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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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12 Septober, 5A 169: Above and Below

So after spending all that time in the library, I think it’s high time I completed my tour of the city… and gave Wadud his trinket back. So I go down to the docks, which have the sheen of prosperity about them still, even with the pall that’s settled on Menaphos. I spend some time walking around the waterfront, admiring the sleek Menaphite craft— they’re quite a bit more advanced than the ones used by the sailors of Sarim, or so they seem at least— I’m not worth much as a sailor— and observe the curious spectacle of a staring match between a crab and a scarab. I also talk to some of the local, including a fishmonger who’s got some interesting catches endemic to the region on display, and someone busy herding… plovers? But why? It seems like such a random thing to do! She tells me I could go down to Sophanem to learn the art myself, but the suggestion somehow doesn’t strike my fancy. Still, next time I am in Sophanem, I’ll keep my ears open.

Once I’ve seen the waterfront to my satisfaction, I turn inland and go into the maze of modest homes that make up the harbour district. The trades represented here are workaday ones connected with the sea traffic: weavers, blacksmiths, and the like. The guy manning the smithy is more communicative than most of the close-lipped locals, and lets me in on a secret: in his view at least, the master blacksmith is going crazy, talking about anvils disappearing when they’re clearly still there. Hm, that’s strange. Wonder if there’s any truth to it— maybe Ozan has a hand in the vanishing anvils? Or Wadud’s thieves?

Out behind some warehouses, near Wadud’s tavern, I run into a guy with the tongue-twisting name of Henutemipet. He strikes me as a bit suspicious (not that it’s really my business), but he turns out to be quite friendly (which is why I know his name). He tells me he’s in charge of laying the dead to rest in their tombs: a responsible position, and a contemplative one. Rather like a gravedigger-cum-pallbearer, but the customs around death are much different here, of course.

Having wandered around the district to my satisfaction, I turn toward Wadud’s inn, the Golden Scarab. It’s still early in the day, so there aren’t many drunks around— just one, really, who troubles to tell me that the wheat beer and imported spirits from the Eastern Lands served here are without compare. To my surprise, there’s already a musician performing inside— or, more likely, just practicing, since her song has seriously subversive undertones. On the face of it, it is a religious hymn, telling of the two children of Elidinis and Tumeken, Amascut and Icthlarin. Icthlarin, of course, was and is tasked with guiding the dead to the underworld. (One wonders: all dead— or just the Menaphite dead?) The tale of Amascut, at least in this telling, is more complex. Apparently, her role was protecting the living, or ‘delivering them from death to life with prayer’, whatever that means. According to the song, she was corrupted by the Mahjarrat (!) and turned by them to madness and destruction. The song blames her for Menaphos’ recent misfortunes, and calls out for a liberator to come forth and free the city from her influence… which is consistent with what I know of her and her plans, but for it to be said openly, like this? That musician has got an incredible amount of guts.

Especially since ‘Admiral’ Wadud, pirate and flunky of the Pharaoh, is right there. But he doesn’t seem to mind. Perhaps he likes the feeling of power that defying the Pharaoh by having the singer in his establishment gives him; I don’t know. Anyway, he’s looking at me mighty sourly, so I go ahead and return the precious trinket the Jack of Spades lifted off of him. Though the pirate is none too pleased that the Jack got away, he does thank me for returning his property, then goes back to business, making it clear he’s willing to give me no more of his time. Oh, very well, then.

Rather than report straight back to Grand Vizier Hassan, I spend some time dallying around the harbour area, especially around the far side, where I haven’t yet been. The buildings there turn out to be all warehouses and wharves; the people, workmen and sailors, including an inept carpenter who keeps hitting this thumb with his hammer and a scarred captain who lets me know that all but two of the old wounds on his body were inflicted by his wife! What does he do to piss her off, I wonder? And then, of course, there are the sailors, who hail from all over the world. There’s the crew of a massive junk from the Eastern Isles, dressed in splendid local garb, who even have a siren as their travelling companion! I ask her if she knew Remora, but she doesn’t seem to. On the other hand, there are also folk from the three western kingdoms, who have docked hoping to gain entry to the city but have been denied further passage by the guards. I talk to three of them: a hunter of strykewyrms who has a side gig going hunting Kalphites; an entomologist from the Varrock museum; and a nondescript but slightly shady guy whose name escapes me.

The docks slightly further along have a more reputable air around them, and are lined by what look to be the homes of sailor-folk. Most of them are busily going about their lives, but there is one who stands out by dint of being a talented singer. The song he sings is a shanty, boastfully telling the tale of voyages to the east, and criticising Admiral Wadud for his increasing loss of authority among his sailors and crews, as well as the dishonourable ways of some of the more recent captains. The ships sailing from this area are all Menaphite craft, and include a river-boat crewed by a man named Kags who is happy to offer me free transportation up the Elid (maybe Ozan told him I could use some free transport, I don’t know!), as well as a merchant liner that takes passengers, too… albeit for a steep price.

Okay, so now I’ve really been all over Menaphos. I think it’s time I checked in with Hassan and made sure the diplomatic talks are going along OK. But it turns out I needn’t have worried: Hassan is happy that I’ve managed to make a bit of a name for myself around the city in clearing up some of the Jack of Spades’ chaos, and assures me that the negotiations have gotten off to a good start. If I’m needed, he says, he will send for me. Ehsan adds that she would like me to feel at home in Menaphos, and sends an aide down to the city’s market hall to ensure that I get full access to the trading facilities. Sounds good!

Up in my room, I find a note, addressed to me, and signed, not unexpectedly J. It reads: ‘Meet me at the previous place when you get this. Have got something to show you.’ There’s only one place it can mean, really, the Workers’ District entrance to the tombs beneath the city. Sure enough, I find Ozan waiting for me there. It seems that his purpose in bringing me here was to tell me a bit more about the tombs under the city, now that I’m more at liberty to be sneaking around. So, in a nutshell: Menaphos is situated atop the tombs of the long-dead pharaohs, courtiers and ordinary people who have lived and died here throughout the Ages. These tombs contain much gold and riches that could be used to aid the Menaphites in their struggle against Amascut, but these are, of course, protected by traps, by combination locks, by ancient magic, and less obviously by some mysterious corruption that Amascut has brought into the place. As such, one needs to be quick about one’s business in the tombs (there is a spell that teleports would-be raiders out if they stay too long) and always mindful of danger and death. There is an extra complication: some of the magic down there makes tunnels and chambers connect and re-connect at random as a further deterrent to thieves, making it nearly impossible to predict where one will end up.

There is some good news, though: the corruption can be warded off by breaking into the urns of ancient Menaphites and drawing on the magical energies contained within the burial vessels. That sounds… unethical, but Ozan is the Kharidian here, so if he thinks it’s okay, I guess I can give it a try as well. Also, fighting the corruption will gain me favour with one of the lesser Menaphite gods, if I commune with them before venturing down, and the gods are known to impart their wisdom to those who do so consecrate themselves.

Well, the tombs sound like a pretty dangerous place, and I’m not at all feeling up to exploring them right this instant, but Ozan’s lecture, coming as it did from an expert tomb raider, was very instructive all the same. There are so many aspects of dungeon design, trap avoidance, and so forth that I’ve never even thought of, really, until now!

But that’s not all Ozan wanted to tell me. There is one more thing, and it is that some friends of his are holding a bit of a subversive concert at the Golden Scarab, under the protection of Admiral Wadud. It’s starting pretty soon, actually, taking advantage of the lessened guard presence before evening, so I hustle through the upper passages of the tombs to the port district and settle in at the pub with a glass of wheat beer for what promises to be an exciting show.

Two songs in particular stand out. One, sung by the same musician I saw practicing earlier in the day, is a variant on the song of Amascut she sang for me, but with the words changed to honour the Jack of Spades, whom she deems the future liberator of Menaphos— and it’s definitely a role I can see Ozan pulling off. The other one is sung by a woman dressed in the garb of the workers’ district, and is placid on the surface but simmers with rage just beneath at the Pharaoh’s misrule and alienation from the common folk of the city. She is especially livid at the current Pharaoh’s usurpation of his predecessor and his fomenting of war with Al-Kharid during the last outbreak of hostilities ten years ago, and also hopes that a hero will come to deliver the city from the tyrant. A decided counterpoint to these stirring songs is the drink that’s also served at the pub, alongside regular beer. It’s called ‘squeck juice’, or ’squecks on the beach’, and is an inky black substance that tastes just as bad as it looks. I take a sip and spit out the rest, because it sure as hell isn’t worth the ten coins I paid for it!

On that note (pardon the pun), the concert ends, and with it my last reason for sticking around Menaphos for much longer. The myriad of other strands of intrigue I’ve gotten myself tangled in cry out for my attention, which means I should return to Al-Kharid and debrief. The fastest way to do that would be to use my broomstick (which I still have on me, in fact!) to teleport there through the Sorceress’ Garden, so I do that and, once there, go to the palace to speak with Osman and the Emir. Both are glad that negotiations are going well (though Osman is a good deal more cynical about their prospects for success than the young Emir!), and Osman thanks me for the information I give him about the state of affairs in the southern capital.

But since there’s nothing to be done now but wait for negotiations to run their course, I’ve got nothing further detaining me in the desert and decide it’s time to move on. Not so fast, though: my way out of the city takes me past Ali Morrisane’s stall, and I stop by to see how the merchant is doing. Expecting maybe a sales pitch at most, I’m surprised when he offers me another job! He tells me he’s been trying to corner even more of the local market, but has gotten pushback from the local merchants, who, he thinks, are working together to block his efforts. Or they don’t trust a Pollnivnean— the upshot is that he can’t get the new suppliers he wants. Which is where I come in: my mission, should I choose to accept it, would be to travel down to Sophanem and negotiate a contract with a merchant named Siamun for local goods that Ali could resell to the people of Al-Kharid at a profit. Hm— well, since I’m one of the only people let in or out of Sophanem at present, and since getting their goods out of the plague zone would benefit the locals even more than it would Ali, I think I can help with that, detour though it is. In addition, there’s a guy in Pollnivneach selling blackjacks that Ali sees a market for up here in the north supposing we could improve the quality of the product, so if I could arrange something with him, he would appreciate that as well. Finally, Ali wants in on a market nobody in the desert has managed to successfully manage yet: runestones. He suggests that I approach Aubury, in Varrock, with a proposal to form a rune cartel, splitting the market in the Misthalin-Desert region at the expense of competitors further afield.

There’s one question that’s unanswered: what do I get out of this? Ali isn’t forthcoming with any promised rewards at first, so it takes a fair bit of haggling. But. Eventually, he does agree to give me a deep discount on his magic carpet service in exchange for my help, and, to sweeten the deal, even hands me a pouch of some 600 coins right now. I guess that means we’re in agreement. I can get started as soon as I’ve gotten some rest.

I spend the rest of the day— which isn’t much of it, really— organising the books I spirited out of the Menaphos library and getting my supplies in order for this next, unexpected venture into the desert. I don’t know what it is about this place, but it’s really sucked me in!

#runescape #journal #roleplay #shifting tombs #menaphos

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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11 Septober, 5A 169: A Deluge of Books

Even after yesterday’s efforts, I still haven’t gotten a satisfactory sense of the materials on offer in the Menaphos Library, so when morning comes I make my way back there and start once more to sample from the shelves when the librarians aren’t looking. I get started on the second-highest tier this time, having checked out the one above it already.

The works here are as varied as those above, and with so many to choose from, it’s hard to pick which ones I should sample. One that grabs my attention quickly is an old legend about Tumeken, said to date all the way back to the Second Age. It tells of Tumeken’s contest with the wind, and how the wind tried and failed to overawe the deity by blowing the cloak of a traveller. Tumeken, unimpressed, responded by making the sun come out, and the traveller took off his cloak voluntarily, thus proving that one can accomplish much more with kindness than with anger. A lesson the rulers of this city seem to have forgotten, but a valuable one all the same.

I keep going around the room, and get almost to the far wall before a book title grabs my attention: ‘Embalmer’s Log’. Having seen a bit of the embalming process back in Sophanem, my curiosity about what it might feel like to be actually performing the ceremony and preparing the dead for the afterlife compels me to take a look. The book turns out to be an account of the embalming of a High Priest who died in mysterious circumstances: hunched over a text, reportedly mad before his death, his eyes pale as the moon. The embalmer recounts getting to work anointing the corpse with sacred oil when it rose up, twisted into agony, breath cold as ice, before expiring for good. Despite the embalmer’s best efforts to rationalise the incident, he says that neither he nor the Pharaoh have any rational explanation for the events, and he can’t shake the feeling that the living corpse’s torment is somehow portentous…

A shiver runs down my spine, and I take this as my cue to put the book away in my pack (the information it contains may well be valuable to Osman or Ozan, after all) and move on. The next book I pick up, though, turns out to be just as creepy. It recounts someone’s encounters with a preternaturally agile woman who moves along the rooftops of the city, a woman known by some as the Priestess. An old woman has this to say about her: “The Priestess can never be tamed, and yet she visits amongst us. Accept her gift when she chooses to share it, and do not make familiarity her cage.” The author’s attitude toward the woman is… cryptic. He or she takes care to make the Priestess aware of his/her presence, just for a glimpse, before moving away. One time, the author recounts, she tried to follow, and the author led her across the city ‘to one wiser’. One day, the author predicts, she will ‘understand, and her daughters after her. And so the mistress who betrayed us is diminished. I see her everywhere, and my heart is glad’. Which… I don’t know what to make of it. One more mystery in an entire city of mysteries, is all I can say.

The next book I come across is much more comprehensible, being the matter-of-fact diary of an ordinary labourer. In it, he details being sent to work for the Menaphite priesthood in a forested place called Ullek, which isn’t a name I’m familiar with. Perhaps it’s somewhere on the far eastern isles? The text describes the priests commanding clay golems, a technology known to have been used historically in the region but which in more recent times seems to have been lost. The priests command the group to dig at a tangle of roots in the ground, which is impervious to physical tools but eventually yields to fire, exposing a cache of runestones! Clearly a pre-Fifth Age source, then, and one of great potential interest to historians. All the more reason not to let the current Pharaoh decide it conflicts with the propaganda he’s spreading about his dynasty! I take it along.

Almost back at the place where I started, I find another theological piece, this one a poem about the first meeting between Tumeken and Elidinis, at water’s edge. It contains a number of curious details. First, the meeting between Tumeken and Elidinis is clearly said to take place by the Elid, yet the area is described as forested and not desert. Second, the gift with which Tumeken courts Elidinis is stated to be the Kharid-Ib, said to be a thing made of the sun, designed to nourish her life-giving dream. Third, their courtship is said to have ended with Tumeken succumbing to slumber, at which point Elidinis’ dreams ‘turned to sand’. The poem concludes with a couplet describing Tumeken’s awakening, to find Elidinis gone. It is said he weeps forevermore. A pretty poem, to be sure, even if I lack the cultural context to be able to pick apart all the layers of symbolism.

There are two more levels of bookshelves for me to explore here, yet; but I don’t have any more room left in my pack to keep smuggling stuff out. There is a bank in Menaphos, but after thinking it over I come to the conclusion that I probably shouldn’t let on that I’ve been stealing from the royal library: I might get my diplomatic privileges revoked, or worse. So, instead, I take advantage of the freedom I’ve been granted to come and go as I please to slip out of the city altogether and take the magic carpet from the stand just outside to Nardah, where there is a bank, via Pollnivneach. It would seem that the carpet merchants on the route have been instructed by Ali to keep an eye out for me as thanks for having helped the trader in the whole confusing mess with the gangs in his home town, because the carpet operator over at Menaphos gives me a small bundle of lost-and-found items when I talk to him. The bundle contains two mahogany planks, which is really random, but also more than enough coins to pay for the flight to Nardah and back! Now that’s pretty sweet!

Once my illicit haul is safely in my bank, I fly back into Menaphos and return to the library to continue my browsing. The collection on the third tier down is no less varied than that of the other two, and contains some acutely interesting stuff, not the least of which is a treatise that the curators of the library claim in a written preface was written by a Mahjarrat, Ptolemos, shortly before his disappearance in the early Fourth Age! Knowing what I know of the Mahjarrat, and it’s barely scratching the surface, I’m sure, I devour the text with interest. The subject matter is philosophical: what can change the nature of a god? Yet the author has not just gods in general in mind, but cites one in particular to prove his points: Zamorak! And what Ptolemos has to say on the subject of the Lord of Chaos has the air of confabulation, if not outright heresy. He claims that Zamorak did not always have his status, but acquired it by seizing it from his erstwhile master, a divinity known as the Empty Lord. Yet if the Empty Lord’s being was empty, Ptolemos claims, the core dogma of Zamorak, chaos, proved self-defeating in its absoluteness, and no better or more flexible than the rival ideologies of Saradomin or Armadyl (a lesser-known deity whose name I’ve heard before, though the precise context escapes me). Thus it was that the gods’ visions for the world clashed and the God Wars began. For nothing can change the nature of a god, yet something can change the nature of a man: belief. Pretty profound stuff, even if it’s hard to tell what to make of the allegedly historical details Ptolemos cites.

The next text that catches my attention is equally philosophical, yet much pithier. Whether in metaphor or in actuality, it claims that the desert sands, in the infinite multitude of their grains, are loyal and industrious devotees of Amascut, slowly eroding all they come across in accordance with the Goddess’ will. A captivating way to describe the desert wind, at the least.

The next book I pick up is of a piece with this musing on the nature of Amascut, though without any of the studied detachment, written as it is by someone at the heart of a terrible dust storm. The author speaks of how children are taught not to steal or lie because this will attract the malevolent sands to them. Toward the end, the author looks out into the sandstorm… and sees a malevolent, red figure in the storm’s heart, and despairs of living another day. Intense stuff, is all I can say.

I keep going on my circuit around the library, stopping when I notice a book called ‘The Sons of the Dunes’. Thinking it might shed a bit of light on the dust-devil-figure mentioned in the previous book, I open it, but it turns out to be just the tale of a company of desert mercenaries— a very ill-starred company, it turns out. Caught in a sandstorm just outside of Menaphos, the scattered survivors are ambushed by bandits, leaving only one alive. A cautionary tale of the extreme risks of the desert, to be sure.

At the very end of my circuit around the third tier, I come across the tale of a boy named Phodopis. This boy was a manual worker in the docks, who marvelled at the riches he handled but did not dare steal any of them for fear of retribution against his family. That is, until one day, his aching feet were preventing him from sleeping, and so he tried to sneak into a nobleman’s house to bathe them in the noble’s abundant supply of water. Well, he got to the water, all right, but a passing eagle stole one of his sandals and flew toward the royal pyramid, at which point a great rumbling was heard from within. Knowing what this meant, Phodopis fled and tried to go about his day as though nothing had happened. But it didn’t work: he was apprehended and brought before the Pharaoh, who ceremonially killed him. Huh— I’m pretty sure I’m missing something cultural here, because that didn’t make tremendously much sense.

There is one tier of the library left: a courtyard dominated by a pool of sparkling, azure water. At the centre of the pool is an island with a sundial that looks somewhat familiar; indeed, quite like the ones I ran across when chasing after Prince Ali in the desert! I play around with the gnomon for a bit, but nothing happens, so I go back across the little footbridge to the shelves and go back to picking out books at random to read.

The one that catches my attention first is called the ‘Poetic Mena’. It turns out to be a heroic saga, telling of a war in the desert, a war that seems to have angered the Gods. A war against supernatural beings? That seems to be the implication, though it’s not clear. The text mentions ‘shadows now Empty’ and a final march that won the war but scorched the land, which is all very mysterious. Since nothing I’ve learned so far about Menaphite history sheds any light on these questions, I take the book with me and move on.

I keep going along the shelf, pausing when I see a book with a familiar title: ‘Klenter’s Big Book of Rhymes’. It turns out the former High Priest was a pretty terrible poet, though, and the contents are just hackneyed doggerel after hackneyed doggerel. Meh: I move on.

