Hidden Influences
5 Tarsakh 1492, Waterdeep
Companions:
- Casindra “Casi” Naïlo, a half-elf warlock
- Devotion, a tiefling cleric
- Thava, a dragonborn sorcerer
Assuming we now had all that we needed to solve Fistandia’s Seven Sisters puzzle, Casi, Devo, Thava, and I looked at one another and gathered around the least-cluttered of the two laboratory tables. Its surface was littered with a number of incomplete clay sculptures: misshapen bodies, bat-like wings, and adorable heads that resembled the homunculi upstairs: clearly, these figures were prototypes of the finished constructs who had been so helpful to us so far, and in that recollection, the four of us put our collective arcane knowledge together and realized two other important details about our tiny winged friends: A spellcaster could animate only one homunculus at a time, meaning that Cumin and Coriander had each been animated by one of the pair of wizards, and moreover, a homunculus would not survive its master, proving that wherever Fistandia and Freyot had gone, they were still alive.
“I know where they went!” Devo exclaimed, and then he read off the last page from Freyot’s journal, which he was still holding.
“Fia returned from Kaspar yesterday with enough supplies for the next few tendays. Cumin and Coriander used the mingari to make that stew recipe from Kara-Tur, and… if we need to scrap the homunculi and start over, next time I’m carving taste buds onto their tongues.
“She just dropped off an odd book: it’s blank inside. Something about a bard? She must be planning another puzzle. Might be some clever way to reveal the contents, but knowing her, she’ll drop a hint or two first. I put it on a shelf for safe-keeping until I know more; wouldn’t want to spill something caustic on it and ruin it.
“‘Urgent: Alava’s shadow struck Calim Desert; Shoon minarets kept it from road, but oasis not spared. Pridwyns can’t stay in Calimport. Where next? Nohi Zhel'”
“I just received that in a sending; it seems five years in the Outlands wasn’t enough for it to lose her scent, though I’ll be a good big brother and not say ‘I told you so.'”
“Another extraplanar trip might buy Alava a few more years; I hope she’s used her time in Sigil wisely.”
“Fia doesn’t have a safe haven in Calimport, the Mystran temple there still hasn’t been restored, and her nearest gate is at the Star Academy in Darromar. We should be able to find someone at the academy who can teleport us to Calimport directly, or at worst take a boat to Sazesspur and book passage on a ship.”
“I love sailing, but it would take an extra tenday Calimport might not have. Anwûn’s a powerful priest, but even he cannot hold back this beast for long.”
“We’re off to Darromar; Fia knows a Calishite enchanter currently in the city who will sell us a flying carpet!”
“I know Anwûn!” Devo exclaimed.
I blinked in surprise. “You know Anwûn?”
“I know Anwûn!” he repeated excitedly. “He’s kinda sorta my uncle!”
Casi looked at him in confusion. “What?” I shared her confusion, because up to this point, we’d heard only of Devo’s many moms and had no idea he’d had any other family outside the temple in which he’d been raised.
Devo looked a little unsure of himself just then, and stammered a little on his reply. “I think… it could be a… it might not be him, but I think he’s the brother of one of my moms.”
Lek chose that moment to emerge from the small room under the stars, drying his hands on his trousers. “It’s a water closet,” he announced to no one in particular, then made his way over to the join Pop, Aurora, and Phelan in examining the many colorful jars on the shelves along the opposite wall.
“If it’s the same one,” Devo added.
“I recognize those places, but Darromar, Sazesspur, and Calimport are all very far to the south from here,” Thava noted, “Calimport especially: it’s at the very southern end of the continent.”
“I know Calimport!” Pop chimed in. “Never been there meself, but the Companions went there once, and me hero Drizzt fought Artemis Entreri there!”
That name was vaguely familiar, but as with the sea captain Pop and named before, I couldn’t pin it down. I was fairly certain I’d heard it recently, and in Waterdeep at that. Thankfully, I already had out my scratch journal and was jotting down notes as the other spellcasters and I discussed the blue books.
“Does anyone have a blacklight?” Devo asked abruptly.
The rest of us looked at one another in confusion, having never heard of such a thing, so Devo explained it further: it was a special kind of enchanted light stick priests of Lathander sometimes used which gave off only a limited range of the sun’s light, and was apparently useful for revealing things which might otherwise be hidden under the full spectrum of light. None of us had such a thing and Thava lacked the knowledge to alter her light spell in such a way, so we decided our first measure would be for us to each cast detect magic, then flip through the pages of the books and see if anything appeared under the influence of that spell.
