Episode 2

Maeriks, Ivor, Gibon, and Amit visit the neighboring Heshbaan laborers at their campsite cookout. The food is plain but plentiful. The wine is scarce and quite bad. But the commoners share everything they have. The language barrier is present throughout, but Gibbon can translate and most of the interchange is just merriment and enjoyment of the time and good weather. It is clear that the laborers are happy and humbled to have the wealthy foreigners in their midst.

After the dinner, the commoners settle in to formation to accommodate a speaker, setting themselves up to be a crowd of listeners. They begin the Dread Tales Spoken.

Gibon translates as a series of speakers present their stories one at a time. The stories definitely focus on men, families, or small groups who face hardship, trials and tribulations, suffer loss, often severe loss, but in the end they rise to the occasion and endure, even if not completely triumphant. Most of the stories feature treacherous adversaries, cruel task masters, double-dealing merchants and profiteers, and pompous aristocrats. Almost always there is some sort of appearance or interchange with fantastical creatures such as goblins, djinn, elves, trolls, giants, river and lake monsters, air spirits, forest spirits, dessert spirits, talking animals, or men who are part beast. The characters in the stories often face magical hexes and curses, many of which consume them or drive them to desperation or evil.

The stories shift later from generic to seemingly specific. Regional stories about Jara Hili and Gelshemish, once the City at the Center of the World, now the City of Secrets. The listening crowd is captivated, expressing their fright, despair, and hope along with the characters. There is some question and answer between the crowd members and the speaker. Most of the speakers are great, and use the queues from the audience to expand on the details with greater and greater tension and mystery.

At the end, all the focus of the talk comes to center on a single name, a great and fearsome magic-user who hides within the city and serves as a puppet master over all things, including perhaps it is whispered, over the Sar himself. This villain is a sorcerer of Dark Arts who crept into the Red Bastion and began to unlock its ancient secrets. This fiend is a half-devil, born of a union between a harlot dancer and a devil from the underground of Hel, the place of the tortured dead.

The sorcerer devil is Iz Jeddriss. He lurks through the city and even in Jara Hili, moving around freely from shadow to shadow and under the earth, as is his nature. He claims men as he will, turning them to dust, enslaving them, torturing them, making them suffer his dark ceremonies and profane transformations. He turns men into beasts, changes their organs, and melds their bodies into abominations, all according to his will and his Helish whims. His devilish and beastly servants are also menaces, spying and poisoning, lurking, scratching, biting, and bruising. Always promoting the evil schemes of their dark master.

Soon they say, Iz Jeddriss will be able to unlock The Gate at the Red Bastion, the dreaded door that covers the cavern that leads to Hel. If he is able to do this, devils of all sort will emerge and raze the land, mutilating and killing and devouring anyone caught in their path.

Beware Iz Jeddriss! Who can resist him? Poor workers are the wheat to his harvesting sickle, and he sifts through them like grain. The proud and the wealthy are the goats and fattened calves for his slaughtering knives. He devours them like a dinner of bloody liver uncooked.

Sostias Medios, Kurios of Lepidon, is indeed a Pylosean landowning lord. By his servants, he is introduced to Kray upon arrival at his luxurious tent along with Thorn and Bryn.

The dinner is very fine-- roasted goat, veal stew, dates, olives, rice, seed bread, dried apricots, and cream with cinnamon. The Pylosean wine is also extraordinary and even hard spirits from Esosan are available.

Kurios Medios is a nobleman in his thirties. He speaks fluent Yuoric, so the communication is very easy. He says he is visiting the Sar and his ministers to finalize trade and shipping contracts for the import of Pylosean wine from Lepidon and the export of Heshbaan slaves and the fine woods of Jara Hili. The Kurios' ministers have been there in Gelshemish since last year, and he is now traveling in to finish the cooperative negotiations.

He asks about Kray's business and family, and wishes to hear about the developments in the Markelands.

He also asks which ministers Kray is trying to treat with in Gelshemish. He suggests that the most influential of the magistrates are Golasu, Menachem, and Udi Yam. They have the most access to funding and wield the most sway among the ministry assembly at court. Udi Yam is also prevalent among the Dasnishiat, having some religious title as well.

He wonders if Kray has heard of the rebellion of the forest peasants. His ministers have sent word that these country folk have begun to incite riots and even murders within Gelshemish. They have a mob group called The Stabbers who ambush Heshbaan nobles, seemingly the ones most loyal to Yokud. These Heshes are their own worst enemy it seems, always bogged down in bloody fights among themselves and their different religious factions. And terrorizing foreign visitors - it is just not good for business and exchange.

He tells Kray to be sure and visit the pleasure houses in the Regent District. The luxury and the performances are top grade. Outstanding dancers and prostitutes exceptionally clean. But beware of a rough profiteer called Rama Ash. He is hailed as a district manager who owns many of the House Mistresses, but in truth he is a racketeer who enjoys unchecked privilege even within the Ministry and the Gilded Armsmen. He has a crew of bankers and loansmen who have trapped many visitors into unfair contracts which end in extortion.

