Early in the year 361 A.F., a flashy pimp named Pandarus began offering
his "wares" quite publicly in the main market district of the Bastion of
the North. While there was a moderate amount of stir amongst the
citizens, Ashtan, having had its share of doxy houses in the past, was
not too alarmed.

A few citizens, such as Jenara Nakanishi-Tatiana, were troubled by the
implications of prostitution in the City of Freedom. Still others, such
as Khalil D'Ischai-Saer'rac, Theosis Shiva-Aramar, Gregg Saer'rac, Flair
D'Ischai-Saer'rac, Blujixapug Lucoster, Karyn Siowan Relkatha, Dirgmal
Relkatha, Das Rousseau, Sgueg Devi, Paine Mendacis, and Xephlite
Lucoster were suspicious of what ties Pandarus might have to strange
criminal elements that had been cropping up in other cities, such as a
mysterious Harald in Eleusis, and loan sharks in Shallam, which they had
been investigating individually and in group efforts. Jenara, Khalil,
and the others hounded Pandarus repeatedly, but he remained evasive,
often becoming angry at their incessant inquisitions and insisting he
worked for no one but himself.

Several months later, these questions would come to an end and others
still begin. Pandarus was found grotesquely murdered, his corpse
swinging from a vine noose in Ashtan. Upon his bare chest, his killer
had slashed a distinctive serpent's forked-tongue shaped wound .

Later, the Occultists Blujixapug Lucoster, Nimby Shiva, and Dirgmal
Relkatha performed a ritual involving the aural vestiges left in the
corpse. They were able to glean the information that a man with a
strange scar on his face had perpetrated the deed. Later still, an
elusive and handsome man named Ysven was spotted in Ashtan by Cenetar
Raxis D'Ischai, who immediately noticed a forked-tongue-shaped scar on
Ysven's face and tied him to Pandarus's death. Unfortunately, with the
level of interest ever rising in Ashtan, Ysven quickly realized he was
in danger and was not seen again in public.

However, Ashtan citizens soon realized much more was afoot, when the
beloved city teacher Epicurus began acting as if drugged, and merchant
denizens of Ashtan quietly raised their prices but refused to elaborate
why. Orphans began disappearing from the streets, calling frantically
for help on the city's telepathic channel before being cut off. An
uproar was caused when footpads started dealing a new expensive drug
called gleam in Ashtan. While a good number of Ashtanites, with their
taste for novelty, soon developed gleam habits, the city as a whole
energetically debated what to do about the drug situation.

Not long after, Dirgmal and Orklanishkal Eruu'Yul realized that Amadia
the jeweller no longer had any apprentices at her shop, although orphans
were still being brought to her. They questioned her extensively, but
she reacted with hostility, demanding that they be removed from her
shop. Later, Adanedhel Eruu'Yul noticed a lean young man speaking to
Amadia in her shop, and snuck in shrouded to listen to their
conversation. He quickly realized that Amadia was being extorted, and
confronted her when the man left the shop.

Although she was reluctant to speak, he convinced her cleverly to reveal
the situation: a group was holding her mother captive and had promised
to send her back to Amadia piece by piece if she did not cooperate, by
handing over her apprentices to them, as well as paying them regularly.

Amadia tearfully begged Adanedhel not to reveal this information to the
public, fearful for her mother's life. Adanedhel shared the information
with a few of his Occultist guildmates, and they staked out Amadia's
jewellery shop for the next month. A lean young man did briefly make a
visit, but left quickly when the investigators arrived, and they arrived
only to find an angry Amadia sporting a huge bruise on her face.

Amadia confronted them angrily, saying that their constant presence had
tipped off her extorters, and stormed away to the back of her store and
would not come out for days. Meanwhile, the Dowager Montagenet was found
to be missing from her mansion.

Days later, a woman's scream rang out over the city near the Accron
Overlook, and the city hastened to her aide. Paine Mendacis and Yoda
Darrion were the first to get there, to find Amadia being beset by a
group of men. Using Yoda's prismatic lyre with efficiency, the citizens
who had gathered soon killed the young men, rescuing Amadia.

One of the young men had on him a note, which Paine retrieved as it
dropped from his corpse. He found it to contain cryptic instructions
into a hideout. Amadia was in shock, for she had just been given the
severed finger of her mother, and agreed to help the other citizens as
much as she could, no longer wishing to cooperate with her extorters.

She led them to Croesus in the Pheidas Gambling Parlour, where Paine
quickly discovered a secret storage room, and Croesus was able to assist
them in accessing the entrance to the hideout through that room. A huge
force that included not only Ashtanites but sympathizers from all over
Sapience, led by Das Rousseau, was able to clear the entranceway of the
many zombie henchmen and guards protecting it.

However, the cryptic note still had to be decoded, to gain access
through the entranceway into the main hideout, and this was accomplished
after several days of constant puzzling and dangerous experimentation by
Xephlite and Gregg, assisted by Adanedhel, Mendax, Chesire, Almondus,
and a few others.

Once access had been established, another large force came together to
clear the hideout of the guards within it. One of the guards dropped a
key, which opened a prison cell that held Maricel, Amadia's mother.
While the rest of the force continued to battle and clear out the
hideout, Karyn and Gregg escorted Maricel out to safety, taking her to
Amadia for a joyful reunion.

Meanwhile, Galrog and Xephlite discovered the Dowager Montagenet in a
secret laboratory in the hideout, in a strange mental state. She kept
calling out for her long-dead husband, and her long-estranged son
Rudolpho, as if it were hundreds of years ago. A crumpled letter found
by Degar in a secret vault hinted that someone had been masquerading as
the Dowager's son, and that only a reminder of the past could bring the
Dowager out of her trance state.

Blujixapug hastened to Shallam, and spoke with Rudolpho at length.
Rudolpho, deathly afraid of his mother, refused to return with
Blujixapug to Ashtan. However, goaded by Blujixapug, he did finally give
Blujixapug a certain crystal ball of his mother's that he had taken long
before.

Blujixapug returned with this to Ashtan, and gave it to the Dowager.
Upon seeing this item from her past, the Dowager became very confused,
and fainted briefly. She quickly awoke, fully returned to her senses,
and was able to tell the Ashtanites some of what had been going on in
the past few months.

Apparently, Ysven, who bore an extremely close resemblance to Rudolpho
in his younger years, was also trained and gifted in the ways of the
Serpentlord class. He had used his looks and abilities to hypnotise the
Dowager, tricking her into taking him as her son, producing the drug
gleam for him, and attempting to gain control of all crime in Ashtan.

He had killed Pandarus as a public display of what happened to those who
tried to work on their own. Also, he had been involved with a mysterious
woman who had footholds in the criminal underground of the other cities
as well. He had fled Ashtan with his henchmen once the hideout entrance
had been discovered, taking most of the loot that had been taken
recently from drug sales and extortion rackets. Ashtan has succeeded in
driving out the cruel and ambitious Ysven from Ashtan, but the
whereabouts and origins of Ysven remain a mystery...


Penned by my hand on the 6th of Chronos, in the year 363 AF.