" Well....that was quite the trip....you know I'd heard at Candlekeep that that section of the road used to be plagued by hordes of Gibberlings......and we saw nary a one."
" That smells good. Should we head in? Did we need to book ahead? "
Meredith turned and smiled at the other three as she awkwardly slid off her little hinny that she had decided to call Ziba.....because Clover was just a tad too pedestrian for such a lovely little, slightly bitey, mount.
A couple of hours later, arrangements have been made for a room for Bell, Meredith and Erudisia, boarding of two horses, a stall for Little One in the stable, four evening meals (including one "double or nothing" meal, and four pints of local ale (including one "double or nothing" pint). You have had a chance to bathe in clean tubs. And you have taken your meal in the inn's tavern: herbed pork sausages and buns and sour cabbage.
The matrons of the tavern and inn are very muscular women, three of them: Bernice, Callista, and Dredal. You have heard a rumor that they are in fact golems, their true forms covered by an illusion immune to detection.
The dining area is large, broken into a number of expansions off of what seems to be the original common room. Banners from Balder's gate, Waterdeep, Neverwinter, Yartar, Triboar, and a number of noble houses hang from the rafters. The clientele is, in a word, diverse. The human merchants out of Baldur's Gate, elves, dwarves, the githyanki juggler who apparently also does card tricks, currently entertaining a pair of aaracokra, their folded wings twitching in excitement. Rather good music is being played by a quartet of viols -- their leader a handsome elven man with a voice poignant and true -- accompanied by two older musicians, both satyrs -- playing timbrals and frame drums.
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
Hailing from Calimport with its majority of human and genasi supplemented by the varied array of crews from all across the Shining Sea Meredith was not particularly thrown off by the mixed crowd. She purchased a carafe of wine and sat down at a table with three glasses.....she was fairly certain Little One would not indulge....looking over the crowd she was intrigued by the triad of women and looked down at her own rather less than sculpted arms.....though her forearms were not too bad....many hours of stacking and arranging book shelves.
She called over a nearby merchant and pointed to the githyanki, waiting for a lull in the crowd noise she had to time it right, "Who is that fine troubadour? Is it Gingwazim?"
( Timing her raised voice for the lull in conversation so that it carries then scanning the crowd for any who react to the word being shouted.
Her eyes lingering on each the banners, Erudisia is a step behind Meredith as she makes her enquiry. Half-heard rumours surface in her mind for a moment as she moves from rampant Lion to rampant Pegasus to rampant Beholder… or what she assumes is a rampant Beholder. It is hard to be sure.
None seem especially prominent, and therefore the most proximal of Houses and Lord of the nearby bailiwick.
She leaves the Elfen bard to others. Instead, she heads towards the aaracokra, a species she has never yet met. She waits a moment before approaching them directly, to hear the tone and conversation between them and the entertaining juggler before them.
Meredith’s question of the merchant, which she times to ask just after the musicians announce that they’re taking a short break, is no doubt heard by many in her vicinity. The merchant, who had been bringing a pair of full steins from the bar to his table, is at first annoyed. “What?,” he answers, trying to shake off the bard, spilling a few drops. “Awww flock. Look what ye made me…,” he continues, turning to scowl at Meredith. But when he actually looks at her, his eyes almost immediately soften. “Oh, erm… oh, erm, Gingway Zim? I… I’m afraid I don’t know his name, my beauty.” Meredith instantly reads him: desire. His eyes slip left and right then back to Meredith. “Why, I have been curious about his talents myself. Come join us, and I’ll call him over?,” he asks, venturing a grin – all teeth accounted for and clean enough, his voice only slightly oily. As for others reacting to the question, Meredith firmly determines that she has learned one thing. The word means nothing to anyone nearby. A heartbeat passes, then the conversations pick up to fill in the gap left by the musicians.
