Chapter 43: 3- You’re In On The Folksy Magistrate Sham

Corbin lamented the lack of petting, chin scritches and tummy rubs on his way through the town. He especially didn’t like the idea of heading towards bad stuff when there were so many people with so many hands capable of, for instance, scritching his chin or rubbing his tummy. 

He could also smell food, and realized this new form was going to be more difficult to manage than the raven form. This form craved food. He wasn’t hungry in the slightest; honestly, all the shape changing was painful and horrible and left him with zero appetite.

On the other hand, food existed and it could go straight into his mouth. 

“Get a hold of yourself,” he told himself. Apparently he’d need a rule number two. “Okay, rule two is only eating food when you’re hungry.”

What if he’d left his Intelligence at a measly 3? What would his life be like right now? Would he have just ignored Prissy and Kyessy in favor of tummy rubs? Would he have ignored the present mission and gone off after the delicious scents of fresh meat? Would–

He jerked to the side and took off after a furry little creature. Halfway to the tree he realized he’d never catch it, and at the same time it dawned on him what he was doing. Chasing a squirrel, was what he was doing. He was chasing some six-legged little squirrel thing from another world. It was probably poisonous, to boot.

Prissy and Kyessy were both smirking at him. Laughing at him, really, but being quiet and discreet about it. He shook the squirrel situation off, cleared his head of the glorious feeling of being petted, and got back down to work. Again.

He was definitely increasing his Intelligence every chance he got.

For now though, he sniffed the ground and felt the weakening strands of corruption leading him off northward. They went up into the magistrate’s large manor house. Up his steps to his wrap-around porch, past the rocking chair where Corbin and Kyessy had met him puffing on his pipe. The trail then led him to the door where the housekeeper (again) attempted to bar their path. The woman sneered at him in confusion and disgust. 

There were two kinds of people in the world: those who loved dogs and those who were wrong. This lady definitely fit into the second category. 

 

New Quest Received! – The Secret Life of Magistrate Findell

Acquire proof that Findell is a Vethros Cultist, and the directions it may lead you in your wider quest of ridding yourselves of the corruption of He Who Slumbers. 

Quest reward: You get to do some noir style investigation! Plus you get answers to questions. Hopefully that’s enough.  

 

“And just what do you think you are doing?” She caught sight of Kyessy, apparently, because her indignant tone rose by several notches. “You! Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”

“I shall keep to my rude and offensive ways,” Kyessy said. Her stony tone continued. “Now, your master likely respawned here after I killed him. Where is he?”

“Unbelievable!” The housekeeper cried.

Kyessy leaned forward. “Your master was involved in business with He Who Slumbers, and I’m not not the type of person to withhold judgment when taking into account possible accomplices.”

Corbin could just about see the Intimidation success in the way the housekeeper’s eyes bugged out of her head. Her mouth went all fish-gulping-for-air (something Corbin had firsthand experience with less than an hour ago) while her hands began fluttering. The most important part was her body going loose and limp. Corbin ducked between her trembling legs, while Kyessy merely pushed past her.

“Bloody terrifyin’ ain’t she?” Prissy opined lightly. “I’d stay away from her if I was in yer shoes. Jes let us take a quick lil look-see and we’ll be out yer hair.”

“Who are you people?” The woman asked, but she was ignored.

Corbin hadn’t been in Findell’s household before, but found it curiously… not sparse, nor empty, but soulless. He expected no less from a man who’d tried to bend over and allow a god to do with him as it saw fit. As he made his way through the house though, the feeling deepened, until Prissy finally said it out loud.

The brick construction was insulated first with wood planking within, and also covered with spotless tapestries as an extra layer of insulation, he supposed. And while the floors were covered in rugs, he later realized none of them were threadbare or appeared walked on. The coffee table was free of dust but also water damage rings, or scuffs or scratches. Findell had never stubbed a toe here, or forgotten to use a coaster.

The scent of corruption led him through the house– Findell had been here, or the housekeeper really was part of the conspiracy– but it didn’t use the stairs. He made a circuit of the ground floor and found wisps of Vethros’s corruption everywhere, just not in heavy use. And the entire ground floor appeared mostly unused. After more thought, he came to the word he needed for the ground floor: ornamental. An illusion.

Curious. 

“He never went upstairs.”

“How’d ya figga?” Prissy asked.

“The nose knows.” This earned him another laugh, but both women peered up the stairs just the same. What kind of person used the drawing room (or the parlor, or whatever it was called) only minimally, barely touched the other rooms of the house, and never slept in his own bed?

