Session 3 — The Welcome at Sunton

The story so far, for the table’s memory. Told as the Dungeon Master gave it. It follows session 2.

Off the bridge

The gates of Tyre shut behind them and nothing followed — nothing living. Nyra’s raven familiar looked back and saw the shadows of the ruined city gather themselves and settle into sinister smiles. They are the party’s own shadows now, and they go where the party goes. Five of the seven carry them; Asher and Niðrerir do not, and no one has found a reason why.

The Northern Bridge runs a quarter mile, ten horses wide, hundreds of feet above the Lor’sha’une River, Tyre at the north end and Sunton at the south. Sunton is a walled city, but there is no wall and no gate on the side that faces Tyre. Nobody comes that way.

They came that way, in matching armour looted from a dead shop, escorting a boy with a box. A woman in a yellow dress took one look, screamed, and ran.

The welcoming party

Armed townsfolk closed the road — not threatening so much as frightened. At their head stood a halfling in poofy scarlet, a silvery breastplate worked with gold, and a hat bigger than he was: Pippin, of the town council. With him came a red-haired woman in a well-made plain dress, a burly smith in a sooty leather apron, and a rotund, balding man with beady eyes and a cast-iron frying pan.

Nyra Vail tried to calm them and the words came out as a growl while their shadow moved wrong. Swords came up and the spear came down. What manner of monster are you? Ace bolted into the crowd, and the man with the skillet threw it — two bludgeoning damage and dazed on the spot, then caught and held. Niðrerir put the fear back into them with a word, and they gave ground.

The boy stepped into the gap and begged: the ferry, the griffin, the dragon, the wreck, these people who kept him alive. All the while he hugged his little chest. Three of the seven caught what nobody else did — a flash of real anger crossing Pippin’s face as he looked at that box, gone the instant it came.

Niðrerir spoke into the boy’s mind, unheard by anyone else: Say nothing. Play along. Do not trust this man. The boy nearly came out of his skin. He kept quiet about the box.

The man with the skillet turned out to be Cookie, of the Sunburst, who grumbled something that might have been an apology, and stood the party their first meal.

What Pippin says of his city

He talked the whole way in. No mayor here — a council, and elections, and it has been that way for hundreds of years. He was born in Sunton, went away, came back about twelve years ago. He keeps a pocket watch he reads like a calendar, and his grey hair is dyed brown and well hidden.

Sunton sits on a crossroads: the southern trade road through the Saudient pass and on to the Burren, the northern kingdoms behind, and a harbour of their own newly finished so their goods need not go down to Aberdeen — whose people, he confides, are stuck up tyrants who would love to swallow Sunton whole. A full guild of rangers keeps the roads. Everyone else keeps their own arms.

On the way a giant in full plate stopped them, bowed formally, and said they wore something that brought back good memories. A sun of hard angles and lines was graven on his chest. My name is Ewein. I have made it my life’s mission to guard the roads and paths. He walked on. He’s an Aesir, said Pippin. Not one of the greater ones, but he’s been around a long time.

The Sunburst

A swirling sun hangs over the door — the same emblem as Ewein’s, drawn the opposite way. Inside: music, wide windows, fogged mirrors set to throw daylight into the corners, wood carvings, mounted heads, a brass chandelier that is good work and no more than that.

The house speciality is sunfruit juice. Sunfruit grows on this island and nowhere else in the world, the size of a large grapefruit, tasting like a very sweet tangerine — and it is magically refreshing as well as physically, restoring something of a caster’s strength. It is Sunton’s chief export, and it will serve as a crafting ingredient. The orchard sheep fertilise the trees, and are famously grumpy.

Niðrerir told the tale of Tyre and left out every mention of the coins and everything the boy had done. The table was bored stiff; even the red-haired woman gave up hiding her yawns. Zureth rescued it with a fabricated epic about a giant octopus and an arrow through its eye, and had them — though the red-haired woman believed him least of anyone.

While Pippin was distracted, Asher went for his purse. Every person at that table noticed except Niðrerir. Pippin looked him in the eye, glanced over each of Asher’s shoulders, and nodded once; two goliaths took him by the shoulders. He threw the purse back — scarlet, and heavy enough to thump. Asked his name, Asher said “Ashland,” and was not believed. He spent the rest of the meal seated where Pippin could watch him. It was just a funny joke, right?

