Soul Searching

I wake up and everything hurts. Looks like I was brought back to life somehow, but I’m confused, there is probably not a lot of time to lose. Like, is there ever a lot of time to lose? Do people say that? I don’t hink they do. Well, maybe I’m safer now at least.

I explain a bit about how I got here and what I remember now. How I got to the Red Plumes in Hillsfar at the young age of 16, and what I fled from in the Feywild.

Storytime

My adoptive father and I had been in the Feywild for a while as some creeping, dark black smoke attacked us one afternoon. My father had been somewhat restless since the early morning, and had told me to stay put in our small cabin, while he would be away for a few hours and talk to a faun friend we had made. When I heard that scary sound of the smoke approaching, I braced for whatever would happen next. Then my father crashed through the door, and threw something at me with the black smoke on his heels right behind him. I caught a bundle of cloth, and saw my father release some energy towards me. I woke up somewhere else, somewhere looking very different. Still grasping that bundle of cloth, then unwrapping it, I saw it was the small wooden wolf figurine my father had been carving. He had given me a bear figurine only a month before. Preparing to get up, I hear a voice behind me: “Real slow, buddy. What are you doing snooping around here? The captain is going to be really pissed”. Outnumbered, and not knowing where I am, I try my best to adapt. This is how I ended up employed with the Red Plumes in Hillsfar.

Why were we in the Feywild to begin with you ask? Well, we were searching for some berries and firewood in preparation for a gathering of friends, which my father held every full moon at his place in the woods. I was about 15 years old, and Wolf had come to us only a few months earlier. Suddenly, dark black, corporeal smoke appeared from behind a rock formation close to our home, closing in on us fast. It is the chittering and weirdly clicking sound it made, that I remember most vividly from this event. My father, immediately on high alert, grabbed me as I was protecting Wolf, and struck a small silvery fork, bringing me, Wolf, and himself away into what I later learned was the Feywild. I don’t really remember for how long we were there, and what we did exactly, or if we went somewhere else in between this and what I told you earlier, but roughly a year had passed between the two events.

Anyways

Eira and Kallista tell us that the statue in the garden is actually a friend of theirs that they saw in a vision exactly like this, shown to Kallista by some carnival fortune teller. Eira still hears from a voice in her head telling her to get them the “present” they left at Trollskull manor, which turns out to be a sending stone in order to talk to that weird being that had been talking to her in her head.

Later I say that I think this is all connected. Maybe the Cassalanters were involved in souls trading or something. The voice talking to Eira seems to be engaging in trading souls, and I remember when my father met with his friends back in the day, I overheard them talking about souls: Gods offering something in exchange, Devils making contracts, and Fey offering deals, all heavily competing over souls. This being Eira talks to sounds very much like the fey my father talked to.

Now we’re discussing with the Cassalanters when to get back to the vault in order to prepare the place for transporting away the gold. They don’t need us to go back with them, but they seem to have a good plan for transporting the gold out of it, so we just discuss what we will get out of it. I just want to have the cash and want to try and find my father. I’m worried about him. We also got a lead on who they bought the stone statue from, and negotiate to leave the statue –Eira and Kallista’s friend– with us.

Kallista has some “stone time” and finds out that this stone is very powerful, but can also listen in on anything we do and say, and it also knows what she is feeling. I don’t understand if this has something to do with the fight over souls that seems to be happening, and what Eira is exposed to through the voice in her head. And what about Rick, Pyotr’s pet rat? This is all very confusing.

As we bed down, and rest, I take out the wodden figurines again, and think about my father. I wonder why he gave them to me. What happened to Wolf? Did he survive in the Feywild? That was almost 30 years ago, so he surely must be dead now. It makes me sad that I lived a life in service for almost 30 years not remembering anything. I had to die and be brought back to finally remember. Then I fall asleep.

The next morning we get up and try to decide what amount of money we should ask for from the Cassalanters, before we meet them for the negotiation. There was roughly 500.000 gold worth of treasure in the vault, and the dragon can probably be made money off, too. The statue they are going to leave with us is worth 15.000 gold, and the artist the Cassalanters got it from was Teemoth Flamesnow. A good lead for Eira and Kallista to follow.

In the end Eira negotiates them up from 50k to 88k and we leave both stones with them. As we go to celebrate and have a few beers, I decide to approach Eira, before we get back to Trollskull Manor and call it a day. Addiction is a bitch. Let’s see what happens tomorrow. I need to find my father. I feel he’s in danger. Even less time to lose now I guess.