Vignettes
“Sorry, what were you doing there again?”
Winstead and Marweg were enjoying lunch outside Grynn’s Gramarye.‡ A kinship had formed from the joint realization that they had both studied at Miskatonic University in Shadow, and they were relating faded memories as if from a shared dream. Marweg had been back in Satyrine long enough to feel quite comfortable again, and he assured Winstead that in time she would also remember this was home.
But Winstead’s questions were starting to tax Marweg’s ability to answer. She’d asked about the Deathless Triumvirate who ran Satyrine, about the Emotion Mills Consortium as a business and the emotion leaves they produced (she was particularly wistful about the ones that provided a blissful feeling). She’d inquired about the elderbrin, whose only constant feature from one sighting to the next was their eyes, and about the sentience of lacunae despite their bodies being silhouetted portals to other realms. She’d asked him what the suns were, what it meant to be in Indigo as they were now, and more besides.¶ And now she had related an excursion to the Black Gardens in the Fade district of Indigo, where Marweg had never been personally. It wasn’t a part of his daily routine; breaking routine was a discomfort and as such to be studiously avoided.
“I’d been tracking information about the goddess Visla,” said Winstead, “and I came across an abstract statue to her in the Black Gardens. The plaque called her the absent goddess.” She took another bite of her lunch, swallowed, and continued. “It was as though you took a cylinder and then made some of the edges pour like water toward gravity of another dimension, gave it a bit of a twist, and expanded it to be reminiscent of something that could almost be humanoid. It was pathetically beautiful.” She took another bite and washed it down with her drink. “I heard a poem in my mind while I was there. I don’t understand it at all, but I wrote it out0‡” She held out a sheet of paper, and Marweg took it as he finished a bite of his own. It read:
Path of Suns, Silver to Gold
Auspicious orbs the eyes behold
Universe's end foretold
No epiphany
Each action met by its obverse
Actuality in reverse
Exit left, its lonely nurse
No soliloquy
Silver, Green, Blue, Indigo
Beauty is Truth's secret soul
Grey, Pale, Red, Gold; done, reroll
A cacophony
Visla left, her voice suppressed
Hid her secret seeds addressed
May each vislae's soul attest
To polyphony
Un coup de des, the numbered chance
Invisible, creation's dance
Repetitive, fully entranced
The zemblanity
Break the cycle, roll the dice
A new return will not suffice
Nothingness won't happen twice
Serendipity
He laid down the paper. “I see that this connects with Visla,” he said slowly, “but not what it means. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m going to be much help to you in this.”
Winstead nodded. “It’s alright, you’ve already been extremely patient with me this afternoon. I appreciate it.” She gave a shudder and said something else quietly to herself.
“Beg pardon?” asked Marweg.
“I just said that I’ve needed the distraction,” Winstead replied. “I stumbled over a corpse in the gardens on my way here, and it’s been troubling me.”
“A what?!” Marweg leaned forward. “Was anyone told? We need to get an authority to look into this.”
Winstead shook her head. “I have no idea who to talk to around here. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want questions I couldn’t answer. Didn’t want anyone to suspect I was involved.”
Marweg rose to his feet, plate empty. “Come, we’ve finished eating, we can go to the Fade and speak to the gerent in charge there. They’ll know what to do.”
Winstead got up, and they paid for their meals. As they left, she asked, “What is a gerent?”
“Not what, whom,” Marweg replied. “Gerents are the local authority in each neighborhood of Satyrine. As it happens, I should know how to find them.”
As they walked, Winstead described the scene she’d found. It had seemed like a ritual murder, the being’s limbs removed and carefully arranged, throat and stomach neatly and professionally cut. The person had had the head of a flipbook. Marweg tried to express some sympathy, but in truth he was trying to prevent himself from manifesting a mental image of the scene.
At the gerent’s office, the secretary—a small girl with a wolf’s head—looked up and said, “Welcome to the gerent of Fade’s office, how can I help you?” She sounded utterly bored but also annoyed at them for interrupting the boredom.
“There’s been a murder,” Marweg said. “In the—” He looked at Winstead.
