SESSION 38C: SCOUTING THE TEMPLE
May 9th, 2009
The 21st Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty
“I’ve been told that you were asking questions about a woman named Silion.”
“That’s true,” Tee replied suspiciously.
Nasira’s eyes narrowed. They had a particular look of worn determination, like one who has gazed into the long, hard face of nature. “I know where she can be found,” she said. “I’ve been looking for her.”
“Why?”
“You may not know this, but she’s a cultist serving chaos—“
“That doesn’t really surprise me,” Tee admitted.
“I see.” Nasira pursed her lips. “I’m not really interested in her. But she works for a man named Wuntad.”
“We should wait,” Tee said. “I have some friends. They should hear this, too.”
It wasn’t long before the others joined them, and when they did, Nasira told her story: Wuntad had killed her father and destroyed her village. She hadn’t been able to follow him, but she knew that he had worked with a woman named Silion – and she had traced Silion here to Ptolus. She hoped that Silion would be able to lead her to Wuntad.
“Wuntad is here in Ptolus, too,” Tor said.
“Really?” Nasira said. “Do you think we should just go to him directly?”
They exchanged nervous glances.
“The truth is,” Tee said. “We don’t know where he is, either. If you think Silion can lead us to him, all the better.”
“Why did Wuntad kill your father?” Ranthir asked.
(“Not that he needs any reason to do it,” Elestra muttered.)
“He was researching the lore of the Atapi,” Nasira said.
“The Atapi?”
“A nomadic desert people,” Nasira explained.
“Atapi?” Tor wondered aloud. “That sounds familiar.”
“It does?” Elestra looked surprised.
Tor nodded. “I saw it on a map in Zavere’s office. At Harvesttime.”
Ranthir put the question on the table: “Why would Zavere be interested in the Atapi?”
They had no idea. But they had been suspicious of Zavere before, and this led them only to greater suspicion. Although, in the end, Elestra summed up their thoughts: “We have to trust somebody at some point.”
“No we don’t,” Tee said.
“Even if we can’t trust him,” Tor said. “It’s not like there’s much we can do about it.”
“Who’s Zavere?” Nasira asked, wide-eyed with confusion.
“We’ll explain later,” Agnarr said.
“How long have you been in Ptolus?” Tee asked.
“Not long,” Nasira said. “A couple of weeks.”
“There’ll be lots of things to explain.”
The decision was made for Nasira to join them as they pursued her lead to Silion.
“Where is she, anyway?”
“At the Temple of the Rat God,” Nasira said. “It’s a front for the Cult of the Blooded Knife. I know that Silion controls the temple, but I’ve never seen her. I have seen Urnest – a hulking ratbrute who serves as her right hand man.”
This prompted another flurry of note-checking and memory-searching as they paired up the references they had discovered to both Silion and the Temple of the Rat God and began to weave a larger understanding of her activities. Nasira was able to confirm that the Blooded Knife was associated with various shivvel dens in the Warrens (although she hadn’t had a chance to investigate them closely), which seemed to tie in with the note they had found at Linech Cran’s.
Nasira had lacked the strength to tackle the temple directly. But with all of them working together, they felt the challenge should be manageable.
Before that could happen, however, Tor and Ranthir needed to keep their appointment with Sir Seppa at the Administration Building.
NEWS & INFORMATION
When Tor and Ranthir arrived at the Administration Building around mid-morning, they found Sir Seppa waiting for them. Tor quickly managed the introductions and then Seppa proved as good as his word: After a couple of hours digging through the appropriate boxes of musty records, they turned up an ancient survey map of the area now occupied by the Necropolis. The map indicated the location of several structures, one of which was marked with Alchestrin’s sigil.
Meanwhile, Elestra was hitting the streets. The events on Tavern Row the previous evening were dominating the headlines of the newssheets, but there were a number of other stories and rumors to be found: It was being reported that a half dozen children had disappeared from Gnarl Street in Midtown over the past three days. And the mutilated body of a woman – her skull ripped open – had been found on Flamemoth Way in Oldtown.
