Personal Log
Tsianan oshtra
That’s her name. The dead woman. The one who got us involved in this whole affair. In Gossamer Lord Politics. In possibly trying to head off another war before it happens. In attempting to discover the identity of a traitor among the Gossamer Lords themselves, if there in fact is one. In setting us up as Targets. In taking the Last Walk.
We have now begun the Last Walk. Her Last Walk. It seems important to me now that I refer to her by her name. Both for who she was and for her sacrifice trying to save my ‘world’. I owe her that much respect.
Tsianan oshtra
Tsian for short. It seems my respect has it’s limits.
I chose to bear the casket for the first part of the journey. Making amends perhaps for my rather cavalier attitude to her mortal remains back when she was merely an unknown woman who had dragged us into an unexpectedly life threatening situation. Sometimes it isn’t wise to delve to deeply into one’s own psyche. Sometimes I fear discovering I’m someone I don’t want to be. What’s done is done; it’s time to focus on the now.
Tsian led us out of Shatterlight along a route unknown to me. Hardly surprising, as this was only my second visit to Shatterlight, and neither of them involved any sightseeing. We went through a Door taking us directly to the Agora. Hardly surprising that Vala would have a direct link to such a vital portion of the Grand Stair. It does beg the question, however, of why it took Calais over an hour to reach us when Tsian’s spell pulled us out of Shatterlight earlier. The Agora may cover a vast expanse, but I don’t believe we were all that far from our present location.
Being in the Agora reminds me that Maarah and her clan can’t be far away. Maarah will have heard about the Erebi attack, the death of Tsian, and my involvement, and she knows of my long standing interest in the Dwimmerlaik War. I also expect she’ll know the Last Walk has begun on who is providing escort very shortly if she doesn’t know already. I have hesitated contacting her, not wanting to draw undue attention to her by whoever it is who opposes us, but I have no doubt she’ll find a way to contact me if she learns anything which might help us.
Until now we had been following a single path. Now the path split and we were presented with approximately twenty three choices. By concentrating on them one at a time I could get a feel for which ones led to places on the Grand Stair where I had been before; the Labyrinth, for example, or the world where we had met with the Minotaur. I must admit to a certain curiosity about Tsian’s possible dealings with the Minotaur, and where in the Labyrinth we will be heading if the Minotaur is indeed still being courted by the Incursion. All in good time.
None of us were terribly surprised, I suspect, when one of the paths led further into the Agora itself. Simple expediency indicated that this was the path we would follow. We have to follow all the paths before the Last Walk is over, and adding in a lot of unnecessary backtracking will simply give those who oppose us more opportunities to try to stop us.
The trail brought us to a man of amber with a dead man encased inside him, in the process of adjudicating a dispute between two vendors. Vitrios, the keeper of the Agora, placed his hand on the casket, then handed us a key he said Tsian had given him shortly before her death and thanked us for including him in the Last Walk. Curious that, as I thought it was Tsian who had chosen to include him in her Last Walk and not a decision of ours. The wayfinding path we had been following them disappeared. Apparently our ‘official’ business with Vitrios was done.
We asked Vitrios about his dealings with Tsian back when she was alive. He told us he had arbitrated several matters concerning her in the past, usually to prove her innocence. He also knew she had been accused of stealing a chess set; a matter he had not been asked to arbitrate. He knew as well that she had been issued a challenge, to enter the Impossible Pyramid, although he failed to mention who had issued this challenge. He may not have actually known. I wondered if the Impossible Pyramid was to be among our destinations, but not having been there myself I couldn’t get a sense of this one way or the other.
While I had been talking with Vitrios, Mena had been examining him more thoroughly, and had identified the dead man encased in him to be Mortimus Maximus, formerly the Lord of the Grand Plaza. The Grand Plaza had been the traditional starting point for the Last Walk, before it’s conquest by the Dwimmerlaik and subsequently gaining it’s new name; the Black Market. Vitrios had been created, so the story goes, as Mortimus Maximus’ dying wish and brought here where the Agora then grew up around him. Vitrios himself had no actual memory of this action. It does, however, explain why the Agora is an especially appropriate starting place for this Last Walk.
As a final request before we took our leave I asked Vitrios if he could inform us if he heard of any other Erebi activities. He agreed to do so, and Mena have him her Icon.
