Chapter Two: The Hippocampus on the Cracked Lintel

Vad thinks back to when he first met Zora and taught her the arcane mechanics behind a simple cantrip. She had seemed to readily grasp the concepts that explained how certain forms and substances conducted magical energies, and when Vad remarked on this to Edvers later, he had sort of rolled his eyes and said something about how it was "in the blood." Notable, on reflection, because Edvers had never shown the slightest magical aptitude in all the time Vad had known him.

Leth, meanwhile, mulls over what he knows about Hazard. For such an old, populous, and renowned city, it still held many mysteries. Encircled by a tall, fortified wall, the city straddled both banks of the Ophid, with canals running through many of its districts and some of its oldest buildings occupying an islet in the middle of the river. There was a sizeable population of Mezian immigrants in the city, several generations old, who were said to hold considerable influence over the governance of the city. But the leadership of Hazard was one of the least well understood things about it. The city was ruled by a child-potentate called the Innocent, who served for a limited term of seven years, who was advised by a Hierophant, who served for life, and these two were appointed by the ancient noble houses of Hazard according to rules that nobody but themselves were privy to. As far as their outlaw status following them to Hazard...it was possible that word might spread to bounty hunters and the like, but while Hazard and Sthombo maintained good trade relations, the ancient and insular Hazardites and the practical, outward-looking Sthombons, having gone through periods of bad blood and outright war in the past, tended not to meddle in one anothers' civic affairs.

Felor contemplates the image on the tile. What could it mean? The most obvious inference was that the hippocampus symbolized Nethuns, and perhaps, by extension, Sthombo. But what of the doorway with the cracked lintel? Did it mean a door to Sthombo had been broken? Was this an allegory of some myth pertaining to Nethuns?

Felor examines the tile again. The lines of the etching are sharp and fresh: this was recently made, not some antique.

It was a temple of Nethuns.

I'm waiting for Shamush to make his check before we advance the scene, does anyone want to try another roll in the meantime?

Mordred tries to make sense of the broken doorway, and a little lamplight goes on in his head when he remembers Adan mentioning the Shrine of Culsu. Culsu. A minor goddess of the underworld, associated with passages and doors both literal and metaphorical.

Looking back on it, Zangua realizes Mordred is only the second tiefling he's ever known personally, the first being a mercenary from Felboc who had ended up summarily executed for rapine by a zealous field commander.

What he'd most often heard was that tieflings were born of the union between a human and a creature from the Nine Hells, although it was also said that tieflings were a race unto themselves, their devilish traits passed down generationally, and that there existed hidden enclaves of them. He'd been told stories of their latent infernal powers, their natural facility with blood magic, and their ability to call upon their diabolical parent in times of crisis, but Zangua didn't put much stock in those; the tiefling sellsword he'd known had died on the block like any other man. Nevertheless, his gaze drifts over to Mordred, and he cannot help but wonder how this Sthombon thief had been brought into the Werld.

After several hours of walking, the party stops to rest for a bit, eating and catnapping and resting their legs. They've been pushing themselves hard these last few days, and this terrain has been taking a lot out of them.

They press onward as dawn begins to lighten the sky. To the north, the stony peaks of the Lesser Dulehans cut across the horizon. Ahead, they can just begin to make out the rolling Elkfang Hills. They're getting closer to Five Stones and the King's Cradle, and soon, hopefully, the Badgerways, and Zora.

With a little more light to go by, Leth starts ranging out away from the main body of the party, looking for tracks or evidence of camps or anything at all that might be worth noticing.

Before long, he comes across some grass freshly tramped down in large patches. Not human tracks, but...

He stops, listens. Somewhere ahead and a little to the right, he can hear something, faint but distinct: a sort of heavy, wet breathing, punctuated by sharp clacking sounds. He scans the grass ahead of him, squinting. He sees it: a dark shape, very large. It isn't moving. The sound has stopped.

Shamush, you can still get your skill check in whenever you get back!

Also, if I can, perception check to try and see what it is.

Shamush tries to recall anything he might have heard about the religious traditions of Hazard. The old masters had spoken of it as a confused place, prone to following faddish cults, welcoming foreign deities, and unwisely dabbling in the poorly understood rituals of devotion to the old primordial gods of Bload. It was said that if a god was known at all in Bload, you could find at least a shrine to it somewhere in the city. He knew that Ziu-Pater was nominally the chief god of Hazard, and that his temple there was very ancient, and he had heard references in his travels to a temple of Isis as the central landmark of the Mezian districts.

Shamush stops suddenly, instinct snapping out of his wandering thoughts. He looks to the right and sees Leth standing some distance away, bow raised.

Leth, meanwhile, watches the dark shape intently, bow trained on it. It's about a hundred yards away, the size of a large bear. But it does not move, and he cannot make out anything more than a dark, indistinct shape.

The rest of the party, catching Shamush's abrupt shift of attention, sees Leth as well, and realizes there may be danger ahead...

You're all in a bit of a standoff right now. Nobody is moving. Will you continue to wait out whatever this is, or take some action?

Zangua doesn't see anyone or anything else flanking the party, but there's no good cover in the immediate vicinity. Just some trees a ways behind you.