Revis the Rival
Nade City, Nade
On the day before Dar Aalan passes through Nade and the party lets him go, Ramach solves the Zelixan puzzle box found in Nyana's old room. Inside the opened box are a few pieces of linen paper written in Zelixan. It also contains several sketches of a complicated mechanical object on aged parchment with notes written in Mehujaeli. For those that can read it, the top paper reads:
Nyana -
This is a note from you to you. You know the kind. We’re about to go do something stupid and you asked H. to distill your memories of your search for an item called the Gate Compass to a Spirit to be kept in the cellar. We will invest it tomorrow. If you’ve made it back and are reading this, it must be frustrating to know that you can’t remember this endeavor that you’ve spent so much time on. Take comfort that you took the time to write this to yourself to keep the facts of the search available to you if you need to leave Nade. It’s not strictly by the rules, but you know how you are about rules. Tuck this with the other notes. Good luck and I’m glad you made it back!
-Nyana
The rest of the pages are in neat Zelixan script in tidy short sections.
Full text of Nyana's notes to herself.
The Gate Compass. An object created around the year 300 that gives the positions of the Islands and Gates. Supposedly supports travel between Islands independent of the Arcanists. Made by a potent magi or team of magi, unknown if the Collegium, Magi Clan, or other. Chull certainly is very interested - asks about it every time we visit.
Battle on Balmach. In 490 the Alshekal bought a bunch of junk salvaged from a under an old rock slide in a barren area of Balmah, looking for abandoned magical objects. In the year 364 a struggle occurred on Balmach between a group of magi and Arcanists. It's not in usual histories but evidence is there if you know where to look. We found a battered and half-burned chest containing notes written by a one of the magi from the battle.The notes claimed that in the final moments of the struggle, an orn rider named Karif was given the “Compass” to bring to “Larvach” for safekeeping.
Balmach’s orbit. You had to get Morran’s help on this one. He has a few young Arcanist friends. Around the time of the battle, Balmach was only close to Mehujael. The closest approach put it at 30 miles, well within the range of a lightly burdened orn. Larvach being a Mehujaeli name added to this theory.
Mehujael. You had to get Enelach’s help on this one. Searched records in Mehujael city, found only one close name, Lamach, a drop-mage who lived on Mehujael at the time, and part of a prominent family. Spent some time getting to know his descendants, mostly a dead end, until you found in one of their houses a sketch that matches descriptions of the device. Apparently the thing had become an heirloom and stayed in the family a long time, and someone’s grandfather liked to make drawings of interesting heirlooms. Upon the death of this artistic individual, the last of the direct line of Lamach's, his possessions were sold to a junk dealer in the Traverton in the year 425. The current descendants did not know which one.
Junk dealers. They don’t keep a lot of records, but you showed the sketches around and one old-timer dimly recalled his mother being quite excited over the sale of an object like the sketch. She was offered an absurd amount of coin for it, which was sadly stolen from her shortly afterwards. This was around the year 435. He recalled that the folks who bought it were scholars of the lowlands from an Outer Island who dressed in bright yellow. You were stopped cold there for a bit.
Munkar Tesmarites. Then you heard an unrelated story about a sect of “scholars” based on Munkar who got busted by the Collegium around 470 for practicing unlicensed magic. They evidently all wore bright yellow. You bribed a young student at the Collegium to look into their records, and she reported that the survivors of the bust were put into some kind of work prison on Ampradel.
Ampradel. The Collegium keeps a prison for repeat offenders on Ampradel. They evidently make them construct dangerous magical components or something. You snuck in and asked around, found an old Tesmarite who recalled the device fondly and went on for some time about their experiments with it. He claims it did indeed give the positions of the Islands at any given time, as well as some other arcane output that they never deciphered. He says that they fell on hard times around the year 466 and had to sell off their collections, just a few years before the Collegium took them all to Ampradel. The Compass he recalled going to a representative of the Brightstar Guild of Angbol. The representatives were there to sell, not buy, but this man from Brightstar saw the compass and had to have it.