The next book I pick up turns out to be an old, official report (written by Muthirat, scribe to Pharaoh Emharses the Healthful), which speaks of the re-emergence of monsters in the desert following the ‘fall of the school of Catolax’, terrorising the area from the gates of Menaphos to a place called Senntisten. The report outlines potential solutions, marking out the easiest— hiring mercenaries to kill the fiends— as the worst, due to the drain on the nation’s resources it implies. A few competing uses for Menaphite gold are mentioned: trouble up at Uzer, and wars in the north. This would place the text as… Third Age, at the latest? Perhaps even Second Age. Damn, if Menaphos doesn’t have one hell of a history.

The other files in this area of the library also contain reports and ephemera. I glance over some of them, including a letter by the wife of a soldier to her husband, from the time of the war with Al-Kharid. In it, she describes the sack of Pollnivneach by Kharidian forces and the subsequent evacuation of Nardah, and pleads with her husband to stay safe. It’s… certainly good to be reminded occasionally that ‘the enemy’ is human as well, so I’m glad I picked this one up.

My circuit of the lowest tier of the library is nearly complete, so I grab one final book from the final shelf before heading off. This one book turns out to be a work by a member of a dying civilisation of… spider-people?… retrieved and translated by archaeologists. These spider people seem to have prized logic and rationality above all else, and lived in isolation from humans until a time very near their demise as a species. She describes her own first encounter with a human— a magic-user, no less— a human who identified herself as Elidinis herself? (I’m afraid the text is not entirely clear on this point.) The interloper, after attacking the spider writing the account, tried to recruit her as a guide in her search for an artefact called Aragnya’s Veil— apparently an artefact of ill-renown among the spider-folk, allowing the bearer to twist fantasy into reality with flawless skill. The author (named 0078, if it makes a difference) tries to lie to the visitor, saying that no such veil ever did exist, but the visitor sees through the lie and appeals to 0078’s pity by telling her she is a deity without followers, having lost her husband (scattered to the desert winds), her children, and her faithful. 0078 makes a seemingly reasonable suggestion: if she wants those things back, she should not use the veil, but instead start anew, with a new mate and new children. But Elidinis rejects this suggestion: it is not what her culture permits, and besides, she is too weak now to make more children. So 0078 continues with the story of Aragnya’s Veil, of how Aragnya wove it to disguise her own infirmity, and used it to spawn generations of defective descendants. When the other spider-folk discovered this, they ate her children and imprisoned her where she could not get out, since they dared not touch the veil for themselves. Her corpse remains there still, 0078 tells Elidinis, as beautiful as ever. And that is why she cannot take her to the Veil. Elidinis is lost in thought, thinking of her lost children, of the spider-folk’s slaughter of their defective kind. 0078 asks her why she cannot simply return to her family; she replies that she was banished, for what others thought her capable of, for how she was perceived. Hence the quest for the veil.

Hearing of how the spider-folk trapped and killed Aragnya, Elidinis surmises that the Veil rests inside an old ant-colony to the north. Pleased with the information she received from 0078, heals the spider’s broken legs and commands her to go back to her web and document their encounter. She is to be spared, Elidinis tells her, when her wicked, child-killing culture is destroyed by divine lightning. As 0078 finishes weaving her tale into her web, Elidinis arrives for her as well…

What a chilling tale, if there’s any truth to it— and it would take one hell of a storyteller to make something like that up. Well, if it is true history, I suppose I should take it as a warning. The Veil, with all its powers, may exist yet, somewhere around Menaphos… and if Amascut has it, the prospects are dim indeed.

By the time I lift my nose out of that last, engrossing account, night has fallen, and I make my way out of the library pyramid and back to the diplomatic quarters. I’ve learned a lot today, that’s for sure, even if I can’t quite untangle the truth in it from the fiction, the metaphors from the facts. But having summed up the main points, if something familiar does turn up, I’ll at least be able to cross-reference it. And who knows— maybe eventually I’ll find the time for a thorough study of Menaphite culture to unlock the secrets that remain yet.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #menaphos #library

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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10 Septober, 5A 169: Exploring Menaphos

I wake up from a light sleep at the diplomatic residence in the Merchants’ District at the crack of morning, just as soon as it’s bright enough outside to make my way through the city’s slums without drawing attention to myself via artificial lighting. My plan is to go down into the catacombs beneath the city, where the Jack of Spades’ hideout is most likely to be, and catch him by surprise if at all possible. Well, I hope this works…

I go down the narrow flight of stairs indicated to me by Batal yesterday. The stairs soon broaden, and take me to a central chamber with four entrances, all identical and one on each side, and a deep well in the middle flanked by the statues of the four lesser gods in the Menaphite pantheon. And… the Jack of Spades is there, clear as day, standing in his robes by the well! I draw my crossbow and move in to apprehend him. I call on him to surrender, or else we settle this by force of arms, at which the Jack merely scoffs and asks me “Is that any way to treat a friend?”

I growl at the Jack to cut it with the psychological games and let him know he’s no friend of mine but a common thief. This really gets the Jack’s goat: he exclaims that he is not ordinary but one of a kind… and throws off his hood, revealing himself to be Ozan! Aha— so he actually was a friend! My bad! I bid him explain. First of all, how did he get into Menaphos? The city seemed impregnable like a fortress, and I know I only got in by invitation! Ozan explains that it took a clever disguise and some humiliation involving a snake charmer’s flute. As for what he’s doing here, that much is obvious: he’s tracking down the Kharid-Ib. He tells me Apep and Heru, Lady Keli’s two lackeys, weren’t just random Menaphites; they were high up in the city hierarchy. So he’s been spending his time here gathering information, and what he’s found suggests that Amascut is in the city right now! Well, not inside the actual city, but underneath it: there have been whispers of workers and soldiers being led into the Great Pyramid and not coming back out. Some investigating has revealed that the captives are being used to dig up old tombs, for a purpose as yet unknown. (And, yes, ‘captives’ is the right word: most of them are operating under mind control, a sure sign of Amascut’s presence!) However, there is still much Ozan does not know, and it will take some doing to get more leads and figure out a course of action.

Okay, that makes sense. One last question: why steal the items? Ozan explains that his thefts were absolutely intentional, calculated to get my attention and make me rub shoulders with some of the figures at the heart of the corruption in Menaphos. Grand Vizier Ehsan, for instance, covertly trades on lies and gossip, and keeps a record of the dirt she has on everyone who’s anyone in the city. Her ascent to power has been largely based on extortion. Ozan asks me to warn Grand Vizier Hassan about her, lest he stumble into negotiating a badly unbalanced treaty. ‘Admiral’ Wadud, for his part, is little more than a greedy thug, with a monopoly on the city’s crime. He gained his so-called rank by double-crossing the Skulls (seemingly a broader organisation than just the Draynor branch, and into piracy around these parts) and stealing a portion of their fleet for himself. (Incidentally, Khnum has proven cooperative of late in providing information to Ozan about the Skulls: perhaps he will deliver some helpful intel against Wadud in time).

Ozan continues, moving on to Commander Akhomet, who used to be a great soldier before the Pharaoh ordered the gates closed, at which point she became little more than a lackey and a bully. As for Batal, his case is the saddest: he was once a fiery campaigner for the rights of the working classes, but his downfall came when he tried to organise a protest against the abductions of labourers for the Great Pyramid project. The Pharaoh ordered his hands cut off in retribution (how did I not notice that?!) and since then he’s been a broken man and willing collaborator with the regime.

Well, that about covers my questions. I ask Ozan what he wants me to do with him: should I turn him in, and trust in his ability to make a dashing escape? Ozan, however, tells me that it’s best we separated, and that I start courting the influence of the very same disreputable figures who run the various parts of the city. Okay, I wasn’t expecting that, so I let Ozan explain, and his reasoning seems sound. The stronger my ties with the grandees, the less likely it is that Hassan and I will have our right to visit Menaphos revoked. In addition, getting on the locals’ good side could help drive a wedge between them and the Pharaoh’s increasingly reviled regime, and that can only be a good thing. To get me started on this task, Ozan hands me the various things he stole from the grandees, and tells me to return them to their more-or-less rightful owners. Once I’ve done that, and warned Hassan about Ehsan’s duplicitous ways, I should come back to him and work toward figuring out a plan.

I guess that means it’s time I became familiar with this sprawling city. I go back out the way I came and make the workers’ district my first stop. The first person I talk to there is actually Batal, whom I intercept walking by the entrance to the tombs. And, now that Ozan mentions it, his hands really have been replaced with hooks! Poor guy… Anyway, Batal is grateful when I hand him his purse back, and tells me he looks forward to actually eating tonight. Damn, I feel for the people of Menaphos.

I start my tour of the workers’ district in earnest from the coastline. For whatever reason, though, you can see ruined buildings out quite some ways into the sea that look like they once formed part of the slums. Kind of makes you wonder how they ended up submerged! Anyway, the area isn’t very crowded: all it contains, other than a few unattended tents, is a small makeshift altar and a local practising his dance moves.

I then move inland, into the warren of huts and alleys that comprise the slums. The locals seem to be quite aggrieved by the Pharaoh’s regime: they tell me half-whispered stories of corruption at all levels of the system, of working all day, every day without breaks and still not having enough to live on, and persistent crime that the guards aren’t willing to check. In fact, the only things the guards— and there are many of them here— seem to be interested in is keeping the workers in the open-pit quarry from slacking off! Sickening.

The whole workers’ district is grindingly poor, with only a few basic trades such as blacksmithing and pottery represented. The merchants’ district, by contrast, is basically a different world, full of sophisticated trades and populated by folks who appear quite content with their lot and mainly concerned at getting an edge over their competitors through the bureaucracy. I make my first stop in the district the diplomatic lodgings, where I return the ‘tax’ ledger to Ehsan, and use the opportunity while she looks through it to make sure nothing is missing to whisper a warning about Ehsan to Hassan. Unfortunately, Hassan is not very willing to believe his ears when I tell him about Ehsan’s true colours, and quite loud about it to boot, and Ehsan overhears. Gracefully, she assures Hassan that there is nothing suspicious in her actions besides what the troubled times necessitate. Sadly, he seems to believe her, hook, line and sinker. Oh dear, that’s definitely something that Ozan shall have to worry about.

Since I can’t prevail on Hassan that he’s being a fool, I exit in a controlled huff and hit the market, which is glittering with goods of all kinds, from gems to fish and beyond. Standing off to one side is a very curious sight: a creature that looks like a hybrid between a human and a camel. Sadly, it appears too busy with… whatever its business is… to talk to me, or even much notice me gawking at it. North of the market, there are a few larger shops, and outside one of them, I run into a young woman named Pia who tells me she’s considering giving up being a merchant and becoming a slayer master. I agree to help her practise and tell her to give me a slayer assignment. ‘Fine,’ she tells me, ‘Go kill 24 Scabarites!’ Um, that’s not a name of a monster I’ve encountered before, so I ask her where I can find these creatures. ‘In the Scabarite hive, of course!’ she says, as though that would have been obvious. I conclude she’s quite likely pulling my leg and move on to the shops.

These, it turns out, also contain a great diversity of wares, going beyond what you would find even in great market centres such as Varrock. For one, there’s a shoe store with the largest selection I’ve ever seen, where I spend more time than I care to admit. Then there’s a shop that claims to sell spirit lamps— and not just regular lamps, but ones that can be used four times before they are used up! The seller tells me the tale of how he won the secret of making them from a wizard in the Eastern Lands that he beat in a game of Runeversi, and I believe him… that is, up to the point where I actually inspect one of his lamps, and it looks to be just an ordinary clay lamp with a nice paint job, nothing magical about it. So I challenge the stall keeper to prove to me that his lamps are all they’re cracked up to be, at which point he shoos me away. Pah, what a cheat!

I leave the guy’s stall with a grimace and hit up the shop behind him, which is focussed on the spiritual arts and even holds a full-fledged summoning obelisk! Unfortunately, the shopkeeper is rather low on shards and other summoning-related lairs, to the point where he asks me whether I come bearing manuscripts and supplies from the ‘greener lands’. (Taverley, perhaps?) Anyway, since I’m not buying and he’s not selling, I move on toward the river, which seems to attract poets and entertainers making the most of the city’s stifling atmosphere. Nearby, there’s a baker’s stall and the city’s largest general store, which is stocked with the usual necessities, as well as a local speciality: blue-and-gold feathers known as talismans of Ma’at. They’re supposed to be used for cleansing corruption from the spirit, and while that’s not something I need right now and the feathers are mighty expensive, I buy one regardless: you never know when they may come of use. In fact, having one may have protected me from that whole Icthlarin fiasco in Sophanem, now that I think about it! It never hurts to be protected, the point is.

South of the market proper, I find a lone stall selling toys and, more importantly, the city bank. While the bankers there seem to have arrangements not only with the Bank of Gielinor but with the Grand Exchange as well. (Hardly surprising that the Pharaoh would be interested in maintaining a strong flow of trade despite the physical isolation of the city!) Sadly, the staff there demand that I show a token of approval from the Grand Vizier before they’ll let me use the facilities… and after ratting on her, I’m not sure she’ll give me that. But we’ll see. Opposite the bank, meanwhile, I glimpse from afar the Palace guard— a much more flashy group than regular city guards— arresting someone for an unknown transgression! I try to get closer and find out more, but the guards warn me not to make a scene, so I reluctantly, with Ozan’s warning not to compromise the broader mission in mind, move on across the central plaza toward the royal palace, where Akhomet tends to spend her time. Unsurprisingly, not many citizens linger directly under the gaze of the pharaoh and the many guards, but one person catches my attention: a woman with a butterfly net who’s looking for implings, but confesses not to have had much luck in that regard, recently.

The Imperial District, now that I’ve got a chance to take a proper look at it, is even more beautiful than it first seemed, made up as it is of expansive parkland, acadia trees and palms that provide shade, and pools of flowing water. I make a beeline for Akhomet and return her dagger to her, adding that the Jack of Spades unfortunately remains at large. She’s not too displeased at this news, though, and in fact tells me to check back with her later, as she might have some work for me. Okay, much as I like to avoid dealing with treacherous snakes, I feel Ozan is right on this one and I should take her up on the offer.

For now, though, I ask her a favour that I’m pretty sure will get shot down: would she let me enter the palace, just so I can have a quick look around? To my surprise, she tells me to go on ahead— as a diplomat, I do have that privilege— and so I let a guard usher me through the grand gates and into the pyramid.

The guard leads me straight into the monument’s heart, a hall of marble as pure as snow and as noble as an icyene. The Pharaoh’s throne stands on a high dais on the far side of the room, with the ruler upon it. Next to him is that utter snake Ambassador Jabari, slipping poison into his ear. There is every air of decadence in the decor— indeed, the ground below the Pharaoh’s throne is heaped with mountains of gold coins five metres high. So much gold, and all on display! There must be several billion gold pieces’ worth in that pile! And yet, for all that, the Pharaoh exudes an air of preternatural wisdom, and, somehow, that is the part of the whole set-up that worries me most.

Unfortunately, an audience with the Pharaoh is out of the question: his schedule is already filled by various petitioners, some of whom have come audaciously to vent their grievances with the regime at the very source. For instance, there’s a priest who’s complaining about the Pharaoh’s policy of destroying every scrap of text that denies his divine lineage. With her is a merchant who complains about the onerous taxation that supposedly leaves the tradesmen of the city barely able to afford a modest standard of living (though how much of that is due to their fundamentally expensive lifestyle is another question)— still, the giant piles of gold around the throne suggest she has a point. A final set of complainants comes from the army, like the officer of the guard who wishes to bring to the Pharaoh’s attention the increasing rate of desertions by soldiers who abandon their posts to become common thugs.

Keeping order against the petitioners are the royal guards, who brandish their weapons conspicuously and seem to relish the prospect of suppressing any overt violence with lethal force. Given the delicacy of the situation and the fact that I’m under orders not to jeopardise the prospects for a lasting detente between Al-Kharid and Menaphos, I take my leave of the palace and have a walk through its outer grounds. Around the back of the palace, I find a small residential district and, looking out to sea, even more evidence that a sizeable part of Menaphos has disappeared under the waves. To my surprise, even this close to the seat of power, one can find revolutionaries, including a musician who has drawn a modest crowd with his call to arms. Maybe the guards are letting him be as an outlet to all the tension pent-up in the political system…

As I walk down toward the houses of the district, I unexpectedly spot an egg on the pavement. Thinking it just a normal chicken’s egg, I pick it up, and to my surprise find it covered with lustrous greenish-black flakes, as though corrupted! And as I hold the egg, it starts moving, and before I can figure out what to do with it, it cracks open and a glowing green scorpion, apparently some kind of spirit creature, hatches out of it and begins to follow me around! I don’t know what I’m going to call my new friend… perhaps Ishhara? I think that’s what the Kharidian scorpion in the story that palace guard once told me while I was staying in Al-Kharid for the night was called. And if memory fails to serve, well, Ishhara will just have a unique name that sounds Kharidian enough.

The residential areas of the imperial district are populated with dull members of the administrative elite to whom I have little to say, so I start heading back toward the central plaza. On the way there, I pass a side entrance to the royal palace with stone carvings that indicate that the great library of Menaphos lies within. Remembering the task Osman set me, to learn about the succession of pharaohs, I head inside, into a deep, multi-tiered chamber of bookshelves and scrolls that puts the palace library in Varrock to absolute shame! I mean— with this sort of knowledge, it’s no wonder Menaphos is so rich and powerful!

I relinquish all plans of visiting the docks of Menaphos today, and instead sink into sampling some of this immense collection. There’s way, way too much to be read in a single visit or even a single lifetime. So I sample more or less at random. The first work I look through is the diary of an architect, and specifically one impassioned entry in which he defies the desert and declares that Menaphos alone shall stand eternal.

I take that book along and move on to other shelves. The next book I sample happens to be another journal, this one by a seer named Saa Akila that must have appeared in the library very recently. In it, she describes a series of ill omens that have befallen the city: the Sophanem plagues, the withering of the royal gardens, the decadence that has replaced innovation, and ultimately the abandonment of the city by the gods. Akila fears that, if these trends are not reversed, if openness is not restored, that may be the end for Menaphos. Sobering thoughts.

The next book I look at is rather light-hearted in comparison, being a guide to the brewing of tea. The advice that it gives is nothing revolutionary, though it does recommend that spices from the eastern isles be added to the tea— an exotic proposition given how little of that stuff has made it out to the Three Kingdoms!; the interesting part is the social commentary, on how tea is a gift from Tumeken and a suitable drink for the working class to make them more content with their toil.

I move on to the next book, which turns out to be another very recent diary by a girl named Dawnsu, evidently from Sophanem. In it, she tells the tragic tale of how her parents both came down with Klenter’s Plague (an event that, let’s face it, was more or less my own damn fault…). In an extremely odd twist, she becomes friends with a penguin (yes, a penguin, in the desert) pretending to be a cactus, and this penguin, named Sophie, smuggles her out of the plague-infested city to a new life. That’s… almost too strange to believe. And yet, her words are right there on the page!

The next account I pick up is a memoir by a disciple of Amascut by the name of Tefnut, in which he reminisces about how as a child he would rise to observe the beauty of the sunrise, yet now, as an old man, knows that beauty is a distraction and the only truth lies in emptiness. If he really believes that, it’s quite sad!

By that point, I’ve completed my circuit of the upper tier of the library and it’s near closing time, so I tuck the books I removed from the shelves into my bag, the better to smuggle them out, and nonchalantly have a conversation with the librarian about the state of the collection. He rebuffs my compliments about the sheer volume of knowledge stored within with a scathing attack on the Pharaoh’s policies of book-burning, which have severely depleted the shelves of material on history, sociology and, um, adult romance. Fortunately, the librarian says, thus far they’ve been able to get away with burning only duplicate copies, but the time is approaching when the Pharaoh’s philistinism will start to do real damage.

