“Guards! Toss them out!” bellows de Evore, the Olympian Ambassador.

“That’s not necessary,” Nicodemo counters, “This is not your party.”

de Evore, as it turns out, is just as happy calling Guillermo a dastard, a cad, a despoiler, and a lump of excrement to be scraped off his boot. Antoinette busies herself protesting her innocence in the whole affair, and Guillermo defends himself against the storm of words as best he can.

Amadeus and Eduardo draw up, not quite certain who to side with, and it’s from all the delightful commotion that Marcello’s attention is drawn.

“Amadeus,” he grits through his teeth, slighting Eduardo through refusing to recognise him.

“Lord Marcello,” Amadeus greets him back.

…

Meanwhile, James enters the party. He does not do so through the front door. He has instead throttled a servant into unconsciousness, and dragged him into a storeroom to strip his clothes for a disguise. The only problem: he’s not the only one who has this idea.

The four bruisers in the storeroom work for Mario Rossi. That Mario Rossi. Yes, the criminal, Mario Rossi. James tries to pass it off. His nod says, hey, I’m doing my thing, you’re doing your thing, we can all get along. Mario Rossi’s men pause to consider that. One of them cracks his knuckles, and that says, with all due respect, we’re doing our thing.

…

Marcello and Amadeus talk pleasantries a bit, Marcello expressing amusement at Guillermo’s situation, until the rage bubbling under his politeness bursts forth in outright insult against Eduardo.

Eduardo attempts to defend himself, with Amadeus’ help, which only seems to make Marcello angrier. A butler comes to stand next to Marcello with a cushion draped with a little cover and a lump underneath it.

“This is all a misunderstanding, my lord,” says Eduardo soothingly.

Marcello reaches a hand for the covered item on the cushion, and suddenly Guillermo knows what it is: it’s a loaded pistol. “Misunderstand this,” he tells Eduardo, and levels the pistol at him.

…

James gets his licks in, and they get theirs in. It’s when each side is reaching for knives that James calls a halt: “I just want to talk to Mario,” he says.

“Really,” Edmundo says.

“Really,” James says.

“So you let me up, and he’ll let you up, and then maybe we can make that happen.”

Ten minutes later he’s with Mario, negotiating to help him with his job in exchange for Mario owing him.

“And what’s the job?”

Mario grins, which isn’t pretty in the slightest. “You’ll see. You’ll like it, if you’re on the out with the ponces.”

“You can believe I am that,” growls James.

“Then we don’t have a problem.”

James looks at Mario, wondering if he can push it. “We don’t have a problem,” he says, deciding not to.

…

“No!” Guillermo yells, and leaps forward.

There’s this moment when the mouth of the pistol points straight at his eye. In that  moment everything seems frozen except for Marcello’s finger tightening on the trigger as the inky depths of the barrel promise lead to Guillermo.

But when the bang goes off the bullet hits marble pillar instead, and Guillermo breaths a shaky sigh of relief. Then the anger comes flooding, and he’s hitting Marcello with the back of his glove, “I,” thwap, “challenge,” thwap, “you,” thwap, “to a duel,” thwap, “sir!”

“Yes,” comes a voice from the mezzanine floor above the three below, “how diverting! A duel!” It’s the Duchess.

…

James holds the little metal clawed thing in his hand. It’s oily, and doesn’t … well, it doesn’t feel right. It feels like it wants to move.

“Shut up,” he tells the noble lord and lady he’s standing over on the bed. They’re half-dressed, and aren’t going to do a thing with James looming over them. The man — whoever he is — is shivering on the edge of tears, and the woman is telling him to do something.

Prove myself on board, James thinks to himself. One little piece of metal, how bad can it be? And it’s for Rossi.

“I’ll pay you to let me go,” quavers the lordling, and that decides James.

“Yeah, right,” and he grinds the little piece of metal into the man’s forehead.

…

“Now works for me,” says the Duchess, her tone screaming for all to hear: I am close to becoming bored.

Eduardo demurs on the behalf of Guillermo, as politely as he can. “The morrow would work better, Your Grace…”

The battle over timing for the duel between Marcello and Guillermo is interrupted by Amadeus: he’s the only one not watching the scrap. The punchbowl is throwing out tendrils of sickly mist, and something is rubbing his senses raw.

On a hunch Amadeus throws over the table, and there’s all the trappings of a sacrificial ritual laid out underneath it: candles, floor markings, skulls, victim and priestess straddling him with her knife.

The words she was incanting are broken, and there’s a pause as the gathered drunken nobility goggle at her. There is no entry for this in Livio’s Words On The Palace. She throws her knife to slow Amadeus down and bolts for it; Amadeus throws the punchbowl. The lump of crystal is as large as an ironbound chest, and as heavy. It breaks her back, and she dies on the spot.

…

James creeps out of his hiding place in the Palace. The alert has long since died down, and he knows his brother and his cousins have long gone. What nobles the Duke and Duchess vouched for have stayed on for more drinking.

Mario Rossi seemed to regard the interrupted ritual as the end of their plan and a signal to loot as many small valuables as they could carry.

“Best of luck,” Mario had said, clapping James on the shoulder.

“What was that thing going to do?” James had asked.

“Ask me no secrets,” Mario had warned.

Now you’re mine, Marcello, James thinks as he slips disguised through the tail end of the party.

“I will have satisfaction!” Guillermo roars at the oncoming triumph.

There are jugglers, and trumpeters, and elephants, and all manner of things celebrating the new Hero of Arcadia: Marcello Treyvalen. He who rode Gaspare the Madman down, bested him at single combat, and rounded up his band of criminals. Those, that is, who he didn’t jelly with their very own firebombs as they tried to put into action their mad plot. He who led the bucket brigade to put out the dreadful fires which ravaged the poor quarter, and personally carried orphans from Signor Modesto’s church as it collapsed in flames.

Lord Marcello is a popular man, a reason for celebration in hard times, and people in carnival clothes are yelling his name and singing dirty limericks about what he’s done for the city.

Guillermo wants to slap him in the face, call him a filthy dog, and then stab him through the heart.

Marcello’s easy to spot at the head of the triumph: white horse, crown of laurel, sparkling jewelry on chest and finger. He sees Guillermo — with Amadeus and Eduardo trying to shout down the crowd — and goes up into the stirrups.

There’s a space in the din for him to point at them, and declaim: “Kidnappers!”

The worst thing is, it’s a lie wrapped up in just enough truth that what he means gets across to the crowd with just that word: he’s pissed with them.

Amadeus can see the start of a lynching to please Marcello the great man unfolding before him. He tips over a cart to make an escape route, and beckons the other two away.

