Highs and Lows
4 Tarsakh 1492, Waterdeep
Companions:
- Casindra “Casi” Naïlo, a half-elf warlock
- Devotion, a tiefling cleric
- Lekslufer Biswell, a half-elf rogue
- Popdaka “Pop” Veinfinder, a dwarven paladin
- Thokk, a half-orc monk
The commotion continued down the corridor, seeming to come from the room not at the far end of the right-hand hall—from what I could see past Aurora, that room seemed to be a greenhouse or garden?—but the penultimate one into which the young elf and her drawn bow faced, and she launched an arrow into that room and seemed dissatisfied with the result of her shot.
I cast another glance at Casi—she seemed as-yet unaware there was anything amiss—then started down the hall. Thava was ahead of me and reached the room first, but by that point, the conflagration seemed to be over, and she pulled Phelan out of the room and fussed over him like a mother hen over a chick.
Positioned as it was next to the kitchen, I was not surprised to discover it to be a well-furnished dining room, though I was not prepared to find Pop standing over the rapidly-distorting remains of what appeared to have once been a chair, but was now, in death, slowly returning to its misshapen natural form, as it had apparently been that most tricky of aberrations: a mimic.
“Pop, are you all right?” Lek asked, coming around through the door from the arboretum. His expression was neutral and his demeanor was laconic, but the fact that he was even asking after the dwarf’s well-being suggested a degree of genuine concern.
“I got splinters!” the paladin complained, casting a disgusted look at the dead monster as he rubbed his rump ruefully. “The durned thing bit me through me chainmail.”
I bit my lip, and I did not laugh. Mimics are dangerous foes, after all.
“I see that,” Lek replied sympathetically, “but I don’t think that’s wood.”
“Owie,” Devo agreed, joining his traveling companion in the doorway. “I’ve never seen a man get in a fight with a chair and almost lose.”
The laughter escaped me that time, and I was not alone. Realizing how his fight with the mimic-turned-chair must have looked, even Pop gave a chuckle.
“Have you seen them win?” Lek countered, arching an eyebrow.
“Yep,” Pop answered, no doubt recalling many a bar-clearing brawl in dwarven halls.
“I don’t think I’d ever seen a man get into a fight with a chair,” Devo began to correct himself.
Lek pointed into the dining room. “Well, you have now!”
“Aye, I have,” said Pop, “though I was usin’ the chair as a weapon!”
Lek grinned. “And did you win?”
“Ya! Broke it over the other guy’s back an’ put him to the ground!” Pop answered proudly.
Arrival & Departure
There was a sudden whooshing sound from down the hall, followed by a startled yell in a deep voice. Remembering I’d left Casi alone in the study, I turned and raced for the foyer and the glowing green light shining from that direction.
I don’t think anyone could have predicted the next person to step through the portal from Freyot’s Waterdhavian flat, though perhaps “step through” was not an accurate statement as the figure was picking himself up off the floor some twenty feet away from the portal as though he had been thrown through the magical barrier.
“Thokk!” many voices cried in delighted surprise: Thava, Phelan, and Aurora had followed me down the hall, but Lek, Devo, and Pop had apparently remained back at the dining room.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
The amiable half-orc grinned, having no self-consciousness about his less-than-graceful method of arrival. “I dunno! It’s kinda weird… I was, like, tryin’ to say this stupid password, and then, like, sneezed? And I’m inside here now, which is, like, cool? I guess?”
“While the portal’s open, I’m taking the cubs back through to the mage’s bedroom so they can get some proper rest,” Thava declared, and the look she shot the two youngest members of the party brooked no argument. “They’re so tired, Aurora can’t shoot her bow straight and Phelan can’t hold a wild shape.”
Recalling that they hadn’t gotten a full night’s rest the previous night and hadn’t joined the rest of us at the Yawning Portal until shortly before we’d departed for the magister’s office, I nodded. “You remember the password, of course?”
“Ashuak,” the sorceress confirmed, and shooed her charges through the waning portal.
“By any chance, did you speak to Saer Barrow?” I asked Thokk once we were alone again in the foyer. Casi was apparently still too deep in her reading to emerge from the study and the rest of the party was still down the hall. As soon as the question was out, I realized that indeed the young half-orc must have done exactly that, for he’d mentioned attempting to say a password to make his way through the portal: something he’d not have known to do had he not spoken to Barrow.
“Uhh…”
“The property manager for the flat?” I prompted, and nodded my head to indicate this was a question he should probably answer in the affirmative.
“I think so?”
“And was there a body in the flat before you came through?”
Thokk looked horrified. “No!” he exclaimed immediately.
