Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 1
Following is Chapter 1 of the long-awaited sequel to the Skirmisher Publishing LLC fantasy novel Swords of Kos: Necropolis! It picks up right where the book left off but is a self-standing novella and will be presented here in serialized form for the next several months. A number of the places that appear in the story are fully described in Kos City, the first volume in the "Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting" (and we have included the map from it with this story). We hope you will join alchemical rogue Paros, wizard Pumayo, Elven barbarian Parthenia, and moon priestess Selene in their Return to the Necropolis!
Read "Return to the Necropolis: Prologue"
Time passed quickly for Paros in the months following his return from the necropolis and he was occupied with any number of things. His main focus, of course, was establishing his alchemy shop in the decrepit townhouse he had bought on Lead Street, along the vague line between the lower end of the mercantile district and the sprawling slum quarter.
To many this might not have seemed like an ideal address but, as a member of the Guild of Beggars, Guides, Locksmiths, and Exterminators, it was a better location for dealing with the sorts of customers with which he had the closest connections. He was, indeed, a rogue first and an alchemist second (and, to some extent, also a serviceable locksmith). For those operating at the highest levels of this art, the goal was to master the transformation of one sort of matter into another, and any of the other abilities they might gain in the process were simply side effects. To Paros, however, mastering these side effects was the point of the pursuit, and he produced powerful acids that could dissolve metal, liquid that erupted into fire upon contact with the air, and other substances that could be of use both to himself and sold to other adventurers. If he ever learned to transform lead into gold it would be purely by accident and he had many ways of obtaining wealth that were not dependent upon a lifetime of academic study.
Even with the acquisition from the necropolis of a laboratory full of alchemical equipment, however, establishing his new premises and making them both livable and presentable was more work than Paros had imagined. He could already tell that his locksmithing endeavors would languish and that he would have to pursue them purely for personal purposes or in response to the rare lucrative commission that might present itself to him, rather than as even a cover business.
His love life had also become ... strange. The ghost of the beautiful Koan lady who had attached herself to him when he was looting the tomb in which she had been interred sometime before the Great Cataclysm still haunted him and was prone to make her appearances at the most inconvenient times. These included occasions when he was attempting to entertain or encourage romantic interaction with one or another female acquaintance; the very possibility that the comely shade might manifest made him nervous and threw him off his game, and her actual appearance had sent more than one potential lover screaming for the door. The spirit of the lady who had lived in Kos in some archaic age did come to him in his dreams and was, suffice it to say, quite accommodating, so her presence was not totally unwelcome or without benefits. Overall, however, the situation was less than satisfying.
Paros had visited the Dream Temple of Hippocrates in the suburbs southwest of the city and had undergone treatments there that he hoped might have freed him from her visits. While this hope had been dashed, in the supernatural dream state he had entered under the guidance of his friend, the priest Memnos, he had glimpsed a phantasmagoric scene from the days of pre-cataclysmic Kos. In this vision, a number of masked men had attacked and murdered a man — a man who looked just like Paros and who had been the husband of the Koan lady who now haunted him! This had certainly shed some light for Paros on why the shade was fixated on him, but had raised many new questions as well and indicated that more investigation was warranted.
When he was not working in his shop, Paros liked to spend time at the Four Winds Bar, the watering hole by the port favored by so many adventurers. He had long enjoyed drinking, playing games, and listening to tales there, and he relished his visits even more now that he had stories of his own to tell. That, however, was not the only thing that had enhanced his interest in the tavern. While exploring the labyrinth of catacombs beneath the necropolis, he and his companions had investigated the tomb of the Anemoi family and there, among other things, found a journal that discussed its mercantile ventures in great detail. One of the items in it that had struck him was the location of the Anemoi trading house's main warehouse in the port district of Kos and the revelation that it was, in fact, where the Four Winds Bar was now established. Paros had always assumed that the bar took its name from the fact that it was favored by sailors, travelers, adventurers, and others who had been to or come from the far corners of the world, so it was very enlightening to learn that it was located in a building formerly owned by a family whose very name meant "the four winds."
His venture into the Anemoi tomb was, in fact, one of the episodes that Paros regaled other bar patrons with, and it did not fail to please or to garner him some applause and a few drinks. He told the tales of all the things he, Parthenia, and Selene had experienced in the necropolis — save anything about the shade of the Koan lady, which he kept strictly to himself — especially the account of his grueling ascent up the shaft to escape from the place. The rogue was, however, careful to omit anything about the location of the place, especially when pressed for details by those who seemed a little too eager to learn them, and even went so far as to suggest that it was located on the Anatolian mainland rather than a mere six miles from the city. He was nonetheless sometimes concerned that he might have given away too much, or piqued the interest of those who might themselves be interested in enriching themselves from the ancient cemetery.
