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Tales of Lost Omens: Rat Trap

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

The trail led, of course, to a tavern.

Watching from a hidden perch across the street, Ulthor studied the place. It was a stinking, squalid wreck in Absalom’s Puddles district. Dead fish lay half-surfaced in the sucking mud around the entrance, their rotted heads poking up as if straining for one last breath. Inside, the air was thick with flayleaf and pesh smoke, spilled ale and unwashed bodies, and the pervasive, inescapable stench of the Puddles’ foul tides. Dingy gray cloth covered the grimy windows and hung from the rafters, turning the already-dim tavern into a warren of shadows.

The Rat of Gonevar had sunk low in the world since Ulthor had last had the trail. Still a weak man, prone to weak vices, but without the money or friends to indulge them extravagantly anymore.

That was good. It would make apprehension easier.

There. Ulthor spotted the Rat’s battered hat bobbing through an alley as the man picked his way across the muddy duckboards. The hat was different, and its jaunty feather too, but Ulthor recognized his quarry’s limp immediately. The Rat had lost half his left foot at their last meeting.

Beneath his grim iron helm, Ulthor permitted himself the barest semblance of a smile. No more than the slightest softening at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the most change he ever allowed in his habitually stony expression. It had been a long hunt.

“Prepare to move,” Ulthor told his fellow knights. He’d requisitioned three Hellknights of the Rack as support from the local chapter house. The Order of the Rack generally lacked the finesse he would have preferred, but its Hellknights were as terrifyingly fierce and incorruptible as the Chain’s. They’d do.

“Terms of apprehension?” one of the Rack knights asked.

Ulthor was briefly surprised. He hadn’t expected the Hellknights of the Rack to care. “The Rat of Gonevar must be taken. Preferably alive, but dead is acceptable. Minimize other casualties. Those who do not interfere should not be harmed.”

“And those who do?”

“Will be guilty of obstructing a lawful enforcement action.” Ulthor tacked the arrest warrant onto the face of his shield so that he could display it while keeping his hands free. Small chance that the patrons of the Puddles would respect the warrant’s authority, but a small chance was better than none. He preferred not to break skulls unnecessarily. “Further questions?”

There were none. Ulthor dispatched two Hellknights to watch the tavern’s rear and side exits. Once they were in place, he led the third to its front door. Mud-spattered urchins and drunk idlers, suddenly and nervously sober, melted away from the tavern as the Hellknights approached.

Ulthor ignored them. The tavern’s door was already open, but he kicked it anyway, shattering the weather-beaten wood against the wall to announce the Hellknights’ arrival.

“Dunryl of Gonevar!” Ulthor shouted into the shocked quiet. “You stand charged with desertion, murder, and trafficking in profane corruptions. Submit to the lawful authority of the Order of the Chain.”

“Don’t believe I will,” the Rat drawled. His tone was full of bravado, but even in the tavern’s poor light, Ulthor could see the Rat’s knotted jaw and shaking hands. Withdrawal, and fear. Mostly fear. “I’m a hero of Andoran, I am.”

“We’re free people here,” one of the other card players blustered. He squinted at Ulthor with hostile, ale-fogged eyes. “Free people. Unafraid.”

“You tell ‘im, Gammel,” the Rat encouraged, scooting his own chair back discreetly.

Gammel launched a clumsy fist at Ulthor. The Hellknight knocked his swipe away with a short punch of his own, driving a mailed fist into the drunkard’s face. Gammel’s nose crunched bloodily under the blow, but Ulthor held back his strength. The drunkard didn’t deserve to die over this.

The Rat was reaching under the table for a hidden weapon. Kicking Gammel and his chair aside, Ulthor brought his sword down on the table, smashing the wooden top, the cudgel that the Rat had been reaching for beneath it, and the Rat’s arm.

“You are a liar and a coward,” the Hellknight announced, his voice thundering over the Rat’s cry of outraged agony. “You murdered your superior officer and two comrades, stole a shipment of slaves, and sold all but the youngest and most impressionable. Those you released to spread false tales of your heroism. Then you began ‘rescuing’ slaves so that you could pin unholy texts and secret corruptions into their clothes and minds, using them as unwitting mules to carry foul contraband through Andoran. These are your crimes, Dunryl of Gonevar.”

