Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 2
Following is Chapter 2 of the long-awaited sequel to the Skirmisher Publishing LLC fantasy novel Swords of Kos: Necropolis! Herein a party is reunited and expanded, an Identify spell is cast after some debate, and the critical properties of some forgotten-about magic items are revealed. A number of the places that appear in this story, such as the Four Winds Bar, are fully described in Kos City, the first volume in the "Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting." Join alchemical rogue Paros, wizard Pumayo, Elven barbarian Parthenia, and moon priestess Selene in their Return to the Necropolis!
Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 1"
As one year passed into the next, Paros began to think more and more about the necropolis and his long-absent companions and to begin planning for a return, both to retrieve the treasure they had cached there and to continue searching for as-yet unfound wealth. Reorganizing the party, however, was proving problematic. And, while Paros could have returned there on his own or with new companions, he was hesitant to do so for a number of reasons. One was that Parthenia and Selene were a known quantity, and another was that his return might be perceived by them as a betrayal or attempt to despoil them of treasure they had shed blood, sweat, and tears to collect.
Selene, however, had completely disappeared and, as far as Paros could tell, had not come back to Kos since leaving it for her hill country hamlet. And, while he had considered tracking her down himself, he was apprehensive about venturing alone into the rural interior of the island.
Parthenia, on the other hand, had turned up about once a month at the Four Winds Bar on her way to or from adventures on the Anatolian mainland, and if half the stories she told about slaughtering Goblinoid soldiery was true then the Tetrarchy certainly had a hefty bounty on her head. She proudly pointed out to Paros a number of additions to the barbaric tribal tattoos she wore and regaled him with the incidents that they signified. But she, too, was eager to return to the necropolis to retrieve the treasure they had left cached there, if not to explore the place further; like many of her uncivilized ilk, necromancy and other dark magic of the sort they had encountered in the burial ground was her Achilles' Heel, at least from a psychological point of view. She did promise, however, to visit Selene and to bring her back to Kos City as soon as it was expedient to do so.
One way or another, Paros was committed to expanding their group to include the sorcerous Pumayo. Even before making his acquaintance, Paros had spoken with other fortune-hunters at the Four Winds Bar, particularly one Jason of Argos, head of a would-be "adventurers' guild," and in these conversations had been swayed by certain popular theories on the composition of parties. One, which had both pragmatic and metaphysical underpinnings, was the idea that an optimum adventuring band should include in equal proportions those skilled in stealth, combat, divine magic, and arcane spellcasting. Paros himself was, in fact, a rogue and adept at stealth, locating and disabling traps, and any number of related skills and abilities. Barbaric Elf Parthenia was a fierce warrior and thus filled the niche for that need, and Half-Elven Selene was devoted to and drew power from the Titan moon goddess Phoebe. But their party had not included anyone with arcane spellcasting abilities, and Paros wondered if this had not contributed to many of their difficulties and much of what they had suffered. And, as he had already learned, Pumayo was master of a number of spells that would have allowed the party to overcome or avoid many of the obstacles they had faced during their first foray into the necropolis.
Things did not go as well as Paros would have liked, however, when he introduced Parthenia and Pumayo during one of her visits to Kos and the Four Winds Bar. While the Levantine wizard went out of his way to be solicitous, Parthenia was notably sullen and withdrawn, and the involuntary curl of her thin lips revealed much of her distaste for the dusky, homely, polydactylic man. Paros took her aside after this strained meeting and tried to explain to her all the ways that having Pumayo would have been to their benefit in the necropolis; she did not bother to respond to any of his points and only stated a number of times, somewhat counterproductively, that she did not trust wizards, but that Paros could do whatever he wanted and she would not try to stop him. When she departed soon thereafter the rogue was by no means confident in the outlook for another expedition to the necropolis.
A month later, however, while Paros and Pumayo were playing "Theran Chess" and sipping cups of wine at the Four Winds Bar, the rogue was surprised to look up and see Parthenia and Selene standing over their table, smiling down at him. He got up and embraced both women, ordered a round of drinks for everyone, and bade them sit down, whereupon he introduced Selene to Pumayo. Parthenia then explained that they had just arrived in Kos from Selene's village and gone straight to Paros's home, where they had dumped their gear with the intent of camping in the courtyard behind the townhouse (Paros would have been happier with them in the house but the rustic women preferred sleeping in the open air). They thought it a safe bet that they would find him at the popular watering hole and were not disappointed on that account.
