In Which Our Hero Delves into the Black Mountain Mines; Virginia Reveals a Secret

“Come one! Come all! See the world’s most intelligent orc and other exotic wonders, gathered from the farthest reaches of Arcanum to be viewed by you! Yes, you!”

I paused in the sidewalk, then turned to face the twelve year old who had just thrust his cane at me. The street urchin had been set upon an empty crate of Proudfoot Stout and was waving a cane in the air while wearing ratty old clothing that might have once been fashionable. The effect was rather like someone dressing up to impress the in laws without having the funds to cover the expenses. Seeing my attention, the urchin pointed at me again.

“You look like an adventurer! But have you eve seen a real life shrunken head from the lost city of Kree? Or how about the real true pelt of the Stillwater Giant!” He swept his cane about in a wild arc, pointing at the building he stood beside. “See all these delights and more at H. T Parnell’s Emporium of Wonders!”

“Can you believe this tripe?” Virginia asked, her voice soft as she stepped up between me and the boy, jerking her thumb at the building. “Sir, I’ve seen charlatans and their like before, and I wager we’d be blowing our coin on some ... some huckster.”

“Innit it all Mr. Bates’ coin?” Sally asked, adjusting the large backpack that she was holding. We had just finished a rather impressive spending spree, having blown quite a bit of Mr. Bates’ admittedly impressive stipend on the preparations we were making for our adventure to the Black Mountain Mines. It was nearly a week away by foot, into the northwestern corner of the Stonewall range. We’d be many leagues from civilization and then once we reached the place, we’d still need to then find the exact location. Mr. Bates had marked our map, but the exact coordinates were an area of mountains that seemed rugged and rough on the atlas.

Still, Sally did raise a good point. It was Mr. Bates coin.

The interior of H. T Parnell’s Emporium of Wonders was remarkably poorly lit for a museum, with dim lamps and flickering candles illuminating priceless artifacts. The effect, I believe, was used to disguise certain unfortunate facts that were only discernible after one had paid the five gold coin entrance fee. Virginia and I were both immediately interested in the amazing two headed cow of Vendigroth, which had been taxidermied and placed upon a platform, with a small plaque reading: Discovered in 1880 by the famed explorer and adventurer, H. T Parnell, this two headed bovine was found within an underground vault filled with the most vilest of undead.

“That’s a deer’s head,” I said.

“It’s definitely a deer’s head,” Virginia said, nodding.

“You can see the stitching,” I whispered back. “Nearly as bad as mine.”

Virginia giggled quietly. “Sir, you have improved immensely.”

“Hey, boss!” Sally shouted. She was standing beside a large case that contained the ‘body’ of a humanoid figure with antlers, tusks, and a burly almost ogreish build. The creatures most striking feature was the fact it was clearly covered in poorly sewn together bear pelts. Sally was standing next to the case, her hand measuring out the distance between the top of her head and the center of the creature’s chest. “Finally – hic – someone taller’n me!”

“Very good, Sally,” I said. “Magnus, what have you found?”

“Oh, this miniature steam engine works, all right,” ‘Magnus’ said, turning away from the exhibit she had been examining. “The toothpicks this bugger used to make it will still pick yer teeth just fine, they will.”

I shook my head, ambling past a poorly carved stone head – claiming to be of someone named Arronax. Then I stopped, backed up, and read the placard before the stone head. This stone head is all that remains of the evil elf Arronax, who once sought to rule the whole of Arcanum. He was defeated in battle during the Age of Legends by the glorious Nasrudin.

“Huh,” I said. And now we had a name for the great evil that was returning, if one could trust carnival hucksters. I turned to look for where Virginia had wandered off to, but instead of finding her, my eyes settled on the only exhibit that was brightly lit. Sitting on a chair, looking deeply bored, was an orcess. She was dressed in a quite preposterous imitation of what someone might imagine to be ‘tribal styles.’ Essentially, she wore a fur breast-band and a fur thong, which both looked to itch terribly. Her hair itself was black as mine, though hers tended towards curls and bunching up, which some fool had used as the basis for her headdress: A great deal of bones had been worked into the hair, to add to the tribal effect. Of course, there were no actual orcish religious symbols anywhere on her person – no icons of Shakar, no Velorian symbols. Nothing.

