A Man Divided
Mercuras 8th Concord, 30 Fifth Age
Having shaken the hand of Osborn Tealeaf, a deal was made, but certain members of the party were displeased. Firstly, Callidus, having been sent to Correnwald to broker a deal with either the Swamp Snakes or the Emerald Brewery, worried that, in dealing such a heavy blow to one side, he was pledging his allegiance to the other without due prudence. He pondered if stealing a sample of the Snakes' moonshine and delivering it to his employer for reverse-engineering would suffice. Meanwhile, Baesellor was grievously unhappy with the idea of theft, violence and arson, and refused to partake in the mission. Visimar and Vilwyn reminded Baesellor of what they had seen earlier that day - the Swamp Snakes harassing Byron for unpaid debts and making threats against his daughter. However, they failed to move him - Baesellor argued that he would not sink to the Snakes' level, while Callidus scoffed, suggesting that Byron's intimidation by the Snakes was a sign of weakness. Pushed to desperate measures, Visimar struck Baesellor over the head, attempting to rouse the more mercenary Lancion to the surface. The attempt failed, and as Visimar raised his hand to strike again, Baesellor's fury emerged, blasting Visimar into the muck. Collecting his dignity, Visimar left to wander the town, while the rest of the group returned to the Taproot Inn. Visimar wandered the town, considering his options. Seized by a plan, he entered Vilwyn and Baesellor's room in the black of midnight and made for the shard in Baesellor's chest.
The first time the party met, Lancion Strong bore a fist-sized lump of glass in his chest, veined with red and blue vessels, and displayed it proudly with an open-chested tunic. Baesellor, on the other hand, was shamed by it, and wore his buttons fastened to the neck to hide it. Assuming the shard was in some way tied to Lancion's identity, Visimar tried to ease it from his chest, but before he could remove it Baesellor awoke and Visimar relented. Though alarmed, Baesellor calmed enough to explain. He revealed that one of his earliest memories was lying in some abandoned Kastalavic dungeon, bleeding from a fell wound. When he awoke, a shard of glass had been pushed into his heart. His wounds had healed, and his life was restored, but Lancion Strong was forever a part of him. Baesellor wasn't sure if removing the glass would kill Lancion, himself, both or neither. He just warned Visimar that, whatever the outcome, he was ashamed of Lancion for a reason. Visimar acquiesced and left the room, but not before noting that perhaps Lancion was the man they needed.
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Tondras 9th Concord, 30 Fifth Age
The next morning, Visimar stopped by to apologise, and offered Baesellor a walk to clear the air. As they wandered the mud-soaked streets of the town, they divulged truths about their respective pasts. Baesellor explained that, after Lancion took over, the first time Baesellor awoke he was standing over the blood-soaked bodies of a dead couple, their young daughter looking on. The Queen of Glass decreed that the world must be shattered if it is to be rebuilt, and Baesellor refused to be its breaker. Visimar characterised Baesellor as one side of a coin, and likened himself to the other, having been twisted into a monster by his captors and instilled with a terrible blood-hunger that could not be staunched. Baesellor disagreed, believing that there was honour in Visimar that Lancion did not possess, and (recalling an ancient Elvish proverb), said: 'honourable men are forged in the fires of loss.' Perhaps, in their shared hardship, they could emerge as better men.
Negotiations with Snakes
Meanwhile, Callidus and Vilwyn sought to explore the possibility of mutually beneficial agreement, hoping to at least test the waters of a deal with the Swamp Snakes. They went to the Wheezing Beaver seeking a meeting with the patriarch of the gang, but Callidus gave in to his vices and ended up getting drunk and fornicating with the tavern's wenches while Vilwyn waited outside, embarrassed. Drunken and staggering, Callidus pushed ahead and secured a meeting with Otis 'Clumpfoot' Bolger, the grizzled leader of the Swamp Snakes, but negotiations went quickly south when Bolger heard Arania's offer of forty-five-percent and spat out his drink in disgust. Bolger launched a tirade of insults against Arania, calling her a 'priggish, meddling southern bitch' and demanding Callidus leave at once. Callidus warned the halfling not to insult his benefactress, but he did not heed him, and in his drunken fury Callidus drove his liantasse into Bolger's throat. He sheathed his blade and picked up the confused Vilwyn outside the tavern, leaving Bolger dead at his desk.