I sighed with relief. “Good, then he must have taken care of it already.” Thokk’s expression continued to show that he didn’t think there was anything “good” about that statement, and I couldn’t help but think that all of Toril would be far better off if more people were as charmingly innocent as this half-orc.
“I hear someone talking!” Lek snarled from down the hall, and if there were any other people or monsters anywhere in the mansion who weren’t previously aware of our presence, they surely knew we were there now. But his annoyed expression immediately brightened when he recognized the new arrival. “Thokk!”
“Lek!” Thokk exclaimed cheerfully.
The rogue ducked back into the dining room, but I could hear him tell Devo and Pop cheerfully “Thokk is here!” to a chorus of surprised responses. Lek then stepped back out of the room far enough that he could gesture for the half-orc to approach. “He killed a chair! It’s not a real chair, but a chair tried to attack Pop, as chairs… you know… don’t. Or do, apparently. Sometimes.”
“Why did he kill a chair?” Thokk exclaimed, rushing down the hall.
“The chair started it!” And off the pair went, engaging once more in the Thokk and Lek Show as though they’d never been apart, a comedic pair where both alternated in the role of dead wood and spring cypress.
Assigned Reading
I shook my head and decided to check in with Casi, relieved to see she was peering around the study door, looking down the hall to see the source of the commotion. She met my gaze, shook her head and rolled her eyes in amusement, then disappeared back into the study. I followed her in, asking if she’d found anything helpful so far, and she shook her head.
“Not really. The oldest books are about sixty-five years old,” she explained, pointing to central of the three bookcases, where the leather-bound volumes were relatively tightly-packed but for a few odd gaps here and there, “but they obviously aren’t her first journals: those are either somewhere else—Candlekeep, maybe—or lost or destroyed. Fistandia is both a wizard and a priestess of Mystra, and though she says she’s only quarter-elven she’s also well over a century old without showing any signs of aging, so she’s started to think she might be a Chosen of Mystra, perhaps one of the last selected by the first Mystra before her death during the Time of Troubles.”
I blinked. It was certainly interesting information, and it was no wonder Casi was absorbed by her translation work. Most of the gods of Faerûn had only one Chosen at a time, if any, but Mystra had always bestowed that status to numerous mortals at a time, many of whom were famous and consequential figures in the world even to this day. Few in Faerûn hadn’t heard of the famous archmage Elminster, after all, and Waterdeep was ruled by Mystra’s own daughter, Laeral Silverhand!
“What’s the date of the most-recent entry?” I asked. “If it’s within the last two-hundred days, then per her will filed with the Heralds, the contents of her library do not yet revert to Candlekeep.”
“Much less than that,” Casi answered, reaching into her pack and pulling out a journal. “This last entry is dated the fifth of Ches this year.”
I blinked again, as that date was just a day shy of a full month ago. Fistandia had not been gone from this place long at all!
(I would discover as we bedded down for the night that as Casi and I were discussing Fistandia’s journals, Thokk was admiring the craftsmanship of the chairs in the dining room, including the apparent “good taste” of the mimic in choosing such fine chairs to impersonate. He’s so impressed with the chairs, he wants some just like them for our new tavern.)
The Homunculi & I
Since Casi seemed content with her translation work, I wandered down the hall to the kitchen to introduce myself to the homunculi, who in turn gave their names as Cumin and Coriander. They confirmed the timeline of their masters’ departure, admitting that while it seemed to them as though Fistandia and Freyot had been gone a very long time, in truth it had been no longer than a few tendays, and that such lengthy departures were not unusual for the wizardly pair. The pantry at the back of the kitchen was well-provisioned, having been refilled with fresh supplies by Fistandia only a day before the wizards’ departure, and even were the homunculi to run out of fresh food to prepare for the wizards’ three pet cats, the magical mansion had the means to conjure food.
“Aside from the cats, are there any other creatures in the mansion we should know about?” I asked, thinking specifically about the mimic Pop had inadvertently discovered in the dining room.
“There’s a pair of faerie dragons in the arboretum,” said Coriander. “They’re harmless, and can be a great deal of fun, when they’re in the mood!”
Cumin nodded his head. “Ooh, the time they stole one of Mistress’s satin gloves and then cast a magical hand spell into it!”
“They’re probably also the ones who keep moving the books in the library,” continued the first homunculi.
“And who keep locking Broom in one room or another.”
“Unless that’s Mistress’s imp?”
“I wish Mistress had dismissed the imp before she left,” Cumin sighed. “Nasty imp! Mean!”
“Compelled it was by mistress to do no harm to anyone or anything in the mansion,” agreed Coriander, “but that didn’t stop it from saying horrible, awful things!”