Um, I guess I’m kind of doing my part to save this priceless knowledge, by stealing a few works here and there for my personal collection? Anyway, the stuff I took doesn’t seem to be that valuable and I doubt the librarian (singular!) will be quick to notice it gone. Still, there’s a lot of shelf space I haven’t even glanced at yet, and the book Osman was seeking must be around here somewhere! I shall come back tomorrow and see what I can find.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #menaphos #factions

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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Diary of Ambassador Jabari (9 Septober, Afternoon)

The next stage of Milady’s plan is unfolding marvellously, just as expected! Just twenty minutes ago, a parrot arrived from Al-Kharid bearing the response of that fool Emir Ali. The Kharidian delegation is on its way! The Pharaoh is well-pleased, and concurs with me that it is imperative that the delegates be well-treated… for now, at any rate. At least, about this he is pleased. About other matters… well, his greed is a foible, and a throne room full of gold will not satisfy it. Oh no, he demands ever more, and demands that Milady bring it to him. This she shall, I assured him yet again: after all, are not the tombs beneath the city vast and overflowing with riches? Yet another sore point continues to be the setback we have suffered in past months, which the Pharaoh has brought up every time we’ve met since then. I again gave him my assurances now that the situation is under control and the meddling Elisandre will soon be securely in our snares. At this affirmation, the Pharaoh was less than delighted; he sees the Al-Kharid delegation as adding to the growing hordes of malcontents wishing for his head, even comparing them to his scourge the Jack of Spades. I had better be cautious: His Majesty was explicit that if this gambit does not come off exactly according to plan, I shall be on very uncertain sands indeed.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #villain episode #jabari

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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9 Septober, 5A 169: Sudden Diplomacy

When it gets light, I depart from the guest quarters of Al-Kharid Palace where they’ve given me a bed for my services to the city and begin the hike across the Kharidian Desert, following the tug of the enchanted key. Thinking I’ve got the right idea that the treasure the key is pointing the way to (how does it do that, anyway? Does it detect metal, or were all these caches left behind by the key’s past owner?) lies to the south-west of Al-Kharid, I follow the coast in that direction. Well, it turns out that’s not right at all, but by the time I realise this, I’m at the Bedabin encampment and figure that I might as well take a trip back to Pollnivneach to see how the villagers— and, just as importantly, the gangs— have been getting along after my coup against their leaders, yesterday.

The southern Kharidian Desert is bisected by a mountain ridge, and the only pass across the ridge that lies along the coast goes through a small village that, it becomes apparent upon drawing closer, has been taken over by another group of desert bandits, or perhaps a branch of the Pollnivnean ones. The bandits, for the most part, are a hostile bunch, just respectful enough of my weaponry to tell me to get out rather than try to pull something funny on me. But I don’t get out, not right away, at any rate: I want to check the place out first.

I poke inside some of the modest huts and tents of the bandit camp, and find there a few bandits who are not as averse as their dumb muscle to having something to do with me. For one, there’s a general store set up in a pavilion, whose manager is very gruff but where the prices— even for water, that most precious commodity around these parts— are surprisingly reasonable. But he’s the exception: otherwise, the bandits seem to feel betrayed and shunned by the world, and so they in turn shun it. In short: there’s nothing here for me, so I get moving again. On my way across the pass, I have a surprise encounter with none other than Ozan! He tells me he’s made some real progress lately with the Kharid-Ib mission and he’s on his way toward Al-Kharid to share his findings with Osman. That sounds exciting!

But it’s not my battle to fight, so I move on across a dry, sandy expanse infested with roving bandits (as well as one gnome who’s crazy enough to be studying crocodiles without heed of the danger he must be in from his research subjects— maybe because the desert heat is messing with his mind) toward the site of my latest adventures. Pollnivneach, outwardly, looks little changed since yesterday: there are still large numbers of Menaphites and desert bandits milling around. But the fight’s gone out of them: in fact, when I run into Ali the Operator by his tent, I find him very dispirited, in despair over the failure of his dreams to rule the town outright. He tells me the loss of misleader has left him shaken and that his only plan right now is to wallow in self-pity. Ouch… you almost feel sorry for him. Well, it looks like his gang won’t be causing problems for a while.

Taking a survey of the town, the mood of the locals is very much improved. The Asp and Snake has seen a lot of dispirited bandits come in yesterday and even this morning, and Ali the bartender is so gladdened by this upswing in business that he gives me a free beer as thanks. The other shopkeepers in town are also relieved, and there’s even been a new stall opened at the market, where a guy is selling surplus blackjacks that the gangs have decided to get rid of. I catch up with the mayor as well, and though he’s a busy man he boasts to me how well his plan of restoring peace and prosperity to the town has worked: all he had to do was get his cousin Ali in on the deal… Aha! So the mayor is less of a fool than I gave him credit for. Well played, sir, well played.

Then there are the more unsavoury residents. Ali the Hag isn’t very sociable— perhaps she overdosed on glee when she was preparing the poison for Traitorous Ali and now needs to be sour for a while to rebalance her humours— but even as she threatens to turn me into a frog, talking to her gives me an idea: she’s a witch, right? Might she be able to add another enchantment to my magic broomstick? I doubt she’ll agree, but what the hell do I have to lose, anyway? Sadly, I don’t have my broom with me and will need to get it from somewhere with a bank. Nardah will do: it’s not that far away thanks to the bridge over the Elid to the south of town. (It would be closer still if I took the carpet, but the time saving just isn’t worth the cost of the passage.) Nardah looks just the same as it did the last time I was there, so I don’t stick around long, merely get the broom and return with it to Pollnivneach. When I show the broom to Ali, her demeanour instantly changes as she recognises the mark of a friend to the witches. With a spring in her step, she lays an enchantment on the broom, and when she hands it back to me, a flash of magical understanding fills my mind. Hey, thanks a bunch!

Since there’s nothing further holding me this deep in the desert, I return back to Al-Kharid on foot: even though I’ve got my broom on me, I still want to pinpoint the direction of this damned key treasure. Finally, after feeling the key grow ever warmer as I near the kalphite lair, I come to the conclusion that the treasure I’m looking for is in Misthalin.

I figure I can keep following the tug of the key northwest through Al-Kharid and out of the desert, but as I’m crossing Shantay Pass, a guard spots me and tells me my presence is requested at the palace immediately for an audience with Emir Ali. My meeting with Ozan makes me think this has something to do with the ongoing situation with Menaphos, and I turn out to be right, just not exactly in the way I was expecting.

Emir Ali is waiting for me in the throne room and greets me warmly, before getting straight to business. He tells me he has summoned me due to a communication that has just arrived at the palace from Menaphos, offering a re-opening of trade relations between the two cities in the name of maintaining the peace. ‘An obvious ruse,’ Osman, who, naturally, is at the Emir’s side during the briefing, interjects. ‘Maybe. But it is also a chance for a lasting peace, and that is too important to pass up,’ Ali replies. He adds that he’s already chosen his envoy for the negotiations to come, in the person of Grand Vizier Hassan. The obvious candidate, perhaps, but I’m sure he’ll do a competent job. Still, that leaves the question unanswered of where I come in in all this: I have no experience with desert politics, and as a non-Kharidian I can’t represent Al-Kharid, can I?

Emir Ali replies that this is precisely the idea: I’m to go not as a negotiator for Al-Kharid, but as a mediator to reconcile both sides if they can’t come together. In fact, my past rescue of the young Emir has recommended me for this job in the eyes not only of the Kharidian monarch, but also of the Pharaoh, who is apparently glad at my quashing of the rogue faction within his own army. Osman distrusts this explanation, insinuating that the Pharaoh probably issued the order to kidnap Ali, but the Emir silences him, telling him that what he saw and heard while in captivity has convinced him that the abduction was wholly Amascut’s doing. Osman concedes the point for sake of argument, but remarks that this is the perfect chance to gather intelligence within the city, which has been under quarantine since, um, let’s just say since the plague struck Sophanem. Emir Ali dismisses this idea as well, saying that the Menaphites’ goodwill should not be abused, but adds that he’s not naive, and if there’s anything worth reporting on, I should bring back word of it— I just shouldn’t go out of my way to spy. In addition, I am to protect the Grand Vizier should there be any breach of the peace, gods forbid.

Since time is of the essence, the Emir sends off a messenger via carpet to Menaphos to inform the Pharaoh that he should expect the Kharidian delegation shortly, while Osman takes me aside to brief me on the latest particulars of the political situation in Menaphos. We retire to his office, and once Osman closes the door, I ask him the obvious question: ‘You will want me to act as a spy, correct?’ Osman, however, denies this, saying that he will respect the Emir’s wishes in the matter, not least because he already has plenty of agents in Menaphos. Still, he wants me to keep my eyes and ears open and report on anything noteworthy I may come across.

With that said, we proceed to the briefing. Menaphos, Osman tells me, is the largest city in the Kharidian Desert— so large that it rivals and may even surpass Varrock and Ardougne. Historically, it is from Menaphos that Tumeken and Elidinis ruled. The city itself, though, was only founded after ‘Tumeken’s Sacrifice’ (an event that’s so obvious to Osman that he doesn’t bother explaining it to me) and began as a refugee camp. As wars continued to rage, more people congregated there and the city grew. Originally, Sophanem and Menaphos were one city, but the two grew apart with time and were formally separated, divided between the living and the dead. As Sophanem turned inward, Menaphos, the city of the living, expanded its commerce and grew fabulously wealthy as a result of trade with the Wushanko Islands, in the far east, and a great many monuments and lavish residences have been erected with this wealth.

As for the politics of the city: Osman has little respect for the current Menaphite leadership. He claims that the current Pharaoh is a charlatan, whose mother was a warmonger and tyrant, and whose dynasty had usurped the throne from Osmumten, the last of the rightful bloodline of the Chosen of Tumeken to rule Menaphos. In the early years of his reign, the current Pharaoh seemed to be a reformist, righting the ills wrought by his mother, but over the last decade something within him seems to have changed. All of a sudden, he withdrew his forces from the border settlements, closed the gates of the city, and withdrew his diplomats from Al-Kharid, threatening a resumption in hostilities. Osman believes that the Pharaoh entered into a compact with Amascut around this time to do what his ancestors had failed at and obtain the Kharid-Ib, but he has no proof. If I by any chance encounter the Pharaoh, he says, I am to be very wary of him.

I try asking Osman about any allies I may have in the city, but he refuses to say anything about any agents of his, citing the risk that I may be tortured for information. Welp… I guess that’s a legitimate concern, but it’s not reassuring in the slightest. I mean, here I thought I could go dig for treasure in Lumbridge Swamp and generally have a pleasant afternoon, but instead I’m being shuttled on a spur of the moment mission into an in all likelihood hostile city. I know both Al-Kharid and Menaphos explicitly requested my presence, but that just makes me like the situation even less. So, instead, I ask Osman what else I should know, now that I have no choice in the matter. Mainly, he replies that Menaphos is a militaristic and well-guarded city, and that I should not, repeat, not get on the wrong side of any of the guards, or take any actions that might jeopardise the negotiations. Other than that, the citizens of Menaphos mainly worship Tumeken and Elidinis, though there are small numbers of worshippers of the lesser gods, and the Pharaoh has taken steps to reduce the influence of religion on public life. Finally, a personal favour: if I have the chance of visiting the Grand Library, I should keep an eye out for books presenting the succession of the Pharaohs. Okay, that should be doable, I think, at least unless these Menaphites are much more zealous guards of their information than most of the other librarians I’ve run into.

That’s all the questions I can think of, so I bid Osman farewell and join Grand Vizier Hassan on the roof, where he goes through some boring flight safety protocols, we step onto the king-sized magic carpet sent up for us, and it takes us away southward. We fly across the desert in dubious comfort but with relative speed— though let me tell you, balancing on these carpet things can get challenging when the wind is in your face.

Nevertheless, after a few hours’ flight, we arrive safely at the northern gates of the grand desert city. Before making our presence known, Hassan and I exchange a few words about the intentions of our Menaphite hosts: he believes they are honest, while I… am not so convinced. Before we can continue the discussion, the gates of the city open, and we are ushered in by a squad of grim-faced guards led by our old acquaintance, that snake Ambassador Jabari. The Ambassador is unctuous as always, telling us that the Pharaoh is busy attending to important matters of state, but that he hopes our stay in the city will be safe and pleasant. ‘Safe?’ Hassan enquires. ‘Has there been any trouble of late?’ ‘Nothing major’, Jabari replies. ‘Just some measure of unrest in the workers’ district, nothing to worry about. Plus, that scoundrel the Jack of Spades has been making trouble again. But the guards have been informed of your visit, and shall ensure that you come to no harm’. Right.

The ambassadors and our honour guard lead us to a residence in the beautiful and undeniably extremely wealthy merchants’ quarter where we shall be staying for the duration of the envoy. Waiting there for us is Grand Vizier Ehsan, a middle-aged woman of a haughty and somewhat intimidating demeanour who is Hassan’s Menaphite opposite number. She welcomes us to the city and lets us know that she will be negotiating on Menaphos’ behalf, and that we should make ourselves at home and feel free to send diplomatic dispatches to the Emir. If at any point we need to leave the city, its gates shall remain open to us, though due to the plague in Sophanem entry and exit through there is forbidden. A guarded welcome, to be sure, but at least they are not killing us outright, so…

Once we’ve gotten settled in, Ambassador Jabari takes his leave of us, telling us he must go to the palace and give his report on the Jack of Spades situation to the Pharaoh. No sooner does he say this, however, than Grand Vizier Ehsan lets out a scream, yelling that someone’s taken her belongings! Our gaze instantly jumps to her; behind her stands a man decked out from head to toe in brown robes that conceal his identity. ‘Speak of the Devourer’, he comments, then turns and disappears in a small cloud of smoke, evidently prepared as a diversion.

The Menaphites identify the stranger as none other than the Jack of Spades, and Ehsan, much aggrieved and embarrassed by this very public theft, bids me, the special envoy and neutral party, chase after the thief and return her stolen possessions! Hassan seconds this, um, strong suggestion, and so I fear I have no choice, though I have the distinct feeling that the desert heat has not been kind to the thin ice I’ve found myself cast onto…

There’s nothing to be done, though, but to give chase. I run outside the building and ask the watchmen standing guard outside which way the thief ran. The guards reply that he headed south, toward the port district. They suggest that I speak with a man I assume to be the ranking military figure there, Admiral Wadud, at the Golden Scarab inn for the latest information. Well, there’s no time to lose, so I start booking it down the street (very broad, regular and well-paved: seriously, the architecture here makes our cities up north look like collections of mud huts!). There’s an underpass that would take me directly to the site, but it appears to be part of the palace grounds and is locked down, forcing me to detour across the city’s central plaza, between the palace gates and the blocked-off bridge to Sophanem. The plaza is decorated with a giant starburst of sandstone whose colour resembles the rays of the sun, and dominated by a statue— this one plated with actual gold— displaying the corpulent girth and imperious bearing of the Pharaoh. It falls just short of being tacky, though perhaps I’m being generous.

Anyway, I have no time to waste on looking around, so I hurry across a graceful stone bridge across one of the forks of the Elid delta to the port district. The dwellings here are more modest, but still very impressive by any standard. The locals, gawk at me though they may (I’m quite possibly the first foreigner they’ve seen in a decade!) give me clear directions to the Golden Scarab, which, true to its name, is painted on the inside a garish golden colour.

The Admiral is easily distinguished from the thin crowd of revellers by his uniform— an elaborate cousin of that worn by the guardsmen— and general air of being in charge. To my surprise, he addresses me with an air of familiarity. I ask how he might possibly know me, and he replies that his captains keep him well-informed. That’s good, I tell him, because I happen to be in urgent need of information. I ask what he knows about the Jack of Spades. ‘What’s it worth to you?’ he replies— at which point the same cloaked figure from earlier pads up to him, ransacks some kind of trinket from his pocket, and retorts: ‘About as much as this is worth to you!’ Before the Admiral can fully realise what is going on, the figure melts away into the city. Okay, once might have been coincidence— twice… there’s something definitely going on here with this Jack of Spades trying to disrupt negotiations…

Sadly, even with some precious, irreplaceable trinket of his on the line, the Admiral has little to offer, either by way of reward (he says he’ll owe me one…) or information (all he knows is that the Jack is not often seen in the merchants’ district). He urges me to speak to a guard: while useless and corrupt as far as doing things is concerned, they do keep their eyes open. Well, I can hardly say I’m happy, but again, what choice do I have.

So I go outside and flag down a guard. The first one I run into is even more useless than the Admiral predicted, but he does at least suggest that, if it’s really urgent, I should bring the matter up with his superior Commander Akhomet, who usually presides over matters from the royal parade ground at the foot of the palace. The building is very hard to miss, being easily the rival even of the palace in Varrock. It is a great ziggurat with a sprawling base, towering over the city with its bulk.

I find the Commander of the city guard directly in front of the palace, surrounded by a few of her trusted officers. She is a younger woman than Ehsan, probably not too much past thirty, though not all that much less stern in demeanour. Of course, she’s been briefed exactly on who I am, and when I start off the conversation by telling her I’ve been sent to track down the Jack of Spades, she tells me the report was dead-on about my no-nonsense approach to things, but that the hunt for the Jack is her turf and that I am not welcome in taking it up. Just as she launches into a wall of obstruction, though, the thief steals up behind her, lifts her ceremonial dagger, and dashes off before anyone can apprehend him! Oh my, he’s really intent on pissing off all the authority figures in the damned city, is he?!

Anyway, presented with this evidence of even her best guards’ flagrant incompetence, Akhomet’s tune changes, and she authorises me to go after the thief and get her precious dagger back. She, for one, has some idea where he’s hiding: the workers’ district, thinly patrolled and seething with resentment toward the Pharaoh, seems a likely bet. She suggests that I go there and speak to an old-timer named Batal, who might know a thing or two but is unlikely to give me a warm welcome.

Fine, if I’m going to run around this damned city, I might as well go there as well. I follow the guards’ directions, which take me back past my lodgings in the merchants’ district and into a run-down area that’s visibly much poorer than the remainder of the city. The buildings here are shabby tenements, the streets are unpaved (and, indeed, barely streets at all), and the air is pierced by the sound of pickaxes from the open-pit quarry just off the main square. When I ask to see Batal, the locals look at me with deep mistrust, but ultimately guide me to a wizened greybeard, bent double beneath a heavy sack. As Akhomet predicted, his welcome is not warm: he derides me for a haughty, egotistical and out-of-touch outsider, and is on the point of bidding me go away when I ask him about the Jack of Spades.

The mention of this name brings out in him a vitriolic response. He tells me he knows that the Jack makes his lair somewhere in the district, but that he wishes he knew where it is, exactly, so that he can report him to the authorities. Oh, sure, the Jack redistributes the loot he steals to the people— but then the guards come buy to interrogate, torture and oppress and the locals are left wishing he never existed. Just as he’s winding up to make me go away, though, a now-familiar man in a brown cloak steals his meagre sack of coins, then dashes off! Well, okay, maybe Batal does have a point about the Jack of Spades not being such a champion of the common man.

Batal is galvanised into action by this disaster, levying a thousand curses on the Jack and requesting that I go after where his lair must be: in the labyrinth of tombs below the city! That would make a lot of sense, and would explain how he can get around so easily, but come on: it’s already evening, and I’d really rather not even risk appearing to be robbing graves at night. So, reluctantly, I return to the diplomatic quarters, give Ehsan and Hassan, who have begun their negotiations, a progress report on the Jack of Spades situation, eat a fine meal of fish and ugthanki meat that the Menaphites have prepared for me, and take a rest after a very long day.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #menaphos #jack of spades

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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8 Septober, 5A 169: Taking Back Pollnivneach

I start the day off by going back to the snake charmer— he’s in his usual place— and giving him some more coins in exchange for his secrets. Sadly, though, he’s grown tired of me and will not help: instead, he tells me to go away and charm my own damn snake. Angry, I leave and go out into the desert beside the village to find a snake. Maybe it’s the anger, but this time, the melody I come up with works perfectly, and I get a snake to leap into my basket with minimal effort! Before my danger noodle has a chance to run off, I take it up to Ali the Hag. Ali takes one look at the snake, decides she’ll name it Snuggles, and tells me its poison should be just right to deliver a slow, agonising death to Traitorous Ali. She warns me, though, that Ali might detect the poison unless I bring her one more thing: some fresh camel dung. What? Ew, that’s disgusting! Still, she won’t risk giving me the poison without the dung to hide her involvement, so it’s up to me to get some.

