The Chronicles of Dengril: Cordelia’s Saga

In Sigil, there’s a faction known as the Sensates. They love experiencing everything. I mean literally everything. If it can affect any or all of their five senses, they must partake. When I picked up my most recent client at one of their compounds, I inadvertently walked into the wrong chamber and caught sight of some kinky things that even normal kinky people would find too kinky. I will not talk about it further.

Anyway, it was after this particular job escorting a frost giant who wanted to visit the elemental plane of fire and needed some protection from the elements that I met a young human bard named Cordelia. Whip smart and charming as hell, Cordelia was the finest player of her instrument I’d ever heard. Of course, until she told me it was called an “oboe,” I had no idea what it was and wouldn’t have known if she was actually the best or not, but it sounded fantastic.

She had a most fascinating tale to tell and so I bought her a glass of wine and listened to her story of derring-do. I’ll let her explain.

Cordelia’s Saga

It all began with a contest. I was looking for something to do and a strange collection of adventurers was in dire need of philosophical rescue in a street altercation that redefined misogyny. They were wanting to take part in a major contest where two potential prizes awaited the winners. You can’t have one of these kinds of competitions without egotistical and pompous jackasses threatening to upend all participants, cheating as they must to thwart truly competent individuals.

That’s not to say our group was particularly competent, but we were dedicated and the team listened to reason more often than not. After a particularly exhilarating dockside adventure where I impersonated their leader so we could steal back a satchel that belonged to a young gnomish pair, it seemed like these folks would be down with just about any misadventure, which is what I love in adventuring companions. The gnomes got their pack back and considering they had lost everything in a fire at their inn, it seemed like just rewards to make sure they were back on their feet again.

The cheaters never figured out who stole away their filthy lucre and in spite of my desire to show them that they couldn’t mess with us, any illegal activity on our part (or theirs) that resulted in being caught by the city watch would have disqualified us from the competition. While that tiny purse might have been easy to lose, the promise of adventure and a duchy to rule by ourselves was too tantalizing to pass up.

Everyone thought we were crazy for picking the infested keep for our prize. Far removed from civilization and likely filled with myriad foes of daunting proportions, this castle on the edge of a cliff was easily fortified and had a small community below it to help make it prosperous. Who wouldn’t want to turn that kind of project around.

The contest was a series of mental and physical challenges including opening strange doors, sliding down treacherous shifting platforms and dodging ranged, magic and melee attacks while trying to cross a narrow bridge. We made it across in record time and gloated over the cheaters without remorse.

Before going further, perhaps I should talk about my companions a bit. Their knowledge and skill sets might have a little bearing on the story that I’ll tell later.

Sadly, the half-elf plays up his stereotypes well. Akatosh is a clunky, slim-witted fighter. What he lacks in brains is more than made up for in brawn. He can cleave through two skulls deftly, but sometimes gets himself in over his head. As you’ll discover later, he also too readily listens to strategies that haven’t been thoroughly discussed. In combat, you don’t have much of a choice, but still…

We have two half-elves. Aurora’s the other one. She’s a woman after my own heart. I’ve done some digging within the syndicate and found out plenty about this roguishly beguiling young woman. She’s got better capabilities with a lockpick set than I do, but we’re almost even in terms of acrobatic feats and with the capability to silently move our way through enemy territory. She has a few arcane tricks up her sleeve as well, which can aid immeasurably in an encounter where my limited magical abilities aren’t enough.

The party also has two dragonborn and they couldn’t be more diametrically opposed and I mean that almost literally. A descendent of red dragons, Big Red is a lumbering oaf who plays dumb when he has a lot of bright and wise ideas. He trained formally as a monk, but I haven’t seen a lot of his skills in action yet, so hopefully there’s more to that training than so far meets the eye.

The other dragonborn is a silver descendant. If she were gold, we might have a little problem between her and Red. Iszylla is very quite. Disturbingly so. I’m wondering if her priesthood has demanded her silence in exchange for her abilities. She used to talk a bit more, but has been mum for so long, I’ve forgotten what her voice sounds like. Her primary reason for being with us is that she can heal us and boy do we need healing. A lot of it. We can’t seem to go for more than a couple of hours before we have to rest and recuperate.

And therein lies our problem. During our last stop in civilization, we found a displaced group of dragonborn that Red and I spoke with regarding the possibility of giving them land to tend and manage once we took control of the castle. It’s always good to have allies running things, but they were preparing to leave over a week ago and we were supposed to clear the area before they arrived.

We managed to eliminate the gnoll infestation in the village in the castle’s shadow, but the castle itself remains occupied. Unless we can stop those forces from raiding and ransacking the town when the dragonborn arrive, we’ll have wasted a lot of lives for nothing. We keep resting in order to prepare for our strategic incursions, but time is not on our side. That’s why we are now situated in the dark hallways of the castle preparing to engage with a revenant and his two bodyguards as our last-ditch effort to secure the grounds before. At least secure them well enough to allow us to investigate the castle with more leisure.

That’s where we stand at this juncture and I’m sure it will be something thrilling, but that will have to wait for our next correspondence. I’ll even try to get into some of the adventures we had that led up to this point as a bit of filler…I mean as facts in support of our endeavors.