Jan 1, 1885
It has NOT been the ideal start to my new career. Things started out smoothly enough. My ticket to board the Zephyr was accepted without incident – although the doormen did give me a bit of a side-eye and examine my credentials extra carefully. The other passengers were too excited about the dirigible to pay much attention to me.
Once we were over the Stonewall mountains, however, disaster struck! The Zephyr was attacked by a pair of flying machines! I couldn’t get good look in the commotion, but they were like nothing I had seen before. Completely unlike the dirigible – actually winged vehicles! I wish I had been able to get a better look at their propulsion mechanisms…
As the Zephyr caught fire, I sought refuge under one of the heavy tables and hoped for the best.
When I awoke I was in a field of wreckage in a mountain clearing. I was bleeding from the head, and a strange man in robes was bending over me. I wasn’t sure what to make of him, but he seemed to be trying to help.
He reached out a hand and healed my head wound. Magick. And due to his attire I assumed him to be an itinerant monk of some sort.
When I was able to stand, however, he claimed that he was here to guide and protect me! He thought I was “The Living One“, a reincarnation of a long dead elven wizard named Nasrudin! I told him the idea was absolutely ridiculous, but he insisted – even though it seemed far-fetched “given than I was a woman and an orc“. I let him have it over that! Asking what exactly was wrong with either! He just stammered that he didn’t mean it “that way”. Sure. They never do.
He claimed that my surviving the crash fulfilled an ancient prophecy. When I pressed him he seemed rather fuzzy on the details of this so called “prophecy”. I asked him if the prophecy mentioned crashing dirigibles, but he just shrugged sheepishly. He said his mentor, Elder Joachim, was staying nearby in the town of Shrouded Hills, and that he would be able to tell me more.
Just what I needed. A prophecy and a fanatic “protector”. But the first order of business – especially with a healer on hand – would have to be searching for other survivors.
Unfortunately all the other passengers we found were quite dead. My survival was indeed looking unique. Then we heard a muffled groan from a pile of refuse. We quickly threw it aside to find a badly hurt old gnome. He was barely hanging on, and had trouble breathing, but insisted on speaking.
He pressed a signet ring into my hands, and told me I must “find the boy and return it to him” and that “the boy will know what to do”.
He raved about how “he of great power” will “return to destroy everything and everyone”, and there were “few of us left”. And then he passed away. Not much to go on, and it was difficult to tell how much of what he said was simply the mad ranting of a dying man. He had a passport naming him “Preston Radcliffe“, and a matchbook from the “Roseborough Inn“. I took both for evidence.
Further searching revealed a dead reporter with a camera. It was damaged, but it appeared as though the photographs might be recoverable. I packed it away for safekeeping.
Further away we came upon the burning wreckage of one of the strange aerial vehicles which had attacked the Zephyr! It was utterly wrecked, but a manufacturer’s inscription was still legible – ‘Maxim Machinery, Caladon“. I didn’t know the company, but it was worth noting. Even stranger was the dead pilot. An Ogre! I would not have expected an Ogre to be able to successfully fly such a contraption, but as Virgil helpfully pointed out – he did not actually “succeed” by some measures. I gave him a nasty look at the comment, but it was really myself I was angry at. I had just casually dismissed Ogres in the same way others always dismissed me.
Virgil insisted that there was a Shrine nearby that would corroborate his story. There was indeed a shrine, but the applicability of its inscription was subject to interpretation. I was NOT convinced. And he was utterly unhelpful in explaining the bit about “the Evil One”.
“And the spirit of Nasrudin shall be reborn on wings of fire in hills shrouded in fog, and fight the last battle with the evil one.”
We continued on, heading towards where Virgil said we could find Shrouded Hills. I was not at all sure about this “Elder Joachim”, but it still seemed prudent to find civilization and shelter before nightfall. Before long we were met by an elven man travelling the other direction. He seemed very insistent about questioning us as to where we had been and what we had seen. Too insistent. I tried to steer the conversation towards his own identity and purpose, but he would not be deterred. Eventually he decided from my dishevelled appearance that I must have been a passenger on the crashed airship, and declared that his purpose was “to ensure there were no survivors”!!
He lunged at me with a knife! But fortunately Virgil proved to be not entirely useless – as he brained the man with his staff. Unfortunately this killed him, so we could not question him further. But I was not inclined to quibble.
Searching the elf led to an odd find. A medallion with a symbol I had not seen before. Virgil did not appear to know what it was either, so I put it with the other evidence. I really needed to find a good library so I could research some of these leads, but I suspected “Shrouded Hills” would be unlikely to provide such a resource.
We had an encounter with starving wolves on the way to the town, but nothing serious. Shrouded Hills appeared to be a small mining town. I knew the type. Just the kind that had claimed my father. Virgil wanted to head to the Inn immediately to speak with Joachim. I wasn’t excited about the idea, but had figured we might as well get it over with. Maybe he would have a more sensible explanation than the garbled nonsense I had gotten from Virgil.
Near the entrance to the Inn we were accosted by a Gnome gentlemen who asked a *lot* of questions about the crash site. He asked if there had been any other survivors, and explicitly asked about other gnomes… He claimed to be William Radcliffe, the brother of Preston Radcliffe, but he was unable to provide a workable description of the man. So I deflected his questions despite his suspicions and said nothing of the signet ring.
In the Inn we went to the room where Virgil said Joachim had been staying… and found it in shambles! Two men lay dead on the floor and the room had been ransacked! We searched the bodies, and each wore an amulet like that of the murderous elf. There was also a hidden note addressed to Virgil. It seemed Joachim had dispatched the intruders himself. He warned Virgil that he and his “new companion” should not tell anyone about the Zephyr crash or anything that had happened there. Rather an obvious conclusion at this point! He also requested that Virgil make his way to Tarant and check the telegraph office there for a new message.
We rousted the Constable – a man named Owens. He apparently served as both Constable and Mayor for the small town.
We felt obligated to at least tell him the Zephyr crash had happened – without mentioning our own involvement. He claimed he would organize a search party in the morning. We also informed him of the dead men in the Inn, but he dismissed them as “travelling hooligans” – and said he would have the coroner clean things up. Altogether a most incurious man – I was not impressed.
But at this point I was quite exhausted. I needed a good night’s sleep and time to let the days events percolate in my head. Tomorrow we would interview Constable Owens more thoroughly, and then see – cautiously – if canvassing the town could turn up any further leads.
Author’s Notes:
I think this impressionist style will work well for Cass. It seems fitting for the setting. And so far GPT has been extremely cooperative with the rendering. CoPilot’s MAI-Image-1 has been doing an excellent job with Cass’s pencil sketches, so that helps lighten the load on my OpenAI credits.
I think rather than planning her character development in advance, as I often do in such games, I will just let her grow organically. She’ll develop the skills she uses and needs as situations in the game present themselves, and we’ll see what this ends up doing to her build. It may not end up being “optimal”. But it will definitely end up being “Cass”.
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