Erudisia makes her way closer to the table where the two aarakocra sit, approaching from behind the githyanki entertainer. “And that,” says the githyanki, deftly spreading the deck he has been shuffling evenly across the table top, “is why the hunter made it out… alive!” The last he says, removing a single card from the spread-out deck and flips it over to show his audience a king of hearts. The aarakocra chirp excitedly and seem to be laughing, their beaks pointing upwards, opening and shutting rapidly and making clicking sounds.
The githyanki, smiling broadly as he collects his cards, notices Erudisia’s approach when he looks over his shoulder. He makes brief eye contact – an invitation – before turning back to his winged audience. “Of course, great hunters of the air such as you two, being of a land where all things are shared, may forgive me for saying that a storyteller such as myself has no such freedoms nor the wealth to purchase them and depends on the generosity of those who find his tales entertaining in order to fill his belly day-to-day.” The hawk-headed persons tilt their heads, facing the githyanki with one unblinking eye each, while clucking percussively to one another. Bright silver-blue feathers on their necks glisten in the lamp-light. Their huddle ends momentarily, one of them pulls a gold coin from its belt and flips it in a perfect arc to the entertainer. He snatches it from the air and bows, smiling. He then turns back to Erudisia, who gains the impression that the entire display has been for her benefit since the moment the githyanki saw her approaching.
“Milady,” he says, his expression mysterious though friendly, “a tale to lighten your evening after a day of travel?”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
Meredith’s question of the merchant, which she times to ask just after the musicians announce that they’re taking a short break, is no doubt heard by many in her vicinity. The merchant, who had been bringing a pair of full steins from the bar to his table, is at first annoyed. “What?,” he answers, trying to shake off the bard, spilling a few drops. “Awww flock. Look what ye made me…,” he continues, turning to scowl at Meredith. But when he actually looks at her, his eyes almost immediately soften. “Oh, erm… oh, erm, Gingway Zim? I… I’m afraid I don’t know his name, my beauty.” Meredith instantly reads him: desire. His eyes slip left and right then back to Meredith. “Why, I have been curious about his talents myself. Come join us, and I’ll call him over?,” he asks, venturing a grin – all teeth accounted for and clean enough, his voice only slightly oily. As for others reacting to the question, Meredith firmly determines that she has learned one thing. The word means nothing to anyone nearby. A heartbeat passes, then the conversations pick up to fill in the gap left by the musicians.
" Ah.........right........um......I'm just waiting for my...uh........friends to join me actually......perhaps another time?", she stumbled out before downing half a glass of wine in one shot. She scanned the crowd for Erudisia and....Bell.
Erudisia looks for a chair and table and sits near the githyanki and his current audience. Across the large common room, full of hustle and stein-quaffing bustle, she waves at Bell and Meredith, to show them where she has sat.
Meredith, she sees, has an admirer. From her face and cautious step back though, it is not a suitor with sufficient holdings or privilege to please her family. Erudisia empathises.
“I’d enjoy a reading,” she says, indicating his cards, “and a tale that goes with them, if that be a skill of yours.” She smiles at him, and tucks one strand of artfully free hair back behind one ear, as her eyelashes flutter.
Bell notices Erudisia waving from another table. "Little One, it appears Erudisia is trying to wave us over. Think you can break trail over from here to there -- without spilling any ale?" She said the last with a huge smile.
