Carefully planned parenthood

[Charha]

Occasionally the necromancer Darrol Argeledougal visits Vesper. That's where his old master used to live. The gloomy apprentice is done going through the ruins of the old necromancer's run down mansion. Sadly, these days it's nothing more than a pile of rubble. He should just accept the fact that there is nothing to return to... Today, however, in the streets of Vesper he encounters something unexpected.

The last time he saw Eric Shadowblade, the man was acting very strange. The Wayfarer necromancer only meant to pay a brief visit to the headquarters when he saw Eric butchering an old nag of a horse right there in the middle of a street. Next, without any warning, the man grabbed Darrol by the collar of his robe and threatened him grimly: "Now listen carefully, Darrol. If you ever even consider meddling with Ripkin's business again, I will gut you like that old horse right there."

Ripkin had friends everywhere these days. Who next? Alex? Or Darrine? It was upsetting to see Eric suddenly so protective of the alchemist. What's with all this bullying, anyway? Ripkin already made it very clear that Darrol wasn't welcome in her sight. Be as it may, Darrol thought it was the wisest thing to flee the scene. And so it was! Not much later Darrol and his lady friend Shira heard that on that very same day Eric had gone on a rampage, threatening both Thoran and the former guildmaster Morgain as well as his wife Charha. There had been a fight. The guildhouse door was broken down pretty badly and there was a big dent in the wall across the street. For whatever reason, Eric had left the guild in a very explosive way.

All this considered, Darrol freezes on his tracks as he sees the man riding a horse across one of the many bridges in Vesper, beaten and bloodied. Looking almost like some... Crazy murderer... A shiver run's down Darrol's spine. He half expects the man to grab his sword as their eyes meet. Instead, Eric simply greets him with a weary smile. "Hello, Darrol. What is it? You look like like you've seen a ghost." He doesn't seem to remember anything about what happened earlier at the guildhouse. As Darrol carefully addresses him about how he held a blade against Morgain's throat, he seems genuinely horrified.

"I did WHAT? You're serious about this? I... I... Oh gods, what have I done", the man wails miserably, barely managing to stay on his feet. He tells Darrol that he has no recollection of his actions and that he only remembers not being able to sleep very well, that he had terrible nightmares filled with snakes and brimstone, and that he bought potions from a certain alchemist to help him sleep better. After that the last thing he remembers fighting off some brigands near Vesper.

What was that about an alchemist? Would that be Ripkin? No, Eric tells Darrol that this alchemist was not her. Darrol remains wary. He knows all too well that Ripkin is a manipulative creature with a shady past, and that for some reason when Eric snapped, he seemed obsessed with her. But the dumbfounded warrior swears that he would never come between Thoran and Ripkin. Why, they even have a daughter! By now it's obvious that the man is in shambles. Darrol isn't sure how to comfort the weeping man. Even if he was under some vile spell, he is not out of the woods yet. He's got his guildmembers pretty shaken up, angry and confused.

"I can't believe that I've... That I've done all this that you speak of. But if Thoran wants to put me on trial, I will not object", Eric says with a heavy sigh. "Here, please, take my sword and hand it to Thoran as a gesture of my remorse. I want to apologize for the horrible things I've done. I will stay here in Vesper. I don't know what else to do."


"Um, Alright. I will talk to Thoran and Morgain on your behalf", Darrol promises. "I'm afraid that's all I can do for you. It did seem unlikely to me that you'd be the kind of person who would snap like that... But uh, I believe we're missing a few pieces of the puzzle."

And those puzzles parts are probably in Ripkin's pocket. If only Darrol could put an end to that fiend without burning his own fingers in the process. For now, all he can do is to minimize the damage she causes. He advices Eric to keep a low profile for the time being. He tucks Eric's longsword under his arm and recalls back to Britain. Now he needs to find the guildmaster.

Back in Vesper Eric smiles to himself. That went better than he expected. He sure plays the scrawny little necromancer like a fiddle...

[Morgain]

It's been one of those days again, but Morgain is finally asleep.

Eric Shadowblade limping back to Britain, almost collapsing from exhaustion, was about the last thing the ex-guildmaster of The Wayfarers was expecting to happen toady, even after Darrol had mere hours ago brought him Eric's sword as his way of making apologies.
And to think that the man had thrown his life at Morgain's feet like that, urging him to slit his throat if he so desired.

