18. The Man Called Nix

The fierce fight against the oni continued.

The creature had just turned invisible and hidden its presence, and Wilfred's *detect magic* wasn't revealing anything within its range. Hissing cats gave away its location though - it had gone straight up! A few more shots and spells were fired, the oni fled further, and some of the party gave chase. On the cusp of death, the giant-kin first tried to bargain with the party, saying powerful people like them could get a lot done in a place like this. When the group were not receptive, it threatened Clwyd's life instead, knocking her unconscious with a swing of its huge iron club. Against all odds, Clwyd came back from the brink on her own and managed to finish off the regenerative oni once and for all with a potent dose of her alchemical acid.

She immediately took to rifling through the magical effects of the creature, taking its ring for herself. Then she noticed all the glyph marks on the iron club glowing with a cold blue light and winking out one at a time in fairly rapid succession. Through magical means, Clwyd had learned that the magic of the club was what had bolstered the oni's strength in such a way. And it was losing its magic quickly on the creature's death, all of it leeching out the iron club and returning to its origin. Riding on shaky instincts, Clwyd staved off the bleeding magic as if she were hot wiring an engine. The language, it turned out, was Infernal, and Cormorant knew enough to help her with what she wanted to do. The old man cast a glimpse at the writing and discerned that it was something of a contract that had been forged between this oni and an infernal devil of some kind. He was trepidatious about taking magic like that from some unknown creature but Clwyd was confident that she wasn't signing anything so it would be fine - she was just stealing the magic. They spent a number of hours in the streets working feverishly to transfer and supplement what glyphs they needed to onto Malak's sword. When at last they were done, they bundled the huge oni's damaged carrion into the portable hole - and it blocked the way to everything below it with its enormous bulk - since Clwyd was confident she could produce something from the innate magics the creature had within its body.

As they worked, Fang briefly approached the group, nodded his approval at seeing the oni dead, and told them he and his crew were holed up in Penny Town, a little neighbourhood in the Pieces, before quickly taking his leave. Some of the party slept in Pyt's drum-yurt while others didn't have the time for a full night's rest. In the morning, a small crowd of people had emerged to look at the shimmering drum building that had manifested itself in the Pieces and quickly scattered when the party emerged. Except for one: a child who looked at them and spoke with the authority of the Warden. He confirmed with the party that they'd done the job, but didn't ask to see the body - trusting that they'd done what they were tasked with if they said they were. He turned to Cormorant and told him the following:

> All that I know is as follows: *the Vow* docked in Tortuga just two weeks' past. Its captain did her upmost to not be tracked around the turtle and proved to be very good at disappearing indeed. She came to some of my friends on her second day on the shell and bought out the anonymity of one of my clients. In Bronze Boy, she met with this man, in a bar by the name of Blue Mountain. This was an old friend of yours, in fact: Greenbeard. I hear there was something of a fight after their conversation. Other than this, her dealings on the turtle are unclear, even to me. She stopped briefly in Riverside, and I suspect she refused Badger's call to treat with other pirates. On her third day on the turtle, the day after your new friends here arrived, she swung by the Cat and Biscuit alehouse in the Sinner Side and set the place on fire. Then she sailed away.
>
>

After this, the Warden, through this child, said their business was thus concluded, and the child left.

Travelling through this area of the Pieces, Shaky Bend, the party quickly came across the crowds of people trying to help the families whose houses were destroyed or damaged in last night's fighting. There was anger and sorrow in the crowd, but a great deal of gratitude for what the group had done too. Word travels quickly in the Pieces, and most were aware that these few people had killed the thing that was going after everyone's children.

Cormorant took the party to a breakfast restaurant called HQ. It was near the water's edge at the front side of the fin, facing out to where Tortuga was heading in the atoll. Over food, the group discussed how to track down the six ice mephiti they needed to get to fulfil their obligation to the Proprietor and Lady Rouge, according to the Crooked Warden. As they did so, a nasaly voice piped up, saying he could probably help with the task. Perched at the end of the table, having just dropped an invisibility spell, was a tiny black imp with a creepy little grin. He said 'hiya' and introduced himself as a worker for Wicked Nix, the party's newest ally. They all spoke briefly before taking the imp up on the offer and asking him to subdue the mephiti without killing them.

A few hours passed and the group took to trying to come up with hazing rituals for Cormorant, who was keen on joining them but was met with a less than enthusiastic response. Wilfred took the human outside for his own initiation task, but once there the party saw a crowd gathered at the waterline, completely surrounding the areas where some little shrines stood. They were all looking out to the horizon, where six ships all flying Shandy's flag were sailing towards the turtle. At their front was one vessel unlike the others, truly enormous in size: *the Behemoth*, the flagship of one of Shandy's commanders, Nogg the Dread Drake. Shandy had not sent a commander to Tortuga in a long, long time, and as the urchins of the Pieces scattered with military precision, the party got the feeling they weren't going to be the talk of the town for much longer.

As they looked, a man's voice spoke up from behind them. It was Nix. No imp was visible but a pure black raven perched on his shoulder. He threw a frost-covered sack on the ground and had a brief conversation with the party. They concluded it would be nicer to speak properly somewhere else and agreed to meet in a restaurant in Riverside called the Broken Wing at sundown.