“If it be a skill of mine?,” the githyanki repeats, expressive sharp-tipped ears perking. A jovial smile brightens his face.“Neh, you will not be disappointed, I dare say, Milady, for the cards tell stories of their own. Of greed, of triumph, of sorrow — without any need for translation or interpretation, so long as one has a capacity to understand what they say. But with the aid of one who appreciates the sublime, one, such as I, who breaks through the unseeable mists surrounding the fated path of future days to come, then may one’s dreams be made real. Of course,” he studies Erudisia for a moment, lingering on her riding garb and fair features, “some futures are harder to know than others, and the telling of such extraordinary tales requires efforts beyond the capacity of most persons — even those of my people — to understand.” His smooth, waxy amber complexioned skin is taut over the compactly muscled long limbs of a dancer as his eyes shine expressively. “It may be so exhausting that a full tenday might pass when I would scarcely be able to pull myself out from my… silken sheets. Yeh, silken I say, for among my people I am a prince, though one who has fallen upon hard times and suffers the need to seek recompense for even the slightest exertions in order to… ensure my family — ten children I have, Milady — are well taken care of and don’t miss any erm music lessons or arithmetic lessons or… can be seen to wear clothing less well-tailored than their classmates. But a mere 15 gold would enable me to risk it, to blaze a trail through the pitched seas of fate and bring Milady with me to see what sights the future… holds…”
Here he stops in his tracks for he has fallen into shadow, light from the hanging chandeliers blocked by the planetary mass of Little One who holds four steins of ale in his hands. “Mind if we join?,” the ogre asks, Bell right behind him. Meredith has triangulated and also now arrives. Both Bell and Meredith heard the tail-end of the githyanki’s purple-prosed sales pitch.
There is room at this previously empty table for all to sit. Even, Little One.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
Erudisia smiles with the corner of her mouth. From her coin purse she places five gold pieces, then another three. Then one more. Then one more. Ten gold pieces settle on the table with an inviting clunk, one for each child. Erudisia’s fingers run over the milling of several more coins still within her hand.
”Your royal house is very fortunate. Very fortunate indeed, to have so many heirs. My fortune … well, at present it is unclear. Mayhap if the road were less uncertain I might feel more secure in the knowledge of needed and unneeded expenditures.”
Meredith rather unceremoniously plonked the wine bottle and three glasses down on the table hurriedly before sitting down in a flustered heap, she cast her eye back over her shoulder towards the merchant with a slight shudder, " All right! What are we......oh, cards......no.....oh, ok."
" Oh. Hello.", she said suddenly as if finally noticing the githyanki.
And then she noticed Erudisia seemed to be in the middle of some sort of negotiation and shut up.
The githyanki acknowledges Meredith, then notes the ten gold coins Erudisia has placed on the table, and the potential for more. He smiles, almost flirtatiously, as his orange-brown eyes rise from the table, sideways, to the warlock’s. He does not make a move to take the coins.
“Let us see if my reading creates a call to the shy friends of those lonely buttons. Now…,” he spreads the cards out slowly and smoothly in a long row. The candles overhead flicker. A tavern patron has just exited, and the draft from the door...
“…choose one. The first card is you, Milady.”
When Erudisia takes a card and flips it, the Queen of diamonds is revealed.
“A woman. Grown. Beautiful and powerful — wealthy or seeking wealth… of gold, or… love…”
“The next card is your home.”
A seven of spades.
“And the next card is your family”
A three of clubs.
“And… your fortune. Two cards.”
A ten of hearts and Jack of diamonds. The githyanki regards Erudisia, his expression now of mystery and expectation.
“Tell me… do the cards speak to you? For if they do, the message is… clearest. If not… then their meaning is also clear. But it’s… best… if they do…”
He smiles encouragingly.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
The githyanki acknowledges Meredith, then notes the ten gold coins Erudisia has placed on the table, and the potential for more. He smiles, almost flirtatiously, as his orange-brown eyes rise from the table, sideways, to the warlock’s. He does not make a move to take the coins.
“Let us see if my reading creates a call to the shy friends of those lonely buttons. Now…,” he spreads the cards out slowly and smoothly in a long row. The candles overhead flicker. A tavern patron has just exited, and the draft from the door...
“…choose one. The first card is you, Milady.”
When Erudisia takes a card and flips it, the Queen of diamonds is revealed.
“A woman. Grown. Beautiful and powerful — wealthy or seeking wealth… of gold, or… love…”
“The next card is your home.”
A seven of spades.
“And the next card is your family”
A three of clubs.
“And… your fortune. Two cards.”
A ten of hearts and Jack of diamonds. The githyanki regards Erudisia, his expression now of mystery and expectation.