As we were taking our leave of the Agora Cyra mentioned we were being followed. One of our followers was apparently a member of the Black Raven Legion. It’s possible Mordecai did not have an agent at the funeral and had someone sizing up our party, as well as verifying that the Last Walk had in fact begun. His presence did not imply to me any immediate threat, although it did prompt Cyra to suggest taking a more scenic route to our next destination; a suggestion we were all in general agreement on.
Our second follower was a definite curiosity. He carried with him some magic which helped cloak his presence. The device on the pin he wore identified him as an agent of Luther, a Gossamer Lord who had participated on the last Last Walk. The Plot Thickens.
Bypassing the presumed direct Door to Nexopolis, our intended destination, we exited the Agora via a Door I had made use of in the past. We exited onto the Grand Stair as expected, but surprisingly found the casket’s wayfinding directing us to the Door directly opposite us. Taking this as a sign, although from whom is anyone’s guess, we decided to investigate and possibly pass through this Door. We determined that beyond it lay a library in someone’s Domain, although we could not identify whose it might be. We also determined that the Door was locked. Knocking produced no response, so, on a hunch, I brought out the key which Vitrios had given us. It morphed in my hand into a perfect fit. We went through.
We emerged into what were presumably the crown jewels of collection of very rare books and documents, but the casket was leading us further into the Domain, so after a brief glance about the room I continued onward. It didn’t take long until we came across the owner of this Domain, which I had come to realize contained a portion of the Grand Stair itself. Neat trick that.
Lucien was not happy to see us. He also wanted his chess set back. He also lectured us about the nature and the danger of what we were doing. Not the danger to us personally. He expected that the Last Walk, which had ended the last Dwimmerlaik war, might well trigger the next one. He thought we would do best by everyone if we simply put the casket down and walked away. The thought crossed my mind that it was only his respect for the ritual itself which prevented him from taking direct action to end the Last Walk then and there.
Having made his case, and still not received his chess set, he placed his hand upon the casket, whereupon a small medallion of Amber stone floated out of his pocket and down to the chest. I noticed he wore an identical medallion around his neck. With a final glower he turned and would have left except Mena than offered him back his chess set. The bag she had made for hiding the artifact from Fierce has turned out to be quite useful for carrying things we don’t want traced.
The return of his chess set seemed to soften Lucien’s mood, however slightly. He stopped and, at our prompting, told us that the medallion was a magical amulet, a Charm of Naming which, while worn, protected the wearer’s True Name and would sever any psychic control already in place. Lucien then reiterated his concern that this Last Walk would reignite the Dwimmerlaik war, concerned specifically that this would remove the barriers which the previous Last Walk had apparently erected.
With that last warning we bid Lucien adieu.
The casket now presented us a choice. We could go back the way we had come from or proceed deeper into the library and Lucien’s Domain. Thinking that we didn’t want to risk having to return to Lucien’s Domain a second time, and proceeding deeper into Lucien’s Domain might possibly lead us eventually to the Labyrinth and throw those trying to follow us off the trail, we wended our way deeper into Lucine’s Domain.
We reached the end of the trail in a galley of Icons done up as large formal paintings. Among them were some of people we recognized; The Pale Heirophant, Lady Kitabu (the bird lady who had hired the Raven Legion), and The Lady of Silence (from the temple on Fierce). There was also an Icon of a man in Incursion armor, making me think that it’s not the Minotaur we’re looking for on that Incursion world.
Finding writing materials Cyra drew copies of those we didn’t recognize, then followed the casket as it led us back out the way we had come from.
The consensus then was that we look for Lady Kitabu, as we suspected the Charm of Naming was intended for her. My own personal wayfinding for her corresponded with one of the paths from the casket, so we went in pursuit of that as our next objective.
The Gossamer World we found ourselves in contained a large city made up of a jumble of architectural styles found on most of the standard Earth worlds. Someone recognized it, having heard of it before, and identified it as the New Academy of Arbanes. Having visited the ruins of the original Arbanes, William, Jane, and I having recently done some research on the earlier Last Walks on the Gossamer Lords from the time of the Dwimmerlaik War, I must say I vastly prefer the living version. Our path took us down into a section which was remarkably reminiscent of the academy we had so recently ‘graduated’ from. Perhaps this should have warned us, for just after we passed a plaque indicating the place had been designed by Mordecai we encountered the designer himself, backed up by a squad of his Legionnaires.
