Having decided not to leave Bale Keep to its own defences, you watch from its battlements as more and more lizardfolk soldiers pour from magical gates and gather all around the keep. They toil in the darkness and are hard to see, but you can sense their growing numbers.
“This was not the right call,” Janaar grumbles. “We have gambled our lives and the lives of every man, woman and child here to… to… drawings of underground tunnels in a book. We don’t know what’s in them. We don’t know where they lead. We’re not even sure they exist!”
“Underground tunnels aren’t so bad,” Kildrak tells Janaar. “Entire races live underground,” like mountain dwarves he thinks but does not say.
“We know more than just that, Janaar,” Ryparin says. “We know from Lady Tidwych that Alandra de Winter and her entourage suddenly appeared from the tunnels beneath this place twenty-one years ago. They stayed here a month. They left a Lantern of Light here,” he adds, indicating the lantern that Janaar now carries.
“We should start scoping out these tunnels right away,” Grim suggests. “I mean, where’s the entrance even?”
This last question leaves a silence which eventually Ryparin breaks. “I think Nyneve and I should talk to Lady Tidwych; learn as much as we can from her about what came before.”
The rest of you nod your approval.
“What else should we be doing?” Valaria asks, looking towards Kildrak for strategic advice on their current military situation.
“We need to inventory everything we’ve got,” he answers without missing a beat. “Count every man, woman and child. Every horse, every cow, pig, sheep and chicken. Inventory every weapon, every shield, everything. Sieges are about grinding us down. Grinding down our resources. We need to know what those resources are.”
Again every nods.
“I’m on it,” Valaria volunteers, knowing she can also bolster morale within the keep while doing so.
“What else?” Grim asks, having already decided that he will set out and find the entrance to the tunnels.
“I will review this book,” Zymaan says, referring to the ancient text Lady Tidwych directed him to in a secret storage area within the keep. The books contains information about the keep below known as The Keep on the Shadowfell. Surely this information will be useful to the group.
“Good idea,” Janaar approves. “Our own troops are obviously divided into bowmen and footmen. I think Kildrak and I should organize the footmen as there are more of them. Ash, you organize the bowmen, ok?”
The monk silently nods his consent, his own bow protruding over his shoulder.
“Great,” Janaar confirms. “Anything else?”
“I’ll check in on Lord Tidwych again after we talk to her Lady,” Ryparin concludes and the group disperses to tend to their assigned tasks.
The next few days are hectic. Full of chaos. Crazy and sleepless. The magnitude of the events unfolding before you takes time for you to absorb. But on the third night it hits you even worse as from the battlements of the keep at night, you can see the distant city of Burle burning.
As though in eulogy for that city, Zymaan reads from the book he holds:
“Of all the towns of the Viscounty of Salinmoor, Burle has arguably the most charm. Nearby the Dreadwood, Burle is built more with wood than the stone of Salinmoor’s coastal communities. It is also built with a woodsmen’s sensibility for natural surroundings rather than a seaman’s need for practical efficiency in the face of the sea. Where Salinmoor’s coastal towns feel close, Burle feels much more open and expansive. With a population of 5000 residents, Burle is larger than either Saltmarsh or Seaton. This is not accidental.
Ryparin and Nyneve do their best to speak to Lady Tidwych in the days that follow, but with her husband dying in bed from a poisoned wound and the Captain of the Guard killed in combat, the task of running Bale Keep has fallen to her. She is frantic and exhausted and difficult to calm down long enough to ask questions about the past.
Grim in his explorations of the keep finds strange sigils all along the base of the rocks forming the outside walls of the keep. He shares his discovery with Ryparin and Nyneve, who ask Lady Tidwych about it, who tells them that Alandra de Winter drew those sigils into the stones twenty-one years ago when she was here.
“Alandra de Winter was the most amazing person I ever met,” she tells Ryparin and Nyneve in a rare moment of rest. She drinks some water and then pants to recover her breath.
“She was not of this world, I don’t think. She was angelic. Her presence was calming. I had clarity of thought and vision when she was here.”
Lady Tydwich wrings her hands. She wishes Alandra de Winter were here now.
“She drew the sigils?” Ryparin asks lightly, bringing her back on point.
“Right, yes,” she says, going quiet again. Eventually she continues. “I think Alandra de Winter knew everything that was going to happen next. The foresight I experienced when I was around her, I think it was a weak echo of her own powerful focus and insight. She knew what was going to happen next.”
Again she wrings her hands and goes quiet. Nyneve looks to Ryparin to stir her again. Nyneve doesn’t want to speak for fear Lady Tidwych will somehow suddenly recognize her by her voice.
Ryparin clears his throat and Lady Tidwych comes back again. “The sigils are a magical shield she made. A dome shield to cover the whole keep. She carved symbols into the stone with her finger as though it were butter. She said we would know how to activate it when the time came. I just remembered that now,” she laughs, her laugh tinged with sleepless delirium.
“Surely you know how to activate it then, don’t you Henry?” she asks Ryparin.