Most of Ulthor’s recitation went unheard. At the sight of bare steel, the tavern erupted into chaos. Patrons threw mugs and half-full slop bowls at Ulthor, and then at the Rack Hellknights who charged in to support him. Others shouted and jeered, less interested in defending the Rat of Gonevar than in spitting on the nearest symbol of authority. The law wasn’t popular in the Puddles.

The Rack Hellknights moved to stop the brawling. They were efficient, methodical, and brutal. Bones cracked. Iron thudded into unprotected flesh. The taunts and jeers turned to panicked cries and bloody-mouthed moans.

Ulthor didn’t give them a glance. He reached over the splintered table, ignoring Gammel’s squeak of terror, and grabbed the Rat by his broken arm.

“You bastard!” the Rat shouted, hysterical with pain. “Five years it’s been, and you won’t leave me alone! You broke my arm!”

“Submit,” Ulthor said. His gauntleted fist flexed. Bones ground together in his grip.

The Rat swayed on the brink of blacking out. “Let me go. Let me go! I can tell you — things. All kinds of things. Schemes. Secrets. The — the moaners’ cults. The smugglers. The people who hired me. I can give them to you. Please!”

Ulthor relaxed his grip minutely. Behind them, the brawl had died down. Only the groans and whimpers of the injured could be heard now. The Rack Hellknights moved among the fallen, dealing out extra blows to those who refused to stay down.

“Please,” the Rat sobbed.

“I am a Hellknight of the Chain,” Ulthor told him. He stood, dragging the Rat to his feet by his broken arm. “It was my duty to apprehend you. But if what you say is true, it is not my duty to keep you. Unholy cults are not within my order’s remit.”

Somehow the Rat managed to swallow the shriek of pain that started up his throat. Despite it all, hope ignited in his eyes. “Then we’ve got a deal? You’ll let me go?”

“No,” Ulthor said. “I will send you to the Order of the Pyre.”

And then he smiled, really smiled, as the Rat of Gonevar screamed.

[靜海聆]

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Tales of Lost Omens: Seeds of Hope

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

The horns were blowing in her dreams again.

In her dreams, they all sounded together: the alarm and the battle march and the frenzied call to retreat. The calls overlapped into chaos, yet Veldrienne heard them all distinctly, and she understood with the perfect, crazed, crystal logic of dreams that of course the battle march was wild with panic, and of course the first call to alarm was a dolorous cry played over the bloody field of a lost battle, and of course it all began and ended with a weak, wounded note that broke on the thrust of a dead man’s spear.

Because this was Lastwall, where the knights of her order had trained for nearly a thousand years to meet the Whispering Tyrant’s threat, and where the Tyrant had destroyed them effortlessly. Every battle worthy of the name had been lost before the Watcher-Lord’s armies had mustered. They’d been defeated before they’d begun.

That hurt the worst of all. All their pride, all their valor, and they’d never had a chance.

And so Veldrienne dreamed, again and again, of a call to arms that was a call to mourning, and of battlefields she would never see.

She kicked off the blanket covering her legs. Watery gray sunlight, the only light that shone on the Gravelands anymore, filtered through the burned rafters of the farmhouse they’d sheltered in overnight.

Yeran held up a battered kettle. He’d been up for a while, long enough to have warmed water and made an attempt at shaving. “Porridge?”

“Thank you.” Veldrienne spooned the stale mush out of the kettle. They didn’t have any bowls left. “Save any of that wash water for me?”

Yeran nodded. He’d missed a few patches, shaving with just that dented kettle for a mirror. The stubble was white in the weak light. It made him look old, and almost as worn down as Veldrienne felt. “Plenty to go around, now that there are only two of us left.”

Two. Out of a full company. Veldrienne shook her head. They were the last two left, and yet they still pretended to uphold the niceties of their order. Yeran still tried to keep clean-shaven. Veldrienne still polished the pins of rank on the filthy rags of her uniform.

