Part 27: A Certain Nonchalance

A Certain Nonchalance

“Practice in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought,” from The Book of the Courtier, by Baldassare Castiglione.



You stop by Pentil to rest and because Rydell did say you can take whatever you like from the village's storage. Your expectations are low, but when Rydell's key opens the lock, you find yourself pleasantly surprised.

The canister within is not only intact, but also spotless. You press your hand against the top; the rush of powerful agents improves your ability to shape roamers and restores to you a sense of well-being and steadiness that you'd lost.

No, it was just a temporary slip. Everything is under control.

You wipe your hand on the placket of your robe. Something crinkles. You withdraw a battered letter now well-seasoned with your blood and sweat. It's the letter you found at Northbridge with the outsider humans' effects.


The letter reminds you that you have far more unfinished business than reading orders to lackeys.



You trek to dusty East Kazg. Surprisingly, the guards at the eastern gateway don't attack you. They pretend to ignore you as you pass. The usual call and response game of "Protect Kazg!" and "Destroy the Shapers!" hasn't changed.

The servile cultists hadn't moved from their stations. The Takers have no love for them if what the tinker said is true. You're more interested in the rest of that rumor, though. If serviles have managed to learn magic, well... It's something the Council needs to know about.





The cult's guards watch you with barely concealed bloodlust. They're ready to die if it means taking you down with them. You oblige them -- well, only in the first part. Though one guard jabs Like Clockwork with a javelin, they both fall quickly.

The guards don't sound an alarm, but they don't need to. The clash of combat draws in another pair of cultists with their swords bared. They may have expected Gnorrel's Takers, but finding you instead tears war cries from their throats.

Your creations are ready with roars of their own.





The layout of the ruin forms a funnel of death for the berserk serviles. They charge straight into the fire and acid of your creations without a care for tactics and they pay the price. None of the cultists even reach your front line fyoras. One dings RickVoid with a lucky throw, but it's only a superficial wound.



The altar room is orderly enough, but you don't have time to take it all in. Another cultist lunges for you, tripping over the chairs in its haste to gut you. So far, you haven't observed any evidence of magic, just regular violence.



When the fight ends, you notice that one of the cultists has a nice ring. He certainly won't need it now.



Your creations are about to scout the doorway for you when you hear a familiar, grating noise -- the sound of someone casting a speed spell. A servile zips around the corner, moving so quickly that it blurs.



The servile hacks at Like Clockwork while the rest of your team struggles to keep up. But the cultist is alone, and your team is well-versed at working in concert by now. Surrounded and isolated, the cultist's defeat is inevitable.

You take a deep breath. Somehow, despite all the precautions the Shapers have taken, serviles have managed to teach themselves some magic.

Then again, the Shapers of Sucia Isle don't seem to have been particularly cautious.





The kitchen is a dead end. You take a bite of a loaf of bread left on the work table. It's dry and gritty, but you're starving. Eating the food of a cook you probably just slew strikes you as morbid, but what can you do? Even a dreadful Shaper must eat.



You approach the altar warily at first, but it's just a stone slab.


Fortunately the practice didn't prepare these cultists for stabbing the real thing to death. You investigate the book behind the altar in hopes that it might shed some light on what the cultists have done here.


You shiver and close the book.



There's one more cultist back among the temple's cells. He goes down so fast that he's barely more than an afterthought. Even with magic, these serviles aren't much of an immediate threat.





The first cramped room is full of sleeping pallets crammed in side by side, leaving just barely enough room to walk between the two rows. The second room is a meditation room of sorts, but with intact posts and a cabinet full of whips and scourges. They look well cared for. You shudder and leave. At least the canisters mean you've never had to go to such extreme lengths. You imagine that most Shaper wizards don't go this far. These methods are barbaric and, you hope, antique.



You circle around to the far side of Kazg to find Hew, the Obeyer spy. Now that you're ostensibly one of them, you hope she'll have more information for you.

"There are two Shapers on Sucia Island. Gnorrel has been trying to get a Shaper to be brought to her. But there is another who she is supposed to be trying to kill. That is what the outsider humans want. It seems you are the Shaper they want, not the Shaper they want to kill. Not all of the Takers are so sure," Hew says.

"I'm aware. Is there any other information you can give me?"

"One other thing I have learned. Inside Kazg, in the southwest corner, there is a tower. It is owned by Toivo, the sage of the Takers. If you went in there, you might be able to learn something about what the Takers know or what they are trying to do. It is guarded, though. I have not been able to slip past the guards. But you might."

You sigh. This isn't news anymore. Hew wilts under your obvious disappointment, but what can you say?

You continue further east of Kazg. There's still more to do, including locating the boat, Shaper Goettsch, and all the locked up Shaper supplies...




