After spending most of the previous night approaching the city wall in stealth, they scale the wall and find themselves in the Dark City.
Despite gloom, the arctic darkness cannot conceal the horrors that lie within. Black spires and crumbling dwellings of shadow house nightmares to last a lifetime and the four crouch against the wall as they look for a place to hide and regroup. They sprint to a building that looks abandoned and hide inside to get their bearings and spy on their surroundings.
In the streets, bizarre and twisted fiends of sinister disposition walk though the snow and drive unfortunate slaves before them. Squads of sudaar of white, red and black hurry on patrol or on some errand for a fell master. Black-robed figures ride pallanquins carried by human skeletons while shivvering slave chain gangs and gibbering lunatics walk the streets. Just across the street a pair of black robed figures ride a cart drawn by a pair of diseased oxen- their cargo a score or more bodies in various states of decay. A trio of crooked-legged winter elves squat in a doorway and share a burning herb between them. The air itself is heavy with smoke, and decay and death, with an overtone of the acrid smell of an operating metalworks nearby.
But for all the traffic and activity, Calithil is an empty city, perhaps playing host to maybe a fifth of its capacity.
Savenia Loresong shudders. “I thought I grew up in hell, but I would happily return there if it meant never returning to this place.”
Mar’Khabazza nods in agreement and sends a silent prayer to the gods of thresholds and chance. “We need to find a route through the city that keeps us unseen, of course. But where are we going?”
Magnus says, “wherever we go, a god will be imprisoned in the biggest building in the city, don’t you think? We should head towards the middle and see if we can find something big and imposing.”
Mar’Khabazza heads outside to scout a way, melding with shadows and searching for a way between buildings that look unoccupied. He picks his way north, leading the rest in a counter clockwise direction around the city towards an empty-looking plaza. A passing patrol of winter elves sends the group scurrying into the closest building and as they stalk their way into a crumbling appartment building, they come across a human female crouched over a prone human male. Her hands rest lightly on his chest and she sems to be crying softly in the dark.
Ravenna is the fist to speak, “Hello lady, we mean you no harm.”
At first the woman is unresponsive, so deep is she in her sorrow, but she stirs eventyally and speaks. “The way you readily speak to strangers here- surely you are new to the city.”
Something about her moves Magnus to honesty and communication. “Yes. We are new here and could use help navigating this place. I am Magnus.”
She fusses in the dark, and quickly there is a small glow of a tiny candle. It illuminates the tear-streaked face of a northern woman by complexion. She is gaunt with starvation and hollow-eyed with nightmare. On her right cheek is a brand of a almond-shaped eye. “I am Nyssa and this is Shama, “she says pointing to the still figure with a hitch in her voice. “Was Shama. We are slaves to Gazith of Father Eye.”
“Who?” asks Ravenna.
“Father Eye,” she says as she points to the eye branded on her cheek. “One of the thirteen arcanguls of Az. Gazith is one of his Night Lords.”
Mar’Khabazza mutters, “She says this like it means anything to us,” and Magnus shushes him.
“Do you wish to flee this place with us?” asks Magnus.
“Of course!” she says. “But the wall demons will prevent me from leaving as long as I have this.”
They talk further and Nyssa reveals that the two “most important” buildings in Calithil are the palace and citadel. It is said that Az himself resided in the Palace of Calithil before he was banished while the citadel is much more the operational center. “If you are curious to know the origin of evil in the world, you would look no further than the palace, the citadel, the Tower of Sorcery and the Agony Fields.”
Mar’Khabazza is impatient to continue. “We will return for you to see about getting you out of here.” He gets up and leaves- a man on a mission.
The group pushes north, still working counter-clockwise through the city as they try to weave a path through the decay and squalor to reach the citadel in the town center, where they presume the God of Knowledge is being kept. They reach a sprawling graveyard of scattered headstones, partially collapsed crypts and snow covered tombs. In the center of the space is a tall black obelisk, thirty feet tall.
As they spy from the shadows, a feeling of dread covers them like a blanket as a side of the obelisk flashes a deep crimson and a gristly figure of a skeletal demon and his cohort of decaying animated skeletons steps out. They walk with purpose across the cemetery and disappear among the buildings as the dreadful feeling lifts.
Wanting no part of the cemetery the group skirts around it, stalking from building to building. By the lights in windows and smoke from chimneys, the buildings appear to be more inhabited, though by what is anyone’s guess.
Finally, crouzed in an alley across from a large blood-soaked arena defind by four large grandstands, they spy the Palace of Az, the Citadel of Calithil, and Tower of Sorcery. But they can go no further via stealth. Here the group remains for a span of several hours, watching traffic on the main roads circumnavigating the arena and the palace.
While not crowded, the road is certainly occupied. Body Carts drawn oxen and driven by sudaar and humans, winter elves in copper armor being led by others in spring copper finery. Winged demon birds the side of a child dart and weave and inhuman creatures from the darkest nightmare lumber, slither, and crawl in and out of the citadel itself. As they watch, a human slave stumbles from fatigue or illness, brushing into a seven foot tall skeletal creature and is struck down dead in the street, blood leaking from his crushed head into the slushy snow.
The foursome watch this for a while in dismay. Savenia says, “there’s no way we are sneaking into that place. No way at all.”
Ravenna and Mar’Khabazza confer and decide that brashness might work where stealth might not. With an air of confidence that he does not feel, and ignoring the horror that he does, Mar’Khabazza steps into the street looking for all the world like a man on a stroll. When no alarm is sounded, he is joined by Magnus, Ravenna and Savenia Loresong. In the snowy gloom they walk under the lee of the palace, past the Tower of Sorcery and up to the door of the citadel.
