(RP33) Slaves

You lost.

The Shadowfell is known to be a treacherous place at best, let alone in the midst of an empire that was already cruel before the harsh talons of corruption dug in.

And yet, you persevered. You broke out of the tower that became your prison. You found your erstwhile companion, albeit slain. You travelled the treacherous lands and survived it's monsters.

You even took down a Merdelain noble, an overseer who's cruelty and corruption was even more than usual. You found allies and soon you sailed towards Merdelain itself.

One with a mission to learn for themselves but also their patron. Another to satisfy the flames of vengeance that had been lit. Another yet to stop the harm that would be caused if no one acted. Another that sought to find ultimate power. And finally, a new addition, one who sought to fix a story that had been told wrong.

And yet it all came to nought before the power that Lady Qoledre of the Sarina house held. Her eyes had been upon you from the moment the tower went dark. The aboleth that tried to dominate your minds was simply a test to see if you would be worthy slaves.

She appeared on your ship, casually healed the corruption that threatened to transform you and then froze time itself. Barely able to move your eyes you watched as she telekinetically placed collars, similar to the ones you saw upon the captive sorrowsworn, readied to spring around your necks when time resumed for all.
One was able to defy her will buy paid the price. Effie, using the remaining power that was in her blade, spoke a wish. She voiced her secret desire, a purely selfish one. She wanted the power of the stone. But as Ularan had said when he had bestowed the blade to her, boldness can win you favours but can also lead you to…pain.

And so, Effie was not captured, the collar meant for her springing through the air where she had been. Instead what used to be her was transmuted, shaped and taken to the Ruinstone. It's powers were now hers. She was the Ruinstone. And there she sat, an unmoving stone… For now.

Angered, Qoledre turned her glower upon the rest of you. But her grimace turned to a small smile as Kael, Tiaumil, Arya and Siax all bend the knee and bowed to their mistress. All the collars had found their marks.

A speck of fire rushed out of Arya, the wildfire spirit readying to free it's master but fizzled out to nothingness as the hind between them, the magic needed to sustain it's flames fizzled out due to the collar.

And it was then you journeyed with Qoledre, magically being teleported by her to the entrance of the city. Citizens gawked as she walked over the bridges, heading to the main spire. And although your actions were in her complete control you could not help but notice how many bowed as you crossed the bridges. Not for you, for her. She had once more protected Merdelain, taking out these would be assassins.

Months have passed since then.
Miraculously you are all still alive, if separate from one another. For the first while you were kept together tortured so they could discover your aims. Their practice of these means was honed to an edge over millenia and although you all possessed great will you told them what your aims had been. After that there was no use for you but you were too much an unusual and exotic creature to be dispatched.

And so one by one you were taken by various interested parties. Freedom became a distant echo.

---

[Each of you will be sent a private message by me detailing where you have been taken. We will have the opportunity to both work together to make this something suitable for your character.

This applies to everyone. All items you have carried, magical or otherwise have been taken. Please make a separate container on dnd beyond, call it “Items Taken” and add everything in there (or ping me and I can do this happily.) Do not equip anything from there.

All you have is
- Collar
- Clothers

Best of luck.]

You have been delivered into the care of Lorien Varesh, a minor noble and obsessive archivist.

You quickly realised that your mere existence offended him and it was why he had worked his way to acquire you. Knowledge is his domain and to see you, a mere peasant dare reach such heights, far beyond your station, outrage him.

And as such he seeks to break you. You are a tool to him. For most hours of the day you are made to catalogue the vast amounts of information needed to run Merdelain. Trade information mostly, surplus and demands. Petty grievances and funds allocated.

You write on magical scrolls that to update their counterparts elsewhere. It is this way that the Empire is kept organised.

You are used to writing but this, this doesn't need any of your own mind, merely your practiced hand. The excitement and joy of recording arcane knowledge or of uncovering something new is not present here.

When not writing you are kept in a small chamber, barely large enough to be called a cell. Your robes are threadbare and do not keep out the cold. The food you are given is clearly more suited for the estates animals than an elf and your body, never the strongest now slowly withers with starvation. And yet you still survive.

Reflect, Tiaumil: what has this life of enforced subservience done to you? How do you endure the subtle humiliations and constant scrutiny? What thoughts, ambitions, or secret rebellions occupy your mind as you are treated as a living curiosity? Months have passed, you are not sure how many.

Your blood quill has been left to your possession, it likely being thought a simple writing implement.]

Tiaumil

Tiaumil is from the Shadowfell, and he knows the city Merdelanians enough to understand what his treatment is likely to be, and the reasons. This wouldn't come as a surprise to him. Information retrieval is his purpose, but also the thing he is most skilled at, even without magic.