I winced. “We have good reason to believe the imp stole away through the portal when Matreous left earlier, and then stung him to death and escaped back to the Nine Hells using the fireplace in Freyot’s flat in Waterdeep. I guess once they were no longer in the mansion, it was free to harm Matreous.”
Cumin made an odd coughing sound that was probably the closest noise he could make to a harumph. “Good riddance to two meanies!”
I stroked the soft fur of the one cat still in the kitchen—there was no telling where the other had disappeared to or where the third yet remained—then stepped out into the hall, turning my attention to the paintings which hung along the length of the corridor.
High Art
The first painting was of a dark-haired half-elven woman in leather armor, who appeared to have just called down lightning on her opponents, a pair of red-robed, bald-and-tattooed-headed men I immediately recognized as depictions of the infamous Red Wizards from Thay. I didn’t recognize the powerfully-built adventurer, however, but given her opposition to the Red Wizards, I supposed she might have been a Harper, and I wondered if Fistandia had any connections to that famed organization.
Devo emerged from the dining room to examine the next painting in line, then asked me if I knew who it was. I turned around to see that it was of a red-haired elf wearing a tiara. The woman was wearing a beautiful green gown and her head was thrown back in what seemed to be laughter. Behind her stood a throne atop a dais, though it was engulfed in silver flames, and around it were gathered several robed figures who held their hands up in prayer, supplication, the casting of spells, or perhaps in combination.
I shook me head. “Unfortunately, no.”
He sighed, then nodded toward the painting I had just examined. “What are you looking at?”
“A half-elf fighting Red Wizards,” I answered, at a loss to definitively identify any more than that.
“Red Wizards? Well, we don’t like those guys,” he said with a frown, and I chuckled at the understatement: the only ones who liked Red Wizards were Red Wizards.
I looked toward the last painting in the hall—across from the dining room door and therefore next to the arboretum door—and realized that at some point between my interview with the homunculi and my art study with Devo, Casi had slipped past me in the hall and joined Thokk and Lek in the arboretum.
Suddenly, Lek’s hat floated off of his head, held by a disembodied spectral hand. A high-pitched giggle came from somewhere inside that room as the tall half-elf—easily my own height!—began to swear in Elvish and tried to grab his stolen headwear. He finally jumped and grabbed the brim, yanking the hat out of the fingers of the mage hand, and the dweomer unraveled from the force.
Someone else was still giggling, but I couldn’t see who it was. It might have been Casi, but she was usually far too intense for such behavior, so I dismissed the notion then that it could be her, and assumed it was one of the unseen pranksters, no doubt the faerie dragons the homunculi had mentioned.
Pop emerged from the dining room as well, looked into the arboretum, then shook his head. Turning about, he walked toward Devo and I, muttering under his breath about “giggling idiots” and “bitey chairs”, and he stopped next to us to take a look at the painting with the red-haired elf. After a moment, he turned to the two of us with a questioning look on his face to which Devo and I immediately responded with our denials of any knowledge of the figure.
I stepped over to the painting to look at it a little more closely, then pointed to the emblem on the elf woman’s tiara, “She is wearing the symbol of the elven goddess Sehanine Moonbow, but that’s all I recognize.”
“Reminds me o’ the Lady o’ Silverymoon,” Pop said.
“Lady Alustriel? She’s human and has silver hair,” I reminded him, gesturing toward my own hair with a grin. “And as I told Volo when he inquired, while Lady Alustriel has many half-elven children, I am not one of them.”
The dwarf chuckled and waved his hand at the painting. “I meant more in the way she stands.” Having met Lady Alustriel only once and that was while she was seated at a reading desk in one of the less-frequented corners of Candlekeep, I could neither agree nor disagree.
Lek let out a burst of laughter. “I forgot about that!”
I looked past Pop to see Thokk futilely attempting to pick a flower from one of the illusory plants, his olive-hued face creased in confusion as his hands passed through the stem of the “plant” in front of him again and again.
“Oh, only the flowers in the middle of the room are real!” Devo called out, leaning toward me and peering through the door to witness Thokk’s bewildered plight.
“The box with all the rocks: you should give that a good sniff!” Lek suggested with a wicked grin that immediately told me I did not want to put my sensitive elven nose anywhere near the “box with all the rocks”.
“I’ll just try again,” Thokk said, concentrating very hard on his futile task of picking the flowers that did not exist. “I’ll try again.”
“Thokk, no, they’re not real,” Lek exclaimed, the hand not holding his hat stretched toward the half-orc placatingly.
“What if I just asked nicely?”
“No—”
“May I pretty please—”
“—if you—”
“—with a cherry on top?”
