“I’ve got business to attend to. Let’s go back out to the bar. And seriously, Norm, don’t stress about it. Just go to the fight, and we’ll figure it out from there.” Lucy opened the door and walked through, with Norm following right behind her. Norm found himself unable to escape the watching eyes of the table of gamblers.
“I could tell them,” he thought, “I could tell them that they’re all going to lose their money.”
Norm took a seat at the bar with his back resting against the counter, staring back as the table slowly resumed their activities.
“No, no. If I told them, they’d cancel their bets, and then the guard would take it out on Lucy. Best to just stay the course. But still, I’m not helpless,” Norm thought, taking a drink as Lucy offered it to him from behind the counter.
“Say, fellas,” Norm boomed his voice towards the gamblers, “That bookie who was here just now, what’s his name?”
GATHER INFORMATION
Roll 1d6+wits(2) = 4 versus 2 / 5, Weak Hit
The information complicates your quest or introduces a new danger. Envision what you discover (Ask the Oracle if unsure), and take +1 momentum.
Ask: Do the gamblers know the guard’s real identity? Unlikely, 76+ : roll 1d100 = 93, Yes!
“Who, Tristandrew?” one of the gamblers who looked like he had too much to drink said, right before being elbowed in the stomach by another.
Another spoke up, “No, no idea, Norm. Should you really be drinking before you’ve got to fight tonight?”
Norm looked him dead in the eye and lifted his glass up, tilting the tankard high until it nearly covered his face. He gulped, downing the drink to the last drop. However, when he lowered the cup, and his vision returned, he found himself seated at a wooden table, and the ground underneath him was rocking.
“Oh shit, here we go again,” Norm thought as he saw his own clawed hand gripping the cup. He realized now that the rocking motion was because he was on a boat. Seated across from him was one of the mates from the last vision he had, at the village on the cliff.
The companion lizardperson spoke, “And we don’t have anything to worry about, Drezz. The saying of the elders, ‘When you go out for revenge, dig two graves,’ you have heard it, yes? Well, we dig no graves because the buzzards will eat them!”
The companion let out a laughing hiss, slamming his cup to the table. Drezz, or Norm, spit out, “Aleko, have you no respect for the dead? The gods will make us pay for what we did, and”
Aleko interrupted, “It will have to be the gods because there’s no one left to come for us. Besides, remember what they did to you! We couldn’t let that go. They kill one of ours, we kill all of them, it’s only fair!”
Norm felt the tension in Drezz’s muscles, a sort of full-body cringe as she leaned back in the chair.
Aleko continued, “And now, we live in peace. No more war between the tribes. Just as the shaman foretold, you will live a long life, and all of your enemies will be vanquished. It was the only decision that we had. No other choice would have mattered.”
Drezz stood, and Norm felt the pain and effort that it took for her to do so. Drezz looked down at her leg, and Norm could see the multibranched snaking lines of her lightning scar on her leg. She struggled against the swaying motion of the boat and made her way to the grog cask, filling up her mug. She looked at Aleko and spoke, “Just because it felt like what we had to do doesn’t make it right, shaman’s advice or not.”
She lifted the cup to take a deep drink, darkness filling her vision. Norman saw himself again, through the perspective of someone else, seemingly frozen in time, seated at the bar with his mug covering most of his face.
“What am I supposed to glean from this, and who is telling me these things?” he managed to think before he snapped back to reality, spilling drink down his shirt. He remembered that he had been asked a question.
“I’ll do what I want, and it ain’t none of your concern,” he said, eying the crowd warily.
“They don’t care about me. They only want to make some money. They let slip some truth there, and I’d do best to find out what I can about this Tristandrew, but not from them and not on my own.”
Most of the gamblers looked away from Norm, and after a few more moments, the rest lost interest in him. He nursed his drink, turning the mug in his hands as he watched Lucy go about her business. He reckoned that he had a few hours to kill, and his best use might be to try and find some more information about Drezz, Aleko, and their tribal warfare.
When Lucy returned to the bar, Norm grabbed her attention, “I’m headed to The Light Library to try to figure some things out. Did you hear what they said the guard’s name was?”
Lucy nodded as she filled some mugs and clinked some of the money into her lockbox, “Tristandrew, it’s a start. I’ll see what I can get from them with some help from my friend, this cask of ale.”
Norm smiled, “Ah, a friend in drink is a friend indeed. But, just to let you know, I’ll probably be going from the library straight to the mill if you wanted to go watch the fight.”
Lucy shook her head, “Bloodsport isn’t really my style. It was bad enough having to clean up yesterday after your mess, I don’t want to see what it looks like when several grown men beat each other to a pulp.”
“I hadn’t considered that. Fuck, she had to clean up after me in more ways than one.”
Norm grimaced, unsure how to respond. Finally, after a moment, he hopped off the stool and said, “Sorry. Well, I’ll be going now.,” as he walked out of the door in a hurry, not bothering to look back.
“What the hell is wrong with me? One of three people in the world that might give a shit about me, and I can’t even do right by them.”
Norm took off down the street, nearly running in an attempt to blow off steam. The wind blew past his ears, making a swooshing effect that helped to drown out the sounds of the city and whatever voices he might have to share his head with. He stopped running when he made it to the seawall, around the port, and with the Light Library within view. The structure towered over the harbor and most of the city behind Norm.
