Gale's tale
Session 25
We start our mission against the Kell Guild by requesting a capable partner from the Flinter police stations. As we are handed a list of candidates, we find one familiar name and decide to hire Miggs Maloney for the job. Regarding the 50 officers we'd like to use as strike force, we plan to recruit them from all offices in Flint, so we get wider variety of local knowledge and contacts.
As the king declares the attack on the royal carriage to be high treason committed by the Kell Guild, this means we have pretty free reigns in how to proceed from there. We use the next time to gather even more information from our various sources, including the police and our smaller criminal contacts. It turns out that the Kell-cancer has already spread very far in Flint and the Guild entertains at least smaller hideouts or enterprises in almost every district of the city. We find that the most remarkable ones are the “Black Rose” brothel, the “Mermaid” bath house, the “Sunset Beach” casino, the “Grandiose” fish market and the “Den of Thieves”.
For the higher-ups, we get the names Hammerton (who we already knew to be the contact of the fake reporter), “Knife” who's said to be a refined assassin, “Meat Hook” who's more like the opposite of refined, “Spinning Wheel”, a slender man, and the “Consultant” who's managing the Guild's finances. We also find archived reports about a man named “Fishing Schubert”, an ex-member who dropped out of the Guild some time ago and who's said to have found refuge in the Cloudwood.
We decide that we'd need even more information before we conduct our first strike against the Guild which is why we'll try to observe, capture and question a few of the lower ranks. Also, we try to establish contacts within the local newspapers as we plan to get them to publish articles about the accusation of high treason and the successes of our first raids. This way, we hope to get the people of Flint on our side and let them feel like everything's in good and capable hands. After all, the Kells have crossed a line and we'll do our best to show them the swift justice of the Flint officials.
So we head to the fish market and see that there are hawkers on the streets trying to sell red scarves. We can only guess that these people were tasked by the guild to either incite sympathy or additional disguises for their members and they also don't seem to be guild regulars. We observe the fish market for a while, find one easy target, capture him, question him in a side alley and then wipe his memory of the event. The man didn't know too much, but we learn that this market is meant to launder money and spread information.
Next, Carlyle suggests that we pay prosecutor Starke a visit as we'd like to get his office on board. After all, massive strikes against the Kells will most likely lead to a big number of charges against the guild's members. So we'd better warn the good man that there's an influx of work on the horizon.
When we tell Starke about our mission and our planned strikes against the Kells, Starke is immediately on board. After a while, it seems as if the mission is a pretty personal matter for the prosecutor. When Auryn asks him whether this might have anything to do with a certain event regarding his deceased wife, Starke cannot hold back his tears any longer and he vows to not repeat the very same mistakes he did when he was a much younger man.
“This time, we'll make them pay. We'll round them up and bring them to justice” Carlyle says and he promises Starke that once this is over, he'll finally be able to find peace.
We suggest that his office might produce a standard form for witnesses and drop-outs to minimalize the hurdles for those who'd like to support our effort. Last but not least, we ask Starke about his son's whereabouts. The prosecutor explains that Tyler is doing fine and that he's working on a career as a pianist. He thanks us again for this chance for a new start for both him and his son.
(What a great opportunity to continue the Starke story thread. That guy is one of my favorite "minor recurring characters" and we're glad to be of help to him with all the tragedies surrounding his life)
Then we head to Cloudwood to visit the artist's enclave and try to talk to one of Renard Woodman's contacts. We guess that, if Fishing Schubert fled here, he'd most likely have contacts within the bandits and these guys still owe us a favor for saving Morena. In the enclave, we find a half-elven dancer who's very sympathetic towards Auryn and who leads us to our friendly neighborhood raven druid. We explain our issues to druid and companion and he promises to search for Fishing Schubert and send us a raven should he have news for us.
(Considering the fact that the raven was eyeing Carlyle constantly, we're pretty sure that the avian won't pay him a visit though. Birdie surely doesn't want to be put in a closet again)
As we're already in Cloudwood and Auryn didn't get a response from Gale yet, she decides to take a detour and visit the elusive Eladrin's meeting point, hoping to find her or her letter by chance. Fortunately, Hana is currently relaxing by the riverside, so Auryn takes the opportunity to ask her about her message and the contents of Gale's last letter which she really couldn't wrap her head around.
(Auryn and Gale/Hana are sending each other messages in irregular intervals. She had naturally been “quiet” during her mission abroad and then messaged Gale about having a young student, Isobel, who didn't know too much about Elfaivar so she'd like to know whether her enclave and Gale's home would share the same system, traditions and beliefs)
Gale is quite surprised to see the two of us, but nonetheless says that, regarding her letter, she wasn't really born in an enclave. At least not the kind of enclave Auryn had in mind. She is a bit hesitant to tell Auryn that she was, in fact, born as a daughter of one of “the king's” wives. She then managed to flee from her home when she was a young woman. Auryn stares at Hana is disbelief at her revelation and though she had seen evidence pointing to one or two mad kings being still alive, she's still shocked to see that evidence confirmed by a living witness.
