Nevill said:
So when he regains consciousness, I want to list the crimes he is accused of, and then tell him there are two ways it can be done. He can tell us everything he knows like a good cooperative citizen. Or we can turn him in to the King's judicial system for interrogation, and they are quite a bit less gentle and willing to entertain the notion of mercy than we are. So what is it going to be?
He comes to choking on water and yelling threats. As he takes in his surroundings he begins to realize just how deeply in trouble he is, he blinks twice and opens his mouth to speak.
You cut him off and begin to list his crimes. You circle to his left as Thaïs circles to his right, you alternate speaking, throwing the charges at him rapidly: treason, conspiracy, attempted murder on several counts. He blinks, his lip quivers, more a moment he thinks to protest. He looks past you at Jan's impassive face, he hangs his head and he lets out a low whine.
You give him his options. A polite 'chat' with the two of you now or a nice long conversation with a government examiner later.
He chokes back a sob and agrees to tell you anything he knows.
Nevill said:
How long has he been a cultist?
His entire life. His parents were cultists as were their parents before them.
Nevill said:
Reasons? He needs a moment to think about that. When he does answer it is with a slight shrug.
He has never really thought about it to be honest. It is just who he is. The Goddess is a part of him, a part of his past and his culture and if he serves her well in this life perhaps he will even be rewarded for it though he will readily admit that he does not expect any sort of physical or material reward for his faith. In that detail he says he is different than his father and mother.
Nevill said:
How many did he manage to involve in the worship of the Goddess?
Some of his earliest memories are going to the local temple with his parents. It was underneath the local mill and the congregation consisted of about a dozen dwarves. His mother as the minister would read to them of the deeds of the Goddess, how she created the world and uplifted the dwarven race. He remembers it so clearly, the chanting, the smell of beer and incense, the laughing and even the singing when they were sure they could get away with it. Those are some of his happiest memories and simple recounting them to you brings a smile to his face momentarily.
Nevill said:
If there are any of them who are not involved in working against the crown, we are willing to give them a benefit of the doubt.
He says there are many who follow the Goddess and have no quarrel with the Crown but they most are afraid as they know they will be wrongly persecuted.
You hear Jan scoff at the idea behind your back.
Caoilainn speaks in your mind. She tells you that the penalty for all those who worship the Goddess is death, no exceptions.
Nevill said:
What was he doing on the eighth floor?
He had finished his rounds on the ninth floor about twenty minutes earlier and he was waiting for- he stops, uncertain if he should implicate anyone else in his crimes. You remind him of what is waiting for him if he withholds information from you and with a loud gulp he nods and continues. He says he was waiting for Janine to come down. They would going to take lunch in the quarters of his apprentice and discuss some of the more interesting theories about the place of the Goddess within the 'heretical' versions of the dwarven creation myth. He and Janine get into all sorts of arguements about it. You see he maintains that the Goddess fills a largely allegorical role, a way for early dwarves to explain the shift in their culture from a semi nomadic fishing and gathering existence to a settled agrarian one. The spider Goddess as a sedentary hunter and planner manages to kill the nomadic and 'bestial' Swimmer which is naturally portrayed as a great ell or other, similar fish. Janine on the other hand argues in favour of a literal interpretation of the texts, that there actually was a giant fish and that the Goddess was and is an actual entity. Clearly warming to the subject he begins to laugh kindly and says that she even argues that the Goddess created the world from the body of the dead Swimmer but he believes that to be nonsense.
He grows serious for a moment. He asks you not to harm Janine or his apprentice. They mean no real harm and if you just let him talk to them he is certain that he can convince them to come quietly. Janine is a dear friend and it would break his heart to see anything happen to her. From the way he words his request you are fairly certain that she is more than simply a friend to him.
Naturally, you do not mention her death or the death of his apprentice as you want to get as much information from him as possible.
Nevill said:
What were the orders of 'Doctor Miosguinn'? For how long he accepts orders from him, anyway? Why? The man only was around for 2 to 3 weeks. What did not-Rand tell him?
He does not know who you mean.
On a hunch you ask him if the name Rand means anything to him. He nods. Rand is the name of a human follower of the Goddess that visits both Janine and him from time to time. He first introduced himself at a private gathering of cultists about a year ago, give or take a few months.
He is a strange man, hard to place and it is funny but he can not remember much of anything about the man no that he thinks about it.
You sigh, that is largely to be expected.
However he does add a point of clarification. Although he can not remember much about Rand in general he does clearly remember the meetings he has had with him over the last two weeks for some reason. It is strange, there has been something 'off' about Rand for the last two weeks as well. A sort of cruelty that stands out in his mind and which he is fairly certain was 'new' for Rand though he is not really sure how he knows that.
Over the last two weeks he met with Rand four times and each time the topic of conversation between them was the same.
He wanted to know about the temple below the Academy, when it was built and by whom.
Hallr told Rand that it was built over two thousand years ago. He is fairly certain that the temple was built by a pair of noble Houses that enjoyed a great deal of influence at the time but he can not be sure and both have long since fallen.
Rand then asked about the tomb located in the temple.
Hallr told him that it was probably built by the same people but Rand was insistent that it was not. Hallr could not shed any light upon the mystery though and Rand became quite aggressive. Hallr informs you, with a fair measure of indignation, that Rand in a bit of a fit managed to destroy a five hundred year old mortuary urn that Hallr had been studying. You can hear Jan wince behind you.
