Final letter from the Court of Aether

We were back at the Bottom Feeder after the audience with the queen. The bouncer, an older leprechaun, was very concerned about his granddaughter, who had gotten caught up in something earning the displeasure of the Queen. This thing was likely to be the Cult of the Cave Worm, and his granddaughter is Veavieve, the leader of the larger faction of the cult. We promised him that we would do what we could for her, but I at least wondered what we could do for someone who was so deeply in the cult.

That evening, everyone is “invited” to the opera. Attendance is obligatory, and sleeping through any part of it is detrimental to one’s health. I am not clear whether the Queen herself writes these things or it’s one of her courtiers, but in any case, I steeled myself to a few hours of tedious propaganda. I thought that between my experience of Dwarven recitation of 12 generations of ancestors and our own Queen’s fondness for artistic propaganda, I was ready for anything. I was wrong! The…protagonist, I think, had at least a hundred-line aria complaining about various injustices he was suffering. There was an incomprehensible, unending duet that N’drak assures me was something to do with politics. Then the protagonist is killed, and the Queen, who is in the audience, starts crying. I remembered that at the Court, when she started to sound like she was about to cry, her courtiers all got this look of abject terror on their faces. Now, we learned why. It was like having all the joy magically extracted from you, as if marauders had just killed all your friends and family and the cat, as if…I might write a poem or song about it, but I can’t really describe it in prose. Can’t really describe it in verse, either, at the moment, but maybe someday.

We were all feeling a bit bleak after this bizarre mix of tedium capped by despair, almost stumbling out of the opera house. Who would we meet but our favorite comic relief religious fanatic, Yakazak! Who offers to take us to a major ritual the next night! “Thank the Gods,” I say to myself. “At least it won’t be an opera!”

At some point here, I decided to satirize the opera, I think to establish our anti-establishment creds. We let Interhoff know so we won’t be bothered by the secret police, but who knows? I really don’t know what I was thinking, and it was far from my best work.

Anyway, the next night we go through miles and miles of tunnels to get to the ritual, which granddaughter Veavieve turns out to be conducting. She’s wearing an extremely peculiar and obviously magical cloak, but of more interest was a map that seemed to be the focal point of the ritual. We worked our way through the crowd up to the edge of the stage and figured out how to sabotage the ritual. (Well, one of us did, and I don’t remember who. Not me.) We also figured out that something bad was going to happen if we interrupted the ritual, but if we didn’t there was a good chance that a giant cave worm would show up. And that would be very bad. We felt some sympathy for Veavieve and her cult, because she was doing it all to overthrow the tyrannical rule of the Queen. Well, the Queen is a tyrant, and insanely dangerous, possibly insane (not that you can tell with fey), so fair enough. But a cave worm would just kill everyone, and maybe Her Majesty is the only being who could keep something like the Court of Aether going. We didn’t have much time to decide, but we all looked at each other and decided to do it, not without misgivings.

As soon as we sabotaged the ritual, we were spotted. Veavieve attacked us, along with the cultists. Fortunately, her cloak went haywire at this moment, so she was not as much of a threat as she might have been. Then, to make the day perfect, the Guard showed up. We all had our junior agent badges from the Queen, but I think none of us fancied relying on them with a bunch of battle-crazed redcaps. We were doing OK and had just about convinced Viv to run away when something else moved under the ground at our feet. Aetoine cast something to make it visible, and Kolkar figured out that it was going for the map. I had cast Haste on him, so he grabbed the map and started running for the closest exit. The thief popped up, realized he was too late, yelled something and caused the cave to start collapsing. Part of it hit me, and everything went dark for a moment. When I came to, another thing seemed to be fighting the Guard, Kolkar had grabbed Viv’s cloak and a note that the thief had dropped as well as the map, and we all ran for our lives.

We did not exit the way we had entered, and it took us a few days to find our way back to the Court. I think it was only thanks to the abilities of my comrades that we were able to get back at all. When we did get back, the Queen knighted us all and expressed her gratitude at getting her map back. However, the town had taken a fair bit of damage from the earthquake when the ritual was interrupted, and the Queen was quite capable at any time of blaming us for this and having us arrested. We decided not to stick around. The note that the thief left was signed by one N, a Hryngar who we know to be the leader of the other faction of the Cave Worm cult, and an employer of the fish people slaves who live nearby. Between this note and some other clues, including what the Queen had told us, we decided that these people were the next stop on our list. We paused only to check out of our inn and tell Viv’s granddad that she was still alive. (We saw traces of her passage ahead of us in the tunnels.) We asked him to advise her to go to Highhelm, and quickly, and we would be happy to speak to her there.