Lek’s face was flushed red. “There’s… there’s nothing to grab, Thokk! You turn… turn this way, yes? And you see that pot there? Grab from those and you can put them in my book.”
Thokk gestured to the “plant” next to him. “But what about these?”
The rogue nearly slapped himself in the face with his hat. “They’re not real!”
“Let me just give it one more shot,” Thokk said determinedly, reaching again for the illusory plant.
“They’re not real, you dinkleberry!” Lek exclaimed, spinning away in exasperation, then turning back again. “They’re not real!“
Thokk gestured at the “plant”. “They’re right there; I can see them, dude!”
“I think Casi would have a better chance of grabbing these flowers than you,” Lek grumbled.
I frowned, wondering what that uncharacteristic dig at Casi was supposed to mean. Lek tended not to have anything unfavorable to say about his fellow half-elves, I’d noticed.
“Thokk, they’re like the cobwebs!” Devo tried to explain, starting forward into the arboretum, so I moved to the doorway as well so that I could at least see what was going on inside the room unobstructed.
Lek stomped over to the “plant” Thokk kept attempting to pick a flower from and waved his hands dramatically through the illusion. “You see this?” he shouted. “Nothing!”
Thokk rubbed the back of his neck. “Am I just not asking nice enough? Like, what am I doing wrong?”
“There’s nothing to grab! They’re fictional, they’re not real!”
“But I can smell them!”
“It’s magic!“
“I can see them!”
“It’s an illusion!“
From the doorway I could see that, indeed, it was Casi who was giggling. She looked happy, relaxed, and carefree in a way I’d never seen her before, and it brought a smile to my own face. The homunculi had spoken of faerie dragons in the arboretum, I recalled, and that small species of true dragons had a unique breath weapon that was referred to as “euphoria gas”.
Casi, it seemed, had gotten a good dose of it.
“There’s flowers you can smell and see and touch right here,” Lek exclaimed in exasperation, moving over to the trio of planters that hung beneath a pair of driftglobes in the center of the room.
“I’m glad I’m out o’ the room!” Pop muttered from behind me.
“Right here!” Lek repeated, his voice having risen nearly an entire octave throughout his tirade as Thokk made another futile swipe at his favorite illusory plant.
“Hey, I can put my face into this one!” Thokk said, doing exactly that.
Two more sources of high-pitched giggling joined Casi’s continued mirth.
“They’re not real, they’re—” the nobleman started to protest, but then gave up and spun away. He didn’t seem to be looking to me, Devo, or Casi, more than he was simply pointedly not looking at Thokk. “For once in my life, I’m going to say this: listen to the tiefling.”
Thokk nodded. “I’m gonna try the next one beside it!”
“No!” Devo and Lek shouted together.
“The next one beside it?“
“Those three little pots,” Lek directed him, pointing again to the trio of planters in the center of the room. “Those are the ones you can take.” A smirk crossed his face as he pointed to something on the ground nearby. “And that box. That box is real. Stick your hand in there, sift it around a bit.”
Happily, Thokk began to do exactly as Lek suggested, but as he started toward the box, a new plant suddenly appeared directly in front of him. As his hand inevitably passed through the illusion, the high-pitched giggling began anew.
Thokk turned his head curiously and walked over to another plant and crouched down, a huge grin crossing his face. “Hey, little fella! What’cha doin’?”
Lek stared after him in confusion, his voice back to being an octave higher than usual. “What’s he talking to now?!”
Thokk turned around and shushed him.
“Don’t you shh! me!” the half-elf retorted, but Thokk walked over to the box Lek had pointed him toward, crouched down, and stuck his hand into it, feeling around inside it for a bit as though trying to find something within the container. The faerie dragons began to giggle again, even as Lek doubled over in laughter, and Thokk withdrew his hand a moment later, then recoiled as though his hand now reeked of a foul odor, eliciting fresh peals of laughter from Lek, Devo, Casi, and the faerie dragons.
Thokk walked over to the still bent-over Lek and offered to help him stand upright, but Lek practically leapt away from the offered hand—the one that had been in the mysterious box—and he shooed Thokk over to the trio of planters in the center of the room, reminding the half-orc again that if he wanted to preserve any of the flowers, Lek would allow him to press them inside the pages of his sketchbook.
Devo’s face fell. “How come you wouldn’t let me put any flowers in your book?”
Lek tucked his sketchbook under his jacket and stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The tiefling’s jaw twitched, but he apparently decided to let the issue slide for now, instead looking around the room. Something caught his eye, and he pointed. “Has anyone else noticed the little guy?”
The Faerie Dragons Revealed
“What little guy?” Lek replied.
