Chapter Six: The Muster of Caltlikrath

The priest stops mid-step.

"Oh...did he."

He turns slowly, leaning on his crook. "We must speak in private, then. Follow me." He picks up a candle from a shelf on the wall and steps through the open door.

Something catches Felor's subconscious notice, but before he can identify it, the thought is gone.

Behind the partition wall is an office of sorts. There is a chair, and a desk, upon which rests the sack of food from the Garnet Axe, untouched. To your left is a stairwell leading down. There are a few shelves carrying censers, lamps, candles, and other votive objects, and a broom leaning against the wall.

"I taught young Gavrel his letters, you know," the priest says as he trudges toward the stairwell. "Such a luminous intellect he had, at such a tender age...it terrified me at times..."

He starts to descend the stairs, carefully, one step at a time, bracing himself with his crook.

Nothing seems obviously amiss to Domarc. The state of mild neglect in the holy house seems to be a product of the priest's advanced age.

Everybody going downstairs?

The stairs spiral downward for some distance, finally letting out into a mostly-unfinished basement that seems larger than the holy house itself. The floor is packed earth, but the walls are reinforced with stone bricks for as far as Zangua can see. The priest's candle isn't bright enough to illuminate the far side of the basement.

To the right, there is a boxy bed canopied with heavy black cloth. To the left are about half a dozen barrels. In the center of the basement is a somewhat incongruous round Mezian carpet with a red and green floral pattern. The priest walks over it on his way to the south side of the basement, where the brickwork gives way to earthen walls. Two large wooden cabinets stand here; the priest opens one of them up, rummages around for a moment, and takes out something you can't immediately identify -- a piece of carved wood about the size of a large serving tray. The priest holds it in front of him and walks to the far end of the basement, to a semicircular desk with a single chair next to it. He sets the piece of wood down on the desk and sits down in the chair.

"Come," he says. "Come and see."

"Smoke tricks? Hmm," the priest says, nonplussed. "Come...you will see."

The priest flinches as Felor's spear begins shedding light. Felor walks across the basement, struck by the dank, ferrous smell of the place. Slowly, he approaches the desk and looks over the priest's shoulder.

The wooden board set before him is a carved relief map with a flat plain on the left side, hills in the middle, and rough mountains to the right.

"Now, here we are in Alband," the priest says, tapping a gnarled finger on a marking on the flat side of the map. "You see here the Elkfang Hills, and the Dulehans." He traces his finger across the hills and into the middle of the mountainous side. "Here is where you will go to see young Gavrel." His fingernail rests on a trapezoidal marking on the north slope of one of the mountains.

Where are you all placed in the basement? Did anyone else follow Felor over to the desk?

"It was an old orcish fastness, given as a prize to Gavrel's great-grandfather...there is a terrible beauty to it, you will find...are you ready, then, to journey there?"

Domarc and Felor, please make Perception checks.

Felor holds his spear near the map to illuminate it better, and glances over at the priest as he's talking.