I figure that it can’t be too difficult: I just need to go down to the camel merchant’s place and ask him for some, right? Well, it turns out it’s very easy to start a conversation with the guy about camels, but much harder to get him to say anything about their shit. There seems to be some modesty taboo in play that makes it a wholly inappropriate topic even for a seller of camels. Or maybe his animals are just constipated and he doesn’t want anyone to know about this deficiency. Anyway, I try to broach the subject, but he immediately changes the topic to the two camels I bought from him. (I tell him they weren’t for me, but I was trying to use them to end the bandits’ feud. ‘A noble purpose for noble beasts,’ he responds.)

I venture out into the camels’ enclosure, but despite the presence of two camels there, what dung there is on the ground seems old and stale (which would support the constipation theory). Well, drat: I can either wait for a camel to take a dump or… maybe there’s a way to accelerate the process?

My mind goes back to the sign on the kebab store, the big one with the fire-breathing camel. Now, what if there’s a grain of truth to the sign and the hot sauce is really hot enough to clear out a camel’s bowels? It’s a stupid idea, but I don’t have a better one, so I go in and ask the salesman for a bottle of the ultra-spicy stuff. At first he’s reluctant to give it to me, fearing that I’ll either reverse-engineer the recipe or slip it into the drink of the town drunk, but I persuade him that why I’m after is a camel laxative, and he agrees that it should do the job very well indeed. Excellent!

I take the sauce over to the camel enclosure and dribble it liberally into their hay-filled food trough. Fortunately, the camels don’t seem to mind the spiciness when they’re ingesting the hay, but it takes mere minutes for it to shock their digestive systems into crapping all over the place. I scoop some of the dung up into a bucket that’s lying nearby and take it back to Ali the Hag, who’s finished milking Snuggles for his venom. She takes the dung from me and mixes it in with the raw snake venom, which results in a viscous red liquid. I take this over to the bar, where I figure Traitorous Ali might be hanging out (indeed, he is), wait until he gets up for a moment once again, and slip the concoction into his drink, making sure no one saw me.

I don’t stick around to watch the deed be done (it would be too suspicious, though I’m sure Traitorous Ali’s managed to piss off most of the townsfolk over the years and they really wouldn’t mind my brand of summary justice that much). Anyway, I go back to Ali the Operator, who commends my efforts and tells me I’ve earned an audience with the gang’s leader in order to discuss the group’s future plans. In fact, the leader happens to be around: Ali points me to him, a Menaphite priest with a slightly crazed look in his eye. I ask him what his plans are, expecting to hear something about the desert bandits. Instead, he reveals that what his gang is striving towards is no less than world domination! My response to that is basically ‘But you’re just a bunch of small-town bandits!’ The leader corrects me: he happens to be a high-ranking priest of Amascut, thrown out of Menaphos for attempting to murder the Pharaoh! They are here in Pollnivneach to regroup and, in time, take vengeance and claim what they call their due.

Argh, enough! Why do I keep running into these fucking religious fanatics seemingly everywhere I go? There’s only one thing to do, and that’s to draw my crossbow and level it at the leader’s chest…

But an instant before I can pull the trigger, a member of the bandit leader’s entourage leaps out at me and takes the shot, then keeps me distracted while I riddle him with bolts. This buys the Menaphite leader enough time to teleport away, yelling wildly that the world hasn’t seen the last of him or his gang! Well, I guess that’s the end of the Menaphites’ domination of Pollnivneach, but… that still doesn’t answer the question of what happened to Ali Morrisane’s cousin!

In any case, I feel like the villagers will be grateful for my dislodging of at least one of the gangs, so I go to the mayor and tell him about what’s gone down. To my surprise, though, the news that the Menaphites are no longer a force to be reckoned with doesn’t gladden him. Instead, he angrily claims that my heavy-handed actions have only made the town worse-off, by removing the one check on the ability of the desert bandits to pillage everything at their leisure. Bah— that mayor is a fool and spineless coward, but if he’s burning for me to expel the desert bandits as well, I think I can do that. They’re a virtual rabble compared to the Menaphites!

I have a simple plan to take care of them and restore order to the town. Convinced that it’s likely to work, I go and try it out. I go up to the bandit to whom I offered the camel and persuade his cowardly ass that I was on his gang’s side all along, but that I didn’t work for free, and that their leader ought to pay me for my efforts. The bandit considers this a reasonable suggestion, and gladly leads me to his boss, a grey-bearded bandit dressed in fine desert robes. He thanks me profusely and offers me a generous reward for delivering the town to his tender mercies, and is quite surprised when I turnip down and give him my ultimatum: start packing your bags, or else. ‘How the worm has turned!’ he cries, reminding me how supposedly inconsistent my recent acts of thievery and poisoning are with my bid for the moral high ground, but I don’t take the bait. ‘Get packing,’ I say.

When it comes down to brass tacks, the bandit leader proves almost as cowardly than the mayor. He threatens that he won’t leave without a fight… but rather than do his own fighting, he calls over one of his toughs to try to beat the shit out of me. It ends… poorly for the bodyguard, and two shots to the head and torso later, he lies crumpled in a heap, his adamantite scimitar splayed out of his hand. At that point, the bandit leader loses his composure and demands to cut a deal with me, sharing control of the town. I tell him he’s got no such luck, at which point he turns livid and curses me for bing such a do-gooder. ‘The villagers won’t respect you anyway!’ he yells.

It turns out he’s half-right. The villagers don’t seem too impressed by the fact that I’ve rid them of their tyrants and tell me whatever good deeds I’ve done don’t outweigh the murder and robbery I’ve committed in the process of doing them. Never mind that all they lost from my intervention was a lousy fifteen gold pieces!! The mayor, on the other hand, is thankful for restoring his authority to the proper level, and says he will make sure he doesn’t screw up again with inviting gangs into the city. Best of all, he gives me the information on the whereabouts of Ali Morrisane’s nephew that I was seeking. It would seem that the nephew (whose name, of course, is Ali) was asked by the mayor to leave town a few days back for his own protection. His fault, apparently, w as being too good a salesman, and persuading people to buy all manner of junk. All perfectly legal, but the townsfolk just got more and more angry with all the money he was making them spend on useless crap, and when he somehow managed to piss off both gangs at the same time with some deal, the mayor felt that he could no longer protect him, and sent him away. The last the mayor has heard, Ali Junior was planning to open a store, a ‘real treasure trove’, with some less-than-reputable friends of his, and he’ll be busy with that for quite some time. Well, I guess I shall have to return to Ali Morrisane empty-handed. What a fool’s errand this has been!

I feel like delivering the bad news quickly and moving on, so I hop on a carpet to Shantay Pass and head through the gate to the Al-Kharid market and Ali M’s stall. There, I deliver the news that Ali’s nephew is actually so good a merchant that they ran him out of town, but now he’s got forty people working under him and is a formidable competitor. Ali beams with pride as he hears this, and thanks me for delivering the heartening news, even if it didn’t lead to the outcome he wanted. ‘But wait a minute’, I say, ‘Something is not adding up. This nephew sounds exactly like you in so many ways, and I would not believe you had no idea he was a competitor of yours. Tell me, why did you send me to Pollnivneach in the first place? It wasn’t out of concern for the townsfolk: you’d sell your own grandmother if the price was right. Admit it: you sent me there to drum up business for your merchant friends in town. I bet they’re all working for you!’ ‘Well’, Ali replies, ‘You’re not as dumb as you seemed. And I prefer to call it ‘tourism’. Now, want to see my wares?’

Damn, if that wasn’t the strangest adventure I’ve been on in a while. Almost as strange as that dream I had about cabbages. I’m not sure I gained much from it, except a token reward of 500 gold from Ali Morrisane for removing his business from the threat of bandit extortion, and the experience of being a much more impudent thief than I’d ever dared before.

Well, it’s early afternoon and I’m in Al-Kharid. After the events of the past few days, I kind of feel like taking a break from all the high-strung adventuring… and it just so happens that the circus is in town, to let me do just that! As usual, they’re short on performers and let me in for free on the condition that I do some stunts for them!

And so I begin, with the eyes of Al-Kharid on me. The first event I participate in is the shooting event, which doesn’t go too well: I’m quite out of practice with how the event is supposed to work, and miss the target more often than I hit it— including at some distances where I really should have succeeded! Damn it all, eh? Fortunately, the magic show goes a lot better, since I let the audience guide me to do the tricks they want to see, and even if I don’t succeed at each trial, the crowd appreciates my efforts. Finally, there’s the tightrope, which goes a bit worse than the archery, mainly because I’m not confident enough to try anything really scary. Still, performing is always fun, and even though Balthasar Beauregard pays in clothes, what girl can resist having more outfits?

By the time I leave the circus, it is almost evening, and there’s not much else I’ll be able to do today save strategise and plan. And as much as I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave the desert behind and get on with the rest of the stuff in my life, the temperature of my enchanted key seemed to suggest that there might be treasure in the southwestern part of the Kharidian Desert, where I haven’t yet been. So I’m of a mind to go on a little trip in that direction and see where and what it gets me.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #feud #Pollnivneach

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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7 Septober, 5A 169: Danger Noodle Boogaloo

I sadly underestimated the work that it would take to become proficient with the snake flute… I mean, I know I wasn’t a good piano player as a kid, but the flute seemed easier, somehow. Fewer places to put your fingers. But no: while I can produce a simple melody, it just doesn’t seem to do anything to attract a snake’s attention, and so they just slither away and I’m left hanging. At around midday, I give up and come back from the banks of the Elid into town, where I enjoy a refreshing drink of camel yoghurt and then hole up in my room in the inn, away from any Menaphites who might be wondering why the traitor in their ranks hasn’t been taken out yet. Perhaps my luck will turn tomorrow, or perhaps I need a more vigorous way of persuading the snake-charmer to betray his secrets…

Name: Dame Elisandre Plainview the Grey v. Ashdale &z. Rimmington, CG

Date of Birth: 16 Novtumber, 5A 149

Reputation: 112 (Hero)

Brushes with the Reaper: 3

Treasure Trails Completed: 1/0/0/0

Organisational Memberships: Last of the Grey Wizards; Knight of the Round Table; Temple Knight Initiate; White Knight Novice; Veteran Agent of the Burthorpe Imperial Guard; Agent of the Keldagrim Black Guard; Partner, Doric and Son Smithy; Member of the Champions’ Guild, the Lumbridge Thieves’ Guild, the Edgeville Monastic Order, the Black Arm Gang and the Skulls Gang.

Slayer Of: the Demon Delrith, the Murder Mage Solus Dellagar, Count Draynor Drakan, the Sea Monster Agoroth, the Necromancers Morwenna the Cruel and Dragith Nurn (for now…), General Khazard’s Warlord, The False Kendal, “Fritz” the Witch’s Experiment, the Goblin Pretenders Brokeface, Stinkears and Lumpnose, the Menaphites Apep and Heru and the Cultists Caitlin, Reece and Alomone.

Bester Of: Amascut, the Devourer (Twice); the Zamorakian Mage Ellaron the Red; the HAM Cultist Sigmund (Twice); The Mad Sister Anna.

Claims to Fame: Saviour of Dorgesh-Kaan, the Wizards’ Tower, the Tree Gnome Village, Ashdale, Prince Ali Mirza, the Wizard Merlin, the Priest Drezel, the Healer Elena, the Menfolk of Rimmington, Tolna’s Soul and Doric’s Business; Defender of Varrock and Draynor Village; Broker of Peace between Lumbridge and the Dorgeshuun, and Rellekka and the Mountain Tribe; Catalyst of the Foundation of Gunnarsgrunn (Via Interracial Matchmaking); Wielder of Silverlight and Excalibur; Co-Reclaimer of the Shield of Arrav; Concluder of the Lumbridge Blood Pact.

High Crimes and Misdemeanours: Betrayer of the Rune Mysteries, Instigator of the Sophanem Plague

Other Points of Distinction: Goblin Diplomat (Terrestrial and Subterranean); Murder Investigator (Secular and Ecclesiastical); Palace Burglar; Pyramid Raider and Restorer; Assistant to the Druids of Taverley, the Lumbridge Castle Cook (Twice) and the Shaman Trufitus; Assistant in the Discovery of the West Ardougne Plague Hoax and the Ascension of Filliman Tarlock; Friend of the Ardougne Monks; Finisher of the Tower of Life; Thwarter of the Hazeel Cult; Rester of Jhallan’s Bones; Subterranean Wayfinder, Survivor of the Queen Black Dragon’s Stomach, Soother of Restless Ghosts, Re-Humaniser of Chickens, Purveyor of Counterfeit Swords, Arms Dealer to the Artisans’ Workshop, the Burthorpe Imperial Guard and the Goblin Generals, Coal Prospector, Elemental and Mind Crafter, Herder and Shearer of Sheep, Herder and Dyer of Cats, Seasoner of Magical Goulash, Baker of Terrible Pies (Against Predatory Capitalism), Collector of Bones, Furs and Beads, Thief of Chalices and Totems, Finder of One-Eyed Hector and King Baxtorian’s Treasures, Retriever of Lost Balls, Frightener of Trolls, Fixer of Clocks and Telescopes; Cannon Engineer; Historical Preservationist; Raider of the Old Edgeville Jail; Scout of Lumbridge, Falador, the Kharidian Desert and Karamja; Explorer of the White Lands; Dreamer of Cabbages; In Touch with Her Dark Side.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #dayoff #snakeflute

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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6 Septober, 5A 169: A Fistful of Coins

Another hot, desert day. With the morning, I leave my quarters at the guesthouse and keep up the search for Ali Morrisane’s nephew, this time in the southern part of town. My first stop is actually a kebab shop off the main square, where I stop by for breakfast. The shopkeeper prides himself on the spiciness of his kebabs and persuades me to try one of his really spicy ones, the ones he’s apparently got a corner on the market on. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing actually different about the spicy kebab except for the sauce the guy uses, but that sauce is basically liquid fire! With a bit of gagging, frantic drinking from my waterskin, and cursing myself for a fool, I eventually manage to down my breakfast and move on.

North-west of the main square, there’s a single house up on a hill, which might be worth checking out. I trek up to it, and find that it’s owned by an old, old woman, cackling to herself beside a bubbling cauldron. Now, I’m no expert in the local culture, but up north a woman like that would probably be a witch! A brief conversation with her confirms this to be the case, but she’s not the talkative sort, and asks me not to disturb her potion making, else she’ll turn me into a frog. Okay, I get the hint! (Side note: even she is named Ali— short, in this case, for Alice. The challenge of finding Ali Morrisane’s nephew seems to grow more daunting with every person I talk to!)

Leaving the hag’s house, I go down the hill and head to the Asp and Snake, the pub on the far side of the main square, in the hopes that I’ll be able to get some information over there. The pub is surprisingly well-stocked, and even seems to sell exotic liquors and pure rot-gut like pirate grog. I strike up a conversation with the bartender: he’s helpful enough, though he won’t talk about the gangs because both sides in the feud are paying customers and he has no wish to rock the boat. When I ask about Ali Morrisane’s cousin Ali, however, the conversation runs aground, because as it turns out the vast majority of the townsfolk seem to be named Ali! After some frustrating back-and-forth, it turns out he doesn’t know anything about the specific Ali I’m looking for, which is a downer. So, to end the conversation on a positive note, I ask about the name of the pub: isn’t an asp a type of snake? The bartender explains that it’s a great name: if he were to change it, it would be just another business called Ali’s, and that would get very confusing! Um, he has a point.

Sitting in a corner of the pub is an older drunk guy (wow, a bit early to be drinking so heavily, eh?) who overheard my conversation with the bartender and offers me a deal: if I buy him a drink, he will tell me about the strange occurrences that have been happening in town lately. That sounds like exactly what I need, so I throw aside qualms of encouraging the guy’s drinking problem and buy him a beer. The man opens up briefly, telling me he knows whom I’m looking for and where he’s located, but requests another beer before he’ll continue. I do so, wondering meanwhile whether extreme drunkenness will completely undermine the veracity of the information he has to provide. This time, I get as far as specifying that what I care about is Ali Junior’s whereabouts, at which point the guy clams up and asks for yet another drink. Gritting my teeth, I buy him one and finally, after some threats to wring a beer from his body and squeeze it out into a tankard for him to drink, I learn pretty much the same thing the street urchin told me for free: Ali Junior has gotten himself into a fix with one or both of the gangs and disappeared as of last week. Okay, great, that’s super useful. Thanks for nothing, old drunkard.

I leave the bar in frustration and head into the southern area of town. The first place I stop by over that way is Ali’s camel store, whose owner tells me it is his mission to sell discounted riding camels to the common man. Since I’m not in the market for a camel, I turn the conversation toward politics and the question of the gangs. Ali the camel seller is quite voluble on the subject, cursing the gangs for a pest on the town and lamenting that, Pollnivneach lying just outside the influence of both Al-Kharid and Menaphos, there is no higher authority to kick the bandits out. With some prodding, I get the camel seller to share with me his solution for dealing with the menace: he would like to see a truce brokered between the gangs, perhaps via a mutual exchange of token gifts. If that fails, perhaps the gangs could be subverted from within. Finally, I ask whether the camel seller knows anything about Ali Junior, but run into the same screen of confusion caused by seemingly everyone in town being named Ali. Figuring he might have some more to say if I’m interested in his camels, I ask him whether he’s got any stock on sale. Unfortunately not, he says: the two out back are already sold, but he should have new stock coming in soon. So much for that idea, then…

Nothing to do but to keep going and see whether I can find out anything in the south of town. The sights there are much the same as up north, with a few exceptions. First of all, the bandits who have taken over this part of town are snazzy, not scruffy, with ornate purple-and-gold regalia. However, they’re just as uncommunicative as their northern fellows. Besides them, there’s a snake charmer practicing his craft over by the Asp and Snake (where else?), who’s too absorbed in what he’s doing to talk to me, and a Menaphite scholar who’s engrossed in his research and also too busy to talk.

Finally, on the outskirts of town is the purple-and-gold pavilion of the Menaphite gang leadership’s. Since I haven’t been able to find out anything about Ali Junior’s whereabouts from the townsfolk, it looks like I have no choice but to deal with the gangsters. And that means talking to the one in charge, or as close as I can get, meaning Ali ‘the Operator’. I run across the leader outside the tent, minding his business. He’s surprisingly willing to talk to me, but blames any trouble that’s been going on in town on the desert bandits. When I tell him I’m aware of his own group’s misdeeds, as well, he tells me that may be so, but the Menaphites do the whole stealing and killing thing so much more effectively than the desert rubes, and besides, it’s they who started! I ask him to explain, and he reveals that the current feud started when the desert bandits stole a camel from the Menaphites, a grave offence around these parts. Aha! So I ask whether he would agree to peace with the desert bandits if they gave back a camel of equal value. The Menaphite captain tells me he would, but the desert bandits would never agree to such a deal, not least because they’re so bad at banditry that they can’t afford even a crappy camel, much less a top-of-the-line one. Lastly, about Ali Junior, he has nothing to say. Perhaps he’s too worked up thinking about the competition.

So, that’s the Menaphites’ side of the story… what do the desert bandits have to say? I try in vain to look for their leader in the north of town, so I try the opposite tactic: picking on the weakest and most cowardly of them I can find and getting him to spill the beans. A crossbow in the face is all it takes, and none of his friends bother to help out. I ask him about the origins of the feud between his gang and the Menaphites, and he says it goes back generations, decades before the mayor of Pollnivneach called them in to deal with their nemeses. They, too, allege that their rivals stole a camel from them, and they as well would be happy to stop fighting if I brought them a worthy camel. Huh— I guess I’m not finding anything out until I get each gang a camel.

