A Year in the Life of Klaarf Mason

Klaarf arose as usual. At the usual time, in the usual place, and with the usual people all sleeping in the same, single-room shack they had cobbled together for themselves for some shelter from the cold of the taiga forests this far to the north. He swung his feet over the usual side of the top bunk he slept on, and hopped down noiselessly on stockinged feet. Grabbing his usual bag and pack frame, he headed on out the same door he always did. They had been working on this tower now for a year and a half, driven ruthlessly by the lady who had contracted the place. Some noble from the city, for sure, but just who he could not fathom. He and his fellows were being paid a lot of money for silence. They were known for being discreet, this crew. They had a reputation to maintain, they did! But this particular lady was making it hard not to quit and shout about it at some crowded tavern afterwards.   Oh, at first she was all sunshine and pink roses, if a bit off-putting. Klaarf was convinced it was her red eyes. At least, that's what did it for him. He picked his way along the path the cement masons had stamped out for them when they had finished building the base mound. The noblewoman client had waxed poetic about how much High King Justinian would love his new, secret retreat. That was her story, at first. That she had commissioned it for the High King. Some of the 'fellas' had joked around about her hauntingly alluring beauty, too. According to Chaaley Stone, the Lady from Cotnor City was "as hot as Asmodeus' taint". Then, some chucklehead from Chaaley's circle started a betting pool about who would bed her first, or something, and Klaarf would bet a copper he knew who it was. Crude comments had flown around the worksite like vulgar leaves in a perverted breeze. Their client, the noblewoman with the strangely enticing eyes, seemed not to notice. Nor did the silent, off-putting servant that followed her silently around. The one with no face. She spoke of the High King less and less often while she was on the job site, which was often enough due to her many change orders and increasingly complex build requirements. One room was a spiral, for the love of Oghma. And, gradually, it became more and more apparent that the tower was being built for her. It was being built to her Royal Highness' specifications. It was obvious to Klaarf, anyhow. This was definitely not his old ass' first time around a tower! Yet, he held his tongue, as was his wont. Even as he mortared hidden murder holes and dart traps. Trigger plates in the stairs were very common add-ons. Klaarf used scroll after scroll of magical spells, again to her ladyship's precise specifications.   One day, when it was raining ice so hard they simply could not work safely upon the meticulously built framework of their scaffolding, with a great noise of horses whinnying and being drawn to a fast stop, her ladyship arrived at the masons' makeshift 'guildhall'. Banging on the door in the middle of the night (and scaring the shit out of poor Eagon, who slept next to the door), she flung open the entryway and stepped within, her legs emerging from the darkness outside like a sultry dancer's. She languidly looked about, for all the world like a cat that had stumbled into a den of sleeping mice. "I require the foreman of this operation. Immediately." Her tone and accent were exaggerated in a fantastic impression of the more perverse impersonations that had been made of her. She had been just as officious and sneering as the lads thought she would be, too. For once! Klaarf just kept his head down, stayed silent, and worked hard. He stayed well away from any such drama and gossip. He had been a soldier for the High King! A Marine aboard a man o' war, was old Klaarf, and his self respect wouldn't allow him to participate in such derogatory bullshit. He was a veteran, and as such he felt that he had to represent himself honorably in every aspect of his life. He did his level best, too. Hoo-ah!   Their client, the red-eyed noblewoman from the city, herself, marched Mikka the foreman toward the doorway out like a teacher with a recalcitrant child. The two disappeared through the entrance together after a final, furtive glance from Mikka that was so terrified he looked as if he might faint. The foreman came back alone, however, within the space of a few minutes. He came back with a purpose. He looked quite piqued, did poor Mikka. A deathly pallor and the green tinge of nausea washed Mikka's normally jovial mien with an unfamiliar look of fear. Or terror, more like, thought Klaarf. Mikka pointed to Chaaley, who was one of the more aggressive of the jobsite punsters.   She...wants..." Mikka took his hat off and wrung it like a soaked towel. "Chaaley." He took a deep breath, and steeled himself. Pretty well, too, in Klaarf's opinion. "Chaaley, she wants you to...accompany her...to her 'boudoir', as she called it. Not my word." Chaaley went pale white for and instant, and the cold sweat beading in his hairline as well were obvious signs of fear. But he puffed out his chest with some commendable braggadocio, opining that she must have heard he could show her how a real man performed "in the sack". He wondered if there would be oral involved, or something similarly stupid and macho, and that he "hoped to all the gods that she had a hot tub". But Chaaley was a profoundly changed man when he returned a few days later. Aside from the healing bruises and bitemarks he was covered in, Chaaley was a completely changed man temperamentally. No longer did he joke around on the job site. No more did he shout out the refrains of popular songs only rewritten with absolutely filthy lyrics. His gaze had become furtive and quick, like a raccoon's, thought Klaarf. Chaaley developed a hard time sleeping at night due to his terrible night terrors; so bad, he started waking the rest of the men with his screams. His job performance slipped painfully quickly, and one day less than a week later he just refused to go into work, or even to get out of his bunk. He stopped responding altogether at one point between dusk and midnight of the tenth day, not even arising to relieve himself. On the eleventh, Klaarf was able to get him to take some weak gruel in the morning, but the secretive masons found Chaaley dead upon their return from the job site, mouth open and jaw completely slack. The confused look frozen on his face haunted Klaarf for the rest of his days.  