Eduardo sees it too, and is ready to go.

Guillermo’s not. He grips his sword, and shouts louder. A stone whizzes past his ear, and Eduardo picks out of the din the mahout of the elephant being offered a purse of silver to trample them.

Guillermo’s so focused that Eduardo yanking him off balance takes him by surprise, and his look of startlement causes a gale of laughter to break the impeding nastiness.

Guillermo fumes in the alleyway, and decides to try and find a roof to jump down on the triumph from above: he would have made it if he’d been willing to climb through urine sprinkling down from mocking youths who’d already claimed the rooftops.

As it was, he ends up trailing the triumph to the Palace where there is a huge party being thrown.

Amadeus and Eduardo change into finery to make it to the party, and are grudgingly let in; Guillermo has to prevail upon the Olympian ambassador’s daughter, Antoinette, to get him in.

Inside Eduardo meets up with the sly Lord Nicodemo, who delights in painting him as the seducer of Carmilla why else would she be cooped up at Eduardo’s surgery?

Guillermo pours honey into Antoinette’s ear, trying to get her to give him cover to get as far as Marcello. She’s not listening, wrapped up far more in detailing the future she’s mapped out for him: he’ll go to Olympia and get sanctuary from the collapse of his family by giving her father a hefty tithe from the Argentaria fortune.

She’s gazing into his eyes lovingly, having dragged him into a dark corner, having drunk far too much wine for decorum, when the Ambassador storms towards Guillermo.

This is when Amadeus and Eduardo get escorted by the drawling Nicodemo to the Ambassador: when he’s defending the honour of his daughter.

The Ambassador seems to be fighting his urge to call for the Argentarians’ heads, and instead calls, “Guards! Toss them out!”

She tried to poison him.

That’s what Eduardo knows as he chases Carmilla around the room, remonstrating with her. Carmilla is far less shy of raising her voice in the watch house than Eduardo is, but she’s not talking to Eduardo: she’s talking to Guillermo, saying anything, trying anything, to make him believe that she just had to do it.

Guillermo has a headache, and if it were anyone else he’d help Eduardo. Instead somehow he’s helping her, slowing Eduardo down, and throwing her words into his face.

Eduardo gets Carmilla cornered against the bed, and muscles Guillermo aside. Guillermo gives her an “I tried” shrug to Carmilla, which doesn’t improve her mood in the slightest.

“My lady, we are going to have a talk,” growls Eduardo.

“If you dare lay a finger on,” Carmilla says before she’s interrupted.

The door springs open. Father Amadeus and James are there, dark silhouettes against the dim corridor. There’s a beat where everyone blames the cold wind and goosebumps that that are suddenly slithering through the room on the open door.

Then they notice Lady Isabella is sitting up. Her eyes are closed. She looks no better, no livelier than she did a moment ago, except that her fingers are around Carmilla’s throat, crushing the life from her like iron bands.

She tried to poison me, Eduardo thinks to himself as he leaps to her aid, trying to wrestle his aging mother off Carmilla. When he has trouble, Guillermo goes to help.

“My God! What are you doing? Guards! Guards!” bellows d’Anthes from the door as he comes trailing Amadeus and James. “They’re murdering her!”

It looks bad, but Eduardo and Guillermo are doing no such thing: they’re trying to use what should be far superior muscle and getting nowhere against Isabella’s corpse-cold hands.

Amadeus slams the door on d’Anthes, but he’s not quite quick enough.

“Monsters! Come quick!” roars d’Anthes as he’s pinned in the door, heaving against it to try and wedge it open.

James piles on with Amadeus, trying to force d’Anthes out. When that doesn’t work, he slams d’Anthes’ head in the frame. “You know how this goes,” he spits at him. d’Anthes struggles to pull his sword and force his way in that way: James is ready for that. One quick lash of his boot under d’Anthes’ belt has him down on the ground, groaning piteously as the two by the door drag him inside and get the door closed.

Carmilla’s turning purple.

In a simple world I wouldn’t care if she died, goes through Eduardo’s head. Damn.

He picks up the candlestick instead, and aims it at Isabella’s knuckle. It’s just over Carmilla’s larynx, and he needs all of his concentration to get this blow just right.

“Aunty!” shouts Guillermo, not helping.

“Should’ve walked away,” James tells d’Anthes on the ground as he breaks one of his ribs, not helping.

Carmilla’s looking at him with blaming eyes, and her life flickers visibly in front of him. Isabella slumps against her, as cold and unyielding as an iron noose. Not helping.

Amadeus is reaching for words, for some kind of calm, and that is as close to help as Eduardo can find in the room.

He swings the candlestick, and there’s a pop of tendons, and it’s enough to wrest Carmilla out and have her take a shuddering breath.

Isabella’s hands jump to Eduardo’s neck, and Eduardo has an immediate empathy for Carmilla: this hurts. It’s like having pushing a too-large anchor off a pier and finding your foot’s tangled in the rope. He gets spots in front his eyes straight away, and if he could get a breath in he’d be shouting at Guillermo: do something!

Guillermo is cradling Carmilla in his arms though, and trying to revive her.

But Amadeus tries something: “Begone! What crawling infestation, what nauseating tumour: be gone! Hie ye from God’s sight, hie ye from the LIGHT!”

The looming cold shatters, and Isabella slumps back down on to the bed, releasing Eduardo.

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. James leans against the door, “What the hell was that?” he asks.

He jumps, his question forgotten, as the head of an axe comes splintering through the door by his shoulder.

“I will save you, Ispettore!” rings a deep voice. “I will save the Lady!”

James yanks open the door to be confronted with the biggest watchmen in Puglia Station: Manfredo. He wins wood chopping competitions. He sharpens his battleaxe every day. He loves to chop.

“Monsters!” says Manfredo joyfully, and charges at James with his axe swinging.

James, though, knows this dance: he steps inside the swing, and it’s an eyeblink before Manfredo is on the ground with tears in his eyes.

Amadeus closes the door again on the stunned guardsmen who’d been planning to follow in Manfredo’s wake.

“Go and get another axe,” one of them says on the other side of the door, uncertainly.

“You first,” the other replies.

The skyline of Arcadia is painted in red, yellow, and black as they escape through the window: the poor quarter is burning.

“But it’s what I want to do,” says James. “He deserves it. He’s going to get it.”

“James, you can be better than that,” cajoles Amadeus. “To be a man is to set aside wrath for righteousness.”

They’re being quiet. James wants to shout, and tell Amadeus what to walk off of; Amadeus wants to fill his lungs and beat his brother down with strength of his voice. But this door is supposed to be locked, and they’re most certainly not supposed to be here.

