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Virgil and Lyle change outfits and they make for the no-mans land rookery area. Virgil is unsure that this plan is going to get them anywhere, and moans a lot. His protests are ignored. En route, Zeal vanishes into the crowd from time to time and talks to her various contacts. Unfortunately, no-one knows anything about Andrik, but, as before, the word is put out
Nearer to no-mans land, Zeal finds one of her contacts who does know something - an old, emaciated-looking one legged beggar (who Zeal knows has been there for years). He says he has heard rumours that the sun-worshippers meet at the top of the observatory tower in the old college of Astrologers (he points up at it, just visible from here against the night sky), at dawn, and perform their unholy rituals there. As far as he's heard there are about half a dozen of them.
Close by the old College, another of Zeal's contacts, an old woman named Hettie, who sells deep-fried rat-on-a-stick, mentions that she saw someone who "looked like one of those evil sun worshippers, oh yes dearie," leave the old college and go off in what looked like the direction of the Memorial of Fallen Enemies - where the finest statuary and memorials of all the millennia of conquests by the Empire have been brought to decay under the pitiless gaze of a huge statue of the Undying Lord crushing a faceless foe underfoot.
The three make for the Memorial, which form the top of one of the seven hills upon which Umbra is centred. After a fairly long walk, mostly uphill, they reach the Memorial; it is a huge overgrown space on the hilltop, surrounded by a wall of black stone (somewhat crumbling in places), with, here a gate of black iron. A gatehouse is visible just inside. Lyle knocks on the gate, and after a minute or two a fat middle-aged man in an army uniform carrying a lantern comes out of the gatehouse and over to the gate (weaving slightly). Lyle tells him what they want, and shows the gate guard his military id. On seeing this, the guard straightens up, sketches a salute, and lets them in.
He is quizzed about people entering the Memorial before the party, but the guard says there hasn't been anyone through his gate since much earlier than the time they're interested in. However, he mentions that there are other gates, and the wall isn't as secure as it could be, so people could have got into the memorial in other places. The three ask him for directions, but the guard doesn't have a good idea of the layout, so he goes inside for a map instead. The map in examined. It shows all the memorials there, and the complex web of paths which cover the Memorial, but doesn't name any of the memorials. The guard does say that he thinks the area around the north side of the hill is where the memorials to Skirion are, placed there so they see the sun as little as possible.
They take the guards map and his lantern and head into the Memorial park. It's dark, and very overgrown. The undergrowth is full of rustlings, and statues and monuments loom out of the darkness. At one point they hear some large creature crashing through the undergrowth to one side, across the path, and off through the undergrowth on the other side. There are no large wild creatures in the city
As the three reach the northern side of the hill, Zeal spots a flicker of light through the undergrowth from up ahead. She puts out the lantern and changes over to her hooded bullseye lantern, then they head for the point where the light was. They quickly arrive at a statue of the sun god, strangely not overgrown, and Virgil senses traces that magic has recently been performed here. Lyle hunts around and spots the tracks of one person going off into the undergrowth, which they follow.
After a little while, Lyle hears a person moving through the vegetation up ahead; shortly, he hears them opt for less subtlety and more speed - it seems they have noticed the group following them. At this point, Lyle gives up on subtlety and ploughs ahead. He bursts out onto a path, and facing him, with drawn sword, is a man in a hooded cloak. Lyle tells him to surrender. This is ignored. Lyle attempts to disarm him, but fails, and a they start to fight in earnest. Lyle is badly stabbed in the shoulder (fortunately, not of his sword arm).
Virgil crashes through the undergrowth towards the fight. Zeal creeps ahead onto the path, in the direction the man was taking.
Lyle slashes him across the arm, but doesn't hurt him badly. Lyle takes another bad wound to the belly and slashes the man again. Virgil throws a knife at the man and it embeds in his leg; he hisses in pain. Lyle is slashed at again. They attack again and again. Lyle is injured again, slashed to the bone across the face, and is now very badly hurt, but then with a mighty stroke nearly cuts the man in half from shoulder to groin. He falls down dead in a pool of blood. There is no way Virgil can heal him
They search the body. It is not Andrik, but an athletically built man in his 30's with short greying hair and a moustache. He wears a signet ring with the 'cross in a circle' symbol of House Arrean, one of the noble houses of Umbra. Also in his pocket is one of the red-enamelled gold symbols of the Cult of Skirion. They do not recognise him, but then House Arrean, like most noble houses, has many members.
At about this point, the three notice that it is getting un-naturally cold. Vague misty figures can be seen rising up around them out of the darkness, more and more as time goes by. The three decide to leave; the misty figures do not try to stop them as they pass through the closing circle. More and more figures appear, and begin to swirl around the body of the Skirion cultist. Faster and faster they swirl, and then abruptly vanish. The temperature returns to normal. This is not something which normally happens to the dead.
Virgil thinks that it is something to do with the area, and that the spirit of the cultist is now doomed to walk this place forever.
They continue up the hill, in the direction the cultist was going. Lyle catches sight of a glint under a bush, and finds the body of Andrik there. His eyes, and all his innards, have been neatly eaten out by something, his face carries a terrified expression, and he is quite dead. However, the sword is Skirion is lying next to his body, wrapped up in rags. Lyle hefts it, and finds the balance to his taste. Zeal and Virgil discourage him from doing that too much.
