To those only passingly familiar with the Dwarves, the concept of Grudges can seem like a toxic one. To spend the lives of living Dwarves on the wrongs done to those long dead seems shockingly wasteful. But as you've become familiar with the Dwarves, you've come to believe that Grudges are not the cause of Dwarven troubles, but a bandage over them. The human mind is capable of letting the past stay in the past: leaving the past in the past, letting bygones be bygones, least said, soonest mended. To a human, a grudge is something that needs to be tended and nurtured, something to be constantly stoked lest those fires begin to die. But the average Dwarf, you suspect, is no more able to let the past be forgotten than they are to breathe underwater. To them, unredressed emotional pain is as strong decades later as it was the day it was inflicted upon them. A Dwarf who has been wronged and has no way to right that wrong will be forever haunted by it until it drives them mad, as inevitably as a river carving a valley through stone.
In this way, a recorded Grudge is the mirror to the Slayer Oath: where a Dwarf that has wronged others and cannot fix it seeks to die for the Karaz Ankor, a Dwarf that has been wronged and cannot fix it seeks to
live for the Karaz Ankor. Their Grudge being recorded is a promise that someday, somehow, the Karaz Ankor will take vengeance on their behalf, and this means that any act that strengthens the Karaz Ankor becomes an act of vengeance. But the cost of this is that even the canniest and most cynical of Dwarven leaders must still pay heed to the Grudges of the past, because the promises of a Book of Grudges might represent a titanic outlay of lives and resources, but it is also the mortar that keeps the battered souls of the Dwarven people from falling apart. To entirely ignore it would be to undermine their entire society.
While often tragic, this has one immediately applicable upside to you: that if you show up at their door with a way to cross out a few of those Grudges that is cheaper in lives and resources than anything else available to them, you can very often rustle up a throng at a moment's notice. Especially if you have a proven track record in that regard. For this reason you have made your way to Zhufbar, to meet with a Dwarf you haven't set eyes on in over a decade.
"Thane Weber!" Thane Thori Stoneheart greets you with a hearty handshake. "I'm glad to cross paths with you once more. You showed promise back in Sylvania, but I never could have guessed how much your saga would entwine with that of the Dawi."
"The Throng you led was a rock of stability and reliability in a time when it was sorely needed, which played no small part in my decision to lend my sword to the causes of the Karaz Ankor," you reply with a smile. "If it weren't for King Belegar calling for aid, I might have come here instead to join the Karak Varn expeditions for a time."
"Aye? A shame that those that lurk in its depths will never know how close they came to extinction, then. I don't suppose you've come here to deliver it to them?"
"I'd love to, but there's more enemies in the world than there are days in a lifetime, and my attention is needed elsewhere. The unfinished business I want to put paid to now is that of Castle Drakenhof."
"Seemed fairly finished to me. Barely one stone left atop another, as I recall. That's the naming deed for that belt of yours."
"I'd call it done and good against most enemies, but not the
Zangunaz. We saw for ourselves that there are tunnels leading out of the Castle, and I've heard more stories than I like of tombs and crypts and catacombs within and under the mountain itself, full of treasures and secrets and monstrosities. When the next Von Carstein seeks to start another Vampire War, I want them to have to start from scratch."
He nods in thought. "Something like our raids on Karak Varn, then?"
"Aye, though ideally without as much time pressure. The Countess of Stirland has Sylvania suppressed enough that there's a reasonable likelihood we'd be able to completely secure the site and excavate at our leisure, unless it turns out something's already moved in."
"Hazier payoff though," he says with a frown. "The veins of Karak Varn are very well mapped, but the underside of Karag Drakenhof has only stories to guide our picks."
"I'll be bringing in a skilled
Skarrenzhufokri of good repute that will be able to point us towards what we seek."
"That the same type of
Zhufokri that blew up a quarter of that city last time?"
You suppress a wince, and after a moment of thought decide to step around that instead of addressing it head-on. "No, that was a
Zonzhufokri. I had a
Skarrenzhufokri with me during Karak Eight Peaks, and two for the Karag Dum Expedition."
"Mm. Well, I suppose if you're vouching for them, that's enough for me. Who else is on board?"
"Cleric Tarni of the Order of Guardians and Abbot Ionel of the Council of Manhorak will be available to take care of any ceremonial duties or esoteric difficulties that we might come across." You've yet to meet either, but Gunnars and Kasmir respectively spoke well of them.
"That makes things easier." He considers matters a while longer, then nods. "It wouldn't disrupt much to redirect one of the forces preparing for a Karak Varn raid, and I'll see what else I can round up for it. Grudges from that lot always need to be struck out the hard way since they can't be relied upon to properly die, so it'd be worth it for that alone before we even account for the possibility of recovering Dwarven treasures or fallen."
You nod, glad the tough part is done with, and then the two of you get to the tricky job of scheduling and logistics.
---
Twenty miles as the crow flies is not always twenty miles as an army marches, and when mountain ranges are involved the distances can become very skewed indeed. Most Throngs from Zhufbar that had business in the lowlands would need to travel either westwards to southern Stirland or north to Karak Kadrin to reach the road network, turning it into a journey of two hundred miles or more. But the Throng that Thane Thori has put together is not the usual artillery-heavy force that Zhufbar favours, instead being a Karak Varn raiding force of Ironbreakers and miners reinforced by Rangers, and so they were able to take the direct route across the mountains and follow the uppermost trickles of the River Drak down into Sylvania proper. When they do so, they are met by a rather motley group of three Wizards and two Priests, two of which being you and Johann, the other three new and interesting acquaintances.