Well, Eric was sitting in a jail cell now, considering his deeds, and while rest did not come entirely easily, Morgain is finally asleep.

However, it's going to be one of those nights again.

In his dream, Morgain finds himself standing in a circle of light in the midst of impenetrable darkness. Under his feet, the familiar smooth cobble of Britain's streets. In front of him, four figures frozen in time. His eyes are drawn first to Charha, there in her dress, with a distressed look on her face, arms drawn close to her chest and hands covering her mouth. Morgain follows her gaze to Eric, standing maybe ten paces away, looking bewildered and menacing. In his hand a dagger, pressed against the neck of another figure he's grappling with his free hand. Curiously, Morgain understands that the other figure is he himself, and it's as if he had somehow slipped out of his own body to observe the scene from afar. "Dream Morgain" has his face twisted in a pained grimace, his eyes wide, shooting a desperate look at the fourth and final figure present at the scene. Thoran, forming the third point of a nearly unilateral triangle, has his arms stretched to the sides, his mouth open as he's hastily casting a teleport spell which would in mere seconds prove vital in defusing the perilous situation. On Thoran's head, for some reason, Morgain can see a bright yellow wreath of laurels, which strikes him as odd, yet not exactly out of place. Well, not out of place, but...

Morgain takes a moment to observe the scene. The air is still. Absolutely nothing moves within or outside of the spotlight. It all reminds him of a chessboard, suspended mid-game. Everything is just as he remembers it from the fateful night. He knows the events that lead to all this, and what comes after, but... Something's wrong.

Morgain walks up to Charha, right past Thoran, Eric and his frozen dream self. He brings his hand up to stroke her cheek, but just as soon as his fingers as much as lightly brush her, it's as if her legs give up under her and she collapses on to the earthen dirt floor. Ropes crawl from behind her back like snakes and bind her arms even closer to her chest. A blindfold now covers her frightened eyes.

Through this all, Morgain feels uncannily calm and collected. She feels bad for Charha, and wants to help her, but something else is still wrong and in need of his attention.

He walks up to Eric next. The olive skinned, dark haired man has an almost rabid look about him, blade held firmly against Morgain's dream double. Reaching his hand towards his immobile self, Morgain tries to grab Eric's blade, but as soon as he touches the dagger, Eric's form suddenly disappears, only to blink back into existence a few feet away, between Morgain's doppelganger and the prone figure of Charha. Eric's expression does not change, but instead of holding up a knife he's now marching towards Morgain with a sword drawn, with obvious intent to hurt him.

Morgain considers the changed setting for a moment. Everything is starting to come together now, but things are still wrong. For one, there's someone still here who does not belong.

Morgain can't help but feel a pang of guilt, as he grasps the wreath of laurels and removes it from Thoran's head. He knows he has all the right in the world to do it right now, but it still does not sit entirely right with him. Thoran is the guildmaster now, after all. Will be. Would later be. It's getting confusing, Morgain needs to focus. Dream Thoran is already fading into nothingness before his eyes.



Returning to his frozen dream-self, now stuck in an awkward pose supported by invisible hands, Morgain gently places the wreath on its head. At once, the apparition shifts into a more defiant stance - sword and shield drawn and at the ready. He looks so much younger now, too - the few strains of gray hair vanishing, a few little wrinkles smoothing away. All in all, Dream Morgain looks fully prepared to take on his adversary, who... has undergone quite a dramatic change himself.

In place of the dark-haired Eric, there now stands a blonde man in a flowing, crimson red robe, looking just as angry and frenzied as Eric had been a moment ago, coming towards Morgain with a blade drawn.

"Yes, I remember you. I remember it all now", Morgain says aloud as he gets into grips with the altered scene. Charha lying there, bound and helpless. Himself, with the sword he would later hand down to his daughter. And there between them, Zineon the ranger, back from the early days of the guild, years ago, looking precisely the way Morgain remembers him from when so much of this went down, almost to a script. The familiarity of it all sends chills crawling all over Morgain's spine.

Quite abruptly, the circle of light closes in on Morgain. Left now in the diminishing spotlight is he himself, towering over Eric on his left and the red-robed man on his right, both on their knees before him, their furious expressions now those of guilt, sadness and humiliation.

"Punish me", pleads Zineon.
"Slit my throat", encourages Eric.