Oh great, Robert Frost references.

A servile walks boldly up to you. This specimen is a savage creature, clothed in a tattered, scavenged robe. Its face is covered with tattoos and scars. Its eyes betray no knowledge of who or what you are.

When the feral creature begins to speak, you also find that it has lost most of its capacity for speech. It says, "You! Back! Come our way no more, or we kill!"

You notice that its sword is bloody, and there is the head of a roamer hanging from a nearby branch. They must have been fighting a lot of rogues lately.

The feral servile watches you closely, waiting for an excuse to stick you with the sword. Your creations hold themselves still, ready for your command to tear it apart. You hold your hands out, palms up.

"Peace," you say. "Me pass. No hurt, no fight." The awkward speech makes you feel foolish, but you don't know how to be certain the servile will understand you.

Somehow, you managed to make yourself understood to the creature, and your authoritative tone gets through to him. "Yes. You pass." He points to the north, towards his village. "No! No there! You go village, we kill!"

Slowly, you reach into your robe and pull out a few pods and a few thorns. You think the servile will understand what they are. "I have good things," you say, showing him the goods. "I trade. Me enter village. Yes?"

The servile is paranoid, and with good reason. But he is also greedy, and this poor tribe could clearly use more weaponry. He thinks for a minute, and then he says, "You go in! You enter safe. But you hurt, we kill!" He steps aside.

"I want to know more about these woods," you try.

The servile shakes its head. It has no idea what you're talking about.

You point at the roamer head. "Rogue? Fight rogue?"

"Yes! Rogue bad! We hate rogue! Rogue kill us!"

Thanks to our leadership score, we were able to convince the tribe's representative to not only let us walk past the village safely, but also to enter it peacefully. Therefore we can now pass this zone freely.







Somehow, these serviles had become separated from Kazg. You don't know if their exile was purposeful or accidental. But over the generations, these serviles have fallen back to some state of -- you don't know what. Nature? A creation can't be described as natural. The serviles aren't completely barbaric, but they're close enough.



Barbaric or no, the serviles on this island need to trade- This tribe seems to have had quite a bit of luck scavenging. This merchant can barely speak a word of your tongue, but you don't need that to barter.

"Tell me about your village."

"No talk. Trade? Yes? Trade! Trade!" You have the sneaking suspicion that those are the only four words this creature knows.

"Trade?"



After unloading the goods you found in the cult's hideout, you head east to explore the village.



Along the river banks, you find a canister glowing in the lee of tumbled walls. Using it improves your ability to create artilas.



At the other end of the village is a pile of rubbish, including some still mostly intact records. You pick them up for your next trip to Pentil.



The road east is still reasonably intact. If not for the roamer skulls mounted on the dead tree limbs, you'd continue towards the distant shore.





The paths to the south are rotten with clawbugs and those pink, unstable roamers. They're easy enough to put down.



The woods are also full of thorn bushes, so you spend some time harvesting them. Extra coin is always useful, and in a pinch, you might need the thorns to defend yourself and your creations.





After you locate the far edge of the woods, you head towards the center. There are more rogues here, and they're already alert to your presence.





But you're able to whittle their numbers down. The presence of unstable roamers is less of a threat to you than it is to the other rogues. Whenever one of your creations takes out a roamer at range, it explodes, wounding its fellows.



You find the body of a servile just off the beaten path. The rogues chased her and cornered her here not so very long ago. As you examine her body, you catch a whiff of vinegar over the heavy stink of corruption.





Someone stationed four spawners in this field. Their smell is overwhelming, above and beyond the diseased earth and the decayed corpses.



You haste and bless your creations. It won't do to allow the spawners to overwhelm you with their trash rogues.



After the first wave of defenders is eliminated, your creations target the spawners. Acid is the best agent, as it turns time into your weapon, not the spawners'.





One of the spawners spits out an unstable rogue. Before it can strike, GreatEvilKing spews fire at it. The roamer explodes, wounding its creator. You laugh.

It's more of a cackle, really.

The last spawner goes down before it can summon any more defenders.



You look across the field. You're not the first to bring the battle to the spawners. You might not even be the first to defeat one. It's not outside the realm of possibility for Trajkov to have replacements made. But you probably are the first to slay all four. Anything that costs the outsiders has to be taken as a victory.

Three bodies lie to the rear of the clearing. They all died at various times and, from their positions, were dragged back here by the spawners' creations.


You pick up the weapons and armor left behind by the dead and gone before you head back toward the feral servile village.



This isn't nearly as nice as the Ring of the Eye, which, if you recall, also grants a good mental resistance bonus to our creations. Shapers are best served by equipment which enhances their minions.



