Dark Tide Rising

There's quite a bit that can be said about peace. There had been 100 years of it in the Free Kingdoms. Did it make us complacent? Perhaps, perhaps not, but all I know is that we weren't prepared for the elves, and we certainly weren't prepared for what happened tonight.

I had arrived in Ghostwood keep late in the day with Ili. A group from the Spire and Lyr arrived at the same time as well. We were immediately ushered in to a tower that housed all the people from the Free Kingdoms. Another tower nearby apparently housed the Devoronians. I entered the common room and sat about for a few hours, while Ili went off to perform her incessant proselytizing elsewhere in the keep. It was curious that none of the people in the room gave off a bad aura. I would have expected a least a few of them to have been pickpockets of some sort. The only character of note was a funny little man that certainly didn't belong in a tavern full of humans.

I went to talk to him a bit, to see what he was up. He seemed quite dodgy and evasive, as well as ill-mannered. He would barely tell me that his name was Borrow. I was about to tell him a thing or two about civility before a Lyran fellow stepped in and explained that Borrow had arrived with a group of Dwarves a few days back and was travelling with them to the Keep, and that Borrow was a decent enough fellow. It wasn't quite good enough for me, but I also didn't want to appear to question the Lyran's judgement, so I stepped away and continued to keep an eye on Borrow.

The negotiations between the elves and humans continued long into the night. I surmised that things must have not been going to well, so I retired for the evening. At around midnight, a commotion woke me up. All I heard was something about the delegation being assassinated and that trechery was afoot. I called for Ili, and she helped me strap on my armor as quickly as possible. I grabbed my weapons and ran out into the courtyard. I ran toward the center tower and talked with the guards there about letting us in. After showing our Archabcht symbols, they let us through.

We were looking for the Commander of the keep, who was waiting on the third floor. The place was like a maze, and it took us a while to find the room, on our way, we found the negotiations room where the massacre took place. There was lots of blood, but it appeared as if the bodies had been moved away. We went toward the other end of the keep, where we bumped into someone named Obegard. He said that he was from the Spire, and that he also needed to speak with the commander, so we let him come along. We finally found the commander, and he explained to us what had happened. He said that an unknown number of assassins had gained entrance into the keep, and that they were disguised as the guards. It didn't bode well for us, and I said that Ili and I could go and sweep the tower and look over everyone's aura. However, at that point we were interrupted by several soldiers who entered the room. When asked why they were there, they drew strange looking blades and attacked.

The fight was short but fierce, as we were fighting, Borrow seemingly appeared out of nowhere and struck one of the assailants. I don't know how he was able to follow us, but I was still glad that we had some help fighting these assasins off. During the fight, the commander was hurt badly, but I was able to heal him back to his feet after the fight was over. We searched the corpses of the assasins, and found a note of some sort. Obegard looked it over and could not figure it out, but Borrow somehow did. He said that the a piece of the note was missing. Puzzled, we walked downstairs to collect another blade from one of the assassins that had been killed later. Obegard said that he could use a spell to help locate more of the same blades, but that it could only find the closest one, so that we'd need to collect all that we could find, and take it far away.

When we were about to do so, however, we heard a tremendous explosion, and we ran out to see what it was. Someone had attacked the Church of Albrecht, setting of an explosion that surely must have killed everyone that was inside. We ran over to find that only one person had made it out. He was an adept that was assigned to guarding the door. I now suspect that he might have had something to do with it all, because his escape seemed all too miraculous. I resolved to question him more carefully the next day.

As we were heading back into the keep, an elf suddenly leapt out of the shadows and attacked us, yelling that there would be no peace. He moved as quick as a blur, and I didn't even have time to react before he knocked me and Ili unconscious, then quick as a blur again, he disappeared before the others could summon help. I don't know why he didn't kill us both when he easily could have done so. But no matter what, we had to continue with our task. Just then, we hear yet another commotion. This time, someone had attacked the Lyran delegation, killing all but the Son of Clouds. Fortunately, we arrived just in time to stabilize them before attempting to chase after the killers. By following Obegard, we were able to locate a secret passageway in the stables that led out of the keep. That must have been where they came from.

We returned to the central keep and talked again with the commander. As we were heading out, we passed by the prison and saw that the two guards standing outside had been slaughtered! We quickly entered the prison, and though the assassins were under an invisibility of some sort, I was still able to locate their aura, and they appeared to have been waiting in ambush. I motioned for the others to back up, and I was about to strike one of them, but they must have sensed what I was about to do and attacked. Fortunately, their strikes hit my armor, and I quickly returned with a powerful strike that killed one of them. Just then, I saw that Ili was in trouble, so I cast a spell that compelled the assassin attacking her to become paralyzed. Afterwards, she was easily able to finish him off. We cleaned up the rest of them, but discovered that the elven prisoner was missing! I wasn't sure why they'd go through all that trouble to spring him out. We found another note on one of the bodies. It seemed to be enough for Borrow to figure things out. It sounded from the note that whoever was responsible was neither working for the Elves or the Deveronians. There was a lot to puzzle out. Was the Cult involved, or perhaps a splinter faction within the Kingdoms? Why would an elf help the others, who were all humans? What information was it that the prisoner elf had that was so important they'd risk so much to get him out? And most importantly, no one could have executed such an elaborate plan without inside help. Who were the ones I could trust? Perhaps no one.