She wasn’t sure why they bothered. Habits died harder than people, evidently.

Veldrienne paused, the spoon halfway to her mouth. There was smoke on the wind. Wood smoke. The Tyrant’s rotting minions had no need to cook, and certainly never washed. They didn’t light campfires.

“People.”

Yeran was already buckling on his sword. He’d smelled it too. “East?”

“East.”

Together they walked through the weed-choked fields and abandoned hovels to the last intact farmhouse in town. It was where Veldrienne would have sheltered, if she’d had to shelter here. If she hadn’t known that ghouls, and worse, hunted these grounds.

She knocked at the door. “Veldrienne of Vigil and Yeran Dhoskan, Knights of Lastwall.” It almost didn’t hurt to say that last part anymore. “Is anyone living here? Can we aid you?”

Scurrying inside. Hushed voices, fear and hope warring between them. Then a woman’s voice: “Can you… can you get us somewhere safe?”

Veldrienne closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see Yeran’s look. “Yes. If you trust us.”

They came out. A man, a woman, six young children. Plainly the children were not all theirs by blood. Just as plainly, they were by necessity. Veldrienne’s determination hardened, looking at the family that the Tyrant’s menace had driven together. If these people had managed to protect their children this far, she wouldn’t see them fail now.

“We can get you to the camp at Kassen,” she told them, “and from there you can take a boat to Vellumis. The Tyrant’s creatures don’t hold the water as fiercely as they do the land.”

“Thank you,” the woman said.

The man hesitated, then drew out a pendant he’d hidden inside the seam of his coat sleeve. He offered it to Veldrienne, who shook her head. “I can’t take your money.”

“It isn’t money. It’s… I was a jeweler. Before all this.” He laughed bleakly. “I thought I’d use some of my pieces to bribe our way out of the Gravelands, but there’s no bribing the dead. I want you to have it, instead. I can’t buy safety. None of us can. But I can, at least, offer this. Please. Take it and tell me that—that you understand.”

Veldrienne took the pendant. It was an octagon of rose gold, holding a pressed flower under glass in a ring of white seed pearls. The flower was familiar. Star alyssum. It had bloomed around the Watcher-Lord’s palace and spilled from the window boxes of Vigil’s tidy whitewashed homes, perfuming the city in summer. If she closed her eyes, she could almost breathe its delicate, honeyed sweetness again.

“I made them for crusaders traveling up to the Worldwound,” the man explained. “For them to remember the homes and loved ones they left behind. I never thought that crusade would be won, or that I’d need to preserve the memory of Vigil on its own ground instead. But — look. The back.”

Veldrienne turned the pendant around. In the back, under a panel of rose gold inscribed “Vigil’s blessing,” was a compartment full of tiny black seeds.

Mendev and the Sarkoris Scar were dotted with battlefield graves where star alyssum bloomed. Veldrienne knew those marked the final rest of knights from Lastwall, but she had never considered who carried the seeds there, or what it meant for a knight to lie beneath a bier of flowers on ground so grimly sanctified.

Now, holding the pendant, she understood. “Thank you.”

The man started to say something else, but Veldrienne held up a hand. “Quiet.” She’d smelled something on the wind. Not the remembered fragrance of alyssum.

Ghouls. The stench was unmistakable. The Tyrant’s minions didn’t breathe, and thus had no sense of smell — that was why Veldrienne had scented the family’s woodsmoke first, and why the ghouls’ foulness didn’t incapacitate their fellow undead — but they could see well enough, and the weak sun in the Gravelands didn’t cow them. They must have seen the smoke rising from the chimney once the family was too distracted to fan it away.

“Get inside,” Veldrienne ordered, drawing her sword. She could see the ghouls coming now, loping feral and hideous through the crumbling town. Yeran fell in beside her, and she was glad to have him at her side. There was no better feeling than standing beside a fellow knight, true and trustworthy, against a clear-cut foe.

She’d been wrong earlier. There were still battles worth fighting in the Gravelands. The knights of Lastwall hadn’t been utterly defeated. They hadn’t lost everything yet.

Not yet.

