Inas relaxes his hold on the arrow.  He does this on purpose, to appear less like he's challenging the mind flayer -- because he wants to balance out the challenge his words are going to present.


"How about this.  I think you're lying.  I think that none of you think we have anything to do with the missing pages of the book.  You can all read our minds, and you've already found one of the pages -- in a place, and for a purpose, unconnected to us.

I think you're doing all of this to create an incentive for us to find the pages.  What I can't figure out is why.  Why exactly do you need us to get these pages?  Why don't you just do it yourselves?"

He puts his arrow back in its quiver.

"Or, who's got them, and what are they doing with them, that's got you so scared?"

The flayer barely moves but it clearly is looking at Inas.

"We do not know fear. Think of your statement. In a race where we all can read thoughts and minds, how would we learn to lie?  To what end?   Furthermore, do you lie to the forest animals?  It is for the lessor races to cheat and lie."


Again he hesitates,

"But you are correct in one regard.  the book is among a few that is highly sacred to us.  But if used in the wrong way, it is very dangerous for your world, but its affects would be nearly immune to our efforts to stop it.  It is at the heart of our powers.   For decades we thought it destroyed, and were both saddened, and relieved to believe it so".

Rath just eyed the flayer, anger and distrust all across his face, waiting for it to answer the question Inas had put to it. Clouds of dark thought were ripping through his mind, and he didn't give voice to any of it; but it showed on his face. And then something came to him ... an epiphany? A premonition? Maybe just resignation.

"Tell us what we need to know and get the hell out of here. Where are the pages?"

The flayer steps closer to Rath, "Your enemy has already unleashed the next page, and got luckier this time, though still does not understand the power he wields.  You will find the page at the heart of the maelstrom.  Take this, it will guide you to the pages".

He holds out a simple old looking compass. If Rath takes it, or not (he drops it), then turns and leaves, shutting the door quietly on the way out.

"Bastard," Inas declares after the door shuts, in an irritated tone one might use if a picnic had been canceled by rain.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:58, Sun 27 Oct 2019.

Rath took the compass, making obvious efforts to avoid touching the thing that was passing it to him. He glanced at the device only after the flayer was gone.

"Into the heart of the maelstrom, then," he said grimly. "So, what the hell is a maelstrom?"

"It's a great whirlpool that pulls everything in its path down into the briny deeps," Mari replied. "If I were going to pick a way to make someone disappear, that'd be a pretty good way to do it, as long as you stayed out of the undertow."

"Oh, good," answered Rath. "I thought it might be something bad."

Rath notes it is a simple looking compass, with only one arrow on it, however, when he holds it out, no matter which way he turns it, the arrow eventually comes to aim basically due North.

Inas looks annoyed as he summons Dreadi; once he arrives, Inas's annoyance is not on display.

The ranger explains that there is a certain cat in a certain alley that needs to be supplied some fish every two to three days.

"North," Rath said sourly. "It's a gods-damned compass."

"It could be worse," Mari said, a twinkle in her eye. "It could be west. I hate west. Always something bad lurking to the west."

Dreadi stares at Inas a moment, judging if his leg is being pulled.  When he realizes it isn't he shrugs,

"Ah'll send tha' boy, cats dunna like me fer some reason.  He already 'as a way wi' tha burds on the roof".

Throughout all of this Saliq has kept quiet. Now he speaks up.

'I... do not think we should aid the Flayer,' he said slowly and carefully, obviously thinking his way through things. 'I suppose they might keep their bargain, but I am not comfortable about returning anything of power to them - not again.'

Instructions to take care of the cat having been administered, Inas returns his attentio to the more pressing matter.  Responding to Saliq, he says:

"I've been thinking about that as well.  The thought of helping them is not comforting, and less so if helping them means empowering them.  But I've almost convinced myself that we need to find the pages.  What we do with them could be a matter for another time.  And I say that for two reasons.

First, there's the matter of Stormhaven.  We can't leave the people in the flayers' thrall this way.  At least, while we're looking, no more harm is likely to be done.  And who knows what the flayers will do if we don't appear to do as they demand?

Second . . . it may be that whoever has the pages is doing something worse.  Certainly, I doubt whoever has them is doing anything good.  It troubles me, though, that our 'vistor' would not respond to my accusation that whoever it is has them scared.  Seems to me that they've gone to a lot of trouble to coerce our aid when I doubt there's much in the world they can't handle on their own.

That said -- before we go, I think we should follow Lady Drusilla's suggestion and talk to Inglebern."

"What would scare a Flayer," Mari asked. "An eye tyrant, perhaps, but what else?"

'Clearly something impervious to mind control. The undead perhaps? Magical artificial beings like golems?'

"Might be they're not scared," Rath growled unhappily. "They just don't want to get their hands dirty. Get the animals to do the dirty work, right?"

He paced a bit, looking at the compass. "This ain't mind control, but they're sure as hell getting us to do what they want us to do. I say we do it. Get the pages." What Rath was thinking of doing with the pages after they'd been gotten was not clear, but from the angry, sick look on his face he wasn't intending to just hand them over.

"As we make decisions, let's keep in mind my ship," Mari said. "At the least, it'll buy us time, but dependent upon where the first page is, we might need the ship anyway, if we decide that is the route we will take."

"Right," Rath nodded. He took a deep breath. "All right. Find Inglebern, then follow the damn compass." He looked around at the small group. "So, where's Inglebern?"

"I think the first place to look would be his residence," Mari said. "Not sure what you hope to get from him, though. He's supposedly very sick. Yes, it could be the influence of the flayers, that just makes us marks for the ones who don't want us around anymore.

"I'm just hoping Lady Drusilla had a reason for encouraging it."

In the days leading up to the failed assassination of the Lord Mayor, the group was out and about town, leaning on sources, learning what they could.  Word was that Ingelbern had retired due to his health and returned to his home.  Though few knew him beyond the walls of Stormhaven, it was known to a few that he hailed from a strange place for a, well, diplomat of his high rank, a place called Pyrin's Crag.  Little enough in known about it, but it was said if you went west and north, following the Forlorn Hills, a rough stretch of dangerous foothills framing the northern extent of the Witchlight Marsh and gradually rising to meet the distant Thunderpeak Mountains. Staying to the western side of those mountains, opposite from the rich valley of the Hinterlands, you will travel till those mountains nearly crash into the Great Forest that borders the south lands and the northern kingdoms.  In this place, Pyrin's Crag lies, between the mountain people, and the eldest of elven nations.

Inas swears.

"I've been a fool.  I've been warned about an ogre magi.  And . . . that gate . . . ?  We never determined what it was that came through."

Inas continues mutters as he tries to determine whether Pyrin's Crag is on the way to Seven Falls Canyon.

The four heroes of Stormhaven were not at peace, with themselves, or even with each other entirely.  So many unanswered questions, so many options, fate was as usual a mysterious and sometimes cruel mistress.  A grudging majority, with time ticking on how long it would be before someone came to question or arrest them for the attempted assassination of the Lord Mayor adding pressure, it was decided to listen to Drusilla, and seek out Ingelbern.


In the days and weeks that followed their disappearance, many stories and clues were uncovered.  Half a dozen people swore they saw them leaving by a main gate, sadly, for the investigators, it was every gate leaving the city.  The gate guards themselves, swore no one left by their gates.   All searches led to nothing, no real evidence, no reliable witness, neither magic nor legwork led to any idea as to how or where the four suspects had gone. Some friends, some magics, some luck, may have been involved.


The real story is less amazing.  Heading to Peryn's Crag, the best direction was through the Witchlight and the Glades and out into the swamps.  An area where many friends were, and ones who did not like to share much with the city.  In dark night, on a skiff, they slipped through the swamps far beyond they'd gone before, until the water became too thick and brackish to push through.  Then they slugged through the muck until the land began to rise, into the very base of the Forlorn Hills.

Here, to turn east, would lead to rising hills and the Demonstone, and Calvrix's Keep even, but to the west of the these hills, they would follow hills, rising to great mountains, and beyond into unknown lands.

Whatever lie behind, a new adventure lie before....

ooc:  I will create a new thread to begin this, please wait future posts for it.