The smith gave his name as Govannon: a master arcane smith, driven out of Aberdeen when the Clan of Light got their claws into him. Bring him materials, he said, and he might take one of them on as an apprentice.

Tanwen’s boy

The red-haired woman gave her name at last: Tanwen, newly arrived, setting up a trading house, and desperate to know how they had survived Tyre. When Nyra asked whether she knew of anyone else who had survived it, Tanwen’s face went blank and a tear ran down it anyway.

They came from further south to open trade, bought their building, and knew nothing of Tyre or its curse. The local boys dared her youngest to cross the bridge. He went. That was two weeks ago today.

His name is Rowen. He is eight. Red hair like hers but only a bit wavy, long enough to get in his eyes, hazel eyes, freckles. You won’t miss him.

She would give anything — supplies, goods, her whole shop — to have him back, and she has clothing of his that would still carry his scent.

Then Niðrerir, meaning to speak quietly to the party, said the word coins where she could hear it, and no amount of I said the yoin, it’s an old spell would put it back. Asher produced his and handed it over. Tanwen turned it in her fingers: a lightning bolt on one face, and on the other the same bird that stands on the party’s looted heraldry. She had never seen its like.

What Tanwen knows of Tyre

A thousand years ago Tyre was a seat of Aesir power — the seat of the great Aesir known as the Storm — a city of trade and learning, order and law. When the Aesir and the Vaenir went to war the Vaenir destroyed the great Aesir cities one after another. Tyre is the only one that survived, because the Storm’s power was past threatening.

There were rainbow bridges everywhere once, and they harmed nobody. Then something happened; the Storm grew angry, and made the bridges what they are. He drew the Vaenir into them, sealed them away, and exiled them across. Those great Vaenir have never been seen again.

If a rainbow bridge still stands in Tyre, Tanwen said — and the party had seen one — then perhaps it is still taking people. Perhaps that is where her boy went.

Why the wolf cries to the moon

The performer wore a cloak whose embroidered stars and clouds moved and swirled of their own accord, one scene sliding into the next. He sang the story of Lucian and Luna: the first wolf, the first unicorn, and Draco the first dragon whose jealousy killed her — and the Storm, greatest of Aesir healers, who could not save her and built a rainbow bridge to the moon so that she might live in a world without magic. Lucian could not follow; their children were here. That is why wolves call to the moon, and why the Lobine and the dragons hate one another.

The song ended. The man bowed, collected his money, and was simply gone.

What a sad tale, said Tanwen. That poor dragon, outcast and unloved. And then: I have met this dragon before. It was an interesting experience. She would tell them that story, she said, if they brought her Rowen back.

The night, and the morning

Cookie covered the first night’s rooms. There was one room to be had, so they all shared it. Nyra meditated four hours and called their raven back.

In the morning two teenage boys came off a rooftop at full parkour, playing tag, and landed ten feet in front of the party before vanishing up the buildings again. Around the corner came a tall man with silver eyes — not blue, not grey, not storm-grey; silver. He said good morning, said he had heard about them, and asked them to come and find him in the Sunburst before they left. Then he walked in and they walked on.

Ewein caught them at the door first. Someone is wearing his face — a shapeshifter, doing crimes in his name, so convincing that the last town he flew into attacked him on sight. He asked only that they watch for it. Zureth read him and found him entirely genuine, a fanatic for order and truth. Ewein suspects Vaenir; he noted, looking at Thorne, that Lobine can change shape too, and that if it were one of them it would be extra evil.

At Tanwen’s the shop was mid-remodel, crates everywhere and masons on the stairs. A blonde teenage girl of startling beauty greeted them — Seraphine, Tanwen’s daughter — are you going to help us rescue Rowen?

Tanwen’s stock is thin until her ship comes in: everything mundane they cared to take, six potions of healing, a bag of holding, and a magic purse that carries coin and gems without weight. Asher traded his Tyrean heraldry for plain studded leather and stowed the old set. Nyra took a journal and matches, Niðrerir paper and ink and wax, Thorne a dungeoneer’s pack.

She asked when they thought they would leave. This afternoon, they said.

The session ended on the street, on the way to the mystic shaper’s shop.