4.17 Testimony

For the next... 3? maybe 4 chapters, please shout if you feel like something wasn't sufficiently set up. I'm trying not to drag out the political stuff too much without skipping steps, but it's crazy hard to tell if you had enough information as a reader before certain scenes hit, because I'm sitting over here with pages and pages of context and notes that you don't see and I can't feel what it feels like to work with just what I give you. Thanks!

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Over the past few days, Bernt had gotten into the habit of rising early to practice his sorcery on the slopes of Ruzinia’s peak. This bought him a bit of quiet time to think and focus on his spellwork, but it also meant that he generally didn’t talk to Torvald or the other Ruzinian clerics before the start of the day’s proceedings. Considering that he’d been gone visiting Norhold until late last night, it was understandable that he might not be totally up to date about what his allies were doing.

Still, he was shocked to see Torvald emerged from the morning crowd with a nervous-looking Ranna in tow. The former cultist was wearing an unmarked white tunic, like those worn by temple acolytes. Song walked a few steps behind, but Doreen and the Illurian priestess, whose name he’d learned was Margo, were nowhere in sight.

“Ah… Torvald?” Bernt asked, eying her warily. What is she doing here?”

“You’re the one who wanted me to talk to her,” he replied. “Don’t worry about it for now. I’ll tell you later.”

Bernt frowned at his friend questioningly, but he just shook his head and subtly gestured at the crowd all around. He didn’t want to talk about it in front of all these people.

Ranna wasn’t exactly cringing back, but he noticed that she made sure to stand quite close behind Torvald, her eyes fixed on him as though he were a snake. She was obviously terrified of him, which felt… strange. Not bad, necessarily, but not normal, either. He wasn’t used to being feared. Even after he’d fought against the kobolds and later the Duergar, nobody had ever looked at him like that.

Then again, he’d brutally burned twelve people to cinders right in front of her while standing in what might as well have been an open fire and resisting the attacks of a demon she’d probably revered. Yeah, no, this was appropriate. It felt right. 

This woman was an enemy who had tried to kill him. He wouldn’t hurt her, not now that she was under Ruzinia’s protection. By the look of it, she might have actually become a temple acolyte, which was smart. Bernt hadn’t been planning to actually hunt her down when she eventually left the Peaks, but she didn’t know that. Joining as an acolyte was one of the few ways to effectively protect herself from any potential revenge. 

It was good, Bernt decided. An appropriate penance for a former cultist.

“What are you going to do with her?” he asked.

Torvald nodded toward the Hall of Witnesses. “I’m taking her inside. I think these windbags in there need a reality check, and Ranna is going to help me give them one. I’d have told you about it last night, but you weren’t back yet. What held you up so long, anyway?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s nothing to do with this.”

***

I’ve passed your concerns along to your grandmother, who will make sure that Renias is aware of the situation. I imagine he’ll already know. Everyone is watching to see what comes out of this conclave. The only advice I can give you is to focus on your own goals, not everyone else’s. You aren’t trained for intrigue – you are a paladin of Ruzinia. You bring hope to dark places. I know it’s a holy site, but I think you’ll find very soon that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. Just do what comes naturally. I promise they’ll never see you coming.

When Torvald had first received the letter, he’d thought his mother was suggesting something nefarious about the other gods, or maybe the Sacral Peaks. Now he understood. 

Just like yesterday and the day before, the hall all around him was filled with fake smiles and calculating gazes, though now it was accompanied by and equal number of bored stares and resigned postures. Over the past three days, several Beseri priests had tried to call on the assembly to determine one course of action or another – to send aid to the kingdom, to launch a counterattack against the Duergar, to identify and hunt down cultist cells in all of the attending countries. Each time, the discussion was derailed by arguments over who would be in charge, who would pay, and who would be called to fight.