At the Taproot Inn, the party were shocked by Callidus' rash behaviour, and frantically scrambled for a plan. Baesellor left in disgust, but his agitated wanderings took him to Byron's smithy, where he asked for the truth of the Snakes' actions towards him. Byron told him, explaining that the Snakes were responsible for a myriad of crimes against innocents: smuggling, extortion, burglary and murder. Baesellor asked for a tinderbox, and when he returned to the Taproot Inn, he had ceded control to Lancion. The time had come to move against the Swamp Snakes: first with deceit, then with emerald flame. While Vilwyn tried and failed to steal one of the Swamp Snakes' boats, Lancion entered the Wheezing Beaver, now descended into chaos, and - by manipulating the dim young bouncer Rollo Mudpot - managed to worm his way into the Bolger family meeting, led by Otis' wife Welwyse and attended by his many children and relatives. Lancion avoided being killed on sight by proposing a deal: in exchange for a trip to the distillery, Lancion would surrender the name of the man who murdered their patriarch. Welwyse agreed. The following night, Finlan Bolger and two others would be delivering a shipment of bogroot to the distillery. Lancion would meet them there and travel with them, on the condition that he came alone. If he brought friends, they would be shot with crossbows.
Death in the Mire
Faustas 10th Concord, 30 Fifth Age
As per the deal, Lancion Strong arrived at the Puddle Docks at nightfall, and helped the halflings (Finlan and Rendel - Bolgers both - and Rollo Mudpot, whom he had met yesterday) load the canoes. Meanwhile, Vilwyn, Callidus and Visimar lurked in a boat on the opposite riverbank, waiting for Lancion's signal to follow him downriver. Finlan and Rendel set off in the lead canoe with Lancion and Rollo in the second, and Lancion lit a marshweed cigar, its yellow flame alerting the others to follow. The group sailed downriver, with Vilwyn keeping his boat far enough behind that he wouldn't be noticed.
Soon, a mist came in, choking the river and obstructing vision. Lancion began noticing dead fish bobbing on the water's surface, their silvery bodies charred black. Visimar recalled a rumour he had overhead on Tondras morn - certain townsfolk believed there was a monster, perhaps a dragon, burning the fish in the Ramman River. A sense of unease settled over each of the boats in turn. The quantity of fish carcasses increased as the Bolgers' dim lantern-light faded into the mist. Rollo frantically rowed on, trying to catch up. Something bumped the underside of Lancion's boat, and he hauled the corpse of Rendel Bolger from the river, savagely bisected at the waist and still smoking: a fresh kill. Peering through the fog, Vilwyn noticed a large shape slip into the water several metres ahead. Unnerved, he too tried to close the distance between himself and Lancion's boat, but it was too late.
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| The Monster Attacks |
A creature, a giant crocodile swollen and twisted by some inhuman power, riddled with dimly luminous spines and possessing of a secondary maw within its split jaws, crested the water and expelled from its gullet a jet of flame that lashed Lancion's boat and incinerated Rollo instantly. As Vilwyn rowed and rowed, Lancion rammed his boat into the creature's side and leapt overboard, trying to grapple the monster, but it displayed an uncommon speed that eluded him and he fell into the Ramman's fish-choked waters before being snatched into its jaws. Vilwyn turned his boat unto the bank to allow Callidus and Visimar to climb the mangroves out of the water, and leapt to Lancion's rescue. While Vilwyn pulled him with difficulty from the creature's clamped jaws, the others peppered the creature with bolts and daggers, but its thick hide resisted their blows. Vilwyn pleaded Callidus for aid, hoping to get the critically wounded Lancion out of the water, but Callidus - whether in terror, indecision or something else - stood frozen, and the pair were engulfed in a second gout of flame. Vilwyn threw himself over Lancion in a valiant effort to protect him, but it was too late. Burned almost beyond recognition, the warlock succumbed to his wounds, and both Baesellor and Lancion were snuffed out as one. In a last-ditch attempt to get Vilwyn out alive, Visimar used his blood magics to puppeteer Lancion's body, causing it to drive his glass spear into the crocodile's mouth and stagger away before landing limp in the water. As the creature retreated from the blow, Vilwyn scrambled to land. The creature sank back into the waters whence it came, red eyes agleam, while the party huddled, reeling, on the riverbank, cradling the body of their fallen comrade.
One body had been ravaged, but two men had been lost. Both sides of the coin had been expunged, and not a trace of Baesellor Rhelareon or Lancion Strong remained.
And so it is written.
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| The Demise of the Two-Sided Coin |
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