Baeron Thundestaff II

DAY 145 (3rd Eleasis)(August)

On this very morning Fenrir was freed from prison.

Maliantor of the Grey Hands escorted him to the Thunderstaff Villa where Elsdon

was overjoyed to get back another of his sons.

It was a sad day though, despite this, because Baeron was to be burned at the

stake.

Maliantor gave Fenrir his pardon (a large folded piece of vellum officially stamped

by the Lords of Waterdeep themselves) and a letter from his uncle.

The letter read:

Dear Fenrir,

By the time you read this, I will be dead. I traded my life, and the

lives of several other powerful warlocks for yours. I hope and trust

you will not waste this sacrifice.

This is not the first time I have died though, and if it comes within

your reach, to resurrect me, then please do so.

My brother, your father, is a good and just man, but foolish in the

ways of the city. Arsten II is my legitimate heir, but Shallerim will

contest it. Please help guide your father when he chooses sides.

For me it is no matter as long as the House of Thunderstaff stays strong.

Arsten II is arrogant, proud and wasteful, but at least has a strong will.

Shallerim is clever and worthy, but dull when it comes to business and

unimaginative.

Also, do whatever Bnurgstickslackskin asks of you. The devils now have

the upper hand over us in Waterdeep, to say the least. You are now the

most powerful warlock in the city since all the others have been killed,

burnt or have fled.

Make no mistake, Gilliard De Rosen and all the devils of the Nine Hells

of Baator are now after you. Your survival, and the survival of all

Thundestaffs rely on you doing as our master commands.

And do not disregard the inquisition, they have pardoned you, but they

will attempt to take all the family wealth by supposedly legal means.

Your family will try and play them at their own game in defeating them

in this though and you will certainly need to aid them with your special

talents for diplomacy.

I know you have not shown yourself to be up to this task, I only hope

that you can call on, hitherto unseen, reserves of judgement and sense.

Your Uncle

Baeron Thunderstaff

That afternoon Baeron was burned to death in the Market Square. It drew

the biggest crowd yet. Corum and the others watched from the top floor

of the OJB. Baeron gave an impassioned speech which shamed the inquisition

and turned the crowd in his favour.

I have recorded it here:

''

'You look for people to blame, for these times, some notion of

the fictional infernalists you have invented to scare the people.

While scarecrows dressed in rags stalk the city from the North Downs

to the Dock Ward you seek to preserve something barely worth saving.

In this edifice of a city are military officers destitute of military

knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers

without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world

worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all

totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in

pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of

Nobility, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which

anything is to be got; these are to be told off by the score and the

score.

People not immediately connected with the City or the State, yet

equally unconnected with anything that is real, or with lives passed in

travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, are no less

abundant.

Clerics who make great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary

disorders that never existed, smile upon their courtly patients in the

ante-chambers of the rich. Projectors who have discovered every kind

of remedy for the little evils with which the City is touched, except

the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin,

pour their distracting babble into any ears they can lay hold of.

Unbelieving Sorcerers who are remodelling the world with words, and

making card-towers to scale the skies with, conniving with Unbelieving

Wizards who have an eye on everything wicked.

Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which are at that

remarkable time--and have been since--to be known by its fruits of

indifference to every natural subject of human interest, are in the most

exemplary state of exhaustion while outside their locked and barred

windows the shambling shades of humanity lurk for a carelessly

thrown crust of bread.

If you want to see devils and demons Waterdeep then look to yourselves!

There will be no pause to your suffering while you are whipped with

switches of your own fashioning.

For me it is the end, and I am beyond redemption, but by this small

token, this gesture, I end my life with something profound and good.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is

a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.'

''