Eduardo and Guillermo have left them to it, gone into the corridors of Puglia’s watch station. It’s an old villa — several stories, servants quarters, a cellar, and a courtyard. The front of it blazes with light and the electric blue cloaks of the palace guard.

James pushes down his desire to throttle Amadeus, and tries to hurt him with words instead: “Your church isn’t so lily white as you think, you know. It’s rotten. You know it. Everyone knows it. And you want me to follow its words? Screw that.”

“The words are from God, James, not the church. And I’m not saying this for you, or for me, but for the family. You need to be … more. The family needs you to.”

James looks at Amadeus, and he wants to hit him, or walk away, or something. But they’re here for their Aunt Isabella and he can’t make himself turn away from that. “Fine,” he mumbles. “Whatever you say. I’ll be pure as snow.”

“You’ll do more than that. You will swear to be.”

James never did figure out how Amadeus made it seem like he was doing him a favour to take his oath, and agree to pray on the soul of the church.

…

Guillermo prides himself on his imagination, and yet he’s not prepared for being pulled onto the same bed as his aunt while cherry-flavoured kisses drive away the remaining scent of the scullery maid he’d been kissing just a few minutes ago.

“Carmilla,” he says in a breathing space as he tries to get off the bed.

“Guillermo,” she breathes back. Without words she makes it clear that there will be no discussion of the guilty look she gave on him coming into the room, and the flick of her wrist that crashed the tea cup she’d been holding into pieces on the ground.

“I,” he says, getting distance from Isabella.

“Mmhmm,” she replies, following him.

“Feel,” he manages to add a few minutes later.

“Uh huh,” she says, having turned the lamp off and barred the door without breaking lip contact.

“You’re not,” he whispers as they take a pause to let a pair of guards go by outside the door muttering darkly to each other.

She pokes him with a finger to keep him quiet.

He’s fumbling in the dark for his sword belt a bit later when he remembers he’d started saying something, and finishes it: “… being honest with me,” and winces as she turns her hurt expression on him.

…

Hating this already, James thinks to himself.

Amadeus and he sought out d’Anthes’ chambers, and found him alright: alone, praying for forgiveness in his office.

“I tried, but I just couldn’t,” blubbers d’Anthes. He clutches at James’ knees and his tears soak James’ pants. “My men died and I couldn’t do a thing. What could I have done?”

“You can ask for forgiveness, and receive it,” Amadeus says.

You could shut up, James thinks. “You can resign,” he says instead.

d’Anthes’ breathing stops at that. He comes to himself all in a rush. He scrubs at his face with the heel of his palm. “Forgiveness,” he says. “I’ll take that,” as he stands up. He’s thinking of the money he gets as Ispettore, and grasping for the hope that he can patch up the butcher’s job he made of today.

“I was telling you you were resigning,” James growls, and shoves him back down.

d’Anthes glares up at him defiantly.

James raises the back of his hand over d’Anthes’s face and the little scrap of backbone that the Ispettore had recovered goes out of him again at the threat. When James is sure d’Anthes is going to knuckle under, he smiles, and lashes his hand across the man’s face.

A few minutes later Amadeus is praying for James, and d’Anthes is writing out his resignation.

…

The floor of the guest room that the watch had put Isabella in is a surprisingly comfortable place for an argument.

“Kill Marcello for me,” Carmilla asks sweetly. It’s not the first time she’s said it. That time, weeks ago now, they both laughed as though it was the best joke in the world. Nowadays it’s a warning for him to start thinking how to leave.

“You must have seen something,” he says past her demand. “Tell me. My darling,” and starts kissing her hand.

They fence. She cries. He tries to be stern, but somewhere in there he promises her her husband’s heart, and the story of Olympian cavalrymen quartering at her husband’s Trevalyen town house comes out.

“I swear I didn’t know what they were going to do,” she says with dewy eyes. “I thought I could make Marcello happy by keeping your aunt asleep … but I just couldn’t. Can you forgive me for even thinking it?”

It’s then that Eduardo finds his separate way to his mother’s room, having tried the infirmary first. He stands, looking from the comatose Isabella to Guillermo and Carmilla in dishabille, and he has no words.

Carmilla has words, though. “He hates you,” she whispers in Guillermo’s ear, and throws powder towards Eduardo’s eyes.

The ceilings of the bank foyer are high, and the midday sun filters through the glass windows. It catches the specks of dust that hang motionless in the inside air.

This is James. He is working.

He is working with his fists, pummeling the guts of the only one of four scrawny rich boys who’s still conscious.

He stops, and catches his breath. Lorenzo, the erstwhile bank robber, sobs with relief.

“Now?” James asks him, and Lorenzo starts gabbling again that he’s told James everything he knows. You need to know what he’s saying to really catch it, as every word’s bent and spindled by the pain of breathing, moving, existing.

Lorenzo, like Ottavio before him, only knows this: that they got told there’d be a slim window when the Argentarias would have more on their mind than looking after the money, and the chance of starting over as rich men in Olympia was too tempting to turn up. That the Argentaria family was going to get cut down like that, they had no clue.

“Bullshit,” James says, but without heat. His fists ache gruesomely from hitting these fancy idiots, but he’s damned if he’s going to quit before Lorenzo. He bunches his fist to start in again when there’s a thumping on the door of the bank.

James takes the break, and goes to open the peephole in the great door. ”Yeah?” he asks the princess out there — because that’s all she can be.

She’s Hadean, sure, but noone else could afford that much silk, leather, fur, suede, and feathers in an outfit. The guards bowing to her in a half-circle and the richly dressed vizier is a clue, as well.

She holds out her hand for James to kiss through the peephole. “I am here,” she announces calmly. She’s not ready for what James does: tell her to come back later, and slam the peephole on her.

…

The bedroom of the little house has been stripped of furnishings, and the window boarded shut. The cockroaches are brazen in claiming their ownership of the room.

The stink of blood seeps under the door, from just after they arrived when their captors apparently turned on each other.

This is Guillermo. He is working.

He slumps back from the window where he’s been peering between the boards. “Great,” he says. “Just great. Furious Fiends clanhouse,” he says. There will be no help from the neighbours, not for an Argentaria.

He pokes at the goose egg on his head. “If I just had my sword,” he says.

Amadeus replies, “We should pray.”

Guillermo scowls. “Why’d they start killing each other?” he asks, to try and change the subject.

“Only God knows.”

“Let me know when he decides to share.”

“The footsteps of God are on every path, and on no path for the man with no eyes to see, just as the voice of God sings in every sound, and in no sound for the man with no ears to hear. So look, hear, and be glad of God.”

Guillermo starts to reply, then thinks better of it.