Logically, my next stop is the camel seller’s shop off market square. True, he doesn’t have any camels for sale right now, but he did mention new stock, so I ask him about that, and he gives me the details. It would seem that he’s got two camels due in from the finest stable in Al-Kharid, both very fine beasts, one named Sandy and the other Lumps. I cut off his sales pitch when he starts going into way too much detail about their qualities, and ask how much the beasts are. The merchant objects to such a crass approach, telling me one cannot put a value on life like that (I’m sure he’s just trying to get me to name a price more than the camels are worth…); I counter with an offer of 500 coins. This turns out to be a fair price, and the merchant writes me out receipt for the two camels, so that I can pick them up when they come in. Of course, my plan is to give one receipt each to each gang and see if that won’t make them stop feuding. So far, it seems to be working like a charm!

Thinking I’ve solved things neatly, I take one receipt to the desert bandit I spoke with earlier, and tell him the Menaphites have offered his gang a fine camel in exchange for peace. The guard, thinking the Menaphites have completely folded, scoffs at this offer, and tells me to tell his rivals that if the Menaphites are so scared, they should offer ten camels, not just one. Damn it, why do I even bother!?

It’s the same story with the Menaphites: Ali the Operator, when confronted with this ‘proof’ of the desert bandits’ cowardice, likewise demands an outsize number of camels in exchange for peace. Just when I think I’ve failed, however, he offers me a deal. Reasoning that the desert bandits are weak, and therefore in a position to be toppled, he offers to hire me to drive them out of town. Ah, now I’m getting somewhere. I agree to the offer, figuring if all else fails I’ll have at least given one gang their just deserts. Unfortunately, Ali the Operator doesn’t trust me yet, and demands that I go through probation before he can entrust me with the key role in his master-plan. The task seems simple: I am to pick the pockets of three villagers. Right, I’ve done that before, shouldn’t be an issue at all!

So I go down to the market square and limber up my fingers for reaching into pockets. The first villager whom I try to relieve of money proves an easy mark, but there my luck ends. The vast majority of the town’s residents, having spent years in the crossfire of the Menaphites and the desert bandits, are too situationally aware for me to steal from them. After trying and failing a good number of times, I decide I need to consult with an expert, and so go back to Ali the Operator to ask for advice.

One would think that he would have fired me right on the spot, but no: he’s perfectly willing to make allowances for an outsider who doesn’t know the finer points of thieving in this tough town. He suggests that I try using a distraction to create a moment of inattention in which I can pick another pocket. The most obvious distraction is one that I didn’t even plan: a cat sauntering in with a postbag in his teeth and a postman’s cap on his head! As sure as I am that this will shock the natives, though, it appears that the cat is a regular courier, carrying post between Menaphos and Al-Kharid. Weird!!

So I need some other distraction. Simplest, I decide, is best, so I pay one of the local street urchins a few coins to insult a passing villager and use that chance to slip in and out of the guy’s pockets. The gambit works, but it’s one of those strategies that only works once: the instructions I gave the urchin were too obvious in the execution, and the villagers all know something is up. So, it’s back to Ali the Operator for more advice. This time, he says, I should dispense with all the niceties and use a bit of brute force. To let me know what he means, he gives me a stout oaken club. Oh dear, this is getting more and more ethically dubious as I proceed, but the life of Ali Morrisane’s cousin may be at stake, so I brush off my qualms and steel myself for what I’m about to do.

Specifically: I go down to the market square and hide behind the big cactus near the mayor’s house, which grants me a good degree of concealment from the crowd. Then, when a villager comes by, I reach out and thwack him on the head, conking him out. While he’s out cold, I rifle through his pockets and return with news of my success to Ali the Operator.

Ali is quick to dispel any illusions that my three successful pickpockets are the only trial I shall have to pass. No, there’s another task as well: I need to prove myself as a burglar, and that means robbing the mayor’s villa for the mayor’s wife’s jewels: the only thing really worth stealing in this town. Ali has a bit of advice for me before throwing me to the wolves: I should stake out the place before committing to anything and I should probably have some disguise. Oh, and he’s considerate enough to give me the key to the front door, too!

About the disguise: I’ll need something that will blend right in with the townsfolk: my armour is far too conspicuous. Suddenly, inspiration strikes: wasn’t the guy at the market stall selling typical Kharidian headdresses and fake beards? If I combined the two, I could look like an old Kharidian man to anyone who doesn’t bother to examine me too closely! I go up to the store, buy the disguise, put it on, then head down to the mayor’s mansion for the stakeout. On the way there, I realise that my gloves aren’t right for the job: they’re too rigid, and taking them off would leave fingerprints. It’s an annoyance, but I think I’ll have to go back to Shantay Pass for some simple leather gloves— and use the opportunity to take out some money, too, because I’m likely to need it and have barely any on me.

Having gone there and back again, I go back to the mayor’s mansion and, determining that the coast is clear, slip inside. The place isn’t that ornate, and is in fact quite sparsely furnished, which makes the search easier. I first check the mayor’s study, going through his desk, but all I find there that may be of interest is a brief note describing a well-known mathematical sequence. The upstairs part is a bit more well-appointed, but the decor interests me little. Instead, I search the nooks and crannies of the room for the jewels. Underneath the bed, I find another jotted reference to the same mathematical sequence, which makes me think something is up with it. My search for the jewels, however, seems fruitless, until, that is, I look behind a painting hung on the wall and discover a small safe! It’s locked with a combination lock, so I dial in the sequence described by the two notes I found and note with satisfaction the click the safe makes as it opens! Inside are the mayor’s wife’s jewels, all right: I take them with me and go back with them to Ali the Operator.

Ali is surprised to see me back so soon, and expresses his doubts that I actually cracked the safe myself, without any help. So I tell him about all the hints the mayor left behind, and he has a laugh at the mayor’s foolishness. Once he’s done chuckling, he gives me my final task. He tells me there’s a traitor within his gang, and he wants me to root them out. I ask Ali why he’s chosen me for this task— after all, we’ve only known each other for a day— so Ali explains that he trusts me on this, precisely because I don’t have all the baggage that comes with a life of crime.

I begin the investigation by asking some of the gang members about there being a traitor in the gang, and whether they could specify the traitor’s identity. The gang members give me a name straight away: Traitorous Ali, who is such a backstabbing double-dealer that he would betray his own mother— twice— for barely any payment at all! I return with this information to Ali the Operator, and after a moment’s thought, seems totally convinced that this is the traitor he’s looking for. So, he tasks me with killing him quietly, without raising a fuss. Well, after the horrible things he put his mother up to, I’d say he kind of deserves it.

I go around town looking for Traitorous Ali, but he’s neither among the Menaphites nor with the bandits. At the bar, however, I get lucky: he was drinking there just a short while ago, and even left his beer on the table! Aha— if I had some way of poisoning the beer, that would do the trick! But I don’t have any poison on me— blast and blast again! Perhaps someone in town might, though: how about the witch?

I go up to Ali the Hag’s house, and find to my surprise that she’s more than happy to help me get rid of someone, when that someone is Traitorous Ali, at least: looks like he double-crossed her as well, sometime in the past! The witch concurs with me that poisoning is the way to do it, but requests that I bring her the ingredients for the poison, since she doesn’t have any with her. The main ingredient, she tells me, is snake venom. Now, since I have no idea how you extract venom from a snake, she asks me to bring her a whole, live snake with fangs in its head. The snake-charmer’s pet won’t do, she says: it’s about as dangerous as a rubber knife!

That may be so, but perhaps the snake-charmer could tell me how to charm a more dangerous snake? I go down to the bar, where he continues to practice, and grab his attention by throwing a few coins his way. I ask him whether he can let me try charming a snake; he grunts, hands me a spare basket and snake-charming flute, and tells me to go away. Okay, now I need to figure out how to use this thing. But it’s getting late: I think I’ll spend tomorrow practicing, and see what that gets me.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #feud #pollnivneach

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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5 Septober, 5A 169: Sq’irky!

So, after finding one treasure and finding out I’m not yet in a position to get the other, where does that leave me? Well, there’s one last thing I need to do around here, and it has to do with the task Boric set me of clearing out the living rock golems from the mines in Lumbridge Swamp and Al-Kharid. Although I highly doubt that the mines are still booby-trapped in this way, given the weeks that have passed since Boric gave me the job, I reckon it’s worth a look anyway. S I go down to the mine and dig around a little until… a golem jumps out from behind a coal rock! Who would have thought! But it’s easily dealt with, leaving only one mine un-patrolled, the one north of Al-Kharid.

Now, there are a number of good reasons why it might be a good idea to make a short side trip to the desert. The first is that both my enchanted key and the cosmic talisman I bought point to that general area, and that’s definitely worth investigating. Second, there’s that mine to sweep for golems. Third, there are a number of little errands that I should work on there, such as obtaining the neck bone of a camel for… whatever the old man with the sack of bones is planning. So I get going, travelling through Lumbridge Swamp, where the cosmic talisman is pulling me. Weird, I don’t recall there being another altar there…

Oddly, the talisman pulls me not to an altar, but to a shed that’s empty except for a few shells and boxes, and nondescript but for green cloverleaves carved out of wood. Huh— maybe the altar is buried beneath the shed? That might be worth investigating at some point. Anyway, merely lifting the boxes and peering beneath yields nothing, so I keep going.

As I’m approaching Al-Kharid, I find that a storm surge has washed away the pilings of the city dock, leaving no easy way to cross the river this far downstream! With a little creativity, however, I happen upon a solution: I have my crossbow with me, as well as the grapple bolt I bought just for fun at the exchange. What if I could shoot the bolt at that tree on the far bank, tie my end of the rope to a tree on my side, and shimmy across? Worth a try…

Hey, it worked perfectly! Satisfied with my ingenuity, I retrieve my grapple and head up through the gate into the pearl of the northern desert. My plan is to follow the tug of the enchanted key, which pulls somewhere to the north, but before I can get very far, I run into Osman the spymaster, who pulls me aside. After sharing a few words about Ozan’s progress in infiltrating Menaphos (it’s been difficult so far, but he thinks he’s getting somewhere at last) he asks me for a favour: he’s far too busy to be stealing around the Sorceress’ Garden, but he’s parched for a glass of freshly squeezed spring sq’irk juice. Could I get some for him?

I tell him I will, but in a while: I have to run a few errands first. To begin with: the enchanted key. It seems to become really, really hot (and it’s not just the desert sun) as I go north. Finally,, by the time I reach the oasis by the pass to Lumbridge, the key is steaming hot, so hot I drop it! That’s my cue to dig, and the treasure I unearth here is quite special. Not only do I find ten chunks of mithril ore and a small stack of rune essence, I also dig up a large staff tipped with the symbol of Zamorak. It looks quite fragile and unsuitable for combat, but it may have once had some ceremonial use. It’s a neat find, so I think I’ll be keeping it in my personal collection.

When I feel the key again, it is warm, but no longer quite as hot as it was. Since it’s unlikely any other treasures it’s pointing to are around here, I stick with my original plan and go north to the open-pit mine near the mage training arena. It’s the last of the four places Boric told me to investigate, and so I do, poking at the rocks until— aha!— another living rock golem pops out! It seems like Boric was right on all counts. I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that.

I return to Al-Kharid with the intention of making good on my promise to Osman. I head toward the sorceress’ house through the market, but before I can get very far, a very Kharidian, very importunate merchant calls out to me: Ali Morrisane. Thinking he just wants to sell me some crap again, I try to excuse myself, but it turns out he has a business proposition for me. Seeing that I was going south, toward Shantay Pass, he asks me whether I could help expand his business by persuading his nephew, a guy named Ali, to come up from Pollnivneach and help his uncle out. In return, I would get the first month of Ali’s salary. Well, as a matter of fact, I was planning to go camel hunting in the southern desert, so it wouldn’t be very much of a detour. I agree to do it and continue on my way.

But I don’t get very far up the road after that encounter before I have another one, this one with my old acquaintance Sister Cecilia, one of the survivors of the murders up at Citharede. She pulls me over, but it’s not pleasantries she’s after, but advice. You see, she’s been trying to reconcile her faith in Saradomin and life as a nun with the events concerning Sister Anna, but has found it quite difficult, and she wants me to tell her whether she should stay at the Abbey or leave for other pursuits. It’s a tough decision, she says, because she’s been here since she was a child, and now more than ever she’s clearly needed. What’s more, if she leaves, she can never come back. Well, it’s a hard choice, but… I tell her she’s risking something by leaving, but that I feel this is the best choice for her, not remaining in this place with so many bad memories and never getting a chance to try anything different. Sister Cecilia thanks me, and tells me she will head my advice, then turns up the Abbey road, I suppose to pack her bags.

Besides her, though, there’s nobody else who flags me down, so I reach the Sorceress’s Garden without incident and get the old hag’s apprentice to teleport me in. This time, I head for the part of the garden that’s kept in perpetual springtime and pick the lock to go in. The spring garden, it turns out, is much like the winter one, with the same sort of hedge maze and elemental guardians, but it’s a lot greener than the winter one. Thus begin my attempts to get the fruit, which aren’t initially a success because of how much tighter the timing of the elementals’ movements in this garden is. After about ten failed tries, though, I crack tie timing puzzle and get my hands on one of the fruits! It seems these are quite a bit riper than their winter equivalents: squeezing the one I got yields about a quarter of a glass of juice! (It’s minty and fresh in taste.)

Getting the three more sq’irks I need for Osman’s liquid refreshments is not that big a deal, once I’ve figured out the pattern of the sentries and gotten it into my head just how limited their field of vision is. Still, by the time I’ve overcome my initial blunders, gathered the fruit, brought it to Osman, and listened to his lesson in spying and subterfuge (today’s topic: thieving from a thief!) while he drank it down, it’s late in the afternoon. Still, I figure it’s not too late to head out into the desert, at least get to Pollnivneach, and perhaps hunt down that camel, so I head out to Shantay Pass, grab several waterskins, loop them into my belt, and venture forth.

My journey to Pollnivneach is smooth and uneventful, save for the one lucky pot-shot I shoot off that takes an Ugthanki camel in the heart, killing it cleanly without any damage to its neck bone (which I salvage and take with me). It takes me little more than an hour’s brisk march to reach the desert city, which I actually have never visited before!

Upon reaching the city, it quickly becomes apparent that all is not well in town. The buildings have a run-down look to them, and those in the northern part are occupied by what’s quite clearly a gang of desert bandits. I try talking to them, but they’re not interested in chitchat, so I move on to a building just down the way that catches my attention for all the colourful cloth displayed inside. The owner is a fairly young woman who’s clearly a dyer. She’s much more talkative than the bandits, and tells me the story of how she entered the trade (she learnt it from her mother, who also was an embalmer) and how business is doing (not well, since the locals mainly wear white against the desert sun). Since I don’t need anything dyed, though, I thank her for the conversation and move on.

Further into town, I pass by a shabby market stall. I ask the owner if he’s Ali Morrisane’s nephew, but he apparently is not. He’s got a bunch of goods on offer, including exotic desert fruit, local garb, and even fake beards (what the hell for, I wonder). None of it really interests me, though, so I move n toward the centre of town. There, I finally hit upon a stroke of luck when I ask a street urchin for directions. It turns out he knows exactly what’s going on in the city, including with Ali Morrisane’s nephew. The urchin tells me he was a rather mean market trader, who apparently got into trouble with both of the gangs in town (wait, there’s another one as well?) a week ago and disappeared (or was disappeared). The urchin speculates he might have tried to double-cross them, but claims not to know the truth: if I want that, he says, my best bet is to gain the trust of one of the gangs and ask them.

Since the kid is quite generous with information, I ask him to fill me in about the two gangs. The first one, which rules the south of town, is called the Menaphites because, well, they’re some sect from Menaphos, said to be led by some deranged priest. Few have seen the leader, though, as he deals through a fellow named Ali ‘the Operator’. They’re known mainly for starting fights in the local pub, but the urchin claims they’re planning something big— they’re such a tight-knit group, though, that little leaks out. The other gang, meanwhile, is the desert bandits, who are exactly that: toughs led by the strongest among them. There’s not much to be said about them, and they lack grand ambitions.

I ask the urchin whether there’s any legitimate political authority in town, or whether the gangs just rule as they please. He tells me that there is a Mayor, but that he’s a spineless coward and, in fact, largely responsible for the bandit situation. When the Menaphites came into town, he at first did nothing to expel them, and only belatedly hired out the desert bandits to chase them out. But, sensing his weakness, the thugs turned on him, and… well, here we are.

In fact, the urchin spots the mayor in the crowd of the town square and points him out to me. I go up and introduce myself, and receive a very warm welcome. The mayor gives me a glowing pitch about how his town is the gateway to Menaphos and Al-Kharid, but when I actually ask him for his help in locating Ali the trader, the limits to his helpfulness come out glaringly. For one thing, he claims to be too busy to give me any assistance; for another, he tells me Ali is a very popular name in this town, and tracking down my man might be a challenge. Drat. Oh well, the sun is going down anyway, so I find lodgings in a nondescript inn north of the market square and bed down for the night, making ready to resume the search tomorrow.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #sorceress #spring

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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4 Septober, 5A 169: H.A.M.’s Bling Vault

On my tour of Dorgesh-Kaan yesterday, I noticed that the city’s gates are located not only in the north, leading to the mines, but also in the south, by the industrial district. So, today, I make it my business to check out what lies down there. The answer is: a cavern that is split multiple ways by deep fissures, but that’s not the remarkable thing about it. The remarkable thing is that it appears to be some kind of sprawling installation of bronze pylons and cables spanning the gaps. Off to one side, there’s a little booth made out of metal, with a cave goblin and some very peculiar machinery inside. I ask him what he’s doing, and he replies that he’s in charge of supplying power to Dorgesh-Kaan. For the lighting system, he explains: the machines generate it, and then it gets sent down the copper filaments strung out across the walls to the lamps. The problem is that the machinery is quite delicate, and it’s apparently quite an effort to keep it working all the time in the less-than-ideal conditions of a seismically unstable cave system with copious animal life. In fact, the Dorgeshuun are constantly having to cannibalise older, non-working parts for use in the newer, functional ones. The engineer offers me a job to do just that, to bring back a capacitor and some other gadget from a machine on the other side of the cave, but the way there looks so dangerous for a human like myself, involving so many pitfalls, that I daren’t attempt it.

Instead, I venture down a set of copper rungs set into the rock of the fissures and roam around inside the cracks. These contain the usual slimes and cave bugs you’d expect, and even a few giant frogs near pools of collected cave water. Oh, and of course there’s the odd bit of goblin technology that fell into the cracks, never to be seen again. Toward the back of the cave, in some of the deeper cracks, I find some rarer species: hot pink rockslugs, for one, and also cave crawlers about the size of a dog and peculiar mole-like creatures that live in small holes in the walls. Finally, there’s a small, badly worn door in the cave wall, marked with a sign that reads ‘Kalphite Lair: Mostly Harmless’. It would seem that this is a back entrance to the caves beneath the Kharidian Desert! Intrigued, I open the door and pass through it down a tunnel that, indeed, eventually broadens out into a sand-strewn cavern of sandstone, with aggressive kalphite worker-drones skittering about. They don’t seem to like my presence, and remembering how Gudrik lost his arm in similar circumstances, I withdraw. The bugs don’t follow: apparently, they only care about me when I intrude on their turf. Good to know.

That about sums up what there is to see in Dorgesh-Kaan, and, well, it’s a hell of a lot! I feel very honoured to be able to tour the marvels of such a wise and advanced race while it is still alive and thriving, and from what I’ve seen, Dorgesh-Kaan has a whole hell of a lot more charm than, say, Keldagrim! I will definitely be back, and hopefully not because HAM comes up with another scheme to try to destroy them as a people. Speaking of which: it occurs to me that the HAM storerooms beneath the group’s main base contain supplies that the group needs to carry out its plans, and that if I cause some of those supplies to disappear, that ought to set the genocidal cultists back a bit. So, upon emerging from the Lumbridge caves (Mistag is kind enough to escort me to the castle cellar in person) I grab my cultist robes and try to sneak back into the subterranean warehouse. The ‘sneaking’ part goes worse than expected, as I run into Sigmund (who vows eternal revenge) by the podium in the central cavern, and have a prayer-book with hate-filled sermons thrown at my head, but apparently the cultists believe I’m under Duke Horacio’s protection, and that it thus would not be wise to eject me from the premises.

