Chapter L
in which a drug maker joins the group
Gorbie's West
On their way to the 2nd branch of Gorbie's that Glad invested in months ago, Gorbie's West, the Silver Foxes gather a bit of a crowd of followers who recognize the returned war heroes. When they reach Gorbie's West, they notice the new shop is less shady looking than the original location and has drawn quite the crowd with its prominent advertisements of the new Sentinel of Chracio, a crowd that further loses its shit when Glad arrives to ham it up, promote sales, and sign autographs. Inside, the gang reunite with Gorby who explains that business has been good and that Gorbie's West, at least, presents a legitimate front because of all the extra scrutiny. He returns Glad his initial investment and gives him what dividends he's earned, amounting to some 650 gold. Glad inquires after the Facebook and manufacturing more of those effective poisons they used in the Jhora Plains.
Haas notices a rather plainly garbed girl in the shop who has been following them since they've been to see Xisben. When pressed, she reveals that she is an alchemist and can spirit walk, and she's looking for employment at Gorbie's and protection from the Felspar DEA, since her psychoactive potions are decidedly illegal. This newcomer, Skin, has a third eye on her head that allows her to see spirits and the spirit world. Haas will later try to test how well Skin can spirit walk only to learn that Skin has never left the physical world. She does, however, always see the spirit and physical world overlayed with one another, an effect Haas realizes is possible when she tests one of Skin's psychoactive mixes. Haas finds it disorienting keeping the overlay from being too overwhelming, something Skin is skilled at doing.
As for other business in the city, Maus does some shopping around and eventually decides to spend his artisan work orders with the Grand Artisan directly, requesting a kinetic buffer for their ship that will take about 2 weeks to construct, but can be installed rather quickly. Meanwhile, Glad gives Gorbie the manuscript of his Occult Magics Vol. 1 to publish and sale as a Gorbie's exclusive, and he later leaves a journeybook with the School of Thought for faster correspondance. Glad also spends the majority of his newly made money over the course of a couple of days. He drops 500 gold on ingredients for Gorbie's massive scale explosives, to be used in the seige of Emeri. He also drops 100 gold on buying Facebook, which he learns that Gorbie looted from a slain blood magic user in a trade gone bad. He also later learns that Facebook is a servant/conduit to Vorshen.
After their business concludes, the group decides to at least try getting an audience with Jurlim's representatives, which means taking a trip into the Tusker caverns below Brenthia. Maus is able to mentally get a map of the path from a Reck attuned Tusker that offers to guide them. Before they leave, Red attempts, to no avail, to convert the Tusker to the First. He didn't count on the Tuskers being illiterate. The Foxes come across some strange slime creatures in the tunnels which they learn can multiply in size if fed Chracio sand. Glad makes a slime as big as the tunnel path and watches it split in two and go on its way. Maus practices his projectile magic on some of the smaller rodent creatures in the cave. Glad raises one of his victims from the grave and sends it scuttling off to cause mischief.
A Savage Place! As Holy and Enchanted as E'er Beneath a Waning Moon Was Haunted
As Maus leads the way, Haas notes to herself that there is strangely no sign of Tuskers and is curious about why they haven't encountered any yet. She uses her tracking skills to investigate and further along the path, notices an unusual tunnel that is neither naturally made or created by evocation. And near this tunnel, the faint scent of blood hangs upon the air. They follow the anomalous tunnel until it turns into a narrower tunnel that is, most definitely, not Tusker sized. Glad picks up a faint, immobile life sign 50 yards in. He uses his occult knowledge to investigate and is able to determine that there is some kind of presence or spirit about and that the spirit's contract isn't completed. Skin's third eye picks up an unsettling sensation ... something afoot that makes her angry. Haas decides to proceed onward alone. The smell of blood grows stronger as she crawls onwards. Around a bend, she spies a stationary, obviously wounded, Brenthian who is hostile, at first to her presence. He refuses to give any information up about where the Silver Foxes have found themselves, why he's hurt, or what the unsettling sense of this place is caused by. Even when she offers medical aid, this Brenthian, Dovlan, remains standoffish.
