Thorendor, 2F: Wardrobe & Bath
You found Master Arasemis’s private wardrobe and bath.
Map
Statue
This is statue made from similar stone as the statues in the shrine. But this one is not old. In fact, you’re sure it is Master Arasemis. Even one of the statue’s arms is missing, just like Arasemis. You wonder if he commissioned it, and if so, why? It is surprising to you that he would take time to have a statue made. Perhaps there is something you haven’t thought of.
Weapons
You see a small rack of bladed weapons in Master Arasemis’s wardrobe. They are unusual and you cannot guess their origin. The blades are fashioned from a dark metal and very sharp.
Wardrobe
Here you see many of Master Arasemis’s robes. Some are richly made, others are humble homespun. You have seen him wear many types of clothes to disguise his identity when he travels.
Trunk
Wardrobe Passage
This wardrobe has a false back on a hinge that leads through the wall behind it. It looks like you can push on it.
Wardrobe Chest
You see a collection of alchemical mixtures in this chest. By the looks of them, Master Arasemis may be keeping these on hand in case Thorendor Castle is attacked.
Flashoak Tincture
This is a distillate of flashoak wood, used as a strong sleep agent in shroud eggs and alchemical candles to cause various effects, such as slow sleep and blind sleep. Most effects can be cured with a rising candle or avoided altogether by wearing a mask with filtering gill ferns. Burning flashoak tincture creates a green flame and produces sleeping air.
You remember that Master Arasemis has used flashoak tincture to bring some prospective students to Thorendor Castle, so that they cannot remember the way to the castle if they elect not to join Candlestone. You have helped to harvest flashoak wood from a grove near to the castle. They are fascinating, growing from acorn to tree and collapsing into a rotting heap within two years.
Thornhest
A strong acid that smells faintly of bitter almond, and very poisonous even in tiny doses: a single drop of thornhest can kill an adult. Produced by boiling cribyl 45%), water (45%), carbun (8%), and salt (2%) to evaporation. Subsequently boiling thornhest produces a poisonous air called lungthorn.
A thimbleful of thornhest, which is also known as known as cribyl acid or blue acid, can also be obtained by distilling and purifying a barrel-worth of crushed pits from many types of fruits, apple seeds, or almonds.
Vespertine
A pale green liquid distilled from the seeds, white flowers, and leaves of the vespertine plant. When ingested, it causes delirium, seizures, dilated pupils, muscle stiffness, amnesia, painful sensitivity to light for days, and can be fatal depending on the dose. The older the plant, the more potent its toxin. The toxin can also be distilled from moonwood.
Wardrobe Painting
Gastrolith Trove Caves Near Sipadshur
You recognize this as a reference to the Naren-Dra caves known for being abundant in gastroliths, also known as gut stones. These are small stones of various colors with a high shine and soapy texture that have been ingested by many types of animals either by accident, to aid food digestion for animals that lack grinding teeth, or for ballast. They are commonly found in crocodiles, ostriches, alligators, herbivorous birds, seals, sea lions, and giant lizards.
In the mountains of the Naren-Dra tribe, the caves near the capital of Sipadshur are populated by toothless, bony frogs that are known to ingest pebbles when the long winters set in. The gastroliths scatter on the ground after the animals die and decay, when they can be harvested. During lessons in the laboratory downstairs, Master Arasemis taught you and the other students that the Naren-Dra shroud alchemists ground them down to mix with other ingredients to make cloaking clouds.
Bath Closet
This wardrobe has a false back on a hinge that leads through the wall behind it. The passage connects the master closet to the bath room.
Bath Gallery
Yawncliff Cistern
You remember reading about this almost mythical place in the library. It is hidden in the verdant Belnoyle Mountains. The pool is calm and clear, but you cannot see the bottom. There is a stairway carved into the stone below the cliff face, which spirals down deep into the water. This suggests that at one time it was a dry pit, perhaps a mine, before it was flooded by an unknown mechanism.
You would like to visit this place and swim down, perhaps dropping electrum delver’s eyes to try to light up the bottom, just as Eniri and the others did when the vast storerooms of Gilgalem were flooded long ago. You wish this painting was in the students’ bath.
Welkaria After the Tarborchast
Further along the frame from the title is a III marking, probably meaning this is the third of a set of paintings. Based on Master Arasemis’s history lessons, it is clear this painting depicts the war-torn lands of the Welkari tribe. They lived in the central swamplands of modern Calbria, a large confederation built on a diverse foundation of many tribal peoples and, later, colonial Arukans.
The Welkari were ultimately displaced by the Rahlampian tribe, as these destroyed homes show. The Rahlampians themselves had been pushed into the Welkari lands, banished by their brethren who would become the Gallerlanders. The Rahlampians’ journey was called the Tarborchast. Before that, the Rahlampians and Gallerlanders had been one people, the Agnesci, the most ancient of all Pemonian natives. It was the Cataclysm that drove them apart.
And so, the Welkari shared in the suffering. The Rahlampians eventually displaced other minor tribes, becoming the dominant people by the time of the arrival of the Arukan and Brintilian colonists. Having a distaste for the marshland hovels of the Welkari crannog men, the Rahlampians designed landships, large stilt cities, and other constructs to rise above the muck and expand. They conquered better lands among the rolling plains, the braided riverlands, and tidal coastlines. Calbrians still use landships today.
Chest
This chest is locked.
© 1998-2023 Christopher C. Fuchs. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s owner is strictly prohibited.