“Tell me… do the cards speak to you? For if they do, the message is… clearest. If not… then their meaning is also clear. But it’s… best… if they do…”
He smiles encouragingly.
Erudisiawatches as each card shows itself: her past, her present and her future...
She closes her eyes and feels the draft that plays across the back of her fingers, the back of her neck, pulls her hair from behind her ear to hang beside her face. Her home, a place of creativity and electricity, but also of changing seasons. Her mother in full bloom and dearth in each solstice. Her changing face as the year grows long, and shadowed eyes.
The three of clubs, her three siblings. One proud, one distant, one lonely. All creative. All bright. All of their minds entangled through hers, the common thread of their thoughts and spirits, the frenetic conversation she would draw out and the way they would talk together in each of their domains. The sparring yard, the forest, the library, and the tower.
And then...
A Ten of Hearts.
A Jack of Diamonds
"They speak to me," she says. "They speak to me."
She puts one finger delicately on the Ten of Hearts. "I think these are not one path, but two. This one is my return home, forsaking my ambition. This is the love and warmth of some parts of my family, all but the Queen of Hearts. I am not the Queen of Hearts, and she who is isn't to be bound by a lesser card. At my home I will be as happy as can be, I will be contented, perhaps, as contented as a low card can be."
She moves her elegantly shaped nail to tap the other card. "This..." She hesitates.
Her mind is suddenly back in Candlekeep. She is breathless, sightless, the draft is a gale and she is suffocating. She gasps suddenly, returning to the inn. Her eyes sting, and perhaps there is a teardrop there, but she stares at the card beneath her finger as fiercely as she can, refusing its accomplices.
"This ... is the Jack of Diamonds, but in some places it is called the Knave, and in my home we call it the Valet. The Valet is a servant, an attendant. Here the attendant serves diamonds, serves a master and king of unknowable wealth and power. This is my future if I do not return home ... I shall serve one greater than me, in the pursuit of a particular type of wealth. I shall serve at his pleasure, and grow from the scraps at their table. I shall..." her voice hitches. She does not continue.
Fitfully she places another five coins on the table. "Thank you, sir. I-- I... Apologies."
The half-elf Lady nods to Meredith and smiles. Ladies who luncheon is a fine thing, and she includes Little One in this. She drinks half the glass in one long draw. It has been a while since she got Moonshae girl wasted.
The githyanki acknowledges Meredith, then notes the ten gold coins Erudisia has placed on the table, and the potential for more....
He smiles encouragingly.
Erudisiawatches as each card shows itself: her past, her present and her future...
She closes her eyes...
Fitfully she places another five coins on the table. "Thank you, sir. I-- I... Apologies."
(Granting Erudisia Inspiration!)
Several tavern guests are now standing around the table watching the proceedings. The githyanki seems, at first, poised and commanding, enjoying the attention, perhaps homing in on the next traveler who would be willing to pay for entertainment. But when the Moonshae lady dips toward pathos, Little One’s inhalations and exhalations begin to resemble those of a bull preparing to charge, and the circle of onlookers takes a step back while their curiosity and anticipation heightens.
“You upset lady…,” Little One begins, his expression dark and foreboding. A sudden glowing of his headband, and the color comes back into his eyes. He shakes his head and offers, reasonably, “Maybe that enough…”
“Ah yeh,” the githyanki responds, not quite backing away from the ogre, his eyes flashing to the growing cluster of gold coins on the table. “Ah yeh, maybe it is… and yet,” he continues, addressing all those nearby, anxious, Meredith reads, to finish on a positive note, “it is true that the power of foresight, the realm of the gods and seers, and even, some few gifted mortals,” the last, with all modesty, “can bring delight or it can bring doubt and fear even, depending on how the cards are read! But while the lady is as bright a shining star as may travel the Sword Coast, yet… without training, and experience reading the cards, and indeed, without the true bond that a reader – such as I – possesses with the deck he carries… not everything may be as it appears. Yeh, look here, friends, look here… she reads the cards left to right, but since I have spread the deck, they must be read right to left, the Jack first, and then the Ten. And what can that mean, for I see it clearly, Milady. Jack trumps Ten, Ten trumps Nine, Nine trumps Eight, and so forth… and so begins a series of decreasing erm trials – decreasing, Milady! So that, whichever path you take, your… your powers, be they empathy or strength or… or decency, pure lady!... they will be enough to assure your continuing erm…. That is to say,” he starts again, his confidence fully returned, “nothing will fate place in your path that you cannot overcome. A fair path ahead, Milady.” He smiles, and the onlookers also smile.