Fifteen minutes later, we were forced to admit defeat. The books showed faint conjuration magic, but otherwise had only indeterminate magic about them, and certainly nothing to indicate any kind of concealment or alteration to their nature. The books did not appear to be numbered, either, providing no indication that the books should be examined or arrayed in a specific order.
At Devo’s suggestion, we laid the books out on the table roughly mirroring the position each sister occupied in the painting upstairs, but when we laid the last book in place, nothing seemed to happen. Next, we laid the books out in alphabetical order by title: Bard of Shadowdale; Even in Death; In Shadows; Lady of Silverymoon; Ranger, Warrior, Musician, Mother; Thay’s Nemesis, and Yearning for More.
Casi cocked her head, staring at the arrangement of books. “Is it possible that the titles give us some sort of message?”
Thava chuckled. “That’s what I was just wondering. Is it trying to spell a word? Is it trying to give us a message?”
“Where’s the note from Fistandia to Freyot again?” I asked, as though I hadn’t already made a copy of it in my journal.
Devo produced the letter from his pack and skimmed through it, quickly locating the appropriate line, “‘I’ll give you only one clue: look first at the Daughters of Mystery’.”
“And the ‘Daughters of Mystery’ are definitely the Seven Sisters,” Casi concluded, and we all nodded in agreement.
“Let’s go look at that painting again,” Devo suggested.
The Red Herring
As the others were busy exploring the lab, the four of us adjourned back upstairs and moved to the end of the hall. Nothing happened by us merely bringing the books to the painting, and we found we could take the painting off the wall, though there was nothing on the back of the painting nor anything on the wall behind it, so we hung it back up where it belonged.
“Anything seem unusual about the painting?” Casi asked. “Anything seem out of place?”
Devo addressed the painting. “Hey, can you reveal what’s in the books?” When there was no response, he shrugged. “Thanks anyway!”
“The dark elf certainly seems to be the odd one out,” Thava said, “but they’re all sisters?”
“I know the older six are blood sisters of the same mother and father, but they all regard Qilué as their full sister despite the circumstances of her birth obviously being different,” I answered, not having any better answer than that. “Aside from her being a dark elf, the only other thing I can think of that sets her apart is that she was a Chosen of Eilistraee in addition to being a Chosen of Mystra, and that it was apparently some covenant between the two goddesses that brought about her birth. But, again, I know only what I’ve read in books… or in the one time I very briefly met Alustriel at Candlekeep.”
Casi sighed. “I don’t know if I’m overthinking things, thinking things too deeply… like, should I be looking to the left, because their hair is blowing to the left?”
That set us all off in stress-relieving laughter, as I fear we were all overthinking the puzzle of the books.
“Is this one throwing herself off a cliff?” asked Thava.
“Or ascending to the heavens?” added Devo.
“Neither,” I answered. “That’s Syluné, and at the time this painting seems to have been created, she was the only one of the sisters who was dead, so the artist seems to have been depicting her as the Ghost of Shadowdale.”
Thava squinted at the painting. “Oh… that explains why I can see through her!”
“Look first at the Seven Sisters,” Casi mused, misquoting the letter slightly, but getting the gist of it. “So what are we supposed to look at next? Or… wait, which one’s the oldest?”
I hesitated, thinking it might have been the Simbul, as she had been considered the most powerful of the sisters: she had, after all, single-handedly destroyed a god. We had to go back into the library and consult the Chosen of Mystra book Casi had found previously, and it turned out I was very wrong, as the Simbul was the second-youngest. Eldest to youngest, they were Syluné, Alustriel, Dove, Storm, Laeral, the Simbul, and then Qilué, but as before, simply putting the books in that order did nothing. Next, we arranged the books in alphabetical order by the sisters’ names, and we had to consult the book again to find that the Simbul’s given name was Alassra, as that name had nearly been lost to time behind her titles of Simbul and Witch-Queen of Aglarond.
I shook my head at the ordering of the books. “I seem to recall hearing once that most of them have another name known only among themselves, which doesn’t help us. “
“Were there any other paintings involving the sisters?” Devo asked.
