Episode I: Origins - Act I "Omens and Rumors"

Scene I - Sul, 23rd of Zarantyr, 998 YK

In Flamekeep, most citizens were taking part in the evening's religious ceremonies while Gerard waited for the ferry to arrive. As he stood at the dock gazing out at the icy waters, wondering how a boat could traverse such dangerous waters, and wondering why he was foolish enough to get on board one that was willing to try, he was accosted by a pair of Thranish soldiers who were obviously quite inebriated. One of them tried to pick a fight with Gerard, but he merely showed his identification and they ran away without a word. He then spoke with the other passenger waiting for the ferry, a Karrn merchant named Marcus Fienn who seemed quite amiable. Marcus asked Gerard to guard his cargo, a shipment of much needed wool for a Karrnath buried in snow, across the Scion's Sound.

Meanwhile, the Five Nations Express sped across an unusually quiet Thranish countryside to Flamekeep. In one of the packed steerage carts at the end of the rail, Esan and Morgan sat or stood with over two hundred other passengers who couldn't afford coach. Esan noticed something tugging at his money pouch and snatched a small hand from behind him. A street urchin, probably not past his twelfth year in miserable Khorvaire, had been trying to pick his pocket. He hastily explained to Esan that he had no money for food in Flamekeep, and Esan explained in return the consequences of theft. The urchin troubled him no more.

Morgan spoke briefly with a rather banged up, dirty warforged who was sitting nearby, looking dejected. The warforged gave no name, but explained when asked that he had nearly been dismantled by an angry mob in Nowhere, and was looking for work in Thrane, where the subservient role of his kind was at least clearly defined and racial violence thus less likely to occur. Morgan and Esan then talked for a while.

The Five Nations Express stopped abruptly, and everyone in the cart slowly filed out. Tickets were required to depart the Express, and Esan and Morgan both noticed the street urchin being hauled away by House Orien security when he could not present his ticket. Morgan turned around and managed to convince the Orien guards that the urchin was his son. The child picked up on it fairly quickly, and the Orien guards either believed the act or didn't want to deal with the hassle, so they let him go. Morgan then told the child to stay away from crime, and warned him that he was a wizard, and would know if the child was up to any trouble. He seemed to get the message.

Morgan noticed as he turned to walk across the bridge into Flamekeep that his ferry was departing in five minutes. He told Esan this, and was surprised to learn that Esan was also boarding the ferry. They made their way quickly down to the docks on the city's west side and saw the squat, unwieldy Lyrandar-owned ferry slowly drifting away from its port. Both of them barely managed to jump across, landing on the deck of the ship and meeting Barthanas, a very irate, elderly half-elf 'captain' (though the title of captain was a bit of a conceit, seeing as how he was also the only crew member). He took their travel fare and told them that the icebergs littering the Sound combined with the fact that he needed to idle the boat for a few hours each day to get some sleep meant that the trip would take about six days, with one short stop for supplies in Throneport halfway across. They met Gerard and Marcus at this point, and their journey began.

24th-26th of Zarantyr

These days passed rather uneventfully; the passengers conversed some to pass the time, but mostly everyone kept to their own business. On Zor, the ferry stopped in Throneport for supplies, but after an hour continued on its trip. Barthanas informed the passengers that they would have to move a little bit closer to the Mournland shore than he liked due to an unexpected ice flow in the ferry's path, but he didn't expect it to delay the ferry's arrival in Karrnath by more than a few hours.

Scene II - Far, 27th of Zarantyr

Despite what Barthanas said, the ferry did not come within fifty miles of the Mournland, yet the passengers could still make out the eerily still Dead Gray Mist, stretching from surface to sky, horizon to horizon in the south. Gerard and Esan were both outside, enjoying some fresh air when strange creatures began climbing aboard the ship. They were bipedal sea creatures covered in scales and fins, with webbed feet and hands, and they wielded tridents and shields made out of coral and shells. They immediately attacked the passengers as if in a mad frenzy. Morgan came out of the cabin and assisted Esan and Gerard in the defense of the ferry. Gerard made short work of most of them, and Esan killed the last one as it tried to escape. Morgan then told everyone that the creatures were locathahs, and that it was unusual to find hostile tribes in the Scion’s Sound. One of them still breathed, and Morgan decided that it might be best to question it to discern the motives behind the attack. Gerard bent over the gaping wound in the creature’s chest caused by his own sword during the fight, and when he stood up there was only a scar.