And so it is that I am able to go down into the storerooms unmolested, if not exactly unnoticed. The guards on duty fail to recognise me (why should they— Zanik and I killed all the previous ones, after all!), and even tell me a bit about what they store down here. Apparently, most of it is the valuables of members who have abandoned all their worldly possessions to join the cult. It’s a relatively simple matter to get the keys to the lockboxes off the belts of the patrolling guards, and I spend a few hours clearing the place and the adjacent meeting room out (and receiving the occasional fist to the head from a particularly perceptive guard). The haul is modest, but includes several items of sapphire jewellery that I could enchant and sell for a fair bit of money. Oh, and the meeting room table has a giant ham on it. That’s a nice touch… I wonder who’s supplying them!

When I emerge outside, pack laden with jewellery, I’m pleasantly surprised to find Ernie Glyph hard at work re-doing his statue to Saradomin right by the mine entrance. He explains that the HAM cultists, damn them, didn’t like some detail or other of his previous work and saw fit to destroy the ‘blasphemous’ statue, and now he has to start the whole thing from scratch once again. Since I always find it soothing and instructive to watch him work, I do the usual job of helping him out with bits of scaffolding, and get the usual edifying lesson in sculpture. He was mostly done before I came around, so it doesn’t take too long before he finishes and lets me consecrate the statue with a prayer to Saradomin.

Having done all that, I prepare myself to leave Lumbridge for Draynor Village, where a few tasks await me, but two errands delay my departure. The first is an oddly specific request from the castle cook to go fetch him some willow logs, since those give the most even heat for his range. He doesn’t specify which willow trees, though, so being a bit lazy I cut down one of the ones on the river bank opposite the castle and hope nobody cared too much about that particular tree. The other task is of a more weighty nature, and is given to me by Xenia, who runs into me when I’m returning to Lumbridge Castle with the logs. Xenia tells me that the Nexus, that cauldron of evil in the middle of Lumbridge Swamp, has been growing ever more corrupted, and that urgent action is needed to stem the tide of the rot. Heeding the call, I go to the bank, get out the sack the priestess Ysondria gave me, which converts corruption into positive energy, and get to work channeling the purified rot back into the source. While as an initial foray my progress is underwhelming, Ysondria says she can see results, and she welcomes my help on this matter in future as well, whenever I’m around. I promise her I’ll remember, and will do my best to: Lumbridge is too nice a town to have this, um, thing festering under it. As for my own self, I feel that contact with the corruption has bolstered my faith to the point where I feel empowered to ask Saradomin for aid in blocking similar magic, should I encounter it.

But this promises to be a drawn-out and tedious campaign. With the first battle won, and the sun only beginning to set in the sky, I get going toward Draynor Village, where the hunt for the Holy Grail takes me. As I recall, there’s a whistle in Draynor Manor that holds the key to entering the Fisher King’s realm, but it’s only visible if one has a talisman that has been in contact with the grail. I hope the napkin Sir Galahad brought back will do the job…

There’s only one problem with that: I never asked Galahad to give me the cloth! Annoyance of annoyances!! Fortunately, my trip is not entirely in vain, as there’s another matter awaiting me here in Draynor: that strange sequence of clues that led me across half the world from a scrap of paper in a goblin’s possession. The latest of the clues states that I need to come to Draynor Market wearing a steel longsword, an iron kite shield and studded leather chaps, and yawn loudly to announce my presence. I’ve bought the chaps in Varrock, since making my own would take too long; and while I don’t have the shield and sword, I have the necessary raw materials, and bashing them into something that passes muster at the anvil in Lumbridge takes not very long at all, with Imcando smithing techniques. Gear in tow, I head to the market and do as instructed, at which point a curious-looking man dressed in red, whom I’ve never seen before, steps out from behind a stall and motions to a crate on the ground. I open the crate, and inside find a mithril plate body, worn but serviceable, twenty law runes, a water talisman, and ten strange summoning scrolls, for… something that looks like a meerkat? Anyway, when I look back up from the crate, the man is gone, with no sign of his presence. Very, very strange… I really don’t know just what it is I’ve unearthed, but what adventurer would pass up free treasure? I just hope it’s not cursed or something. Just in case, I’m selling the plate body, not wearing it.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #thieving #ham

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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3 Septober, 5A 169: Down, Down to Goblin-Town...

To start with, a few words about the arrangement of Dorgesh-Kaan. The city is built in tiers around a large, ovaloid central cavern that serves as a marketplace. As size goes, it is impressive: its population must be double that of Lumbridge, and perhaps the equal to that of Falador. Though there are no natural light sources, the place is wired up with coils of copper connecting orbs that are induced by some magic to emit a steady glow. (These are dimmed at a time of day that roughly corresponds to night on the surface.) As for the inhabitants, they are almost without exception friendly and rather more cultured than the average commoner of Lumbridge, and while their first encounter with a real live human tends to be jarring, curiosity usually wins out over any anxieties HAM or simple fear of the unknown might have given them.

After a breakfast of giant frog legs (a dish oddly similar to the gnome specialty, albeit missing the spices) I make up my mind to have a walk around the market square and talk with some of the locals. The first ones I run into are two councillors, Ur-Taal and Ur-Zek, who are deep in conversation about Ur-Tag’s ambitions not only to keep the gates of the city open to humans, but also to seek closer relations with the dwarves. Ur-Taal seems to think it’s a rather good idea, yet Ur-Zek has reservations about such radical openness: humans will be difficult enough to deal with, he argues, and adding dwarves to the mix won’t help. Also, dwarves built and delivered the machine that almost drowned the city so very recently! So never mind that they’re not technically surface dwellers, he says, there’s a dangerous precedent being set. I don’t butt in, but it’s clear to me that Ur-Tag will have a fight on his hands to ram through more radical changes to the cave goblin way of life before the shockwaves from the current ones die down.

Just off the market square, dug into the cave wall, is the small, cozy abode of a Dorgeshuun named Oldak, who seems to be a dedicated inventor. So much so, in fact, that two figures I know quite well are there visiting him when I come in! The first is, of course, Zanik, who’s back from another trip to Lumbridge. This time, she brought back some runestones, which it turns out the cave goblins are unfamiliar with. Oldak, having studied them for a bit, has discerned their basic properties and is wondering aloud how rune essence came into existence: what great force could have imbued the essence with its power? That’s a question neither I nor the other visitor has the answer to, sadly. The other visitor is a human, one of the first handful to come through the gates of the city, a human I know well: Ariane! She greets me, and tells me she was in the area when she heard the Council of Dorgesh-Kaan was opening the gates and that she came at once upon hearing the news. We share a few remarks, just between the two of us, about my efforts to complete the Tower of Life and the ethical implications of using its powers to create new life, at which point she leaves for the market, leaving me and Zanik to our chat with Oldak.

Oldak turns out to be a kindly fellow, though rather too keen to lapse into technical detail using terms that are completely unfamiliar to me as a human. He tells me of his initial experiments with the runes Zanik had brought him, and what I gather is that he’s had most luck with the law runes. He did something what most human mages would have thought crazy, mere waste of runes or invitation to magical disaster, and ground the runes into powder. When he threw the dust on the ground, he found he would teleport to random places in the city! With some more experimentation, he was able to perfect the process and eliminate the element of randomness, and now he’s willing to make teleportation orbs for adventurers who provide him with two law runes and some molten glass. Sadly, I’ve got no glass stored up, but I thank Oldak and make a note to come back when I have some.

The next building over, on the level of the market, is the bank, which by the terms of the accord signed yesterday has joined the Bank of Gielinor network. They’re still ironing a few kinks out, but it’s amazing that I can withdraw and deposit stuff in the cave goblin capital as easily as I can in Lumbridge! And however strange it is to think, without my intervention it might not have been possible at all!

In the main square, I speak with some of the locals. Most of the regular folk are either ambivalently curious or appreciative of my deeds, but among the martial types I sense an undercurrent of resentment. Some of the rank-and-file members of the guard seem to blame the opening of the city gates, though the influx of humans has barely even begun, to an increase in crime in the city. Meanwhile, their leader, the captain of the guard, notes warily that the Council has been pressuring him to break a longstanding Dorgeshuun taboo and transform the city police force into a standing army, in response to the threat from the surface. Oh dear— I hope the Dorgeshuun can preserve what makes them great in these turbulent times, but I get the unpleasant feeling there may be more upheavals ahead.

Around the centre of the main square, I run into another council member, Ur-Vass. He seems to be of the pro-openness faction, or at least has nothing to say to me but thanks for my efforts alongside Zanik. Maybe he’s just being polite, though. Anyway, he rushes off and I head to the market, which seems to be the most bustling part of this happening city. Despite all the mining that the Dorgeshuun have set up outside the city gates, the main item on sale here appears to be food: my first encounter with cave goblin cuisine! It is, as one would expect, very reliant on the ingredients that are abundant in the Lumbridge caves, but quite diverse for all that! For instance, there are frog legs, bat kebabs, frog burgers between slices of mushroom, cave slime soup, frogspawn gumbo and wall beast fingers on sale, all in the first few stalls I visit! I buy a sampling of each, for a fine dinner later on.

Besides these foods, the market also offers some local handicrafts, including frog-leather armour not too unlike the kind I had made for me a while back, and lamps. By talking with the lamp merchant, I learn a bit about the lighting system that keeps Dorgesh-Kaan illuminated. The principles on which it operates escape me, but magic is involved, and the lighting orbs are made of glass with a copper filament inside. The technology is not perfectly reliable, though, and occasionally the orbs burn out and need to be replaced. I’m told there’s a wire-making machine somewhere in the city that’s used to make the filament.

Most interesting, though, are the goblins who throng me, asking me to sell them surface foods. I don’t have much on me right now, but I bring out a cabbage and one of my gnome battas and show it to the goblin gourmets. Before I can make a sale, though, the manager of the marketplace refuses to let me trade unless I gain Council authorisation! This, fortunately, turns out to be a mere formality, and Ur-Vass, who happens to be passing by, quickly sets things right. Unfortunately, the prices the goblins offer aren’t very good, but I sell the goods at a discount anyway. It’s only fair, if I get to sample their food, that they should get to sample mine.

After I finish trading, I leave the market, and on my way out run into Zanik again. She’s just come back from the mines, where a really, really big frog was causing trouble until she chased it off. An adventurer’s work never ends, even when one is a cave goblin! Well, she goes off on her business and I continue on, past a delegation of human merchants come to satisfy the goblins’ craving for surface food. They’re an equal mix of Misthalians and Kharidians, and they’re all quite protective of their turf and not very friendly, so after studying them for a short while, I move on.

There are a few side passages into small residential areas, which are mostly empty at this time of day, the residents being mainly out in the common areas and taking care of their business. In one of the dwellings, though, I run into a member of the Council, a female goblin by the name of Ur-Meg. She confesses to me that she is worried about the decision the Council just took. While she’s happy to have us humans visiting the city, she cannot help but worry that the new openness will bring other, unwanted visitors. In a whisper, she tells me who these are: the G-O-D-S… It’s a legitimate worry, as I learned from Zanik not long ago, but fortunately, I have good news for Ur-Meg: the God Wars have been over for over two millennia now, and the gods no longer interfere in mortals’ affairs, at least not overtly. That seems to set Ur-Meg at ease, and she tells me she hopes I’m right about that.

I leave and continue down a side hallway, which terminates at a modestly sized shop that’s filled from floor to ceiling with bones of all shapes and sizes! It’s the sort of place you’d never find on the surface, but that would make a certain elderly guy I know squeal for joy if he knew it existed. The place is owned by a goblin named Barlak, and he’s got a business proposition for me. Specifically, he’s clean out of exceptionally large bones, the kind that make great structural supports, and he’s willing to pay me a decent sum of money if I bring him some, as well as teach me some goblin construction techniques to sweeten the deal even more. In addition, he’s looking for large shells, which can be crafted into useful stuff, and will pay extra for them, as well as give crafting advice, if they’re of sufficient quality. I don’t have any really nice shells or bones to trade right now, but I’ll definitely keep this place in mind!

Since I’ve seen most of what there is to see at ground level, I double back through the market and plaza and head up the grand staircase at the far end of the cavern onto the upper tier. Just at the head of the stairs, I find the large, stately building of the Dorgeshuun Council, and head inside. Nothing is going on inside at the moment, but the opulence of the decor and the large meeting table leave no doubt about its purpose. The only person there at present is the Council scribe, who is using the downtime in his duties to work on what he claims will be the definitive history of Dorgesh-Kaan. In connection with that, he asks me a few questions against the HAM cult, and takes my answers down stoically, even as I’m telling him how the organisation considers him and his countrymen monsters.

In return, he tells me a bit about his work in service of the Council (a body, it turns out, of seven members) and relates to me his research on the city’s history. At first, he relays the information I’d already found out, about how the Dorgeshuun were one of the goblin tribes caught up in the God Wars. He gives me a bit more detail on how the tribe came to live underground, though: apparently, a Dorgeshuun general named Bloodfist was handed orders from the Big High War God that would have meant the destruction of the tribe. Refusing to comply, he marched his army to a fissure in the ground and stood at its mouth, shouting defiance against the gods. The Big High War God, angered, smote the ground around him, killing the general, but also closing the fissure. His lieutenant, Strongaxe, led the tribe into the caves until they found this cavern and founded a settlement in it.

In the early years of the settlement, the scribe continues, the Dorgeshuun were ruled by generals, much like on the surface. A new general would succeed the old when he defeated the old in single combat. The generals were advised by a council of elders, but as generations passed and it became clear that the Dorgeshuun were no longer an army, many of the tribe came to believe that the Council, not the generals, should have supreme authority. The people voted to become a republic, but General Bonehelm refused to give up his hard-won power, and a civil war began. The sides were about evenly matched: while the republicans commanded the support of most of the population, the military had all the best warriors and weapons, including magical equipment brought down from the surface. In the initial fighting, Bonehelm was driven out of the city itself, but established a base nearby. Once his forces had regrouped, the general launched a bloody attack on the city using troops mounted on giant frogs, but was once again repulsed. The war would have continued, except that General Bonehelm, in mining out his base, had compromised the structural integrity of the cavern he’d made it in, and the roof collapsed on his withdrawing army, killing the great majority of them. The Council, secure in its power, took over the governance of the city, and there has been peace among the Dorgeshuun ever since. Hm— there must be something special about the Dorgeshuun, for them not to have had a major war in all this time since then!

I ask the scribe about recent history. He recounts the events I was caught up wth, starting with the accidental tunnelling into Lumbridge Castle in the 29th Century since the goblin city’s founding. His account is mostly accurate, though with a few odd details: he confuses humans with ogres and calls Duke Horacio ‘General’. Still, he fills me in on a few details I didn’t know from the cave goblin perspective: that the decision to open the gates stirred a lot of controversy among the people while it was deliberated, and that it came down to a very narrow 4 - 3 split on the Council. But, in the end, what’s done is done, and history, for better or worse, marches on.

I thank the scribe for his most insightful account and continue my tour by having a walk around the upper tier, which turns out to be a quiet residential area, where the more well-heeled cave goblins seem to live. The only place there that’s significantly busy is a goblin nursery, where the children of the Dorgeshuun are raised collectively. I say hello to the kids; they’re pleasant enough, but pretty shy about strangers, especially a stranger from the surface. I play with them a bit, then move on, back toward the Council hall. There, to my surprise, I run into Zanik again, right by what turns out to be her house! She invites me in, and we talk for a while about what Juna told her, that she is destined to lead all goblins into a new age. ‘All goblins’, Zanik says. ‘Not just the Dorgeshuun.’ She’s puzzled about what it all means, but when she spoke to Juna about it, she just told her that when the time is right, everything will become clear to her. Which, of course, is no help to her right now. I confess myself uncertain as well of the meaning behind Juna’s words, but tell her that should anything happen, I will be on hand to lend her and the Dorgeshuun all the support I can. Zanik thanks me and excuses herself, then takes one of Oldak’s teleportation orbs and vanishes off somewhere, no doubt on her next adventure.

There’s one part of the city I haven’t yet explored, and that’s the industrial area to the south of the marketplace. Though I’m getting tired, I head down there at least to have an initial stroll around. Unlike the other parts of the city, this one is noisy and sooty, even with the excellent ventilation facilities the Dorgeshuun have put in over the centuries. Prominent against one of the walls is the contraption used to spin metal bars into wire. It’s spinning fast and looks quite dangerous: one misstep and it’s likely to rip your fingers clean off. Beside it is the city’s forge, staffed by a goblin whose sole authority it is to keep all the metal items in the city in good repair, and the responsibility of his position is telling on him. I reassure him that it looks to me like everything is working quite properly, then leave the forge and continue my tour of the area. Heading over to the other side of the district, I find a sand-pit that ought to give me everything I need to make molten glass, the essential raw material for Oldak’s teleport orbs! Nearby, finally, are the communal kitchens (it’s probably a ventilation thing, not only a manifestation of the collectivist bent to cave goblin culture), where the food sold on the market is prepared. The smells coming from there make me quite hungry, and I’ve covered basically all of the city today, so I backtrack to the market area for another meal and return to my quarters as the lights are being dimmed to rest for the night.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #dorgeshuun #city

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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2 Septober, 5A 169: Dorgesh-Kaan Delivered

Everything went better than we expected! When we got through the tunnel, we were close to the city of Dorgesh-Kaan. We reached the city gates and, since I, as a human, was not allowed to enter, Zanik had Mistag and Ur-Tag summoned from inside to receive our report. Zanik explained to the leaders the main points of our adventure, and concluded that, while the HAM cult was indeed planning the annihilation of the cave goblins, they have been defeated for now, in no small part thanks to my efforts. Ur-Tag then asked Zanik whether, after what she’s seen and been through, she would recommend that the cave goblins embrace or shun contact with the surface. Zanik, despite being tortured and killed at the hands of surface dwellers, emphatically pronounced herself in favour of further contact, and told Ur-Tag that the surface is a strange and wonderful new world that the Dorgeshuun would do well to familiarise themselves with. Ur-Tag then announced that, since the council voted to base their ultimate decision on Zanik’s report, from henceforth the gates of Dorgesh-Kaan shall be open for humans! If this is the first stage in Juna’s prophecy coming to pass, I’m not surprised: what a historic decision! I am supremely pleased to have gotten the chance to contribute to an effort this important.

I retire for the night to quarters in the city, which is grander than I had dared expect, and fall asleep in fulsome comfort, grateful that Zanik is alive and proud of our efforts to save the Dorgeshuun, yet again, from the designs of HAM. And to think I could still be teaching children in Ashdale!

Name: Dame Elisandre Plainview the Grey v. Ashdale &z. Rimmington, CG

Date of Birth: 16 Novtumber, 5A 149

Reputation: 112 (Hero)

Brushes with the Reaper: 3

Bester Of: Amascut, the Devourer (Twice); the Zamorakian Mage Ellaron the Red; the HAM Cultist Sigmund (Twice); The Mad Sister Anna.

High Crimes and Misdemeanours: Betrayer of the Rune Mysteries, Instigator of the Sophanem Plague

Other Points of Distinction: Goblin Diplomat (Terrestrial and Subterranean), Murder Investigator (Secular and Ecclesiastical), Palace Burglar, Pyramid Raider and Restorer, Assistant to the Druids of Taverley, the Lumbridge Castle Cook (Twice) and the Shaman Trufitus; Assistant in the Discovery of the West Ardougne Plague Hoax and the Ascension of Filliman Tarlock; Friend of the Ardougne Monks; Finisher of the Tower of Life; Thwarter of the Hazeel Cult; Rester of Jhallan’s Bones; Subterranean Wayfinder, Survivor of the Queen Black Dragon’s Stomach, Soother of Restless Ghosts, Re-Humaniser of Chickens, Purveyor of Counterfeit Swords, Arms Dealer to the Artisans’ Workshop, the Burthorpe Imperial Guard and the Goblin Generals, Coal Prospector, Elemental and Mind Crafter, Herder and Shearer of Sheep, Herder and Dyer of Cats, Seasoner of Magical Goulash, Baker of Terrible Pies (Against Predatory Capitalism), Collector of Bones, Furs and Beads, Thief of Chalices and Totems, Finder of One-Eyed Hector and King Baxtorian’s Treasures, Retriever of Lost Balls, Frightener of Trolls, Fixer of Clocks and Telescopes; Cannon Engineer; Historical Preservationist; Raider of the Old Edgeville Jail, Scout of Lumbridge, Falador, the Kharidian Desert and Karamja; Explorer of the White Lands; Dreamer of Cabbages; In Touch with Her Dark Side.