“The Black Gardens,” she supplied.
“That’s it. A very deliberate, horrible thing, possibly ritualistic. Dismemberment, evisceration.” He shuddered. “Quite disturbing.”
“We’ll get that cleaned up right away.” The girl made a note. “Will that be all?”
Marweg was nonplussed. He’d said it was a murder, hadn’t he? Not a spilled wine bottle. He looked at Winstead again.
“But shouldn’t something more be done about this?” asked Winstead. “It was a horrible thing to see.”
“Yes, I’ve noted that already. The gerent will see to its removal when we can manage,” the girl replied, still in a bored business tone.
As they walked out of the gerent’s office a few minutes later, Winstead turned to Marweg. “Is murder always treated this trivially here?” she asked, very disturbed.
Marweg didn’t have a good answer. He’d never understood how different districts did things. Weird things happened in Satyrine all the time, but there was something reassuring about the familiar oddities of Fartown. This encounter simply confirmed in his mind that deviation from routine was best avoided.
“Mind if I sit down?” Rhea asked.
Ward looked up from the small group studying the day’s Obverse Herald. “Sure, pull up a seat,” he replied, gesturing next to him.‡
She sat and set down her notebook, then motioned for the waiter to come take her order. After requesting tea and a sandwich, she turned back to Ward. “Anything of note?”
Ward smiled. “There’s always something interesting in the Herald. The question is whether you can figure out what it’s telling you.”
A baffled look infiltrated Rhea’s expression. “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”
“Well, the Obverse Herald doesn’t ever tell you what’s going on directly. All the headlines are wrong, but they’re all inversely correct in some fashion. The question is whether you can glean enough information from the incorrect stories to determine what the true headlines are. And it’s always about stuff that hasn’t happened yet, so there’s the fun of trying to predict what’s coming based on the misinformation given in the paper.”
He laughed. “They’re very careful about that, you know. I think they once printed a retraction on a story they’d accidentally gotten right and ‘corrected’ it to ensure it was wrong.”
Rhea leaned over to look at the articles. “So all of these are wrong?”
“But in interesting and opposite ways,” Ward said, nodding. He gestured to the other people nearby. “When I’m able I join the group here in the morning to argue interpretations over tea. It’s not exhaustive, of course. It only covers our neighborhood of Arca here in Fartown, and a bit of Greater Satyrine. The weather forecasts are great, though.”
He turned a page and frowned. “Although, given our recent history together, these might be worth looking at.” He handed her the paper, pointing out two headlines. One read “Gatesmithe Restored” and the other “Camden Found.” He noted, “Gatesmithe was where Jeremiah’s party ended up. That place is still an absolute mess.”
Rhea nodded. “Camden… lost?” she asked. “Where’s Camden? I’ve never seen that on a map of Satyrine before.”
Ward shrugged. “It was a neighborhood in Fartown that went missing just before the war. No one really knows where it went.”
“Maybe it’s that bit on every map that’s never consistent,” she mused.*
“No idea,” Ward replied. He looked over at her notebook. “What’s in there?”
“Oh, wonderful!” came a voice before Rhea could reply. Carrie from the Stamwhence Parade was approaching.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to thank you both for your assistance again at the party.” She smiled broadly. “I also wanted to say that Angela agreed that you are both to be invited to the next stewards’ meeting at the parade. It’s this afternoon, at two o’clock sharp. May I tell her you’ll come?”
Rhea replied, surprised, “Sure, I’d love to.”
Ward nodded. “I think I could make that time.”
“Great! I’ll see you then!” Carrie walked off, waving farewell.
Rhea’s breakfast arrived at that moment, and she dug in hungrily. A moment passed in silence before Ward turned back to Rhea.
“Well, that was interesting. What’s in the notebook?”
“Oh, right!” Rhea flipped it open. “I’ve been making notes on the paths of suns!”
