Wandering Wolves: Scars of Karrnath (1)

Zarantyr 2 - Zarantyr 15, YK 1000

Having driven off the attack by Cavoletta and her allies, the Wolves turned their attentions to Breyten d'Orien and Url, who were in deep trouble with House Tharashk and House Orien. Brand sent a Sivis message to his father, who was arrested immediately upon entering the Orien enclave in Passage, as he'd expected. However, it took only a few hours for that to change.

Aeromus d'Orien was arrested and taken into custody by House Orien security, and a trial was scheduled for him and Traega, to determine the truth of what was going on with both of them. House Orien requested that Breyten and Url be sent back to Passage for the trial, and the Wolves decided that, in addition to security from Houses Orien, Tharashk and Deneith, they would send Luggoth with them to make sure the two of them arrived in Passage and were incarcerated. They made arrangements for Luggoth to come and meet them in Karrnath when he was done.

The rest of the Wolves went to their linked portals on Silver Lake Isle and traveled to Korth, where they were met by a House Orien coach that was to take them to Karrlakton to meet with General Gustavus Karlach, commander of Karrnathi military forces in that city.

Karrnath was in the throes of the worst blizzard that anyone could remember, colder than many of the Wolves had ever been. William thoroughly enjoyed the chance to revisit his homeland... the rest of the Wolves weren't so fond of being without their creature comforts of Sharn or the Wolves' Reward.

The travel took a few days, but it was uneventful. Throughout most of the journey, the windows on the coach had a view of the Mournland, which was unsettling to say the least. Freezing weather and the dead, gray mist of the Mournland left most of the Wolves with a less-than-pleasant first impression of Karrnath.

After two days of travel, they had a brief stop in the town of Vurgenslye, and then they traveled for another day and a half, reaching Karrlakton late in the day. The coach deposited them at the headquarters for Karrlakton's military, and they were greeted by Corporal Hanish Viett, who took them in to General Karlach's office.

Karlach, a man in his early sixties, was dressed in his full military uniform, complete with a number of medals and ribbons, and wearing the ring of the Order of Rekkenmark, as well as a fur hat in the Karrnathi style. William quickly recognized that Karlach was a highly-decorated officer.

Karlach offered the Wolves some vedbread (crusty bread with sharp ved cheese) and lamb and vegetable stew, and then proceeded to tell them why he had asked to see them.

"I was an officer in the Karrnathi military during the Last War. I saw action in the Talenta Plains and the Mror Holds, but for most of the war I battled against Thrane. Just after I was promoted to lieutenant, I met Count Werner ir'Orlok. It was in 961, during the Siege of Shadukar, under the command of General Horacht. We took Shadukar and pillaged it completely, with necromancers reviving the bodies of their foes to bolster the ranks of their armies. When we were finally forced out by Thranish troops a year later, Horacht ordered them to shut the gates of the city and put it to the torch, leaving the city an utter ruin, filled with dead and undead."

"It was a horrible thing, but much as I disliked them, I followed my orders. I didn't like Orlok, though... he was creepy, even for a necromancer, and I got the sense that he was sizing him up for some kind of horrible projects."

"I was very nearly your uncle, William, and I should have been. I met your aunt Hannah when I was home visiting family in Karrlakton. She was 19, and had just begun work as a Blademark, and I was was 37, and had just been promoted to Major. We shared a long distance courtship throughout the war, never in one place long enough to spend more than few days together. I proposed to her after a few years, but both of us knew that nothing would come of it until after the war was over."

"When Cyre was destroyed, we both knew the war was coming to an end, and we both transferred back to Karrlakton. I took over command of the forces here, and Hannah took a job training Sentinel Marshals instead of going on active missions so frequently. We made plans to marry as soon as the war was officially over. Just after these plans were made, Hannah had to go out to rescue some of her students who had disappeared on a mission into the Shadow Marches, chasing rumors that Count Orlok had been risen from the dead. She never came back."

"I've always assumed that Orlok killed her, but I've been searching for him ever since. I've hired House Tharashk scouts and inquisitors, as well as my own scouts, and one of them came to me a few weeks ago to tell me he spotted activity in Iceridge Tower in the Icetop Mountains, which was one of Orlok's labs during the war."

"If it is Orlok, my scouts will need stronger support to handle him. If the Wolves will go up to the base and rendezvous with my scouts, I'm willing to pay each of you. In addition, I have some pull with the Sentinel Marshals, and I know, William, that you have petitioned to become one. If you can capture or kill Orlok, I think I can get them to make you a Sentinel Marshal."

Karlach handed each of the Wolves a small pouch, with an extra one for Luggoth. Inside was gold, platinum and a gem for expenses.

He then asked if William would indulge him in a game of Conqueror. William hadn't played the game since he was a boy, and after an early lead, the general began dominating his game. The Wolves decided to help, with Lysander engaging the general in talk of stories and history from the region, while Brand spotted weaknesses in the general's game and imparted them to William, and Pel tried to convince the general that William's game was stronger than it looked.

The combined efforts of the Wolves won the game, although William wasn't entirely happy to have, in his mind, cheated. Karlach accepted the loss with a smile and told William that he should practice, making it clear that he thought the Wolves' help was a fair counterbalance to his much greater experience with the game.

After doing a little shopping in Karrlakton, and spotting a number of doomsayers in the Mournland-adjacent city, the Wolves boarded the Orien coach again. They traveled for 3 days to Vedykar, then 3 and a half more days to Vulyar, where they boarded the Eastern Line lightning rail. After about 15 hours of travel, they arrived in the small mining town of Irontown.

