DM
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.
DM
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.]
[probably not necessary since you have things planned, but i was still trying to see whether it might b possible for Tiaumil to plan an escape based on what the disposal methods for slaves were like in Merdelain. ]
DM
[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?]
DM
[Investigation or Religion check possibly]
Tiaumil
[He's not really religious, so I went with investigation as that made more sense generally.
Investigation = 15]
DM
You'd know that it would depend on status. Nobles would be taken to rest in the halls of remembrance, vast semi buried buildings that can be found within the city. Some are even built within the walls themselves. As to who goes where, it all depends on status, profession, etc.
In villages such as yours funerals would be short somber and end in flames. A body left intact is asking for trouble in the Shadowfell.
As such it is odd that you saw the dead being disposed of so casually. With a 15 investigation you determine that the river current does seem to match where the skull faced officials took bodies but it is hard to say with any certainty.
Tiaumil
For all that Tiaumil is sworn to his Patron, he really doesn't know much about religious practices at all. He knows about manipulating people just enough to get what he wants, or navigating around them to get the same result, but without his power, there is little he can do.
He looks over his patron-granted tome, pen in hand, but nothing he looks at would offer enough of a chance of escape when he has been left without those powers. One spell from a scroll might be possible, but not for long enough, nor take account of getting past those who deal with the dead. He hadn't recognised their religion, nor grasped their burial practices enough to think it was a good plan, not when 'feign death' only lasted for an hour.
He let out a breath. The collar was, of course, the greatest of stumbling blocks. Without it, he could have done so much more; had so many more options, but that wasn't the reality he currently inhabited. Jergal had sent him here to retrieve information, and it seemed, now that he'd had ample time without the direct lure of new paths to magic spells distracting him, that Jergal must have known he'd be captured. He would have known, as Tiaumil and the group did not, just how powerful the Merdelanian noble houses had become. Knowing that, knowing that he had been sent here to get that brief glimpse of information to his patron, he could guess that was his task done. Jergal had cast him to the Shadowfell as one might throw a leaf into the fire for a brief burst of warmth.
Contrary to many others, Tiaumil did not rail against this. He did not feel betrayed. His dealings with Jergal had always been a transaction rather than a boon. Jergal was playing a long game of some sort, and Tiaumil was just a tool, a pawn, to be used and discarded when it outlived its usefulness, at least in the material plane.
With another sigh, he tucked the book and pen away, and lay back down. He was weary, and his limbs shook with weakness. No opportunity had yet come up that seemed worth the risk of attempting it. The collar remained, and so too did he.
DM
Days later, although to some they would have felt like weeks, you found yourself under a mild compulsion to open and check your tome.
It was a somewhat alien feeling and clearly not something bubbling up from within. The little you understood of the collars didn't make you think it was related to this feeling.
Tiaumil
Tiaumil had always been able to feel if and when his patron relayed something to him through the tome. It had been a long time since he had received any notification from him. There had been no demands, no question, and it had been that, perhaps unknowingly, that had resigned Tiaumil to his current fate.
But he felt it then, slightly muffled, whether through by the collar, the shadowfell, or merely because Tiaumil himself was not in as good a shape. Nonetheless he did notice it, as one might notice the shape of their soul being gently nudged.
He opened the tome.
DM
"Death awaits all. There are many who deny this, who flail and flee.. And meet it all the sooner. I bid you one thing now solus scriptor; survive. Your work is not yet done."
The writing glistens as if written in fresh ink but it does not smudge on the page you have opened the tome on.
Tiaumil
Squinting against the darkness of his cell, he read those words by tilting the tome just enough that the glistening of the ink caught the sliver of light from the cracks in the door. He read them, and then again, letting their meaning sink into him and reaffirm his task, interested, despite the weariness, what Jergal had for him to perform yet.
It was a puzzle, one that took the shape of the drawn out death and changed its trajectory.
Survive. It did not sound as though it was a demand for him to escape this current place, not with those words. To survive when death hovered was an endurance rather than a race. To survive meant to minimise risk, and so he more fully discarded some of his more precarious potential plans.
"Your will shapes my intention. I understand."
After that message, Tiaumil would cease trying to write scrolls, for that took both pain and his ability to heal better. He did his best to be the downtrodden but useful scribe that the 'Master' of the house demanded he be, and did his best to avoid any further confrontations or situations that would result in beatings or worse. He made himself useful, but forgettable, as much as possible, and endured the hunger and the weakness as best he could.
He would keep his eyes and ears open though, for any information that might be of use, now or later, but for the most part, he played the downtrodden slave that they wished him to be.
DM
Due to your experiences in the last two months you have gained a new ability.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/2254977-patient-scribe
Patient Scribe Your time in the Varesh holdings has tested you both physically and mentally. Striving for so long to create a magical scroll has taught you much about how to use your quill unlocking a new ability. Whenever you finish a long rest, you can create one magic scroll by touching your Quill to a blank piece of paper or parchment and causing one spell known to be copied onto the scroll. The chosen spell must be of 1st or 2nd level and must have a casting time of 1 action. Once in the scroll, the spell’s power is enhanced, counting as one level higher than normal. You can cast the spell from the scroll by reading it as an action. The scroll is unintelligible to anyone else, and the spell vanishes from the scroll when you cast it or when you finish your next long rest. As with parchment, the spell can be scribed onto skin, but if the skin is on a living being, then the spell leaves the skin dead in the aftermath until the person or creature completes a long rest. |