The orcess herself, though? She was as lean and muscular as I, with feminine curves and a face that was quite hauntingly beautiful by orcess standards. Her lower tusks were prominent, thrusting out and up along her upper lip, and her nose was flat and broad. She had full lips and a narrow chin, and her eyes were a dark brown, like mine.

I walked slowly forward. “Are you the world’s most intelligent orc?” I asked, my brow furrowing.

“Ugh!” the orcess said, sitting up. “Me Garina. I world smartest orc! You have got question?”

I rubbed my chin, frowning a bit. She had the facial features, tusks, and body of an orcess. But after the last few items I’d seen at this place, my skepticism was seeking for any flaw in her disguise. But nothing physical came to light. She looked like an orcess, even under harsh electric light. “What do you know?” I asked.

“Garina know many things,” she said. “Garina tell all. Politics. Mathematics. Tea.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Politics?”

Garina puffed up her chest, accentuating her form as she crossed her arms on her lap. “Tarant foremost representative democracy in Arcanum. Chairman Willoughsby try align Tarant with Caladon, cause him much trouble. Councilman Braithe call for him step down, us invade Caladon. He no like Caladon because it monarchy. Main question be: Can democracy join with monarchy and not de-sta-ba-lize?”

She had brought that off like it was a rote speech she had said dozens of times.

“Any more thoughts?” I asked, probing her gently as I looked at her eyes. Her eyes remained bored.

“Durnholm kingdom dying. Refuse all technology. Lose all provinces. Gar think King Praetor stupid. Other places side Caladon or Tarant. Few try be alone.” She shrugged. “Be alone bad for people. Bad for kingdom.”

I chuckled. “Fair enough, Garina.” I grinned. “How about some mathematics? What’s...” I cocked my head. “Four million five hundred seventy four thousand two hundred divided by six thousand five hundred forty three?” I watched her reaction to that question. And for a moment, I saw a flash of amusement in her eyes. She grinned sheepishly.

“Garina not genius. Garina smarter than other orcs, not smarter than professor of math-e-matics.” She thrust a finger into the air. “Garina know twenty five times forty equals one thousand. No other orc tell you that!”

“Aren’t we both orcish?” I asked, dryly.

Garina showed a moment of concern. This wasn’t in the rote script, nor one of the most common questions – I figured people threw impossibly hard math at her every day. No wonder she’d have learned a reaction to that. But she immediately came back with: “You so superior to Garina! You have human blood.” She nodded, seeming quite pleased with herself.

Improvisation. I rubbed my mustache, then asked the last question that could be asked: “Tell me about tea?”

Garina’s eyes flared with delight. “Garina like tea much! Garina civilized.” She patted her chest. “Garina say Earl Gray tea, hot, is best. Made from blend of black teas and oil from the Bergamont plant. Excellent, Garina say.”

Politics were impersonal, mathematics was dull, but tea? Tea seemed to be something Garina actually cared about. And so, with casual contempt, I said: “Surely you jest, everyone knows green teas are better than that desiccated swill they call black tea.”

Garina gaped, as if she had been smacked. She grabbed onto the armrests of the chair. “Oh come now, that’s absolute rubbish,” she said, her voice discarding the grunting, guttural tonality of her memorized speeches. Garina, speaking from the heart, sounded a great deal like a posh, upper class gentlewoman from Tarant. “Green tea is for the foreign constitution and not for the consumption of those with a discerning ... uh...” She blinked. “Er. I mean...” She coughed. “Ughh. Garina no like green tea.”

I thrust my finger at you. “Hah! I knew you were acting!”

Garina scowled at me, then crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Listen here, sir, have you ever seen a human being interacting with even a half-blooded orc? They’re not exactly prepared to admit that one with green skin might be intelligent, let alone cultured,” she said, her voice once more quite posh sounding. “If I fail to play the part, then people might guess at my true origins.”

I arched an eyebrow. Garina sighed, then curtsied to me, like a high born lady. “My name is Gillian Thelonius Remington the Third, of pure human stock.” She coughed, then muttered into her hand. “Or so my mother has claimed repeatedly.”