Morgan questioned the creature, but it did not appear to share a language with any of them. Morgan went into the cabin and found Marcus hiding under a bed. He knocked on Barthanas’ door (which was locked) and convinced him that it was safe to come out. Barthanas came out, and recognized the creature for a locathah as well. He spoke Aquan fluently, and conversed with the creature for a few minutes. While he did this, Marcus rewarded the other passengers with gold for ‘defending his cargo’; he didn’t seem to understand the motives of the locathah at all, for when Barthanas was done speaking to the captive, he made it clear the the creature was quite mad. The only marginally intelligible things it said were that his family was all dead, the fish tasted bad, and that there was ‘something in the water’. Barthanas suggested that they give it a clean death, to put it out of its misery, before going back to the pilot room.

Esan and Morgan initially agreed with this idea, but Gerard insisted that the waters were the jurisdiction of the Throne Wardens of House Deneith, and that the creature needed to be turned over to them for judgement. He placed manacles on the locathah and the other two agreed to help him watch over the captive until they arrived in Karrnath. Morgan told his familiar to catch a fish and see if the locathah was telling the truth; when the crow returned with a fish in its mouth, it said that the fish didn't taste right at all.

Scene III – Sul, 1st of Olarune

The ferry arrived in Southbridge in the evening, just a few hours behind schedule. Southbridge is a small village built around a bridge crossing the Karrn River. Southbridge is also a crossroad on an Orien trade route that branches off to Rekkenmark, Korth and Karrlakton. The passengers disembarked and headed to the Port Authority, where they turned the locathah over to some guards who Barthanas was hiring for his next trip. Morgan wrote out a short description of the locathah's behavior and what it had said during the interrogation and handed it to the guards, who said they would escort it to Throneport and make sure House Deneith got the note. They stayed the evening in the King's Bounty, the only inn Southbridge had to offer. The accomodations in the rooms they rented were barely adequate, but the dinner and ale more than made up for this shortcoming. While they lingered in the common room, Morgan asked around to see if any caravans were leaving Southbridge for Rekkenmark in the morning, but could not find any interested in hiring on guards or accepting passengers.

Meanwhile, Gerard and Esan noticed Marcus Fienn having some sort of altercation with a gray cloaked woman sporting an eye patch. They left the King's Bounty, and by the time Gerard got outside to see where they had gone both had disappeared. He went back inside and inquired about the woman with the eye patch at the bar. The barkeep (and owner of the inn), a fat Karrn veteran named Maigon, denied knowing anything about the woman. Gerard sensed that Maigon might not be telling the truth, but when he pressed the man for a true answer, Maigon merely warned him that inquisitive foreigners didn’t last long in Karrnath and told him to sit down. Gerard decided that starting a fight was not the wisest course of action and let it go, though grudgingly. Gerard, Morgan and Esan then talked for a while, and realized that they were all still going in the same direction. They decided to travel together before settling down for the night.

2nd-4th of Olarune

After gathering supplies and cold weather gear, the party set out on foot for Rekkenmark. The first three days were unremarkable; the road was not as well traveled as it might have been in better weather, but it was patrolled by the Royal Swords of Karrnath. They were stopped once on the first day by Royal Swords and asked for their identification papers, but when they produced these they were not further hindered. On Wir, they passed Tanar Rath, a fortress town governed by one of the Karrn warlords. It was midday, so they decided not to stop and look around.

