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episode 7
2022-10-17 01:45:34 +00:00
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Cleric + Thief
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<header id="title-block-header">
<h1 class="title">00007. Tall Man</h1>
</header>
<p>Iofi walks up the dirt path to the cottage with a basket of fruit,
fresh picked from the abandoned, wild orchard.</p>
<p>She walks past the front door, around to the side of the log house
and stops before a blank wall. She waits, her arms full of fruit basket,
as an opening in the wall slowly appears. She steps inside and the
portal closes behind her.</p>
<p>Inside, Meadowgloom is sitting, propped up in a chair near the
fireplace. He is pale and thin now. His hair is thinner, and white. His
large watery eyes dominate his sunken face now. And his jowls hang on an
otherwise gaunt face.</p>
<p>It is traumatic coming back from the dead.</p>
<p>Blackguard and Maddox are sitting with him.</p>
<p>Iofi sets the basket down on the table and retrieves one of the long,
yellow, fuzzy pods. She peels it open revealing a bright green flesh
speckled with small dark seeds. She dices it up, plates it with some
bread, and brings it to Meadowgloom who accepts with a weak smile.</p>
<p>Maddox shifts uncomfortably in their chair. Iofi looks at him
questioningly.</p>
<p>“Nothing,” they say. “I just. I just didn’t expect it to still be
this hard.”</p>
<p>“You don’t have to keep going down there,” she replies gently,
sitting down next to them. “Why don’t you come on back. There’s no
reason to torture yourself.”</p>
<p>Maddox looks away, closes their eyes, and sighs. Another Maddox snaps
into existence by the table with the fruit basket. “I’m recalling
everybody,” this new Maddox says, the first Maddox popping out of
existence. “I need to have just one person in my head for a while,” the
new Maddox continues. They leave the common room, going into one of the
bedrooms and closes the door behind them.</p>
<p>Iofi turns and looks at the fireplace. She and Blackguard watch in
silence as Meadowgloom pretends to eat.</p>
<center>
<pre>~ * ~</pre>
</center>
<p>Bridgers Farm is an abandoned orchard just outside the walls of
Kriteach. The goosefinger trees are growing untamed, and more and more
are becoming a small, wild forest. Goosefinger fruit lies rotting on the
ground in the autumn. The birds and small critters can’t eat it fast
enough.</p>
<p>The farm used to supply Melior Abbey with goosefinger to make wine
and brandy, which the monks sold to support the abbey. And the farm.</p>
<p>When the King Vulture died and the monks all went mad, the abbey was
abandoned. And then it was razed to the ground in retribution.</p>
<p>A few walls, an intact room here and there, are all that remain of
Melior above ground.</p>
<p>Below ground the tunnels remain. The cellars and the catacombs, and a
few sealed tombs. One such sealed tomb is rumored to still hold the
remains of the 12th abbot of Melior who, according to legend, was
entombed alive as punishment for heresy and for plotting against the
King Vulture. For centuries the abbot’s remains have rested inside the
wall undisturbed until just very recently when he unexpectedly gained a
new cellmate, the Hand’s master assassin.</p>
<p>The Melior tunnels connect the abbey, nestled inside the city walls
in Scholar’s Gate, to the orchard on the outside. A convenient way to
transport fruit, and one of the few ways to bypass the city walls.</p>
<p>The privacy and freedom of movement provided by the tunnels, in
addition to the farm’s remoteness and its taboo association with the mad
monks of the King Vulture, are why Iofi and Maddox moved their new base
of operations here from the compromised Bone and Beak bookstore and
cafe.</p>
<p>“I think it’s time,” says Iofi and Blackguard tenses. “The Crown and
the Hand are both looking for you, Blackguard. Why?”</p>
<p>Blackguard seems to deflate. Meadowgloom is sleeping in a chair by
the fire.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know,” Blackguard starts. “I was … I was moving cargo. I
would get a shipment container number, and then my men would go down to
the dockyard and load up the crates and carry them out to Chicken Gate.
And there’d be somebody there waiting to take the shipment. I didn’t
know where it came from or where it went.”</p>
<p>Blackguard looks up at Iofi, wild-eyed. “You have to believe me.
Nobody believes me. The Count thinks I’m behind the whole thing! I don’t
know how he found out. But suddenly I had royal funding. The shipments
started coming in more frequently, and I had to step away from my other
ventures and just … do whatever this is fulltime. Of coure I knew the
Hand would find out. They know about everything that comes through the
harbor. I knew that being in the pocket of the royals would do me any
favors with them. But for a while it seemed I was untouchable. Until …
until I found out what we were moving.”</p>
<p>Blackguard’s voice drops to a whisper, he casts his eyes downward and
rings his hands. “It was people. People, I tell you.”</p>
<p>He looks up at Iofi, his eyes blazing. “It was Western people. It was
Givzi people.”</p>
<p>OUTLINE</p>
<ul>
<li>xp</li>
<li>Camping in the abandoned orchards outside Melior Abbey</li>
<li>Blackguard</li>
<li>Tall Man</li>
</ul>
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