Chapter 4
Calamity
Calamity had come back from Pandemonium with four things.
Three of these things were names. It was unclear if Trulnuroth had been unwilling or unable to give her more – perhaps knowing everything was too tall an order, even for such a tall creature – but he had given her a quarter of them.
She wasn’t exactly the brains in their adventuring party, and she hadn’t told anyone but Eden about her father, so she needed to be a bit more underhanded.
As the others – mostly Ser Liam Prize and Captain Morgana Silversword, the two do-gooders of the group – pieced together the puzzle of The Twelve, Calamity had to subtly plant puzzle pieces they could find.
For two of the names, this strategy worked well.
First had been Cinesha, a captain in the Queen’s Guard.
Morgana had fought alongside Cinesha when they were younger and was horrified to learn that his power grabs had evolved from underhanded conduct to full-on evil scheming.
The party intercepted his attempt to liberate an artefact called the Blade of Brotherhood from the collection of a local, lesser royal.
The blade would have compelled any who saw it drawn to fight alongside its wielder – a power dangerous in even the most noble of hands.
Then there was an old hag called Spiderhook, who lived deep in the Walstall Wood.
Rather than seeking out an existing artefact, she had lured and entrapped several artificers in an attempt to create a Crystal of Concordance – a gemstone pulsing with light that would hypnotise anyone who looked into it.
Having spent years in the Walstall Wood, Gorlag, the half-orc berserker that brought most of the party’s muscle, led the quest to disrupt the infusion and defeat Spiderhook.
Sadly, it was Gorlag’s last mission with the party; they travelled home to their clan in the wild north soon after.
In their research to defeat Cinesha and Spiderhook, the party uncovered evidence that led them to two more members of The Twelve.
Hiyei Hajun was a mage just one spell away from becoming a lich, and the party managed to disrupt the ritual, stopping him from binding his soul to the Queen’s sceptre.
Then there was Lady Nideta, an emissary from across the Pasmagne Sea, who was already using a powerful artefact called The Diplomat’s Quill, compelling other signatories to accept any terms Nideta put forward.
A blade that rallied others to war. A hypnotic crystal.
A sceptre with undue influence. A quill that could sign entire nations over in one stroke.
Combined with the Supremacy Sphere and Diadem of Dominion, the two mind-control artefacts they’d already destroyed, it was clear that The Twelve sought total domination.
But the party was still only halfway to stopping them.
The momentum was high, but eventually, despite the party’s best efforts and Calamity’s best attempts at being discreet, the leads dried up.
Eden even revisited her home in the Astral Plane to try to find answers, but her only leads pointed back to Trulnuroth.
So when Eden came back empty-handed, Calamity had no choice but to give her a name to share.
“We’re looking for The Varjo,” Eden said to the party as they convened in her and Calamity’s room at the Adventurers Guild. “They’re the leader of a shadowy crime syndicate here in the city.”
“Finally,” Yorick cried, collapsing back on Calamity’s bunk where he sat. “It’s been ages since we had a lead.”
“Wait a minute,” Liam said, and Calamity froze, wincing; she should have known better than to hope they would accept the intel without question. “Where did you get this name?”
Calamity caught Eden’s eye. Play it cool, kid, Calamity thought, but Eden broke immediately.
“I heard it in the Astral Plane,” Eden lied. “Whispers, allusions, all that sort of thing.”
“From whom?” Morgana asked, always taking Liam’s side.
“Uh…” Eden looked over at Calamity, but Calamity wouldn’t meet Eden’s eye. “Trulnuroth.”
The others gasped, and even Calamity couldn’t keep a straight face, turning to gape at Eden, who shrugged apologetically.
“You spoke to the Prince of Pandemonium?” Morgana asked, aghast. Calamity knew none of her friends were particularly superstitious, so it was a surprise to hear Morgana use the moniker instead of his name. She held back an almighty eye roll.
“No, not directly,” Eden said, shaking her head. “I just heard they were connected.”
This wasn’t technically a lie. The others nodded their heads, though Liam was still squinting his eyes as if he didn’t quite believe the druid. Calamity glared at him until he went wide-eyed and turned his attention to his own feet.
The rest of the group started strategising for how they could get more information about The Varjo – Yorick wanted to go undercover, whilst Morgana wanted to interrogate some criminals she’d encountered during her Queen’s Guard years.
But Calamity didn’t weigh in, and that wasn’t surprising; she was hardly the decision-maker in these kinds of conversations.
Instead, she was subtly pulling her less-than-modest robes tighter across her.
Because she had come back from Pandemonium with one other thing besides names – a new bit of bling.
And if anyone looked closely enough at the small stone pendant around her neck, they would have seen the rune for Trulnuroth’s name carved into it.