…

“Break down this door, and kill him for me!” says Princess Feyza. James can hear the rage fizzing in her voice through the thick, ironbound door. She did not mind the spectacle of taking the bank’s steps in front of the smallfolk of Argentaria Square, but having the door shut in her face she minds very much.

“My Princess, that may not be wise,” says her vizier, Tolga.

“I care not.”

“An arrangement has been made, my Princess. Please, I beg you, allow me to try. They are barbarians,” he says to mollify her.

James opens the peephole again when Tolga bangs on the door. “Yes?”

Tolga makes his case to James: Feyza’s hand has been promised to an Argentaria, in exchange for what’s been agreed. There is maddeningly not enough specifics to be sure who was promised for what, but the fact remains: the Argentaria family has arranged to acquire a Hadean princess by marriage. James does what seems best: delays. He sends her to a tavern.

She doesn’t like it one little bit, but faced with the prospect of being a spectacle in the square any longer she sweeps away.

…

Amadeus has his ear pressed against the door when he hears the nobleman arrive on the other side of the door. An Olympian nobleman it seems by the way he talks: “Still two at large?”

“Yes, m’lord,” says Sargeant Gaspare, “Waiting on the others to flush them out, and if that fails we have these two at bait.”

The nobleman ponders this, and as he paces Amadeus can hear the jingle of his cavalry spurs. “Close enough could be good enough,” he muses.

“They’re finished, m’lord, if you would take my opinion.”

“Mmm. Take care of these two, and we might get lucky.”

Amadeus has his ear pressed to the door still when he hears what “taking care” means — a booby trap on the far side of the door. He squints, and eyes the stripped bed. With Guillermo he lifts the frame easily, and in his hands it is a battering ram, smashing the door to flinders and setting off the bomb the two cavalrymen on the far side of the door had time to put in place and rig to blow.

There’s a thud, and every bit of glass in the small house blows out into the street.

…

“What the Devil have you been up to?” demands Eduardo of James.

“I’ve been busy!” shoots back James, after letting him in to the bank.

“Busy, is that what they call it,” says Eduardo as his disbelieving eyes take in the mess James has made of the bank robbers. His expression is not helped by James relating his encounter with Feyza. “I wish you were the only one with problems.”

The two hunt high and low for Guillermo and Amadeus, asking everyone they run into on the streets. “The Palace Guard is out!” the people tell them as the streets liven up again.

There’s a dull thump from Furious Fiend territory, and a plume of smoke in the evening sun. Eduardo and James’ eyes meet. They know without speaking that that’s where they need to go.

And, in the light of the small house burning to the ground, with Furious Fiend gangsters swirling around looking for a fight, the four meet up.

“We have to rescue Lady Isabella,” they agree. So there’s the villa of Ispettore d’Anthes: brightly lit, with the palace guard surrounding it, and everyone jumping at shadows.

We open with James tied to a chair, still reeling from the chemical that’d been shoved in his face. He’s in front of the family bank vault with a couple of slight, well dressed, bemasked individuals unlocking it with a giant ornate key.

A key that James knows very well.

A key that Popa Cleto would fight to his dying breath to hold on to.

He flexes his muscles and the chair falls into kindling. The two look back at him and their jaws fall. Their eyes dart to the crossbows they’d left lying on the ground to manhandle the vault door open, but it’s too late. James steps towards them, fists balled.

Meanwhile…

Guillermo is sitting in Argentaria Square, shaking off the humbling he suffered at the assassin’s hands.

Eduardo comes back to him and they set off to find Amadeus together — and the city at large is in turmoil.

There are brigands on horse back cutting across the city, sending the civilians alight with panic and confusion, unsure whether to hide or go to arms. They see the Watch has been called, because they find some of their bodies trampled in the street, and cut down from behind. Civilians too. The Palace Guard is rumoured to be coming out, but noone sees any sign of them.

They duck and run, looking for Amadeus, and find him with his captive in a marketplace that had been set up for the day, and then deserted when it became clear that the streets are a dangerous place to be. The start of a pyramid of oranges is scattered higgledy piggledy around where Amadeus has the killer Augusto in an iron come-along grip.

They see cavalry cut through the streets around them, circling for clues of where they might be, and desperately try to interrogate Augusto under the shelter of a stall. Guillermo gives in to the thrumming of adrenaline and runs him through the gut in frustration when he’s mutely shaken his head enough times. Augusto’s screams are terrible, alerting the cavalry before Guillermo stabs him in the throat to silence him.

At the bank…

James looks up from kicking the unconscious bodies of the bank robbers when a crossbow bolt clatters against the vault door beside him. Lorenzo and Ottavio, stylish bank robbers, have come to the help of their co-conspirators. Ottavio really thought that he would hit with that shot, though, and they’re not sure what to do next.

“Put that *&^%ing thing down, and you won’t get this,” James growls at them and breaks another rib with a dull crunch of a kick. Lorenzo steels himself, and shoots … but his eyes are closed, and this one passes through James’ clothing. Their eyes go wide, and they run for their lives.

In the marketplace…

Eduardo ducks for a bolthole while Guillermo and Amadeus pelt for a chokepoint to take on the cavalry — but it’s too late! They’re encircled, and it’s a time of flashing blades and wheeling horses.  Guillermo is a dervish, all footwork and subtle cuts, and Amadeus soaks every thrust with his shield and drives them back with the threat of a crushing blow.

Eduardo runs from the melee, for help.

In the bank…

James pelts after the two, roaring with rage, and everyone struggles on the slippery marble floors. He pulls the lever which trips the portcullises to come down, and manages to trap himself inside as Lorenzo and Ottavio slide under just in time. They pant with relief on the far side of the bars before realising they’ve accomplished nothing. No silver. No payoff. Whatever’s driven them to this is still hanging over them. Even though daylight is just behind them, they turn back and threaten James with the bomb they’ve put inside to compromise the bank, saying all the want is a modest bag of silver.

James pretends to agree, and catches them both in his bully’s grip through the bars. He grins at them. “You’re going to defuse it, or I’m going to break your lily white hands, boys.”

In the streets…

Eduardo meets Ispettore d’Anthes. He is a large man with ears sprouting a garden of hair. Eduardo demands his help, and offers money: “If I need to pay you to do your damn job, then so be it! Money it shall be, man!” This gets d’Anthes’ back up, and he throws back that Lady Isabella is — suddenly, just this second — his top suspect for the murders that morning.

 Nevertheless they come racing to the scene of where Amadeus and Guillermo were, just a few scant minutes ago, fighting for their lives. There’s nothing there but blood, and trampled mud on the streets.