“Noooooo,” Thokk answered slowly, then sniffed at his hand. “Dude, this smells bad.”
“You’re the smallest ‘guy’ in here,” Lek observed.
“There’s a little guy in the plant,” Devo said, pointing toward one of the illusory plants near the edge of the arboretum.
Thokk shook his head. “There’s no little guy.”
“Yes, I see it!”
“No, you don’t!”
Lek was trying to slowly his sketchbook into a hidden pocket and not being especially subtle about it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said dismissively.
“He’s right there,” Devo insisted.
“No, he isn’t,” Thokk replied immediately.
“Lie to me all you want, but I know what I’m seeing,” the tiefling insisted, starting to get angry. First, Casi being giggly, then honest Thokk attempting to lie, and now ever-optimistic Devo becoming irritated? It might be time I asked the faerie dragons to put an end to their pranks before they caused actual harm to someone.
A startled look crossed the tiefling’s face as he spun around to face the plant he’d pointed to, then he turned back to Thokk. “Nevermind!” he exclaimed. “You’re right. Nothing there! I don’t see anything, actually, it was just the plant, like a weird leaf.”
I slapped my palm over my forehead, guessing what had happened, and therefore, what had likewise happened when Thokk had put his face into that same illusory plant earlier and introduced himself: the prankish creature had quickly managed to telepathically convince my companions to play along with its game!
Having realized something was amiss, Lek gave up trying to be subtle about his sketchbook and just jammed it into his pack, then walked over to the illusory plant Devo had just left and peered into it. “Oh,” he said a moment later, reaching into the plant. “Hello!” After a moment, he frowned. “Oh, come on, I’m all right.”
There was a fluttering sound, and then an orange faerie dragon shot into the air, hovering near the middle of the room on its delicate butterfly-like wings.
You are not surprised to see me? a bell-like voice asked me telepathically in fluent Draconic.
Cumin and Coriander told me there were two of you here, I replied silently.
And you didn’t tell the others?
No one asked me, I answered, and was rewarded with a musical giggle.
We know little of your common language, and the spell I can cast to speak it won’t last much longer, but you know the True Tongue!
I was suddenly pushed aside as Pop barged past me, marched up to Devo, threw the tiefling over his shoulder, then strode back out of the room carrying the protesting priest the whole way. “The fumes’re gettin’ to ya!” he declared as Devo tried to grab at the door frame to stop his progress.
“But we’re both orange!” Devo protested, his talons failing to find any purchase on the apparently-not-actually-wood frame of the door as Pop continued his relentless march down the hall.
I shook my head, thinking that if I had actually stepped into the room instead of hovering in the doorway, Pop might have grabbed me first instead of poor Devo. Thankfully, he had not, and as I peered back into the arboretum, I saw Casi give a shudder and shake her head, and from the sudden change in her posture, I knew she’d finally shaken off the effects of the euphoria gas.
The giggly one knows the Fey Tongue, the telepathic voice continued. I’ll talk to her now. Caexarith is older and less fun. She will talk to you!
The illusory plant which had so suddenly appeared in front of Thokk earlier just as abruptly vanished, and a yellow faerie dragon appeared from the far right side of the arboretum half-wall, launching itself into the air much as the orange one had done earlier.
A slightly-different voice then spoke into my mind, its pitch a little deeper than the orange faerie dragon’s had been but the timbre nevertheless ringing as feminine. I am Caexarith; the other was Virlyaer.
I am called Shadriel or Shay. I was worried for a moment that my companions were becoming upset by the pranks and that I was going to have to ask you to stop.
The fun had nearly reached its end anyway. Virlyaer is an excitable one and didn’t want his game spoiled, and I was surprised when first the orc, then the tiefling agreed to keep it going! If you can discover how to get us through the portal to leave this place, we could go with you? I tried to fly through the portal when it was open once, but I bounced off of it like it was a stone wall.
I blinked, surprised by both the problem the faerie dragon had encountered and also pleased by its offer. Faerie dragons were fun-loving, independent creatures, so I doubted that they’d stay with us for long if they did return with us to Waterdeep, but wouldn’t “The Faerie Dragons’ Rest” be a fabulous name and theme for a tavern?
Well, we first have to figure out how to open the portal again ourselves, I admitted, and briefly explained the issue with the wizards’ passwords for the portals. I noted that though Thava and the wolf cubs were expected to return on the morrow, unless we could discover the solution for ourselves, we wouldn’t be passing through the portal again until Saer Barrow sent for us at the end of the tenday.