Angbol trip number one. The Guilds are difficult to infiltrate, but it’s a long orbit with not much to do and they get bored like anyone else. After a lot of unsavory dealings (better you do not remember them, actually) you found that the Brightstar Guild likely had the Compass, and may have figured out how to use it. But in the year 495 treachery had been done. Just out of the Shroud and on the approach to the Ang, a number of guild assets went missing and a guild lackey vanished. Investigations are rumored to have been intense and focused on the Arcanists, who claimed to know nothing of it of course. It wasn't until after a Core connection that it became known that an infamous surface explorer and dealer in surface artifacts named Rinsluk was incognito on the Island that cycle, and of course later it was assumed that the missing lackey was selling secrets (and objects!) to Rinsluk and ran into foul play. The Brightstar Guild have been hunting Rinsluk ever since.
Rinsluk. As luck would have it, the Alshekal know of Rinsluk. He is based in Nade City. Palmach set up a meeting with him. It was cautious even by Palmach's standards. Rinsluk was hiding from Brightstar agents and very cagey. He let you know that the guild traitor was indeed selling him the Gate Compass, among other items, but double crossed him. The man gave Rinsluk information, but had packed up all the assets in a padded crate and dumped them over the edge on the approach to the Ang. Claimed he could send a team to retrieve them later. Rinsluk admitted to throwing the traitor after the crate, and claimed to have left Angbol with just the secrets.
Angbol trip number two. Yes, you spent two years of your precious life on that stupid rock. Rinsluk remembered the day of his failed ploy, and with this information Morran’s friends helped with the positions of the orbits to map likely landing locations, if it even survived such a drop. So you went back and hired a group to descend into the Ang and look for the thing on the surface. The less said about it the better. You did not Locate the Compass in the likely area, and nearly died for your troubles. You’d have ended there but for a sweet fellow named Orosh who got you back off the surface alive. He is prime inheritor material in the mold of Morran and I hope you remember giving him your coin.
Now. You have to consider that perhaps Rinsluk was not being entirely truthful about the guild traitor throwing the Compass off Angbol. The rumored reward on his head seems high for someone who just took guild secrets. He may have fed you that lie in the hopes that it would get back to the Brightstar Guild and buy him some reprieve. Another visit with Rinsluk may be in order, perhaps with more Alshekal in attendance.
Alshekal business calls, however, and we’re off to Darromar first to relieve the Tinker of some bones.
In summary, Nyana’s trip to the Ang during which she met Orosh was to search for the Gate Compass, an object that Enelach had stated was a goal of the Alshekal predecessors and somehow allows circumventing of the Gates. She did not find it, and suspects her source, a surface explorer and dealer in surface artifacts named Rinsluk, lied to her and may actually have the device. Miksaji Palmach set up her last meeting with Rinsluk, who was at the time and may still be hunted by agents of the Brightstar Guild of Angbol. The mention of a "cellar" in the cover note leads the party to search the Nade house for a way to a basement, and they soon find a secret door in the back of the office-like room on the first floor.
A shaft descends 30 or 40 feet to a subterranean room. There is little there but a few moldy carpets and a table on which rests a small carved skull, another vessel for a Spirit of Intellect. This one is clearly for Orosh's coin, and a spectral version of Nyana is summoned into being. She is both thinner and more sinuous than Orosh remembers.
After appropriate greetings and introductions, she says she stores the memories of Nyana's search for the Gate Compass and certain things about Nade house. She says there is a trigger for the house related memories that hasn't yet been met, but waxes poetic about the Gate Compass search with more to say than was in the note she wrote to herself.
First, she expands on the Gate Compass itself. She says it has to do with complex magics by which experienced magi can move about from place to place on an Island and on the surface - like getting around without a Gate. These magics do not work between Islands or from surface to Islands. Something about the motion of the islands utterly confounds them. The compasses, she thinks, were created to solve that problem.