“I’m not calling you a liar, my lord, but there is nothing here,” says d’Anthes, his bulging eyes and clenched jaw calling Eduardo a liar. “My troop and I are leaving.”

And every second, Amadeus and Guillermo get carried further away by the cavalrymen…

Amadeus and Guillermo meet at Eduardo’s in the predawn: he has coffee in his surgery.

They wait for James, who should be there, but he does not arrive.

Aunt Isabella, even as she pressed the champagne on them the night before, had insisted that they not be a moment late. She was the sort of lady who could smile, offer a rare treat from Olympia, and still make the peril of disappointing her abundantly clear. So they leave without James.

On their way in the predawn there’s a milk cart overturned, and that’s enough delay so they come to Argentaria Square when all is quiet, and shrouded in mist. The stink of blood fills the air, and draws them forward to find the first body: Uncle Adamo, who just last night had told his drunk coachman story for the thousandth time. Never again.

More bodies: Aunt Carola who collected fans, Cousin Arnaldo whose hands looked like a string of walnuts, Popa Cleto who knew every page of the seven books of law, Cousin Cleto whose shoes never matched, Aunt Giacinta, Cousin Placido, Mama Rina. All cut down  and run through, bleeding their last. Everyone who knows the business and day-to-day of the Argentaria Bank.

And one still breathing on the edge of life: Lady Isabella, Eduardo’s mother. Eduardo forgets his training in the shock of the moment, and it’s Amadeus who starts treating her first, with Eduardo joining in after he has had time to shake off the horror of the tableau.

Guillermo stalks the edges of Argentaria Square looking for clues: he finds one, in the form of three horsemen arguing. He gets close enough in the start of the dawn to hear that they are trying to lay blame for who started the massacre without waiting for the last four victims. The one in charge sends the other two on foot and without sword and spear to look for the other Argentarias while he tries a circuit to look for them.

Amadeus and Eduardo pull Isabella from the jaws of death as the city stirs for the day and people start coming into the square. They’re just done as the two assassins blend with the shocked and milling populace, trailed by Guillermo.

Guillermo manages to signal Amadeus, who tries to box the two killers in a counter-ambush. It doesn’t quite go as planned, and a desperate fight between the well-armoured but knife-wielding assassins and the leather-clad duo ensues. Amadeus runs his opponent off and sets off in hot pursuit; Guillermo cuts his opponent but fails to seal the deal. Things look bad when the assassin manages to pin Guillermo on his back. His search for a blade to slit the duellist’s throat is interrupted by a washer-woman cracking a pot over the killer’s head, and he staggers off to lick his wounds.

Eduardo takes his mother to his surgery and stitches her up as best he can manage before he’s interrupted by Carmilla Trevelyan sweeping in — far too early for her normal hours — and assuring him that she had nothing to do with the butcher’s work in Argentaria Square. Nothing whatsoever. And she would be happy to entertain him in a private audience to ply him with food and drink and further impress upon him her innocence.

Amadeus catches his man and throws him against a wall before he surrenders.

We finish with James tied to a chair in front of the family vault, helpless.

I pitched a new Burning Wheel game like this:

You’d play the younger generation of a family bank on the edges of a Kingdom. One night the oldergeneration is brutally murdered, and the jackals start circling. Can you keep the family heritage together, and get vengeance?

We burnt characters, and ended up with these:

• Eduardo Vizzini, noble, doctor to the court of Arcadia, His Lordship from the branch of the family with noble blood
• James “Knees” Argentaria, street thug turned money lender and well known in the Moneylender’s Association, or “Sharkers” as they’re more commonly known.
• Father Amadeus Argentaria, chaplain to the court of Arcadia. He runs St Nicholas’ Orphanage.
• Guillermo George Rodriguez Rodrigues, smuggler turned duellist and notorious ladies man.

Session One:

Failed my Wealth roll. Grandma Nbeke came hunting us. The river turned — and I quote — from “a drinkable brown to something much, much worse: black, oily, and slightly smoking”. And when Dieter ordered people to actually get off their lazy arses and man the walls to get ready for Nbeke, that’s when just how many of them had the fever became clear.

Dieter went aggro on Needles to get her to stim people to get them through the raid; she faked saline on most of the jabs to stop her angel kit being run down too much.

Tarot went hunting Nbeke, and blundered into a trap: Nbeke and two of her gunluggers got the drop on him. Tarot pulled his shotgun anyway, and dared them to throw down on him. She folded and started pulling her people back, but not before telling Tarot that a world of hurt was coming Litterbox’s way and running her off was stupid. When he was walking Nbeke off Litterbox’s land, he found the shattered oilpipe which was spoiling the river. The oilpipe leading towards where the machines dwell.

Dieter read the sitch; he twigged that the imminent plague was his biggest problem, more of a problem than whatever Nbeke might be doing. He also saw that some of Nbeke’s people could be grabbed. He buddied Adelia, his flamethrower ganger, with Needles to start a quarantine. “Whatever you have to do,” he told Needles, and nodded to Adelia. “Fix it.” Needles chose to cajole the sick ones instead of leaning on Adelia, promising them narcostabs and medicine to get them to isolate themselves quietly.

Dieter sent his 2IC, Elmo, in the jeep to grab Nbeke’s trailing retreating folk. They tossed down their weapons rather than risking that Elmo’s gunner’s ancient M60 would actually work. Something about Elmo struck Dieter as wrong: he looked like he might be ready to make a play. A quick conference on Tarot’s return led to Tarot agreeing that he’d work for Dieter. Tarot’s first job: publicly taking Elmo down a notch. “Are you going to cause me trouble?” asks Dieter, and Tarot smiles, as wide as you please.

Tarot caught up with Elmo in Needles’ infirmary. He tries to knife Elmo, more than what Dieter asked for, but he flubs it. Needles drops what she’s doing — patching sick folk — and grabs her stun gun. Five seconds later Elmo is down and twitching, and Tarot’s caught a charge as well. He grits his teeth though, picks Elmo up, and shoves Needles away from trying to interfere any further.

He takes Elmo into the marketplace, and waits for him to wake up with everyone watching to see what happens. “Look at this, Elmo,” Tarot says. “See who your real friends are.” Noone moves a muscle, except maybe Dieter, who nods. Elmo spits in Tarot’s face, and manages to graze Tarot’s ribs with his shank as his throat is getting cut. Dieter grinds his teeth.

And that is how Dieter celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of him taking over Litterbox.

[This was the session of the GM taking a bath. Big time.]

Cirien tried imperiously to direct the three to help her; Maledicte demurred: “Killing this demon is more important than defiling Súlimë! Look! It still moves!”