“No, and the only other one that was particularly Seven Sisters-adjacent was the painting of Khelben Arunsun,” I replied, pointing down the hall toward the arboretum. “He was Laeral’s husband.” I grinned inwardly, wondering what Waterdhavians a hundred years ago might have thought hearing the fearsome Blackstaff referred to merely as “Laeral’s husband”. He had been a painter himself, as the portrait of him hanging in this very hall had depicted, though allegedly only of mediocre talent and of landscape scenery almost exclusively. I likewise doubted many Waterdhavians of a century past were given to disparaging Khelben’s artistic talents within his earshot, but I doubt any criticism of his paintings mattered to the archmage.
I doubt the paintings mattered, I repeated to myself.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with the painting,” I said aloud. “It’s entirely about these seven books. Fistandia made these specifically for this puzzle, even bringing one to Freyot’s lab and scattering the rest around the mansion. ‘Look first to the Daughters of Mystery.'”
Thava picked up the books, looked at their titles, then cocked her head in an expression of curiosity. “The titles are a little awkward, don’t you think? Why not start them with the names of the sisters?”
Casi nodded. “Look first… could we make a word out of the first letter from each title?” I volunteered my scratch journal for the work, and the four of us bent over it, quickly trying several combinations. It wasn’t long before Casi exclaimed, “Liberty!” and our efforts were rewarded with a whoosh from down the hall as glowing green light filled the foyer.
We abandoned the blue books where they lay and scrambled down the hall, delighted to see that the word “liberty” had opened the portal, presumably back to Freyot’s flat in Waterdeep. In retrospect, we probably should have confirmed its destination before we gathered everyone together to march back through it, but we were so relieved to have finally gotten the portal to open from this side with what seemed to be the correct password that we didn’t question it further.
“But why that word?” Casi asked.
Other than that.
“Wizards,” we all agreed was the only explanation.
Traveling Companions
“So do we just go back downstairs, get everyone together and leave?” Devo asked.
“Well, we do still have a little bit of unfinished business,” I began.
He nodded. “And there were still a few rooms to explore.”
Thava’s eyes sparkled. “We could search for treasure!”
“We still need to find the friend,” Casi pointed out, on the same wavelength as I.
I pointed to her. “Exactly.”
“The what?” Thava asked.
She and the wolf cubs had been absent for Casi’s misadventure with the euphoria gas, and apparently the rest of the group had failed to fill them on that when we were reunited the next morning and Casi and I were busy comparing notes on Fistandia’s journals. We filled her in on what had transpired: two faerie dragons in the arboretum had played pranks on a few unsuspecting members of the party, but after they’d had their fun, had told us how they’d gotten to the mansion. Originally, there had been three of them, but they’d been captured by a “stupid wizard” with some kind of magical jars. One of the jars got broken inside the mansion and the other was released by Fistandia, but they never saw their third friend, and they were frightened by the sight of various unusual body parts inside the wizard’s lab and flew away, taking up refuge in the arboretum, where they’d been ever since.
An expression of mixed curiosity and understanding slowly began to overtake Thava’s face, and she shrugged off her pack and pulled out another leather-bound journal. “I picked this up in Fistandia’s lab upstairs, next to a broken bottle.” She opened the book to a marked page, displaying an illustration of a bottle and plenty of the Draconic shorthand that characterized Fistandia’s work and personal journals.
Though I was delighted to see the book and it would surely help us learn more of the origin of the faerie dragons, I was confused as to why Thava had collected the book when she’d only just now learned of the two creatures in the garden. And why not tell us about it before now. “Why did you pick this up? Why not leave it in the lab upstairs?”
“It reminds me of the bottle I keep my little ghost friend in,” Thava explained, fishing in her pack again and producing an intact bottle matching the illustration.
“Little ghost friend?” I echoed.
Devo looked very excited by the idea. “You have a ghost friend?!”
Thava sighed. “I don’t talk about him because people look at me strangely when I tell them I have a little ghost friend!”
Life has a funny way of making coincidences seem like fate. “By any chance does your ‘ghost friend’ speak to you in Draconic in your mind?” I asked.
“At times,” Thava admitted.
“Where did you get your little ghost friend?” Devo asked.
“I found him before I left Baldur’s Gate.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, recalling the name given to me by Caexarith. “And would his name happen to be ‘Vaerix’?”
Thava stared at the bottle hard, apparently communicating telepathically with its occupant. “Yes?” she answered at last.
My hands shot into the air triumphantly. “He’s their missing friend! You had him with you this whole time!”
