Let Sleeping Dwarves Lie

Forward
Dear journal, this will be my last journal entry for a long time because this chapter in my life, the Haunting of Harrowstone, is ended. By now I have made new friends to converse and commiserate with, and even as I write upon this last journal page, it warms me to know that I will hereafter share my new adventures with real companions, not merely the hempen pages of a lonely book.

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The Final Days

One attribute of a proper druid is the wisdom not to disturb a sleeping animal, or so they often say. My friend Gregor is one such druid (and one such animal), but until now I thought quite harmless; last night he gave me witness to his first transformation into a hunter cat, a majestic leopard-animal with fierce claws and eye teeth that our foes will soon witness as well. There is much more to this grave-digging commoner than meets the eye, he has become a trusted ally and friend.

I stood at the side of Luther's well-crafted coffin for hours, pausing only to check on Agile, my young companion, whom I've advised to stay on as a bookkeeper in Kendra's mansion. After all, a fine library like Professor Lorimor's should not be left to disuse. His books will continue to feed Agile's mind with things I could never offer him. And in return, Agile will attend to Kendra's needs, making my departure from Ravengro easier knowing Kendra has not been left alone.

At some point during that long day, Zarkendraal explained he has returned to his old ways, and his old name of Urgilash. I could see the way he eyed Luthor's coffin jealously, wishing it were he laying in repose instead. As a follower of the Gray Lady, I can only imagine that She feels Urgilash has much to learn yet from this life, and through our travels with him, that he must continue to live and learn his lessons before She will be ready to send him to the Boneyard. In fact, I doubt he will learn these lessons any time soon––for he professes a dwarven righteousness and all-knowingness about matters that could even rival the bold arrogance of a paladin. In fact, he even scoffed at Gregor's profession of moving dirt and snubbed our original internment site for Luthor, stating that any good "clan" would see fit to have stone worked instead to honor such a friend.

This gave me pause.

I took to heart this idea of interning our friend Luthor in stone rather than dirt. I humbly prostrated myself before brother Grimbarrow one last time to beg the full rights of ownership for the false crypt at the corner of The Black Path and The Eversleep within the grounds of the Restlands. When Grimbarrow agreed I suddenly regretted all the bad things I'd said behind that man's crooked back. For some reason that old codger always unnerved me with strong suspicion of malintent. Thus, we'd turned Urgilash's insult against Luther and the party's burial plans into a catalyst for upgrading Luther's internment. It is now a fine, clean crypt with room for others, such as Urgilash, when the time comes!

Although he tried, Father Grimbarrow was not powerful enough to remove Fr. Charlatan's chains from me. Gregor's great wisdom prevailed to interpret the spirit planchette when it had suggested Charlatan's spirit was hiding within Urgilash's symbol of Torag. Planfully, we leveraged Tythanis' sleep spell and Mstislav's sleep hex against Urgilash so we could quietly remove his holy hammer symbol and smelt it down within the walls of the holy church. Thus we found it abundantly wise to let this sleeping pseudo-dwarf lie. The stone name above the archway required alteration, a job one would typically find easy in the hands of a dwarf. Urgalish wrote, "Here lize sum elf". Later, when I had learned of Urgilash's unseemly stonework upon the arch above Luthor's crypt door, I suddenly found myself being equally careless with the recasting of the Torag symbol prior to its return to Urgilash. Apparently neither he (nor I for that matter) are craftsmen. Oh well, I say. For as much as that arrogant dwarf, er... twice former-dwarf, boasts about his clan's dwarven stonework, he possesses neither the skill nor patience for such fineries. I say it is befitting that a limp lopsided hammer remains as an icon of his ironic deficiencies. I understand now, only too well, why he is again called "he who walks the surface without honor."

We left Ravengro behind, and kissed the morning road toward Lepidstadt. En-route, we encountered "The Crooken Kin––Ustalav's Greatest Traveling Cabinet of Curiosities." This amounted to little more than nine covered but gaudily painted wagons belonging to a band of gimped cripples and freaks. There were thirteen performers in all, with exotic if not frightening appearances: Hap Tarvin, the Flea Man; Kaleb Hesse, the Ringmaster; Lidia Gerod, the Bearded Lady; The Pinheads, Lettie and Poppy, Prince Zar, the Human Caterpillar; S'jeer, the Vudrani Princess (with 4 arms); The Swarm of Clowns, Gerik, Josef, and Tam (each with an extra limb); Trollblood, the Giant Man, and The Wolf Child (named for obvious reasons).