“And your parents let you fester here rather than stay at their mansion?” I asked.

“Oh, no, no, you misunderstand, sir,” Gillian said, sounding quite affronted. “Whatever my father might think of my parentage – and for all I know, I am merely the byproduct of orcish blood somewhere in the family line that only chose now to exhibit itself – he and my mother both loved me quite intensely. Too much, in fact. My father lost his job in the Tarantian when he refused to air the first transcription of a speech by that loathsome Hamilton Demry.”

“The author of The Orcish Question?” I asked, frowning. “I’ve had the displeasure of being lectured on his duology a few times.”

“The very same,” Gillian said. “My mother was kicked out of every social engagement for having me as a child, and soon, our finances were in utter arrears. And so, I sold myself over their objections to H. T Parnell, who came up with a suitable nom de guerre and ... thus ... I am here.” She gestured to herself. “Willing away my days. Before you think me in a sorry state, think on this: Here, I am on a chair, away from the sun, and not currently on my back at Madame Lil’s.” She shrugged.

“Now, now,” I said, waggling my finger at her. “Don’t sneer at ladies of the evening.”

Gillian sighed. “I suppose that my current position is not as different from them as I would like. But, alas, I am currently held in indentured servitude here.” She looked down at her own mostly exposed frame. “Quite a ways from a respectable- uh, er, Garina like fur. It comfy, yes. Uhh.” She nodded.

I turned and found that Gillian had adjusted her voice and vocabulary for a reason: H. T Parnell himself was standing there, looking quite cross at the two of us. Shorter than anticipated and round of cheek and bald of pate, H. T Parnell’s most striking feature was his elaborately overdecorated suit, which was as bright red as the piping on a stevedore’s jacket, contrasted by a luridly purple tie. His cheeks had turned nearly as red as his face as he thrust his finger into my chest. “What are you doing, bothering my poor Garina? She’s easily confused by civilized pretensions!”

I batted his hand away, frowning. My mind leaped immediately to a way past his bluster and to get Miss Remington out of her current lamentable position. “Mr. Parnell, I am actually a representative of an orcish rights movement, investigating reports of her treatment at your hannds,” I said. “And Gillian has told me everything. Tarantian law frowns on human slavery.”

H. T Parnell blinked, his face paling. “I beg your pardon.”

“I have conclusive proof,” I said. “In the genealogical records of Tarant that this woman is a full blooded human – her orcish appearance is merely a piece of physiognomic phantasmagoria. Now, if you wish me to make this public and go to the newspapers about the fact you’re keeping a full blooded, fully articulated human in bondage despite what the laws and morals of this land state, then you can take this up with my superiors. Or you can simply release Gillian from your contract and I will ensure that doesn’t need to go too far.” I smiled. “I believe you know which is the most sensible option. From a business perspective.”

H. T Parnell narrowed his eyes and sucked his lips.

“Fine,” he said, like he was speaking through great pain.

Outside, Gillian draped herself in Virginia’s old robes while Virginia looked at me. Very quietly, she whispered; “Are we going to adopt every stray we run into?”

I smiled, sheepishly. “Maybe?”

Virginia sighed.

The trip from Tarant to the depths of the northwestern wilds could be summarized with a few broad strokes. While each of us endeavored to carry some of the supplies purchased in Tarant, Sally ended up carrying the lion share of the heaviest equipment. As she did not even seem to be aware she was carrying pots, pans, tinder, flint, torches, tents and bedrolls, I tried to not feel guilty about burdening her so heavily. Was it really a burden if she did not even notice? Meanwhile, Maggie was allowed to resume presenting herself as her true gender, packing away her false beard to her great relief.

Our marching order usually went I and Virginia, then Maggie and Sally, with Gillian taking up the rear. We all shared in conversation – Maggie had an endless parade of anecdotes about the first century of her life, which had been spent entirely within the second story of her family home. They tended to be about absurd or silly contrivances she had spotted while looking longingly at the outside world. Sally, meanwhile, knew a great number of sea shanties, which she sang without tune, melody or rhythm. Still, nothing quite made the vastness of Arcanum’s wilderness feel less empty more than a repeated round of Shipping up to Black Root or Barrett’s Privateers.