The portal closed, but now that we knew how to open it again, we were unbothered. We raced down the hall to arboretum, and Thava triumphantly held up Vaerix’s bottle, and the “little ghost friend” apparently became very chatty with his two compatriots now that his presence had been revealed. Delighted that we had kept our promise and found Vaerix—even if he was still stuck in a bottle—Caexarith asked if we’d figured out how they could travel through the portal with us.
“Can we find more bottles?” Thava asked, as obviously Vaerix had traveled through with her that way.
“There’s only the one upstairs and it’s broken,” I noted, and Virlyaer, having been in that bottle when it was broken, adamantly refused to travel that way again.
“The imp hitched a ride,” Casi recalled.
Thava grinned happily. “They can sit on our shoulders!”
Virlyaer and Caexarith exchanged glances then swooped down to land on Devo’s and Casi’s shoulders, respectively, their butterfly-like wings fluttering lightly to help them maintain their balance. For the first time, I noticed a small silver band on Virlyaer’s right forelimb, and I wondered what purpose it served.
It allows him to cast a spell of tongues once per day, Caexarith answered telepathically. He tends to save it until he really has need of it.
Like when he’s playing a game of hide and seek with a tiefling, two half-elves, and a half-orc? I asked sarcastically.
Exactly so, the yellow faerie dragon replied smugly, and then the two tiny dragons became invisible once again.
Back down the stairs in the study we went, and though we briefly contemplated gathering the rest of the party from Freyot’s lab, we figured that if four spellcasters and two faerie dragons (and a third faerie dragon in a bottle) couldn’t handle whatever we found in the remaining two rooms in the mansion’s basement, then it was probably more than the whole force of us combined could handle, and we should probably just leave the mansion entirely.
“So are you going to stay with us after we leave here, or are you going to leave us?” Devo asked Virlyaer when we reached the bottom of the stairs. “I don’t speak Draconic… or Sylvan!”
“He can tell it to me,” Casi volunteered, and then she translated, “‘As long as you remain interesting!'”
“I think we’re pretty interesting,” Devo declared.
“So far!” Virlyaer agreed via Casi’s translation.
From the laboratory at the end of the right-hand hall, we heard Lek snarl, “Don’t drink that!” His voice was followed by muffled protests from Thokk, and Pop, Phelan, and Aurora could be heard laughing at the pair.
“Some of us more than others,” I joked.
Some more than others indeed. There’s something about you that seems not-quite-elf, mused Caexarith slyly.
I rolled my eyes. Yes, because I am only half elf. My mother was human.
The faerie dragon said nothing more, but I could sense her amusement.
The Menagerie
We opened the nearby closed door and peered into the room, which was austere by the mansion’s standards, having only a solitary wooden bookstand and three mage light sconces within it and no other furniture or wall hangings. A glance at the floor soon revealed the reason for the sparse furnishings: the floor was marked with a small summoning circle, and around it stood braziers used for summoning rituals.
Devo and Casi cautiously stepped into the room, with the former calling out a friendly greeting to the warty toad that sat on the bookstand.
The warty toad, of course, was not quite what it seemed, and the tiefling was suddenly dodging the slashing claws of a quasit. Devo then glanced at his shoulder where Virlyaer had been, but from the faint sound of fluttering wings, the invisible faerie dragons were now aloft.
If the four of you can’t handle a quasit alone, you’re not that interesting, Caexarith telepathically teased, and I relayed that to the others.
I struggled to recall what I knew of quasits, but I had a feeling my saber would do me little good. “I think these things are immune to non-magical attacks? Or at least they’re very resistant against them.” Deciding only magic might prevail here, I laid my right hand on the neck of my viol, bolstering my next words with arcane energy, “Hey, quasit! You were a lot prettier in your toad form.”
It wasn’t my best insult, but it seemed to have done the trick, as the tiny fiend recoiled from the psychic slap. The other three jumped in immediately with their own magical attacks: holy fire from Devo, which it dodged; another eldritch blast from Casi, and… actually, I’m not sure what Thava did, but as soon as she finished her incantation, the quasit dropped dead and began to melt into extraplanar goo.
“Yay, you’re back!” Devo exclaimed happily as Virlyaer apparently returned to perch on his shoulder.
