The Ghost's Crusade

Chapter III: Drystan

… Genevi Keep, Baedorn

The keep looked... incredibly unkempt.

Ivy that had clung to the walls for over a hundred years was wilted, brown, and falling off in large decaying clumps. No one had bothered to remove the piles of horse droppings from the courtyard for a few days and they were beginning to compete with the stink of the mildewing vines. One of the two banners flying above the main doors was tattered, and the doors themselves looked like they had recently taken a beating. Fresh chunks of wood had been chipped out of them and no one had bothered to repair the damage.

There was something very wrong in Baedorn. Drystan was more sure of that now than when they had made it all the way from Gendelheim without being accosted by so much as a panhandler.

This is starting out like the beginning of every adventure story Akkali tells. I'm betting it's going to be one very interesting night.

A squirrelly man with a graying bushy beard and eyebrows but not much else in the way of hair greeted him at the door. Average in height but thin, he was clad in a fine robe of heavy blue fabric belted about the waist with a black sash and a chain made of wide, flat silver links. Aside from the four guards standing on either side of the entry he looked to be the only person in the entire keep. He also looked like he hadn't slept for days. Dark circles rimmed his gray-blue eyes and his weary ashen pallor gave him a countenance frightfully similar to that of a walking corpse. Luckily Drystan had seen quite a few walking corpses as an Inferi and could easily tell the difference.

“You are the knight from Antenox I take it,” he said, looking Drystan up and down with pursed lips. “Your commander said she was sending for one of her best men. But you... you look so... young.”

Not the first time he had received such a comment Drystan merely raised an eyebrow and said, “Joining Antenox is generally not something undertaken by those who desire dying from old age.”

The man chuckled at the remark, likely the first time he had laughed in weeks if his frown-lined face were to be used as a measure. “Of course, of course. Forgive me. I'm just so... exhausted.” He bowed at the waist in the respectful fashion considered to be polite in Oribian. “I am Marion Luke, Seneshal of Baedorn. The Ovan is in chambers with the Inquisitor General... and his captain is somewhere about the keep. Lost track of him a while ago. The man moves as silent as a cat after a canary. Please, follow me.”

Drystan mounted the stairs and kept on the seneshal's heels as the man shuffled through the doors of the keep as they were pulled open from the inside. “It's very quiet in Baedorn. Within and without.”

Seneshal Luke nodded. “It's these damn demons. Not even the highwaymen deign to harass the people still willing to actually come here. Couldn't have come at a worse time, really.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“I'll leave it to the Ovan to explain,” muttered the seneshal. “If you really have need of clarification I'll be in my offices... figuring out how we're going to fund the guest garrisons without any trade coming in to the city. Saints preserve my sanity.”

They proceeded down the long hallway without much more in the way of conversation. At the far end was a wide stairway flanked by two massive statues of men he assumed to be former Ovans of Baedorn. One carried a greatsword and the other held steady a massive kite shield before him. The shield bore the oak leaf symbol of House Jadri's predecessors, the noble House Genevi. A century ago virtually all of the Genevis had succumbed to a plague that had decimated half the city's population. The lone survivor of the house went mad and threw himself from the keep's watchtower, convinced that the spirits of his dead kin wanted him to join them. Solomon's Tower, named after the crazy leaper, was the tallest structure in the entire city, sitting at least three stories above the tallest tower on the outer wall. There were dozens of bardic tales about the event that were tavern favorites in the western Oribian.