Virginia, meanwhile, took advantage of our camps to practice her magick skills, now that we were a good distance from the technological miasma of Tarant (something my keen orcish nose was all too glad about.) She had a good handle on healing poisons and toxins, but she was beginning to practice what she referred to as the school of Conveyance. She requested that I remain fifteen paces whenever she practiced. Since her magick would interfere with my current experimentation with the effects of electrical current on the various metals of our possessions, I was more than willing to keep my distance, even as Virginia managed to, over the course of a week, to go from being utterly unable to effect any change at all to being able to move an object weighing up to five stone merely by glaring at it.

It was quite impressive, all things considered.

And it saved my life.

On the morning of the 8th of February, I slipped out the camp to relieve myself in a nearby brush. Since we had been traveling for nearly a week to the northwest, the air was frigidly cold and I endeavored to leave as much of my traveling clothes on while still having enough clearance to accomplish the task needed. This still left my teeth chattering as my breath fogged the early morning air, and getting my privates secured once more required more focus than I had thought, with a great deal of wriggling, squirming, and quiet swearing. This was why I was caught entirely off guard by the man in black leather stepping from around a tree. The only thing that saved me from a quick death was that the man in black leather was just as surprised to see me as well. He held a knife in one hand and he tensed upon seeing me, and I sprang backwards, drawing my revolver, aiming it right at his chest.

The man sneered at me. He had a hard, narrow face, and cold, flinty eyes. But what drew my attention far more was the amulet that hung around his neck: A golden circle with the pentagram containing the single closed eye. The symbol of the assassins who had dogged me for so long.

“Well,” I said, quietly. “I suppose you saw me in the papers.”

The man twirled the knife around his fingers, looking directly at me. He smirked. “I’ve been hunting you for weeks, half-orc. For five hundred years, no one has ever escaped our order. I intend to correct this oversight.”

“What order is that, hmm?” I asked.

The man’s left hand twitched. I drew back the hammer on the revolver.

“As you will be dead soon,” he said, slowly. “There is no harm in saying that you, Rayburn Cog, are the target of the Molochian Hand.”

I nodded. “Good to have a name, then,” I said, quietly.

The man thrust out his left hand. A flash of brown energy sparked along his fingers and I dove hard to the side, rolling as a disk of stone the size of my head flew where I had been standing. The edges were sharp enough and the force was great enough that it struck a tree and burst it like a cannon-shell. Splinters hazed in the air and I flung up my arm to protect my face. This gave the assassin time enough to run forward and kick the revolver from my hand. As it went flying into the underbrush, I scrambled backwards, my legs spreading as his knife plunged down. The blade struck dirt between my thighs and I kicked at his face. But the assassin leaped backwards, evading my blow.

I got to my feet and looked at the brushes. But before I could do more than glance, another disk of stone flew at me. I dodged, but it struck my shoulder. The impact was glancing, and the blade of the stone edge did not cut me, but the blow still sent me staggering to the ground. The assassin leaped forward, drawing his knife back.

A purple light exploded around his hand and the knife flew through the air, twisting out of his fingers. I and he both looked and I saw Virginia – still wearing her night shirt and long johns – holding up her hand. The knife flew into her palm, the hilt slapping against her hand. She threw. The knife whistled and plunged towards the assassin’s chest. He twisted like a snake, catching the knife by the tip as it shot past him, then twisted his body and threw it right back! Virginia ducked and the knife struck the tree behind her head.

The assassin sneered for a half beat before his upper head exploded in a fine spray of red. He collapsed as Virginia and I stood. Maggie stepped out from behind a tree, holding my repeating rifle in her hands, the barrel smoking in the early morning light.

“Who the bloody hell was that?” she asked, lowering the barrel.

I rubbed my shoulder. “Apparently, a five century old order of assassins called the Molochian Hand.”

Maggie pursed her lips. Without her false beard concealing her face, her emotions were more clearly writ across her features, and I could see her expression of bemusement. “Not sure how the buggers have been kickin’ around for five centuries if they just send one lad after someone like you.”

I grinned. “Thanks, Maggie,” I said, then rubbed my shoulder. I winced. “I believe I may have broken something.”