“Child, this is where we can finally take a proper step back from the brink of war again. Súlimë will transform. We will mourn her. But she will go so so many other trees can live.”

“More than trees can transform,” Maledicte hissed at her.

Cirien sang the Voice of Ages, trying to cloak herself in the wisdom of the Etharchs, but she was rattled; she agreed to Adrosius’ death after Súlimë’s bending.

Cirien consulted with Deannor on how best to go about the process with far fewer voices — albeit better trained ones — than she’d planned to do it with. Seleniael took the opportunity to rip free shards of Súlimë and in turn drew Deannor aside to demand he make knives of them.

Deannor was enraged at the tone and refused. Harsh words turned to blades. Seleniael ended up sprawled on his back from a nasty shove of Deannor’s spear. Seleniael looked murder up at Deannor. “So you’ll make them?” he spat at him, which made Deannor laugh darkly and agree.

Cirien watched this eruption with foreboding, which turned out to be well justified: her voice, subtle and strong though it was, could not keep the harmony from twisting under her grasp. Deannor’s trap was sprang, and Súlimë’s quiet rage at the destruction of the heartland of Astanar erupted in flame. Not metaphorical, but literal flame. And not the cleansing flame Cirien had worked to entice out. Maledicte and Seleniael’s songs took the opportunity opened by Deannor’s masterwork, and taunted, baited, provoked Súlimë with verse after misshapen verse. She was an everlasting furnace, yes, but one that would never serve the Orcs who’d plundered her brothers and sisters. She gouted greasy black smoke and a nervedestroying, unrelenting squeal.

Cirien turned on Deannor in fury, shouting in outrage at him. Deannor came close to her, and whispered in her ear. Cirien’s outrage crumpled, and the three knew the look that came over her face. The look of someone renouncing grief for spite.

Seleniael saw the captain of the lancers, Githildan, which means “true friend” in Elvish, negotiating a ceasefire with a Named Great and Black. Neither of them cared for the lives of the goblins, but there need not be loss of life amongst the important. Maledicte’s shot spooked his horse, and Seleniael shot him in the back of the neck.

The lancers turned on Seleniael, and made to charge him in vengeance, until he called Githildan a traitor to his kind. “There can be no peace with this vile creatures!” he bellowed. The lancers looked at other, and their inner prejudices won out. They were his.

Maledicte was then charged by the Named, Ulash, Eye Eater. He rode his great warg Durothmog at her, and raised his monstrous axe over his head. Seleniael shot the Durothmog out from under Ulash; Ulash hit the ground, rolled, and carried sprinting for Maledicte as though nothing had happened. Maledicte waited until he was close enough to be sure of her shot, and put two arrows in Ulash’s head.

Next session is two months later. Adrosius is caged and whimpering for his freedom. Cirien has ridden for Eindior to spread whispers of discontent at the peace. Súlimë has fed on the ruins of Moghash on any who were too slow to flee, and now strides ponderously in Cirien’s wake. She has incinerated two entire forests, and turned some small number of their protectors to flaming treants trailing after her.

They now approach the chasm which houses the great halls of Nuraddum, but instead of from the North where trade and farmland flourishes, they approach from the poisoned and blasted South. This side of Nuraddum’s Gap, instead of leading down to the Halls with masoned stairs and polished railings, drops over dizzying heights to myriad cave entrances in the side of the chasm, any one of the smoking holes which could be the lair of Kedivant Dwarfbane. Monster. Dragon. Possessor of a fire hot enough to melt Adrosius.

We started with Maledicte realising that she couldn’t do more than slow Adrosius down with what she had at hand: eye, throat, heart, they all only scratched it.

And the goblins of the Choir started flooding into the clearing around ancient Súlimë, the last tree of Astanar, all that’s left for miles around. Mud churned under their ironshod boots, mud that was once covered with fragrant grass and a place for hundreds of Elves to make their life.

Maledicte, Seleniael, and Deannor had a moment on seeing they were trapped. A moment of uncertainty, and then Seleniael’s eyes narrowed. He heard Cirien’s horn blow, and it was as if that was his cue to draw his bow. “Call the Whipmasters you see,” he breathed to Maledicte. She grunted her reply as he took his shot at the first one he saw.

Its throat sheeting with blood, it went down, and the goblin Choir it was driving fell into confusion. A troll was hit with enough force for its numb senses to feel it, and it started trampling goblins to their shrieking dismay. What had been an orderly advance on Súlimë turned into chaos as the command structure of the Choir collapsed: goblins turning to look for direction from their Whipmasters and the Trollish Shieldbearers that guarded them and only finding goblins looking forward for someone to blame for the arrows that thudded into their ranks.

Maledicte and Seleniael called targets to each other; Maledicte eeled her way up the tree, gritting her teeth against the pain of her injury. It was, impossibly, working: they were in the middle of what must be several thousand Orcs, and not yet eaten alive. Maledicte laid down withering fire, choosing her targets to tempt an attack, and she got it. The bile of goblin infantry overcame their fear, and they charged the base of Súlimë looking to come up after her. Maledicte dropped down lightly behind their line as the splinters of the trap went flying.

The goblins spattered with the splinters tried to howl their pain as their lungs and mouths filled with foam. Deannor smiled as he drew his night’s cloak over him and crouched by Adrosius, and worked his dagger into its wrist, winkling the demon’s blood into his gourd one reluctant drop at a time. The possibilities for torturing such a creature were tripping lightly through his mind as Adrosius roused enough to close a hand on Deannor’s ankle, singeing his skin with its burning flesh.

[Why I didn’t say this was a 1D Lock I’ll never know!]

Adrosius, cut upon in a dozen different ways, was still fast; he swiped at Deannor, but not fast enough. Deannor managed to break away and poked at Adrosius with his spear. Again. And again. Adrosius tried to stand. To talk. To plead. Deannor didn’t let him, and finally he collapsed from his wounds again.

It was then that Cirien, Honeytongue, granddaughter of Palandel who saw the dawn and the lancers guarding her rode in.

“Silence!” she called. There was. When Cirien spoke, all listened. It was a moment’s silence, but enough for Seleniael to lift up Ellenmure’s broken body.

“They’ve gone mad,” he said, “and Ellenmure is dead!”

Maledicte pitched in with, “Their Orc’s demon killed him,” and Deannor with, “There can be no peace now.”

Cirien stood up on the back of her horse, old in years but not in body. She surveyed the Orcs around them as the temporarily leaderless goblins started appraising the Elves in the middle of the sea of Orcs, starting to see them as meat instead of forbidden by the ones who held the whips. She appeared beyond fear. Whether she believed them or not was impossible to tell in the depths of her tranquility.