SCOUTING THE TEMPLE
While the others fanned out across the city, Tee and Nasira headed to the Temple District to scout out the area around the Temple of the Rat God.
The temple was located on the Blessed Bridge: This hefty bridge of stone, running between Midtown and the Temple District, was broad enough that a jumble of buildings had been built along both sides of its length. The entrance to the temple of the Rat God was crammed between two other buildings; in fact, it appeared as nothing more than a nondescript door leading to the half-basement level of an adjoining temple built literally over the top of it.
Asking around, Tee discovered that this other door led to the Temple of the Jade Idols, a minor Reformist cult. Since these were not the only small temples jammed together along the Blessed Bridge, there was no reason to suspect that the jade idolaters were associated with the ratmen or chaos cultists.
After mulling the matter over for awhile, Tee’s impatience eventually got the best of her. (Maybe a little Agnarr was starting to rub off on her.) She told Nasira to watch her back and then simply barged through the front door.
Inside she found a dimly lit sanctuary hall. At the far end, at the top of a short flight of stairs, was a large statue depicting an upright rat holding out its front legs like greedy hands and wearing a vicious, bloodthirsty sneer. Scrawled along the walls were several crude, graffiti-like messages (“beauty is plague”, “love is greed”, “the solace of filth”, and the like). Three hooded figures were knelt in prayer before this idol, but they were on their feet almost instantly as the door opened.
“Oh… I’m sorry,” Tee said. “This isn’t the Temple of the Jade Idols.” She backed out and shut the door.
But not before she’d seen a furry hand.
Tee had seen no doors leading out of the sanctuary, but she and Nasira both agreed that there must be some secret egress. And now that Tee had a firm visual reference for the temple, they could continue their investigations magically.
Heading into the Temple of the Jade Idols, they found a curving maze of small, incense-filled rooms. The walls were lined with various niches containing jade idols of the nine gods and forming a variety of small shrine-like areas of worship. Nasira explained that the jade idolaters believed that the idols of the nine gods, carved from nine different types of jade (the “harmonic lifestone”), captured the Song of the World.
They found one of the smaller shrines tucked back near where Tee estimated the worshipping ratmen were kneeling below them. Nasira then reached out into a higher consciousness and felt her thoughts seeking out the minds of those below them. They had hoped that Nasira would be able to detect the thoughts of other ratmen and, from that, ascertain the layout of the rest of the temple. But if there were other ratmen present, they were too far away for her to find them.
So, instead, she latched onto the mind of one of the ratmen in the sanctuary hall and pushed, looking for thoughts that would reveal the secret entrance to the temple recesses. Unfortunately, she read his panic: He had felt the strength of her connection and his suspicion was exploding.
Nasira quickly muttered an incantive prayer and projected a sense of clairaudience into the sanctuary hall below. She was in time to hear the ratmen deciding to summon reinforcements. She quickly informed Tee of what was happening, and Tee rushed back to the street in case the ratmen headed that way (in which case she could follow them).
But she saw nothing: The ratmen didn’t leave through the front door. Instead, Nasira heard the sound of scraping stone. Perhaps more importantly, she heard them decide to not warn Silion (she was quick-tempered apparently) – confirming that she was somewhere within the temple.
When Tee returned, she nodded her head. “It’s interesting that when they go for reinforcements they go farther in, not out into the street.”
They concluded that the sound of scraping stone must be some sort of secret door within the sanctuary. They suspected the temple complex was larger than it appeared, but perhaps not. “There might be a connection to the sewers,” Nasira pointed out. “They might be going through the sewers to get reinforcements.”
A little later, Nasira heard another scraping of stone and the arrival of more ratmen. Shortly thereafter, the strength of her spell gave out.
Running the Campaign: Expanding Dungeons – Campaign Journal: Session 38D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