“Paths, plural?” Ward asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Yes, I might have had a breakthrough on some new directions.” She found a page and turned the book around to show Ward. “Do you see here? This is the Nightside Path, as opposed to the regular path that everyone knows. I’m still trying to figure out the other paths and how they function. But I’ve learned that from the Silver Sun you can travel either to Indigo, where we are, or you can go to Green.” She flipped a page over. “And when traveling the Nightside Path, Silver goes straight to the Gold Sun.”
She looked around and then leaned in toward him. “Actually, I broke into an old cathedral and found a fellow there who gave me some new insights about the paths. There were diagrams of more than five different paths you could travel; unfortunately, seeing them drawn out isn’t sufficient to comprehend them.” She sighed. “I have so much to learn if I’m going to make it to them. My life’s goal is to travel them all.”
In her wistfulness, she didn’t catch the shocked expression on Ward’s face at her mention of the cathedral.
“Just . . . where was this cathedral?” he asked, a slight strain in his voice.
Rhea described the location in Arca just a short walk away, and Ward immediately relaxed.
“Why the concern?” Rhea asked.
“Oh, nothing,“ said Ward. At least the offices of the Cathedral of Illuminism in Lower Taverswood didn’t have any vandalism problems.
“Well, all right then,” said Rhea, finishing her breakfast and standing up. “I’ll be seeing you at the parade meeting later, but you’ve got the apartment to yourself until then.”
Ward nodded and went back to the Herald as Rhea strode off.
Jeremiah waited. The meeting of the Paraders had been opened to some of the folks who’d helped at the party. Winstead, the newest parade homeowner, looked much more relaxed than when they’d first met. Ward seemed a little distracted but was trying to be present. Rhea was listening intently to the flow of conversation. Marweg looked stuffy and uncomfortable. Jeremiah felt the same way, but he was sure that Marweg’s discomfort did not arise from a memory of Mort and Dickie. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and checked the figures in the account book again.
He waited while Annalise explained Zennan Street’s discomfort with its previous encounter with the parade, and that the mists they had encountered on the alternate route were known to occasionally lead to the ruined expanse. The mists were not a constant presence and were absent when the reroute occurred, so the risk hadn’t even occurred to anyone. He watched impatiently while Angela scolded her for her negligence.‡
The dressing-down eventually subsided, and Angela ended on a note of compassion. “It was an unlikely confluence of errors, I’ll grant, but going forward we will exercise full diligence in route planning, and we will not have any repeats. Understood?” Before Annalise could respond, Angela had already called on Jeremiah for the budgetary report. He stood quickly, catching his papers as they tried to spill out of their folders.
“Stewards and guests,” he began, “I have looked over the past accounts of the parade quite extensively over the last several days, and I am extremely nervous about our position. The bad news is that the books have been cooked for almost their entire history via consistent but easily avoidable errors. I cannot understand why it took so long for these errors to be recognized., I’ve only been able to reconcile the receipts going back thirteen months.”
He looked up from his pages. “It seems the discrepancies relate to payments that the parade had been making to a third party, a ‘Maxwell.’ I haven’t been able to find any contract that states the exact nature of what the payments are for, or the specific terms. The good news is that I’ve been able to determine where we stand with him.” He paused and looked around the table like a man at a funeral. “The bad news is that the parade owes to Maxwell a debt of thirty-five magecoins, and he has communicated to me that it is due in a matter of days.”
He let the news sink in for a moment, the group sitting in stunned silence. He looked pleadingly at Mr. Whiskers and Angela. “How many magecoins could we muster on short notice?”
A short but heated debate concluded that the Paraders might be able to lay hands on eight or nine.
“Bloody suns, why is it so expensive?!” asked Rhea.
“Well, it is thirteen months in arrears,” Jeremiah commented mildly, amazed at the calm in his own voice.
“Let me explain,” said Angela. “We were paying Maxwell until a year ago. We feared an attack, which is why you have defense clauses in your housing contracts, but it never materialized. We assumed the threat was gone or imagined. But when we tried to change the terms of the agreement with Maxwell, it went very poorly. We didn’t have the money, so we thought we’d take our chances and see whether our fears were justified.”
