Picture may take a few moments to load, please be patient

Report on Pimoria

accounted by Emil Stephan

I was sent to Pimoria to check on a report from the local librarian

(whose name I cannot recall, having met him only once and very briefly,

as he was in a great hurry at the time), about a "superstition" held by

the local townsfolk, which may have a basis in truth.

As I found out when coming to the town, the "superstition" in question

involved a giant, man-sized run that has been coming near the town

every night for many years, longer than even the oldest residents of

the town could remember (in fact, it has been coming into town ever

since Pimoria was founded, six generations ago). The run could be

identified by a special mark under its left claw, though no one

currently living in town has actually seen the mark close enough to

describe it. The townspeople would leave food for the run every night,

which the run would take. People thought of the run as a pet of the

town; the local tavern was named after it, "The Eatin' Run". The

"superstition" was that the town would enjoy peace and prosperity as

long as they fed the run, but that if they don't feed the run the town

would be cursed with disasters.

Based on information from old residents of the area, confirmed by

several events I witnessed, I can report with certainty that this

belief was fully based in truth; it was the result of a pact made

between the townspeople and Pymor when the town was founded. The run

was in fact an orc war-chieftess who led the Moon Clan six generations

ago. The chieftess was a very devout follower of Pymor, but one day,

after the clan was particularly successful in its hunting, exclaimed

that even Pymor herself couldn't have caught such good game. Pymor was

greatly angered by this remark, and demanded that the chieftess either

solve a riddle that she posed her, or face great punishment. The riddle

was:

Some say it is a must to rule and control.

Others protest that it is not so.

Bolster to some, but bane to you.

If it grows too strong it destroys itself too.

The answer that Pymor looked for, clearly, was: pride. The chieftess's

answer, however, was: the moon. Since this was a bad answer, Pymor

punished her by turning her into a giant, immortal run. The clan

changed its name to the Broken Moon Clan, and lost a large part of its

territory, on which human worshippers of Pymor then settled and built

the town of Pimoria. Pymor promised the townspeople to provide them

with peace and prosperity, as long as they feed the run. Since then the

town did in fact enjoy peace and prosperity, and continued to feed the

run even though most of them forgot the reason for it. They also

enjoyed very friendly trade relations with the Broken Moon Clan and

other orcs in the area. The vast majority of people in the town

continued to be worshippers of Pymor. It should be noted that when I

and other travellers mentioned Celis, many people in town either have

never heard the name, or believed that "Celis is a fairy tale".

The trouble started one week before I arrived in Pimoria, when some

orcs from the Broken Moon Clan captured the run; the clan's current

war-chief, finding the run's appearance interesting, and knowing

nothing of its significance, decided to hold it captive. As a result,

the townspeople didn't know where the run was and were unable to feed

it. The town then started suffering a series of mishaps, including the

blacksmith's forge exploding and the library catching fire. The

war-chief of the Broken Moon Clan was possessed with voices calling him

to reclaim the territory of the town that once belonged to the clan,

and he started sending the clan in attacks on the town. Curiously,

while Pymor was cursing the town and causing these mishaps, she

continued to provide the town's mayor with her protection; on one

occasion that I witnessed personally, a man who tried to run the mayor

through with his sword had his attack magically reflected, running

himself through instead.

Most of the townspeople, including all of the town's guard, the town's

librarian, and many others, decided to leave the town. The librarian

was leaving just as I arrived; he only had time to quickly show me the

library, about half of which had been burned in the fire.

The town was attacked by orcs several time the day that I arrived.

Fortunately, several other travellers came into town on the same day,

and were able to defend it against the orcs. However, attempts to

interrogate orcs that were taken captive, and to find out where the

war-chief is or the reasons for the sudden hostility, proved

fruitless.

Several of the townspeople and the travellers, including myself, went

searching for the orc's camp. We did not find it, but instead found a

group of bandits led by a half-orc named Lez. Lez had been a member of

the Broken Moon Clan, but had some claim to the position of the clan's

war-chief; the clan, unwilling to accept a half-orc as a war-chief,

banished him. Lez and his group have come upon a strange magical body,

which has been constructed several centuries before by a powerful mage

who hoped to transfer his own soul into it, thus making himself

immortal; however, something went wrong in the spell, killing the

mage. The body then lay undisturbed in the woods, until discovered by

Lez's men. A mage named Rodgar, of the Circle of the Unfillable Tome,

who had been kidnapped for ransom by Lez's men, was with them when they

found the body, and found the notes of the mage who constructed it.

>From the notes, he was able to find out where the spell went wrong,

and, after his ransom has been paid, offered to stay and perform the

spell to transfer Lez into the body. Lez agreed, hoping that in the new

body he will be able to get the Broken Moon Clan to respect his claim

to leadership. When we found the group Rodgar was ready to perform the

spell, and was missing one ingredient; we supplied him with that

ingredient, in return for Lez's promise to help in finding the run and

in restoring peace between the Broken Moon Clan and the town.

Rodgar performed the spell, and Lez dropped dead, while the body came

to life. The body confirmed that it is indeed Lez, and answered some

personal questions from his men proving his identity. Lez in the new

body is apparently immortal, is extremely strong, and has no need for

sleep or food.