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A year later, and the mason crew working out on this secret, rural project were finishing up interior stonework and doing the small custom add-ons these nobles felt themselves entitled to, when she banged loudly on the door of the Guildhall once again. Her Dark Ladyship was choosing the dozen or so craftsmen she would trust to build her inner sanctum, and as luck would have it, Klaarf was among them. He felt the dubious honor was because he could read. Yay. He would have to thank his parents for that, someday.   Klaarf it was who ended up engineered most of this tower's defences, sticking strictly to her ladyship's designs "for the health of the High King" and to his original contract to build a retreat for her, and through her for the High King. It took a fairly short time, but it became obvious (at least, to Klaarf) that this tower would be used for nefariousness. That perhaps she was asking him to engineer and build the very means of a dark and complex plan to destroy the High King. Her own son, it turned out. And, while Klaarf did not know it, the fungus that she had infected his brain with began to affect him in other, stranger ways. He began to 'act out', in the vernacular. Drinking huge amounts of ale and rum, for instance, and starting fights amongst the other masons at the camp. Yet, he would remember none of it the next morning. He began openly sleeping with other men's wives, and stopped washing himself just a short while after that. Klaarf was completely unlike his usually quiet, self deprecating demeanor, when he was drinking. He lost all of his friends in short order; his family disowned him after he began stealing money from them to buy drugs. Klaarf, the nondescript mason from Craysilt, now arose with hollow, poppy-blackened eyes. He had no usual place to do anything, anymore. Not even to lay his head.   Klaarf worked feverishly, towards the end, layering enchantments exactly as he was directed to, losing more and more of his mind, over time, to the invasive fungus that was colonizing his central nervous system. He was the last living workman on that towering royal retreat. The last one not raised as an undead slave, also. Maybe incidentally. That last layer, as the final level was built as a luxurious suite of apartments with the locks, as in the rest of the building, built on the bottom of the hatchway leading down to the floor below. Klaarf stifled a laugh; at least, he thought he stifled it, as he installed the locks. The cleverness of the gnomes sometimes really impressed him, but these locks were miracles of magical engineering that astounded the stricken mason. They were able to recognize people, or to open via the use of a password. Giggling to himself through a prismatic sheen of saliva flowing unchecked from his slackening jaw, he assured complete control of the tower was given to the High King, and to Corrine Cotnor. And to Justinian Grey in particular. None of the tower's magical defences would work against the good and noble High King! Whom everyone had heard of, even mad old Klaarf! Ha HA! He took to shouting "COMMAND ME, MY LADY!" randomly, at the top of his lungs.  

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Klaarf would never get to train the High King in the use of the tower's magical defences. He was murdered and consumed, shortly thereafter, by the demon Lord Gakrûl, who could sense Klaarf's malcontent and mischief towards the order. Klaarf was completely forgotten afterwards, by Lady Cotnor and everyone else.