But she made her decision: “Captain,” she said softly. “Secure Súlimë for me.”

She then began to sing for him. A song for when twenty Elven lancers must face a hundred times that many Orcs and prevail. The captain’s charge hit the goblins just as the beauty of her voice wrapped them in its chains, and the rout of the Choir started.

“Come,” she said after a short time, the captain’s voice taking up where hers left off, poor shadow of it though it was. “We four still have a ritual to complete.”

Next week: will Seleniael’s desire for massacre win, or will Deannor turn Cirien to his design of taking the Elven throne? Or will the beauty of Cirien’s voice start to turn the three from Spite?

Oh, never leave a play report for more than a fortnight.

We started with Seleniael facing off against Adrosius. Teardrinker. Nothing about its features sit right. Grey skinned. Winged. Fanged. A maw that drools great ropes of spit. Seleniael hesitated, and Adrosius oozed up to him with sickening speed.

Its tongue licked the inside of Seleniael’s ear. “Come fight me by your friends,” it breathed at him, and its features started to flow like rancid butter on a hot day. Seleniael then remembered to breath, and slammed his knife into Adrosius’ side. He ran.

Adrosius made it to Maledicte and Deannor before Seleniael did; they were just finishing off their trap. Adrosius’ copy of Seleniael was clumsy, but as it sprinted for her yelling of a doppelganger, it was enough to persuade her. She wasn’t sure, though, and fired a warning shot instead of what Adrosius was hoping for.

Seleniael shouted at Maledicte. He ranted at her. That did more than anything else to convince her that it might well be the real Seleniael; she stood aside and he feathered Adrosius. The arrow, like the knife previously, barely drew any blood; instead it burst into flames from his fiery skin.

Deannor went for Snarog, Adrosius’ controller. Snarog took one look at Adrosius’ state and ran for it. He didn’t make it far before Deannor caught him. Deannor thrust his spear into Snarog early on in their scrap, and after that it was a long, cruel death for him.

Adrosius limped after Maledicte, trying to catch her, but couldn’t with its wounds. Ellenmure came to offer his help to Seleniael, who accepted it. He then crushed Ellenmure’s wrists in his hands, lifted him from the ground, and threw him at Adrosius. Ellenmure lasted barely a second once in arm’s reach of the demon. Maledicte then shot Adrosius, causing him to totter and fall.

Maledicte came up and shot Adrosius in the face; it bounced off. She shot him again. Again. Again. Point blank and with the full strength of her bow, she couldn’t do more than scratch him, and the wounds were closing. That’s when the first goblin of the Choir came into view.

Maledicte’s wound took sixteen long months for her to heal from enough to move.

She still has a fragile constitution, but she could move without screaming in frustration, and the scar on her chest went from black, to purple, to an angry red fist in the middle of her skin.

Around her sickbed the seasons turned and turned; Deannor and Seleniael waged a war against the patrols and hunters that the Great One of Moghash and the Etharch sent after them. Noone won that war. Deannor and Seleniael were kept moving, off balance, and the ranks of the hunters were thinned. Deannor lived richly on the bounty of the forest, but every time he tried to build a place for them it was sniffed out, torn down, and torched by their hunters; Seleniael scratched himself meagre living as he could. Maledicte withered under the sometimes care of the other two, and became unkempt.

After Maledicte got up from her sickbed, Deannor ordered her to accept a breastplate of sculpted wood from him. “It will invigorate you,” he told her. “It will let you serve me better.”

Maledicte didn’t like that. She didn’t need to say a word, but she fought against him, pushing to get him to accept her and Seleniael as equals. She spat at him, shot a contemptuous arrow into his breastplate, and finally — driven to it by him intoning his designs for the two of them — told him he was no better than the Orcs for what he’d done to the trees.

When she started singing a lament for her forgotten Grief, Deannor relented enough to say, “Please. You must.” Seleniael did not take this reminder so well, and struck her to get her to break off that song that they’d all left behind.

Maledicte, conceding that she needed the help, donned the Life Drinker armour.

Then the news: a ceremony was due on the new moon. One where the last tree of old Astanar was to be ripped up, with an Orcish chorus to be led by Cirien Honeytongue, Loremistress of Eindior. Seleniael devised a plan to pull her and her guard away from Moghash for long enough for them to infiltrate it: that sly old witch knew far too many songs to risk her being there.

He delivered his offer of a meeting by shooting her horse in the meat of the neck as their cavalcade approached Moghash. The threat was plain: I could have hit you; meet where I say or I shoot again. It was enough to get her to nod in agreement, and order back her lancers from scouring the countryside for their hiding place.

Never intending to meet at the appointed time, the three slunk into Moghash. The guard pickets were six deep on this night of all nights, but this was not enough to keep the Dark Elves out. They were like a whisper — and when they were seen, they were able to fake being part of the visiting dignitaries.

What they didn’t know is that Snarog, Master of Blood, had dragged up something from the black pit that could sniff them out. And it circled the camp, searching …

Maledicte trapped the great tree that was to be the centrepiece of the ritual. “If it is to fall,” she said, “it will have an honour guard.”

“Many guards,” objected Deannor.

After a hissed argument, Maledicte adjusted her trap to spray many more poisoned splinters of wood than she’d originally planned. But this took time, time that they could have used to escape from the Orc chorus converging on the great tree, if they had but known it was coming.

Deannor’s part in shaping the splinters done, he went searching the camp for a fool to do his bidding. And he found one: Artendenil, so-called The Subtle.

“Take this crown to Zandagul,” he said to him. “It will open his eyes.”

“I should not trust you, Deannor,” Artendenil replied. “But I will — because you will owe me, whether this is a terrible thing I do or not. And you, Master Sculptor, I like the idea of you owing me.”

“You will get what you deserve,” Deannor told Artendenil with a crooked smile.

Artendenil did not miss the threat there, “I should leave right now, shouldn’t I,” he said, his nerve gone.

“Go now,” Deannor confirmed.

With Seleniael’s part complete in the trap complete, he went stalking the last Elf left in Moghash: a diplomat, Ellenmure Openhand. He drew back the flap of Ellenmure’s beautifully embroidered tent. Ellenmure had his back to the tent’s opening, and did not hear. Seleniael weighed his knife in his hand, and prepared to dispatch Ellenmure as the first half of his plan to make it look like an Elf and an Orc killed each other.

He was interrupted by what Snarog had drawn up: a demon. A demon who had just slipped its chain. In the middle of the Orcs of Moghash shuffling, being whipped, being yelled at to form a ring of flesh and voices for the new moon’s ritual.