We offered to find Aleece, a pinheaded sister who had gone missing. After a swift battle with a phasing spider who mimicked the lost girl's voice, we found her remains and returned them with remorse to the traveling carnival's ringmaster. Even unto death I loved my child, as I still do. And so I now empathize deeply with the grief this traveling troupe must feel at the loss of one of their own.
Even if my own little girl had three arms or three eyes, I would have loved her all the same... ... this is why I lashed out at the inquisitors so many years ago when they said my daughter had been compromised the undead. I would have loved my daughter even if she had become a vampire's thrall. If it were not for the Esoteric Order of the Palantine Eye, I might not have escaped the inquisitors' wrath at my defiance of their judgments... but I could not stand idly by and watch my wife and daughter be put to death before me. If news of what I had done and the lies I told to save my family were ever told, I would surely hang from the gallows in Lepidstadt Square. But I never truly saved my family... and so I travel, forever moving to new locations, familyless in the company of friends and freaks, not unlike the Crooked Kin.

Epilogue
So now ends a chapter thusly of my early scholarly learning, academic ledgerdemain, banisteria, and reverent pretense toward authority. Like Luthor's reposed corpse, and Urgilash's song-and-cackle-induced torpor, my own secrets must also sleep quietly for now. Each time I see a dead child like Aleece in the swamp, or Cynthea of Harrowstone, I increase the desire seek to one day become the Black Abbot of Caliphas and wear the powerful robes of holy office. Only then will I finally punish those who took my family away from me and change the laws of the church. Then and only then will I cease to fear the inquisitors who have cheated the innocent of their lives. Until that day I will miss Matreya and my beloved wife, B'Elanna. Until that day when I see them again, I embrace the adventure that awaits our modest group of friends and freaks upon the open road to Lepidstadt and beyond. For only death will be the rest of these travelers - the end of all our work.

"Mors est quies viatoris - finis est omnis laboris"

–––αєтєяηυм ναℓє,
ρнιяσz ιяαℓη σƒ ¢αℓιρнαѕ

 





The Dying Of The Light

Our friend, Luther, was not among the hundreds of inquisitors some would love to throw into a torture device. At one point in my life I would have lined them all up in a row, and one by one shut the lid closed with their pleasant screams of torture soothing the painful memory of the loss of my daughter at the hands of overzealous inquisitors! Ironically, Luther's name was not on the long list of fork-tongued judges I would have placed upon an altar of blood. He did not deserve to die wracked by pain, pierced by the destructive phantom iron spikes of the haunted iron maiden. Luther was... reasonable. He was truly a white sheep amongst an otherwise dark flock of misguided lynch-men. And now, we solemnly carry our friend's body back to Ravengro, back to another dark flock of priests who should thank Luther for giving his own life to lift the town up from this bleak miasma of supernatural horrors.

We had returned that day, once again, to the haunted halls of Harrowstone, seeking out the Mosswater Maurader. Thanks to Thythanis' possession of the key ring, we unlocked the captain's office, wherein we spied fractured skulls on a table with a heavy hammer–the telltale sign that the mad dwarf known as the Mosswater Maurader would be near by. Suddenly, a sobbing dwarven spirit rose up wielding a ghostly hammer and waded into melee with us.

But the most frightening moments were just before the death of our friend Luther, when he and Mstislav scouted amongst the numerous grisly tools of torment in the room beyond the portcullis. Hidden from undead, they slowly stepped steadily about the cages, toward hanging chains, past the twisted skeleton upon the stretching rack, around the large wooden tank, and dodging the fire pit in the room's center. The large, bloodstained wicker basket which sat at the head of the rack seemed to stir, rattling a bit of their courage, and shaking a bit of their resolve if not nerves.

To the east stood the grim iron maiden that would soon seal the doom of brother Luther. The lid appeared closed at first, and presented a stern decoration of a tormented woman upon its face. Perhaps, in their fear, they imagined the illusion of Kendra within it, for they ran toward it as though to save someone. And one by one my friends were mauled by the ferocious blood-thirsty haunt. First Luther, then Mstislav, next Zarkendraal, and finally my own earth elemental all took turns bleeding within the maw of the wicked device. Yet, it was brother Luther who could not shake the illusory spikes–for him, they continually inflicted great wracking pain unto the final release of his spirit to Pharasma's Boneyard.

