Espi in Rastingdrung

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Erebos Retires

Downtime 08 ❖ June 27, 2020

Espi awakes, not in a flower but in a four-poster bed in a room walled in crimson damask in the former Inquisitor’s Theatre, deep within Zyan Between. She rises and washes her face in a small basin, pausing to run a finger along the gleaming golden scar that crosses her face. She stretches, her body feeling unfamiliar after her long slumber amid the white fronds of the jungle. Her shoulder is healed from the wrenching wound the white ape gave it; she feels the joint and peers at it closely; there’s a delicate tracery of gold spiderwebbing the skin. She frowns faintly, but other things call for her attention.

Dressing quickly she runs out onto the balustrade surrounding the domed room and down the stairs. It’s late in the morning and the bar is already busy, dour exiles from the Apartments to the south and jaded Ulimites from Rastingdrung crowding the tables. She listens to the wistful tales of the exiles of their glory days before they were banished to the underground where the sun of Wishery never shines; to a merchant’s tales of his voyages among the shattered isles and the continents far to the north of Ghinor. She’s a keen listener, hungry to fill a mind near-emptied of memory, and even the grim exiles warm to her earnest interest.

Hours later she steps out of the door of Ultan’s Print shop, into the bustling streets of Rastingdrung. She blinks and looks around in awe, standing on a new world under a new sun. She begins wandering through the crowded narrow street, and Aeris has to shoulder past people to keep up with her. They emerge into Eidolon Square, and she stops to admire the fine carvings of Ulimite saints on display, and watches the master carpenters hammering and sawing in their shops around the square.

In the next square people gather at the tables outside little cafes with windows and doors wrought in art nouveau styles, smoking pipeweed and drinking coffee. Espi tries a cup but pulls a face, finding it bitter. The Rastingdrungers are charmed by her wide-eyed manner, and a con artist circles, but at a look from Aeris he melts away in the shadows of the cafe.

Following the sound of flutes and the scent of incense, she finds the temple of Ulim, formerly of Mitra, now a pleasure den and the headquarters of Rastingdrung’s religious secret police. Her guide gently draws her away from that place, skirting the debauchery within and the potential attention of the Scarlet Censors.

“What’s that?” she asks, pointing to the tower rising from the faded domes and crumbled spires of the Chatelaine’s palace, about which monstrous white shapes wheel - the Aviary of the Storm Riders’ War Crows.

There’s a little fuss getting her a Red Seal for the city gates when she’s already inside, but soon Aeris leads her through the shanties and colourful open air markets surrounding the city, darting from stall to stall, buying clothes and nicknacks, though she carefully saves most of her share of the treasure.

By evening she plays with a group of local children in the iridescent shallows of Lake Wooling, listens to their tales of the city beneath the lake, and flees with them back to the shore when a huge albino fish draws near, and climbs back up the banks, soaked and smiling, her heart full with the swell of new memories.

Along the shore is a crumbling tower, long abandoned, looking out over the shimmering lake and the stinking fens where the Groveler Birds wail their plaintive and pathetic cries. It’s been hastily hung with yellow banners, and on the ground floor Caenn and a team of porters and carpenters are unloading boxes and kicking the rickety wooden stairs. Espi sleeps on pile of straw in one corner, heedless of the hammering of men assembling bookshelves, as Aeris sits on a box and rifles through books purchased from the Exiles in Zyan Between.

The loss of the Parapraxis is not described in detail in any of them, but from passing references it becomes clear that it was the great flagship of the Explorer’s Guild, a vessel bearing a great library of poetry and verse, museum pieces from other worlds, crewed by duelists and great hunters and storytellers, and that it was not limited to the skies beneath Zyan but could go wherever in the its navigator desired - there are veiled suggestions that this was its undoing.

In any case, the loss of the Parapraxis occurred during a war with a race of tyrants known as the Archivists, and was a source of great shame and regret, a blow from which the guild did not have the chance to recover, with the terrible advent of the Hidden King. Such hard study after a long day of keeping up with Espi’s boundless energy soon wears Aeris out, and the knight too falls asleep on one of the piles of straw the workmen have strewn upon the mildewed flagstones of the old tower.

In another world, Willard the stablehand, napping amid the hay, stirs, as Lady Nicholson walks past the stable door with a companion, out of sight, but their voices clear in the summer air. “...the strangest dream, everyone wore masks all the time, and the streets all wound in upon themselves, and the trees grew upside down and their leaves were white... Everyone was so sad, though, as if something had been taken from them. Oh, listen to me, going on about nonsense. But it felt so important at the time. I suppose dreams always do!”

In a smoky back room Rhea meets with a gaggle of street urchins and three or four more seasoned rogues. She’s become something of a legend among the local underworld with the treasures she’s brought back, and they’re keen to know, are the streets of Zyan truly paved with gold? And if not, do those walking them at least have nice fat coin purses? They also complain bitterly about the attentions of the Chatelaine’s black-armoured guard and the Scarlet Censors; Rastingdrung feels increasingly, they say, like place where an honest thief can’t make a dishonest coin. A dozen grubby faces look up at Rhea expectantly, brothers and sisters of the streets seeking in her the answers to their troubles and the fulfillment of their avaricious little dreams.