That might almost have been worth it, of course, had a bard of note composed some ballad based on his experiences, and he had very much hoped to entice the minstrel Desdinova to do so. That personage was absent on some extended personal business, however, and the only entertainer who expressed any interest in his tales was the Half-Orc crooner Hate Rockma, whose songs used a style of chanted rhyming lyrics that Paros found repulsive. The two of them had talked a bit but both seemed to lose interest in the collaboration even before the rogue blacked out from the strong mixture of juniper-flavored distilled spirits mixed with the juice of crushed oranges favored by the gold-toothed entertainer.
Paros also frequently brought with him to the tavern the ancient game board and the blue and green soapstone pieces that he had found in the catacombs. He did not know what rules applied to this game, however, and had put some time into contemplating how to play it; it was reminiscent of chess in many ways, but used a different color scheme, had more and different pieces, and somehow seemed more mercantile or even occult than martial in character. It was easy to imagine, correctly or not, how a pawn-like piece might be moved across the squares of the ten-by-ten board, but it was less clear how one should employ the little sailing ships, bulls, or bare-breasted women with snakes in their hands.
Paros began to sketch out provisional rules for the game but was disappointed and even irritated by his general failure to find anyone willing to try them out with him. Some reiterated the opinion of his adventuring companions Selene and Parthenia that it looked "too complicated," others were simply not interested in trying anything that did not already have rules established for it, and others annoyed Paros to no end when they suggested he was creating the rules so that he could "win" the game. The concept that the rules applied equally to both players and thus favored neither did not seem to be obvious to such buffoons, and the idea that at this point it was a matter of the players learning to master the game rather than defeat each other was even more alien to them.
And then Paros met Pumayo. He had not been overly hopeful when this ugly, swarthy man — who from his robes and turban Paros took to be a foreign merchant — stopped at his table to lean over the board and pieces and make what the rogue assumed were the typical idle and pointless inquiries about them. He had, nonetheless, somewhat perfunctorily began discussing his theories about the game with the goateed newcomer, and found himself becoming more engaged when the other man ordered cups of wine for each of them and began to study the pieces, nodding in appreciation as Paros spoke. Then, as Pumayo eagerly began to arrange the pieces nearest to him in a possible starting configuration, Paros was shocked to see that the man had six stubby fingers on each of his hands! He carefully masked his initial surprise and revulsion, however, and the two went on to enjoy a very satisfying game.
From that point onward, Pumayo was almost exclusively Paros's collaborator on what they began to refer to as "Theran chess," and the two of them collectively developed and tested any number of rules, variants, and options. Paros did think that Pumayo was a bit of a stickler for rules they had not quite nailed down and was less open to changing things on the fly than he was, preferring to see a particular rule applied until the end of a game even if it was clearly broken. He could hardly, however, complain about a devotion to this pursuit commensurate with his own.
Paros also became not just inured to looking at Pumayo's repulsively thick, fleshy features and supernumerary digits, he began to appreciate how much they made him look like some of the squatting stone idols he had seen in shops and foreign temples. And, in the course of their continued association, Paros also learned that his new friend was not a merchant at all but rather a wizard and adventurer native to the Levantine metropolis of Tyre (a place, like many Asiatic city-states, that had a somewhat dark reputation among Greeks). This discovery was attended by the revelation that the wizard was not as solitary as he had at first seemed and kept nestled within his voluminous robes a small but particularly ominous-looking cobra, with what appeared to be tiny horns on its head and scale patterns unlike any Paros had ever seen.
Their mutual interests in alchemy and the arcane gave the two yet another solid basis for association and it was not long before Paros invited the foreign wizard to his premises for purposes both of showing them off and receiving professional feedback on them. Before long, he had made the laboratory available to Pumayo and the two of them began discussing any number of activities they might work together on. By the time the hundred-year anniversary of the great cataclysm was celebrated the two were fast friends and spent a week carousing together during the wild and carnival-like Titanomalia. A not-undesirable side effect of this prolonged and boozy urban adventure was that the companions gained a good sense for each other's capabilities and how their respective abilities complemented one another.
It was thus that the months passed after the return from the necropolis, and there were days that went by that Paros did not think of it or his absent companions.
Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 2"