He is also used to talking in such a way to curry favour, or at least minimising the impact on himself as much as possible. In the past, he used it largely to deal with stuck-up wizards in candlekeep and the like, but he would have been able to turn it to trying to keep the worst of behaviours from triggering in his owner. He doesn't care about the pride associated with bowing and scraping wherever needed. Survival is more important.

He would know that there would need to be time between being captured and any possible escape long enough for his presence to become more background. The thrill of having a new slave to torment would wear down a little, and that would need to be balanced with his own health enough to pull something off, whether his escape or otherwise.

I think that Tiaumil had always been aware that the chances of getting out of the shadowfell alive were relatively slim. His weakness has always been the lure of magical knowledge, and Jergal knew what to dangle in front of him to get him to agree. But he knows better than to go back on a deal, or not fulfill it if at all possible. He is learned enough to know what can happen to warlocks if they utterly fail at a task for their patron. Jergal may or may not go down that route, but better safe than sorry.

So I think his primary aim would not be to save his own life, but to complete his tasks for Jergal. He is not suicidal, and he hasn't given up, but that would come first. He knows, after seeing what happened to Idris that despite the towers, a claimed soul is taken by those that claimed it. He is therefore reassured that even should he die in Merdelain, Jergal will take him. So yeah, I think he will primarily be concerned with seeing to his task for Jergal.

Therefore, if he managed to find parchment enough to make a scroll without being noted, the first thing he would try to do wouldn't try to kill his keyholder, but potentially use it in order to write the ritual to summon his warlock book of shadows, because he can write in that to update Jergal with what he has learned from watching and listening where he is.

Depending on how noticeable that would be, would influence when he tried to do that.

He wouldn't be able to cast the spells in the book, but he could still write in the god-given tome.

Accumulating the materials you needed was a painstaking task as you not only had to avoid being seen but also fight against your own body.

When commanded to do something the only way you could do something else is by finding a way to convince your own mind that it was relevant somehow.

Perhaps it was this blocker that caused you to be seen one day, grabbing remnants of parchment.

Coming up with a lie so convincing that you could fools yourself was the hard part, it was no wonder your justifications worked when applied to others.

You retained the parchment and were not found out but sensing some sort of dishonesty (not that an excuse was needed) Lorien Varesh had you beat.

[You are able to summon your book of shadows and keep it hidden. However at the start of the next session you start injured with only 75 hp.]

Tiaumil

The writing on the book is not in Tiaumil's beautiful and well-crafted handwriting, and yet still done by his own hand; pain producing ink from a pen they had not thought to take from him. It seemed foolish to leave a slave with a sharp object, and one that was magical, and so he had to believe that its nature had been hidden and perceptions subverted by the one who crafted it. Bloody and pained from the most recent beating, mostly starved and exhausted, Tiaumil's writing in the dark of his tiny chamber was not at its best.

We were captured on the boat to Merdelain. Qoledre of the Sarina house. Too powerful for us after fighting a sickened aboleth she controlled. She cast some manner of greater restoration, and then Time Stop. Collared us all. Split us up. I only managed to regain your book now from a crafted scroll.

Much as he had done before, he would update on anything he had noted that might be of use to Jergal, as he had done before on the boat just prior to their capture. Anything he had seen, heard, or noted about what had been going on, anything of use, he tried to write it, though for each word written the pain searing up his arm only grew in strength, sapping him in trade for a pen to work without ink. Finally though, he had noted all he could.

Just then, he did not have the strength to write more, even if he'd had more to write, and so instead, he pressed a bloody thumb under the words, barely able to see in the almost complete darkness of the room, but seeing just enough to note the words fading, as they always did, from the pages of the book. Months, it had been, and there was little to report that he had not done prior to capture. But at least now he could try and recuperate at least a little. With his book in his possession he had a far greater pool of spells by which to craft a scroll… if he could find the energy. Not that day though. Today all he had left in him was the wish for sleep before he was once more called to start yet another day of mind-numbing tediousness. It was certainly a far cry from his life back in Candlekeep.

—

[I know that being trapped and powerless in Merdelain was meant to be his greatest fear, we saw that from Ularan's book trap, but I figured that Jergal's intervention there was a reminder that his patron is always there, and the blood quill is a reminder that Jergal's power and his expectations do not cease merely because Tiaumil cannot currently access his power. He is still hating all this, and he fears that this is the end for him, but considering his continuation after death is at stake depending on how pleased Jergal is with him, i figured he'd prioritise Jergal over immediately trying to escape.]

[Depends on who dies. A noble? Full burial. A slave? They get carted away by these cowled folk wearing a skull mask. The whispers are that they are used but how and in what is unknown]

Tiaumil

[Ah, i wasn't sure since we saw dead just randomly dumped by the water earlier. He would have been paying attention to things like that. Would it be possible to do some sort of check to see if he could work out more?]

[Investigation or Religion check possibly]

Tiaumil

[He's not really religious, so I went with investigation as that made more sense generally.
Investigation = 15]

Tiaumil

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