SESSION 18B: MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
March 22nd, 2008
The 7th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty
Their carriage came to a clattering, jolting halt on Brandywine Street before the abandoned lot.
Tee led the way into the ruined shed, taking a few moments to verify the hidden signs she had left. “They haven’t been disturbed,” she said. “No one’s come this way.”
At the bottom of the ladder she found the doors of the antechamber still locked. She slid the key into the lock, turned it, and then stepped back – clearing the way for Agnarr and Tor.
The doors swung wide to reveal utter putrescence: The pinkish flesh of the lair seemed to be dying, literally rotting away from the walls. Pus and blood dripped from gaping, ulcerous wounds.
“Oh no…” Tee murmured, already suspecting that they were too late.
They headed down the main hall. Agnarr took the time to sprint down the side passage leading to the sewer entrance. It had been smashed open from the outside. He knelt down: The pulpy, dying flesh had clearly been trampled by many feet, but he wasn’t sure how many had passed this way… or whether they were still in the complex.
The rest of the group proceeded down the main hall. When they reached the room where the idol had rested, Tee’s worst fears were confirmed: The door had been smashed open with a battering ram which lay nearby. The idol had been ripped out of the floor. It was gone.
“Dammit,” Tee cursed, tears welling in her eyes. “I should have just taken it. Why didn’t I just take it?”
The idol wasn’t the only thing disturbed in the room, however: Off to one side a section of the fleshy wall had been hacked away… revealing a hidden passage.
Heading down this passage they found that it led to a small prison of sorts. Two cells were formed from bars of now-rotting flesh. In one of them, crouched against the far wall, was a hauntingly beautiful man – beautiful, but gaunt. Gaunt almost to the point of starvation.
“Are you with the elf? Or the others?” There was a note of desperate panic in the man’s voice.
“The elf?” Agnarr said. “Do you mean Shilukar?”
“Aye, the black-skinned elf!”
“Black-skinned?” Tor frowned. “He had black skin?”
The man confirmed it: When Shilukar had come to him, he had ebon skin. But this only served to confuse them. Was it actually Shilukar they had fought before? Had he come to the man in disguise? For what purpose? Even Tee had never heard of an elf with ebon-colored skin before.
As they worked to free him, the man – whose name was Carlin – told them his story. It was rather confused and fragmented, but in the end they pieced it together: Carlin had worked as a groundskeeper at Dallaster Mansion. A few weeks ago the Dallaster’s daughter, Tillian, had seduced him in a fiery passion, but they had been discovered by her parents and he had been summarily dismissed. A few days later he was captured by Shilukar and brought to this place. Shilukar had told him that he was suffering from some kind of wasting disease, but instead of curing him the elf had performed various experiments on him. Then, just a few minutes earlier, a group of six people had appeared outside his cell. He had begged them to free him, but they had just laughed and left.
To Carlin’s broken narrative they were able to add details of their own: Carlin’s disease was almost certainly the Lover’s Grip, which they knew had broken out in the Nobles’ Quarter. They knew it was a magical wasting disease that was transmitted sexually and made its victims irresistibly attractive. (Agnarr edged away from Carlin.) After kidnapping Carlin, Shilukar had broken into Dallaster Mansion and assaulted Tillian. (“Or did she assault him?” Elestra wondered.)
“I don’t think we can help you,” Tee told Carlin. “But we know someone who might be able to.”
“I’d be glad of it,” Carlin said. “I’ve been getting weaker every day.”
While they were finishing this discussion, they had successfully freed Carlin and returned to the sewer entrance. They were going to try tracking whoever had taken the idol.
They told Carlin that he didn’t have to follow them into the sewers – he could wait here and they’d come back for him. But Carlin had had enough of Shilukar’s lair and came with them.
Agnarr actually found the trail easy to follow through the sewers: The boots of the trail-makers had been coated with the decaying putrescence of the lair-flesh, leaving clear marks.
The trail led them for several blocks, and ended at a ladder leading up to street level. Unfortunately, the trail emerged onto the bustling Old Sea Road… and was lost completely.
The idol was gone.
YARROW STREET
They flagged down a carriage and began the long ride back to the Nobles’ Quarter and Castle Shard.
Agnarr raised the idea of stopping by Yarrow Street on the way. There didn’t seem to be any harm in waiting to deliver the second round of bad news to Lord Zavere, so they quickly gave new instructions to the carriage master.
