The jingle of bells awakens Tric with a start as someone enters Damal’s shop. It is a grizzled old fellow with scars on the side of his reddish face. Tric recognizes him as Jedeth, a veteran who has bought him a few drinks after shows at the Parting Glass.
From up front at the counter, Damal requests Heppa wait one moment and asks the newcomer, “How may I help you this morning?”
“Oh, no, no no! Go about your business,” Jedeth replies. “I’m looking for this fella.”
Tric hops to his feet. “Sorry, Damal,” he apologizes, but it does not sound very heartfelt. “Professional services,” he adds with a shrug, then throws in a conciliatory, “I promise I’ll make a purchase.”
Jedeth tells Tric that he has gotten a lot out of his highly entertaining shows. “You expressed some interest in some of the local historical sites…”
Tric nods. “Yes, gotta learn the lore of the land. It gets you new material.”
“I heard from the barkeep down at the local drinking hole that you were fixing to head out of town. If you’re heading back east where your forest is—whatever it was called—there are a couple places just outside the city I could maybe show you on your way.”
“Oh, really?” Tric perks up even more. “You would do that for us?”
“It’s the least I can do for a visitor to our town,” Jedeth says agreeably.
“That would be fantastic, actually. We’ll be heading out…” Tric looks over to where Heppa stands, bedecked in alchemy supplies with a stack of purchases near her. She has her map out and is scribbling down notes. “Probably about mid-day. She’s making some major purchases. This is a fine shop,” he adds. He is essentially conducting business on Damal’s turf, so the least he can do is put in a good word for the proprietor.
Jedeth looks around, bemused. There seem to be a lot of colors. “Is this a paint shop?”
“You probably can get that here, actually.” Tric then suggests he and Heppa meet Jedeth at the eastern gate at midday.
“Sure, sure!” Jedeth agrees. “I’ll bring some sandwiches.”
“Oh, great! Looking forward to it! We’ll just want to check around some, maybe do a little bit of digging… See what’s left out there.”
“Not a problem. I have stories I could tell you!”
After Tric’s first performance at the Parting Glass, this fellow mentioned having been beyond the Bitter Swamp with Gweddry’s army. This seems the perfect opening for Tric to learn more about that. “I heard Mal-Ravanal had a capital, some ruined fortress. Have you been there?”
“Yeah, yeah…” Jedeth takes his cap in his hands and lets out a long breath. “Fwoof! It is nestled in among mountains. We were not able to proceed—Well, we got within sight of it. We weren’t able to breach it.”
“I understand. I heard you and Gweddry rescued some knights there?” Tric prompts. “That had to be crazy, sneaking into his capital to rescue some folks!”
Jedeth relays the story from his perspective. After passing through the tunnels when they fled the Southern Outpost, the army emerged in the Estmark Hills. “Gweddry wanted to end this thing. The wishy-washy mage who was his advisor kept insisting no, no, he’s too powerful. But Gweddry was firm; we had to try.” The army kept heading east, fighting their way past multiple sets of necromancers and dark sorcerers, each grimmer than the one before. They fought their way through the Bitter Swamp and crossed lands beyond it broken by chasms. Then, when the mountainous fortress was finally within view, the army was ambushed by more sets of Mal-Ravanal’s forces. “Mal-Ravanal himself taunted us before vanishing in a poof, like he always did,” Jedeth tells Tric, ending in a mutter, “cowardly creature that he was.”
There were cages scattered among the swampy area west of the mountain fortress. In them were several of the king’s knights. They had been sent out on a mission by King Konrad II back before Gweddry was given the defense of the Southern Outpost but had never returned. It now became apparent that that was because Mal-Ravanal had captured them all. “They were stuck in these little cages in the swamp, guarded by these things called revenants.” Jedeth looks down at his hat, spinning it around in his hand as he describes them as even more creepy versions of skeletons.
“More skeleton than skeleton?” Tric asks, a jocular note in his voice.
“Not just a bone guy with a sword,” Jedeth explains. “They had armor and helms. They were fully equipped skeletal warriors. And, truth be told, they had this… aura about them that was really unsettling. These knights in these cages were stuck, surrounded by these things for who knows how long. And what’s even worse, is that Mal-Ravanal played a sick game with us, taunting Gweddry to try to rescue the knights. When we did launch the assault, the first time one of our people was downed in the fight, one of the revenants killed one of the knights.”
“What?!” Tric is sobered now.
Jedeth explains how they had to reevaluate their tactics. Of course, a leader does not really ever want any of their soldiers to die, but some sacrifices have to be made when fighting. But this new situation required an even more defensive approach, while at the same time increasing the urgency of reaching the knights. “Mal-Ravanal was pretty messed up,” Jedeth comments.
“I knew he was evil,” Tric says. “I didn’t know he was twisted.”
Jedeth nods in agreement. “He toyed with their lives, but we were able to rescue a handful of knights who then joined us in the rest of the war. Sir Inyc, Sir Marthynec, Sir Tadogin, Sir Terraent…” The name Inyc sounds familiar to Tric, but he cannot place where he has heard it before. He wonders if maybe Gumreddoc mentioned him but then lets it go. Jedeth is still talking, and this is valuable material that is all new to Tric. “We focused on rescuing the knights. Since Mal-Ravanal had vanished—again—Gweddry finally accepted Dacyn’s advice to get out of there. With the knights we had liberated, we did a tactical withdrawal.”
Jedeth sighs in remembered weariness. “Then we had to fight through all those things again… There were these nice elves in one place. Some Volas fellow, an elf king who some orcs were trying to assassinate. We helped them with that—the elves, not the orcs.” Now that name Tric does not need to struggle to remember: Volas is the High Lord of the Estbryn Forest council. “Then we crossed the Great River, and the rest is history,” Jedeth concludes. His tale done, he puts his cap back on and heads off to buy sandwiches.