As one initiated into the service of Gazul, Cleric Tarni has no past that she will speak of, but her fluent Reikspiel with a Reikland accent and her clumsy Khazalid with a Grey Mountains accent tell you plenty. She's quiet, intense, wiry, and constantly seems to be watching you, though you can't tell if it's out of caution or curiosity. She's short even by Dwarf standards, her mail is a dull black, and the sword on her back has an eerie blue gleam that you're rather familiar with. If you find any Dwarven remains, or any Vampiric ones that can be identified as having wronged the Dwarves, they will be her responsibility, and you get the impression that if you encounter any Vampires that still need to be turned into remains, you wouldn't be able to stop her from doing her best to make that happen.
Under what you assume to be Kasmir's direction, the Council of Manhorak has structured itself along monastic lines, and so the High Priest of Darmorak is titled the Abbot of Dark Moor. Of the four, it's the one you know next to nothing about. Bylorhof is where the worship of Bylorak kept one corner free of Vampiric influence, and Grim Moor and Hel Fenn were the sites of the defeats of Konrad and Mannfred von Carstein, and, presumably, where they still remain. All you really know is its approximate location on a map, but that location is at the headwaters of the Templa, nestled up against the mountains and no more than twenty miles from both Castle Drakenhof and Zhufbar. Abbot Ionel himself is a beardless man in his forties with kind eyes, long brown hair and a limp, who walks with the aid of a walking stick topped with an axe head and wears a long, curved dagger on his waist, both of which are made of a dull grey metal you'd guess to be bog iron. He's here as a demonstration of both authority and responsibility, and speaks of Vampires in general and Von Carsteins in particular with a quiet and tightly-controlled loathing.
The final major figure to this expedition is more prominent than you expected, as you'd asked the Celestial Order for a skilled Magister or a talented and bold Journeyman and instead ended up with Lady Magister Goendul, who you'd last seen taking on Dragomas in the Obsidian Hall and receiving an Amber Spear through the torso for her troubles. She simply claims to have been working in the area anyway so helping out with this wasn't out of her way, but you can't help but wonder if perhaps she's here to peer over your shoulder and make sure you're not up to anything you shouldn't be. Or, as it is Celestials you're dealing with, there might have been some sort of premonition that may have led the Celestials to believe her presence here was necessary. She has the focused stillness of a cat readying itself for a pounce and moves with the unnatural lightness of one who pays only the most perfunctory of lip service to the pull of the earth. Her robes seem to have started as the standard billowing blue robes typical to her Order, but were then drastically tailored and belted until they could no longer be disturbed by the breezes that constantly spring up around her. A second Lady Magister is an always-welcome increase in magical firepower, but her chief contribution will be focused auguries to guide the picks of the Dwarves.
"The main problem," Thane Thori says as he lays out maps in the shadow of Mount Drakenhof, "is that last time we were here, we did a damn good job of clogging up every egress. Any entrances to the catacombs from above will have many tons of broken masonry atop it, and the tunnel we found that seems to lead into it from below, we blew up. So we either start at the top and dig down, start at the base of the mountain and tunnel in, or we dig through the cave-in we caused in the access tunnel."
Thori looks upwards to the top of the mountain, where Castle Drakenhof once stood. "If we go up the path to where the Castle used to be and clear out a campsite, we'd be the safest from any ambient nastiness that might be wandering around and we'd be able to carefully plan our approach downwards, but we'd also have the most tedious dig to go through."
He looks back down at the base of the mountain. "We could start here and just dig our way right in the direction of what we're looking for - I'm told that there's a
Zhufokri way to point the lads in the right direction. It would be a very ordinary mining operation, picks on unworked stone, very unlikely to spring any surprises on us. And it means we'd be easily able to fall back into the open instead of being trapped in close quarters with anything nasty that might still be prowling around in there. But it also means that if there's anything thinking and organized calling the place home, we won't be able to scout ahead and see what we're dealing with ahead of time, we'll be breaching right into their living rooms."
He waves a hand towards the forest, where the concealed mouth of a tunnel leading to the castle can be found. "Of the three, the tunnels would be the fastest dig, but the riskiest - not just because we might have compromised the structural integrity of those tunnels with the explosions, but because we did so atop a whole bunch of skeletons who'll suddenly become our problem once more if we unearth them. But once we're through that we'd be coming right up through the underbelly."
There's also, you reflect, the question of what you'll be doing during the digging. There's a collection of interesting and important people here, and getting to know one of them will keep you entertained while the Dwarves do the difficult work of carving through rock or rubble.
Approach:
[ ] [APPROACH] Over
[ ] [APPROACH] Through
[ ] [APPROACH] Under
Downtime:
[ ] [SOCIAL] Thane Thori
[ ] [SOCIAL] Cleric Tarni
[ ] [SOCIAL] Abbot Ionel
[ ] [SOCIAL] Lady Magister Goendul
[ ] [SOCIAL] Zhufbar Ironbreakers
- There will be a two hour moratorium. One from each category will win.
- The Celestial Wizard recruited for this endeavour was rolled for here.