And you, my brother, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Indeed, I would see Luther breathe again! I shall rage against the dying of his light. If not today then one day soon, or on some distant dawn by my own hand. I swear it with my life! For what little meaning... worth... or sense can be judged of a world... that keeps alive all the depraved inquisitors who vaingloriously impose iniquitous judgments upon little girls––and yet sentence to a torturous death (by means of a grisly iron maiden) the sole inquisitor in all of Ustalav who possessed fair-minded and rational good judgment?  

Fortunately, we recovered the Warden's badge of office and returned it properly to Vesorianna, symbolically transferring enough power of office to allow her to banish the haunts from Harrowstone for good. In turn, she also departed for her own journey to rest in the arms of the Gray Lady, Pharasma. We rest now too, comforted in the success of our mission to rid Ravengro of the Haunting of Harrowstone.

The Lopper

Luther listened at the door. The surmounting evidence had warranted an official inquiry and yet the inquisitor wasn't ready to pass judgment on Mstislav.

"Bash it in!" he cried with fervor, but the door was unlocked and easily opened, just as promised by our mysterious yet conspicuous companion.

We were mesmerized by his eerie, white, pupilless eyes. He was eye-locked with his pet, or should I say his master, the small dragon companion Tecsok. Once inside Mstislav's room we heard the droning of a foreign tongue which our dumbek-bonging cohort claimed was draconic. Indeed it was! I had only heard similarly parsed words once before, long ago when Master Angelo read from the Book of Days, a recounting of a fallen soldier's tale from his campaign against the great monster, Iythuzach.

I was deeply impressed that Luther's judgment was based on sound evidence that Mstislav was merely exercising his mnemonic spell-witchery for the day, in preparation for our return to Harrowstone. Although the clatter of draconic words was marginally quieter this morning, I was relieved to learn Mstislav had not been compromised by the spirit planchette as Gregor and I had previously suspected. Moreover, I now question my own resolute distain for inquisitors–in this case against Mstislav, Luthor had acutely demonstrated sufficient adherence to enough empirical evidence to exonerate him. This is the first time since the death of my beloved daughter that am I willing to look upon an inquisitor without seething rage. Thus I am most glad, dearest journal, that in the mid-years of my life I have not yet become too soundly set in my ways, and that I still demonstrate the very open mindedness that I claim is an essential component of ecclesiastical empiricism.

Once more inside the prison, we entered a large chamber lined with iron doors. In its center was a hinged metal grating over a dark pit and rope. Zarkandraal took the lead this time to jump down and recover the body of a serial killer known as The Lopper.

Back at the mansion I reviewed Mstislav's research notes on the Lopper. Apparently that block of cells was used to house the most violent murderers in Harrowstone–killers who couldn't be trusted alongside even other prisoners. The grating in the middle of the room was once kept locked with lengths of chain, but today the grating was unlocked. The pit below dropped 30 feet into a deep oubliette–a cell from which its occupant's release was never intended.

According to the prison records, despite the indisputably violent nature of his crimes, a number of bureaucratic complications kept pushing back The Lopper's expected date of execution–unable to proceed with what he felt was a simple judgment, the warden instead had the Lopper dropped into this pit. With both of his legs broken, the Lopper malingered in these depths during the months prior to the great fire of 4661. It was said that he also decapitated the prison guards during his attempted escape.

Our party confronted him! Taral's holy attacks, Zarkendraal's raging prowess, Mstislav's cackling witchcraft, and my own positive energy radiance were no match for the Lopper–and his wraithlike soul swiftly retreated into another room where it confronted the very guards he had decapitated 50 years ago. Engulfed by the sonic thrumming of Tythanis' dumbek, and sundered by Luther's harsh judgments, the incorporeal undead monstrosity finally succumbed to one final slicing blow by Zarkendraal.

As an afterthought, dearest journal, I find it unusual that I've learned more about the character of dead murderers from 50 years ago than I have about some of my own adventuring companions! I believe this is nobody's fault but my own–I shall be mindful to further press each one to explain more about themselves with each passing day. We can hope, dearest journal, that they possess at least some semblance of a story of their own to tell; we shall see if they are more interesting than decaying corpse shells. Dearest journal, I cannot help but * laugh with ye, out loud.* LWYOL!