She paused, a regretful expression on her face. “The decision was contentious. Many homeowners left; only Mr. Whiskers and I remain from the original owners. But for more than a year, there was nothing. It seemed to be the right decision before. Now . . .”‡
“Do you mean to say that this Maxwell steered the parade into that mess deliberately?” Marweg asked, horrified.
“No,” said Mr. Whiskers, “he doesn’t have that kind of power. Or if he does, nobody has heard of it until now. I think we can safely assume it wasn’t his doing.”
“Listen, Angela, why can’t we just ask the former treasurer how they handled things with Maxwell before?” asked Rhea.
Angela’s lips pressed tightly together. Marweg leaned forward, watching her carefully. “Can you answer?” he asked.
Angela shook her head.
Winstead proffered a pen. “This pen can’t lie,” she said. “Write it down, and then you won’t have to say it.”
Angela took the pen and wrote a few words. Jeremiah picked it up.
“The name is blurred out,” he said, “but it says they are the Rook.”
“What’s the Rook?” Marweg asked.
“The tower, second house in the parade after α β γ,” Mr. Whiskers replied.
Marweg whistled and muttered to himself, “So that’s why,” before turning to Angela. “How long ago did the Rook appear?” he asked.
She looked at him strangely. “Just before we stopped payments to Maxwell.”
“If we could . . . ,” Marweg mused, looking away, “if we could return your treasurer, do you think they could help us now?”
Angela grimaced, and Mr. Whiskers flicked his tail. “Part of the issue is that they were responsible for our current financial predicament. He lost the magecoins we had designated for Maxwell.”
“But he was the one dealing with Maxwell, correct?” pressed Marweg.
Angela nodded. Jeremiah watched this exchange intently.
“Did you trust him when he was treasurer before? Do you believe he acted with the best interests of the parade at heart?” Marweg asked.
Angela nodded again.
“Then, if he lost the magecoins, he might know how to get them back, whether stashed or spent,” Marweg finished.
“And maybe they’ll know if there was a loophole in the agreement,” Winstead added, her head tilted to one side. “Maybe they’re inside the Rook now?”
Angela shook her head sadly. “We tried to talk before he was . . . rooked, but we got nowhere. And you can’t enter the building. It’s magically sealed.”
Ward raised a hand. “It’s possible we might be able to help with that.”
“Look, one thing I’m not clear on is whether the breached agreement was the former treasurer’s fault or the fault of the cooked books,” said Rhea.
Mr. Whiskers purred. “As I understand it, the irregularities in the books were part of the agreement’s terms.”
“I’m sorry?” asked Jeremiah incredulously. “The errors are intentional?”
“The only errors in the books,” Mr. Whiskers said cryptically, “are the places in which there are no errors.”
“By the by,” Marweg said, “before we move on to other things, I noticed that the siege worm moved aside for the Rook during the chaos of the other day. Have you any idea why?”
Angela nodded. “As I understand it, nothing good or bad can happen to the Rook at all.”
The rest of the meeting proceeded stiffly, ending with an invitation to all present to attend a formal ceremony in the Marquis District the next day. As the meeting adjourned, Marweg pulled Angela aside.
“I found something amazing the other day.” Inside the Rook, he didn’t add as he pulled his find out of a pocket. “It’s a compass of some kind that allows travel along different axes than are usually possible. Have you seen its like before?”
Winstead, who’d followed out of curiosity, asked, “Could it get us inside the Rook? Bypass the magical seal?”
Angela showed no recognition. “You’re more than welcome to try,” she said, “but I haven’t seen this before and I can’t tell you whether it would help. I’m sorry.”
Marweg put it away, deflating. “It’s all right,” he said, “I just thought it might be useful.”
“It might be,” said Winstead. “C’mon, we’ll give it a go.” She led him out of the house, Marweg faintly protesting her impatience all the way to the door.
“Is Angela telling the truth?”
Rhea and Ward had cornered Mr. Whiskers after the meeting, and the cat looked uncomfortable —that is to say, more aloof than usual.
He yawned ostentatiously. “All truth is partial, Rhea. You should know this already.”
