While waiting for the sudaar raid, Magnus discovers he can read the hodgepodge script of the Sudaar. He begins translating the journals of the sudar shaman from the river valley. (link to journal entries)
October 25, 7761
In the morning darkness, scouts posted on the north hills sound the alarm as sudaar are spotted to the north of the city. It’s a force of three score sudaar how have materialized seemingly out of thin air and they charge headlong into the city guard encampment. The sudaar force is massed at a collection of buildings with a coppersmith at the eastern flank and are holelessly outnumbered by the entrenched city watch.
“How did the sudaar get past the rangers on the road? How is this the first we are seeing any sign of them?” wonders Magnus aloud, but the thoughts are fleeting as he rushes to engage.
The sudaar try to break through the line but the charge bogs down. They try a flanking maneuver around the coppersmith and Mar’Khabazza, Ravenna and Magnus rush in to engage, slowing the advance down long enough for a squad guards to form up and contain the flanking maneuver. As this assault is mopping up, the troupe sees fires burning from the southwestern part of the city near the Ranger’s Road.
Deciding that this was a feint by the Sudaar to draw the watch away to the north, the group splits up: Ravenna and Magnus retreat to the Salt House in an attempt to seek succor for their wounds while Mar’Khabazza rushes to the aid of the rangers as the southwest part of town begins to burn. As he heads southwestwards, he sees the library burning to the east so changes his course. He gathers a force of rangers and rushes east while Ravenna and Magnus change direction and run straight to the library.
At their arrival, they see that the library is beseiged by black and white sudaar and two khopesh-wielding winter elves. The defenders include members of the Sept of the Serpent: Justiciar Trueheart, Merajit the Alchemist, Savenia Loresong. They are holding fast with some of the city guard against the attackers while defending the librarians who are using strange whips to beat out fires that are starting along the peremiter of the building- the black sudaar are flinging bombs of alchemical fire against the library which burn yellow and orange in the morning gloom.
Mar’Khabazza attacks one force led by one of the winter elves while Magnus and Ravenna move into position to ambush the other winter elf who is assaulting the library from the rear. Mar’Khabazza attacks the winter elf but is laid low by a single blow from his black-glass khopesh. His wouund would certainly have been mortal if not for the quick aid of the rangers fighting at his side.
Ravenna unleashes a fury of fireballs and kills many sudaar. Magnus, Savenia Loresong, Muriel Trueheart, (wielding a broadsword to great effect) and guardsmen kill the winter elf that wounded Mar’Khabazza and recover his sword. (Mar’KHabazza would eventually claim it as a trophy for the Salt House.) The fighting is fiercest at the front of the library but the numbers are with the defenders and though the roof of the library catches and some books inside are charred from a suicidal charge by a bomb-flinging black sudaar, the library is saved.
As the sickly dawn gloom illuminates the glacial valley, the troupe, members of the Sept of the Serpent and the librarians survey the damage.
Ravenna asks Lorekeeper Mykos, the head librarian, about the building and its contents.
Mykos says, “we have been guarding the Library for as long as Opal has been here and I am the third Head Librarian in these fifty years.” He rubs his temples with soot-smudged hands in frustration. “We have been tending to the Library but still don’t know or have categorized its entire contents as some of the content is beyond our ability to translate. The earliest explorers of the Upheaval recorded that the building was here in the wilderness before Opal was founded, and before the Duergar, and I think that it predates the Upheaval and somehow survived it.”
Ravenna also challenges Muriel Trueheart, Merajit and Savenia Loresong about their presence here, but she is rebuffed by the Justiciar. “This is not the time, Ravenna. This is not the place.” But Ravenna persists and convinces the Sept to come to dinner at the Salt House to talk about the Library.
From the slain winter elf and sudaar forces, the troupe finds map sheets that, when linked together, show a single spot in the void from which radiates four pathways to gates presumably through which the three forces were able to arrive near Opal undetected.
October 26, 7761
Members of the Sept arrive for dinner. Masha and Lotwil Variatus bring them in and seat them. Present are Savenia Loresong, Postmaster Malowne, Judiciar Muriel Trueheart and Merajit the Alchemist.
Muriel Trueheart opens the conversation. “The Sept of the Serpent is the worst kept secret in Opal. Our true purpose is that we are disciples of Faylin, the Stern Teacher, Lady of Magic and Knowledge and are comitted to preserving her memory. She went silent millenea ago, but her legacy has been maintained in buildings like this throughout the Empire. No one knows why these buildings exist and why the sudaar wanted this one burned. But we do know this building survived the Upheaval.”
Referencing the shaman’s jounal, Magnus and Mar’Khabazza ask about the reference to Pale Night. Trueheart smiles dismissively at this. “Pale Night is a phantom, like the boogeyman used to scare children into eating their porriage. Legends say that Pale Night somehow ‘hid the stars’. The only light overhead at night is the moon Kedi and the ruins of Evet. But most scholars agree that there have never been a thing called “stars” in the night sky.”
Frustrated by the vague non-answers in this conversation, Ravenna asks to become a librarian herself. She wants direct access to the knowledge contained within the Library’s walls and Trueheart agrees to arrange for her authorization by council edict in the coming days.