Morgain realizes he's now holding something. They weren't there a moment ago, were they? In his right hand, a whip with nasty thorns and knots, all the better to flay the flesh off its victim's back. In his left, a dagger of finest kryztal ore, sharpened to its extreme and thirsty for blood. The two kneeling men repeat their requests once, then twice even louder, and then it all becomes an echoing chorus of begging and pleading and urging and apologies. By now, Morgain's head feels like it's about to explode. And then he lets go. The instruments of punishment slip from his hands, clatter on the ground and dissolve into ashes. Everything is silent again, except for...

-clap-

-clap-

-clap-



Yet another figure approaches from the darkness, clapping slowly, deliberately, sarcastically at the performance. Morgain is unable to focus on his face, but he knows exactly who is coming, and even without seeing he can tell that she's smirking. Ripkin walks over to the two broken men in front of Morgain, and without a word lifts them up to their feet with surprising ease. With one final cock of the head and a wink, Ripkin leads the pair of them, still mumbling apologies under their breath, out of the light and into the darkness beyond.

And then Morgain is wide awake, lying next to Charha in the small upstairs bedroom of Britain's first inn. His pulse is pounding. The memories are flooding back, the dots all connecting in his mind.

Come morning, he would need to have a serious talk with Charha. And then another one with Thoran.

[Charha]

Charha the Gypsy has been meaning to take a good look at her tarot cards. She inherited the deck from her late mother years ago, and even though the cards are a little faded by time, she believes they have powerful magic within. Sometimes, when she is confused or frightened, curious or just bored, her mother speaks through the cards.

During these last few days Charha and her husband Morgain have been occupied by strange happenings by the Wayfarer guildhouse. Charha was surprised to see Ripkin, who used to travel the world with Charha's band of gypsy friends during her teenage years, long before she even met Morgain. These gypsies were a colorful, curious lot, and sometimes they got in trouble. Eventually they scattered like embers in the wind, and apparently Ripkin ended up working in a bar somewhere. Charha recalls that Rip had been a different person back then with stronger and more masculine features. She could have easily passed for a man. Who knows, maybe she drank enough incognito potions to lose some of that edge? One thing is for sure: she hasn't aged a day.

And now she's apparently married or sort of married to Thoran Ravenwing, the guildmaster of the Wayfarers. She seems to be doing alright. She is an alchemist these days, of all things, and apparently quite good at that. But Charha's been hearing some bad things about her, and she feels like there's more to find out.

After drinking almost half a bottle of red wine all by herself, Charha thinks she is in the right mindset for spreading out the cards. The Star Guide spread is particularly good for exploring specific questions. These cards see everything... Or so she would like to believe. Alas, tonight everything seems muddled. The flickering candlelight makes the shadows around her move in a way that makes it hard to concentrate. She turns the cards one by one, but they offer no insight. There is the hermit together with the hierophant reversed, but Charha already knows that there's confusion in the guild. The cards repeat themselves, the same obvious patterns and people, and the fortune-teller is none the wiser.

After three different spreads of cards Charha gives up. She takes a long sip of wine and leans back in her rickety chair. She is already feeling the effect of the alcohol to the extend that it distracts her thoughts quite a bit. She picks up the cards, shuffles them and turns them in her hand, admiring all the familiar paintings. The cards make her happy and take her back to times when her feet felt a lot lighter and life was easy. Even though the world was smaller, she thought she knew it all back then, but the gypsy road is long. Now that she is older and perhaps a little wiser, she misses her mother a lot. The gypsy enchantress used to tell her such wonderful stories.

As Charha flicks the cards one by one, lost in her thoughts, she suddenly comes across a card that shouldn't be in the deck at all. It's a red knight on a black horse. The card has no name. How'd that get in there? She flips another one. This time it's a man in blue. Next up there's a cat and duck of some sort. They are like pictures from a story book for children. The rest of the cards are familiar to her and exactly the same as before. Is someone playing tricks on her or is her mother trying to tell her something?



There's a man in red and a man in blue... And a black cat chasing a golden goose? That's not making any sense.

[Thoran]

Ciara sleeps calmly in Thoran's arms. He gently pets Ciara's hair and can't but think what has happened during the last few days.

He had sent a pack of wolves to track Eric who was in fact found near a cave in Vesper. The very same day he heard back from the wolves, Morgain came before him with similar news. Eric had tried to make amends with Darrol and turned himself in to the guards in Britain. Morgain also presented Eric's sword that he had given as a sign of remorse. Thoran didn't think much of the gesture, but decided to go and check on Eric nevertheless.