Scene IV – Zor, 5th of Olarune

Just before dusk, the party spotted two figures just down the road; having seen no other travelers for the past few hours they were immediately out of place, and moreso when it was apparent that they were not moving, simply standing in the middle of the road. When they got closer, Gerard and Esan recognized Marcus and the woman with the eye patch, though now she was dressed in the uniform of a Royal Swords officer. She had a bare-bladed bastard sword swung over one shoulder, and a cocked hand crossbow in her other hand. She ordered the group to halt, and declared that she was Captain Adalgisa Jaranus of the Royal Swords. She told the party that Marcus had reported one of them as a Thranish spy. Marcus immediately protested, saying that he had merely said ‘yes’ when she asked him if there were any Thranes in from the ferry. Adalgisa insisted that one of them was a spy, and asked for identification papers. Gerard and Esan both spotted soldiers hiding in nearby trees while she was speaking. Gerard volunteered that he was a Thrane, though he said he was no spy. She didn’t believe him. Marcus told Gerard not to worry; the Royal Swords would merely take him into custody and ask him some questions, and then release him when it was clear that he was an honest traveler. Adalgisa interrupted Marcus by putting a crossbow bolt through his throat, and then ordered her soldiers to execute the party for ‘murdering a Karrn merchant on the King’s road’.

A short fight ensued; Morgan immediately put the Captain and one of her men to sleep with a powerful enchantment scroll while Gerard and Esan made short work of the others. The party realized that killing Royal Swords in Karrnath was no small complication – they briefly talked about the consequences, and realized that turning them in for murder would do no good. In a place where martial law reigns, a Royal Swords officer is going to be believed over a bunch of foreigners. They checked the murder weapon, and it was conspicuously generic and unidentifiable in origin. They decided that the only way to see justice done was to mete it out themselves. They executed the two soldiers who hadn’t been put to sleep, and hauled the captain and the other away for questioning off the road.

Morgan used another scroll before the interrogation that prevented the two captives from speaking lies. to It did not prevent them from being evasive, so Gerard used more…traditional means of questioning – brute intimidation. And before Esan moved back to the road to cover up evidence of the battle, he used some sort of mental power that seemed to frighten Adalgisa even more. They learned in just a few minutes that Adalgisa and her men were all agents of the Order of the Emerald Claw, a Karrnathi terrorist organization that used to be an order of knights in service to King Kaius I.

Adalgisa and her men were ordered by Ermana Kessler, another agent of the Order in a different cell, to patrol the road to Rekkenmark for ‘Flamers’ and others who might prove meddlesome to her, and to eliminate them if possible. They do not know what Kessler is up to, though they do know that she is meeting with Talovar ir’Mandar, a young Karrn warlord currently giving lectures at the Rekkenmark Academy. Morgan asked Adalgisa if the Order is somehow still connected to the Royal Throne, and Adalgisa said no. She did imply some sort of connection between the Order of the Emerald Claw and the Blood of Vol religion, but she didn’t seem to know terribly much about that, either. She repeatedly tried to buy her life with promises of amnesty and even wealth. She betrayed the only other person directly in her chain of command, some sort of official in the Royal Swords office in Korth named Alarich Dorn. Apparently, Dorn is some sort of communications hub for her cell. He gets her orders and passes them along to her with her regular directives from the Royal Swords. She said that she has never met Ermana Kessler; she merely got her orders through Dorn.

The interrogators offered them a chance to live – if they would write out a confession and come quietly to the nearest Royal Swords office to turn themselves in. Even Adalgisa was too terrified of the consequences of living to betray the Order. The nameless soldier died with dignity, but Adalgisa went to Dolurrh screaming. The party then buried the dead as deep as they could, making sure to smash the mouths of the Emerald Claw agents so that they could not communicate with investigating priests. They buried Marcus separately with a small ceremony led by Gerard, and did not smash his mouth in. Gerard admitted that he was an agent of the Silver Flame at this point, but Esan and Morgan were still willing to travel with him. They found the horses used by Marcus and the Emerald Claw agents. Marcus’ they kept, but the others were branded as property of the Karrnathi military so they were unsaddled and let go. The group continued to Rekkenmark.