Menagerie:

-Minou, Icthlarin’s Little Helper

-Spike the Labrador

-Meatpie the Baby Troll

House Level: 1 (Hovel)

#runescape #journal #roleplay #dorgeshuun #dayoff

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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1 Septober, 5A 169: Death to the Dorgeshuun!

Though I had thought she would wish to stay at Lumbridge Castle a bit longer to discuss the details of a potential trade agreement with the Duke, Zanik is impatient to see more of the surface, and I find her all ready to go out and continue to explore when I knock at the door to her room in the morning. She tells me she would like to speak with some of the people ofLumbridge today, so I offer to take her around. Our first visit is to the cook, who is rather startled at having a cave goblin speak to him, but quickly recovers his composure and tries to rope Zanik into fetching some ingredients for him. Zanik asks him what the ‘milk’ and ‘eggs’ he’s asking for are: some kind of exotic surface food? No, he replies, they’re quite common! Zanik asks him, if they’re so common, why doesn’t he have them? The cook blusters, and I excuse Zanik, telling him she’s too busy to help him. “Worth a try…”, the cook responds.

Zanik and I then leave the castle, where she catches the attention of Phileas, the man known as the sage of Lumbridge. They share a few words about the vastness of the sky and whether or not it’s unsettling, and then we move on to the church, which I’m particularly keen on showing Zanik so that Father Aereck can reassure her that the gods no longer walk the earth, and have not for two millennia now. The meeting initially doesn’t go as I expected, Zanik’s religious ignorance rubbing the priest the wrong way. Zanik somewhat heatedly explains that the Dorgeshuun have a bad history with gods. I ask her whether she knows the name of the war god the Dorgeshuun used to worship, but she does not. Father Aereck speculates that it might have been Zamorak, or one of the lesser deities who fought with him during the God Wars… not that he ever thought the God Wars were any more than metaphors for a struggle of the spirit between good and evil before now, though! Zanik replies that her tribe never saw the wars as good versus evil, but as God A versus God B, with victory in battle after battle the only possible way to survive as mere foot soldiers. Father Aereck tries to get Zanik to convert to Saradomin; she rejects the offer for the time being, but tells him she’ll keep an open mind about gods from now on, which seems to satisfy him.

We go outside and to the cemetery, not because I want to show Zanik how humans are buried, but because Xenia likes to hang around there, by the gate to Lumbridge Swamp. She is quite friendly toward Zanik, and applauds her adventuring spirit. Zanik, for her part, tells her of her plans to see the surface and promises to show her around once the Council decides to open up Dorgesh-Kaan to surface-dwellers.

The next few encounters Zanik and I have are not so nice. Not only does the doomsayer, that crazy guy who stands outside the castle and rants about the end of the world spook Zanik a little with his predictions of a terrible doom in her future, but that good-for-nothing Lachtopher goes off on a racist tirade about the town going to shit now that goblins are allowed to walk the streets.

I assure Zanik that Lachtopher is a lazy bastard who just leeches on other people, and that seems to reassure her. Still, the encounter has shaken her somewhat, and she seems to have enough of sightseeing for the time being. We pause by the river, and she asks me whether I would like to hear the story of the mark of her forehead. I tell her to go right ahead. So Zanik begins: it was just about when the passage to the surface opened. Zanik was visiting Juna, the story-snake, deep beneath the swamp. Juna, she explains, is a collector of stories, and sometimes rewards particularly good ones with a tasting of something called the ‘tears of Guthix’. Well, that one time, Juna let her into the cavern where the Tears are found thanks to a particularly good story about how she found Mistag’s brooch and some stolen silver inside a cave frog. She went in and drank the Tears as usual, but this time, the Tears surged through her along with a sensation of searing pain. Juna, seeing this effect, told Zanik that this reaction is not normal, and that the Tears must have marked her out for a special purpose. She pointed out that Zanik’s forehead was now marked with a strange emblem. She told Zanik that, when the mark started glowing, that would be the time for her to come back down to the cavern of the Tears and let Juna tell her her destiny. The mark has not glowed yet, however…

Zanik suggests a change of pace: why don’t we take advantage of those HAM robes we stole and visit the cultists’ base to see if they’re up to anything? It seems like an OK idea to me, though Zanik’s build is not that of a typical human, and that worries me. Still, if it comes to that, I guess I can fight well enough for Zanik to make her escape, so I agree to take her there. We cross the bridge on the Lum and open the trapdoor to the old mine where the HAM cult is based, then slip inside. Zanik is not impressed by the headquarters of her people’s nemeses: it’s so squalid and dirty! However, she’s not content to just look around, and actually wants to talk to some HAM guys to determine what they’re planning.

That’s risky, but, again, I think I have a decent contingency plan, so we go past the guards and talk to one of the unarmed members. Zanik introduces herself as Zanik, a new recruit from a distant land. She tells the cultist that her whole city is overrun by goblins, and he tells her of the cave goblin problem they have in Lumbridge, and how the Duke is betraying his race and concluding peace with them! Fortunately, he says, Johanhus and Sigmund have a plan to rid the world of this menace for good, though they don’t share details with mere underlings.

Okay, that’s serious, and that means we’d better talk to Johanhus directly to try and learn what’s really going on! I lead Zanik through the cave to the alcove where Johanhus has made his office, and ask him what he plans to do about the cave goblins right under our feet, right now. Johanhus, however, is keeping his plans close to his chest. Only senior members have a right to know, he says; the rest must simply trust that the problem is being dealt with.

Well, crap! Now, how are we going to find out anything if the people in the know aren’t talking? I guess we can at least search the cave for evidence. Rifling through Johanhus’ personal effects turns up nothing, but on our way to the opposite end of the main chamber, Zanik spots a trapdoor hidden by some dirt! It’s really well-concealed: these cave goblins must have great eyesight!

We wait a moment until we’re sure nobody is watching, then climb down. We find ourselves in a storeroom area, an outer corridor giving access to various goods stores. The place is guarded quite tightly. We try passing the guard posted by the trapdoor, but he tells us the place is off-limits and gives us one warning to leave. Zanik and I duck back behind a bend in the entry corridor to confer. Zanik’s got a plan: if I can get the guards to face me instead of her, she can take them out stealthily using her bone crossbow. I tell her it’s worth a try and run back and past the guard. He follows, drawing his truncheon, but doesn’t manage to get two paces toward me before Zanik shoots him straight in the head, killing him.

There are other guards in the area, though, and these won’t be as easily tricked as the first, standing as he is athwart a narrow corridor. Zanik and I search the area for a way around him, and we are lucky enough to find one: there’s a crack in the wall of one of the storerooms that lets me get to the other side of the guard, as long as I watch out for his patrolling friend. I go through— the storeroom contains the usual crates and chests, nothing immediately suspicious— and startle the guard, allowing Zanik to shoot him. Impressed, I ask Zanik where she learned to shoot like that. She replies that it’s a special cave goblin crossbow technique, and that she’ll be glad to teach it to me if we get out of here alive.

Speaking of which, there are three more guards to deal with. The first one is relatively easy: Zanik waits until his back is turned, then impales him with a bolt. The other two are trickier, as together they cover our approaches to them. Zanik suggests that I lure one of them past her and take him out by surprise. That’s a pretty good idea: I tell Zanik to wait, crossbow drawn, in the narrow corridor bisecting the storeroom down the middle, and show myself to the storeroom guard from the entrance end of the storeroom. He charges to intercept me, at which point Zanik leaps out of the corridor with her crossbow, and down he goes.

That leaves only one guard, by a double door at the end of the storeroom. It doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere, so Zanik and I agree to double-team him from separate ends of the warehouse. As usual, I’m the bait and Zanik the sniper. It goes off flawlessly, leaving no guards alive and letting us approach the double doors unmolested. As we get close, we begin to pick up strands of muffled conversation from the inside. We put our ears to the door; the voices are still too faint for me to hear, but Zanik can figure out what’s being said. She whispers that they’re talking about a machine, and… her eyes widen, as she hears some truly shocking information. I ask her what’s being said, but before she can tell me, I hear a voice behind me exclaim ‘Got you, you spies!’ and turn around just in time to see a guard’s truncheon falling in the direction of my head…

I black out. When I regain consciousness, I am in the prison cell of the HAM headquarters with a splitting headache. As my eyes adjust, I look around. There is one guy sharing the cell with me, a rough-looking human. Zanik is nowhere to be found. I ask the prisoner whether he knows what happened to my friend. He replies that she was resisting arrest something fierce, and that the HAM people were dragging her off outside, the last he saw her! Shit, I really need to get out of here and rescue her… Goddamnit, Elisandre, way to be super-careless…

As soon as my legs can bear my weight, I get up and inspect the door of the cell to see how easily I can get out. The lock, I am very fortunate to find, is of a quite shoddy make, and it takes only a moment while the guard is distracted to pick it and slip out. Because the HAM people haven’t thought to reclaim their robes from me, slipping out is quite straightforward, and in the commotion that our apprehension has created, nobody even gives me a second look. I get over to the ladder going back up to the surface and ask a guard whether he’s seen where they were taking the spy. The guard tells me Sigmund and about twenty other guys took ‘it’ up the ladder and out of the base.

Trying not to seem alarmed, I climb up and out, and look around for any sign of the HAM posse or Zanik. The HAM guys are gone, but after a bit of searching, I find Zanik up against a tree, sprawled on the ground. At first I think she’s just passed out, but she doesn’t respond to my attempts to rouse her, and… well, she’s not breathing, either. Nooo!!!

One thing is unmistakable, however: the mark on Zanik’s forehead is now glowing brightly… and didn’t Juna tell Zanik that, when that happened, she should go back to her? Perhaps not all is lost, after all! But I must see Juna as soon as possible. I don’t know where the cavern with the tears that Zanik told me about is exactly, but it’s somewhere beneath Lumbridge Swamp.

There’s no time to lose! I grab my oil lamp, my tinderbox and some supplies, and head into the swamp caves through the passage in the cellar of Lumbridge Castle. This takes me past the usual cave goblin posted to escort visitors to the Dorgeshuun mines, so I ask him whether he can point me the way to Juna’s cave. He proves helpful, and directs me into the main cave under the swamp, telling me to just keep going straight ahead until I reach the farewell, and it should be there. Crossing the cavern is easier than I was expecting, and despite my anxieties the frogs of unusual size basically leave me alone.

I pass through a stone archway… and witness a sight that takes my breath away. Ahead of me looms a deep chasm, so deep as to seem bottomless, and inside the chasm float motes of living light that move around with definite purpose, but seem to ignore me. And then there’s Juna, a serpent the likes of which few have seen, blocking off an entire broad tunnel with her coils. A realm of wonders, hidden beneath the earth!

I approach Juna, carrying Zanik’s inert body in my arms. The symbol on her forehead continues to glow. I tell Juna Zanik is dead, but she does not believe me, claiming that this was not to pass until after the mark the Tears of Guthix had given her had begun to glow. So I show her Zanik’s forehead. Juna acknowledges what she sees, but says it is strange, and she must commune with the gods. She averts her gaze for a moment, deep in concentration, then turns to me and tells me Zanik’s death was premature, and that the gods thus permit it to be reversed. “You can raise the dead?” I ask Juna, stunned. Juna explains that the Tears of Guthix have properties beyond mortal comprehension, and that they can, indeed, bring someone back to life, with the gods’ consent. She points me to a carved stone bowl and lets me through the tunnel to collect the tears beyond: a special privilege I have not earned, but this once she will make an exception. I am to collect twenty blue tears, which should suffice for the purpose.

The cavern beyond Juna’s perch is small, and mysterious, glowing green and blue liquid trickles at odd intervals down the walls. I collect the blue tears as they run down, trying to avoid the green ones, as they evaporate the blue ones upon contact. It doesn’t take long before I have a full bowl. I take the tears out to Juna, who calls upon their power. The water rises from the bowl in a shower of sparks and forms a layer around Zanik’s body, lifting her up into the air. With a jolt, Zanik comes to life! At first, her mind does not process her return to life, and she flashes back to her death at the hands of the HAM cultists. Then, reality catches up and she asks me, bewildered, what exactly she’s doing in Juna’s cave. Juna explains to her that she did indeed die, but she was brought back to life because the gods have a great purpose in mind for her: she is destined to lead the goblins into a new age! But that is for the future, Juna says: for now, our priority must be stopping the HAM cult!

That reminds Zanik: she still hasn’t told me what she overheard the HAM leaders saying in their meeting! She fills me in: their plan is to drill a tunnel from the bottom of the Lum River to the Lumbridge swamp caves, flooding them and thus killing all the cave goblins. And, she says, they’re almost ready to go: the last machinery should be arriving from Keldagrim shortly (apparently, the cultists will deal with the dwarves, even though they’re non-human, because there’s no substitute for their technology… and it’s somehow all the goblins’ fault). Their base of operations for this project seems to be the watermill on the east bank of the Lum!

Zanik and I hustle out of the caves and over the Lum to the mill. The mark on her forehead continues to glow brightly. Out of curiosity, I ask Zanik if she feels up to telling me what it was like being dead. She replies that she doesn’t remember much about being dead, per se, but she does remember the torture that preceded it, the sadistic glee of the cultists as they went about it, and that they must, absolutely must be stopped now. I completely agree.

When we reach the mill, we find that we’ve either come in the nick of time, or are too late. A flatboat is tied up in the mill’s yard, and a dwarf and some HAM guys are working together to unload crates of heavy machine parts from it and haul them to the mill’s cellar. I ask the dwarf what he knows, but it isn’t much: he’s getting paid, so he’s not asking questions. As for the HAM members, they’re not letting me in unless I look like I’m there to help with the machine. I guess it’s time to put on the pink robes once more and try my luck being sneaky…

The only problem is Zanik. There’s no way the HAM people are going to mistake her for a human member again, even if she does wear the robes. We’ve got to find another way in… Then inspiration strikes: the crates! Zanik can climb into one of them and I can carry her inside, as though she’s a piece of heavy equipment! Zanik concurs that this is a good plan and hops inside a crate. I carry her down the ladder into the cellar and let her out. The cellar is a damp and musty place: off in one direction, there’s a long tunnel that must run all the way to the Dorgeshuun city, but what we’re most interested in is straight ahead: our old nemesis Sigmund, flanked by three guards and busy putting the final touches on a giant drill, its bit pointed at the cellar ceiling! We charge in, catching our adversaries off balance. The guards themselves aren’t very tough, and fall easily, but Sigmund calls on the power of Saradomin to protect him from our attacks. That works fine for him while his guards still live, but once they’ve fallen, Zanik and I are able to concentrate our efforts on him alone, and because he can’t ward himself against two threats at once through prayer, our blows soon draw blood, and the tide is turned! Just as I think Sigmund’s death imminent, though, there is a flash of purple light, and he disappears! Curses, he must have been wearing a ring of life!

Still, we are left in control of the field… um, basement. Our first order of business is to smash the machine and destroy as many parts as we can, so that the cultists will not be able to restart the project at their convenience. The cave goblins will likely destroy the rest, and Zanik hopes that Duke Horacio can be persuaded to post a guard at the mill, to ensure that work does not continue. For now, though, the only thing to be done is to return to Dorgesh-Kaan (through the tunnel Sigmund dug, as is most convenient) and try to explain what just happened without causing a massive diplomatic incident…

#runescape #journal #roleplay #zanik #juna

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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31 Fentuary, 5A 169: The Grand Tour of Lumbridge

When I said the Thieves’ Guild has expanded, I really meant it. Behind the humble cellar where it all began, there is now an expansive training hall, with staff on hand to teach aspiring thieves the art of picking pockets and disarming traps. Over breakfast, I get into a conversation with Darren Lightfingers over how the expansion is going. Darren seems satisfied with the progress so far, but is worried about the cost of continued expansion. To meet these costs, he’s come up with a plan. Specifically, there’s a dwarven craftsman in Varrock by the name of Urist Loric, who specialises in clockwork mechanisms and precious stones. Darren tells me he’s commissioned a model red dragon, made from ruby, from the craftsman, at the cost of the entire guild treasury! That sounds like madness, but Darren explains that he has no intention of buying the dragon. Instead, he needs someone to steal it from the craftsman’s stall in Varrock. Once someone does, he would like that someone to demand a refund from Urist, thus leaving the Guild with both dragon and payment: a 100% return on investment! And, knowing my track record with the chalice earlier on, he wants me to be that someone. Okay, it sounds risky and more than a bit illegal, but I relish the challenge. It’ll just be some time before I can do anything about it…

As I eat, I have a chat with Chief Thief Robin, and he tells me about the beginnings of his career as a thief. As he tells it, he entered the business out of ironic pique at being mocked for his very fitting name. He met Darren Lightfingers when Darren was a con artist, which, he claims, is all in the past now. I ask Robin whether he’s got any advice for me as far as the dragon caper is concerned. Robin doesn’t know much in specific about Varrock, but he advises me to make the acquaintance of a close associate of Urist’s, and to watch out for the guards. Okay, that’s not super-helpful, but I’ll keep it in mind.

After breakfast, I leave the Thieves’ Guild to attend to the more pressing item of business now on my plate, stealing robes from the HAM members. I’ve already got a nearly complete set for myself, so I put it on (so as to appear less suspicious as I carry out my sartorial heist) and head out to the HAM base on the far side of the Lum to see what I can lift. Stealing from the HAM members is a dicey business: few of them have spare robes, and more than once I’m caught and bundled out of the camp, but I always manage to get back in and keep pilfering (the guards at the door really aren’t very sharp!). I must say, the range of stuff the HAM folks have down here is very diverse, from tools to busted pieces of armour to another one of those strange rocks I’ve been finding here and there, the ones the Museum claims are parts of the body of an ancient wizard.

By mid-afternoon, I’ve managed to ransack enough chests that I have a full set of HAM robes ready for the goblin emissary, in addition to the ones I stole for myself. With these in hand, I head down to the basement of Lumbridge Castle, where I find the goblin emissary, a tall (by goblin standards), orange-haired woman, ready and waiting for me. She introduces herself as Zanik, and she’s quite awed to meet me after all I’ve done for her people. I ask whether she’s comfortable proceeding with the tour, given the very distrustful attitudes toward the surface world most cave goblins have; she says she is, although cave goblin legends speak of the surface as a terrible place. But she thinks it’s important that the legends be verified, and if they’re right, well, there’s value in knowing that they are.

As she’s speaking, I notice that Zanik has a strange mark on her forehead. I ask her about it, thinking it might be some cultural cave goblin emblem, like a tattoo, but there seems to be a more traumatic history behind it: certainly, Zanik doesn’t want to talk about it. To defuse the awkwardness, I tell Zanik I’ve got the HAM robes ready to go and we can start touring the surface whenever she’s ready. She takes her robes, but doesn’t put them on yet: she thinks it’s safe to walk around Lumbridge undisguised, and she’d like to see the town before proceeding with the more clandestine aspects of her mission.

