A Letter to Tedronai

You do not know me, and I will not pretend otherwise. My name is Corwin Grimlute, and I am a bard by trade and inclination. I collect stories. I have been doing so for some years now, moving from village to village, tavern to tavern, cataloguing the remarkable and the mundane with equal enthusiasm. It is a good life. It is also, I have come to realize, a somewhat lonely one — and a dangerous one, when the stories one finds are of the sort that involve frozen bodies and bandit syndicates.

I write to you because your guild has a reputation, and reputations are the currency of my profession. I am seeking consideration for membership — or at the very least, an audience. What follows is my case, which I offer not as boast but as evidence. I will also tell you about two others I have met along the way who may be worth your attention.

Three days ago I arrived in Paleback Village for the funeral of a dwarf named Urgon, who had died under circumstances that were — to use the most polite term available — strange. Turned to ice. Cause unknown. I was there for the story. I stay for this sort of thing.

At the funeral I noticed a halfling working the crowd with a lightness of touch that would have gone unremarked by anyone not specifically watching for it. He had identified a recently discharged soldier named Bangor as a mark and was making his approach. I intervened quietly — not to protect Bangor, who looked entirely capable of protecting himself and then some, but because the halfling was about to make a very loud mistake in a very small village, and loud mistakes have a way of ending stories before they get interesting.

The halfling's name was Leeper. He took my warning with the easy grace of someone who has been caught before and has long since decided not to be embarrassed about it. I liked him immediately. He has the particular quality of stillness that the best scouts and shadows possess — the ability to be present in a room without the room quite noticing. When Elro, the village elder, approached the three of us shortly afterward with a job offer, Leeper had already assessed every exit in the building. I am fairly certain he had also assessed Elro's coin purse, though nothing came of it.

Elro was an elf with a bow and the weariness of a man who has watched too many of his neighbours turn to ice. He offered one hundred gold to investigate Urgon's death and look into a villager named Tulgi who was showing the same symptoms. We accepted.

Our first call was on Tulgi, who was showing the same symptoms as Urgon — blue veins, eyes beginning to protrude, the general appearance of someone losing an argument with the cold from the inside out. She was wrapped in blankets with soup on the kettle and absolutely no interest in speaking with us. Leeper, while I knocked on the front door, was circling the building — not once but twice, noting the window positions, the roof line, the angle of the rear door. When two wolves emerged from under her bed and she made clear we were no longer welcome, we left. Leeper filed everything away without a word. That is the mark of a professional.

Urgon's cabin had been ransacked. Inside we found a silver mace — which Bangor placed into his pack without ceremony or comment — a mounted yeti head, a modest library, and a receipt for the sale of a dagger, a scroll case, a jade statuette, a quiver of twenty arrows, a silver ring set with jasper, and two blue glass vials to an establishment called Pelc's Curiosities. One thousand gold, two months prior. I noted it. Leeper noted it differently — he was already thinking about where a syndicate fence would move such items and in what order.

Pelc's Curiosities was boarded up. Leeper had the front door open in a manner I will not attempt to describe technically, slipped inside without a sound, and returned two minutes later with a full account of how many people were inside, where they were positioned, and what they were doing. He delivered this information quietly, without drama, in the way that people who are very good at things tend to do them.

We went in. Five elf bandits were waiting for us in the dark, and they had decided that if escape was not an option, violence would serve. Leeper took the first blow, which would have staggered most men. He did not stagger. He stepped back, melted into the shadows with the ease of someone returning to a familiar room, and began moving. A halfling in darkness with a bow is a specific kind of problem, and these bandits had it.

The headshot ended one of them before he knew the arrow was coming. Clean, unhurried, from a position nobody could quite locate. The remaining bandits spent the rest of the fight glancing at the wrong corners while Bangor and I handled what was in front of us. I dispatched one myself with my rapier — I mention this not to compete with the headshot, which I cannot, but for the sake of completeness. I also attempted to provide bardic inspiration to Bangor at a critical moment. He was not paying attention. Our friend Dave, who was running the session, ruled that it failed. This was correct.

The last bandit surrendered. He told us he worked for a woman named Hulil — Tulgi's sister — who had sent them to find relics to fund a cure for Tulgi's condition. Hulil was at a place called Croaker Cave. Then he broke free and made for the door. Bangor held strong opinions about this. The bandit did not make it outside.

In the back room we found the shopkeeper Verla, bundled in blankets. She had also turned to ice. Tracks led back toward Tulgi's cabin. We followed them.

Tulgi refused to open her door. I attempted to persuade her several times in several registers, with diminishing results. Eventually I told her plainly — if she would not speak with us, and we found a cure in that cave, I would not be bringing it back. She could die alone with her wolves and her soup. She opened the door. She confirmed the syndicate, admitted to robbing the curiosity shop herself, and gave us what she knew about Croaker Cave. We brought all of it to Elro before making camp. In the morning we set out.

I write this by firelight, with Bangor asleep beside me and Leeper somewhere in the dark doing whatever rogues do when nobody is watching. We have not resolved the matter yet. I do not know what is in that cave or whether we will come back from it. But I wanted this written before we went in, in case the account is of interest to you regardless of how it ends.

I am looking for a guild. Specifically, I am looking for one that goes to interesting places and encounters remarkable things, because remarkable things make for remarkable stories, and remarkable stories are what I am for. I believe I have demonstrated that I can handle myself, contribute to a group, and — perhaps most usefully — talk a grieving, wolf-owning woman out of letting us die on her doorstep.

More importantly, I want to bring Leeper to your attention. He is young to this life — younger than he carries himself — but he has instincts that cannot be taught and a steadiness under pressure that most veterans would envy. The headshot in the dark. The reconnaissance in the boarded shop. The way he circled Tulgi's house twice without being asked. He does not say much. He does not need to. If your guild has room for a halfling who moves like a rumour and shoots like he has been doing it for thirty years, you would do well to consider him.

I would welcome the opportunity to speak with you, or with Stilgar, whose name I have heard in connection with your operations. I understand he is a man who keeps records. So am I, in my way.