Glad joins Haas and warns her that he is about to do something stupid. He then proceeds to do something stupid, blinking rapidly past Dovlan to figure out where the tunnel leads. He ends up disoriented after his fourth blink and runs into a wall. When he comes to, Glad finds a strange black growth encasing his arms and panics. He rushes back to the cave, wherein Haas has paralyzed Dovlan's hammer arm to prevent him from collapsing the tunnel that led there. Facebook has his fill of the spilled blood on the floor and determines that the presence Glad sensed is not a blood contract. With help from the others, Glad is able to remove the black growth. Dovlan comes to and is given aid. After the Foxes deescalate the situation, they reveal they're trying to find a Sentinel or Archon of Jurlim. Dovlan says they'll need appropriate tribute ... mentioning a battle to the south where they're like to find the Sentinel engaged with a rival clan and where they can farm tusks, the appropriate tribute for an audience. Dovlan can show them the way if tribute is offered to his ancestor-God called Paroks. Dovlan's clan recently defended against a Tusker raid on their holy land, hence the smell of blood. The Silver Foxes agree to these terms and are shown inside Dovlan's city. They make preparations for the coming fight and Glad offers Dovlan the chance to see one of Vulsh's children. Haas accompanies him to the pit and keeps him out of trouble. She also makes a visit to Paroks' temple, offering up her claws so as to not desecrate the holy space. Meanwhile, Skin preps flammable potions for the fight, Frax teleports to Chracio for some much needed sunlight, and Glad unearths the remains of a defeated Tusker, scavenging for bones.
No Quarter ... or The Bone Collector
Half of Dovlan's clan marches to the Tusker camp the next day. Glad hangs back during the march and casts to Og, offering Tusker bones and his blood in exchange for a boon to his speed.
When they reach their destination, they set off an earth magic effect that slants the ground downwards, giving them an uphill advantage. Haas takes point, shapechanging into a giant cavern worm. She catches a couple of Tuskers off guard, dragging a half eaten Tusker into the ground, and sustaining only minor damage from the others. Frax is positioned ahead of the Brenthian front lines. He uses his massive size and his borrowed warhammer to take on three Tuskers himself. One is easily smashed, but the other two give him trouble, forcing him to retreat after a skirmish. He also sustains minor damage from a spellcaster who tries to stop his heart. Luckily, Frax doesn't have a heart. Skin remains in the back and uses explosives to tactically distract the Tuskers' ranged fighters. Glad targets the spellcasting Tuskers. The first one doesn't go down easy. It takes a couple of back and forth exchanges to take him down. The rest become slim picking for Haas when Glad uses his staged energy for a massive lightning effect. Otherwise, the fight is fairly even. Tuskers and Brenthians drop like flies.
Haas soon becomes the target of the Tusker's Chief and his two body guards. She launches herself at the Chief's face, but fails to penetrate his hide deep enough to poison him. Before the bodyguards can really do damage to her, Glad blinks behind the Chief. He's able to easily slice through the armor, but faces the same trouble Haas had in slicing through his hide, both with that attack and his subsequent one. Fortunately for Haas, the fear effect on Glad's sword draws the attention of the Chief's bodyguards. Glad faces off with them while Haas struggles with the Chief.
Still safely behind the battle, Skin alternates between explosives and the obsidian scythe Glad lent her, distracting Tusker's engaged elsewhere. Frax, too, uses his plant magic to entangle opponents and shift the tide of battle in his allies' favor. He manages to immobolize the Tusker who gave him the most trouble. Glad attempts to swiftly stab both bodyguards. His first attack lands, but his second goes wrong badly. The botched attack, in which he tripped and beings to fall, should have ended up with him face-down on the ground, vulnerable to being stabbed in the face, but Glad feels his body move as though by instinct or possession, and he recovers himself. The other Tuskers notice the turned tide of battle and surrender, although the Chief and his two bodyguards continue to fight.
Despite the surrender, Frax finishes off the persistent Tusker who injured him, smashing his head in with his warhammer. Haas is able to lethally poison the chief, but she ends up within an inch of her laugh. Glad channels a lightning effect that quickly fells one of the bodyguards. The other, who had just stabbed Glad, finds himself unable to let go of the spear. Glad does not cease the effect and makes a show of finishing him off. Haas gets in the spirit as well and rips the tusks off the felled Chief, tossing them to Dovlan. With the battle concluded, the Brenthians see to their injured and clasp their prisoners in chains. They clear out but the Foxes linger. Glad uses blood magic to offer up the bodyguards to Og. His teammates get to see Og in action as an ominous mist rolls in and covers the bodies. Haas attempts to get closer, remaining on the edge of the fog until she feels her bones begin to rattle. Then she withdraws. Glad is unaffected. When the fog clears, the bodies left behind are flattened, boneless versions of the bodyguards. Haas collects the Og flower growing on their corpses to send to her Archon for investigation. Then the Foxes return to Paroks' cave.
