A Deal for the Deceased
Darrowmar
In which the party puts together the final picture of their predecessor's time on Darromar, and learns the fates of their relatives and loved ones (or their marks, in the case of Koros). Also, a new deal is struck with The Mordrin, who is vexingly vague but seems to be an enemy of an enemy...
From the hilltop fort, the party travels two days to a small town near the Tinker's compound. While the party observes a handful of merchants who are camped in town to make deals with the Tinker while Darromar makes its way through the Core Islands, Koros hits the drinking holes for information.
He learns that yes, there was a big fight about a year ago. A champion of some local upstart clan challenged the Tinker. A festival was made out of the event, with the fight itself happening in a field just below the main gate of Tinker's compound. Tinker uses a healthy compliment of Habri mercenaries to guard his place, and he chose their captain as his champion. The fight was worth every penny the people had to pay to witness it, and is still recounted by many clans who had people their to see it. It was a back and forth battle, but ultimately the Habri captain slew the champion, and the upstart clan - the Lakes? the Lakishmer? something like that - had to exit Darromar through the first available Gate, as it happened to the Mountain Redoubt.
SOI Morran is quite morose at the news. The party decides that whatever their predecessors wanted, it was on the surface and not in Tinker's compound, so they leave without causing a fuss and make their way back to the Anaxar's holding, planning to try and ask The Mordrin about her final deal with the Alshekal.
A few more days of travel brings them once again to the guarded gate of the Anaxar's inner holding, and they ask to speak to The Mordrin. The guards send the message, and return saying that The Mordrin will contact them when she wishes, within a few days at most. The party rents cheap rooms and wanders the ongoing weaponsmoot, biding their time.
Late one evening, a small sickly girl knocks on their doors and asks them to follow her. The party does so, wary and alert, as the child leads them down off the mesa and into some near scrublands. She then slowly transforms before their eyes into The Mordrin, who greets the party with cool indifference. The party asks about the final deal, and the Mordrin tells them that she was to preserve Morran's body in the event that he fell in the challenge, and that she was to guard the Lakesla hilltop fort with a Necrobind (a fact the party already knew). For their part, the Alshekal were to deliver to her a book from a location near the Mountain Redoubt.
The Mordrin then launches on a series of baffling topics that are at first difficult for the party to follow. Eventually the situation comes into focus - The Mordrin is indicating that there is a powerful scrying presence on the Island, one that she is loath to cross. There are things she will not say openly, but there is information she would share, if only the party asks the right questions. She cannot "see" the party through her own powers, and she is fairly certain that the party is immune to the scrying she fears form others. The party launches on a series of yes-no questions to puzzle out what The Mordrin has to share.
First, it is apparent that the scrying force is the Arcanists. The Mordrin indicates that her clan has passed down history of the Arcanists knowing things that happen on the Island that they just should not know. The mordrin clan are always careful when discussing the Arcanists to never say aloud or do anything that would appear to cross them.
Second, The Mordrin conveys her belief that by staying so long and so eventfully on such a small Island the Lakesla must have drawn the Arcanist's attention, and that perhaps, like her, they were perturbed that they could not "see" the Lakesla. She believes the Arcanists must have then somehow thought the Lakesla a danger or a foe.
Last, she indicates that although the Lakesla (less Morran) did indeed enter the Gate to the Mountain Redoubt, she knows for a fact from sources at the Redoubt that they never stepped through the other side. Through further yes-no riddles the party learns that The Mordrin knows of long-standing rumors of the Arcanists' ability to alter an open Gate to utterly destroy what passes through. The disappearance of the Lakelsa has confirmed it for her. There is a quiver of fear in her voice as she recounts this fact in her roundabout way.
Thus the party learns the final fate of their predecessors; annihilated while idlily doing what thousands of people on Raeluna do every day, walking through a Gate.
Doran then asks after Morran's body. Failing to bring back the live man, he is now compelled to return Morran's remains for proper funeral rights on Empyrean. The Mordrin answers that a deal is a deal, and the former Lakelsa did not fulfill their side of it. She says that the source of her power frowns on giving things away for free. She does offer a new deal, however. She says that her rivals the Forraze are quite weakened and that if the party can crush them in their current state she will deliver Morran's body to them. Telling the party to beware the Arcanists, The Mordrin then bids them a good night.
Although their primary question - what happened to their predecessors - is answered, the party agrees to fulfill the new deal for Doran, so that he might take Morran to a proper resting place. They grab their things from the Anaxar's hold and head out towards the home village of the Forraze clan.