“Hear, hear!,” one of the merchant’s says too loudly, raising a glass, although his neighbor chides him immediately in a whisper, “Come on, ye infant,” and the pair step back to the bar.
With a bow, the githyanki scoops up the gold and, bowing, takes his leave in his loquacious manner.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
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" Well....that was quite the trip....you know I'd heard at Candlekeep that that section of the road used to be plagued by hordes of Gibberlings......and we saw nary a one."
" That smells good. Should we head in? Did we need to book ahead? "
Meredith turned and smiled at the other three as she awkwardly slid off her little hinny that she had decided to call Ziba.....because Clover was just a tad too pedestrian for such a lovely little, slightly bitey, mount.
A couple of hours later, arrangements have been made for a room for Bell, Meredith and Erudisia, boarding of two horses, a stall for Little One in the stable, four evening meals (including one "double or nothing" meal, and four pints of local ale (including one "double or nothing" pint). You have had a chance to bathe in clean tubs. And you have taken your meal in the inn's tavern: herbed pork sausages and buns and sour cabbage.
The matrons of the tavern and inn are very muscular women, three of them: Bernice, Callista, and Dredal. You have heard a rumor that they are in fact golems, their true forms covered by an illusion immune to detection.
The dining area is large, broken into a number of expansions off of what seems to be the original common room. Banners from Balder's gate, Waterdeep, Neverwinter, Yartar, Triboar, and a number of noble houses hang from the rafters. The clientele is, in a word, diverse. The human merchants out of Baldur's Gate, elves, dwarves, the githyanki juggler who apparently also does card tricks, currently entertaining a pair of aaracokra, their folded wings twitching in excitement. Rather good music is being played by a quartet of viols -- their leader a handsome elven man with a voice poignant and true -- accompanied by two older musicians, both satyrs -- playing timbrals and frame drums.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
(Does Erudisia recognise any of the noble house pennants?)
Bell sits in wide eyed wonder at the diversity of the tavern crowd. This was a bit more 'cosmopolitan' than she was used to being among.
They are Sword Coast houses, so they will likely be familiar to her.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Hailing from Calimport with its majority of human and genasi supplemented by the varied array of crews from all across the Shining Sea Meredith was not particularly thrown off by the mixed crowd. She purchased a carafe of wine and sat down at a table with three glasses.....she was fairly certain Little One would not indulge....looking over the crowd she was intrigued by the triad of women and looked down at her own rather less than sculpted arms.....though her forearms were not too bad....many hours of stacking and arranging book shelves.
She called over a nearby merchant and pointed to the githyanki, waiting for a lull in the crowd noise she had to time it right, "Who is that fine troubadour? Is it Gingwazim?"
( Timing her raised voice for the lull in conversation so that it carries then scanning the crowd for any who react to the word being shouted.
Perception/Insight- 6 )
Her eyes lingering on each the banners, Erudisia is a step behind Meredith as she makes her enquiry. Half-heard rumours surface in her mind for a moment as she moves from rampant Lion to rampant Pegasus to rampant Beholder… or what she assumes is a rampant Beholder. It is hard to be sure.
None seem especially prominent, and therefore the most proximal of Houses and Lord of the nearby bailiwick.
She leaves the Elfen bard to others. Instead, she heads towards the aaracokra, a species she has never yet met. She waits a moment before approaching them directly, to hear the tone and conversation between them and the entertaining juggler before them.