Kyessy disappeared upstairs anyhow, and soon could be heard upending furniture… or possibly fighting a spiny jiddara. 

“I bet this bloke expected someone would come lookin’ fer his bed. Like he’s got a house out inna woods or somefin.”

She’d gotten there before he did, which was surprising. This wasn’t where Findell slept. 

All this inspecting and his True Scent eventually brought him to the best part of any house search: the secret door. The smell of cold and damp drew him after some searching, to the pantry. Aside from a much smaller amount of food than he should’ve had, Corbin sniffed out the side panel and barked at it (again) before he could stop himself. Prissy pranced up, laughing, and asked him in her most awful talking-to-a-doggo voice, “Oh good boooooy. Thassa goobboy. What is it, boy? What’d ye fine?”

Sigh. “Secret panel.”

She squealed. Literally she went ‘Eeeeek!’ with her hands up near her face, quivering with joy. And after some searching, she discovered that if you pressed this thingy right here, it went click. Then the panel swung back, revealing a narrow set of stairs leading down into darkness.

“Kyessy!” he called.

The three of them made their way down. Corbin had a serious situation going on here, with his eyes proving next to useless, while his nose constructed a complete picture of this secret cellar he wasn’t prepared to have. Human Corbin had never used smells to off-set his blindness, and it was an experience that took some getting used to.

First of all, the blood on the earthen floor. The wax of the candles, and the stink of something his Inspect skill informed him was the residue of consumed echocrystals. 

He and Serrell (and probably Grotok) had done their nasty soul magic here, and it stank like nothing else he’d ever smelled before. Like if you combined all the bodily fluids from somebody who hadn’t taken a shower in the past week, and brewed them. This was what stolen souls stank of, apparently, if you used them up in forbidden magic rituals.

“You don’t smell that, do you?” he asked.

“Smell what?” Prissy asked, but Kyessy gritted her teeth and nodded. 

“Soul crystals were used here… they’re called echocrystals.”

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“Sounds baddish,” Prissy responded.

“The worst.” He explained all about the Shardmage, de-leveling that bastard, and the souls of adventurers who’d been trapped inside. Those who were trapped by the Shardmage died a real death, and it had been far too late to try and put their souls back in their bodies. Worse, the hapless adventurers who’d been lured out to the Shardmage’s place were consumed in the ritual to make Findell the avatar of Vethros.

Prissy countered by explaining about a de-leveling succubus her Ranger buddies had encountered, who had perma-killed one of them in the infinite dungeon, also by consuming his soul. Both of these were awful revelations to the respective listeners; they’d come to see death as an inconvenience rather than a serious situation, and this changed all that. 

His only saving grace was he now had the intestinal fortitude of an animal that could eat its own feces without any compunctions.

Thankfully the scent wasn’t strong, meaning they hadn’t done this dark magic in some time. Inspect told him over a month. After all, Serrell had been abducted by the Fellwroth army and detained at some point, before he and Kyessy had freed her. If the scents had been any thicker he probably… well, he probably would’ve been forced to resist eating the evidence, like he was now, but he would’ve been even more disgusted with himself than he presently was. 

This room, or rather this shrine to the god of Sleeping A Long Time, had a number of trappings Corbin found almost cute. First of all, Corbin was left to wonder if the little guy had dug this whole place out by hand, or if he’d been able to subcontract the job to an adventurer who’d later been put into an echocrystal. The walls were tamped earth held up by great wooden beams, with several stretching across the ceiling. The whole thing was no bigger than six feet to a side, but Corbin wasn’t a normal sized being, and approximating was a little tough. All the timber in here had been inexpertly carved with runes that he was pretty sure were edgelord runes– made to look dark and intimidating, but with no real purpose or meaning.

The one wall–the main wall–was dominated by a woodcut of a cosmic horror blob sporting a number of eyes and mouths where it shouldn’t have eyes and mouths, with tentacles wobbling about in all directions. This woodcut had been badly framed, because you couldn’t just take your depictions of unknowable entities out of time and space directly to the frame shop. Findell had been forced to commission a painting roughly the same size, get it framed, and then remove the painting on his own and replace it with this awful, cliched woodcut. It would’ve been adorable if it weren’t for the half circle in front of it, clearly painted in blood and strewn with bones also spattered in blood. Half and mostly-melted candles adorned this shrine to Vethros, scattered here and there, and also ringing the main shrine.

