Carew stood up slowly and scanned the room. What he needed was his travel pack and his sword but he couldn’t help but let his eyes dart to the lute that he had fastened to the wall of his room. Lutes weren’t all that uncommon here in the city of Tos. Quite the contrary, Jala Bards often brought lutes from lands far and wide to perform on the green just outside of the great arena of Tos.There was usually an easily captive audience for an ambitious performer to find. This Lute however, was particularly fine, in fact Carew was uncertain that he had ever seen a more perfect lute than this one. He had recently “acquired” this masterwork piece when bravely, or perhaps foolishly, fighting his way deep into the basement of Castle Victoria.
Many adventurers and heroes made the trek to the foot of the mountain where Castle Victoria stood. The castle’s many rooms and halls became a testing ground of sorts but it’s been told that even more who wandered there have had the misfortune to meet their end staring into the spectral eyes of the mad king himself. The ghost of Far’Nohl was well known to wander the long abandoned castle, raising skeletal warriors and the corpses of his long dead servants to dissuade scavengers like Carew from staying long. It was an attempt to avoid these cackling abominations that led Carew to a certain wooden trap door set into the floor of what was an otherwise unremarkable room in a castle full of undiscovered rooms. To describe the room itself is to waste time. The room was nothing more than four stone walls and the door he entered through. He lifted the dusty wooden trapdoor, which creaked loudly with each slight movement on its hinges, until it flipped over, dropping quickly and banging loudly to the floor, the sound echoing off the walls. The impact of the door raised a large cloud of dust that Carew tried to wave away with his left arm while covering his mouth with his other hand. He’d rather not breathe in whatever molds likely inhabited this place. The opening revealed a staircase down into what Carew assumed to be a storeroom or cellar. He imagined that the musty smell coming up through that opening must be preferable to what might have been rotten food or dead rats in the early years of this castle’s abandonment but also he wouldn’t call that smell pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. If it were much more putrid he might have left the dark passage entirely to explore it another day, but his curiosity was far too strong to ignore.
Knowing it would be pitch black darkness in the storeroom below, Carew reached into a pouch on his belt and brought out a small clump of elderberries. Placing the berries in his hand and touching his palm to a holy symbol in his pocket he whispered a quick prayer to Kraanan for what the priests affectionately called “night vision”. The process was swift and it always unnerved Carew a little. He watched the otherwise plump elderberries (he had intended to make wine from) as they rapidly dried out, cracked, popped, and blew into ash, a sacrifice to Kraanan himself for his aid. His eyes filled with a stinging sensation as they slowly adjusted, the room and passage transitioned from darkness to being lit as brightly as day. He couldn’t help but think “this is how the orcs, and shadowbeasts of the deep see the world.” That thought made him shudder but he knew this foreign sensation was far more efficient than fumbling with a torch or other magical illuminations.
With that he crouched low and entered the trapdoor. He found the opening was barely large enough to accommodate the stairs below. The degree of difficulty excited Carew, while he tried not to get his hopes up he couldn’t help thinking that if this hatch was meant for daily use it would have been designed for servants to easily climb through with arms full, whatever this storeroom’s intended purpose, it was clear the opening was made more for secrecy than for accessibility. The stairs widened as he cautiously descended, his sword at the ready. He peered into a massive room with a very high ceiling. Carew marveled at the size of the room. If he did not see the blocks of the stone walls themselves he might have guessed that this was merely a repurposed cave or cavern but no, this room was clearly built to be a vast open space. It was too plain to have been a secret ballroom, although it reminded him of one. Was this once the secret meeting place for some dark cabal? The questions merely let Carew’s thoughts spiral into even more questions. What was apparent however, is that at least in the final days of Castle Victoria this room was indeed used as a storeroom. In the middle of this immense mostly empty space there were several large stacks and wooden crates. And spider webs, so many spider webs. Carew noted there appeared to be the opening to a large spider nest not unlike the kind you might see in the twisted woods to the south of Tos. He crept slowly towards the crates hoping not to disturb anything that might want to greet him from that nest.
Planning not to stay long he hastily scanned the crates for something that might fetch him a good price. It became immediately discouraging as many of the open crates and sacks seemed to hold parchments or diplomatic trinkets. These items might have held some significance during the King’s reign but, without being composed of some precious metal, most of these items he knew would only hold interest to the scholars of Marrion. He had learned, far too well, that scholars who could pay to acquire such artifacts, seldom did manage to pay anything. Citing instead that the goodwill and understanding such academic research might provide for the realm would be “priceless” and afterall, what else were you planning to do with it? No sir, Carew did not crawl down here risking zombies, skeletons, and spiders for “debate fodder.” Despite his stubborn determination however, he was about to give up hope when he spied a small crate without a latch, this one nailed completely shut. He slipped his sword back into his scabbard and produced a smaller dagger from his boot. He slid this blade up under one of the boards and used it to pry the side of the crate away, the wood groaning as it reluctantly let go of the nails. Inside lying on a bed of fabric there it was, an immaculate lute made of a strange dark wood that Carew couldn’t identify but noted, as he lifted it from the crate, that the lute was definitely heavier than it appeared and it seemed to almost fill his mind with a song as he held it. The strings seemed in perfect shape. He doubted any normal instrument could remain in storage strung so and in such perfect condition. He even found himself wondering if Jala herself might not play a lute so beautiful as this.
He was roused suddenly from his memory by a slight nudge. He shook the past away and was back in the present of his rented room above the tavern known as Familiars. He looked down to see his friend and companion the curious clump of mushrooms and fungal matter known as “Woo.” The fungus beast looked up at him, the arrangement of brown, green and gray fungus clumps that made up his face seemed to almost form browlines which set Woo apart from most of his kin. The fungus beast used those implied eyebrows in concert with his green pool-like eyes to affect an expression of curious concern.
Carew knelt down and patted Woo on the side giving him the slight squeeze of a side hug.“Nothing to be worried about my friend, I was just lost in a memory.”
“Take a look at it Woo!” He stood and gestured over to the lute with a melodramatic flourish of his arm. “To some this might just be a musical instrument, or a conduit to sing praise to Jala, but to me?…” He leaned down as he paused and said with a grin, “it’s the perfect loot.” He winked and chuckled at what he knew was a terrible pun.
The fungus beast shook his head rapidly as if in pain and made a sound like the cross between a cough and sneeze, spores shot from its face up into the room as it did… Carew knew that was as close to a groan as his friend could manage, which caused him to erupt with bellows of laughter that echoed out through the open window of his room up into the starlit night of the wider world.
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