Chapter Six: The Muster of Caltlikrath

Garho looks skyward, thoughtfully. "It comes in the part where she is describing the royal court of Hazard. She has been asked to read their fortunes, and when it comes time for the king to have his fortune told, he tells Aligoon about his brother-in-law, a man learned in the ways of magic, who had been exiled years ago for disloyalty.

"The man was cast out because he had become a zealot, and was known to say that 'only the wearer of the six-pronged crown is fit to rule in Bload.' He settled in Sthombo after his exile, and lived freely there as a sage and healer, styling himself as 'the first servant of the six-pronged crown.' He was well-liked in the city, and had the ears of its lords, and the King of Hazard was worried that he was plotting intrigues and vengeance against him, so the king asked Aligoon to prophesy the fate of the 'first servant.'

"They brought out some old jewelry that had belonged to him, and through these objects Aligoon looked into his future. She told the king that before his reign was over, the First Servant would be entombed alive within the crypts beneath the Temple of Nethuns. The king was satisfied. And that is all that Aligoon had to say on that subject." Garho smiles. "Until many years later, when she writes her marginalia. This is what caught my attention, relevant as it is to the interests of my profession.

"In the margin, she writes that she has since learned the meaning of the 'six-pronged crown.' It refers to a tale told of the eighth circle of Hell. Long ago, during some long-forgotten infernal war, a colony of ice devils were called to muster at the fortress of Caltlikrath. For some unknown reason, six of them strayed from their path and encamped on an isolated glacier. They slew the devils sent to admonish and retrieve them, holding the glacier as their own fiefdom in perpetuity thereafter. Eventually, the glacier came to be known on Hell's maps as Seglogron. Which translates to 'six-pronged crown.'"

The dialects of Infernal get verrryyy idiosyncratic the deeper you get into the less-trafficked parts of the lower planes. Give me an Intelligence check?

Domarc sits and nods thoughtfully. He says:

"See what lies on Culsu's door:
Sleeping sea-horse, curled in a ball.
Tickle him awake, and your city will fall!
Ice and flood through the broken gate
An early death is the last Child's fate
Set a crown of frost on the tomb of the Old
And never again will men dwell upon Bload."

"I think this helps us know where the agents of the Six Pronged Crown would take the Sphere, if they get the chance."

"The 'how' I leave to them; I think this is the 'what' of their plan. At least the first step. And I start to understand the enmity between Sthombo and Hazard more, thanks to this story. Perhaps the destruction of Hazard will act to release the First Servant, somehow, from his crypt - perhaps what is in motion now is part of an ancient plot to enable his revenge on Hazard. 'Entombed alive.'; what waits down there, I wonder? This land crawls with secrets."

It's not how Mordred would have translated "six-pronged crown," but it sounds close enough based on what he knows about Hellish dialects and the loan-words they use. He ponders "Caltlikrath" as well, deciding it means something like "cold dead body castle."

Garho considers Leth's question. "In the medicine shops of Felboc, it was a subject of lively debate whether the true remains of Ilhaz can still be found for sale. Most of them seemed to believe that if indeed the titan's body had laid at rest there, there would have been nothing left of it by the time Hazard seated its last king." He plucks a few stray bits of dried fish from the spread cloth and eats them. "Now, if all this cult wishes to do is open a portal to Hell, that is not as difficult a thing to accomplish as you might imagine. It certainly does not require the use of unique magical artifacts."

"What struck me about that passage in the Record of Aligoon," Garho says, "is how absolutely unheard-of it is for greater devils to desert their legion. To such fiends, the infernal hierarchy is their very religion. They might rebel against one lord to follow another, but the story, as she tells it, is that these six devils decided on their own to seize a glacier and defend it as their property. But why?" He drums his fingers on the side of his drinking gourd. "There must be a reason. An ice devil is not a creature to act upon a sudden whim."

There are two paths that seem fruitful to me:
1) Back to Hazard and investigate the mastaba to find out what the deal is with Ilhaz.
2) Way back to Sthombo and investigate the Temple and fishmongers and see if we can't track down the Sphere itself.

I think we were headed back to Hazard to warn them that the Shrine could be used as a portal by invaders. But getting our hands on the Sphere would also be valuable - it is just a hunk of metal that Pafthinel enchanted; we could melt it down and end it as a threat. But I also assume that the Cult has a strong idea on where it is - they've had Martjan hostage for sometime now.

1. Does anyone have any more questions for Garho?
2. It's getting dark out. Is the plan to camp here, or walk back to the village?

Garho shakes his head. "It is not time for me to swim upstream, my friend. Bahanzin calls me to the city of Banwod. I don't know what I will find there, but I know that is my destination."

Second heading back to town for the night.

Garho reaches into his garments and removes something from around his neck: a wooden pendant of a fish with a hooked snout. He passes it to Leth. "If you wish to find me again, pray to Bahanzin. Perhaps he will send me to you. I have few friends on Bload, but if ever you find yourself in Felboc, seek out Velenix Silver-Chain. I have not met anyone in this land whose expertise in goetic matters matches hers."

Ready to return to the village?