Others offered more general suggestions similar to those that Torvald himself had originally meant to push for – sharing intelligence, pushing Kallrix and Madzhur to send scouts into the Depths to build a clearer picture of the Duergar Empire as a whole, and sending a delegation to make diplomatic contact with the Empire’s ruling council. Even though those initiatives wouldn’t require anything like the effort or investment as the earlier ones, they hadn’t gone anywhere either.

It had been less then a week, and it was clear that this Conclave and the Invigilation as a whole was doomed to fail. At least, it would be unless someone set a more productive tone and injected a little urgency into the discussion. So, taking his mother’s advice, he’d done a little work of his own behind the scenes.

Torvald hated intrigue and backstabbing and lies. He hated speeches and hair-splitting discussions over who was responsible for what while people were suffering and things needed to get done. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t participate – at least as much as was required to get things moving. He’d enjoyed the best education that money could buy back in Halfbridge, and while his parents had kept him insulated from politics and court inrigue, he’d always been an able student of history. 

So, when Ranna threw a golden opportunity right into his lap last night – when he’d finally sat down with her to talk about her cult, he’d known exactly what to do with it.

He shuffled his mother’s letter to the back of his notes and rose, descending to the floor of the hall as the previous speaker – a high priestess of Eyeli from western Madzhur – sat back down. She’d just spent twenty minutes arguing that the Invigilation should purchase its surplus foodstuffs from her temple district whenever and if ever it actually decided to pursue any course of action.

He stood at the edge of the floor for a moment to see if anyone with seniority over him wanted to speak, but thankfully nobody else rose. Trying to ignore his sweaty palms, which had begun to dampen his notes, Torvald cleared his throat and spoke.

“Honored representatives of the Invigilation.” He called, looking around at the crowd. About half of them weren’t even watching, and more than a few were talking amongst themselves. Of the rest, a few leaned in toward him as though trying to hear, while the rest looked mostly bored, with the exception of his colleagues from the Temple of Ruzinia. They knew what he was about to do. He raised his voice a little for the people trying to hear and continued, reading off of his notes. “In light of our lack of substantive progress in developing a response to the threat of the Duergar and their use of a greater demon to destroy an entire city of people, the Temple of Ruzinia has decided to take action unilaterally, starting today. This announcement is both a courtesy to you, and an invitation to join us.”

While his jab at the utter uselessness of the Conclave so far drew a few more eyes, what followed finally got the audience’s attention. A murmur passed through the crowd, and more faces turned toward him until finally, blessedly, the room was quiet. 

“Our priests and paladins within Besermark will immediately uncover and eliminate the cult of Varamemnon in the country to prevent them from acting in support of the Duergar in future incursions. We would hereby like to invite all of you here today to support these efforts by sharing any information you might have about cultist activities in your own regions and forming your own task forces to help gather information and to join us in removing this threat. It is our hope that the entire Invigilation will act together to create an information and enforcement network acros all the attendant countries.”

Cultists had repeatedly proven how dangerous they could be as infiltrators in Halfbridge, and Ranna had confirmed that they’d been involved in the fall of Loamfurth as well. Curbing their influence was the only objective that Torvald and his colleagues had agreed they could feasibly pursue on their own without the blessing of the larger Invigilation. Predictably, reactions were mixed.

“How are you going to find them?” one voice called out mockingly from behind Torvald as a murmur washed through the crowd. Someone nearby grumbled, “Good for them. At least somebody’s doing something.”

“You can’t do that!” one especially loud priest of Balarian called above the rising rumble of the crowd, standing up. “The invigilation can’t act inside sovereign borders without government supervision. Do all your people have their own legitimators appointed already?”

Torvald had more text left in his little speech, but decided against reading it. Instead, he held up a hand for quiet. Most of the noise quieted after a moment, and he answered the man directly.

“We will be working directly with the authorities, providing them the locations of major cultist cells in major Beseri cities and supporting them as they wish. The clerics involved are not representatives of the Invigilation and are not sent by this body, but rather by the will of the goddess directly, who has agreed to bless our efforts.

