Dragons of Autumn Twilight: The Mockening (Chapters 2 and 3)
Chapter 2: Return to the inn. A shock. The oath is broken.
The Inn of the Last Home is even more of a nexus than you'd imagine. Hell, it's even a "center for news". Not that the news seems to have trickled much to the managing staff, whose knowledge base is comparable to Hamfast Gamgee's - Hamfast Gamgee being a mildly curious, chatty old fart in a peaceful, isolated region that simply isn't bothered, not people who are constantly in a bar that attracts people of varying states of desperation from all corners of the map.
Anyway, this is where Tanis, Tasslehoff and Flint are headed. They're going to have a big reunion at the inn tonight (the Mysterious Old Man has no doubt properly consulted his Ouija board for the arrangements), which they all swore a sacred oath to attend. An oath, huh? Yeah, I think Weis and Hickman might just be overplaying their hand here.
The kender is able to get through the inn quickest, and all our other party members are concerned he'll steal from random patrons:
"Caramon better look to his purse," Flint grumbled. "Or count his teeth."
Um, ow?
No, no, actually he's implying that Tas can steal someone's teeth without being noticed. And would be inclined to do so.
There we go for unintentionally creepy. Now, how about we try on some intentional creepy for size?
The aforementioned Caramon, you see - well, actually, he's not all that interesting. He's an expansive, slightly dense sort of big man. But his twin brother, Raistlin, is clearly intended to be creepiness incarnate. I'm thinking they overdid it a bit.
He starts out sitting in the shadows. With a hood over his face for extra shadows. Then he dramatically comes out of the shadows, then dramatically lowers the hood, and his eyes are all demonic and his skin is all metallic and his flesh appears to have gone all mummy. And he makes deathly whispers about how it was all worth it for the power, and how he's seeing everyone slowly die through his demonic hourglass pupils, and he grasps at people with an icy bony grip. His monologue done, it's back into the shadows again.
Damn, Caramon sure puts up with a lot of his brother's obvious festering evil.
Don't forget that Mysterious Old Man is at fault for nearly all those damned shadows.
After some hitting on the barmaid - who has red hair, green eyes and freckles, so she's got to become a party member even though I don't actually remember anything like that - she delivers a message. Sure enough, someone broke the oath to come to the inn. Naturally, given the way this is structured, we know but bupkiss about her.
Chapter 3: Knight of Solamnia. The old man's party.
But don't worry, they'll remedy that in a hurry.
The first thing we learn about Kitiara the oathbreaker is that she's part of Raistlin and Caramon's apparently very fucked-up family. The second thing is that she's very busy with a not-at-all-ominous unidentified lord. The third thing is that Tanis really, really likes her. The fourth thing is delivered in the most stilted as-you-know dialogue imaginable:
The last time we saw her was here, in the Inn, five years ago. She was going north with Sturm. We have not heard from her since. As for the new lord, I'd say we now know why she broke her oath to us: she swore her allegiance to another. She is, after all, a mercenary.
But hey, look at it this way: Raistlin said something that didn't ooze death with every syllable.
The fourth thing is that the guy who delivered the message is a Nazgul. (Speaking of unspeakable evil, guess who's still playing around with the dramatic shadows!)
And, true to his word, Mysterious Old Man is still hanging around. He saw the Nazgul, but never mind that - hell, he wouldn't explain anything anyway - here comes the aforementioned Sturm!
He is wearing badass ancient armor and laughing in the face of all the suspicion all over Solace in these days of inquisitors, rumors, et cetera. And then he ruins it by smoothing his "great, thick moustaches", leaving you to wonder whether he has multiple mouths or what. What's more, they're apparently Fu Manchu moustaches. I didn't snigger at this the first time I read it, did I?
In the middle of all this, a couple of barbarians come in, swathed in furs to the point of being unrecognizable, making the fifth and sixth instances of face-concealing fashions in the book so far. What is this, the Hog's Head?
They promptly ignore the barbarians. Raistlin repeats the dramatic hood-lowering, they brush up on the broken oath, and no, Sturm doesn't know jack-all about it either. Wanna bet those goblins from Chapter 1 work for Kitiara's new lord?
Sturm's quest was apparently to see if his father was dead or alive. This was, like all the other quests apparently were, inconclusive. I really do like his sonorous grandeur about it all, though.
Back to the barbarians. Apparently, Sturm showed them to the inn when they were near-exhausted from the road. That is to say: he showed them up the forty-foot-high spiral staircase when they were near-exhausted from the road.
Oh, yes, the goblins from Chapter 1 were looking for a blue crystal staff. Forgot to mention that, somehow. Raistlin has a crystal staff, but it's apparently not it and, in case he's stopped being creepy, he wishes people would die horribly by his spellcraft for saying so.
Anyway, the barbarian woman lowers her hood, and I quote:
No jeweler spinning molten strands of silver and gold could have created the effect of this woman's silver-gold hair shining in the firelight.
Now picture Harry describing Draco Malfoy's hair of the same color the same way, and you will grasp how thoroughly this screams "SPECIAL!!"