[靜海聆]

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Tales of Lost Omens: The Hopeful

Illustration by Federico Musetti

"Pardon..."

Over the din of the bustling street market the young boy's cry reached the passing nobleman. "Pardon me, my lord. Are you seeking the god rock? Do you need the courage to take the leap? The blessing of one who passed the test?"

The nobleman ignored him, but the young merchant persisted, obviously recognizing the robed figure's wealth from the quality of his clothes and the confidence in his step. "I have here the tears of Iomedae herself, shed when she learned of Aroden's death!" The boy pushed through the crowd, following the nobleman, waving a tiny vial that undoubtedly contained ordinary water. "My lord?"

The nobleman paid the boy no mind and walked through the throng seemingly oblivious to the solicitations of its eager vendors.

All along the Avenue of the Hopeful it was the same racket. Everyone had some divine relic to sell: a tabard supposedly worn by Iomedae in the Shining Crusade; a barroom dart thrown by a mortal Cayden Cailean; a blood-rusted dagger said to have been wielded by Norgorber himself. They were all fake, of course, but the visitors that streamed down this road every day to look at the Starstone Cathedral didn't know that—or pretended not to out of willful ignorance. Sometimes even the merchants believed the veracity of their claims, their fraud offset by their misplaced good intentions.

Among themselves, the charlatans hocking these wares claim the cathedral is the straight man in their cons. Its very presence adds an air of mystery and divine authority to the propositions, no matter how obvious the counterfeit relics are. How could it not? Inside the towering ancient shrine, suspended in the center of an unfathomably deep pit, lay a chunk of rock that fell from the heavens millennia ago amid the untold devastation of Earthfall. Those who brave the cathedral, passing all of its cunning tests, defeating its deadly guardians, and surviving to touch the Starstone exit the cathedral as gods. Many have tried over the centuries since Aroden constructed the cathedral to protect the holy relic within, but only three have ever succeeded. Unsurprisingly, it is Absalom's most visited tourist spot—the epicenter of the City at the Center of the World.

"Just two silver weights!"

The nobleman was now so far from the desperate tear-merchant that the boy's last cries were all but lost to the sounds of the city. The kid was new to the street and if he didn't soon fall in with one of the many organized rings of counterfeiters and con artists who worked in tandem to move their merchandise, he'd undoubtedly end up like so many others in the Ascendant Court, picking pockets to turn a profit from even the most discerning of customers. Those with experience working the God's Market knew not to waste their time with this particular nobleman, either as a customer or a mark.

Lord Synarr arrived in the city only six months ago, and since then he has walked the avenue every morning to gaze upon the Starstone Cathedral. At first, he was swarmed by kids hawking sacred items and protective talismans, but over time, they learned not to bother. Lord Synarr never spared even a single copper for any of their wares, he never once inspected their goods. He only diverted his attention from the Starstone Cathedral at the end of the Avenue of Hopefuls for the hopefuls themselves—those adventurers, demagogues, and zealots ambitious (or foolhardy) enough to plan their own run on divinity.

In a bid to prove their worthiness, most set up in one of the God's Market's many empty stalls and proselytize to what small audience they can wrest away from their competition. Some preach a message that speaks to a particular listener, or are charismatic enough to enthrall the crowd with their pageantry, and convert real followers from among the masses. On any given day a half-dozen or more hopefuls line the avenue, preaching their new faith, offering indulgences for coin, or performing rituals to prepare themselves for their journey.

For his first few weeks in Absalom, Lord Synarr stopped at each one as he made his way down the avenue, listening to the articles of the hopefuls' soon-to-be faiths before stoically moving on. The enigmatic noble no longer tarries before such aspirants, but he listens carefully to their tirades as he walks past, sometimes even smiling smugly to himself when a hopeful exhibits particular skill at capturing the crowd's attention.

Today, Lord Synarr witnessed a Keleshite trade prince offering a golden scabbard to Golinarth, the hulking hopeful who always wears a wooden skeleton mask and claims to have come back from the dead to become the god of second chances—one more rube offering wealth for miracles that would never materialize. A few yards further down the avenue, Ryni the Jest, a prankster hoping to become a god of mirth, gave the stern noble an unreciprocated wink of acknowledgment before turning his attention back to the butt of his public ridicule. The lord had his suspicions that the clown never actually intended to attempt the Test of the Starstone, but was simply amassing followers to start his own cult of personality.