Nevill said:
He seems to want to gain access to the tomb. He has even suggested blowing it open with explosives but Hallr refuses to hear of such a thing. To deface a structure of such cultural and historical importance- Hallr practically clucks in incredulity -had Rand tried he would have been tossed out on his ear. Hallr is adamant on this point.
Nevill said:
How long did they know about the existence of the underground temple? And about the tomb?
He says that the upper echelons of the faithful have always known about the temple and that the Academy was founded to hide the temple and allow the cultists of the Goddess to worship without fear of government agents. Over time however, the leadership of the Academy has fallen out of the control of the faithful, much to the detriment of progress he might add.
You catch Jan fidgeting out of the corner of your eye. Eventually he can contain himself no longer, he hops to his feet and starts berating Hallr. He tells him that the Academy is dedicated to understanding the world and was created to help further the dwarven mastery of magic,
not to act as a front for a bunch of fanatics. Hallr spits back that he is no fanatic and that his faith is complementary to his desire to pursue the truth.
It seems like the two scholars might actually come to blows so you quickly act to split them up and settle them down again. As Hallr's attention returns to you, you can hear Jan muttering to himself from the far side of the room.
Nevill said:
Does he know who the tomb belonged to?
It belongs to a saint of the Goddess', an ancient warrior that fought in the Kingdom's interests against all manner of foe but little is known of his story and much is contested.
Some say he betrayed the Goddess; others say he was betrayed by the Goddess; some claim he helped her preform a great task, possibly driving off a ghôlish invasion in the early days of the Kingdom or something else suitably impressive; yet others say that he was not a mortal at all but some sort of spirit that owed the Goddess his life.
Hallr believes he was probably an early King of the dwarves and a follower of the Goddess' religion and was buried in that temple as a sign of respect for his faith.
Nevill said:
What does he know about the Spider Goddess (not-Rand mentioned he does not even believe she is a real entity)?
He believes that she represents an important stage in the development of dwarven civilization. The point at which they first adopted settled agriculture, by taming, planting and harvesting the various naturally occurring cave crops that surrounded them in the deep caverns below Stoneheim. It is his belief that originally the Swimmer was worshiped by the dwarves but as their needs and outlook changed they invented a new god to satisfy their desires. He also believes that the later outlawing of the Goddess' worship and adoption of the 'universal' god Wyrd coincides with the transition of the dwarves from an 'underground' race and civilization to an 'above ground' civilization.
He believes that the Goddess as a symbol and her texts as a moral guide can still serve the dwarven people well in the modern age, even if they do have to be modified somewhat. He begins to laugh again, he says this is another point that he and Janine fought endlessly about.
He asks if you might take him to see her soon. You temporize while your better half redirects him to other topics.
Nevill said:
Fangshi, how difficult would it be to request Hallr for ourselves to do as we see fit with him, and send him into the Dreaming? He is a dead man walking anyway, and the Dreaming is quite a bit more secure than a Pathfinder prison. Besides, Morpheus might like a company of an academician.
Albrecht trusts you enough to give you a fairly free hand (really he has few other operatives he can rely on at this point) so if you make a point to ask for Hallr then you can have him to do with as you see fit. You would need to provide assurances that he would never become a threat though.
Nevill said:
Can we request some arrows and bolts from the guards on our way out? King's orders and all.
The bolts they use won't fit in Thaïs' crossbow and they do not use arrows as they have no archers.
Nevill said:
Do we get to increase the number of the items we can enchant as part of our collective mage activities by virtue of practicing this for a whole month?
Yes, it is taking you less time to cast those enchantments as you are close to mastering some of them. You can enchant a bit more in the same amount of time should you wish.
Nevill said:
One month ago we could enchant 10 arrows per hour for a week. Does the math still stand? Maintaining a small reserve of arrows enchanted with different spells would probably benefit us.
That should be doable if there is interest. I would also need to know if you lot want to pick the types of enchantments on the arrows or just leave them up to the party to figure out on their own.
Nevill said:
Why did we not learn The Path of Intellect and The Path of Clarity as part of our everyday activities? They are the ones we actually actively cast.
Derryth is too stupid. She can not grasp the runes.
The way I set up many of the dwarven enchanting traditions bound them to specific stats. (I wanted to try something new out and I decided it was plausible to have the dwarves learn magic in a vastly different manner from humans.). So Lyssa and Thaïs at INT 8 are smart enough to learn those spells but Derryth at INT 7 is not.
It cuts both ways though, if Derryth had been the one to learn the riddles way back when you first came to the Academy then she would have been able to grasp several spells that the other two would not be able to manage due to her higher WIS (8 as opposed to 6 for the other two).
If Derryth ups her INT she will be able to learn the two paths she does not know. There is also a slight chance that she will have an epiphany and figure it out from studying the other two but so far she has not rolled well enough to pull it off.
Nevill said:
Can we ask Jan if he knows something about the 'guardians' down the stream? Apparently there were recorded claims of their existence.
He has heard stories about fish-like dwarves abducting people ages ago but as far as he knows it is all just rumour.
Supposedly that pool and the tunnels connecting to it were part of a very old mine and one day the miners struck water either through incompetence or sabotage. Many of the miners became trapped on the lower levels as the water rose. Legend says that they prayed to all manner of beings and that something actually answered them. It saved them but it made them into monsters.
He does not believe it of course, just a story used to terrify the novices.