March 1, 2026
1 Khordrak, 826
Far from the driving rains of Dastrux City, the winter wind drove stinging flakes into the faces of Ormar and the driver. The latter, a groom of House Swallowtail’s stables named Halfarin Cairwyn, muttered that the wolves were approaching again. Sure enough, those with less than elven hearing began to hear the howls a few minutes later.
The wolves had been pursuing the enormous covered sleigh for three days, longer than any pack should have pursued so large a target. Ormar peered into the whiteout, but could make out nothing beyond the tall rumps and long swishing tails of the houndbears pulling the sleigh.
Muffled by the snow, the report of a musket sounded from the top of the sleigh. Theodwine dropped down to report that had missed his shot. He and Ingweald, both kinsmen of Ormar from the piedmont of Varn Lodihr, are members of the Order of St. Walker, dedicated to the protection of travelers.
Gunter opened the aft door of the sleigh and loosed a warning shot at the wolves. Ormar came back to join him and hit one of the wolves with a well-aimed firepot. The wolf burned, loped five more paces, and then died, but the rest came on.
A black shape loomed on the bank of the frozen lake. It was a ghost stone, a crude stone- or copper-age statue of an ancient warrior, a spear in his hand, the other raised to pull either a hood or long hair away from his face. The ghost stones ring areas hallowed in ancient times by the priests of the Night Ghost tribe, ancient inhabitants of the Nachtgeistmark.
It was to the unease of everyone in the sleigh, then, that at the border marked by the ghost stone, the wolves stopped, watched for a moment, and then slipped away.
Smee climbed beside the driver’s seat and stared at Scheffelden. The city is built on a promontory projecting into the lake, with a small harbor on the downstream side. A modest stone keep rises from two-thirds of the way along the promontory, built on a patch of solid rock jutting from what is otherwise mostly a gravel bar.
A year before, when Viraesse departed from Kothar’s secret fortress to return to Scheffelden, she came to Smee and gave him the choice of whether to come with her or stay with the party. “You’re your own goblin,” she reminded him, having helped him kill his bullying tribe’s mother and escape. Smee hemmed and hawed, but decided that Ormar, being hurt worse, needed him more than Vira did. Smee asked her to make him a goblin promise that they would see each other again. She burst into tears, and told him that she could not, as the world was full of dangers. Smee burst into tears as well, but he couldn’t leave Ormar. “My friend Ormar needs his sneak buddy,” he decided.
Their sometime patron and powerful dragonblooded paladin, Kothar the Teacher, had told them that an ally would be waiting for them in Scheffelden. They expected to see Vira, but when the sleigh pulled up, the only people they met were the harbormaster and a halfling woman.
Halfarin dismounted and began arguing with the harbormaster about stabling the houndbears. One of the bears pushed its head against Gunter, and he scratched its floppy dog ears. The other bearhound ended the argument by sitting on its haunches, raising one paw, and promising, in decent Western Tradeglot, that they wouldn’t cause any trouble and just wanted to curl up in a pile of hay and sleep until spring.
The halfling woman was wearing a Legion longcoat with the unit patches torn off and holding a sign with Ormar Tiller’s name on it. She introduced herself as Optio Hilda Butler of the 10th Cohort, Hellstalkers Legion.
Ormar asked who sent her and she answered with the Margrave’s title. Ormar muttered that he was going to kill Kothar and gave Hilda a stern warning against Hellstalkerish behavior.
As the Torchbearers went up to the keep, they saw that the weather and darkness were quieting the city and filling the taverns early.
At the keep, they met Margrave Heinrich Talhain, who greeted them enthusiastically. They asked what had happened in the past year. He told them that the Scheffelden had spent much of the time rebuilding from the siege by undead wights. The Scarlet Kingdom, the bandit group that once killed Gunther’s husband, has become active again. Tethyk, once driven away, had not shown his hand again, and neither had the rukkator (who, once having been betrayed by Tethyk, were greatly weakened both before and by his defeat.)
Heinrich offered the Torchbearers rooms at the keep, which they gladly accepted. He asked them if they had seen Viraesse, as she was supposed to meet them, but they had had no word. They went to bed.
2nd Khordrak
The Torchbearers went to visit Thasinia, a former dark mirror of Viraesse whom the latter had helped back to the light. Called to the paladin’s path by Ukhuthu’ak, god of war and memory, she has opened a training hall within the city.
As the torchbearers descended through the city, they saw wreckage from a widespread brawl.
Reaching the hall, they found Thasinia sparring with a pair of young shirtless men. They talked with Thasinia, who told them that the brawl had been between supporters of Viceroy von Stettin and Herzog Arnoltz. She asked if she could introduce them to Symon, a young man who romanticized the adventuring life, and either dissuade him from it or train him to survive it.
She also told them that most of the civilians from their former home base, the village of Hazelwatch, had relocated to Scheffelden, and several of the city’s wood elves had in return moved to Hazelwatch to guard it. Some of the Hazelwatch inhabitants in the city included Gowry Farmer, whom they once positioned to take over the Imperial Bank of Scheffelden when they learned it was about to fail, and their old friend and mentor Vicar Aleena.
Aleena, who was an adventurer before the wizard Bargle the Infamous put her in a wheelchair, closed her notes when the party came in and greeted them warmly. They discussed the wolf attacks, which outlying villages have also been suffering, and the mood of the city. Aleena suspected that last night’s brawl was the release of tension that had build up over the long and abnormally wet winter.
Aleena also told them that the snow has left many of the villages isolated for months, and some of them are running low on crucial supplies.
The Torchbearers returned to the keep for lunch, where they found Viraesse waiting for them. She said she had been delayed by white apes ranging south from the mountains. She has gathered a few dozen allies and established a war camp on the former site of Tethyk’s manor, which was itself built on a sanitarium sacred to the powers of elemental water.
Vira told them that she has also been having trouble with wolves. She has a few tasks that the Torchbearers might complete, but she was unwilling to order them perhaps to their deaths. She wants to, as the prophecy commands, raise a fastness on the site of her warcamp. This would involve clearing the lairs of nearby monsters that would raid civilian workers at the construction site, establishing a communications network with the nearby villages, and securing sources of construction materials.
The Torchbearers begin preparing for an expedition to establish contact with the outlying villages by bringing them medicines from Aleena. They plan to recruit Symon to the postal service, giving him a middle ground between stable work and an adventuring career.