Caexarith had overheard such a password—or pass phrase, in this case—used for the portal, but it was the one used by the wizards just before they departed a month ago, so I suspected it opened the portal to another destination. She claimed then that she remembered it well because though it was in Elvish, in which she knew only a few words, it sounded very nice to her as a small dragon who loves small, shiny things. Still, I record it here just in case we should need it later: tammin tar kiira, a phrase meaning “a cauldron full of gems”.
Will you share that with your companions? Caexarith asked, settling lower overhead as I used my “scratch journal” to make a quick note of the passphrase so I’d remember it again when I recorded my proper journal in full later.
If they ask, I answered, and Caexarith seemed to find this response just as amusing as had Virlyaer.
Casi cleared her throat. “This one is Virlyaer,” she began, pointing to the orange and yellow faerie dragons in turn, “and this one is Caexarith.”
“Nice to meet you both,” Lek replied drily.
“There’s a third one that they’re looking for,” the other half-elf continued, then trailed off, her brows furrowing as she seemed to direct a telepathic question to the yellow faerie dragon.
Virlyaer is offering your companion a deal: help us find our way out of here and we’d owe you a favor, Caexarith explained.
I glanced at Casi, who was staring hard at Virlyaer as they communicated silently. What was that about about a missing third? I asked Caexarith.
There were three of us once, the faerie dragon explained, captured together by the same idiot wizard from Baldur’s Gate.
Idiot wizard? Those two terms didn’t normally go together, as wizards were generally considered to be the more scholarly practitioners of the Art, especially as compared to likes of—admittedly—bards, sorcerers, and warlocks.
He could have asked if we wanted to go with him, Caexarith replied haughtily. Not that we would but he didn’t even think to ask, just opened his bottles and started pointing them at us.
I had heard of such bottles before, an expensively-crafted iron flask most-often employed in the entrapment of djinn, efreeti, and other powerful elementals. And this wizard had used three of them to capture young faerie dragons! While it was possible he was an “idiot” indeed or so phenomenally wealthy he could afford the frivolous use of such items, I thought it equally plausible the wizard was testing the items on less-dangerous quarry before selling the bottles to those who might want them to capture deadlier targets. And your missing friend?
Caexarith hovered lower so I could see her eyes roll dramatically. The wizard who rules this place is less of a fool, but she somehow managed to break Virlyaer’s bottle, freeing him, then she let me out of my bottle. We didn’t see Vaerix‘s bottle in the room, but she had… parts, so we escaped her workroom and made our way out here to this garden, where we’ve been ever since.
Parts?
Parts in jars on shelves, so I’ll let you figure out what that means.
I grimaced. Caexarith was obviously concerned that the first of the trio may have already been freed from his bottle, then killed and dissected for alchemical components. You don’t think your friend is still alive, do you?
The faerie dragon settled on the half-wall next to the door. Virlyaer is young and still has hope that Vaerix is simply still in his bottle, hidden somewhere else in this mansion.
Casi was relating much the same of that to the others: Virlyaer wanted us to look for the missing faerie dragon or the bottle in which he was trapped, or at the very least to find out what may have happened to him, and then return with any news before we departed the mansion. If we brought them any information about their missing companion, then they would leave with us when we departed.
Of course, we’ll know if you lie to us, Caexarith added slyly, launching herself into the air again and fading out of sight as her innate powers of invisibility took hold. And all that assumes you can figure out how we can pass through the portal!
“…They’ll come with us when we leave, but we need to help them find their friend,” Casi related, gesturing toward the now-vanished faerie dragons.
Pop glanced over his shoulder down the hall with unmistakable curiosity. “Somewhere in this building?”
“This is what I usually know helps find a missing friend,” Lek declared, then shouted, “Marco!”
“Reeta!” answered Pop, and then the two stared at each other in confused silence for a long moment.
Casi cleared her throat. “From what they told me, they were trapped in bottles, so their other friend could be trapped in one, too.”
Devo sighed. “Pop, could you put me down now?”
Self-consciously, the sturdy dwarf released his hold on the tiefling. “Now that ye’ve all settled down and got yer wits about ye,” he grumbled.
“I was fine! I never lost my wits!” Devo protested.
Lek snorted.
“That was all me,” Casi admitted with a blush. “The faerie dragons have… they called it ‘euphoria gas’?”
“I thought it was the flowers,” Thokk said, sounding a little disappointed. He made another half-hearted grab at a bloom, and again his hand went through the illusory plant. “So, should we go up the stairs to check for the other little guy?”
A chorus of voices immediately chimed in to correct Thokk that the plan, for the time being, was to fully explore the first level of the mansion before ascending the stairs. I briefly wondered where I was when this “plan” was being made, but decided it didn’t matter, because I certainly agreed with it.