There were three made. The original maker perished by Arcanists. The Arcanists suppress all research into the area, and have coopted much of the Collegium to do the same, although some quietly resist, like Chull. One is rumored destroyed, and two have been lost for over a century.
She points out two things about the sketches. First, a small symbol on one corner of the device matches one that can be faintly seen in the glow of the Alshekal coins. It is a symbol, she says, that the Alshekal used long ago. They stopped because some powerful enemy came to know them by it. She says the symbol being on the sketch means that this Gate Compass belonged to the Alshekal. Our forebearers, she says, were at the Battle of Balmach, and may have lost the Gate Compass there.
Secondly, an array of small circles with lettering grouped on one side of the sketches of the device looks like circles on the floor in the basement here, under the carpet...and others found in older secure Alshekal locations. She is unsure about the significance, but points out that this is further evidence that the device in an Alshekal artifact.
She has no further information about Rinsluk, other than it was Palmach who set up her meeting with him.
The party soon contacts Palmach, who meets them in a public market near Little Jamerah. He says that he remembers Rinsluk, and that he had some hot object he was trying to offload and then to get off the Island himself. Palmach, being a careful fellow, did not want to deal with someone as slippery as Rinsluk and sent him to a rival, a man named Revis, who specializes in getting people off the Island. Revis, Palmach says with distaste, is a sloppy operator, and always works out of his front business, a slaughterhouse in the Market Fields district. He is rumored to keep a ledger off all his deals in a guarded subterranean chamber. Palmach says with a grin that he has tried to get a hold of it, but no one he has given the information to has ever come back. He suspects the party could likely pull it off. The party agrees to do so.
They scout the slaughterhouse by day, and return at night. The guards are put to sleep or intimidated and present no real resistance. Koros picks locks all the way to Revis's office, which contains a desk and a few artifacts, including a slab of Ancient Race ruin on the back wall. Akissi finds the secret hatch in the floor, and the party descends into the basement. Koros picks the lock on a large sliding door, and sets off a trap that causes the Ancient Race slab in the office above to topple over on the hatch, trapping the party in the basement. The room on the other side of the now open door is dark, and from the dim recesses low growling can be heard....
Two low and large black beasts prowl forward, like dogs but with overly muscular front legs and wide, flat, eyeless heads. Their mouths stretch unnaturally wide from ear to ear. As the party opens fire, one of them lunges forward across 30 feet of space and nearly grabs Koros's leg. Orosh and Akissi run forward to enage, while Paetro and Ramach fire ranged bolts and firebolts and Koros keeps to the flanks. One of the beasts gets a hold of Akissi's leg, shakes her to the ground, drags her 20 ft around a corner and mauls her near to death before Koros and Ramach finish it. Another gets a hold of Orosh, but is knocked senseless by Orosh and Paetro before attempting to drag Orosh to the ground. The surface beasts bleeding on the floor, the party smashes into Revis's second office, disables a magical trap, and grabs both his ledger and a bunch of scrolls outlining his current dealings.
Palmach meets the party the next morning at garden courtyard in the Baraki Quarter, filled with strange desert plants and scents. His appreciation is high and visible - he is near quivering with glee when the party hands over Revis's ledger and scrolls. He consults a few pages of notes he brought with him and pages through the ledger in squirting concentration for perhaps half an hour.
When he looks up, he says that interestingly no where is it recorded what Rinsluk was trying to sell. Revis recorded only that he sent Rinsluk to Baron Erodan of Iradel.
Palmach frowns. If Revis has a knack for getting wanted people off of Nade, the Baron Erodan is rumored to have a knack for making them vanish altogether, from searches both physical and magical. Palmach has not dealt with him, but knows his reputation. The Baron's services are rather exclusive and very highly priced.
Palmach looks at the ledger again, and his frown deepens to a scowl. He says that Revis then turned around and sold this same information to some agents of the Brightstar Guild. If those brutes were after Rinsluk, Palmach wonders if Rinsluk is still among the living. Only Baron Erodan would know, he supposes.
Luckily, the Gate to Iradel opens in 5 days.