“But you know the name of the treasurer, don’t you?”
His ears flicked in assent.
“So what is it, then?”
“His name,” said the cat, “is best forgotten.”
“Well, what about the magecoins?” she said. “How did you get them together to pay Maxwell before?”
Mr. Whiskers didn’t answer. The silence stretched on until Ward was quite uncomfortable.
“What about this Maxwell?” he said to break the silence. “What do you know about him?”
Mr. Whiskers regarded Ward for a moment and then said, frankly, “He’s a mobster, with connections throughout Satyrine and pull at almost every level of the city. Fortunately, he also has a code of conduct. Stay within the bounds of that code and he is a most honorable gentleman. Cross him, though, and you will find him to be utterly and completely ruthless.” He paused and thought for a moment. “And we want to be very, very careful about crossing him further.”*
Winstead threw down her tools. “I can’t. Make. The damned. Door. Open!” she seethed. She smacked her hand on the tower door, but the Rook remained stubbornly locked.‡ She turned around in frustration to see Rhea, Marweg, and Ward watching. “Well, don’t just stand there, do something!” she said, moving aside with a snort.
Ward stepped forward, saying, “All right, I think I have an idea.”
Marweg leaned against the wall as Ward held up his index finger and made a complex motion with his other hand. He inserted the key his finger had become into the lock, and the door opened soundlessly for him.‡
“Well done!” said Rhea, smiling now. She and Marweg walked into the tower, leaving Ward and Winstead outside.
“Why couldn’t you have done that in the first place?!” she demanded.
Ward just gave a sheepish smile. Winstead glared at him and stomped in after the others.
“And there’s nothing here,” Winstead proclaimed as she surveyed the bare table and empty room at the top of the stairs.‡
Marweg barely noticed. He had pulled out the compass and was walking “along” the room. It was still empty, and nothing strange leaped out at him. But a sudden shout rose behind him.
“Is there anything that looks odd to you?” he called back to the others.
“Where are you?” called Ward. “You just disappeared.”
“Can’t you see me?”
“No!” said Winstead.
“Fascinating,” murmured Marweg. “Just a moment please.” He turned around and passed the others as he headed “toward” through the tower room.
Behind him, Rhea’s voice sounded from the top of the stairs. “Sorry, I couldn’t find anything downstairs. Where’s Marweg?”
“I have no idea; he’s just completely vanished into the room!”
“Vanished?”
“Well, we can’t see him anyways. He seems to know where we are, but for all I know he’s not on this sun anymore.”
“His voice keeps growing fainter and louder again, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”
“I caught a glimpse of him a moment ago as he passed, and then he disappeared again.”
“I mean, how many dimensions does this tower have? This isn’t normal behavior even for Satyrine.”
“But you did hear him?” Rhea persisted.
“Of course they can hear me. I never left the room,” said Marweg, coming back to them.
Ward and Winstead explained (unsatisfactorily) what was happening to Rhea, but Marweg wasn’t listening. He gently ran his fingers along the compass. “Where did you come from?” he whispered.‡
Camden. Gerent. Owner.
He turned to Rhea. “This seems to have once belonged to a gerent of a place called Camden?”
Rhea took the compass. As she looked at it, she said to Ward, “Didn’t the paper say that Camden had been found?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Marweg pointed out the unusual directions on the compass. “If you follow this one, you find areas you didn’t know existed. It’s orthogonal to both the other axes.”
Rhea started walking ’along.’ Marweg watched her disappear, come back, disappear again, come back again, miss them, and finally stop next to them.
She handed the compass back to Marweg. “It seems perfectly mundane while you use it. Don’t get me wrong, it seems a very interesting tool, but how does this help us any?”
“Because,” Marweg said, “I found it right here on this table the day of our unfortunate outing in the ruined expanse.”
“Wait, you’ve been in here before?” Winstead asked.
“Just the once,” Marweg replied. “It didn’t seem to mind.”
Rhea gave him a keen look. “Have you spoken to it, then?”
“Well, not spoken to, not as such. I suppose I was able to sense some communication, but it mostly revolved around a sense of imprisonment and a request for help.”