That evening, Pymor's curse continued to appear, this time in the form

of attacks by the fey. Most of the fey's doings were merely petty

annoyances, such as taking people's weapons or belongings and dragging

them a few feet away; causing people to have uncontrollable urges for

various silly actions; tying the tavern's door with a cord; or

rearranging the beds in the boarding-house. Some of their attacks,

however, were much more malicious. They moved about several of the

herbs and potions in the alchemist's shop; as we realized the next

morning and as I discuss below, that was a much more sinister action

than it first appeared.

Finally, the fey enchanted two young women travelling in the area,

causing them to lose all memory of who they were, causing one of them

to believe herself to be a puppy and start walking on all fours, while

the other believed herself to be a woodsman and believed the broom she

was carrying to be an axe. Chansegril - a Descendant of the Crimson

Blade and a priest of Meenon and Mynon - was able to use his powers to

detect that these women's strange behaviour was the result of

enchantment by the fey. At Chansegril's suggestion, I looked straight

at the moon and entreated Pymor to release the two women from their

enchantment. The two women regained their memories, and, understandably

frightened and alarmed, quickly left the town.

Later that night, the town was visited by a strange undead creature,

covered completely in a black cloak and a black mask with nothing on

it, and tied around its neck with a heavy steel chain; there was a

slight gap between its gloves and sleeves, through which we could see

that the gloves and sleeves did not contain anything visible. The

creature approached people and, in an eerie whispering voice, asked for

eyes, offering to pay money that it was carrying in return for one eye,

promising that removal of the eye would be painless. No one was willing

to sell it an eye, and the creature seemed to make no attempts to

attack people or take anything against their will. When one person

taunted the creature in a particularly rude manner, the creature caused

it a temporary spasm of pain, but no permanent injury.

Things grew more alarming, however, when some of the people present,

who believed that the creature must be killed, goaded Chansegril into

attacking it with a spell. The creature froze for a while, but no

further attacks on it were effective. After a while the creature

unfroze, and then walked up to Chansegril and forcibly plucked out one

of his eyes, causing him great pain. The creature then threw off the

chain and walked away. It seems that obtaining an eye set the creature

free in some way; its actions also seem to indicate that it was unable

to take an eye forcibly unless it was attacked first.

Some followers of Celis who were present were able to appeal to her to

restore Chansegril's eye; however, he could not be healed while in the

town, and had to walk out of the town's boundaries for the healing to

work, apparently because the town was Pymor's territory.

At around midnight that night, the town's mayor woke fearfully from his

sleep, and walked into the tavern. He told us that he had dreamt that

he was the war-chieftess of the Moon Clan, and dreamt the events that

led to her transformation into a run. His dream contained the riddle

that Pymor asked the chieftess (other sources we found for the story

knew that there was a riddle, but did not specify what the riddle

was). Chansegril suggested that the correct answer to the riddle was

"ego"; I suggested, as I note above, that a more accurate answer

probably is "pride". In any case, we did not realize at the time the

far-reaching effect that our solving the riddle had; by solving the

riddle we broke the chieftess's punishment, causing the run, held

captive by the orcs, to transform back into the chieftess.

The next morning, Cherise, apprentice to the town's alchemist, drank a

potion against hay-fever which she was in the habit of drinking every

morning. However, because of the fey's tempering with the herbs the

previous night, the potion was in fact a poison which caused old

wounds, which she had suffered during the orc's attacks the previous

day and which had been healed, to reappear on her; after the alchemist

healed the wounds, they would quickly appear again, and Cherise was

quickly bleeding to death. Chansegril decided to perform a ritual to

Meenon and Mynon, entreating them to help heal Cherise's affliction.

Horus, the tavern-keeper, was at first reluctant to participate in the

ritual, believing this to be blasphemy against Pymor, but finally was

convinced that this is Cherise's only chance. As a result of the

ritual, Chansegril was instilled with the knowledge of what potion from

the alchemist's shop would reverse the poison, and was able to heal

Cherise.

The Broken Moon Clan then walked into town, led by the war-chief and by

the old chieftess. The mayor, seeing the chieftess, cried in dismay,

believing that this broke any chance of removing the curse and

restoring the town's peace and prosperity. Crying to Pymor, he

entreated her to accept him as the new run, in order to renew the pact

and allow the town's peace and prosperity to continue by feeding him.

To our amazement, and to the chagrin of the townspeople, the mayor

started to transform before our eyes, gradually becoming more and more

like a run. The mayor asked Horus to supply

the run from now on with Dwarven mead; he then ran into the

town hall, and dug himself in a corner away from the sunlight; when he

emerged from it that night, he had been fully transformed into a run.

After some negotiation between the orc war-chief, the townspeople, and

Lez, the orcs agreed to accept half of the town's buildings as their

territory, and to co-exist peacefully with the human inhabitants. The

orc war-chief also agreed to take Lez's claim to the leadership before

the orc's council again.

Many of the townspeople have by now become very dissatisfied with the

capriciousness of Pymor's protection, and decided - some

enthusiastically, others agreeing reluctantly - to rededicate the town

to the worship of Meenon and Mynon instead; Cherise announced her

intention to become a priestess of Meenon and Mynon. Chansegril led

all the townspeople in a ritual dedicating the town to Meenon and

Mynon, and placing it under their protection. Horus took down the sign

at the town's entrance, since the people have determined to change the

town's name (though as we left, they have not yet chosen a new name);

as he took down the sign it burned his hand; but no further mishap

occured after that. It seems that Pymor, displeased as she is by losing

the town, is restrained from taking vengeance on them either by the

protection of Meenon and Mynon, or by her pact with the mayor now