"Oh, I still have these things!" Parthenia said, reaching into her belt pouch and retrieving from it three lead amulets, each fashioned in the form of a ram skull and somehow associated with the hoary cult of Hades that had tended the necropolis in the era before the cataclysm. Upon their return to Kos, the companions had liquidated everything that one of them had not claimed for personal use at the Hermesium, the massive brokerage hall at one end of the city's grand bazaar. They had neglected, however, to sell these amulets, which Paros had appraised as having very little material value anyway. "Maybe we can trade them for a round of drinks ... ."
"Wait!" said Pumayo. "Might I examine those?" Parthenia willingly enough passed them over to him and, after he spread them out on the table in front of him, the wizard moved his hand in an arcane gesture and uttered the syllables of a brief cantrip, and then stared briefly at each of the items. Paros also noted surreptitiously that the wizard allowed his gaze to briefly linger upon each of the companions as he slowly looked up from the table with a mystical look upon his face.
"These amulets reveal an aura of magic," Pumayo said.
"Can you tell what they do?" Paros asked, his interest piqued.
"I can, but it would be somewhat expensive ..." the wizard said. Discussion ensued on this and intensified when he revealed that he needed two fine pearls — worth about two-hundred gold drachmas altogether — as components for casting this spell.
"Why should we pay you two-hundred gold pieces to tell us what our own items do?" Selene demanded. Paros was stunned that, as a spellcaster who also required material components for some of her spells, she should somehow be perceiving that this was a fee that the wizard was demanding, and made some attempt to explain this to her. Parthenia, who with a word could have explained this to her friend, did not bother to do so, and the rogue did not know if this was because she could not understand it either or just did not want to be seen trying to sway the opinion of the other woman. Finally, Pumayo offered to cast the divination in question in exchange for one of the amulets and, as Selene did not want one of them anyway, she agreed to relinquish the one that would have been hers.
"I don't really care what they do anyway," she said, reiterating her stance that she would not in any event use an item bearing the symbol of deity not just other than her own but one from an altogether opposed pantheon.
This agreed upon, Pumayo retrieved two pearls from one of the small leathern pouches on his belt (provoking gasps of indignation from Selene, who thought the fact that the wizard already had these proved her contention that he was trying to shake them down and ignored that they must have cost him something in the first place). The wizard ordered himself more wine and, while waiting for it to arrive, placed the two creamy, oceanic gems in his empty ceramic cup, and, drawing the dagger from the sheath at his belt, proceeded to crush them with its butt end. He ground away at them for a few minutes and then, once they had been reduced to a powder, poured some of his fresh wine into the cup. Finally, he removed a feather from his turban and used it to thoroughly stir the mixture of wine and pulverized pearl.
These measures completed, the wizard picked up one of the amulets and looped its blackened-silver chain around his neck. He then gulped down the wine-pearl concoction, intoned a series of alien words that did not sound as if they had been formed with the human tongue in mind, clutched the amulet, and slipped into what appeared to be a trancelike state. He remained this way for some time, his eyelids fluttering, his thick lips silently muttering obscure words, and his hands twitching — and then all at once opened his eyes and looked at his companions. All told, from start to finish the ritual had taken about an hour (and, while Paros had been fascinated by the process, the women had become "bored" and broken out their dice and begun to entertain themselves with them).
"This amulet was crafted by the priests who served as stewards of the necropolis from which you retrieved it," Pumayo began. "It would allow the one wearing it, once he had crossed over the enchanted stream that prevented people from returning to its near side, to cross back over freely. It has no limits on the number of times it can be used but, in any event, can only bestow its benefits upon one person, until being carried back across the water by another. In short, it cannot be used by one person to cross back over the stream and then thrown across to another and used by them." Pumayo tucked the amulet he was wearing into his robes.
Paros was stunned, and he sat there slack-jawed in disbelief. All the horrors they had suffered from being trapped in the catacombs — the lingering starvation, the being steadily transformed into shades that would have forever been condemned to wander the gloomy corridors of the place — could have been forgone simply be placing these amulets around their necks.
"How do you know they all do the same thing?" Parthenia asked suspiciously.
"It is a fairly safe deduction that they do," Pumayo said, smiling. "They all radiate exactly the same level and type of magic. But if you would like me to verify that by casting an identification spell upon yours I would be happy to if you are able to supply the requisite pearls ... ." The barbaric woman responded by picking up her amulet and looping it around her neck, and Paros did the same. Selene watched the proceedings with something like a combination of incomprehension and indifference, seemingly unaware that the gist of the exchange had been to deprive her of free passage out of the deadly place they were about to return to.
Then, the four companions began to discuss in earnest their return to the necropolis and the preparations they would need to make for it.
Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 3"