I lead Zanik up the ladder into the kitchen of Lumbridge Castle. Zanik is initially surprised at how enclosed the space is: weren’t we supposed to be aboveground? I clear up her confusion and lead her outside, to show her the real surface. Zanik is surprised by the giant light in the sky— the sun! The open sky above her awes her. I ask Zanik what she would like to see, and she suggests that we visit a shop: there’s a cave goblin named Tignik who wanted her to bring a souvenir from the surface! So I bring her to the general store, where she picks up a map of Misthalin as a gift. I then take her to Bob’s Axes, where a terrible scene unfolds as Bob orders Zanik out of the store, yelling that they don’t serve the likes of that thing here. I try to convince Bob that she’s with me, but he won’t have it. Racist. Fortunately, Zanik doesn’t seem to take it that badly: it seems she was prepared for something of the sort, having known about the poor reputation of surface goblins.

By Zanik’s request, we make our next stop the Duke of Lumbridge’s chambers, as she was instructed by Ur-Tag, the cave goblin leader, to send him his regards. Duke Horacio, in stark contrast to Bob, is perfectly courteous, and tells Zanik to convey to Ur-Tag that he’s willing to open trade negotiations and terms for the opening of the cave goblin city to surface-dwellers. Zanik says she’s all for that, but the Council is made up of elder cave goblins who prefer to take their time in making decisions. Zanik is impatient to persuade the Council to open the gates, but Duke Horacio advises her that, sometimes, with decisions this big, caution pays off. So while she’d love to show me around her city, it’ll probably have to wait.

While we’re with the duke, I ask him about the specifics of the treaty concluded between Misthalin and the Dorgeshuun. Basically, the border between the two states is demarcated at ground level, except for the cellars of Lumbridge, which belong to Misthalin. There are other details as well, but Zanik finds them boring and urges me to move on. Finally, before I leave, I ask the Duke whether he’s heard anything about renewed HAM activity, but he has not, only that they’ve been recruiting heavily of late. Whether they’re planning something, he knows not.

Burning with diplomatic fervour and idealism, Zanik asks me whether there are any goblins near Lumbridge, and, if so, any prospects for reuniting the two sides of the race. I tell her not to get her hopes up, but lead her across the bridge to the area of Lumbridge that’s been overrun. Once there, she attempts to speak with one of the goblins, but it’s futile: not only do they not care for art or civilisation, they also think that the sort of peace the Dorgeshuun have earned for themselves is strictly for the weak, and thus ungoblinlike. She asks the goblin why he thinks peace is for the weak; the goblin replies that Big High War God says so. Utterly deflated, Zanik tells me we should go.

Night is falling, so there’s no point in continuing the tour while all the townsfolk go to sleep. So, I escort Zanik back to Lumbridge Castle, where she’s put up in the visitors’ quarters, and go myself to the Thieves’ Guild, to spend the night there.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #zanik #tour

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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30 Fentuary, 5A 169: Rule #1 of Ratcatchers

After breakfast, I start today off with a walk to the Grand Exchange and some more shopping. This time around, I get myself a runite pickaxe, which will make me the bane of ore deposits wherever they may be; a raw swordfish and cave eel, to further my less-than-perfectly ethical experiments with creating hybrid animals; some studded leather chaps for my very mysterious rendezvous in Draynor, since I’m not confident in my ability to make my own; an agility potion for Tamayu, which I hope will help him to defeat his nemesis the Shaikahan at last; and as many adamant melee weapons as I can afford, since it’s high time I upgraded those. I soon run low on money, and the reason for this is the wily young prodigy Ali Morrisane, Jr, who somehow convinces me to buy a load of willow branches for eye-watering prices! I don’t know what I’ll do with them— make a basket, I guess?

Once I’ve bought as much stuff as money allows, I do a quick scan for Bob using my catspeak amulet, to see if he’s around. Unfortunately, he isn’t: the amulet shows that he’s still somewhere in the Falador area. So I turn around and busy myself with another cat-related errand: visiting the sewers to see whether Gertrude’s tip about the ratcatchers was correct. Down below the streets, I don’t spot anyone new, but the creepy women are still around, and I have a hunch these might be the people Gertrude had in mind. So I go up to them, ignoring the sickly-sweet smell of vinegar that attaches to them, and tell them Gertrude sent me. The two are less than impressed with my pitch: I tell them I want Minou to learn some tricks to catch rats more effectively, but to them, this is preposterous: ‘fuzzies’ don’t learn ‘tricksies’, only dogs do. Before they will teach me anything, they set me a test: I need to get Minou to catch eight rats for them. With the sheer amount of rats down here, this is no sooner said than done, and I return to the gruesome twosome. After having a laugh at my expense for trying to emulate their way of speaking, the pair tries to blow me off, but I manage to convince them to give me something to go on, rat-catching wise. They give me a wooden pole from which… one can hang rats, I suppose?… and tell me about a contact of theirs in Ardougne named Jimmy Dazzler who might be able to help me along further. The way they say it, it seems like another joke at my expense, but hey, it’s not like I’ve got anything to lose from getting in touch with him, right?

Anyway, Ardougne is a long way from here, and I’ve got stuff to do closer to home. For instance: I’ve brought back all those skins from the Fremennik Province for the odd old man of Paterdomus, and it’s time, I think, I cured them. So I go to the bank, get rid of all the clutter in my bag, and take out the skins, several bags of salt, my hatchet and my tinderbox. I go with these to Paterdomus, where the old man has prepared a curing rack. And then it’s just a simple algorithm: rub skin down with salt, stretch skin on rack, light a fire, wait for skin to cure. The setup is quite effective, and I get through all the skins in fairly short order. The snag occurs when I get to the rock crab carcass, as I can’t think of any way to put it on the rack without damaging it. So I show it to the old man, to see if he has any ideas. The old man takes a look, and he tells me the carcass was not what he had envisioned at all, and that he’s very sorry about this. As he says so, I can hear a distinct sniggering from the bone sack on his back: it would seem that whatever creature lurks inside is enjoying the fruits of its practical joke. As for the rest of the skins, the old man takes them without complaint, and while he has nothing to reward me with, I must say I’ve learnt a fair bit about killing stuff and lighting fires, and meditating on bones and death has, I think, increased my bond with Saradomin by a touch.

Predictably for the odd old man, the furs aren’t the end of the services he wants. He’s spent the time I was hunting furs composing another wish list of bones that he wants me to procure. This one consists mostly of stuff that will be really hard to get (for instance, nine dragon tailbones, each from a different variety of dragon), but there are some things I can get started on right away, such as the shoulder of a giant: hill giants happen to be quite abundant in the dungeon beneath Edgeville, and since I’m already here, that’s an item I can fulfil right away!

With this in mind, I return to the Grand Exchange, finish up my purchases of adamantite weaponry, grab my key to the back entrance to the Edgeville dungeons, and go down and start whaling on giants. Very quickly, the expedition becomes a success, as I find a suitably impressive shoulder bone, wrap it up in cloth, and put it in my pack.

I’ve done all I wanted to in Varrock, more or less, so, since there’s plenty of daylight left yet, I repair to the next area where I have stuff to do: Lumbridge! The quickest way there is to teleport, so I grab some runes, cast the spell, and get pulled through the Abyss to the courtyard of Lumbridge Castle. Once there, my first move is to bring the slop of compromise (as I’ve come to call Mudknuckles’ masterpiece) into the time-frozen banquet hall, and see whether it has any effect on unfreezing the goblin generals. And… it works perfectly! As soon as I insert a spoonful of the slop into the generals’ mouths, they awake and vanish from the banquet hall! Gypsy Aris congratulates me on this first success and hands me some pages from the Culinaromancer’s cookbook that she’s found within the time-slip while I was away. These teach me not only a few cookery tricks, but also how to farm various ingredients! Very useful stuff.

Okay, that’s two Council members saved, and seven to go. The pirate slumped on the table next to where the goblins were seems like as good a person as any to begin with. I ask Aris what she thinks I could feed him, and she relates to me a vision that she had while I was away: the pirate loves fish cakes more than anything in the world. It’s not a recipe I’m familiar with, despite having grown up on the sea, so I ask her if she knows how to make them. She does not, but she recommends that I speak with the castle cook: he might know. I leave the time slip and ask him. He doesn’t know the recipe off the top of his head (and is surprised that I don’t, given that from his perspective I’ve already defeated the Culinaromancer), but he looks it up, and finds that one would need ground cod, ground kelp, ground giant crab meat and breadcrumbs. The cod and breadcrumbs are obvious enough, but kelp and crab meat aren’t exactly commonplace ingredient. I ask the cook whether he’s got any ideas; he mentions that Murphy, the owner of the fishing trawler in Port Khazard, used to pull up giant crab, and he would also know where one could find kelp. Okay, sounds like a plan!

Before I can get started on any of it, though, I run into the Duke, who tells me he’s got an assignment for me, his go-between with the Dorgeshuun, if I’m willing to take it. It turns out that the cave goblins have reached a point in their diplomatic negotiations where they’ve decided to send an emissary to the surface to report on conditions there. It would be quite important, he says, for someone to accompany the emissary during their trip to the surface. Mistag will have the details, he says.

Okay, that’s a job I wasn’t expecting, but I won’t pass on the opportunity, so I grab my lamp, head through the hole in the cellar wall, and let myself be guided through the winding passages to the cave goblin mines. He confirms what I heard from the Duke, and adds one unexpected detail: part of the embassy will involve infiltrating the HAM base, to determine whether the cultists have further nefarious plans vis-a-vis the Dorgeshuun. Thus, I will need to find two complete sets of HAM robes for me and the envoy to use. I should get the robes and meet her at the cellars of Lumbridge Castle once I’ve got them.

Sounds like a plan. It’s getting late, though, and I doubt I’ll be able to pilfer any robes today, so with what’s left of the day I return to the surface, bake a loaf of bread and grind it into crumbs, as the fishcake recipe requires. Then I retire to the thieves’ guild headquarters, where expansion has been proceeding rapidly, for the night.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #ratcatchers #recipe for disaster

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jotawakening-blog · 8 years ago

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29 Fentuary, 5A 169: A Swathe Through Asgarnia

I begin the day with a breakfast of freshly caught cod, then get going on the business that brought me here to Port Sarim: catching the ferry to Entrana to learn all I can about the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. Of course, Entrana has strict policies on weapons, so before I board the boat, I use the deposit box conveniently located nearby to stow away my combat gear.

Once the ferry lands, I head straight for the basilica, and ask the High Priest there whether he knows anything of the Grail. He does, it would seem: it did pass through the island some time ago. However, it’s not here any more, and he doesn’t care enough to tell me where it went. Just as I’m about to get on my way, to look around the island myself, an old crone who overheard my conversation with the High Priest pulls me aside, and tells me that if I’m in search of the grail, I’d best hurry: ‘A fisher king is in pain’. Perplexed, I bid her explain, and she does, as best she can. Apparently, the Grail has found its final resting place in the realm of someone called the Fisher King. This realm is a pocket plane adjacent to ours, which can be entered at a point where the boundary between the planes is weakest, by blowing a magic whistle there. This spot is marked by six great stone heads, whose gaze converges on the correct location. Ah! I think I know what heads she means! But, I ask, who is the Fisher King? She has little to say on this, only that he is ‘the owner and slave of the grail’. I guess I shall have to find out myself. As for the whistle: I can find it in a haunted manor in Misthalin (almost certainly Draynor Manor), but only if I’m carrying something from the Fisher King’s realm. Hm, I guess the tablecloth Brother Galahad gave me might work? Anyway, I doubt I’ll be able to find out any more here, so it’s probably time I left Entrana and got on with my adventures in the Eastern Kingdoms.

So I get not he boat and take it back to the mainland. My plan now is to go down to Mudskipper Point and see what my old friend Thurgo can do to fix King Alvis’ ancient axe. For this, I obviously need the axe, so I head up to Falador to retrieve it from the bank and get geared up again. Also, I take out my catspeak amulet: assuming that Bob’s still wandering the world instead of staying at home, I may be able to track him down around here. For the same reasons, I withdraw the enchanted key. It’s noticeably warmer here than in Kandarin or on Karamja, but not warm enough to indicate treasure anywhere nearby.

In any event, I take the axe to Thurgo and explain that I need it restored. Thurgo, naturally, takes an interest in the weapon, and asks me where, exactly, I might have gotten it. I tell him it’s from Keldagrim, but spare him the embarrassing details of how I came by it. Thurgo nods. ‘We have not been to Keldagrim for a long time’, he says. I ask him what he means by ‘we’— could there be more Imcando dwarves in hiding someplace?— but he claims it was a slip of the tongue and moves on to the details of the repair. All he will need, he tells me, is an iron bar. Okay, that’s very easy to procure. I tell Thurgo I’ll be right back and go back up to Falador to fetch one from the bank. Once I’ve got it, I return south using Remora’s pendant to save me a bit of time and hand the axe back to Thurgo, who fixes the corroded parts in very good time. Like he said, the damage wasn’t as extensive as it appeared. Thank you, Thurgo!

Okay, that’s one step closer toward the restoration of the statue… but getting the axe fixed was just one small item on the long list of tasks demanding my attention out here in the east. My next moves shall be to the north of Falador, where I’ll be hunting for Bob, catching a scorpion, and deliver the compromise meal to Mudknuckles at the goblin village so that maybe, just maybe, I can free the Goblin Generals from the culinaromancer’s time snarl.

I find Bob by the moat of Falador Castle, thanks to the enchantment on the amulet, but he’s not too communicative. He tells me he’d like to speak with another cat, and asks why I keep Minou in the care of the Bank of Gielinor. This leads to a rather odd discussion in which Bb tries to convince me that cats are easily as hardy as sheep, and, indeed, were the second species brought over to Gielinor by Guthix. That’s not what we were taught in school (what about the dwarves and gnomes?), but who knows? Maybe cats really do have some insight there.

Anyway, I go to the bank once more and get Minou to come meet Bob with me. This time, I let Minou explain the problem: while Bob has been wandering the world, Unferth has been missing him! It turns out he hasn’t been home because he’s madly in love with a cat named Neite, all the way in Sophanem. The problem is that Neite, while she has feelings for him, refuses to get into a relationship with a cat of no status. Minou, ever practical, asks whether he knows who his parents were, but he doesn’t: he was abandoned at a young age and left on Gertrude’s doorstep, over by Varrock. In his earliest memories, it’s Gertrude who’s caring for him. Minou comes up with the idea of visiting Gertrude and asking her what she knows about Bob’s origins. As much as I’m not happy about playing matchmaker between two cats living almost a continent’s length away from each other, I guess I am kind of committed at this point, and might as well, seeing as Gertrude doesn’t live that far out of the way from the Grand Exchange, after all.

First things first, though: I need to deliver the rather unpalatable melange of ingredients I’ve collected to the Goblin Village kitchen. The place, it turns out, is still in as bad a shape as it was when the cauldron exploded, but it seems that Mudknuckles likes it that way: he keeps collecting new ‘data’ and ‘results’ from the walls and ceiling, and fantasising about new culinary experiments. I hand him the ingredients, which he beats into a sort of grey pulpy mush and hands to me, with the disclaimer that he can’t vouch for the idea working because the instructions from the generals made no sense. (Even my choice of ingredients doesn’t reassure him.) Well, I guess it’s better than nothing, right? I’ll give it a go when next I’m in Lumbridge, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll see if I can’t think of something else.

Okay, next up: catching scorpions. The seer back at Seers’ Village claims to have seen them both nearby, one at the monastery and one in a shop in Gunnarsgrunn. I have my scorpion cage with me, and grab a holy symbol so I’ll be let into the monastery, which I make my first stop. Once there, I first look around for the scorpion in the public areas, then, not finding it there, try to head up into the monks’ quarters. As I try to climb the stairs, a monks stops me and tells me the obvious: that this area of the monastery is for monks only. So I ask him if I can join the order, and to my surprise, he inducts me on the spot! All I had to do was ask! It seems that word of my exploits (the re-purification of the Salve, perhaps?) has spread further than I was expecting!

With the monk’s blessing, I head up to the private quarters, where I find a robe laid out for me. More excitingly, I hear the scorpion skittering around! Deftly, I track it down and trap it in my cage without having the other one run off, as well. That leaves just one more, which I think I can get presently! Before I leave, I pull over a monk to bless for some holy symbols that I brought for this purpose. He does so, infusing the energies of Saradomin into them and thereby transforming them from moulded silver stars into talismans with the power to ward off evil! Now, of course, I can sell them for a bit of profit.

There’s still plenty of daylight left, so: on to the next scorpion, this one in Gunnarsgrunn. Or so the seer said: unfortunately, the delay between my talking to him and my arrival at the barbarians’ village proves, this time, to be telling. Peksa, the owner of the helmet shop, admits to having had the scorpion in his possession when I ask him about it. Unfortunately, he no longer does: he gave it away to his brother Iwor, who lives all the way out in the outpost by Baxtorian Falls. (And by ‘gave it away’, he means ‘left it in his room so it would sting him’.) Well, that’s disappointing, but I’ll keep an eye out for it the next time I’m there, assuming Iwor doesn’t squish it first!

But that’s a task for the future. For now, given how close I am to Varrock, I’ve got other things on my mind: first of all, trading at the Grand Exchange, and then seeing what Gertrude knows about Bob. And so, after consigning my pile of accumulated loot to a broker, I visit Gertrude for a spot of late-afternoon tea and a chat about cats. Gertrude is pleased to see me— and Minou— looking happy and healthy. Gertrude is happy to talk, as long as it’s not about death runes— she’s been hearing terrible rumours, and…

I assure her that it’s not about that, and that I came to her because of a cat she adopted some time ago. Gertrude remembers Bob, but tells me she doesn’t know anything about his parentage: he was left on her doorstep by some locals, and she took care of him until he could take care of himself. At some point, Minou loses patience with Gertrude’s anecdotes about Bob and yowls at me to demand Gertrude tell me what she knows. (It’s quite a scene: I threaten Minou with amputation, Minou threatens me with a clawing, and I’m basically forced to get to the point.) Gertrude’s memory still isn’t jogged, but Minou has an idea: is there a chance that Bob has some connection to the legend of Robert the Strong? I must confess I’ve never heard that legend, so I ask Gertrude if she can tell it. Much to Minou’s disdain, though, she doesn’t know it either, and suggests that I go speak to Reldo: if there’s anyone who knows it, it’ll be him. Good idea!

Before I go, Gertrude tells me there’s something else I should know— some people I should meet are in town. They’re rat catchers, she says, and they live in the sewers: she knows this because she had to drag her two eldest sons out of there recently. (Yuck!) Well, it’s another not-half-bad idea, since I’m already here. But first, I return to the Exchange and begin to go down my long shopping list, purchasing a new talisman for runecrafting, this one imbued with cosmic energy, an adamantite hatchet to help me chop down trees more efficiently, and, perhaps most excitingly, a mithril, crossbow-fired grappling hook. with which I might just be able to create paths for myself in areas where there are none, like over walls and stuff! Should be fun to try it out.

The last thing I do before nightfall is visit Reldo at the Varrock Palace library and ask him about Robert the Strong. This is a figure Reldo is familiar with from some old histories of the Fourth Age, but he has to look it up: he doesn’t know the details off-hand. In the books, it seems that Robert is known as a hero of Misthalin, taller than the tallest man and stronger than the strongest warrior. He is said to carry a six-foot longbow and have as his pet a panther named Odysseus, and to be involved in a crusade against the dragonkin. The book explains what these are: a race of tall, avian, immortal humanoids, who do not use their wings and cannot reproduce. Because of their lack of breeding capacity, they shunned other races, and created debased versions of themselves to protect them: the creatures we now know as dragons. Now, the information on this subject is old and unreliable, but Reldo believes there is a grain of truth in such folk-tales, waiting to be discovered.

Okay, that’s nice and all, I tell Minou, but how does that help us? Minou seems to think, on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence (no one seems to know where Bob came from, based on the grand total of one person we’ve asked), that Bob may actually be Robert the Strong. Um, what? That’s so illogical as to beggar belief, but… Minou’s been right about things before, and when next I cross paths with Bob, I suppose I’ll ask him about it. Most likely, he’ll agree that it’s a ridiculous theory and we’ll be back to square one.

Anyway, it will be nice to see Dororan and Gudrun again and sleep in a proper bed, and I can worry about this and everything else tomorrow.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #holygrail #robertthestrong

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