Auryn says that now she finally understands Hana's skepticism towards Elfaivar. The eladrin continues the tale of her restless journey through Elfaivar: After a while she finally found a place that welcomed her, an enclave named Sentosa, led by the matriarch Athryalla Valanar. She explains that she could finally find some rest there, living without the constant fear of being pursued by the king's agents. The people there treated her well, but there were aspects of the city that just felt wrong and reminded her of the place she fled from, including the institution of the Anata Paudha, a place where the enclave's citizens could satisfy their sexual desires.
Auryn says that there isn't much wrong with a place where younglings can share their first experiences or where men can signal that they are interested in a brief encounter. Hana stops her thought there and says that it is more like a kind of service performed by some women of the enclave and that every man of the enclave has the right to spend one night there, something that's more akin to a sanctified brothel. Now that hits Auryn like a nasty low blow and she cannot really believe that a matriarch would ever allow customs like this. She explains that no man shall ever be entitled to sleeping with a woman and that men who cannot control their urges shall be exiled from any true enclave as they'd violate the basis of respect and cooperation every enclave is built upon. Being with a woman, she says, is a privilege that has to be earned and given individually.
Hana lauds Auryn for her spirited speech and then asks her about her own home and views. Auryn tells her a bit about the customs of Pallita and then adds that she'd have to change quite a bit in her own enclave as she knows that most of the remaining veterans will die during her lifetime, thus normalizing the ratio of eladrin men and women. She herself might either be one of the last matriarchs to have multiple husbands or one of the first to marry only one. She'd also value the lives of her sons as much as those of her daughters as all children will be most precious in the times to come.
Hana seeems quite interested in Auryn's plans and philosophy. She says that maybe she could consider settling down in a place like hers one day. She adds that she'd love to meet young Isobel once her name has been cleared and she's free to enter the city of Flint again. Regarding Elik, she promises to keep looking for him and says that she'll send us her messenger canary should she get news on this matter.
Then the two women exchange their farewells and Auryn... suddenly realizes that she completely forgot Carlyle in the process. The latter looks utterly aghast at her as if he just witnessed something truly unreal. He says that he didn't understand a single word besides 'Elik' and adds that this would not be too relevant as the two women clearly needed some private time.
„But this... this was just embarassing. Besides, after I told you everything I... thought you'd stop keeping secrets from me.“ he says, utterly disappointed with the whole situation.
Auryn apologizes for not telling him earlier about having more to discuss with Gale than just Elik. She just forgot she didn't tell him about her correspondence with her pen friend and also never thought it'd be relevant. She didn't mean to exclude him from any important secret, even if there are obviously topics that are rather intimate and she's pretty sure that he wouldn't wish to discuss all of his private correspondence with Lord Vantrys either.
Regarding Gale, she just hoped to broaden her knowledge about elfaivaran traditions as she doesn't want to teach anything too niche to Isobel. She also thought her to be a good source of information regarding her own “problem“ as maybe other enclaves would have different views on marriage. She surely didn't expect Gale to tell such a disturbing story and she confesses that she's still feeling sick thinking about it.
Now Carlyle still doesn't understand why Auryn would be so devastated and so he asks her to maybe clear up that "mad kings" matter for him. Auryn slowly calms down a bit and explains that the mad kings were those Lords of Elfaivar who refused to accept the new circumstances after the Fall of Srasama. They started an all-out war against everyone who was lucky enough to have one or more women left insider their territory and tried to claim them as their wives at any cost. Auryn says that tales about the kings were told as horror stories when she was a child, and as a warning about what happens when leaders forsake both dignity and duty.
The kings turning out to be real and alive, as well as Gale's descriptions of an abominable institution in an enclave led by a matriarch are both facts that are hard to swallow for her. Facts that place serious doubts in her mind, thus weakening her faith in the possibility of a unified Elfaivar.
„What if everything they told me wasn't true at all? What if we and our way are a mere minority? Then what was I training, what was I fighting for?“ she asks, seeming unnaturally insecure.
Carlyle responds that she shouldn't draw too hasty conclusions. Instead, he suggests that she could finally take her days off and pay her old home a visit. After all, she'd be the best person to judge the situation in Elfaivar, being both an investigator and a canny diplomat. He then quickly adds that he could also warm up to the thought of teleporting her, so she won't have to take the long trip through the inner sea. Now that just sounds like a fine plan for Auryn.
(To be honest, the whole Gale affair escalated so much because of me making the mistake of actually forgetting to tell Carlyle about the visit despite the fact that I had originally planned to keep him up with Isobel's training. I felt a bit like in a hurry and then got excited to hear that she was truly at the riverside and... there we were.
Auryn didn't ask Gale about her time in Danor or about what happened after Sentosa yet because she knows how straining these topics can be. She was barely able to talk about Fordren a few years after her rescue and she'd been imprisoned for "only" about a year or two. Gale, on the other hand, had been a trophy wife for 100 years.
Also, she's really opinionated when it comes to the enclaves and her traditions. She knows that she has to change things and she adapted to risuri culture and customs to some degree, but she's still biased and sees everything through the lens of a matriarch's daughter – which led to a pretty funny exchange with Aodhan during their preparations for the conference. So, both the Kings and the Anata Paudha are perversions in her eyes which have no place in a modern Elfaivar.
And this was only one of the first incidents that started gnawing at her sanity during adventure 5.)
