11.1 Allies, Perhaps Friends

General Summary

Day 105

When we approach Deldrin, it is clear that the festival has concluded and some new members are now in power. The gold banners have been replaced with a pale canary yellow, and the rose with a stone grey.   The guards seem tense, and there are more of them patrolling the entrance. We are greeted by a guard dressed in emerald green (a sage, I recall) before being passed off to a young elven woman dressed in new, stone grey armor. The woman greets us with jarring familiarity and exclaims “Father will be so glad to see you again!”   Evidently this is Winter’s daughter, and she is sparing us quite a bit of hassle with the guards and paperwork, for which I am grateful.   Inside the city, she leads us towards the inn and gives us a brief update on the status of the city.

• Several influential people have been murdered, some under the guise of being robberies.
• Some of the city guard has gone to help the outlying villages who have been attacked..
• Justine Rose lost her seat and this means there is no mercenary presence on the Council.
• Tolv Canary won a seat, and he is an aggressive actor who has been championing the sending of guards into the countryside.

Winter summons Nishvalen and Vaneili for us and we have a more in-depth discussion of the circumstances.   There have been rumours of bandits and brigands attacking the countryside, which is what prompted the guards to be sent to help. These rumours don’t fit with the merchants arriving into town with burnt wagons and tales of destruction, not thievery. This fear led the city to elect Tolv in favour of Justine, who prefers magical defences and careful military advancement to the brash behaviour that Tolv is promoting. Master Bodin, the stonecarver we had briefly met last time, fills the other seat, though his convictions are nothing notable. He is a man for staying the course and always votes for the least disruptive option.   With a smaller guard presence in the city, violent crime has gone up, though the elves have been unaffected. No one has seemed to have noticed this yet, thankfully.   Wyn Azure and Shelor Silver are the Council members most likely to be our allies in this matter, and Nishvalen leaves to arrange a meeting with Shelor. She runs a dance studio, but there are rumours of her having been an assassin in the Kingdoms across the sea. Notably he also tells me that she could hold her own, politically, in an elvish court.   So with this discussion out of the way, the group splinters. Bran leaves to pursue membership in the Smiths’ Guild, thinking to gain a foothold in the city. Vaneili takes our new members on a tour of the Twilight Garden.   Hella, Kadia, and I go to find Dedrafel and begin work on the repairs. We find him poring over notes and working on a magical defense system. It is quite ingenious! It prevents directly destructive magic from manifesting at all, and he is working on producing a totem of some kind that will make our own forces exempt from the ward. He is quick to note that he is simply arranging and making sense of existing magic, but it is still very well done. Kadia and Hella remain with him to work on it when Nishvalen brings me away to meet with Shelor.   Alder and I arrive at her dance studio and find several students practicing - human, dwarven, elvish, and even a fae.   She is a formidable-looking woman and very graceful. We sit down to tea and she summarily ignores Alder’s presence, which I think he probably prefers.   She opens with both a request and an offer: Information for a secret. I tell her, in somewhat guarded terms, what a Dread Lady is. Someone sworn to protect her people, with both the power and the responsibility that one would expect. There are not very many, and so it is natural that the title feel...heavy. In turn, she tells me that she is the last of her line, a member of some royal family from the other side of the sea.   With the accoutrements of trust out of the way, we turn our attention to the mess of threads that we have independently been examining. I tell her of the Order and their devotion to the Candlemaker and Fisherman. I mention the presence of elves among them, and the ritual, which she recognizes as “the Shadowbreaking”. She assures me that it is forbidden in Deldrin, and any with that knowledge are not permitted to be a member of the temples here.   In turn, she tells me that the murders here have not been random.

• A high priest of the Candlemaker
• Sages of wind and rain
• An oil merchant, whose wagon of goods were stolen
• Two underpriests of the Fisherman. Their high priest has since been grieving and unreachable ever since.
• A captain of the Wizards’ Guard, who carried a wand and enchanted sword, both stolen. She in particular was one of Shelor’s trusted informants and extremely competent. To have killed her is notable.

The pieces of this puzzle come together better for both of us. Targets who represent either resources that would help a fire-based order, and who wield opposing magic or represent an alternate direction of their faith.   I mention Zadiyah, but not by name. And Shelor tells me of a man - Killeon - who was exiled from the Kingdoms for his crusade on behalf of the Candlemaker, and who may be behind this new crusade. It would certainly explain where Zadiyah got this idea of being Chosen from.   Something still doesn’t quite fit though. Shelor doesn’t fully understand why Deldrin is such an attractive target. I have my theories - it is a magically powerful place regardless, but it also contains artefacts that would allow for an easy spread across the entire land. It is also home to many elves who could be ‘chosen’. I elect not to tell Shelor about this, that the Order believes that elves are intended to be the next chosen people.   In our parting, there is a wary amount of trust and respect. Allies, for now, but perhaps one day friends. She notes that she may be able to persuade the Council to judge these Shadowbroken elves more lightly for their crimes based on their torture and mental state, which is a kind gesture. She seems to understand when I tell her that if I have the opportunity to simply collect my lost people and leave, I will do that instead. This is a kinder gesture.   Finally, a human who can play politics!