Evil Green Rock interlude: Rusalka

They need to sort out a few details before they leave, so it's back to Corvis for our heroes.

James is thrilled with his gifts. Ian and Islene report to Cyrus, who is horrified by Rhul paperwork (four copies! At least!). Cyrus has never heard of a metal like they describe. He tells them he'll look into it, but if the dwarves don't know, then he isn't optimistic.

Grigori and Braydon, meanwhile, powwow over Five Fingers. Besides the two of them, they figure on taking Islene, Ian, Boomtongue, and Mara, because an Illuminator is not a bad thing to have when you're dealing with evil green rocks.

The Scharde and the thief with a hole in his soul get some funny looks from the paladins when they go to fetch Mara. The Illuminators know nothing about such a rock, either, but Mara is all for coming along. After that, Braydon hits up Cyrus for the latest news from Five Fingers while Grigori checks with Pendrake to see if the great adventurer knows anything about evil green rocks.

In fact, Pendrake seems to know quite a bit about evil green rocks, rather too much to narrow this down. "There are lots of stories about things buried in the Wyrmwall Mountains," he tells Grigori cheerfully. Somehow, this is not reassuring.

As for Cyrus, he has heard no news out of Five Fingers recently. Distinctly no news. Suspiciously no news. In other words, something is up in the port of deceit.

Islene apologizes to her family about dropping in and then being off again so quickly. "We're tracking an evil rock to Five Fingers," she tells them quite candidly. Her father sighs. "I don't suppose we can talk you out of this. This is what happens when you raise them to respect people." She tells Ashley, too, whose reaction is, "Good! You have to read this!" Ashley shoves Lenard's tract at her sister, who promises to read it on the train ride. Ashley knows nothing about evil green rocks, either. "There's nothing under the Protectorate except oil." She suggests Islene might try burning the thing when they find it. It works surprisingly often.

Braydon passes on the suspicious lack of news to Grigori, who says that traditionally means something's about to go down among the the city's big players. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can join the party," he tells Braydon wryly, who replies in the same tone, "Course it's too much to ask that this doesn't involve our rock."

The ship they charter down the Wyrm's Tongue sets sail the next morning, with several passengers and interesting cargo on board. Well, interesting for salivating sneaky types, at any rate. An Ordic merchant traveling with his daughter has quite a pile of trade goods shipping with him, which Grigori ogles just a little indecently. The man's daughter is whiny about leaving Corvis, much to his irritation. "This isn't like you," he rebukes her. She sulks and paces.

She continues to sulk and pace after the ship sets off, Corvis growing distant behind them. Grigori tries to chat her up while Braydon sits back and watches this bit of impromptu theatre. She blows him off, acting disinterested and antsy.

Braydon keeps watching her; her behavior doesn't change. She spends hours on deck, fidgeting and fretting. Grigori finds her suspicious, too, and entertains Braydon by expounding on his process any time he's on a boat: namely, assessing how likely they are to be attacked by pirates. "We have booty," he points out, waving at the shipping crates, "and there's something wrong with this river fog." "The fog is perfectly normal," his sometime-pirate friend disagrees, grinning.

But there is something strange about that girl, who barely eats at lunch or dinner, to her father's increasing concern. Mara tries casting Detect Evil on her, but while the reading is odd, it's inconclusive.

That night, over Boomtongue's sonorous, bullfrog-like snoring, a grinding vibration through the hull wakes Braydon and Grigori. It's the sound of the engine seizing up, which finishes off with a substantial KLANK. Grigori wakes the others, stuffing a pillow in Boomtongue's mouth, which makes him snorfle, cough, and rouse.

Islene and Braydon head out toward the engine. A sailor tries to reassure them that everything is fine, but when they spot an unconscious man a little ways behind him, he explains that there was a bit of an accident. Islene agrees to help fix the engine. Meanwhile, Mara and Ian check out the injured man. He'll be fine, but it looks like someone knocked him out with a prybar.

Which, coincidentally, rather resembles the prybar that someone wedged into the engine shaft. "That's the traditional way of sabotaging ship engines," Braydon tells Islene, wrenching the thing out.

The ship needs parts, so they captain decides to swing into a riverside town and put the passengers up for the day or so it'll take to effect repairs. The group divides surveillance of the eight other passengers among themselves, figuring to narrow down the suspects and find out what happened here. Boomtongue stays to keep an eye on the riverboat while it's being repaired.