Then the entire party notices her, and they all have this identical dramatic gasp at how durn purdy she is. And that is why Kitiara should not have broken the oath - this adventuring party desperately needs a woman.
Mysterious Old Man is still sitting around telling heretical stories, when suddenly he completely shifts gears and randomly hypnotizes the barbarian chick, whose name (Goldmoon) he, of course, knows for no apparent reason, to sing a particular song, in full confidence that she'll know which one.
The song is mainly a lot of uncomfortable stuff about her personal history, but it mentions a "blue staff". So, I guess the Mysterious Old Man was trying to get her to announce that she owns that staff all the goblins have been looking for"? For some reason? In any case, nobody in the entire bar gets the memo, so I guess that was a bust.
Not to be thwarted, he goes back to telling the boy of the old gods. Whom the boy has never heard of. The rationale being that since the old gods are purportedly responsible for the freaking apocalypse three hundred years ago, they, er... just sort of forgot about them. Yeah.
This finally draws the attention of the High Theocrat, who rises to his feet in a drunken slapstick, tries to confiscate the staff just because Goldmoon sang a love song, then abruptly falls headfirst into the fire and starts fouling up all the comic atmosphere with the stench of his burning flesh.
The old man confiscates the guy barbarian's staff and hands it to Tasslehoff so he can thwack the High Theocrat with it. Hence revealing the sucker to be blue crystal, and also to have healing powers. Horrified at this heresy, the Theocrat rearranges a few body parts on the old saw of cutting of your nose to spite your face and chars his had to a blackened crisp for the heaven of it. (Healing is exclusively divine magic in Dungeons and Dragons, remember. The characters certainly do, even if they're fuzzy on the apocalypse.)
So, I guess the old man's work is done here, because now he feels free to start shouting that the kender has the staff and that everybody at his table, plus the barbarians, are in league with them. Sturm needs a little convincing to flee based around the fact that Goldmoon is, in fact, a woman, which leads me to believe that this is not only a D&D universe, but it's based on an actual D&D campaign that incorporates a typically difficult paladin.
Meanwhile, the frothing mob that wants the goblins to leave them all alone once they have the staff is, I quote, "in no great hurry." They make their great escape, in which Raistlin manages to creep everyone out by, of all the things in the world, casting Feather Fall, and Tanis rather gorily slices his palms off on the escape rope to give Goldmoon yet another opportunity to show that YES, HER STAFF HAS HEALING POWERS.
They think they can lay low in the same damn town and everyone will just have forgotten about them. Ha, ha, ha.
The Inn of the Last Home is even more of a nexus than you'd imagine. Hell, it's even a "center for news". Not that the news seems to have trickled much to the managing staff, whose knowledge base is comparable to Hamfast Gamgee's - Hamfast Gamgee being a mildly curious, chatty old fart in a peaceful, isolated region that simply isn't bothered, not people who are constantly in a bar that attracts people of varying states of desperation from all corners of the map.
Anyway, this is where Tanis, Tasslehoff and Flint are headed. They're going to have a big reunion at the inn tonight (the Mysterious Old Man has no doubt properly consulted his Ouija board for the arrangements), which they all swore a sacred oath to attend. An oath, huh? Yeah, I think Weis and Hickman might just be overplaying their hand here.
The kender is able to get through the inn quickest, and all our other party members are concerned he'll steal from random patrons:
"Caramon better look to his purse," Flint grumbled. "Or count his teeth."
Um, ow?
No, no, actually he's implying that Tas can steal someone's teeth without being noticed. And would be inclined to do so.
There we go for unintentionally creepy. Now, how about we try on some intentional creepy for size?
The aforementioned Caramon, you see - well, actually, he's not all that interesting. He's an expansive, slightly dense sort of big man. But his twin brother, Raistlin, is clearly intended to be creepiness incarnate. I'm thinking they overdid it a bit.
He starts out sitting in the shadows. With a hood over his face for extra shadows. Then he dramatically comes out of the shadows, then dramatically lowers the hood, and his eyes are all demonic and his skin is all metallic and his flesh appears to have gone all mummy. And he makes deathly whispers about how it was all worth it for the power, and how he's seeing everyone slowly die through his demonic hourglass pupils, and he grasps at people with an icy bony grip. His monologue done, it's back into the shadows again.
Damn, Caramon sure puts up with a lot of his brother's obvious festering evil.
Don't forget that Mysterious Old Man is at fault for nearly all those damned shadows.
After some hitting on the barmaid - who has red hair, green eyes and freckles, so she's got to become a party member even though I don't actually remember anything like that - she delivers a message. Sure enough, someone broke the oath to come to the inn. Naturally, given the way this is structured, we know but bupkiss about her.
Chapter 3: Knight of Solamnia. The old man's party.
But don't worry, they'll remedy that in a hurry.