“It’s a prisoner?” Winstead looked up from the restless pacing she’d begun. “Then maybe if we destroy the cell, we free the treasurer.”
“I don’t believe we can do that,” Marweg replied. “Angela said nothing good or bad can befall it, and it might be that destroying the cell destroys the prisoner as well.”
In the periphery he saw Rhea beginning to weave something. Her hands seemed to gather the very air around them, twist it into cords, and spin them into a free-flowing current of wind. She grabbed Marweg’s hand, and together they touched the wall of the tower.††
The air in the room shifted as though a giant had let out its breath. From around the room came a deep vibration that resolved itself into words. “Can you hear me?”
Rhea gave a huge smile and said, “Yes, but can you hear us?”
“I can hear you,” rumbled the room.
Ward and Winstead just stood there, dumbstruck.
Rhea directed her focus to one section of wall. “The parade is in danger, and we need to find the magecoins that were misplaced. And we need them fast.”
“I don’t have that money anymore.” There was resignation in the voice.
“Well then, where is it?”
“I entrusted it to someone I shouldn’t have.”
“Can we get it back?”
“I don’t know who they are anymore.”
“If you were freed,” Marweg interjected, “then would you know?”
“You don’t understand,” said the Rook. “I know who they were. But I don’t know who they are now.”
Rhea made an impatient gesture. “Okay, tell us who they were then.”
“I gave the money to one Asclepius.”
“Is he the one who did this to you?”
“No. The parade did this. They were furious with me, perhaps justifiably. I felt awful about it, but there was nothing I could do anymore.”
“The parade imprisoned you? So they could release you, then?” asked Marweg.
“I hope so.” The voice sounded more hollow than before. “I don’t know how many are left.”
“Would you be willing to help them deal with Maxwell, were you to be released?” Rhea asked.
“I would be willing to try; I don’t know if I would be forgiven enough to be allowed to do so, though.”
“Oh, I do beg your pardon, but I’ve just remembered my manners,” Marweg said suddenly. “Allow me to make introductions. My name is Marweg, and these good folks”—he gestured to the others—“are Rhea, Ward, and Winstead. May I ask for your name?”
There was no answer.
“All right, what might we call you?” he amended.
“Whatever you like.”
“Rook, then,” said Rhea briskly. “Rook, why is this such a problem? What is Maxwell going to do if payment doesn’t occur?”
There was a slight pause. “Maxwell covers our tracks. His greatest threat to us is the withdrawal of his services. We feared that if we were traced, something terrible would happen.”
“Like what happened last week?” asked Marweg. “Are you aware of what happened then?”
“I felt it.”
“Is that the result of Maxwell’s support being withdrawn?”
“Maxwell cannot command hate cysts.”
“Who would want to track the parade?” asked Rhea, intense concentration on her face.
“Its gerent.”
“Camden’s gerent?”
“Yes.”
“Who is that?”
“I don’t know. I never lived in Camden.”
“But what does it want?” asked Marweg.
“I don’t know.”
Rhea turned to Marweg. “Camden is lost; the entire community just disappeared around the time of the War.”
Marweg looked at the compass in his hand. His thumb ran over the arm marked “along.”
“Perhaps it merely traveled to a place where others cannot follow.”
‡ Forbidden Game—Green Sun
¶ Winstead learns Circle of Luctus, in part as an apology for all the Despair I’d given her.
‡ Tyrannical Clock—Silver Sun
‡ Lucky Coin—Blue Sun
* This was a neighborhood feature that was only referenced once here, and one other time near the end of the campaign.
‡ Monarch—Indigo Sun
‡ Untrustworthy Mirror—Grey Sun
* There were no ready answers to these questions at the time.
‡ Misremembered Dream—Pale Sun
‡ Swan—Red Sun
‡ Doctor—Gold Sun
‡ Messiah—Invisible Sun
†† Freed Speech
Indigo
Level 4
Depletion: End of conversation
You are able to converse with any being or object.
Qualities: Escape (Freedom), Speech (Wind)