There they were met by a House Vadalis representative who gave them four magebred horses to take out to the base. The horses had camping and cold weather gear on them, and the Wolves bundled up to head into the freezing weather. It helped a little, but they still found the weather absolutely chilling, and travel was extremely tiring.

After two days in the blizzard, exhausted from the cold, they realized that they were lost, and that the white, mostly featureless landscape offered few clues which direction to go. Fortunately, William was able to recall some elements of the Karrnathi wilderness from his school days that pointed them in what they thought was the northeast, and Brand was able to discern from the way the snow fell that they were nearing Lake Dark, which was the correct way to go. Lysander recalled a story he had heard about a soldier lost in a blizzard, and some of the things he had done to survive, and finally all of the Wolves were able to spot the faintest trail leading to a cottage, with light in the windows.

The cottage belonged to Kravitz and Hestia Bonne. Kravitz was a one-legged veteran of the Last War, and it was clear to the Wolves from the symbols in their home that they were worshipers of the Blood of Vol. This, they explained, was why they lived in isolation away from the town, and they also said that they held no love for the Emerald Claw and its bastardization of their religion. The Bonnes were smithys, and they sold armor and weapons to Irontown from time to time.

After serving some food to the Wolves, they told them that they had recently celebrated Revelation Day at their temple, but that their priest, a mummy, and the rest of the followers had betrayed them. They had used the blood from the ritual to create a blood elemental that they intended to take with them to the Mror Holds for some kind of Emerald Claw operation. When that time came, they would come down from the temple to get Hestia and Kravitz, and they would either have to go with them or be killed as traitors to the cause.

Kravitz asked if the Wolves, in exchange for a safe place to sleep and rest, would go to the temple and deal with the Vol cult. The Wolves were all too eager to do this anyway, and so, after a night of sleep and warmth that got them back to their fully rested and ready selves, they followed Hestia out into the snow once more to find the Blood of Vol temple.

The temple was a few hours away from the cottage, and it was a fairly impressive structure, built of stone with stain-glass windows and only one entrance. William, never once for ceremony, kicked open the doors and charged in.

The mummy was overseeing a ceremony in the candle-lit temple, surrounded by close to a dozen cultists, and a blood elemental and blood amniote, a kind of ooze, stood in the center of the temple.

William moved in to draw both the elemental and the amniote to him, and managed to keep their focus on him throughout the battle. Pel, Brand and Lysander spread out throughout the temple in preparation for the battle.

Two of the cultists revealed themselves as warlocks, firing desiccating curses at Brand and William, and following up with deadly curses that scoured the flesh more quickly from their foes. As William continued to battle the amniote, the elemental and the occasional cultist, Brand and Lysander made quick work of some of the cultists, and Pel engaged the mummy.

His opening salvo was to blast it with the scourging radiant light of the Traveler, then he pulled out his scimitar and began hacking at him, as Brand moved in to help. Lysander, with help from Whitehearth, engaged two of the more brutish cultists.

The mummy focused attacks with his skull-headed mace on Pel, and before long, all of the Wolves had plenty of scrapes and bruises. The desiccating curses were taking their toll on Brand, who was barely able to remain on his feet, and the elemental and the amniote had been pounding relentlessly on William.

With most of the cultists dealt with, the wounded Wolves focused their attacks on the mummy and his blood elementals. Pel called down a flame strike that set the mummy on fire and damaged the last remaining cultist, who fell under the sway of Lysander's persuasion and found himself marching toward the snow outside, firing his bow back at his tormentors without much effect.

The mummy, on fire and dying, stumbled into William's reign of steel stance, and William swung Terminus and cleaved the undead priest's head from his shoulders. A wave of necrotic energy swept out from him, infecting all of the Wolves with the curse of mummy rot. William turned back to attack the elemental and the amniote, and Pel moved in to join him. Brand teleported in and finished the elemental with a flurry of his blades, right after it managed to smash William into unconsciousness.

The Wolves focused their attacks on the amniote, and Lysander finished it off with a song powerful enough to cause deathly fear in the barely sentient ooze. As Pel moved to bandage William, Brand charged outside and finished off the last remaining cultist before he could return to cause more trouble.

Searching the blood-soaked temple, the Wolves found a couple of rooms where they could rest, shielded from the elements. They also found the cult's treasury, which included valuable gems and gold, as well as a blood red potion of vitality brewed from the blood of the cultists and the mummy's herbs. In addition, William found a letter from Count Orlok, clearly addressed to the mummy. It read:

"I have word that our operation in the Mror Holds has encountered some difficulties. The resistance at the mining operation is more severe than anticipated, and I have a request to provide some reinforcements. As you are the nearest Blood of Vol cult available, and my own forces are busy providing security here at the tower, I need you to take as much force as you can muster to the ir'Mroranon mining operation as soon as possible. Perhaps the ritual you had been working on to create constructs of blood would be useful to this purpose.

Lady Vol will look on your assistance quite favorably. The dragonshards we are procuring at the mining colony are crucial to Operation: Ascendance."

Lysander ministered to each of the Wolves to deal with the after-effects of the mummy's curse, and with his help, all of them managed to shake off mummy rot. Unfortunately, Lysander himself didn't, and the next morning, the hale and hearty Wolves saw that their elven companion looked sallow, sickly and near-death. They realized that in order to save him, they'd have to journey for two days across the blizzard conditions without resting, for fear of Lysander taking a turn for the worse.