking-hole to the next. The selection of locations in Nevond Nevnend for soul-rending alcohol binges isn’t what it was during the height of the Stonefister occupation, but Lucius has a local ace-in-the-hole; a grizzled dwarven ex-soldier, ex-adventurer, ex-a-lot-of-things by the name of Hastur.
Initially, Hastur is paid to keep an eye on the supremely drunken (and supremely rich) wizard during his “grieving process” in the gutters of the shattered Tenh capital. Over time, Hastur and Jespo develop a mutual fondness based on crushing self-pity and bitter regret.
Jespo wears a lot of black.
-----
Lucius scouts Wintershiven as requested, and gathers intelligence on the Pholtan splinter-sect. Or, to be precise, he hires out the job, and spends the rest of the time in Stoink, cross-checking Elenthal and C’min’s information, and making contacts of his own. In short, he establishes a coven of interested business leaders, rogues, thieves and thugs, and sets himself above them all. He instructs them on how to organize themselves, and assures them that when the time comes, they will be called upon to Run the City.
That settled, he returns to Wintershiven, de-briefs his informants, kills a few Pholtans, and returns (via teleportation) to Nevond Nevnend.
“Tau’s story checks out,” he reports. “But no one knows much else. It was a slow month.”
-----
“Are you really a conjurer?” Lucius isn’t drunk, although he is pretending to be. Jespo is drunk, a state that he has spent most of his time in since his return from Chendl. The two Liberators are sitting on the bench outside Jespo’s favorite watering-hole, drinking the house bitters from dirty mugs and watching the first snowfall of the year. “I mean, really?”
Jespo stiffens, and sits up straight. “I am, in fact, the Dean of Conjuration at the Willip Wizard’s Community College.”
“I didn’t ask about your job, Jespo. I asked if you were actually a conjurer. Do you specialize in conjuration magic or not?”
Jespo squints. This seems like a fairly personal question, and one that flirts entirely too close to the border between what non-wizards are allowed to know and what they are not regarding the Craft. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question,” Jespo lies. “In my career, I have made a specialty of summonings, yes.”
“That’s not what I asked, Crim, and you know it.” Lucius leans forward. “Are you or are you not barred from other schools of magic?”
“Well. As you know, I do not cast spells of the evocation type.”
“But could you?”
Jespo sighs. “I suppose I could.”
Lucius rolls his eyes. This gesture of disrespect provokes a startling reaction from the frail wizard. Jespo seems to deflate almost two full sizes, his chesty braggadocio evaporating.
“Then why don’t you, Crim?”
“There are more . . . well. Subtlety is vital to the practice of wizardry.”
“No, seriously, Jespo. You spend most of your spell-casting time killing people, or trying your damndest to do so. I know because I’m there. Explain to me where subtlety enters in to that picture.” Lucius is sneering now, reducing Jespo a sheath of flaccid skin dangling from bone. “Do I look stupid, Crim? Do I look like Regda?”
Jespo’s eyes moisten. “No, you do not,” he mutters, his eyes on his hands.
Lucius continues. “Then don’t f-cking lie to me. Why don’t you cast evocations?”
Jespo is whispering. “I . . . I’m frightened of them. When I was an apprentice, I set my familiar on fire with a botched burning hands. That was the first Fräs, you never knew her. My master had her regenerated, but . . .”
“What happened to that familiar, Crim?”
“She died in the Temple.”
“She burned to death, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And it was the best thing to ever happen to you. You should have been issued a sack with rocks in it when you graduated to wizard. Now look here, I know you’ve had a hard life—but your life ain’t got nothin’ on mine, are we agreed?”
“I suppose,”
“’I suppose’ is a pussy way to say ‘no’, Crim. Do you or do you not think that my life has been six shades of trouble?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then do you or do you not think that I know a thing or two about a thing or two about pulling your own ass out of a fire?”
“I . . . I do.”
“Good. Then trust me on this one. I’ve arranged for a real mentor for you, Jespo. His name is Nystul. He’s a very famous man, and he could probably take out Prisantha’s candy-ass wizard’s academy single handed. He’s agreed to teach you evocations, Jespo, and you’re going to learn them and say thank you.”
“I don’t think . . .”
“A smart wizard says, ‘thank you.’ Say it.”
Jespo looks down. “Thank you.”
“Good. We go to Chendl tomorrow, you start your training, and when you’re finished we’re going to get your goddamned stuff back.” Lucius stands up. “Stop crying, Crim, makes you look like a woman. Besides, I just put you on the winning side. If I were you, I’d be whistlin’ like a halfling.” Lucius leans in close to Jespo’s ear. “And a smart wizard keeps his mouth shut about where he’s going.”
Because in a fantasy world with all kinds of shapechangers, men marrying men (or in this case men marrying women who are really men) really isn't that odd.
Great update, it should be interesting to see what old Jespo can do with some blasty spells from Nystul. Lucius is right being afraid of your own spells really isn't very becoming of a Liberator. Did any of the players see the Regda/Regar thing comming? Definately a laugh out loud moment.
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