Wondering what else we might find down here, we ventured to the last door, peering inside to see that it was a store room of some kind. The odor of alcohol and brine hit our noses even before we’d pushed the door open more fully to see what lay beyond, and the reason for the smell quickly became apparent: the floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with jars of varying sizes, the majority of which contained preserved specimens of various creatures: a cockatrice, a giant beetle, some kind of mushroom-like creature, and many more less immediately identifiable. One larger vessel on the floor was missing its lid and there appeared to be splotches of dried gunk trailing away from the jar, as though something had crawled out of it.
After a brief discussion amongst ourselves, we concluded the escapee was probably the mimic Pop had fought in the dining room: the homunculi hadn’t seemed aware of the creature’s presence, and it wasn’t likely to have been summoned through the summoning circle from another plane like the imp or the quasit. Thava opted to investigate some of the vessels a little more closely, but after she identified one jar’s occupant as a slaad tadpole that might possibly still be alive, she decided she wasn’t actually all that curious about whatever else was in the room, so we closed the door in the hopes that might prevent any more escapes. With nothing left to explore, we returned to Freyot’s laboratory to give the rest of the party the good news about our imminent return to Waterdeep.
A Chilly Reception
Cumin and Coriander were sad to see us go, but they were not interested in leaving the mansion with us: they would continue to wait for the return of their masters. They were also happy to inform their masters that we were taking the faerie dragons with us—they could apparently see through the dragons’ invisibility—and would not be dissuaded from doing so, considering it their duty. Devo then introduced himself as “Jon Smith” and the guileless constructs seemed to take him at his word!
At last we gathered in front of the mansion’s entrance, and we four who’d solved the puzzle called out the password in unison: “Liberty!”
Pop led the way through the shimmering portal, and the rest of us followed shortly after, sighs of relief escaping us all as we recognized Freyot’s flat. Apparently with the portal having been activated from the mansion side, we were this time expelled into the more-spacious sitting room side of the doorway, rather than the cramped area next to the fireplace, and a quick glance to the windows showed it was late enough in the evening now to be dark outside. Once the portal cut off, we could hear the sound of rain drumming on the roof of the building.
We stepped out onto the balcony, closing the flat’s door behind us, and I noted a few of the party shiver as the evening’s chill made itself known: it was still only early Tarsakh, after all, and winter did not release its grip on the North so easily. Fortunately, the roof hung over the balcony as well, keeping dry all the entryways of the flats in this building.
“Should we send someone to let the landlord know we’re back?” Casi asked.
I nodded. “If you’d rather stay here where it’s dry, I don’t mind making the dash across the street and back again.” I lightly fingered the earring which granted me resistance to the extremes of weather. “The rain won’t soak into my pack, and the cold doesn’t bother me. Of course, unless it lets up, we’re all to get drenched making our way back to the tavern, but I suppose there’s no help for that.”
Knowing the others were surely anxious to get back to familiarity—and probably a hot meal—I raced down the stairs and across the street to the landlord’s office-slash-residence, where I found Saer Barrow just preparing to sit down for his evening meal. Apologizing for the interruption, I quickly filled him in on the important details: we were all safely out of the flat, so he could lock it up once more, and we’d discovered that Freyot was alive and well, but merely away in southern Faerûn on important business. I deliberately kept what that business was as vague as possible because I was confident that if Freyot had wanted his employers to know, he’d have informed them as to his whereabouts already.
“And if Lord and Lady Cassalanter wish to know what proof you have of this?” Saer Barrow asked nervously.
“He and his partner have created a pair of magical servants called homunculi,” I explained, much as I intended to inform the First Reader upon returning to Candlekeep, though I knew Bookwyrm wouldn’t need further explanation about the nature of the constructs. “Homunculi are quite literally loyal to the end: the moment their creators die, so do they. As each homunculus is still alive, so too is each creator, therefore both Freyot and his partner are still alive and well.”
He seemed hesitant still, so I teased him a little. “If you’d like, we could take you through the portal and introduce you to Cumin and Coriander, the homunculi. They’re very charming, but perhaps not the best cooks.”
Saer Barrow blanched at the notion of traversing the magical portal, glanced down at his own waiting dinner, and accepted my words at their face value.
I stepped back out into the evening air to find my companions had disregarded my advice about staying warm and dry, as the majority were out on the street, dancing in the rain and enjoying their liberty. Thokk did not seem at all bothered by the chill, and both Casi and Aurora seemed to be at least accustomed to such temperatures, but Thava and Devo were alternately shivering and grinning. Pop, Phelan, and Lek remained beneath the overhang of the roof, Lek muttering that no one should complain to him if they became ill.