They head back to the gate, Lyle carrying the sword and Virgil carrying the body of Andrik (as Lyle is reduced to a hobble by his injuries). The gatekeeper lets them out, glancing uninterestedly at the body. Lyle tells him to keep quiet about what happened here, and Zeal helps him forget with the aid of some gold Chetrun.
The three head off through no-mans land and back to the nearest place where they can find a cab back to the Palace. The alleys are dark, smelly and dank. After a while, they come out of a side alley into a wider street, which seems unusually quiet. As she tells Lyle and Virgil to go back a mob of thugs (not dissimilar in appearance to Blunt) appears out of the darkness at one end of the street, to the left. To the right appears a smaller group of better dressed, better armed men. Both groups advance.
Zeal dives into an alley and the other two follow. Lyle, who is going slowest due to his injuries, starts to shoot at the pursuing mob. He can't help but hit, and takes out a few of them, causing the mob to block up as they trip over their fallen comrades. Zeal shouts to force one of the doors into the buildings along the alley. Lyle does so. Zeal throws a handful of gold Chetrun at the mob, and shouts, "Gold!" The mob screeches to a halt as they fight over the coins. Zeal, Lyle and Virgil flee into the building. Inside is a dark, filthy hall, with stairs going up, two doors to the right and a door out at the back. Lyle crashes out of the back door into a filthy yard, stacked with rotting crates, then forces a gate out of the yard, hurting his shoulder. The three of them flee down another alley and away from the mob.
Zeal finds her bearings and leads the way. Some distance away, they duck into an inn, the 'Rotting Corpse', says Zeal, a place where they won't be disturbed, and where rooms can be rented by the hour. Zeal pays the doorman, Benny, for a room, and pays more for him to turn a blind eye to the corpse Virgil is carrying and Lyle's battered condition.
The room is small, with a big, dirty bed and a smell of sweat, but they all fit in. Virgil has Zeal send down for some brandy, which he uses to help in treating Lyle's wounds. Lyle's condition is stabilised, but he'll be slow in recovering without magical assistance, which Virgil cannot, presently, provide, due to a lack of sacrificial victims.
They decide to just take Andrik's head for now, and leave the rest of him behind. The head is cut off and wrapped in rags. Zeal tells Benny they'll collect the rest later, and gives him more gold. They slip off through the dark alleys, making for the Great Bazaar, that being the nearest place they are likely to find a cab.
As they are getting near the market, they pass into a small square, with several streets and alleys leading off it. As they near the exit, one of the better-dressed swordsmen from before steps out of the darkness of street they are about to take. "Give me the sword," he demands.
Lyle shoots him. The man's head explodes in a shower of gore and he falls down dead. Zeal notices that other men are blocking all the other exits, and conceals herself. Lyle and Virgil do not notice this, and are both shot in the back. One of the bullets shatters the bone in the upper part of Lyle's non-sword arm, and with this on top of all his other injuries he falls over, unconscious and bleeding heavily.
Zeal acrobatically leaps from cover to Lyle, grabs the wrapped up sword and leaps nimbly into a doorway, dodging gunfire as she goes. She pulls out her lock-picks and starts unlocking the door. Just as the bolt goes across she feels the muzzle of a pistol press into the back of her neck. "Give me the sword," says a voice.
Zeal does nothing, so he reaches over and takes the sword from her hand. She doesn't resist. Virgil tries to tackle him as he steps back with the sword, but he misses and falls on top of Zeal in the doorway.
The man steps back into one of the alleys out of the square, and disappears into the darkness. The other ambushers do likewise. Zeal sneaks off after them by a roundabout route, intercepting them after a little distance. She follows them to the old College of Astrologers, and watches them go into the ruins. Then she leaves to return to Lyle and Virgil.
Meanwhile, Virgil treats Lyle's injuries as well as he can, stabilising him so that he stops bleeding and comes round. However, he really needs magical healing.
At this point Zeal returns. She tells the others what she has discovered, then returns to the old college to keep watch.
Virgil props Lyle up in a corner of the square with two loaded pistols to keep the riff-raff from murdering him and stealing all his property, then heads to the nearby Great Bazaar. It is only a couple of hours before dawn now, so the market is starting to come alive ready for the days trading. Virgil heads to the slave market area of the bazaar, and finds one which is just opening. He looks over the merchandise and buys six unwell-looking slaves, three men and three women, leading them back to the square in a chained-together coffle.
Upon reaching the square, he takes each slave in turn and kills them with a dagger, draining their life force and using it to power his healing magic as they each scream silently. The remaining slaves moan and shake in terror as they see the fate awaiting them. The lives of four slaves are sufficient to heal Lyle, leaving only scars behind; the remaining two heal Virgil's wounds. The people loitering around the square (waiting for Lyle to fall unconscious) watch interestedly as this goes on
Once the healing is over, Lyle and Virgil go to join Zeal at the College, leaving the corpses of the six slaves in the square, in the centre of spreading pools of blood. There is only one hour left until dawn.
Zeal spots them as they arrive (they can't see her, she is too well concealed), and beckons them over into the shadows. They discuss what to do. "Let's go in and kill them all," demands Lyle.
Zeal looks dubious, but this is the plan
The World of Dran | Feel of the World | History | Inhabitants of Dran | Larger Universe | Magic
Personalities | Science and Technology | Society of Dran | Spirit World | Home
Game Notes 1 | Game Notes 2 | Game Notes 3
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Copyright © Tony Jones, 2007.
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