Below the woodcut, above the candles and macabre semi-circle, a piece of furniture stood that Corbin couldn’t quite name. A bookstand? The closest he came was a podium with arcane symbols carved into it. A tome sat upon it. 

He did his best evil crone impression. “You shall never obtain the necronomicon!” 

“What in the nine hells–“ Kyessy began, but Prissy waved this away. 

“It’s an obscure story out of our world’s lore. Either that or Corbin is losing his marbles. Take yer pick.”

It could’ve been bound in human skin. It was surely some leather or another, and again, a job done in secret and not by a professional, because one didn’t simply take one’s evil book of Vethros worship to the local bookbinder, along with the poor sap you’d skinned alive, and go ‘oh hey, I’ll pay you heaps of gold not to say anything about this’. That was how you’d find your house broken into and the villagers tying you to a big, flammable pole surrounded by bundles of sticks.

It was locked. Someone had also badly welded a metal band all the way around the book, with a lock and everything.

“We’ll definitely be taking that,” Kyessy said.

 

New Quest Received! – Mystery Of Findell’s Handmade Tome

No good can come from Findell having this, so you’d best take it. If Findell yet lives, he’ll surely be hunting you for it. If you can find out what secrets it holds, you may have yourself a potent weapon in the fight against the corruption of He Who Slumbers.

Devotees of He Who Slumbers will doubtless be after you.

Quest reward: Knowledge. It’s a weapon in and of itself. Plus, there’s a skill point in it for you.

Sidequest: Keep Vethros followers from getting their hands on it.

Sidequest reward: For each week you keep the tome secret, and keep it safe, you’ll receive 2000 xp. 

 

“Find the key I guess,” he said. Or burn the book? Two thousand xp per week sounded pretty great, actually, assuming they wouldn’t have people like Serrell to deal with. Perhaps they’d come up against your garden variety cultists, whatever that meant.

He vowed, yet again, to increase his Intelligence at every level up.

The only other item of interest in here was on a carved out little cubby, an alcove about twelve inches across, and maybe that much deep. On that little shelf sat a shard of what was possibly pottery because it was definitely broken. The broken part was white ceramic, but the rest had been glazed a glossy black color he found disconcerting. Kyessy had a torch, but still, the glaze on this shard of pottery didn’t appear to be moving with the torchlight. 

On the side he could see, raised, was the image of a hand… sort of. A hand of a being with fingers like spider legs, seven fingers to be exact, with one eye in the center of that hand. The eye was a ruby with some inky dark spot in the center of it, and Corbin got the distinct impression that eye was looking at him.

All around the fingers, barely incised at all, were little inscriptions in a type of letters he’d never seen before. They were reminiscent of the poseur runes Findell had carved into the wood supports shoring up this room, but they actually meant something.

Hang on a second… how did he know the eye in the middle of the hand was red? A cold shudder of fear ran through him, like he’d stumbled onto a Stephen King situation. Color shouldn’t scare him, and yet here he was.

“Can you… can you get this without touching it? I don’t think it should be touched. It can’t stay here.” 

Prissy came up with part of her cloak in one hand, and a bag in the other, and managed to slip the terrifying pot shard in there. Just in time, too, he was starting to believe the thing was reporting whatever it saw (and possibly heard) to the Slumbering Sonovabitch.

“Ain’t no key,” Prissy said. 

“Findell probably has it on him,” Kyessy said.

Corbin considered this. “We’ll get it inspected by a wizard who isn’t a glorified plumber with an inferiority complex, and then if there’s no magic trap on it, we’ll just rip the metal bits off.” 

He wanted to get out of here, and posthaste, but these two didn’t have True Sight, so he had to do one last bit of rooting around after anything still hidden. 

Nothing, thank the non-evil gods. Except the far-off ranting of a rage-filled housekeeper. 

“Let’s GTFO,” he said. 

Kyessy didn’t know what that meant, and said so, but didn’t ask for clarification. They got TFO.

On the way past the housekeeper, Corbin growled. “You knew,” he said. The woman shrank back. “At very least you knew he didn’t sleep here, and had a weird habit of asking you to make his house look like someone lived in it. You’re in on the folksy magistrate sham and I wish I could bite you.”

“Aw, Corby-me-Corgi, if you feel compelled to bite this here lady, none of us’ll stop ye.”

“Keep that mutt away from me!” the woman shrieked. “Think you’re above the law, do ya? Intruders! Thieves!”

“Adventurers,” Kyessy said, and they left. 

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