Unraveling Mysteries
So Thokk boldly marched down the hall—his step hesitating only slightly as Pop chortled after him “Watch out for the chairs!”—and led the way toward the other “wing” of the mansion.
Bringing up the rear, I paused for a moment to look at the final painting I hadn’t had a chance to take in, and to my surprise, it took but a single glance to identify the black-clad figure whose likeness was captured even as he was himself painting a landscape scene. Though the silver hair at the temples of his black hair and the solitary streak of silver in his full beard would have been identification enough, the black wooden staff leaning against his painter’s easel was that for which he’d gotten his nickname and his successors had derived the title of their office: he was Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun, the legendary Archmage of Waterdeep and late husband of Lady Laeral Silverhand.
“Knew that one from me hero’s stories,” Pop told me proudly. “Khelben’s the one who introduced Drizzt to Captain Deudermont!”
I took in that odd bit of trivia with no small amount of astonishment, but as I re-examined what I knew of the oddly genial dwarf in that light, it suddenly made a great deal of sense. Pop had named that extraordinary dark elf “me hero” once before—when we met the Eilistraeans at the clerk’s office—but I had dismissed the wording as inconsequential at the time. I knew Pop was from Mithral Hall and like many dwarves of Clan Battlehammer, had marched with his reborn king to reclaim Gauntlgrym. I had falsely assumed that all his declarations of pride for “me king” were just that of any loyal dwarf to his legendary liege, but it obviously went well beyond that. Pop was a dwarf through-and-through, but he carried a recurve shortbow, a powerful weapon rarely seen on the back of a dwarf and more commonly carried by cavalry and highly-trained elves. And who might he have learned the handling of such a weapon from but the unicorn-riding ranger of the North and great ally to Clan Battlehammer, Drizzt Do’Urden?
Sadly, the name “Deudermont”, though familiar, wasn’t currently ringing any clarions for me. I nodded and smiled my thanks to Pop, and quickly jotted down the name in my scratch journal for later research.
Bypassing the open study door, Thokk walked up to the first closed door in the hallway and boldly threw it open. Purple light spilled out into the hallway from some light source beyond—a window, I would soon discover—but no one was immediately assailed by a chair or beclouded by mind-altering fumes.
Thokk disappeared into the room. “Hey, dude, how’s it going?” his voice drifted out into the corridor, addressing someone or something in that overly-gentle manner he had when he clearly thought whatever he was facing wasn’t at all deadly in the spare seconds he had before it attempted to kill him. “Have you been here this whole time?”
If ever we find Fistandia, perhaps she will need to study our party to understand the extradimensional properties which allowed us all to quite suddenly teleport into the same room as the guileless half-orc and interpose ourselves between Thokk and—
A broom.
An enchanted broom, of course, but one which thankfully was not in the process of attempting to murder Thokk, but rather just sweeping the floor of what looked to be a small martial exercise room, given the training dummy along one wall and the large illustrated diagrams of defensive routines for staves and daggers.
Devo sighed and squeezed out of the room, turning right and heading further down the hall. Most of the rest of us slowly made our way out of the room and back into the hallway, though Lek paused to admire a weapon rack containing a quartet of well-made daggers. Pop followed Devo into the hall, and Casi followed him, and after a last glance at Lek—now testing the weight of one of the daggers and giving it a few practice jabs at the battle-scarred sparring mannequin—I stepped out of the exercise room as well.
As in the other hallway, there were more paintings here, and the painting on the wall nearly opposite this door was instantly recognizable as a depiction of the Sage of Shadowdale himself, Elminster. I turned to my right, unsurprised to see another painting hanging between the exercise room door and the door through which Pop and Casi were cautiously peering, and after only a brief moment of contemplation, realized I beheld a depiction of four lesser gods of magic, one of them a dead god: Azuth and the one-time usurper of his power, the archdevil Asmodeus; as well as the diviner Savras and the now-destroyed necromancer Velsharoon.
Devo stood carefully in front of a door leading out into what appeared to be another balcony-like area similar to the arboretum, though this one had far fewer plants. Perhaps wary of falling victim to a prankish faerie dragon, however, the tiefling remained carefully inside the hallway, allowing only his head through the doorway to examine the patio beyond.
“Dwarves ain’t much interested in books,” Pop grumbled, turning away from the door he was standing in front of to look at the same painting I had just finished examining. “Or paintings,” he added with a dissatisfied huff.
Casi pushed the library door open more fully and entered the room, and as I stepped around Pop, I could see her looking around carefully and cautiously, her eyes glowing faintly. After a moment, she walked over to a desk in the corner of the room and began to examine the two books which were on it, looking back and forth between the two seemingly-identical volumes. “This reminds me of the stone… when we signed for the inn.”