The first thing we learn about Kitiara the oathbreaker is that she's part of Raistlin and Caramon's apparently very fucked-up family. The second thing is that she's very busy with a not-at-all-ominous unidentified lord. The third thing is that Tanis really, really likes her. The fourth thing is delivered in the most stilted as-you-know dialogue imaginable:
The last time we saw her was here, in the Inn, five years ago. She was going north with Sturm. We have not heard from her since. As for the new lord, I'd say we now know why she broke her oath to us: she swore her allegiance to another. She is, after all, a mercenary.
But hey, look at it this way: Raistlin said something that didn't ooze death with every syllable.
The fourth thing is that the guy who delivered the message is a Nazgul. (Speaking of unspeakable evil, guess who's still playing around with the dramatic shadows!)
And, true to his word, Mysterious Old Man is still hanging around. He saw the Nazgul, but never mind that - hell, he wouldn't explain anything anyway - here comes the aforementioned Sturm!
He is wearing badass ancient armor and laughing in the face of all the suspicion all over Solace in these days of inquisitors, rumors, et cetera. And then he ruins it by smoothing his "great, thick moustaches", leaving you to wonder whether he has multiple mouths or what. What's more, they're apparently Fu Manchu moustaches. I didn't snigger at this the first time I read it, did I?
In the middle of all this, a couple of barbarians come in, swathed in furs to the point of being unrecognizable, making the fifth and sixth instances of face-concealing fashions in the book so far. What is this, the Hog's Head?
They promptly ignore the barbarians. Raistlin repeats the dramatic hood-lowering, they brush up on the broken oath, and no, Sturm doesn't know jack-all about it either. Wanna bet those goblins from Chapter 1 work for Kitiara's new lord?
Sturm's quest was apparently to see if his father was dead or alive. This was, like all the other quests apparently were, inconclusive. I really do like his sonorous grandeur about it all, though.
Back to the barbarians. Apparently, Sturm showed them to the inn when they were near-exhausted from the road. That is to say: he showed them up the forty-foot-high spiral staircase when they were near-exhausted from the road.
Oh, yes, the goblins from Chapter 1 were looking for a blue crystal staff. Forgot to mention that, somehow. Raistlin has a crystal staff, but it's apparently not it and, in case he's stopped being creepy, he wishes people would die horribly by his spellcraft for saying so.
Anyway, the barbarian woman lowers her hood, and I quote:
No jeweler spinning molten strands of silver and gold could have created the effect of this woman's silver-gold hair shining in the firelight.
Now picture Harry describing Draco Malfoy's hair of the same color the same way, and you will grasp how thoroughly this screams "SPECIAL!!"
Then the entire party notices her, and they all have this identical dramatic gasp at how durn purdy she is. And that is why Kitiara should not have broken the oath - this adventuring party desperately needs a woman.
Mysterious Old Man is still sitting around telling heretical stories, when suddenly he completely shifts gears and randomly hypnotizes the barbarian chick, whose name (Goldmoon) he, of course, knows for no apparent reason, to sing a particular song, in full confidence that she'll know which one.
The song is mainly a lot of uncomfortable stuff about her personal history, but it mentions a "blue staff". So, I guess the Mysterious Old Man was trying to get her to announce that she owns that staff all the goblins have been looking for"? For some reason? In any case, nobody in the entire bar gets the memo, so I guess that was a bust.
Not to be thwarted, he goes back to telling the boy of the old gods. Whom the boy has never heard of. The rationale being that since the old gods are purportedly responsible for the freaking apocalypse three hundred years ago, they, er... just sort of forgot about them. Yeah.
This finally draws the attention of the High Theocrat, who rises to his feet in a drunken slapstick, tries to confiscate the staff just because Goldmoon sang a love song, then abruptly falls headfirst into the fire and starts fouling up all the comic atmosphere with the stench of his burning flesh.
The old man confiscates the guy barbarian's staff and hands it to Tasslehoff so he can thwack the High Theocrat with it. Hence revealing the sucker to be blue crystal, and also to have healing powers. Horrified at this heresy, the Theocrat rearranges a few body parts on the old saw of cutting of your nose to spite your face and chars his had to a blackened crisp for the heaven of it. (Healing is exclusively divine magic in Dungeons and Dragons, remember. The characters certainly do, even if they're fuzzy on the apocalypse.)
So, I guess the old man's work is done here, because now he feels free to start shouting that the kender has the staff and that everybody at his table, plus the barbarians, are in league with them. Sturm needs a little convincing to flee based around the fact that Goldmoon is, in fact, a woman, which leads me to believe that this is not only a D&D universe, but it's based on an actual D&D campaign that incorporates a typically difficult paladin.
Meanwhile, the frothing mob that wants the goblins to leave them all alone once they have the staff is, I quote, "in no great hurry." They make their great escape, in which Raistlin manages to creep everyone out by, of all the things in the world, casting Feather Fall, and Tanis rather gorily slices his palms off on the escape rope to give Goldmoon yet another opportunity to show that YES, HER STAFF HAS HEALING POWERS.
They think they can lay low in the same damn town and everyone will just have forgotten about them. Ha, ha, ha.