Yarrow Street was a short, cobbled way that curved gently through the cold, grey-faced buildings of the city’s lower bureaucracy. They found what was most likely the alley mentioned in the mysterious letter about midway down its length.
Tee and Ranthir clambered out of the carriage, leaving the others to watch over Carlin.
Even with the afternoon sun still high in the sky, the alley – crammed between two looming buildings with faintly gothic architecture in the Vennocan style – was massed with shadows. After about forty feet the alley took a sharp turn to the left and abruptly ended at a bricked-up doorway. Across the bricks, scrawled in charcoal, was a duplicate of the symbol that had been used to sign the letter.
“Now what?” Tee wondered aloud.
“I don’t know,” Ranthir said. Then he walked up to the door and laid his hand on the symbol.
“Good to see you again.”
The voice had come from behind them. Turning they saw a strange figure squeezing his way through a nearly imperceptible crack in the stonework. Their first impression was that the figure was 
shadowy – but they quickly realized that this wasn’t the case: It wasn’t so much that the figure was hidden from them as it was that their eyes just naturally seemed unable to focus on him, leaving them with no impression of its true features.
Tee decided to bluff it. “Your note said you’d found the key.”
“I haven’t found the key, but I have found a lead for where you might find it.”
“Well? What is it?”
“Money first.”
“How much?”
“250 marks, as we agreed.”
Tee paid him.
“The key was last held by the Crimson Coil.”
Tee arched an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. After the Coil got it, the key disappears from sight. Whatever they did with it, it hasn’t turned up since then.”
“Fine. Thank you.”
THE CRIMSON COIL
As they continued their carriage trip up to the Nobles’ Quarter, Ranthir and Tee quickly filled in the others on what had happened in the alley.
“The Crimson Coil?” Elestra said. “I think I’ve heard something about them. Random acts of violence. Vandalism. That kind of thing. I got the impression they hadn’t been around for years, though.”
“That’s right,” Tee said. “I was still living here. The cult members wore blood-red robes and hoods. They’d spontaneously appear in huge gatherings to wreak random chaos. Then, about two or three years ago, the Knights of the Pale tracked them to their stronghold – I think it was called Pythoness House. Reportedly the whole cult was wiped out.”
“Perhaps their local operations were stopped,” Ranthir said. “But the cult was not wiped out. The Coil is still active beyond Ptolus. In fact they have quite a long history, always following the same pattern: They show up to burn a building or set fire to a field or slaughter a family or deface a monument. They come very suddenly and in such numbers that they simply cannot be stopped – a dozen to murder a merchant walking down the street; a hundred to burn down a building.”
“It never got that bad here,” Tee said. “Random beatings and vandalism for the most part. There were a few murders in the end, just before the Knights took action.”
“Then you were lucky,” Ranthir said. “The cult is said to maintain countless secret temples throughout the Borderlands, but when they appear in the Five Empires they often appear in great strength. All of these temples, however, are referred to as the ‘lesser temples’. The few cultists who have been successfully interrogated say that their greater temples are to be found in the Western Wastes or somewhere beyond the Southern Desert. Although whether that’s truth or grandiose myth-making I don’t think anyone really knows.”
“But what about this key?” Elestra wondered. “What key could we have been looking for?”
“What about the box that Ranthir found in his room?” Dominic said. “It could be a key for that.”
“Maybe it’s a key for those secret doors in Ghul’s Labyrinth,” Tee muttered. The others laughed. The idea of a door that she couldn’t open seemed to be Tee’s personal bane.
A CLEVER IDEA
As they pulled up in front of Castle Shard, Carlin was taken aback. “This is Castle Shard!”
“Yes,” Tee said. “This is where we can get you help.”
“Help? From Castle Shard? Who are you?”
Tee smiled. “Friends. Come on.”
As far as the matter of Shilukar was concerned, this meeting went no better than the last. Lord Zavere was deeply worried by the fate of the idol, but seemed to place no blame on them. After hearing Carlin’s story, however, he said he would be glad to see that he got the help he needed.
As they left, Tee turned back for a moment: “Is there anything else we can do to try to help you with Shilukar?”
Zavere smiled sadly. “Only if you can find him before tomorrow.”
They left the castle with their heads bowed. Their failure was hard to accept.
But as they reached the halfway point across the drawbridge, Ranthir suddenly stopped in his tracks. The others turned to look back at him.
“What about the alley on Yarrow Street?”
