Week 5: Hi, Mom!

The group had just revived Zuri, and found that while Sister Mira was dead Sister Sulon had driven off a pair of shadow hounds who attacked them. Sulon explained that the hounds would return each day at dusk until their creator was destroyed. 

Outside the dormitory, they witnessed a puppet show: the puppeteers explained that the Marghoz was mounting an effort to end piracy on the sea lanes, and the show told the story of the Saffan victory over Typor Citadel.

Meeting with Kada’s parents — Kyrlian and Floris Rahlo — they learned that the shadowy would-be assassin had war paint on known as the Tears of Typor. The Tears are worn by members of the Moor Foxes, a Typori separatist group. The Rahlos told the story of the Sorrow of Saffa, and of the mysterious raid on Typor that the Saffans undertook as vengeance. The Moor Foxes are a group of Typoris who maintain a vendetta against Saffa and the rest of the remnants of the Urek Empire, and in recent years have amassed enough money to hire some former members of the Ashguard. When that happened, the Rahlos moved to Moru Kel and raised Kada thinking he was a Nawabe to avoid prejudice.

The Gryphons then went to the Pearl, where they found a note from Ammon with a map leading to his place. Before heading out, they talked to Warden Carletta, who pointed them to Wattilchot and Pella. Wattilchot either left the force or has been pushed aside for spending time obsessing over the case, but Pella still works for the Bronze. They left a note with the Sentinels for her, and proceeded to Ammon’s.

Along the way they were attacked by a tiger while Tobias was engulfed in a giant pitcher plant. They managed to defeat the tiger, and Tobias invoked a weird shadow power to escape the trap. 

Ammon greeted them with a new vegetable from the north, the po-ta-to. He also showed them a number of inventions, including globes of light from the far south and a modified Tempest Prognosticator which could detect tremors in the earth: he’d been tracking a volcanic threat to Moru Kel, and pinpointed its source somewhere beneath the ocean. His boatman Eklo led the group (and Ammon’s glass diving bell) out to sea, where they discovered a group of mahksi in a cave. The mahksi’s leader Nira identified herself as Kyamu’s mother, and told the tale of their group:

The Chosen of Maru were sent here long ago to support the Keepers of the Candle of Tapakarami. Tapakarami is a capricious but territorial being, powerful in her own domain: while the candle remained lit, her presence contained the wairu, an evil demon captured long before the memories of mahksi. Tapakarami prevented the wairu from escaping, but she also prevented Maru — the one the surface-folk call Mir — from coming near.

About 25 years ago we began to fear the wairu’s return: our people began suffering from stonegill and many of the animals we hunt to survive became scarce. Some days, the water itself is poisonous in certain areas. Our ability to resupply the Keepers — you and your father — was strained, though we did our best to continue.

Five years ago we knew that we had failed in our centuries-old responsibility, for the wairu appeared one morning and attacked our small settlement. It had killed 5 of our people and had young Tairu in its sites when a burst of green and yellow light appeared: Maru herself, finally free to visit us! She exploded into a thousand motes of light, weakening the wairu and pushing it out to sea. Maru is an avatar of the sea-god itself and can never be destroyed for long, but the wairu was also not permanently killed. The majority of our people fled, planning to head back to the kelp forests or to the rumored village of Panga to the south. I remained here, with the young, old, and infirm who were too frail to make that swim. The others swore they would return, but the wairu is capable of shaking the very earth: the cave entrance collapsed soon after they left. So even if they did return, they had no way to find us. We opened the rear tunnels to fish, but that entrance has been beset by razor sharks, giant squid, and worse. We’ve been attempting to stockpile food to make the journey when our strength recovers.

She also let them know that the wairu invested a lot of power in the creatures it controls, so defeating them would weaken it for a time. And she explained that the Chosen drew straws to determine who would become the next Keepers of the Candle, and the saddest day of her life was when she had to send Kyamu and his father to the cave of the Candle.

Sensing a creature of the wairu approaching, Nira gave the group the Needle of the Deep (a spear that had been embedded with Maru’s power when she saved Tairu). They fought a dangerous demon-shark that had magical mind-control abilities, narrowly defeating it. Determining that its flesh was inedible, they loaded the starving mahksi onto the boat to return to Ammon’s.