(POW~)

Kicked off the session with a Packmaster, and a Named coming after them; their only warning was the flurry of birds taking to the air just before the warband.

The warband had been coming to take Orbag back from Tarnamil; instead they found his body. The Named, Mularz Biledrinker, wanted to walk the line between keeping the peace and taking vengeance: he wanted to take the hand of the Elf responsible. The Packmaster, Muk, wanted to feed his worgs Elfblood.

Selenial and Maledicte sprang to their feet and raced for the covering shadows. Deannor refused to hide, and instead sang. He sang at the slope they and the warband were on. He sang up an avalanche. The song took hold on the wooded slope to far greater effect than he anticipated, and everyone scrambled over the churning earth trying to keep their footing.

Selenial was the only one who managed this; Maledicte was cast down, and she and Deannor took a battering from rocks and trees sliding past them. The Elves and the Orcs ended up in a mess of shattered trees, rock, and dirt at the bottom of the hill.

Muk and his worg Shag reacted first and leapt on Maledicte; Shag was prevented from doing more than growling down at her by Selenial’s arrow whipping past Muk’s ear. Muk’s hunting bow came out, and he and his worg — a crushed paw slowing him somewhat — played a deadly game of tag with Selenial. Selenial’s first arrow slammed into Muk’s chest with killing force, but his studded leather kept it from doing more than winding him. The second arrow broke Muk’s nerve, and he turned Shag’s head away from the Elf, and shrieked in fear. Selenial’s third arrow took Muk between the shoulder blades and his life’s blood started gushing out.

Meanwhile, Deannor made himself look smaller, frailer, less threatening than he ought to be, and the Named’s instincts took over. He strode on Maledicte, and yanked her to her feet.

“You’ll pay with your hand for what you done,” he hissed at her, and unlimbered his axe. His warband, getting over the shock and pain of the hill collapsing on them, started staggering to cut off her and Deannor’s retreat.

Maledicte leapt back from his advance, and got far enough back to pull out her bow. Eight Orcs in the warband had bows to answer her. Deannor slipped out of the circle, cutting an Orc’s throat to make good his escape. He sprinted after the fleeing Shag, intending to garner himself a captive.

Maledicte slid behind a tree to draw her Elven bow, and came out to take her shot. The Orc she was aiming at stood transfixed in fear, staring down the shaft of her arrow. He was saved by the Orc she didn’t see, popping up from behind a shattered boulder to fire. The cruelly hooked head of his arrow ripped its way out through the other side of her quilted armour, and a red stain soaked her chest on both sides. She gave a look of surprise — unfair, her expression said, I wasn’t ready — and slid to the ground without a sound.

Mularz advanced on her fallen body with his axe out, intent on her hand. Two of Selenial’s arrows, fired at the same time and coming from out of nowhere, dropped him. Then down went the Black Hunter who’d shot Maledicte.

The remaining Orcs took one look at the terrible look of rage on Selenial’s face as he fitted another arrow to his string, and tried to flee, to get cover, to shoot back. Anything.

It didn’t help.

[It was an Obstacle 8 weapon test to wipe out the Orcs — he managed it on nine dice after spending a Fate point to get the extra success he needed. The condition for failure was that they would take his hand. He accepted this condition gladly to achieve Maledicte’s Belief, and that’s what got him a Deeds point.]

Deannor, meanwhile, amazingly caught up to the fleeing worg. Shag ran for his life, and after a long chase thought he’d lost Deannor. That was when Deannor dropped down from the tree and menaced Shag. Shag, driven mad with the grief of carrying his dying master, growled that he would drink Deannor’s blood and charged. Deannor had to kill Shag to survive his onslaught instead of capturing him like he’d planned.

So.

We’ll be starting a few months later with a Resources test for them living in the forest terrorising the Orcs of Moghash. Also recovery and Health tests and so forth for seeing how far Maledicte has recovered from her arrow wound.

We’ll start with the news Deannor has just discovered from one of his victims: that the last of the sacred groves of Astanar will be ripped up in a great ceremony by the Orcish Masters of Blood on the new moon — in a bare two days time. Can they get there in time to put their own stamp on the ceremony?

The Etharch has been courting the players, trying to turn them to his diplomacy efforts against Men. They have been obstinate, pushing to go visit Astanar — now in the hands of the Orcs and called Moghash.

The Prince Zandagul, his Orc “pet Named” Agdula, and the Princess Tariel along with a small troop of lancers showed the three to the edge of a cliff overlooking Moghash. Adhrin the lancer tried to comfort Seleniael as he saw what had been done in the name of peace to the pristine forests.

Adhrin’s throat was slashed, his body pushed over the cliff, and the swords came out. That’s where we started.

Deannor tied Tariel in trying to draw her away from the standoff; she stayed with her brother but didn’t get involved.

Zandagul and Seleniael threatened each other; Seleniael pulled a surprise win here and intimidated the Prince into withdrawing. Deannor thought quickly and stealthily unravelled Tariel’s saddle clasp.

She tumbled to the ground off her horse not a hundred yards away; Deannor sprinted to catch her whilst she was still dazed and took her hostage, drawing her under his Cloak of Darkness with Seleniael and Maledicte similarly melting away.

This is where I regreted not burning at least one of Zandagul and Agdula with Observation! Frustrated, unable to find the players, Zandagul threatened banishment.

Skip forward a day; Maledicte has covered their retreat from Moghash into what looks more like Astanar of old with traps and false trails. Her traps catch unlikely prey: the Orc boy nicknamed Orbag, fresh from The Rites, defying his Named by even trying to commune with the forest by the Elven student Tarnamil.

With the Orc and Elfling dangling from the snares, the players squabble; Deannor wants to do something vile — or beautiful, he says — to them, Seleniael wants to kill such unnatural “friendship” out of hand, and Maledicte wants to let such innocence as they have go. They agree that if the two can agree who should be let go, they’ll let them go. The two young explorers surprise them by agreeing that Orbag should go. He runs and doesn’t look back.

Selenial gives Orbag a fair time to get away and then slips under Maledicte’s gaze to chase down and murder Orbag. Not as woods-wise as Maledicte, he leaves a trail back to where Deannor is working his fell songs.

Deannor shapes a tree around and through both Tariel and Tarnamil. He offers them a choice of who is to be unravelled; Tarnamil offers himself up again for his Princess. Tariel tries to sing forgiveness of Deannor, but is drowned out by his unravelling: he cuts Tarnamil off from his soul, and that’s enough to change the tree into something awake, crazed, and dangerous.

Sadly he passed his rather difficult test to avoid us starting the next session with him in the clutches of a Crazed Ancient Protector. Ah well. We’ll have a worg pack instead, I think.