Chapter 16: Isekai Life & “The Talk”

First, Ashryn and I put Voss in a comfortable position- paralytic venom only lasted for 2d4 minutes, so he’d come around pretty quick. Then Ashryn used her last spell- which turned out to be Detect Magic, or rather, “The Starlit Eyes of the Arcane”, to scan around the room and check for any other fire snakes. I had no idea if “animals from an elemental plane who were otherwise totally normal in the context of that plane” counted as “magical” for the purposes of that spell, but it was worth a shot. Other than excitedly pointing out that our potions were, in fact, magic, she reported there were no magical objects in our vicinity.

So we had some time to kill while Voss regained voluntarily control of his body and the numbness in Katriana’s sword hand went away. We used the time to get our facts straight. Well, Katriana and I got out facts straight, though Ashryn was just happy to be a part of the process.

“A few days” before the night of the arson, someone in plate mail came to the Temple of Yphion and arranged for a Resurrection spell to be cast on someone in exchange for a large donation. This meant that a) the body was in such a terrible state that it couldn’t be raised by a simpler Raise Dead spell, b) the person being resurrected would need to do strenuous activity right after regaining life, or c) both. The remains of this guy, whoever it is, are still missing.

The day of the ritual, a package arrived containing five fire snakes, presumably they were drugged or sleeping from magic or something. The package was made of wood- described as a “crate”- but was sealed in such a way the Hierophant couldn’t open it, so he ignored it for now, presumably to be addressed later.

That night the five priests- the Hierophant who was at least level ten but not higher than level fourteen, two assistant priests who were probably levels four to six based on nothing but my assumptions on local level distribution, and two acolytes who were at levels one to two- gathered together to conduct the Combine ritual and cast the Resurrection spell. At some point during this ritual, the fire snakes woke up/got hungry/got bored and burned their way out of the crate, setting the Hierophant’s study or office on fire, which then spread to the rest of the temple. The priests didn’t notice what was going on, trancing out in their little ritual, until it was too late.

The day after the fire subsided, the Eternal Order of the All-Father, either out of the goodness of their hearts or as part of a PR stunt, resurrected the priests, but only managed to get one of the assistant priests and the two acolytes. At around this time, once the temple’s ruins got cold enough, the five fire snakes relocated to the next-warmest thing in the area- a tamped forge that was waiting to be reactivated the following morning. This next day, the blacksmith would open up his forge for a day’s hard work, only to startle the snakes and have his jugular ripped out as thanks. He bled to death on the floor of his forge, and while his apprentices and family knew he was missing, none of them got around to breaking into the guy’s workshop to find him just yet, and was undiscovered until our party was investigating, two days after the fire.

We also concurred that, despite not murdering the poor guy, the situation was just suspicious enough that it was in our best interests to let the apprentices/family/whatever discover the body for themselves in a day or two, rather than have to two people that the city guard already had flagged as suspicious make an official report. Hopefully the feral cats wouldn’t chew on him too badly.

That last bit about the guards made Ashryn look upset, so I figured it was as good a time as any to have “the talk”.

“We are, technically, Prince Theodore and Princess Katriana of the House of Esche, rightful heirs to the throne of a city-state known as Chalcia, which is about two hundred leagues to the west of here,” Katriana explained, “The use of arcane magic is severely sanctioned, but in spite of that, every king of Chalcia for sixteen generations was secretly a wizard, using their powers to aid the country and protect themselves in secret. Our father happened to be caught by a political rival, who then engineered a coup against him.”

I continued, “We got away, with the help of some retainers, and escaped to the Thaumaturgical Academy at Brustania. I was able to complete my education as a magic user there, but Katriana discovered a plot by the headmaster to use me as a puppet, overthrow the current ruler, and seize control of Chalcia for himself. Normally, I’d be ecstatic at the possibility of having help from a huge organization of magic users in taking back my throne, but I don’t want to be anyone’s disposable puppet. We high-tailed it from the Academy before I could formally graduate, and we’ve been on the road every since.”

“Our basic plan is to gather resources and allies as adventurers, before returning to Chalcia to take back Theodore’s rightful throne,” Katriana finished, “But we don’t want work of who exactly we are from getting out in case someone tries to make use of us again. We’re not really worried about one of you two hiking that far to sell us out to some people who are half a continent away, but we don’t know the nobility of Tresens too well and it’s possible that we might get wrapped up in some scheme or worse, kept as trophies.”

With that, I looked to our two companions. “Any questions?”

Ashryn raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“I already knew all that stuff.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I figured Mariska might have done some basic divination about us when she decided to hire us.”

“No, I mean, I knew about you before that,” Ashrynsaid while fidgeting some and flushing with embarassment, “We’re not supposed to play around with the powers granted to us by the Siphine, but one night some of us acolytes got into the sacramental wine and one of the older girls started casting auguries about ... stuff.” She fidgeted some more. “My augury said that ... the two most important people to me were the Prince and Princess of Esche, and I think I got a vision of what you two may have looked like at the time. High Priestess Mariska didn’t tell me anything, she just said there were two adventurers I was to help, but I recognized you on sight.”

Katriana and I exchanged glances, and she shrugged with a small, bemused smile. “Uh, okay,” was my only reply.

Voss’s hand went up, his hand still at something of a limp angle.

“Yes?”

“If I help you guys out, will I get to become a badass knight and carry a title, build a keep and all that?”

“Sure. When I get my throne back, you can have whatever is in my power to give you.”

“Alright, fuck it, I’m in.”

And thus, under these circumstances the Chalcian Revolutionary Army was formed. Not the most auspicious beginning, but there are worst places to plan a conspiracy to overthrow a king. Could have done without the corpse, though.

Once Voss was mobile again, it was agreed that our meeting be moved back to the Lazy Ox for now, to discuss our options and next steps. And to ask the proprietor about trustworthy jewellers.

By the time we got back, it was mid-afternoon, and the place was being cleaned in preparation for the inevitable crowd of tourney-goers and competitors who would flood the place later that night. The innkeeper’s attitude about Katriana and I had improved significantly after the town guard decided we weren’t criminals, especially since we were springing for a fancy room and once again asked for a private dining room for dinner. We didn’t strictly need to discuss things over dinner, but seeing as how Katriana was still injured, Ashryn and I were out of spells, and only Voss was really in fighting form, we decided it was best to take a night and compare notes. Katriana paid up this time, but as it turned out the dining rooms were still being cleaned.