Both sides were taken unawares, as neither of us had been expecting an encounter. I tried brandishing the chest towards him, hoping curiosity might get him talking before things got ugly. While I was doing this Mordecai was busy making things ugly and punching Cyra through a wall. As I dropped the casket into a pocket and pulled out my shotgun (Namural has nice big pockets when needed) Mordecai dodged an attack from Sturm and ran him through, literally, with his sword. At this point I was reduced to backpedaling furiously and shooting ineffectually as Mordecai came after me trying to grab the casket.
I was desperately trying to devise an escape plan when the conflict came to an abrupt end. Jane had finished tossing around the squad of Legionnaires who were now equipped with cardboard armor and toy guns while Mordecai was mind-locked. I quickly clubbed him unconscious and bound him, and we looked to our own injured before having a little chat with Mr. Mordecai. Sturm appropriated his coat in the process.
With his bonds having been perfected via Eidolon, and Cyra keeping him honest by way of mental jujitsu, we proceeded with our mission. Surprisingly Mordecai was one of those who Tsian wanted to visit, so I held the casket under his hand so he could touch it. As he did so his beret floated from his head and landed on top of the casket. Mordecai cursed in an untranslatable (as in not native to this world and not translated by the Door we came through) language. I’m guessing this is in the nature of something personal between them, but only time will tell if there’s more to it. Tsian’s business with Mordecai was now done.
Our business was not. Mordecai told us he had three options. One, he could return to his client, Finnian, with the casket. Two, he could kill us all. Three, he could return the money and decline the contract. Circumstances being what they were, he told us he had decided to decline the contract and take a long vacation. Cyra told us he was telling us the truth. We wished him well in that and moved on before he could reconsider.
Sturm had kept Mordecai’s coat. It was an artifact offering much better protection than any normal coat. Sturm gave it to Cyra, as Cyra was least able to protect herself in a normal knock-down-drag-out fight. The coat also contained Icons of the Mordecai’s five cohort commanders.
The hat was just a hat.
As we continued on, moving in the direction we had been following to find Lady Kitabu, we discovered she had disappeared from Wayfinding. Mena used Lady Kitabu’s Icon to make contact, discovering she was in what looked like a local cathedral located along a western wall, losing contact as she tried to grab her and pull her through and getting kicked in the teeth for her trouble. Cyra put up a shield around the whole (rather large) building to prevent her escape as we all began a search.
A door hidden from the sight of all but Masters of the Grand Stair drew our attention. Not wanting to give our quarry time to erect more elaborate defenses, I placed my hand on the door and commanded it to open. It did so, even as I was blasted down the corridor, cursed, poisoned, and more.
By the time I got back to the action a Door had appeared in the floor, Lady Kitabu and several of the others were gone, and a large black knight was approaching. I immobilized the knight with a couple of superglue rounds, gluing it’s feet to the floor, and joined the rest of us in diving through the Door in the floor.
By the time I hit the floor the excitement had ended, as Lady Kitabu was now wearing the Charm of Naming and was no longer fighting us. I presented the casket to her, but there was no reaction. Apparently Tsian had no further business with Lady Kitabu now that was no longer being controlled.
She then identified Prince Calais as her controller. She told us she had been trying something similar on him some fifty or so years ago, and he wound up turning it around on her. That did make me feel marginally less sympathetic towards her plight, but only marginally. Then she told us there were some aspects of being controlled she sort of enjoyed. Kinky aspects. That was something I didn’t need to know.
She also confessed to hiring the Raven Legion to stop us, something we already knew but it was nice to hear her volunteering the information.
Unfortunately, this still does nothing definitive to support Lady Tsian’s death warning, or to cast Calais in that role. Lucien plays an indirect game. Could Lucien, with a few well chosen words, have planted the suggestion that we had to be stopped which Calais then acted on thinking it was his own idea? Would Lucien’s respect for the ritual of the Last Walk prevent him from getting someone else to interfere with it, as long as he didn’t explicitly suggest it? Unfortunately, I don’t know Lucien well enough to know, and I’m not sure if we dare bringing it up with anyone who would know.
I hate politics.
Written by Dave Nebiker