Meredith’s question of the merchant, which she times to ask just after the musicians announce that they’re taking a short break, is no doubt heard by many in her vicinity. The merchant, who had been bringing a pair of full steins from the bar to his table, is at first annoyed. “What?,” he answers, trying to shake off the bard, spilling a few drops. “Awww flock. Look what ye made me…,” he continues, turning to scowl at Meredith. But when he actually looks at her, his eyes almost immediately soften. “Oh, erm… oh, erm, Gingway Zim? I… I’m afraid I don’t know his name, my beauty.” Meredith instantly reads him: desire. His eyes slip left and right then back to Meredith. “Why, I have been curious about his talents myself. Come join us, and I’ll call him over?,” he asks, venturing a grin – all teeth accounted for and clean enough, his voice only slightly oily. As for others reacting to the question, Meredith firmly determines that she has learned one thing. The word means nothing to anyone nearby. A heartbeat passes, then the conversations pick up to fill in the gap left by the musicians.
Erudisia makes her way closer to the table where the two aarakocra sit, approaching from behind the githyanki entertainer. “And that,” says the githyanki, deftly spreading the deck he has been shuffling evenly across the table top, “is why the hunter made it out… alive!” The last he says, removing a single card from the spread-out deck and flips it over to show his audience a king of hearts. The aarakocra chirp excitedly and seem to be laughing, their beaks pointing upwards, opening and shutting rapidly and making clicking sounds.
The githyanki, smiling broadly as he collects his cards, notices Erudisia’s approach when he looks over his shoulder. He makes brief eye contact – an invitation – before turning back to his winged audience. “Of course, great hunters of the air such as you two, being of a land where all things are shared, may forgive me for saying that a storyteller such as myself has no such freedoms nor the wealth to purchase them and depends on the generosity of those who find his tales entertaining in order to fill his belly day-to-day.” The hawk-headed persons tilt their heads, facing the githyanki with one unblinking eye each, while clucking percussively to one another. Bright silver-blue feathers on their necks glisten in the lamp-light. Their huddle ends momentarily, one of them pulls a gold coin from its belt and flips it in a perfect arc to the entertainer. He snatches it from the air and bows, smiling. He then turns back to Erudisia, who gains the impression that the entire display has been for her benefit since the moment the githyanki saw her approaching.
“Milady,” he says, his expression mysterious though friendly, “a tale to lighten your evening after a day of travel?”
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
" Ah.........right........um......I'm just waiting for my...uh........friends to join me actually......perhaps another time?", she stumbled out before downing half a glass of wine in one shot. She scanned the crowd for Erudisia and....Bell.
Erudisia looks for a chair and table and sits near the githyanki and his current audience. Across the large common room, full of hustle and stein-quaffing bustle, she waves at Bell and Meredith, to show them where she has sat.
Meredith, she sees, has an admirer. From her face and cautious step back though, it is not a suitor with sufficient holdings or privilege to please her family. Erudisia empathises.
“I’d enjoy a reading,” she says, indicating his cards, “and a tale that goes with them, if that be a skill of yours.” She smiles at him, and tucks one strand of artfully free hair back behind one ear, as her eyelashes flutter.
Bell notices Erudisia waving from another table. "Little One, it appears Erudisia is trying to wave us over. Think you can break trail over from here to there -- without spilling any ale?" She said the last with a huge smile.