One old man, a sweet fellow heading to the nearby river town of Fisherbrook to visit family, is pretty obviously off the list of suspects right away. Grigori chats with another passenger, who turns out to be a scholar from Caspia University who's annoyed by the delay because he wants to reach an auction at Tarna in time to purchase some rare texts. Someone just unearthed them from an Old Kingdoms dig dating back to before the Orgoth. Revealing that he's an Orgoth scholar, Grigori attempts to engage the other fellow in some academic wrangling, but Orgoth scholars are crazy, so far as the other gentleman is concerned. He attempts to make his escape with, "I'm going to get more warm milk." But Grigori is having none of that. "I'll have some more whiskey," he replies smugly. "Another way I win."

The gauntlet is thrown, and the academics engage in verbal battle, much to the amusement of Braydon and Ian, who entertain themselves with snarky quips.

Islene sends Braydon back to the boat to go through the girl's belongings. Boomtongue helps him sneak on board by distracting the boatmen with booze. He finds little of note in her room. Her diary indicates she didn't like Corvis much at all (making it rather strange that she'd be so displeased about leaving), except that she and her father were rescued from a mugging by the 'dashing Captain Hellstrom.' There's also a box for a lady's dagger, which her father apparently bought her at Corvis' market afterward so she could defend herself.

It doesn't take long for Grigori to drink the other academic under the table. The man's pretty much gone after two shots of hard liquor. Satisfied with the outcome, and confident they can write that fellow off as a suspect since he probably couldn't do any real damage if he tried to swing a crowbar, he follows the young lady out when she announces she's going for a walk. Ian the stealth-priest accompanies him, and they are the night.

After a moment when she looks back and then turns down a back alley, she gives them a merry chase, winding all through town until suddenly she seems to vanish around a corner. Even Camden loses track of her. They meet up with Braydon shortly after that, coming back from the dock. While he fills Ian in on his skimpy findings, Grigori backtracks to see if he can pick up the girl's trail. Sure enough, he finds her footprints leading off in a different direction than he thought she'd gone. She's heading out of town. Leaving some scuffs so the others can follow him easily, he takes off after her. The others, along with Boomtongue, catch up to him right about the time another fog moves in.

"Okay," says Braydon, "This one isn't normal." And it's not. The fog is so thick it slows their movements and seems to dampen sound around them. Strange, high-pitched laughter rings out nearby, putting a chill down their spines.

Then gravity seems to throw in the towel. Swept upward off their feet, the adventurers are rather at a loss. Boomtongue lets out a Fell Call, the signal howl of a Fell Caller whose sound can travel for miles--even back into town where Islene and Mara are waiting.

They fall upward several more feet, then fall back down. Before they can make it to their feet, a Chain Lightning spell strikes through them. Braydon and Grigori roll out of the way. Boomtongue turns toward where the spell came from, targeting a stunning call at the caster. Braydon closes in to trip her, then wrenches her weapon away--a dagger, dripping with venom.

Grigori tries and fails to pin her, for which Braydon laughs at him. Ian knocks her out with chloroform instead. The fog dissipates just in time for Islene and Mara to see the girl faint.

"Now what the hell is this?" Braydon wonders, looking at the dagger he's holding cautiously. Boomtongue recognizes it: a rusalka dagger. When you kill a rusalka, a female water spirit, her soul may become trapped in the weapon used to kill her. If another woman picks it up, the rusalka's spirit can possess her in order to return to her home waters.

Destroying the dagger will kill the rusalka, but it's a magical object, so it's tougher than normal. Grigori wonders wistfully if there's any way to get the rusalka's spirit out without harming the dagger itself, since the thing is worth a tremendous amount of money. True magical weapons are rare, after all. Braydon thinks that's a rather good point (and also wonders idly, though he keeps it to himself, whether it could possess Grigori, with his unusual vulnerability to such things), but Mara puts the kibosh on that, declaring that the thing is evil and they're going to destroy it. Boomtongue crushes it with his mechanickal Umbrean war axe while Ian takes the girl back. Once the dagger is destroyed, she seems perfectly okay, although she doesn't seem to remember much of what happened.

The ship is ready to go by the next day, so it's back onto the river and heading toward whatever awaits them in Five Fingers.