Norm walked along the docks, watching as the harbormaster’s dolphins towed one ship out to sea, a crew preparing to fly the sails as soon as they hit open water. Norm made it to the base of the Light Library and approached the glass door. He saw the light pouring out from the eternal flame left by ancient peoples and amplified through a variety of mirrors and lens that paved the entire ground floor in brilliance. A large covering would be removed when nightfall came, and the light would journey to the sky to power the lighthouse.
But Norm turned his attention to the front desk, where a ravenkind sat with a pair of spectacles perched on their beak. Norm approached, “Howdy, I’m looking for a good place to start on some research for a book.”
The ravenkind did not look up from the book they were reading. Instead, they opened their beak slightly as someone’s voice, something with an Elvish accent spoke out, “Subject?”
Norm replied, “Well uh, let’s see... there are tribes of lizardfolk at war with each other. They’re seafaring, probably only along the coast, and they take guidance from a shaman. That’s about all that I know.”
The ravenkind looked up, their eyes an expression of annoyance as they looked beyond the rim of their glasses. Then, they spoke in a different voice, this one with the gruffness of a dwarf saying, “Ancient Peoples, section 27,” before looking back at their book.
It would be questionable whether or not the Light Library had exactly what they were looking for. So many of the sailors that came and went from this port brought and traded books as they went on their travels that the administrators had long ago embraced the chaos of the system, doing their best to put books into appropriate sections but never bothering to keep track of who had any of them. So Norm would have to look for this on his own.
GATHER INFORMATION
1d6+wits(2) = 8 versus 9 / 6, Weak Hit. On a weak hit, the information complicates your quest or introduces a new danger. Envision what you discover (Ask the Oracle if unsure), and take +1 momentum.
Norm browsed the Ancient Peoples section, looking over the collection of bound books, loose connections of papers bundled together, and even a couple of scrolls. Some of the titles were visible. Others had no title and required him to read a bit to see if it was relevant. After more than an hour of searching, Norm finally found something promising in the form of a stack of papers tied with a perpendicular tied section of twine. Underneath the string, there was a crudely drawn black and white triptych-style drawing of a lizardperson. The first panel depicted them standing in front of flames, the middle a lightning bolt bound straight for them, and the last panel depicted them standing atop a cliff. Unfortunately for Norm, this bundle of papers was in a language that he did not know; the script was sharp, full of strange slashes and edges.
Norm took the bundle and sat down at a nearby table. He thought as hard as he could in an attempt to decipher the text. Through exploring his mind in the past, Norm had found that if he opened his mind up to those who came before him, he was sometimes able to channel what they knew. Norm stared at the page until his eyes lost focus, attempting to turn himself into a blank slate.
SECURE AN ADVANTAGE W/ RECALL: When you assess a situation, make preparations, or attempt to gain leverage, envision your action and roll
RECALL: When you reconnect with the memories of your past lives, roll +wits. On a strong hit, add the value of your action die to your Recall track (max 6). You may then Secure an Advantage, Strike, or Face Danger +Recall to channel the force of past lives. If you do, suffer -1 Recall and take +1 momentum on a hit. On a weak hit, as above, but capturing these energies is harrowing; Endure Stress (2 stress).
1d6 +recall(5) = 8 versus 5 / 5, Strong Hit and Match!
Norms' eyes had glazed over, but now looking at the manuscript, he had the strange sensation of now being able to instantly recognize what the words said.
“THE SAGA OF THE RED FEATHER CLAN”
Norm blinked and rubbed his eyes, unable to fathom what had just happened, “I can read this language now? The language of what, the ‘Red Feather Clan?’ This is the closest I have ever come to know exactly the story of one of the people in my head. At least now I know I wasn’t going crazy.”
Norm flipped the pages, hoping to stitch together the story of Drezz and Aleko. Surely enough, their story was written down, although it was compiled here by a lizardfolk historian named Evka. Drezz’s daughter, who was to succeed her as matron of the Red Feather Clan, was murdered by Ice Rock Tribe members because they feared her daughter’s magic powers. Drezz, distressed, sought out the shaman for holy advice. The shaman told her that only total retribution would suffice for what the Ice Rock Tribe did to her. But the shaman spoke to Drezz in secret: if Drezz had her revenge, she too must die, or else the gods would send someone to strike her down.
Drezz bore this secret, keeping it from everyone, even her mate Aleko. After they had slaughtered the Ice Rock Tribe, Drezz was struck by lightning. Drezz knew it to be a sign that the gods were angry at her, but to her battlemates, this was a sign of power. Drezz and her warriors sailed back home, and the Red Feather Clan was plagued with hardship for many years. Finally, Drezz, knowing that it was all her fault, flung herself from the cliff.
The manuscript seemed to be full of marginalia and footnotes from the historian Evka. Norm pieced together another curious facet: Evka, the historian, lived in Asnor. Norm returned the manuscript to the shelf and made his way to the building’s exit.
“Maybe gods are looking down on me, smiling with cruelty as I navigate the labyrinth of this life and many others. Now I can finish this book, and on time for once. Just need to piece together a few more memories, and Meringue can edit the hell out of it.”
Norm was so distracted by his research and surrounded by the brilliant lamps of the eternal flame in the Light Library that he hadn’t realized how much time had passed. It was dark when he walked out of the structure. Norm was late for his fight night.
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