Post by Dietrich on Mar 23, 2019 4:05:25 GMT
It was midday in Waterdeep. The sun sat high in the cloudless blue sky, warming the cobblestones of Horn Street in the North Ward. Many traders and nobles went about their daily business, flowing through the streets like a chaotic, living river. Situated off to one side of the road, pushed back between two other buildings, was an understated and easy-to-miss three-story structure of wood. It looked like nothing more than a warehouse or block of apartments. The only thing that gave the structure’s true nature away was a small, nearly unnoticeable scrawl of common etched above the door;
The Silent Shield
Dietrich had found the nondescript inn shortly after arriving in Waterdeep. The culture shock had been a bit immense, suddenly switching from living in a collapsing, rotten hovel in the middle of nowhere to quite suddenly being surrounded by thousands of the Sword Coast’s wealthiest and most influential nobles and businessmen. But the proprietors of Silent Shield cared little for social class or outward appearances. If one required a quiet, safe, and secure place to rest or lie low, then they were equally welcome...provided they had the coin.
With some considerable effort, Dietrich had managed to scrape together enough coin to rent a room for a full month. It wasn’t anything grand, a simple one-room affair, furnished by an average bed and sturdy wooden desk. A small bedside table, complete with several small drawers for storing clothing or other effects, held up the small brass lamp used to light the room in the evening. The only other notable item in the room was the wooden washtub and small shaving mirror in the corner. While not an incredible improvement to his living situation, the man was just happy for a roof that didn’t leak and a door that could actually be locked.
As sunlight streamed through the window, casting a warm glow into each corner of the room, Dietrich sat at the desk, a deluge of parchment and books laid out in a haphazard mess before him. He was leaned forward, an inkpen grasped in his hand as he scratched another page of notes into his journal. To his left, a heavy leatherbound tome rested open to a page adorned with strange diagrams and formulas. Various scribbles of recent handwriting criss-crossed the page, handmade amendments, and questions to the printed information contained within.
Function? Purpose?
Why not keep it in the Prime Material? Someone else already seeking it?
Use Ellashan’s methodology instead - Ivelenor was a stone-brained quack…
Will need more reagents to make the sigils work. This list is made for a rat-sized being.
With a sigh, Dietrich flipped his journal closed and placed the inkpen down on the table before leaning back in his seat. As the chair rocked back onto its hind legs, the wood gave a low, groaning creak in protest. Dietrich stretched his arms high over his head with his own grunt, trying to work the tension out of his shoulders from sitting stooped over and writing for so long. The bones in his back let out a few muffled pops and cracks, contributing to the noise.
As he stood up, he shuffled over to the single window that opened out to Horn Street. Leaning on the sill, he watched the people trickling by. Hundreds of faces, hundreds of bodies, all passing him by without so much as a curious glance or trace of interest. Of course, he was on the third floor. Most people couldn’t be bothered to look up without some kind of motivation, some cue to survey their surroundings. As a warm Spring breeze pushed its way through the window and across Dietrich’s face, his mind began to wander. It often did that of late.
He stared at the people going by and wondered if this must be how she felt. How she saw the world, the myriad of mortal souls passing by, all blissfully unaware that something dark and threatening loomed just outside of their narrow fields of view. He wondered if this was how she felt watching him, watching his father. Would this be how she felt when her gaze settled upon Dietrich’s own daughter?
He’d begun clutching the sill hard enough to turn his knuckles an ivory white. As he realized this and pulled away, a small crimson trickle of blood trailed its way down his fingers. A tiny sliver of wood, worn loose by time and weather, had come away as a splinter, burrowing its way into the soft flesh of his palm. Almost unconsciously, he reached out with his uninjured hand and probed the foreign body. A jolt of needle-like pain shot up his arm, eliciting a frustrated hiss from between clenched teeth.
Holding his hand away from him like some undesirable bit of refuse, he walked quickly to the bed, doing his best not to allow an errant trail of blood to follow him along the wooden floorboards. He sat on the edge of the firm mattress, reaching under the bed frame with his good hand and grasping blindly. Where was it? He knew it was there, somewhere- Aha! His hand seized around a two-inch wide strip of rough fabric. With a jerk, he wrenched the leather bag from it’s hiding place and hefted it up onto the bed beside him. In another moment, he had the small metal clasp undone, and the closure’s flap tossed open. Inside was an assortment of small glass bottles, metal tins, rolls of fabric, and several doctor’s tools.
Dietrich set to work immediately. He removed the splinter with a small pair of tweezers, doused the puncture with a small splash of spirits, and then smeared a pinch of grease across the wound to serve as a barrier to infection. The oil was preferable to a proper bandage, as the cloth dressing would make it harder to write or perform any of the more involved motions necessary to cast a spell.
Satisfied with his work, Dietrich returned the items to their respective compartments in the bag and was about to close the leather flap when he saw the small, faintly yellowed piece of parchment lying on the floor. He’d almost forgotten about that thing. It had been tucked into his bag for months now, gathering dust and wrinkles in equal measure. He leaned forward and picked it up, the rough texture of the stationary giving an all too familiar sensation. As it should, he thought to himself, I spent a week just trying to get everything worded right.
As he held the small rectangle of folded paper in his lap, his fingers idly traced along its surface. They passed over the simple seal of dark red wax, then drifted upwards to trace along the flowing script that covered the front of the small sheet with a single word.
Lucia
It was almost enough to make him laugh. The letter had been in his pack for a full month, all but forgotten, and now merely holding the piece of parchment in his hand was enough to call forth a flood of memories. He found his thoughts drifting back to Shadowdale, back to his parents and sisters, the family farm and his apothecary he ran out of the first floor of the house he’d saved up his coin to afford for nearly two years. He thought of Lucia, of the happier times before he...before she drove her away.