“If it be a skill of mine?,” the githyanki repeats, expressive sharp-tipped ears perking. A jovial smile brightens his face.“Neh, you will not be disappointed, I dare say, Milady, for the cards tell stories of their own. Of greed, of triumph, of sorrow — without any need for translation or interpretation, so long as one has a capacity to understand what they say. But with the aid of one who appreciates the sublime, one, such as I, who breaks through the unseeable mists surrounding the fated path of future days to come, then may one’s dreams be made real. Of course,” he studies Erudisia for a moment, lingering on her riding garb and fair features, “some futures are harder to know than others, and the telling of such extraordinary tales requires efforts beyond the capacity of most persons — even those of my people — to understand.” His smooth, waxy amber complexioned skin is taut over the compactly muscled long limbs of a dancer as his eyes shine expressively. “It may be so exhausting that a full tenday might pass when I would scarcely be able to pull myself out from my… silken sheets. Yeh, silken I say, for among my people I am a prince, though one who has fallen upon hard times and suffers the need to seek recompense for even the slightest exertions in order to… ensure my family — ten children I have, Milady — are well taken care of and don’t miss any erm music lessons or arithmetic lessons or… can be seen to wear clothing less well-tailored than their classmates. But a mere 15 gold would enable me to risk it, to blaze a trail through the pitched seas of fate and bring Milady with me to see what sights the future… holds…”
Here he stops in his tracks for he has fallen into shadow, light from the hanging chandeliers blocked by the planetary mass of Little One who holds four steins of ale in his hands. “Mind if we join?,” the ogre asks, Bell right behind him. Meredith has triangulated and also now arrives. Both Bell and Meredith heard the tail-end of the githyanki’s purple-prosed sales pitch.
There is room at this previously empty table for all to sit. Even, Little One.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Erudisia smiles with the corner of her mouth. From her coin purse she places five gold pieces, then another three. Then one more. Then one more. Ten gold pieces settle on the table with an inviting clunk, one for each child. Erudisia’s fingers run over the milling of several more coins still within her hand.
”Your royal house is very fortunate. Very fortunate indeed, to have so many heirs. My fortune … well, at present it is unclear. Mayhap if the road were less uncertain I might feel more secure in the knowledge of needed and unneeded expenditures.”
Meredith rather unceremoniously plonked the wine bottle and three glasses down on the table hurriedly before sitting down in a flustered heap, she cast her eye back over her shoulder towards the merchant with a slight shudder, " All right! What are we......oh, cards......no.....oh, ok."
" Oh. Hello.", she said suddenly as if finally noticing the githyanki.
And then she noticed Erudisia seemed to be in the middle of some sort of negotiation and shut up.
The githyanki acknowledges Meredith, then notes the ten gold coins Erudisia has placed on the table, and the potential for more. He smiles, almost flirtatiously, as his orange-brown eyes rise from the table, sideways, to the warlock’s. He does not make a move to take the coins.
“Let us see if my reading creates a call to the shy friends of those lonely buttons. Now…,” he spreads the cards out slowly and smoothly in a long row. The candles overhead flicker. A tavern patron has just exited, and the draft from the door...
“…choose one. The first card is you, Milady.”
When Erudisia takes a card and flips it, the Queen of diamonds is revealed.
“A woman. Grown. Beautiful and powerful — wealthy or seeking wealth… of gold, or… love…”
“The next card is your home.”
A seven of spades.
“And the next card is your family”
A three of clubs.
“And… your fortune. Two cards.”
A ten of hearts and Jack of diamonds. The githyanki regards Erudisia, his expression now of mystery and expectation.
“Tell me… do the cards speak to you? For if they do, the message is… clearest. If not… then their meaning is also clear. But it’s… best… if they do…”
He smiles encouragingly.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Meredith was not exactly sure what was happening, she'd seen fortunes read in Calimport but it was usually astrology or coffee grounds.
Erudisia watches as each card shows itself: her past, her present and her future...
She closes her eyes and feels the draft that plays across the back of her fingers, the back of her neck, pulls her hair from behind her ear to hang beside her face. Her home, a place of creativity and electricity, but also of changing seasons. Her mother in full bloom and dearth in each solstice. Her changing face as the year grows long, and shadowed eyes.
The three of clubs, her three siblings. One proud, one distant, one lonely. All creative. All bright. All of their minds entangled through hers, the common thread of their thoughts and spirits, the frenetic conversation she would draw out and the way they would talk together in each of their domains. The sparring yard, the forest, the library, and the tower.