Possession
Unable to fall asleep, Glad feels a vague but purposeful restlessness. He wanders about the Citadel trying to find where he's drawn. After some busy work, he runs into Frax at the Citadel's garden. They both become intrigued by and investigate the strange fertilizer being used, discovering the one of the ingredients is worm shit. Thinking there is something more to these worms than it first appears, Glad decides to take a look at them in the dreaming, but winds up in a stone walled cell in the dreaming. He knocks on the walls and converses with a nameless wraith that claims it is a god. Nameless trades information with Glad. In return for revealing that the worms/worm shit hasten plant growth (hence Og's interest), Glad provides Nameless with the info on Og he requested. After learning the contact ritual, Nameless warns Glad not to share this information with other wraiths or else Nameless will find Glad and make him regret it. When Glad tries waking, Nameless "helps" him out, squeezing Glad's head with his stone/earthen hands. Glad wakes from the dreaming nauseous. There are black spots circling the crown of his head, corresponding to where the wraith grabbed him. He doesn't notice himself, because he's occupied by this sudden ill feeling. He tries to alleviate the pain so he can sleep. While holding his vial of blood makes him calmer, blood magic doesn't help. So he drinks until he passes out. Fraxinus helps the gardener out with his work.
Glad is missing in the morning. Frax and Red enlist the Brenthians to track him down. They find him passed out and seriously ill looking next to a bowl of dried blood. There are marsh plants sprouting from the marked spots on his temple. No one is able to deduce the nature of this illness, so Dovlan has him brought to the Citadel for cleansing. Glad begins to come to when they lay him on the alter. The priestess has her people restrain him, helped by Frax and Red. Glad resists, trying to fly up from the table. When that doesn't work, he concussively pushes everyone away. Hovering over everyone, he mentions something about being overcome with rage and starts screaming at the top of his lungs. Dovlan nails Glad in the chest with a hammer throw. Red tries to use earth evocation but finds he can't manipulate the room's walls. He can, however, still conjure earth, so he does that to blind Glad after revoking Glad's flight. Instead of falling at a normal speed, Glad gracefully descends. Phrax gets a hold of him. He drains the water from the Glad's head-plants, leaving Glad more ill feeling. The priestess continues her exorcision. Before it completes, Glad blinks to the room's entryway and runs past the gathered crowd. Then he blinks to Chracio.
Ignoring the startled crowd, he grabs water from a nearby follower and blinks back to the Citadel's outer perimeter, having returned for his swords. After casting to Og for protection, he charges through Payroks perimeter, not minding the slow growing black guck on his arms. He concussively plows through any resistance he meets. Back inside, he starts looking for his sword. Red and Frax follow the noise to the commotion. Red manages to knock Glad out using earth magic. They strip Glad of his enchanted items and everything else, leaving him in only his underwear. Dovlan carries his body back to the alter and the priestess continues the exorcism. When the plants disappear, she sees the black marks on Glads head and shares a concerned glance with Dovlan. They have an unheard aside after she finishes the cleansing. Dovlan accuses the Silver Foxes of using dark magic, which Frax and Red deny. Red, though, freely offers up that Glad is an "infernalist" in contact with all manor of demons and dark magic and once tried sacrifice someone to a servant of Baishu, despite Red's many protestations against using dark magic. At this, Dovlan offers up a death sentence for Glad and tells the Foxes to leave or share Glad's fate.
Maus and Haas join the scene at this point as they Foxes telepathically debate what to do. Haas gathers Glad's effects sans swords. She gives his blink gem to Red, who palms it in Glad's hands under the guise of waking Glad so he may hear his sentencing before he dies. Jogged from his unconsciousness and already near death, Glad is seconds away from being smashed by Dovlan's hammer when everyone blinks to Chracio. A righteously furious Red then challenges the still near-death Glad to leadership over the Chracioites and sucker punches him with a boulder, knocking Glad out again. This draws the ire of the gathered crowd. They don't take kindly to their Sentinel being assaulted and reject the idea that Red can speak for Chracio's will and whether Glad's magic is blasphemous. When Glad does come to, the Foxes have a tense debate about the days' events and where blame lies. Frax and Red explictly blame Glad's contract with Og. For his part, Glad believes his party unnecessarily escalated the situation and that the Frax and Red are brushing over some crucial context. As he learns from the Weaver through Maus, he was definitely marked by Nameless. It also seems like Og greatly dislikes wraiths. With both sides unable to reach a moral agreement, and Glad unwilling to accept a hypnotic key, the best safety measure they come up with is making his blink gem remotely triggered, so he can be dumped at the pit in an emergency.
The Foxes then discuss next steps while Haas blinks back to the Citadel to sneak in and steal back Glad's swords.