However, we all had to make our way through the dark and damp in order to return back to our tavern, though I endeavored to navigate the shortest route back to Saerdoun Street and Thunderstaff Way that I could manage. The miserable weather seemed also to have prematurely ended any Waukeentide festivities for the night, as though plenty of lights still shone in taverns and shops along the way, there were few others out and about on the streets.
Once we reached for-the-moment-still-known-as-Trollskull Tavern, everyone was quick to cluster up on the covered porch out of the rain while I pounded on the door with with the hilt of one of my daggers. The hired work crew had done swift work to clear away the broken handrails, withered vines, and bits of broken wood that had previously littered the porch, and welcome light spilled through the boards covering the windows of the taproom.
After several long moments, a latch clicked, and the door opened to reveal a relieved-looking Ember Flintblade.
“Good ye’ve returned, then! I was startin’ to worry the poor half-orc fellow’d gotten lost tryin’ to find ye.” The dwarf stepped back, making way for us to enter the tavern. The taproom was warmed by a crackling blaze in the fireplace near the bar.
All of the broken furniture had been removed from the room and a temporary post shimmed into place to shore up the sagging second floor. The worst of the dust and grime had been cleared away, but the illusory cobwebs remained stubbornly in place as though mocking Ember’s efforts to bring order to the mess.
Ember gestured for us all to gather near the fireplace and warm ourselves while she closed up the door behind us, then she looked over the bedraggled lot we surely made and sighed. “I’m nae sure what Thokk remembered tae tell ye aboot the strange happ’nin’s here, but tae make a long story short, it turns out Volo might’ve been right aboot this place after all: it’s haunted!”
The Ghostly Barkeep
“I don’t see any evil bookcases,” Lek joked.
“Or bitey chairs!” added Pop.
“Or flying swords!” Phelan chimed in, and this set Lek, Thokk, Pop, and the wolf cubs off into a recounting of their misadventures in Fistandia’s mansion.
“We were trapped in a magical mansion full of animated objects,” I explained to the property manager. “Wizard stuff, mostly, not haunted.”
“Aye, well I suppose this could be either,” Ember admitted, then pointed to the battered pitcher and mug that had been on the bar when we first arrived in the tavern with Volo the previous morning. “Thrice those things were removed from the bar: the first time by accident, and the last time they even went into the rubbish hauler’s cart outside, but each time, as soon as no one was looking, they were back again on the bar as though they’d ne’er left!”
I frowned, vaguely remembering that Ember had accidentally knocked at least one of the vessels astray when she’d spread out the assortment of paperwork she’d gathered on the tavern’s layout and history.
“If we move them off the bar and then sit and watch them, will we see them move back?” Devo asked.
Ember shook her head. “No one ever saw them move, but as soon as someone turned their back and was nae watchin’, there’d they be again.” She scratched her bare chin—an uncharacteristically clean-shaven look for a dwarf but not so uncommon for a female dwarf living among humans—then added, “I ‘spose if we put a ’round the clock watch on them they’d ne’er move, but the instant ye blinked…” She snapped her fingers and gestured to the bar.
“Maybe it was the pixies,” Aurora suggested, going back to her earlier theory.
“Could they have put the stuff back?” Devo guessed.
Ember looked confused at the exchange, resting her meaty hands on her hips. “Did ye by chance read o’er the history I gave ye o’ this place?” Guiltily, we shook our heads no: we’d been pre-occupied with the reading of many other documents during our extradimensional excursion. “Aye, I dinnae think ye’d have the time, but ’tis nae matter. There was more ‘n’ one bad egg who owned this place o’er the last hunnerd years, an’ any o’ them could be responsible for its haunting now.”
Devo and Casi looked thoughtful, with the former suggesting a cleansing ritual might be needed for the building, but Thava began looking around curiously, inspecting the two vessels carefully without touching either, then circling the bar and seemingly examining every square inch of the bar, walls, ceiling, and floor.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I think we’re dealing with a poltergeist,” Thava explained, “and the way you deal with a poltergeist is you find it and then you kill it again. But first you have to find it.”
“Maybe the poltergeist can be useful!” Devo protested. “Maybe we can hire the poltergeist to work at our tavern?”
Thava looked up curiously. “Like a bouncer?”
I laughed. “Poltergeists are definitely known for throwing things!”