And he thought of Cristina. How old would she be now? Ten or eleven years old, if his memory served him. Dietrich often wondered what she looked like now, after so many years.
He might have sat like that for hours, staring at the unsent letter and contemplating the past, were it not for the soft knock at the door of his room.
The Silent Shield
Dietrich had found the nondescript inn shortly after arriving in Waterdeep. The culture shock had been a bit immense, suddenly switching from living in a collapsing, rotten hovel in the middle of nowhere to quite suddenly being surrounded by thousands of the Sword Coast’s wealthiest and most influential nobles and businessmen. But the proprietors of Silent Shield cared little for social class or outward appearances. If one required a quiet, safe, and secure place to rest or lie low, then they were equally welcome...provided they had the coin.
With some considerable effort, Dietrich had managed to scrape together enough coin to rent a room for a full month. It wasn’t anything grand, a simple one-room affair, furnished by an average bed and sturdy wooden desk. A small bedside table, complete with several small drawers for storing clothing or other effects, held up the small brass lamp used to light the room in the evening. The only other notable item in the room was the wooden washtub and small shaving mirror in the corner. While not an incredible improvement to his living situation, the man was just happy for a roof that didn’t leak and a door that could actually be locked.
As sunlight streamed through the window, casting a warm glow into each corner of the room, Dietrich sat at the desk, a deluge of parchment and books laid out in a haphazard mess before him. He was leaned forward, an inkpen grasped in his hand as he scratched another page of notes into his journal. To his left, a heavy leatherbound tome rested open to a page adorned with strange diagrams and formulas. Various scribbles of recent handwriting criss-crossed the page, handmade amendments, and questions to the printed information contained within.
Function? Purpose?
Why not keep it in the Prime Material? Someone else already seeking it?
Use Ellashan’s methodology instead - Ivelenor was a stone-brained quack…
Will need more reagents to make the sigils work. This list is made for a rat-sized being.
With a sigh, Dietrich flipped his journal closed and placed the inkpen down on the table before leaning back in his seat. As the chair rocked back onto its hind legs, the wood gave a low, groaning creak in protest. Dietrich stretched his arms high over his head with his own grunt, trying to work the tension out of his shoulders from sitting stooped over and writing for so long. The bones in his back let out a few muffled pops and cracks, contributing to the noise.
As he stood up, he shuffled over to the single window that opened out to Horn Street. Leaning on the sill, he watched the people trickling by. Hundreds of faces, hundreds of bodies, all passing him by without so much as a curious glance or trace of interest. Of course, he was on the third floor. Most people couldn’t be bothered to look up without some kind of motivation, some cue to survey their surroundings. As a warm Spring breeze pushed its way through the window and across Dietrich’s face, his mind began to wander. It often did that of late.
He stared at the people going by and wondered if this must be how she felt. How she saw the world, the myriad of mortal souls passing by, all blissfully unaware that something dark and threatening loomed just outside of their narrow fields of view. He wondered if this was how she felt watching him, watching his father. Would this be how she felt when her gaze settled upon Dietrich’s own daughter?
He’d begun clutching the sill hard enough to turn his knuckles an ivory white. As he realized this and pulled away, a small crimson trickle of blood trailed its way down his fingers. A tiny sliver of wood, worn loose by time and weather, had come away as a splinter, burrowing its way into the soft flesh of his palm. Almost unconsciously, he reached out with his uninjured hand and probed the foreign body. A jolt of needle-like pain shot up his arm, eliciting a frustrated hiss from between clenched teeth.
Holding his hand away from him like some undesirable bit of refuse, he walked quickly to the bed, doing his best not to allow an errant trail of blood to follow him along the wooden floorboards. He sat on the edge of the firm mattress, reaching under the bed frame with his good hand and grasping blindly. Where was it? He knew it was there, somewhere- Aha! His hand seized around a two-inch wide strip of rough fabric. With a jerk, he wrenched the leather bag from it’s hiding place and hefted it up onto the bed beside him. In another moment, he had the small metal clasp undone, and the closure’s flap tossed open. Inside was an assortment of small glass bottles, metal tins, rolls of fabric, and several doctor’s tools.
Dietrich set to work immediately. He removed the splinter with a small pair of tweezers, doused the puncture with a small splash of spirits, and then smeared a pinch of grease across the wound to serve as a barrier to infection. The oil was preferable to a proper bandage, as the cloth dressing would make it harder to write or perform any of the more involved motions necessary to cast a spell.
Satisfied with his work, Dietrich returned the items to their respective compartments in the bag and was about to close the leather flap when he saw the small, faintly yellowed piece of parchment lying on the floor. He’d almost forgotten about that thing. It had been tucked into his bag for months now, gathering dust and wrinkles in equal measure. He leaned forward and picked it up, the rough texture of the stationary giving an all too familiar sensation. As it should, he thought to himself, I spent a week just trying to get everything worded right.
As he held the small rectangle of folded paper in his lap, his fingers idly traced along its surface. They passed over the simple seal of dark red wax, then drifted upwards to trace along the flowing script that covered the front of the small sheet with a single word.
Lucia
It was almost enough to make him laugh. The letter had been in his pack for a full month, all but forgotten, and now merely holding the piece of parchment in his hand was enough to call forth a flood of memories. He found his thoughts drifting back to Shadowdale, back to his parents and sisters, the family farm and his apothecary he ran out of the first floor of the house he’d saved up his coin to afford for nearly two years. He thought of Lucia, of the happier times before he...before she drove her away.
And he thought of Cristina. How old would she be now? Ten or eleven years old, if his memory served him. Dietrich often wondered what she looked like now, after so many years.
He might have sat like that for hours, staring at the unsent letter and contemplating the past, were it not for the soft knock at the door of his room.