Technological aptitude or no technological aptitude, it only took a few tries for Virginia to heal my wound. Thus tended, we took what we could salvage from the assassin, then buried him in a shallow grave. I was not particularly concerned if he was dug up by a pack of wolves – any who got to him deserved what they could find. Still, after that point, Virginia made a point of accompanying me for every single early morning relief – meaning that I soon began to miss a certain other point of relief that came after urination. And while I was sure that I was glad to no longer have hair on my palms, it still left me feeling a bit anxious and frustrated, even as we came to the foothills of the Stonewall Mountains.

There, we began to search for the actual entrance to the Black Mountain Mines. Gilbert Bates had been sending adventurers out here for a great, long time, but those who had returned gave different coordinates for the actual mouth of the cave itself. This in part was due to the less advanced modes of cartographic data tracking in the earlier decades of the 19th century, and in part due to the fact that as the pool of willing adventurers had dried up, the relative intelligence and competence of the teams that Mr. Bates sent out lowered precipitously.

Fortunately, this little party was not led by some common knuckle dragger!

I had spent my time traveling from Tarant to the Stonewall Mountains preparing my mind for this challenge, and so when we arrived, I began a systemic searching pattern, using landmarks and small flags (which everyone had complained about when I had purchased them – but their complaints dried up now that we were using them to ensure we did not end up going in circles) to explore the mountains. By crossing off potential places for the entrance of the mines off our list in this systemic pattern, I was able to reduce the searching from months to a mere three weeks! Thus, on the 16th of March, our party came to the map coordinates of 1308 west by 754 south: A small valley, tucked between two mountains, which led straight to the mouth of the Black Mountain Mines.

“Now this is dwarven craftsmanship!” Maggie said, gesturing to the doorway. It was nearly fifteen paces high, ten paces wide, and the stone ringing the doorway was covered with the harsh, angular design of dwarven runes. Stern looking faces loomed at the top of the doorway, glaring down at us.

“Where’s -hic- the door?” Sally asked.

We all looked down at the entrance itself – which loomed darkly. I frowned. There wasn’t a door. I walked forward, pulling a torch from my backpack. Lightning it with a striker, I held the torch up. Several gleaming eyes flared in the light and I drew my revolver. But the eyes scampered away and I could hear the soft sound of padding paws. Then the wolves who had been within the doorway ran past us, darting around our legs. They were gone then, rushing off into the wilderness. I frowned. “Everyone stay alert,” I said, walking forward into the Black Mountain Mines.

The grand foyer of the Black Mountain Mines was done in the grandiose dwarven style. Broad caverns, hammered flat and tiled in an intricate geometric pattern, while the walls were dominated by angular, stern faced dwarven patriarchs, carved to still be clad in their plate armor, to still hold their hammers and their axes in positions of parade rest. They glowered down at our party as we cast light from pitiful torches and from Virginia’s illumination cantrip. The floor itself had once been pristine – but now, dung and bits of straw were scattered liberally by a string of squatters, mostly animal in nature from what I could tell.

We all remained silent as we headed down this foyer, coming at last to a series of doorways that themselves led into the mines proper. The first level we soon determined to be living quarters – and all were eerie and foreboding in their emptiness and sparseness. They had not been looted – in fact, there was no sign that anyone had disturbed the beds and the workshops. Rather, it looked as if they had been quietly packed away and left to rot. We checked a few chests to discover that they held little save for detritus that no one could want to take – sheet metal that hadn’t been forged properly, bits of slag, a few cracked geodes, a single shattered hammer, and other similar bits of useless pieces of garbage.

Gillian put it best when we came to the main stairwell in the heart of the first level. Looking behind herself, then at the rest of us, she said: “It’s like a house that’s been mothballed – like my family’s summer home during the winter.”

Virginia nodded. “This place is empty, sir,” she said. “Maybe we should return and tell Mr. Bates that?”

“We don’t know for sure what happened here,” I said, firmly.

“Yes, but the lower we get, the deeper into the earth we go, the harder it will be to get out,” Virginia said, her voice soft. “I don’t want to be the Panarii who let the reincarnation of Nasrudin get lost in some dwarven mine and starve to death.”