The sorceress rolled her eyes. “Okay, we’ll find the poltergeist then talk to it.”
“We’ll be known for having one working here,” Devo continued. “Call ourselves, I don’t know… the Poltergeist Tavern.”
“About a hundred years ago, it was quite popular for taverns and inns along the Sword Coast to claim to be haunted,” I recalled. “Since there were a few inns that actually were known for their ghostly inhabitants, it became a thing for other establishments to hire wizards and gnome inventors to create ghostly illusions and self-slamming doors and the like.”
“Oh. So maybe not.”
“Oh, no, that sort of thing fell out of favor with the onset of the Spellplague. Too much wild magic and unpredictability, apparently.” I shrugged. “Maybe it’s due for a comeback.”
Thava stopped abruptly, staring at the floor directly behind the bar. “Does that look like footprints to anyone else?”
Devo leaned over the bar to look, while Casi and I quickly ran around behind it to join Thava. Sure enough, a pair of faintly-glowing boot prints were outlined on the floor directly behind the bar, as though showing where a ghostly bartender might be standing.
“Excuse me, barkeep,” Devo began, but then stammered over what to ask the ghost. “We were, uh, wondering… uh… Do you want to keep working here?”
Ember stroked her beardless chin again. “Ye think it’s the barkeep, do ye?” We looked at one another and shrugged, but it seemed a reasonable guess: the footprints were behind the bar and the poltergeist seemed weirdly attached to a tankard and pitcher. The dwarf considered this for a long moment, then said, “So if it’s the barkeep that’s hauntin’ the place, then I’ll have to think which one o’ them might ha’ died here. Let’s see…” She hummed to herself while she thought. Thinking she might need the refresher, I opened up my pack and retrieved the documents she had given me regarding the tavern’s history, and she began to search through the pages.
“Rolley Haskett died o’ the plague in 1395…” She snapped her fingers. “All right, ghost, are ye Rolley Haskett?” There was a long moment of silence—aside from the continued foolery around the fireplace by the rest of our party—which Ember took for a “no.” “I don’t s’pose ye be Rolley Haskett, then. Well… I dinnae think Elvey Birch or Ogmund Dowell died in the buildin’, but are ye Elvey Birch?” She waited a moment, then asked, “Are ye Ogmund Dowell?”
“Is your name Jon?” asked Devo with an impish grin.
Thava crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you able to answer any questions at all?”
There came a distinct thump from the countertop.
“One for yes and two for no?” suggested Devo, and I nodded my agreement, thinking an affirmative “no” was better than silence.
The poltergeist likewise seemed to agree to those terms, and answered with a single thump.
“Did you used to work here?” Thava asked, and she was met with a solid thump. As she began to say something else, a delayed second thump seemed to negate the first one.
Devo leaned against the bar. “Were you a patron?” The answering thumps were made close together so that it was a quick and unmistakable “no”.
“Are you a spell?” asked Casi, her eyes glowing faintly as she looked for traces of magical energy, but detecting magical emanations was not the same thing as seeing invisible creatures—she likewise couldn’t see wherever it was the faerie dragons had flitted off to after we’d entered the tavern—so she saw nothing new.
Two thumps.
“Can we play a little game to figure out your name?” Devo offered, rubbing his hands together, and after receiving an affirmative reply, he added, “I’m going to go through the common script and name off each letter, and when I get to the first letter of your first name—” He was cut off by two thumps. “Oh, you don’t want to play that game?” Thump. “Oh. Worth a try. Wait. Do you not want us to know your name?”
Silence answered him, and Devo suddenly realized as apparently we all did that it was possible the poltergeist might not even know its own name. “Uh, no thumps if you don’t know?” the tiefling offered, and there continued to be no reply for a long stretch before finally two quick thumps.
“Are you willing to live harmoniously with us here and let us have our business?” Thava asked, her voice lowering to a nearly-threatening growl. Given her protectiveness toward the wolf cubs, I could easily imagine her going after the poltergeist herself if she thought it might harm either of the youngest members of our party.
The ghost refused to answer.
“Have you been here for longer than a hundred years?” Devo asked, and it was a great question: if the spirit was from before the Spellplague, then the documents Ember had gathered on the changes of ownership since the death of the building’s original owner wouldn’t be relevant to identifying the bartender.
There was again no response, so it seemed the ghost didn’t know the answer to that question, either.