I glanced at the last painting in the hallway—instantly recognizable to me as the Seven Sisters—and stepped into the room after her, peering at the title on each of the books: A Guide to Medicinal Plants. “It made an exact copy?”
“Looks like!” Casi agreed, then put the two books down and moved over to a nearly-bursting bookshelf and began to examine the titles. After a little while, she pulled a volume off the shelf and settled into the chair by the desk to read through it: The Chosen of Mystra. I could immediately follow her line of thinking: Fistandia believed herself to be a Chosen of Mystra, and aside from the four gods of magic, the other common thread of the paintings I was able to identify in the hallway so far was that they were all Chosen of Mystra. No doubt the red-haired elf and the half-elf warrior would prove to be the same, and likely could be found in that book Casi was even now reading.
“These are really nice chairs!” called a voice from beyond the other door in this room, and I chuckled at Thokk’s discovery of more fine furniture on the patio. He’d be very disappointed to learn that magic had no doubt created the furniture rather than the tools of a wood carver. After trying to decide which of the two copies of the plant book I should tuck into my pack, I shrugged my shoulders and slipped both into the bag, then stepped over and began to examine the same shelves Casi had searched, similarly looking for any titles referencing the Chosen of Mystra.
Hurried footsteps sounded from the hallway and Devo peered around the door into the library. “The password we’re looking for? I think we’re supposed to start with this painting here.” He held up the letter Fistandia had written to Freyot and pointed over his shoulder to the painting of the Seven Sisters. “‘Look first at the Daughters of Mystery’! Does that… does that make sense?”
I looked over to him in surprise. “Mystra is referred to as the Lady of Mysteries, so that does track, and the Seven Sisters are her daughters.”
Devo threw his hands up in excitement. “I did it! So we need to look at this painting!”
I put back the book I had just started to pick up—Magisters of Mystra—and followed Devo out into the hall to look again at the painting of the Falconhand women. Was there some clue I had missed because I had recognized the figures so easily, and therefore hadn’t given it more than just a passing glance?
The painting’s provenance fell in a span of only about 20 or 30 years, near as I could recall, as its depiction showed Syluné in her spectral form as the Ghost of Shadowdale—after her death defending that land against three chromatic dragons!—but all others were apparently still shown to be alive. I knew from time among the Eilistraean faithful in Cormanthor that Qilué had been killed not long before the onset of the Spellplague, and that many had feared Eilistraee herself destroyed by Lolth in that same horrible event, for their beloved goddess had fallen silent while Selûne and Sehanine Moonbow answered their prayers in her stead.
And yet they kept their faith in Eilistraee for a century! Is it any wonder I admire those brave and proud Sword Dancers so?!
The next to perish was the Simbul, Witch Queen of Aglarond, who was immolated in a mighty battle which likewise destroyed the lich-god Velsharoon. Most recently, the great Dove Falconhand succumbed to grievous injuries suffered defending the people of Myth Drannor while the remains of the flying city of Shade rained down upon them: such a fitting and noble end for the last Knight of Myth Drannor, one might suspect her bardic sister Storm of having penned it.
Storm was in the painting bearing her harp, and the other two surviving sisters were garbed in elegant tiaras and gowns, showcasing their important roles in matters of state: Alustriel and Laeral. At the time this painting had to have been envisioned, however, only Alustriel would have been an active political leader as the High Lady of Silverymoon, as during those scant few years between the deaths of Syluné and Qilué, Laeral was known to many as little more than “Lady Arunsun”.
Was this the discrepancy, then? This painting seemingly depicted Laeral as a political leader equal to her elder sister Alustriel when that was ahistorical to the era of the painting? But what could that possibly mean and how would one derive a password—
There was a sudden clattering sound and a curse in Elvish, and Devo and I turned to see Lek awkwardly stumbling out of the exercise room. “I tripped!” he declared defensively. “I tripped!”
Devo grinned. “Oh no, was the mannequin a mimic? Was it a mimi-quin?”
“I tripped!” the half-elf insisted. Behind him, the animated broom serenely began to sweep its way out of the exercise room and down the hall toward the foyer, and Lek watched it go for a moment, then started to turn around, paused at the painting of Elminster, and announced, “Hey, it’s that one guy.”
Sage of Shadowdale, Doombringer, Weavemaster, the Great Oversorcerer, I grinned to myself, and when next I visit New Olamn I can add That One Guy to his titles!
Lek stomped past Pop, Devo, and I and entered the library, muttering to himself something about nobility. Then there was the groan of wood, a startled shout, and a very loud crash.