V. GHOSTWISE

At first, Cuatala had hated the bleak marshes and plains of Thar. She resented the cold winds that blew between the sea and the land. As a child of the Channath Vale she had scrambled up and down lush gorges, tumbled into bird-haunted ravines, and walked vineflower-draped paths. If the tropical warmth in that long-lost place stifled, it stifled as if it had no choice, as if there had to be something to check the exuberant, competitive life surging up into it. But in Thar, there was nothing. The landscape was a hollow reed through which a dead god blew tunelessly. Roaming the barrens left Cuatala feeling exposed–insignificant, maybe, but not hidden. Then, one morning, camping on the coast, she saw it: dawn coming to a land of a thousand grays, the grasses’ dull green aching like memory, a silver sky frowning into a silver sea. At that moment, she knew would never love the forest as completely as she once had because she had seen this other beauty. She soon found ways to hide in it.

It was a change in perspective. It was not the first she had experienced.

Cuatala had been a wild child, even for a ghostwise hin. She resented the traditions and clannishness of her people and wandered further and further afield until, one day, she wandered too far and met people who would hollow her out until there was almost nothing left.

She did not remember everything, even now, a year after her liberation. She knew she had lived for many years in a place called Thay, that she had been forced to work, that the family who claimed to own her in those terrible final months mistreated her because she was so small and weak–“a bargain, but not a good one,” she heard the wife once say to the husband. The children were especially cruel. A halfling was a novelty to them, half slave, half doll, all theirs. The husband eventually traded her for a cask of Sembian wine.

When the wine merchant brought her to Melvaunt to resell, several mercenaries secretly hired by Ulblyn Blackalbuck posed as city officials. The merchant was given a sheaf of documents in which to catalogue his assets and to sign, and while he did these things the officials freed his captives. Then they killed him. It was dangerous for an independent merchant to dock at Melvaunt past midnight.

The other captives had fled as soon as they could, but Cuatala wanted to know who her saviors were and why they had helped. “Me?” said a burly man. “I’m just a sellsword, lass. If you want to know who to thank, thank Ulblyn Blackalbuck–but don’t tell him I’m the one who told you.”

It had been many years since Cuatala had seen another halfling. If she and Ulblyn were different kinds of people, he might have become like a second father to her. But both were unsentimental and pragmatic and shrugged at their racial kinship. He was a lightfoot, after all. Her gratitude was no less sincere for all that, and she pledged to help him in his work. She would scout the coast, spy on newly arrived ships, listen for news, and watch the Phlan Path for caravans with cages.

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GAMEPLAY NOTES #1

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IV. BLACKALBUCK’S SWAP SHOP