This wand works like the ensnare crystals, which deal a little damage but are mostly useful for the Stun ability.





A few more rogues blunder across your path, but the tribe's woods are now much safer than they have been since the outsiders arrived. As you continue your clean-up efforts, you stumble across some ruins in the heart of the woods. The key you took from the dead servile unlocks the lever.



You avail yourself of the surviving essence pools and leave the door unlocked when you go. The tribe might stumble over the pools later, and they're welcome to them.



Your sweep concludes with the destruction of another pair of unstable roamers.



Inside the tiny structure is another reward for your trouble. The canister grants you a new blessing spell that is just beyond your power to use. Mass energize will allow you to bless and haste your creations simultaneously.

With these woods pacified, you turn your attention south.





Dead trees give way to greenery. You inhale the clean air and center yourself before continuing on.



This place hasn't been completely looted by serviles, or so you've been told. If there's anything of interest here, you'll find it.

But before you plunge into another knot of tunnels, you check out a little side path.



The bones along the path don't presage good tidings.



Bore is a quest target, but we won't be getting the quest on the canon timeline. Receiving it requires murdering all the Sholai in the Refugee Caves.

At the very end of the path is an unusually large fyora. It glares at you hatefully, sizing you and your creations up as a likely meal. Before the rogue can do more than evaluate how meaty you are, you order your creations to attack. They are relentless, and their fire comes so fast and furious that the rogue fyora doesn't even take another step before GreatEvilKing finally takes it down.



In its nest you find a leather shield. The enchantment on it will probably save your skin from future rogue fyoras, so you swap out your battered iron shield for the fyoraskin one. You try not to wonder why that rogue had a fyoraskin shield in its nest.





The wind moans through the tunnels, raising the fine hairs on the back of your neck. You pull your hood down tighter. Ahead, hidden by the curve of the walls, are more of those crystal alarms. This time, though, they're surrounded by twitching mines.

You creep forward and manage to disarm one crystal, but the other emits a flash of light and a loud keening sound. You jump back just before two of the mines go off.

Past the mines is a small room built into the living stone. Within is another spore box. You twist the knob and hear the familiar hiss.



So when you pass into the Grand Gallery, you're relieved when none of the turrets swing toward you. The spore box was to control them.

The outsiders probably placed all these defenses here. The unfinished state of Holding Two's tunnels doesn't give you much hope of finding much of use, but if the outsiders thought this place was worth blocking, then it's worth your attention, too.



Just past the Grand Gallery is a huge storage chamber lined with cabinets. Most of them are full of mundane tools, but some hold swords and pods, which you collect.



The tunnels are blocked by more mines, of course. Your team stumbles over a crystal, triggering it and detonating the mines around it. Somehow none of the wounds are fatal.



You find another control box in a room piled up with ruined pedestals. You try to work the knob, but the controls are more complex than those you've encountered til now. You aren't sure what to do, so you wind up doing nothing for fear of making things worse.



The path leads back to the Grand Gallery. Your creations hiss -- these turrets are tracking you. You pull back and head south instead, seeking an alternative route.



As you explore, you find some of those delicate crystal lattices that store essence. How did they wind up propagating here?





You fail to disarm another crystal trigger and harmlessly detonate it instead. Holding Two is just packed with the things, and sometimes the crystals are tucked out of sight.



This room is full of creation vats not unlike what you saw in East Kazg.


You haven't learned your lesson yet. You flip the switch.




The strange creations that pop out crackle with energy. The thahds in particular are strange, almost like the shades from the Tombs.

But even though Like Clockwork is beaten nearly to death in the process, these rogues die like any others.



In the end, you have nothing to show for your efforts but a wand you find beneath one of the vats. It was probably lost there two hundred or more years ago.



The Rogue Holding chamber is barely even half finished. None of the usual precautions were here, and the walls weren't even completely built. You patch up your creations in the relative quiet here.



You backtrack to the north end of the Grand Gallery and begin the painful work of destroying the turrets. You don't want the spore-pacified ones to be turned against you, and obviously you must destroy the hostile turrets to get any further into Holding Two.







As awful as turrets are, mines are simply far more dreadful.



After some fumbling attempts to disarm the crystal triggers, you have to patch yourself up with healing pods. And the more pods you use, the fewer you have to sell or trade for other supplies.

Lately you've noticed that the pods are no longer as effective on you as they used to be. You don't know if you're building a resistance to them or if it has to do with the canisters changing your body. Even the essence pods no longer refresh you as much as they ought. It's troubling, but what can you do?