Meanwhile Garviel has spent the day attending to his falconry, shopping for promising birds and necessary equipment with Daronalis, the halfling full of questions about his adventures beyond Ultan’s door. Now he’s being fussed over by Samhir, a flamboyant Ulimite master tailor. He talks too much of opium and temple prostitutes for Garviel’s taste, but his talent is undeniable, and he’s excited to work on such a fine cape, chasing Garviel from his shop with unseemly haste in his eagerness to begin work.

The sound of felt shoes hammering the flagstones echo through the vaulted halls of Rastingdrun University. The assembled lecturers watch through a magicked bowl in the staff smoking room.

“Look who’s back.” Sneers the chief conjurator, chewing idly on his pipe.

“More like smell who’s back.” The illusionist-in-chief chuckles, to a murmured ripple of weak laughter. “Erebos the Brown, here to brag of the latest dinner he conquered.”

A sharp rap at the door interrupts the lecturers’ japery. With a finger to his lips, the dean stands from his seat. “Come in, Erebos.” The lecturers stifle their laughter as the door creaks open.

He stands now with purpose: his fists clenched, his gaze true, his shoulders as far back as they will go. “Hello, dean. And the rest of you.” Erebos’s wizened features twist into a frown. “In my travels, I have come to realise something.”

“Here he goes...” a voice mutters from the back of the room.

“In all my years as this university’s librarian, I have never once been treated with the respect deserving of a senior staff member. And I do deserve it! I’m incredibly senior!”

“Get to the point, Snore-ebos.” The lecturer in applied necromancy jeers from the back of the room.

“You told me I wasn’t to come back until I had a discovery worthy of the University’s name. Well, I have a discovery for you - I’ve discovered that you’re all a pack of wretched poltroons!”

He pauses a moment to let this sink in, “I’m rich and I turned myself into a bowl of petunias -twice! I don’t have to take this poppycock anymore from a bunch of...” he gropes for another insult, but never one to underuse a good word, concludes, “of poltroons! You can keep your tenure! I’m going to build my own library and research spells, and I won’t have to do any more of this running around in horrible places at the behest of poltroons!”

He pauses once more. The faculty stare at him for a long moment. This isn’t the first time he’s annoyed them, but it’s the first time it’s been deliberate. He meets the dean’s contemptuous gaze with a steely confidence, and slowly pulls a handful of dirt from his pocket. Hurling it into the air, he points at the dean and intones, “botaniculus!” as fine soil rains down around him. A nervous looking underclassman who happened to be walking behind the dean yelps and turns into a bowl of petunias.

“I... I meant to do that! Let that be a warning to you, or... or next time you won’t be so lucky!”

And with that he drops a marble to the ground, casting Erebos’ Resilient Sphere on himself. Secure against reprisals, he rolls confidently out of the room before the dumfounded gaze of the faculty, breaking into a nonchalant stroll and even whistling a cheerful tune as he rolls down the corridor, his good mood lasting right up until he reaches the top of the sixth floor spiral staircase and realises it’s far too late to cancel the spell.

The stair mishap aside, it was a good day, and that night, dressed in fine new yellow robes (with significantly more gold trim) he strides into his tower, looks around at the half-built bookcases, boxes of alembics, and dozing guests. He’s made it. He’s a proper wizard, with a proper wizard’s tower, and he’ll never have to leave or go anywhere terrifying or unpleasant or even saturnian again.

He shares a few words with Caenn, before the latter ventures out into the reeking midnight fen, magic light casting weird shadows, treading carefully between tussocks of grass, toward a crumbling cottage half-ruined amid the muck. Here dwells Krodofel, the Cannibal Quasit, a vile little imp with ribbed horns and skin stretched taught over a skull-like face, shunned even by demons for his habits.

The creature appears from nowhere, squatting on a log behind Caenn, and drools as it eyes the demon leg he carries. “Yesyes, I know why you’re here, wizard. You seek what only I can make, yes, I’ll take your coin and make your staff and sup on the sweeeeet, sweeeet marrow,” the creature purrs, unfurling a long and sinuous tongue.” He hops down and peers at the opal, gazing into the depths. “Dark, dark, this gem won’t give up its secrets easily. Cruel, cruel to prise them from it. But for gold and marrow I’ll do it, yes? Now go. Leave coin and jewel and leg and look not back, come again at sunset.”

Dungeon Master’s Notes

This was the first downtime where I really tried to tell a story and not just recount the results of DT actions. I really wanted to capture Espi’s feelings as she woke up to her new life. It was heavily inspired by the opening scenes of Alita: Battle Angel (2019) - the kindness of strangers, the dirty and dangerous but vibrant city, the small unexpected joys.

The chocolate scene had the curious consequence of establishing as canon that she eats, though she doesn’t breathe. But we roll with these things.