The Weight of Evils Great and Small
Seventeenth Day of the First Month 293 AC
Rather than setting off immediately for the barracks, you decide to deal with John Mudd one way or another, The man was a commander of sorts and is now bound to your will, unsettling though that may be. You might as well take advantage of it. After a brief pause you motion for Malarys and Vee to follow you, the first for his experience in such matters and the second for her good sense unshadowed by any doubts in dealing harshly with prisoners.
Dany quietly removes the curse from the man's forehead, then says: "I'll talk to the others. When you interrogate the priestesses I want to be there, though."
"Of course," you agree. She more than anyone would be able to understand the servants of the Mother of Wyrms and perhaps turn that understanding to advantage.
As the four you duck into a side chamber, Malarys catches your eye and says without artifice. "Unpleasant as his condition might be, it is ultimately less of a strain to body and mind than
rougher examinations would have been, not least because we can be sure he speaks the truth as he knows it."
You nod in understanding, though the uneasiness is far from wholly dispelled by his words.
You have but to speak the word and a man will kill or die at your command, betraying any sentiments however noble or base he may have held... what kind could match this heady, dreadful, power?
"Could one of ye look for winged rats?" Vee asks, practical as ever.
A quick look around the dusty chamber assures you that there are none, and so you command Mudd to sit upon the worn stone base of some long lost statue and speak all he knows and all he suspects about those who now command the Golden Company.
"There are no other bases like this one, we move around through the ruins as we can, fighting what we can and fleeing from things that are too strong. Two other expeditions just vanished... died probably this year. One to Sarnath and the other to Essaria from where only the Dark Lady's priests came to us. There was also an expedition to Bhorash but they disturbed something old in the ruins and the Men of Mantarys came under the command of one of their Angel Lords and cast them out, slaying one of the wizards who refused to abandon his work. I heard that he may have fallen under the power of whatever horror had been called up. Sallosh was special because it was safe."
Even as you listen with baited breath to the report on your foes' movements and abilities, the stilted dead voice sends a shiver down your spine.
Why was this worse than hearing a man tortured in front of you?
"What was your purpose here and elsewhere. What did you seek?" Malarys asks after a scarce moment's pause for the man to catch his breath.
"Old magics, books, scrolls, sorceorus workings, particularly waking the steel sentinels for the Smith. Mopatis was very interested in them because of how they shed sorcery like rain off a duck and they served only the Smith who was
his man... or whatever the hells he was under those wrappings. The archers could shoot dragons from the sky too..."
"Dragons?" you ask sharply. "The Golden Company hatched dragons?"
"Called from magic, not hatched. Not proper dragons neither, according to the servants of the Dark Lady. Drakes they call them, the lesser kindred. They can fly and they can kill, they can talk with the tongues of men too. There's supposed to be dozens of them fighting in N'ghai, but I've only seen two of 'em myself." Some shadow of fear or awe enters the sellsword's tone then, even through the deadening enthrallment. "A thousand colors flowed on 'em like oil on water, like the power of the goddess herself..."
Malarys snorts "Probably glamours to make the beasts seem more fearsome and
magical for easily impressed fools."
"So what other monsters has your lot been calling up?" Vee asks on, not even trying to hide the anger in her voice.
"There are other dragon-men. Not sure how many. I've seen four... the binder called up more I think, as guides and to send into the world. Killed a lot of slaves that way."
"What way?" Whatever sympathy you may have held for the man before you melts like ice in high summer.
Not so different from Manatrys after all.
In the end you discover that things had not gone quite that far. The summoning and bindings of demons were done in secret and at night, the slaves delivered in some secrecy, not so much that rumors did not spread, but enough that one was not forced to give them credence. Reading between the lines you guess that there must have been some sort of rivalry between magister Illyrio and Tiamat's servants, with each trying to eclipse the other in influence and arcane power while maintaining an uneasy truce against common foes. Thankfully this allows you to more easily separate those driven by ambition and greed from the sellswords who had offered up their loyalty and perhaps their souls to Tiamat... and of course the greater mass of the company that was swayed like the wind.
"Where is Blackfyre," you ask almost idly as you try to settle in your head how you would interrogate the other officers to sort, for not the guilty from the innocent, at least the damned from those who were still in possession of their souls.
"With the captain... not sure where he is. The war on the plains moves around a lot and the Company's campaigning," comes the reply, as steady as any of the others. So much for having a quick path to the rest of your foes... though you suppose several thousand men would be rather hard to miss if you flew around the fallow lands of N'ghai.
"What crimes have you committed, John Mudd? What sins stain your soul?" you ask abruptly, sick of the conversation.
The answer you get is neither what you expected nor what you feared. There are no tales of desecration and murder, no dark deeds done for the devotion of dark powers and the favor of demons, but neither is the man before you innocent by any measure of the word. Murder, rapine and burning, all these are as familiar to the serjeant as his own shadow. He recounts these many crimes not even with a true sadist's relish, but merely as the rightful privileges of command, the ordinary fruits of victory or else the means by which that victory may be achieved.
That you are going to see him hang is no longer in doubt, but it still leaves the matter of how you will do so without seeming, arbitrary or foolish to those among his fellows whose services you would rather keep. Not to mention the small matter that admitting how your extracted said confession will do your reputation little good.
What do you do next?
[] Ask more questions
-[] Write in
[] Move on to securing the rest of the city
-[] Write in plan for addressing the sellswords
[] Write in
OOC: So yeah, you can thank Illyrio for the fact that all the Golden Company did not wholeheartedly embrace Tiamat.