Lastly, Medios asks Kray if he would like to join to see the games at the local sports arena. It is called the Circle of Valiants. Nothing like the games in Olane or Sinacuse or any of the large ports back home. But still, there are Pylosean and Kortellan trainers that direct the fights, and it seems that the Sar and many of the local lords are investing in strong slaves for the sport. Certainly on the up trend from what he has heard during last year.

Everyone gets ready before dawn, closing down camp and packing up all things. You meet for assembly and muster, answering final manifest for the convoy, as directed by the Holy Gilded Armsmen, out in full force and led by Bezil Koral.

With little delay the convoy is on! As a large group, perhaps 250 people, you move through the forest. Entering Jara Hili, but following a trail for only a short distance...



...and then departing into the undisturbed forest when the trail more or less...disappears.

The lack of pathway is a bit strange, but the forest is easy travel. As a landscape, it is rather impressive, if not peaceful. The soft and green forest floor is a marked difference from the rough snow-covered ground of the Curnaugh Forest of the Danneinkiff, the lands through which this group ranged under heavy stress not so long ago during the Winter War.

The high branches of the thickly grouped trees seals a near-full canopy overhead, making for heavy shade. It feels almost as if you are walking under a vast shelter.

The hike is mostly uneventful. Perhaps what stands out the most is the travel for hours and hours following no markings and no trails. It is as if none have ever passed here before, though now a parade of hundreds stomps through.

It is difficult to maintain an eye on the sun for direction as well, and the Gilded Armsmen are shifting the direction of the route here and there on the way.

Late in the day Koral and his lieutenants ride through to announce that the first stop will be just ahead, near a brook and small clearing.

As promised, the waypoint site is reached in a last short leg of the march. Some of the Armsmen fan out and ride through the area, apparently on security patrol. Others direct travelers about limits and locations of camp sites and fire rings. In short time, groups are breaking up to set up small camps. Travelers are getting water, preparing fire pits, and setting up tents and tarps.

The Armsmen ride through making a serious announcement again and again, in Heshbaan.

The words are long. Gibon seems to shorten it. "No one is to cut a tree. No trees chopped. None. King owns all trees. Only branch fall on ground for fires. Only here." He motions in the small camping area. "Travelers do not go away. Stay here only."

After a few minutes, a Gilded Armsman on horse back rides through and several of his underlings roll up to a camp of poor laborers nearby, a part of the group that Ivor and Maeriks partied with on the previous night.

The rider speaks out definitively to the group and the support armsmen follow with commands of their own as they direct the crowd.



For those who do not speak Heshbaan, the messaging is unclear, but soon the armsmen gather up a small group of about 10 of the laborers and assemble them in a formation. All of the laborers, those chosen and those not, seem nervous and intimidated.

Without much delay, the formation is directed to march out in a two by two line. They are handed bags, some tarps and short rope lengths on the way.

Those walking away look worried but they stay quiet, avoiding eye contact with their armed directors. Some of those in the camp who were not selected look on at their departing fellows with a look of concerned. Others look away and get back to work quickly. The ordeal creates a somber air in that part of the camp.

Marching along at the direction of the armsmen, the line of workers disappears into the woods. The foot soldiers lead out as well and the horse mounted commander follows along behind.

The darkness of night sets in around the entire camp site. There is a bit of a clearing at this area near the brook, but the overhead opening to the sky is limited. Most of the outer area is still canopied by the thick branches of the tall trees, so when the sun sets the light of day is gone rather quickly.

Small fires have cropped up at individual camp sites around the perimeter, and a fire also burns in the middle of the assembly, attended by the Gilded Armsmen and the other Gelshemish soldiers.

After being gone between one hour and two, the line of workers is seen returning into the camp. The mounted armsmen leads the way and the other armsmen walk along side of the laborers, all of whom now carry large wraps of sticks and logs, strapped to their backs in large bundles. The soldiers direct the men to dump most of the wood near the central fire. A few are sent to stack their logs at couple of different sites on the perimeter. It is announced that this fire wood can be used by the individual camps during the night.

When the workers are released from service, both they and their companions at their camp seem elated. Once the soldiers are gone, the workers quickly reunite with their group, received with handshakes, pats on the shoulder, and even full embraces for some. A burst of guarded but glad talking ensues, and they are all enthusiastically invited to join their friends at the fire for the humble dinner that is cooking.

Thorn notices one older man embracing one of the younger returning worker repeatedly, likely his son or some other family member it seems. The older man clutches onto the lad's shoulders and smiles again with satisfaction, as if he is so relieved that the young man had returned. This old man, and some of the others Thorn notice, had been visibly counting all of the men returning, as if to verify that no one was missing.

At other camps, the workers, marketeers, and artisans look on at the camp of the returned workers in silence mostly. They steal glances in the direction of the small celebration, and then turn back to their own campfires. Some seem to be watching the central camp of the soldiers. The armsmen are seen talking with one another and enjoying cuts of venison, a deer felled during the day and now roasting on a rack.

The darkness is thick and heavy anywhere beyond the reach of the red orange light cast by the small fires.

Are Gibon and Amit armed? If not, and they can't find a spare, Kray would suggest they at least try to fashion a makeshift spear or something from the woodpiles.