“That’s a load of crap,” the man sneered. “The cults are hidden from the eyes of the gods – all the ones that matter, anyway. If Ruzinia could simply track down demonic cultists for her agents, she would have been doing it all along. They would never have become a problem in the first place!”

“That’s… true,” Torvald allowed, “and I didn’t mean to imply it. Ruzinia will guide our fellow clerics according to the information provided by our newest acolyte, the former cultist, Ranna of Gobford. While her information is not exhaustive, we believe what she can share with us will be enough to severely limit their ability to act going forward. I’ve invited her here today to share what she knows with the assembly. I think you’ll want to hear what she has to say.”

He held up a hand, palm up, toward the double doors that served as the chamber’s main entrance. The top rows of seating held a scattering of acolytes – those who weren’t busy doing menial chores around the Temples where they served and who didn’t want to miss such a historic event. It had been quite a bit fuller a few days ago, before they’d realized this was just a gigantic waste of time. 

Ranna was sitting at the very top, as close to the exit as she could. She hadn’t really wanted to come, but this was important and he’d managed to talk her into it with Doreen’s help. He’d half expected her to bolt after arriving, but she was still sitting there, her whole body visibly tense even from here as everybody turned to look at her.

She rose nervously and hurried down the steps toward Torvald, keeping her eyes down. If she’d wanted to, she could have just spoken from her seat, but correcting her now would probably only fluster her further, so he kept his mouth shut.

When she got down to the floor, Ranna finally looked up at her audience, eyes darting around.

“Ranna,” Torvald prompted, “Tell them about the cult.”

“Uh…” she began, licking her lips nervously. “The cult. Right. I was in Gobford – that’s where I’m from. We didn’t do anything there, yet, with the war, I mean. We were just waiting. Recruiting. The demons came and told us to prepare, that they could come at any time. We’d serve and the Great One, Varamemnon, he would give us power. The ones who did the best – they’d get to be immortal.” Her voice steadied and grew a little louder as she talked, though she was clearly rambling. “That was bullshit, though. I watched them all die, and the demons, too. Not the Great One, the others. It was horrible.”

Torvald cleared his throat and leaned toward her a little. “Tell them about where the cult is active.”

“Ah. Yes. Um… the dark one – that’s Nuros, the right hand of Varamemnon – he’s in charge of all of them. He set them up, or his servants did, and he didn’t start in Besermark. We have cults in Madzhur, Kallrix, and one in Illuria, too, on the main Island. There’s one on the Tib’nar plateau with the orcs, and several in the Depths in the Dwarven Confederation. I don’t know where, exactly, we weren’t told. Zijeregh – that’s the demon in charge of my cult – she liked to tell us how far their reach went. The largest one is in Matar. That’s where the ones who recruited me – ”

“Lies!” Someone shouted so loudly that Torvald flinched back and Ranna cut off, taking a step behind him. Others were talking and shouting over one another. The paladin tried to figure out who it was, but several red-faced people were yelling at the top of their lungs now, obviously enraged as others reacted with annoyance at the spectacle, and then anger when they would’nt sit back down.

Matar, historically called Mahat’Ur, was the capital city of a country bearing the same name: The Madurian Empire and its successor state, Madzhur. It was the ancient city that, over a thousand years ago, had formalized magecraft and used it to forge an empire. As far any loyal citizen of the country was concerned, it was a holy site at least as important as the Sacral Peaks itself. Unlike Besermark, Madzhur still executed people for the mere suggestion that they might dabble in demon-summoning. Suggesting that it was the epicenter of demonic influence on the entire continent, just as it had been when the empire fell, was a slap in the face – and one that they sorely needed.

Torvald watched as the entire chamber devolved into chaos. Several priests tried to push forward toward Ranna, but Song, Doreen and Margo closed around them and they began to make their way out of the room. He wasn’t sure exactly what would happen now, but he was confident that something would.