Most of the Grand Gallery has been tamed now. You venture into one of the side tunnels. To your surprise, you locate some essence pools. It's unclear whether they're unfinished or if the pools died, but either way, they're useless. The outsider's body near one of the empty pools yields some interesting armor, though.

There's another spore box near some hitching posts, but, as expected, it's another one of those strange and difficult control panels. You let it be. Chances are that you've already killed some of the turrets this spore box controls.





The clean air out here invigorates you. The clearing leads to another, detached structure with a wide-open foyer.



You check the ledgers.





"Servant, awake," you say in your most authoritative tone. You're not sure how deeply your command will penetrate the sleeping mind's awareness, but you have to give it your best shot.

The mind doesn't respond.

"Servant, awake!"

It shifts about in its tray restlessly.

"Servant, I command you awake! Now!"

It slowly opens its eyes. It takes a few minutes for it to return to partial consciousness. Finally, it says, "Shaper, I am active. I await instruction."

It takes you a few seconds to shake off your irritation at having to command the servant mind not once, not twice, but thrice to awaken. "Servant, what is your name?" you ask.

"I am sorry, Shaper. I have not been named." It must have been sent into hibernation only shortly after it was placed here.

"What is this complex?"

"It is the complex I was born to control. I was to maintain the lists of its contents and monitor its defenses. But I have not yet been fully instructed." That makes things difficult, but maybe you can wring some sort of advantage from the situation.

"What things in this complex can you control?"

"I cannot tell you, Shaper. Until I am deemed active, I can only respond to commands of my designated trainer, Veet."

You sigh. "I am a Shaper, and I command you. Tell me what you can do."

It doesn't respond. This only makes sense. Servants minds always only obey their trainers until they are deemed sufficiently trained to I recognize who they can and can't accept orders from.

Since this servant mind has only been minimally trained, it's probably naive enough for you to fool it. "I am Veet. I can understand your confusion. I look much different since these many years have passed."

"Oh. I am sorry, master. I will obey you in all things."

You do feel just a touch guilty for lying to an innocent, abandoned mind, but it's not like this nameless creature will ever face punishment for aiding you, unwittingly or no. Your crimes and the situation on Sucia Island have long since surpassed that point. You ask the mind once again to tell you what it can do.

"I was only given the controls to a few things. My feed case, and one of the vault doors. Perhaps, some time, you can show me how to control more."

You ignore the implied question. "Open all of the doors you can."

"Yes, Veet. It is done."

"What do you know about this island?"

"I know little, Shaper. I was told that I was to control the products of the Geneforge before they were exported."

"What do you know about the Geneforge?" you ask.

"It is north. It makes products. I was to look after them. The products were valuable. That is all I know," the mind replies.

The old Shapers anticipated a high demand for the Geneforge's products if they planned out an entire complex with a servant mind to manage the storage of exports. You wonder if anything was exported before the island was Barred.

"That is all I need from you for now."

"Yes, Shaper. Thank you."

Before you go, you check the nearby cabinet that the mind unlocked.




There's another door just south of the one you took into the clearing. It's unlocked, too.





Inside is an untouched storage room. The shelves are empty, but the crystal boxes along the wall yield much needed supplies -- including a reaper baton, fully loaded with reaper thorns. You reverently hook it to your belt.



Your explorations here are not yet complete. There are still many turrets to clear out and mines to disable or detonate.



After clearing this passage, you find a small, dead-end chamber littered with potsherds and one whole canister. It improves your speed spell and washes away your lingering worry for the abandoned servant mind.







Past another screen of turrets and crystal mines is still another canister. This one grants you a deeper understanding of the creation of vlish.



Someone reached this room before you. The three used up canisters were left behind to mock you, you're absolutely certain. And now that you've destroyed the turrets, the control box is useless. Frustrated, you crush the crystal lattices before you leave.







You're fuming so hard that you barely notice the sunlight and pine-fresh air on you way out.



Back at the refugee's cave, you meet with Solyony. He's all too happy to take some of your goods off your hands in exchange for coin. Most of the money he uses is foreign, with Sholai symbols and strangers' faces in profile stamped into them. Solyony possesses only a limited amount of the old Shaper currency. Not many serviles could get past the blockades the Takers and the other outsiders have set around this place.



This isn't bad, but Solution has better belt options. All in all, equipment that gives a Shaper's creations extra stat points is the best choice for regular wear for this class.

Once you're done bartering, you meet with Masha. "I've met Astrov. He is doing well." You describe to her your meeting with him, as well as the cavern he has holed up in.

Your matter-of-fact recitation impresses Masha. "Marvelous news! I am glad he is able to help you. Trust him and his wisdom. If you want to deal with traitor Trajkov, you should speak with Astrov much. He knows more than me now of the way things are."



Next time: Souls Freed From Vice