“Are you the one who keeps putting back the pitcher and mug when they get taken out?” Thava asked, picking a question the ghost should be able to answer, and it confirmed that by lifting the two objects in question into the air and letting them thud solidly against the bar top together in a single thump.
Devo shuffled sideways down the bar, away from the two containers. “Do you want us to leave those alone?” he asked, and received another equally dramatic response. “If you don’t mind us having our business here, we can leave those right there! Is that okay?” After a pause, there was a muted thud.
That drew sighs of relief from us all: the first indication we’d had from the poltergeist that it might be willing to work with us if we respected what it had set as one obvious boundary.
“Do you want to work here with us?” Devo asked hopefully, but his expression fell as there was no reply, and Thava chortled.
“Who wants to work in death?” the dragonborn laughed.
“Maybe he doesn’t know he’s dead,” Casi whispered, reminding us all of one odd quirk of poltergeists: they were often very confused about their state of undeath, with much of their anger at the living stemming from that confusion.
There was a strange creaking or rattling sound in the air just then, like someone shaking a large bundle of sticks. Was the poltergeist trying to speak aloud or manifest itself in some other way? But the noise subsided and there were no other effects, so whatever the ghost attempted, it appeared to have been harmless.
Devo looked to Casi, Thava, and I, then over his shoulder at the rest of the party still warming and drying themselves by the fire. “Are there any other questions we should ask?” and we looked among ourselves while we each thought it over. “So you didn’t work here before… or at least you weren’t the barkeep.”
After a moment, there was a quiet thump.
“Wait, yes, I’m correct, or…?” Devo sighed and tried again. “Did you work here? Or rather, do you work here?”
Although the answer was negative the first time this question was asked, this time the poltergeist declined to answer at all, as though it was no longer sure.
Casi looked toward the kitchen area then back again. “Are there more of you here?” she asked, receiving a negative response.
“Aww, are you lonely?” asked Devo, and when the poltergeist answered in the negative, the ever-optimistic cleric expressed his relief. “That’s good!”
“Are you willing to be peaceful with us?” Thava pressed again, and finally the poltergeist gave an affirmative response.
“Yay!” the tiefling exclaimed. “My name’s Devo; it’s nice to meet you!”
Thava wasn’t yet satisfied, though. “Are you good with us doing what we need to do to get the business going?” This time, however, the poltergeist remained silent. “Do you want to me left alone right now?” she asked instead, perhaps wondering if she’d pushed the spirit too far, and indeed, it replied to the affirmative.
Devo held his hands up, indicating he was “hands off”. “Okay! We’ll be respectful.” He was acknowledged with another thump.
The dragonborn sorceress sighed and turned to Ember. “What else can we do with the bar since we’ve agreed to be respectful of Mister… ghost… poltergeist… thing?”
“Pol. We’ll call him Pol Tergeist,” Devo grinned, and Thava chuckled.
Casi shook her head. “Can we give you a name, so we have something to refer to you by?” The spirit didn’t seem to like that idea, though, and replied to the negative.
Ember looked up from the papers with a frustrated sigh. “The only other person to have manned the bar and died here in the last hunnerd years actually died out front, so it could nae ha’ been Zalif Moonvale.”
The responding THUD was so loud, it silenced even the joking from the quintet at the fireplace.
Ember coughed. “Zalif?” The responding thump this time was more muted, but still distinct. “Well, that may explain a few things,” she chuckled. “He owned the place, so he did nae exactly work here.”
“And might be why he’s a little reluctant to let us run a business here,” Devo guessed.
“Aye,” Ember agreed, as the ghost—Zalif—gave his own confirming thump. “He was a mighty powerful wizard at that, so he might behind some o’ the magic.” She winced. “That might be explainin’ a bit o’ the weirdness around here.” She went on to describe how the workers who were cleaning out the upper floors found a small door in the ceiling of the third floor turret bedroom, but when they used a ladder and tried to access the door, the worker who tried to touch the hatch received a very painful shock and was knocked unconscious for some time. The rest of the workers wisely decided not to touch the door again.
Lek looked over in interest. “Maybe I could try seeing what was in—”
Zalif interrupted the rogue’s suggestion with two deliberate knocks, expressing his disapproval.
“Is there anything dangerous up there?” Devo asked, and Zalif confirmed that there was. “But you don’t want us to try to get anywhere near it,” he continued. Zalif agreed with that statement.
I sighed. “And to think I wanted that room to be my bedroom!”