Chapter Four: The Manifest of the Harikan Squall

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Mordred leads his companions on a curious detour, through empty buildings and hidden alleys, until he is satisfied that they've lost the man following them.

The party reaches the Peddler's Bridge, and crosses without incident. The guard on patrol gives your group a thoughtful glance as you pass, but makes no attempt to detain you.

You stand now on the Isle of Ilhaz, on the east side where a cluster of private houses, many of them quite ancient, stand. To your west is the temple of Achlae the river god, and near it the old hospital, a guardhouse, and a few other contemporary structures. In this area you will find the one bridge that connects the Isle to the southern half of Hazard. Further west are the ruins: the crumbling ramparts, the broken tower where Ziu-Pater supposedly struck down the last King of Hazard, and the low flat expanse of the Mastaba.

The Isle is quiet. You can see the faint glow of hearth fires in a few of the nearby houses, and the flicker of guards' torches near the guardhouse and hospital.

Wait, Edvers is really dead, right? We aren't going to pull off Adan's mask to reveal it was Old Man Kells all along, are we?

Are we in sight of the Mastaba? What is the area around it like? Is it an actively used building, or more like a tomb?

A good number of people saw him beheaded and buried so you're pretty sure he's dead and not masterminding this nonsense.

You can't really see the Mastaba from here, it's behind the temple/guardhouse/hospital clump of buildings to your west and it's not a tall building by any stretch. There isn't much around the Mastaba besides the foundations and stones of other structures that used to stand here. The Mastaba itself (Domarc would be able to fill you in on the basics) is a flat sandstone building about 200' wide and 275' long and only about 15' high, like a gigantic slab on the ground, basically.

There are several entrances to the Mastaba, some of them built in at its construction, others opportunistically made later. All of them have since been bricked up.

Approaching the Mastaba, you see a trio of guardsman sitting on the northeast corner of its roof, playing dice and bantering by the dim light of a coal-filled iron basket.

Any objections to moving on to the Shrine of Culsu?

Leaving the Isle behind for now, the party crosses over the bridge to the south side of Hazard and finds themselves in what would, in the daytime, be a bustling, crowded marketplace. They are hardly alone as they wend their way through the narrow streets between shuttered shops and stalls, finding guards on their rounds and less savory characters prowling in the darkness where the guards' torches don't reach, but none of them harass or detain you.

Heading west, the party makes its way to the South Temple District, whose aging stone edifices are built so close as to seem to lean against each other, and every bit of space between them seems to be filled with some sort of ad hoc shrine. It's quite a contrast with the orderly plan of the New Temple District. At one claustrophobic intersection the party has to stop to wait for a procession of men and women in white shrouds to carry an idol of Aitas through the streets on a litter.

The streets are narrow and mazelike, but eventually you make your way to the massive Temple of Ziu-Pater with its enormous stone columns and Y-shaped iron fork stretching high up from the cupola on its roof, and in its shadow you find a small, round, domed structure made of limestone with an image of scissors and a repeating looping ribbon pattern carved into its wooden door. This is the Shrine of Culsu. A heavy padlock hangs from the door, but it isn't secured to the frame: apparently whoever's job it was to lock the shrine up for the night has forgotten to do so.

There are people -- beggars or the devout, it's hard to say -- sitting and sleeping on the steps of Ziu-Pater's temple, and a pair of guards standing near the adjacent Temple of Erat, but there doesn't seem to be anyone paying much attention to the party or the shrine right now.

The door doesn't look nearly as weathered as the rest of the shrine; it must have been replaced at some point in the recent past. The wood appears to be oak. The carving is well-done, but not particularly elaborate or finely-detailed -- Mordred takes it for the work of a skilled contractor, not a loving devotee of Culsu.

Who wants to give me a Religion check?

A little reflection jogs Domarc's memory; Martjan gave him a rundown on native Bloader mythology soon after he started working for her. Culsu is the patroness of doors and passages, but her true divine station is to stand at the gateway between the Werld and the planes beyond, where the souls of dead mortals are brought to her by the psychopomp Vanth. There she cuts the silver cord that binds them to their life with her scissors as they pass over its threshold.

Mordred sees no evidence that any previous doors were retired due to foul play.