October 27, 7761
In an ongoing attempt to learn more about House Rinj’i and House Bates, rather than assault them directly, the troupe decides to look into their allies. Mar’Khabazza breaks into Senator Stonehallow’s house to do some sleuthing. Inside, he stalks though the house invisibly to listen in on conversations by house staff and goes through the Senator’s desks looking for something, anything, to be used against him and perhaps loosen their iron grip on this town. In a credenza in his office, Mar’Khabazza descovers a set of papers concerning a mysterious incoming package. A ledger in the same compartment has instructions to pay “5×200 silver” on the day of delivery, described as the first day of the full moon after the first light after the long night.
October 28, 7761
Mar’Khabazza returns from his scouting mission, having discovered that the senator has a plan to raise funds and return to the Empire and seek vengeance on those who have wronged him. He also finds the senator’s getaway money – bags of silver and gold, maybe three thousand pence or so. On his way out of the residence Mar’Khabazza also steals some official imperial stationery, impressions of keys to the senator’s house and lockbox, and makes an imprint of the official senator seal.
By now, several days after the raid, rumors and gossip around town have spread about the sudaar assault, the Battle of the Coppersmith, the Battle of Ranger’s Road and the Battle of the Library. In defense of the town and their loved ones, witches made themselves known during the battle in the southwest with public displays of arcane violence against the sudaar. The town has more of them than was originally thought.
While most of the town is indifferent or grateful to the witches for their defense of the city, a small but vocal miniority of the town is shocked and horrified by this revelation. The catalyst of this energy and outrage being a young leader of the Hoods- a yound northman who was the desciple of Elder Sarophas named Arne Gunhilde. However, Arne doesn’t have the political clout to mandate any trials or enforce any laws, but is encouraging individual actors to uphold their righteous ancstry and take matters into their own hands.
The troupe considers killing the heir to the hoods outright and saving themselves a lot of trouble. “Surely he is going to be a pain in my side eventually.” laments Mar’Khabazza. These decide that murdering their enemies is not the way to win hearts and minds in Opal and decide to leave him be. For now.
October 29, 7761
The troupe is now curious about the various portal stones and after giving the maps a looking over, and discussing the three different raiding parties, the want to know where the group that assaulted the Library came from. With Naisha tracking and leading the way, they make the hike past the Duergar castle, past the waterworks and up a small maintenance staircase next to the dam up into the mountains of the Upheaval.
A steep climb up a winding staircase carved into the stone, a walk along the glacial lake held back by the dam, and following sudaar tracks into another climb up through the craggy flank of the Upheaval leads them to a house-sized portal stone of the strange grey rock. Unprepared for a trip into the void, they withdraw and start organizing a dedicated expedition into the void gate in the mines. The intention is to see if they can connect the mine to one of the four paths though the void as laid out by the winter elf maps.
October 30, 7761
Muriel Trueheart and Savenia Loresong are waiting at the Salt House upon their return and Judiciar Trueheart bestows the title of Apprentice Librarian upon Ravenna. “with rank and priviledges”. When told about their upcoming expedition into the void, both eagerly volunteer to accompany the troupe into the mine and into the void beyond.
Ravenna then heads back to the Duergar fortress to ask Frahnzahl to teach her how to use the portals.
October 31, 7761
Muriel, Savenia, Magnus, Ravenna and Mar’Khabazza head into the mines under Opal to meet Frahnzahl so he can teach Ravenna how to open a gate. Being “designated inspectors” authorized to venture into the mines, they have minimal trouble getting though the minehead. A walk though the cramped darkness takes them back to the spot on the fifth level on the eighteenth branch on the right-hand side where the Duergar complex leads to the void gate.
As they approach the door it is immediately apparent that something has changed. The air is bitingly cold and the door to the complex is covered in frost. Entering the complex reveals frost and ice covering most surfaces, winter elf tracks in the dirt and the twisted ropes of laen that were exposed have been melted away.
“It appears that the winter elves have been hard at work smelting the laen under our very noses,” says Mar’Khabazza.
“Do you think the cold ore we sold in Edmonds Crossing was used here?” asks Ravenna.
“No telling, but the deed is done and will probably come back to haunt us.”
After grueling instruction and still more hours in multiple attempts, Ravenna reopens the mine gate under Frahnzahl’s supervision. They make their way methodically through the void, mapping the junctions and pathway interconnects while attempting to reconcile any of the junctions with its accompanying pathways with any of the pathways on any of their maps.
November 1, 7761
After perhaps a day’s walk though the murky surreality of the void, the troupe arrives at a platform that coincides with a platform on one of the four legs on their maps. They follow it to its entrance and emerge in the mountain range east of the Kehah Ria in the region called Tothkubad. Frightened by the dark rumor surrounding this place, they dive back into the void. Following the link in the opposite direction leands them to the nexus of the four sudaar pathways. They pick one of the other legs at random and after another day’s walk arrive at the funeral stone in the cemetery just off the rangers road. They decide to walk back into town along the road rather than returning via the void.
Portals they now have visited:
River Valley portal stone
Couloir Temple Portal (connected)
Duergar mine portal (connected)
Cemetery Stone / Ranger’s road portal (connected)
Dam portal (connected)
Tothkubad portal (connected)
