Originally Posted by Blueraven's Grimoire, Day Sixteen
I will not tell Vara or any of the Witherwind Enclave about Iera's father. He did not have a K on him at the time. That's the only detail that will be shared with the Magi, and with Haldreth, who has to be told in order to swear him to secrecy. I checked Iera thoroughly afterwards. She's clear. That's one of only a few bright spots to come out of last night as a whole.
The other is that we have an alchemist worth a damn now. Not to mention a weaponsmith, engineer, construction worker, and anything else you could list under the blanket term 'artisan.' Fidelnor is still jittery and hostile to me, but he's much, much closer to what seems to be the baseline for Wanderers now. Vara chalked up any imperfections in the Zero Step to my desertion. Cessae handled herself well. I told Vara to strike herself. Life goes on.
Except where it doesn't.
T'ema Rinlas died this morning. She was eighteen years old. We stripped the body of arms and armor, then cremated it thoroughly. Two thirds of our number are walking wounded. Quel'thas is sleeping heavily from blood loss, thankfully he wasn't poisoned or anything. Sigel and Warram are my only apprentices who made it through the night unscathed.
Warram's skills at alchemy have blended it to her magic. I think I might have been wrong about her potential combat applications. Fidelnor has taken her as his apprentice, translating Wanderer alchemy into something a tonedeaf Wizard can understand and letting her go from there. She's taken to it exceptionally well. She was the one runing and breaking stones for Sigel last night, up to and including putting runes inside of unbroken stonework. She's going to be a beast in short order and I've ordered her to study up on runes as best she can in the interim. Fidelnor is helping. Their major project right now seems to be updating the Rangers' arsenals, though he apparently mentioned something to Vara about beefing up our present fortifications.
Whatever that means.
Sigel's talents seem to be a combination of Ectomancy and Runic Bypass. His machine gun trick was completely above and beyond anything he should be capable of, but he was able to come up with a way around the limitations and used it to full effect. I may have to teach him what I know of Necromancy at this rate, just so I can have someone else on hand who can fight the undead on their own terms. Vara is not keen to the idea. Neither am I.
Of all my apprentices, Neesal was hurt the worst last night. I slept with her. In the sense of holding her until she fell asleep on her own. She's also, arguably, the furthest along in her development: Her Voice has come in, fully developed and tied directly to her magicks and emotions.
We launched a raid on the ships in the harbor today. The senior Rangers and Vara did most of the work; the rest of us were too exhausted to do anything more than work in support of them. I lost count of how many dead they re-killed, but we did a thorough job of torching the bodies. Vara and Fidelnor enlisted the aid of locals to help unload the ships, once we'd confirmed that the food onboard was mostly just stale and a little rotten. No poisons, no curses.
I will now repeat what I told Vara earlier, shorthand because I've been awake almost forty-eight hours and can't afford to be tired when people need me. Long story, short: Kaverre is a liar, except where the truth hurts more with less risk to himself.
What I saw last night, and the other day when Cessae took a shot at him, was not his real body. That's just the body he likes to use the most. He has something planned. The constant cycle of despair, the efforts taken to make sure the people are alive but weak... That's not sadism. That may be sadistic, but it's not sadism. That's a ritual in the making if I ever saw one. When I get some time to myself, I'll try and figure out what he's doing for real. Until then I can only speculate.
He said he learned his lessons well. And he also told us a few things about our own plans thus far. Most of that could be guessed if you were worried and obsessive enough. I don't think we have a traitor in our midst, but I've taken to stripsearching everyone just in case. Once I checked Vara and Fidelnor, I allowed them to check Neesal. Nobody had a K, nobody carried anymore taint than the background for this hellhole would suggest.
What I know of Kaverre's abilities is this: He has at least two modified forms of Blightcrow's Scattershot Barrier, he can puppet bodies and move at least one body and multiple constituent parts around inside of another including probable teleportation from another place, and he can maintain the puppetmaster act in semi-intricate detail for at least 300 people while simultaneously ordering his undead army around. I'm no longer sure if his auxilliaries are real people or doubles or what.
And he's a liar.
And I'm going to kill him.
I invoke Rule Three, Subsection One, the Rule of Vendetta. I am going to kill the Baron Death Lord Rosven Kaverre.