Eric had been in a battle, which had left him with a large wound that had almost slipped his shoulder in half. He had been temporarily moved from the jail cell to the healer’s house where Darrine was overseeing his treatment.

Thoran did not know what to think when he saw Eric and Darrine. Strong rush of disgust flooded over him when he saw the madman being treated, but at the same time he felt pity for him. Would it be possible that he truly was resentful? Could it be that he was poisoned or even worse, under some spell?

Thoran looked at Darrine, who calmly tried to aid the delirious madman. Thoran saw the future of the guild in her. Someone who could put aside everything that had happened and only do what was right. Help a dying man. Thoran and Darrine exchanged few words of Eric's condition before Darrine finished for the day. Neither of them knew what the odd black liquid was that oozed from the wound, but concluded that binding the wound is top priority at this point.

As Darrine left, Thoran stayed for a while and stared at Eric. Thoran struggled to say anything, especially since Darrine stated that he'll most likely hear everything. Eric uttered a few words from which Thoran could identify "forgive". After that he quickly left, while pondering on the matter.

Thoran carefully reaches for his pocket and picks up a worn letter. "Lots of ardent kisses, Rippy" is written to the bottom of it. Thoran reads the letter over and over again and stares at the attached drawing. "Who is Zineon?", he whispers. Thoran inhales and few tears drop on the letter.



Suddenly Ciara shifts in his arms and coos. Thoran quickly wipes his eyes and returns to his earlier task, petting Ciara's hair. Ciara however is up and active. Thoran is caught by surprise as Ciara grabs his beard and babbles.

"Dada."

[Charha]

So who is the man in blue? Ripkin knows the old wizard well enough. For the last couple of decades years Mr. Menzora Quedver has lived in Moonglow, focusing on various studies on thaumaturgy, bound creatures, summoning of demons, power through divination and domination - or science, as he bloody well calls it...



And whatever happens, Ripkin doesn't want to return to his clutches. She escaped his house years ago and has so far stayed several steps ahead of the wizard's lackeys and anyone else who might reveal her whereabouts to this old, stern man. She honestly didn't think that he would ever bother to visit Britain. In person.

What a relief Mr. Menzora isn't into sightseeing and that he has no reason to stop by a certain charity guild's door. It's also fortunate that Ripkin has a trusted friend who alerted her to danger.

"Ripkin. We need to talk. Now", Morvenius Silverwind had told her. While Ripkin is always happy to see this sophisticated old gentleman, who just happens to be another well-established magic user and a colleague of Mr. Quedver, the grave undertone in his voice caught her attention immediately. It almost - but not quite - wiped away the persistent little smirk from her face. "Oh, so now you want to talk? Last time we met you seemed happy enough just patronizing me for my questionable life choices..."

"I'm sorry, but there is no time for pleasantries", Morvenius cuts in. "Menzora is in Britain. You have to flee before he finds you."

Ripkin's smile fades. For a heartbeat her human mask flickers. If Morvenius is right, and why wouldn't he be, this is serious. She has to get out of here. The alchemist recently bought a boat and named it, half jokingly, The Last Resort. It's almost like this time she was a little bit ahead of herself... She feels like the walls of the Wayfarer guild house are closing in. The floor boards are burning through the soles of her boots; every minute wasted increases the risk of getting caught, ending up scolded and caged, stripped from all power of res publica and the many pleasures of res privata she has so industriously surrounded herself with.

It is now obvious to Morvenius that his free-spirited alchemist friend is shaken by the news. "This is very unfortunate for you", he says. "And especially now that you have a child..."

"Oh, who cares about some goddamn child? I need to bail while I still can", Rip moans. "If the wizard finds me, that'll be the end of me! I'll just leave Thoran a note. Something quick. Maybe I can explain my disappearing act later on in further detail. Maybe fake my own death... again, who knows. At least I'll have something to think about while I run to the docks."



Ripkin jots down a quick note, leaves it on Thoran's desk and bids Morvenius a hasty farewell. She is pleased to find out that her mind works quite well even as her heart races and she scrambles down the street, barely dodging a hay cart and jumping over a confused stray dog. It's okay, she'll figure her way out of this mess, too. She knows she's in trouble, but she has never felt more alive.