Discord
Changelog
08-08-2021, 07:49 AM
Events could move by so quickly, when time was inclined to do so.
All it started with was a feeling, an instinct he had long learned to listen to, telling him to turn and look behind him. He obeyed, and did not see anything extraordinary right away, though tavern common rooms were rarely extraordinary. But in the span of a handful of seconds, he saw what he was looking for.
Again, nothing extraordinary. One more face easy to overlook, if it was not for the fact that the very same face was drawn, pale, tight. Loss, he could see it easily, written like a book.
He smiled lightly to himself, knowing fertile grounds when he saw them, and made his way over to her table without a word, only stopping to grab a drink along the way.
Initially she was standoffish at his presence, especially as he so boldly sat himself down at her table without any invitation, but such things bothered him little.
She did not give much of herself aside from a name to his prodding—Tizergha, and even then that took a little while—and her worship of Talona (which explained a lot) and, most interestingly, that she was supposed to meet a Red Wizard named Warrick Talman later to continue doing some sort of task for him. Searching underground for some lost kingdom of gnomes, apparently.
And then the pieces slid into place: why he was destined to cross paths with her to begin with. What he thought was a simple spreading of Shar’s word was now suddenly much more intricate.
*
Szollos was more than comfortable with the exploration of dark, dank, underground caverns, especially ones rich with secrets to uncover. Traps and illusions and riddles delighted his mind, and he eagerly plunged deeper into the depths of the mountains.
Yet there was danger inside those depths, at claws and beaks of flying monsters that tore his skin, and even deeper still. So deep that he truly began to be concerned that they had reached the Underdark, when they reached the hellish room of an Inquisitor and its personal army. He battered them as well as he could, but their numbers were too much, too strong, and he fell.
He did not remember the time he supposedly spent being dead. All he remembered from the darkness was a laugh, and then he was sitting up again and breathing, coughing, and very much alive.
Even deeper they went after that, where light and air and a blue sky were almost a fantasy, and then they reached something…else. A settlement, but made by no hands of gnomes. A place known only in stories by now, one Victoria recited to them, and as Szollos listened the only thing he could think about what how much he would have loved to see what was in that lost magic tome.
*
Coming back was a disorienting experience, dark and damp caves first, then sunlight and air in the next breath. Worlds away, so blindly oblivious to what could dwell within the bowels of the earth. He found himself almost missing it.
No surprise, then, when he and the druid ventured beneath the earth to comb through some local catacombs. A much more mundane venture, but no less rewarding as his eye spotted a treasure map upon the corpse of the goblin whose pockets he was digging through. A treasure map with secret clues, nonetheless!
The more he read, the more he felt as if his mind had been set aflame. It was all his patience could take to scour the rest of this section of catacombs clean before racing outside to find where the first clue was: under a carpet in the Citadel of Tyraturos. Fortuitous that they were so close to it!
No doubt he looked a fool to the guards and other passersby, trying as discreetly as he could to lift up the rugs in the front room to see what lay underneath, but his efforts were soon rewarded when he found a neatly folded slip of paper under one of the corner carpets. Snatching it, he unfolded it hastily, and was met only with a symbol painted on its inside: a purple triangle facing downward, with three amber drops inside of it.
His head snapped to look at the druid. Shar had more than certainly led him to cross the path of a Talona worshipper, he was ever more certain now. But there were several temples to Talona throughout the land, which one…
On a hunch, he held the paper up to one of the torches scattered about, letting the light illuminate it from behind, and saw a word that had been written upon it before it had been painted over.
Surthay.
Szollos smirked.
All it started with was a feeling, an instinct he had long learned to listen to, telling him to turn and look behind him. He obeyed, and did not see anything extraordinary right away, though tavern common rooms were rarely extraordinary. But in the span of a handful of seconds, he saw what he was looking for.
Again, nothing extraordinary. One more face easy to overlook, if it was not for the fact that the very same face was drawn, pale, tight. Loss, he could see it easily, written like a book.
He smiled lightly to himself, knowing fertile grounds when he saw them, and made his way over to her table without a word, only stopping to grab a drink along the way.
Initially she was standoffish at his presence, especially as he so boldly sat himself down at her table without any invitation, but such things bothered him little.
She did not give much of herself aside from a name to his prodding—Tizergha, and even then that took a little while—and her worship of Talona (which explained a lot) and, most interestingly, that she was supposed to meet a Red Wizard named Warrick Talman later to continue doing some sort of task for him. Searching underground for some lost kingdom of gnomes, apparently.
And then the pieces slid into place: why he was destined to cross paths with her to begin with. What he thought was a simple spreading of Shar’s word was now suddenly much more intricate.
*
Szollos was more than comfortable with the exploration of dark, dank, underground caverns, especially ones rich with secrets to uncover. Traps and illusions and riddles delighted his mind, and he eagerly plunged deeper into the depths of the mountains.
Yet there was danger inside those depths, at claws and beaks of flying monsters that tore his skin, and even deeper still. So deep that he truly began to be concerned that they had reached the Underdark, when they reached the hellish room of an Inquisitor and its personal army. He battered them as well as he could, but their numbers were too much, too strong, and he fell.
He did not remember the time he supposedly spent being dead. All he remembered from the darkness was a laugh, and then he was sitting up again and breathing, coughing, and very much alive.
Even deeper they went after that, where light and air and a blue sky were almost a fantasy, and then they reached something…else. A settlement, but made by no hands of gnomes. A place known only in stories by now, one Victoria recited to them, and as Szollos listened the only thing he could think about what how much he would have loved to see what was in that lost magic tome.
*
Coming back was a disorienting experience, dark and damp caves first, then sunlight and air in the next breath. Worlds away, so blindly oblivious to what could dwell within the bowels of the earth. He found himself almost missing it.
No surprise, then, when he and the druid ventured beneath the earth to comb through some local catacombs. A much more mundane venture, but no less rewarding as his eye spotted a treasure map upon the corpse of the goblin whose pockets he was digging through. A treasure map with secret clues, nonetheless!
The more he read, the more he felt as if his mind had been set aflame. It was all his patience could take to scour the rest of this section of catacombs clean before racing outside to find where the first clue was: under a carpet in the Citadel of Tyraturos. Fortuitous that they were so close to it!
No doubt he looked a fool to the guards and other passersby, trying as discreetly as he could to lift up the rugs in the front room to see what lay underneath, but his efforts were soon rewarded when he found a neatly folded slip of paper under one of the corner carpets. Snatching it, he unfolded it hastily, and was met only with a symbol painted on its inside: a purple triangle facing downward, with three amber drops inside of it.
His head snapped to look at the druid. Shar had more than certainly led him to cross the path of a Talona worshipper, he was ever more certain now. But there were several temples to Talona throughout the land, which one…
On a hunch, he held the paper up to one of the torches scattered about, letting the light illuminate it from behind, and saw a word that had been written upon it before it had been painted over.
Surthay.
Szollos smirked.