And then...
A Ten of Hearts.
A Jack of Diamonds
"They speak to me," she says. "They speak to me."
She puts one finger delicately on the Ten of Hearts. "I think these are not one path, but two. This one is my return home, forsaking my ambition. This is the love and warmth of some parts of my family, all but the Queen of Hearts. I am not the Queen of Hearts, and she who is isn't to be bound by a lesser card. At my home I will be as happy as can be, I will be contented, perhaps, as contented as a low card can be."
She moves her elegantly shaped nail to tap the other card. "This..." She hesitates.
Her mind is suddenly back in Candlekeep. She is breathless, sightless, the draft is a gale and she is suffocating. She gasps suddenly, returning to the inn. Her eyes sting, and perhaps there is a teardrop there, but she stares at the card beneath her finger as fiercely as she can, refusing its accomplices.
"This ... is the Jack of Diamonds, but in some places it is called the Knave, and in my home we call it the Valet. The Valet is a servant, an attendant. Here the attendant serves diamonds, serves a master and king of unknowable wealth and power. This is my future if I do not return home ... I shall serve one greater than me, in the pursuit of a particular type of wealth. I shall serve at his pleasure, and grow from the scraps at their table. I shall..." her voice hitches. She does not continue.
Fitfully she places another five coins on the table. "Thank you, sir. I-- I... Apologies."
Meredith watches enthralled but not really comprehending.....she firmly pushes a glass of wine in front of Erudisia....she looks like she needs one.
Then also passes one to Bell.
The half-elf Lady nods to Meredith and smiles. Ladies who luncheon is a fine thing, and she includes Little One in this. She drinks half the glass in one long draw. It has been a while since she got Moonshae girl wasted.
(Erudisia, please take inspiration!)
(Granting Erudisia Inspiration!)
Several tavern guests are now standing around the table watching the proceedings. The githyanki seems, at first, poised and commanding, enjoying the attention, perhaps homing in on the next traveler who would be willing to pay for entertainment. But when the Moonshae lady dips toward pathos, Little One’s inhalations and exhalations begin to resemble those of a bull preparing to charge, and the circle of onlookers takes a step back while their curiosity and anticipation heightens.
“You upset lady…,” Little One begins, his expression dark and foreboding. A sudden glowing of his headband, and the color comes back into his eyes. He shakes his head and offers, reasonably, “Maybe that enough…”
“Ah yeh,” the githyanki responds, not quite backing away from the ogre, his eyes flashing to the growing cluster of gold coins on the table. “Ah yeh, maybe it is… and yet,” he continues, addressing all those nearby, anxious, Meredith reads, to finish on a positive note, “it is true that the power of foresight, the realm of the gods and seers, and even, some few gifted mortals,” the last, with all modesty, “can bring delight or it can bring doubt and fear even, depending on how the cards are read! But while the lady is as bright a shining star as may travel the Sword Coast, yet… without training, and experience reading the cards, and indeed, without the true bond that a reader – such as I – possesses with the deck he carries… not everything may be as it appears. Yeh, look here, friends, look here… she reads the cards left to right, but since I have spread the deck, they must be read right to left, the Jack first, and then the Ten. And what can that mean, for I see it clearly, Milady. Jack trumps Ten, Ten trumps Nine, Nine trumps Eight, and so forth… and so begins a series of decreasing erm trials – decreasing, Milady! So that, whichever path you take, your… your powers, be they empathy or strength or… or decency, pure lady!... they will be enough to assure your continuing erm…. That is to say,” he starts again, his confidence fully returned, “nothing will fate place in your path that you cannot overcome. A fair path ahead, Milady.” He smiles, and the onlookers also smile.
“Hear, hear!,” one of the merchant’s says too loudly, raising a glass, although his neighbor chides him immediately in a whisper, “Come on, ye infant,” and the pair step back to the bar.
With a bow, the githyanki scoops up the gold and, bowing, takes his leave in his loquacious manner.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters