Archivist Gleaner
Trouble
Assassin with a Conscience
Racial Aspect
Cliff Dwelling Earthblood Human
Other Aspects
Vertical Free Runner
Tomb Raider
Death From Afar
Cover My Tracks
Skills
Good (+3): Athletics
Fair (+2): Burglary, Missile
Average (+1): Weaponry, Stealth, Investigation
Stunts
Human Spider
Tripwire Sensibilities
Good Arm
Light Foot
Refresh: 2 (6)
Archivists, sure. Everyone knows who the Archivists are. Soft, portly men and women with their round glasses, braided beards and plaits, and those silly beads they use to mark their academic prowess. Ink stained fingers and the silly little wedges of inscribed metal they use to sharpen their quills, the pocketed vests and cloaks, and the trails of scrolls and paper scraps that seem to follow them around. There’s an Archivist library in every major town from Perch to Raven’s Gorge, and teams of diggers, gleaners, and scholars at every ancient ruin and abandoned temple from the Pyramid to Corinth. Everyone knows who the Archivists are.
ReplyDeleteBut who are the Librarians? Well… you might not know so much about that…
First though, at little about me.
My mother, a small, lithe woman in her early 50s, won’t tell me who my father is. To me, that means he was a scion of one of the merchant families living near the tip of the Talon, where the walled compounds protect the wealthy and elite, those who profit from the wealth of gems, herbs, and other rarities we bring up from Raven's Gorge. I'm a bastard, and I'm okay with that.
My youth I spent in the Gorge, scampering up and down the obsidian walls of the cliff, collecting haklo leaves and kwama pods, multi-colored salt lichens, and even guar eggs when I could find them, all to trade for coin and goods with merchants near the Talon’s tip. I’ve always felt a strong affinity for those rock and obsidian walls. My grip never tires, and my movements are sure and quick. Among the various collectors who worked the walls, I was one of the best. My mother, she made knives and needles out of knapped obsidian. Her skill at making these small, sharp blades was such that both the healers and butchers from Verger sought out her tools, using them to cut open their patients and flay their meat. Between the two of us we managed to do fairly well, leaving my younger sister, Ariana, to flirt and play with the boys until we could marry her off to a suitable partner. Life on the rim of the Gorge wasn’t easy, but it was adequate.
My ranging up and down the Gorge walls knew few boundaries. The terrors from the dark depths of the shrouded bottom held little sway, as I found some of the richest lichen beds in the cool caves near the bottom. It was there that my path as a cliff dweller came to an end.
The cave entrance was bizarrely regular, a near perfect hexagon carved into the sheer obsidian wall. The inside was eerily quiet, the roar of the water below and the callings of the winged guar that glided the updrafts of the churning black waters below cut off as soon as I entered. I pulled a twined bundle of dried lichen from my pouch and lit it, to explore the interior. The walls were smooth, straight, and gleamed in the weak light. Straight back the tunnel went, for 30 paces. A small chamber opened up, allowing me to stand upright. The walls were six-sided, doming above me in exact regularity. Deep inscriptions, with neat and precise script, covered all surfaces. I recognized enough about the ancient script to know what it was, the same language that was found on the Pyramid and the ruins of Corinth, but aside from that it was indecipherable squiggles. What caught my eye though was a small hexagonal shaped disc, the size of my palm, that seemed embedded in the far wall. As I reached out to touch it, I heard a click, and the disc fell out into my hand. The chamber shuddered and groaned, rock dust falling from the ceiling, and I turned to dash down the stooped tunnel. The grinding of rock on rock continued behind me, but to what end I know not, as I burst into the light, snatching a wicker vine to swing out and away from the cave. Clinging to the side of the cliff face, I examined my loot. The disc appeared a pale, burnished metal in the sunlight, covered on both sides by the same ancient scrolling script I found on the tunnel walls. I held it in my teeth as I made the climb back to the surface.
Weeks later, not knowing what to do with the disc (but not willing to part with it), I had fashioned a crude amulet using a leather thong, and wore it around my neck. An Archivist, his braided beard littered with brightly colored beads, peered quizzically at it while he perused the herbs and knapped obsidian at my faire tent.
ReplyDelete“Where did you get that, son?” he asked me, squinting and pointing at the disc.
I put my hand over it, holding it tightly to my chest. “Down near the bottom of the Gorge. What’s it to ya?”
“Quite a bit, I think,” he said, giving me a look over. I did the same to him. Like most Archivists, his fingers were stained a dark blue, almost black, and his beard beads rattled as he leaned forward to try to get a better look. I acquiesced, and held it out for him to examine, which he did… for a long while.
“Tell me son, you say you found this at the bottom of the Gorge? All the way down?”
I nodded, squinting at him. “You think it’s worth something?”
“Boy, you have no idea.”
And so I came into the employ of the Archivists.
I worked first as a gleaner, someone who could get in and out of tight places, clamber up (or down) ruined walls, squeeze through narrow cracks… essentially a tomb raider, for lack of a better word. The Archivists put my years of cliff climbing to work, using me to retrieve artifacts once their locations were uncovered by their teams of diggers and scholars. For the most part, it was either scroll cases, ancient beyond measure, or artifacts of some sort... small ceramic and metal contraptions whose use I had no earthly idea. Twice though, I was called to help retrieve another disc… much like the one Portnoy took from me when he hired me away from the Gorge trade faire. Each time this happened Portnoy was there, along with two other Archivists I had never seen before. Each time, these new Archivists seemed more… I don’t know… shady…. They had more beads than the others (and by this time I knew that each bead represented a new mastery of some arcane lore), but they were secretive and suspicious, even of their fellow Archivists. They took the discs from me and disappeared, muttering to themselves and scowling at the rest of us.
The third disc I was asked to retrieve though… that’s where things got a little dicey.
Before I left the Gorge, my mother had given me a set of obsidian throwers. She knew I used them to pick off guar and the toothy, floating netches when I climbed the Gorge, and she thrust the bundle at me, sobbing and begging me to be careful out the wild world. In my three years as a gleaner for the Archivists, my employers had seen me use my obsidian shards to bring down game on many occasions, and no less than four times, when our travelling coaches had been set upon by brigands, it was my well-placed shards that saved us from being looted and murdered, or worse. Aside from my prestige as an unparallel climber and gleaner, I was earning a reputation as a competent killer when it was required.
The third disc… it was found in Verger, somebody had been calling it “The Eye of Yagmur” and news of it grinded through the rumor mill as a stolen bauble waiting to be fenced. The thief had stolen a gem the size of a bird egg from a Church vault and was holed up, letting the heat to die down before he resurfaced. One of my contacts, a man I knew simply as “the Rat,” sold me some information on its current location, high in an abandoned, burnt out tower. Retrieving it should have been simple, but before I left the library, Portnoy pulled me aside.
“Listen boy, this thief, he knows too much. He can’t learn his bauble is more than a fancy old amulet. You’ll have to do for him.” Portnoy pointed at the leather wrapped handles of my obsidian throwers, jutting from a bracer across my chest.
I nodded my understanding, but a cold feeling curdled in my gut. I had killed men (and other, slimier things) before, but always in self defense. Leaving the library with the deliberate intention of killing somebody, this was new. And I didn’t like it. But by now I had some understanding of the darker, sinister side of the Archivists, an inner cabal who pulled the strings and made things happen… the Librarians. I knew if I failed in my task tonight, it might be me who “gets done for” next.
ReplyDeleteScaling the burnt and crumbling tower was simple matter, but the man I found within… I could not bring myself to slay him in cold blood. Rather, I approached him openly, ready to make a deal. If he would give me the Eye, I would report to my superiors that he was slain. The man, Karven by name, surprisingly agreed to this, even knowing that the Archivists might be hunting for him ever after if they learned of his survival.
The Eye was something like I had never seen before. It was a perfect hexagon, the same sizes as the other tiles, but cut from a bright red cat’s eye stone, flat on one side, and rounded on the other. It felt warm to the touch, sending a tingling sensation into my open palm. If this was part of the Mosaic, I had never seen anything like it. Kraven and I worked out away to help him disappear, confounding the Church inquisitors on his tail. The Eye would go one way, and news of Karven’s demise would spread throughout the underground with the help of the Rat. His face was not widely known, and if the Church had any sort of sensing power on the gem, the Archivists would be able to remove it. He only had to worry about those few Inquisitors who might see through our ruse.
Covering my own tracks was also a simple thing… my word was trustworthy with Portnoy and his brethren. Portnoy bought my story, especially since I handed him the hexagonal gem as I related it. Karven, it seemed, was in the clear.
Months later, I received another assignment from Portnoy. A sorcerer of known dark repute had taken to collecting artifacts of the ancients, and one of the Librarians had deduced that he had acquired the power to control those with Fae blood. I was charged with gleaning the artifact that allowed such power, and to slay the sorcerer who discovered it. However, when I arrived at the sorcerer’s enclave, he was in the middle of a throw-down with an Imp, with spellfire and arcane plasma splattering the walls in the fierce firefight. The Imp eventually gained the upper hand, draining the sorcerer of his arcane battery, leaving him gasping and clawing for his life. I stood above them both, they grasping for breath and spent from their arcane battle, me with razor sharp obsidian shards raised in my hands, poised to end both their lives. Again I paused, sensing something far more than a simple contest of wills between the two. Staying my throw I sided with the Imp, taking the spent, charred ceramic rod of control from the sorcerer’s trembling hands. I edged towards the Imp, sheathing one of my shards but keeping a careful eye on the sorcerer.
ReplyDelete“Go now, your debts no doubt are forgiven,” I told it, slipping the ceramic rod into a pocket in my cloak.
The sorcerer lay on the floor, lungs heaving, his heart pushed to the point of bursting from his exertions. The Imp, however, pleaded with me not to kill him. This would be a harder non-death to cover than Karven’s. Still, the sorcerer’s den was torn asunder by their battle, and with effort, the Imp and I convinced the sorcerer to fade away, change locales and pursue new courses of study, far away from Verger and the Archivists. Perhaps I could convince Portnoy of my success in slaying the spellcaster.
It seemed to work. Portnoy did not question the aftermath, once I handed him the burnt ceramic rod. I had managed to cover up two failures with the Librarians, who were, currently, none the wiser.
Other assassinations were less problematic… I found it far easier to kill a target once I was convinced of his corruption and immorality.
I am Arcturas Anton, cliff dweller of the Gorge. I am a Gleaner for the Archivists. I am also an assassin for their inner cabal, the Librarians. Within these dark shadows, I am known as the Shard.