I smiled, then rummaged in my pack, then drew forth some drafting paper – which had been cleverly printed in a grid pattern, to allow for easy marking of designs. I grinned at her. “Say, one square is on par with five paces?”

Virginia frowned, slightly.

Sally, though, was rubbing her chin. “Something smells funny here.” She flared her nostrils.

“I can’t smell anything except dust,” I said.

“Hmm...” Sally was silent.

We all waited.

A loud rumble of flatus emerged from Sally.

“Good Gods!” Virginia cried out and Sally beamed at her.

“Tha’s what that was!” She said, then slapped Virginia on the back – which provoked much histrionic gagging from Virginia. I laughed, then ushered us away from the area most impacted by the scent, and down the stairs. The second level of the Black Mountain Mines showed more sign of being mines, as opposed to the areas that had been turned into living quarters by the dwarves themselves. And here, we saw some signs of something else living within the mine: Rat corpses, strung up on old traps, dangling from their tails. Footprints in the dirt that may have been recent or decades old. Doors that had been hacked down by crude looking blades – and rooms that had been actively looted.

The third level was more a mine proper.

It was also when my foot caught a rope and only the quick reflexes of Maggie – closer to the ground, she had surely seen the rope before I – saved my life. She pushed me forward and the wall exploded with a flurry of crossbow bolts as several concealed weapons fired off their quarrels into the far wall. They thudded home and dust went flying. I coughed, then scrambled to my feet. “My thanks, Maggie,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, frowning, then reaching up. She tugged the now revealed crossbow from the wall. It had been concealed into a cunningly carved niche, and the crossbow itself looked faintly rusted and worm-bitten. She adjusted the lever, frowning. “This is a dwarven crossbow.”

“Someone left that recently,” Gillian said, leaning forward. “The rust there can’t be more than five years old.”

I nodded. “All right, everyone,” I said, drawing my pistol once more. “Everyone be most alert. Verge into outright paranoia if you will.”

“Why weren’t we already as alert as we could be?” Virginia hissed, drawing her magick blade.

I started to walk more carefully now, letting Sally hold both her torch and my torch, freeing a hand to hold my pocket watch. This proved to be a good precaution: The ticking of the second hand became quite erratic as we came to an intersection near the northern section of the third level – and there, Virginia divined a small magick trap, designed to infuse any who stepped upon it with cyanide-like toxins. We set it off with a ten foot pole held in leather gloves – the pole became soaked with the grayish toxin, and we hastily dropped it and kicked it into the corner of the corridor.

Thus, we made our way through trap after trap. Crushing traps designed to swing mace-heads on chain from the ceiling down into the face. Deliberately weakened beams threatened to drop entire corridors on our heads, forcing us to backtrack and find new routs. But more than the constant danger of traps, there was an omnipresent senses of being followed. Distant echoes behind us, clatters and clacks that we tried to track down several times ... but always came up empty. We would stand still and listen hard whenever we thought we heard the sounds, but every time, the noise would cease. Every time we went to check, we found naught but a faint disturbance in the dust.

The creeping sense of foreboding grew more and more intense as we came to a corridor that was filled with traps. We picked our way past hidden crossbows, disarmed magickall traps that flung fireballs, and set off bear traps and finally got to the door at the end of the corridor. It was thick wood, and it bore a scrawled symbol upon it: A dwarven rune. I looked at Maggie, who stepped closer, holding up her torch. Her brow furrowed and she mumbled a few attempts at a translation, before finally saying: “I believe it’s a name: Gudmund Ore Bender.”

“Is that a Black Mountain name?” Virginia asked.

“Bugger me if I know,” Maggie said, shrugging.

I stepped up to the door, then shoved at it. The door swung inwards and we saw the room beyond contained three corpses and a pillar. The corner of the room had a small bedroll and a small fire pit that looked well used. The other corner contained what was clearly a refuse pit, and it had been long used, though it was empty now. The three corpses, though, were what drew my attention most. There was one elf, who looked as if he had been shot in the chest with a crossbow and was sprawled against the wall next to the door itself. The other was a human, who had taken an ax to her face. She was curled up to the ground. Five feet away, with a long dried trail of blood smeared along the ground, was the body of a dwarf. Each of the bodies had dried out and rotted, filling the air with a fulsome reek.