A half-orc woman with a lilting accent offered Lord Synarr a score of rings, pendants, and bracelets tied to a velvet pillow. "Welcome back, my lord. Taking the test today?"

The noble didn't flinch, continuing his leisurely stroll toward the cathedral without a second glance in the merchant's direction.

"I got a new one, I did. Lets you walk on air." Her arm shot toward the end of the avenue like an arrow loosed from a hunter's bow. "Fttt—straight over the pit!" Recognizing that her daily pitch to her regular "customer" would have the same results today as it had the last six months, she turned her attention seamlessly to a wide-eyed gnome wearing Mwangi fashion to Synarr's left. "How about you, chum?"

Lord Synarr doubted any of the woman's jewelry was even magical, much less powerful enough to help someone cross the yawning expanse that separated the Starstone Cathedral from the surrounding city. Some fool, he was sure, would slip the ring on and dive headfirst into the abyss, cursing the merchant the whole way down. His dark eyes twinkled at the thought. One more shrine for the cathedral of the Failed, if even that.

Finally arriving at the edge of the chasm, Lord Synarr stopped for a moment and looked at the ancient temple. He was not the only one to hesitate near the precipice, and he had noted other regulars with their own routines in his time performing this daily ritual. Very few of them had lasted longer than a month or two, either giving up on their hopes of godhood or having perished in the attempt. Lord Synarr would be neither distracted nor a failure; he had one shot, and he would only attempt it when the time was right.

The robed lord turned to the left and walked around the chasm, the same route he took every day.

As he walked, his gait embodying both purpose and tranquility, Lord Synarr's thoughts turned to the temples adorning the grand plaza surrounding the pit. Iomedae and Cayden Cailean, two of the four whose apotheosis occurred mere yards away, had monuments here, built by their faithful as testaments to their success. A bridge spanned the chasm between each temple and the Starstone Cathedral, a physical manifestation of the gods' connection to the Starstone through which they attained divinity. The ascended god Norgorber, second after Aroden to pass the test, was far too secretive to put his temple out in the open. Those, like Lord Synarr, who studied the Starstone Cathedral could guess in which direction Norgorber's temple lied from the alignment of the third bridge, which appeared to point toward nothing in particular.

Lord Synarr ended his circuit of the Ascendant Court each day before the ruined fourth bridge across the mighty chasm. The missing span once pointed to the city's great temple to Aroden, who had raised the Starstone from the ocean depths along with the entire Isle of Kortos and in so doing captured his own spark of divinity. Though the bridge and even Aroden himself are gone, the temple still stands, now serving as the Chelish embassy. Despite the addition of the infernal insignias of House Thrune, Lord Synarr could still make out symbol of Aroden's eye that was once emblazoned above the grand entry, a negative outline in old dirt and moss.

The noble ended his daily stroll here to remind himself of his own mortality. While Lord Synarr welcomed the dignity and experience the gray in his hair and the lines at the corners of his eyes indicated, he could too easily allow the comforts afforded by his vast wealth distract him from the unwelcome truth that unless he passed the Test of the Starstone, he too would die. Though Aroden, god of humanity, may have died, Lord Synarr would not, he told himself.

His gaze turned from the repurposed Arodenite temple toward the towering cathedral at the city's heart. From this vantage point, he didn't see the gulf separating him from the home of divinity, and the sights and sounds of the bustling metropolis fell away. With the focus of an owl trained on its unsuspecting prey, he was aware only of the Starstone Cathedral and the power within. And just like every other day, he said one word, quietly to himself, before turning and walking back to his stately manor and the day's extravagances.

"Soon."

Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design

[晨世宣融]

其中Tales of Lost Omens: Seeds of Hope翻译在卡拉布瑞尼和克拉希瑞·艾奥梅达Kalabrynne and Clarethe Iomedar的边栏了。