The party travelled to Lady Rouge's Red Velvet to hand over the mephiti. When at last she was summoned, the Lady was far less amenable than she had been when the party first visited. She hurried them to a side sitting room and explained in blunt terms that she'd been waiting nine days for them to complete this task that was assigned to them - and losing money for every moment they hadn't done it. She did not see this as the conduct of a group that respected her. She took the party through a secret passage that ran under the surface of the shell to the bathhouse's basement. Inside was a large mass of copper tubing, walls and devices embedded with glowing crystals, and a lot of workers running around feverishly. Little Crow of Ingela's crew was also present with an entourage of Lady Rouge's workers around her helping. She had a pair of mephiti before her, one of ice and one of steam. They'd been bound together and were snapping out as best they could but with a flick of her wand they swirled and condensed and were eventually sealed in a little crystal that glowed and hummed on the floor. The elementals had been bound to the thing and bathhouse workers quickly moved to fix it in place among the other crystals, where it began producing water to travel through the piping and feed the many baths of the building. Clwyd and Wilfred unleashed a barrage of questions on the standoffish woman, interested in how she'd done that and where she'd studied. She was engrossed in the work and not at all interested in answering them. The inquiries were cut off when Rouge snapped for them to leave the mephiti they'd collected and to kindly not interrogate one of her guests in this manner.

Cormorant wanted to speak with the Lady on what he'd learned from the Warden. She led the party back to the Red Velvet through the passageway, not keen to talk in the basement of the bathhouse. Inside, she told Cormorant that she didn't know much of what had happened in Bronze Boy other than what he already knew. There had been something of a tussle in Bar Blue Mountain. Pyt fired off his own curt replies to Rouge before storming out the place saying 'fuck that bitch.' Clark tried his best to not burn the bridge all the way down but Rouge reiterated again that she wasn't a warrior or a mage and she only got by through acts of mutual respect. Having been so low priority to the party for their time on Tortuga had soured her to them and their work ethic.

The group headed to Blue Mountain in Bronze Boy, content to try and help Cormorant with his errands. What they found was a small cafe with no bar, just a number of tables and walls lined with books. The owner, an old human by the name of Junior, spent most of his time in the corner of the room, reading or otherwise keeping to himself. The party were served coffee and had their choice of whisky or rum added. Wilfred, invisible at the time, stole a book called True Lycanthropy from the shelves of the place. Cormorant questioned the owner of the place a bit and learned that there had indeed been a fight between two pirates in the place a little while back. In fact, most of the furniture and even some of the books were brand new as a result. Junior didn't tend to listen too carefully to what his customers were talking about when they were in his place, but since things were getting heated between those two he'd heard them saying something about a boat, Greenbeard had gotten offended, and then shit had started flying. Junior had blacklisted him, and all his friends in Bronze Boy would honour it. Meaning if Greenbeard was keen for a drink there, he'd only be able to do so in the bars that weren't friendly with Junior for one reason or another: Bar Bistro Pavo, Bar New Albatross, Bar Death Match in Hell, Bar Dutch Courage, and Bar Soap Land.

As the sun was setting, the group arrived at the restaurant and met Nix and his imp inside in a private room. They talked about a great many things. Nix told them some of what had happened at Badger's parley: he had been swayed to join the cause and sail for Driscoll on noticing the potential some of the party apparently had. Hot Eye seemed like he might be keen to join a war against Shandy since it was more than just a pie in the sky kind of ambition at this point. Hells Bells liked coin more than anything. Nix suspected he'd be one of the first people Shandy's goons started hiring to come after the party - an easy way to sidestep the Tortuga Rules that forbid pirate lords from killing each other. Itz was an enigma to Nix, but she hadn't seemed keen to listen to what Badger had to say. Ingela was certainly out. She'd said she thought Badger was on the losing side and she had little interest in sailing under him, Driscoll, or anyone else.

Nix was curious if the party were going to try and fight the Dread Drake now that he'd shown up. He said he gets frightfully bored but that could be a great deal of fun indeed. The group ummed and ahhed about it a bit, though Nix did suggest that if they were going to fight Nogg then he thinks they'd be best to do it by stranding him in the water. Nogg, according to Nix, was some combination of dragon and giant-kin - a rare creature of the sort that Shandy is particularly fond of. He was a monster of a fighter on land. But at sea, Nix was confident they could cripple him by simply killing the masses of slaves he has working the rigging and oars on his ship. Needless to say, the party were less than keen on the idea of killing them all, instead suggestion they might start a rebellion. Nix all but laughed, wondering how they'd get the time while sneaking aboard Nogg's flagship to inspire feelings of hope and courage in people who would have been tortured and had their minds and spirits broken long ago. Far easier to kill them, though he would hold off on it until they finalised a plan of sorts.

When asked, Nix also briefly spoke of his other obligations. He belonged to an infernal household, middling in rank, headed by his mother. He was their emissary on Terca Mahres, and between his own side projects and amusements, he searched for people with the potential to house and nurture a mote of power that his household owned. In short, he acted as a patron to those who sought power and didn't mind paying the price of entering his household in servitude. He even offered this as a possibility for the party's consideration when Clwyd asked if there was anything they could do that would help Nix out. They all declined for the time being.

In the final moments of the meal, Wilfred, trusting Nix, asked him if he recognised the tear drop necklace that he had. Nix thought it resembled a dragon scale that had been worn down, though the metallic dragons had long since removed themselves from the spotlight so it was a curious item indeed. Pyt asked him if he knew anything about Mab and he said that he knew of the Queen of Air and Darkness. She ruled the sky and the night in Faerie. Stories say she tried to steal the moon from the sky and that's why this world shared it with the night sky of her own plane of existence. He knew she was powerful, beautiful, and beguiling, but confessed that he wasn't all that interested in the dealings of the fey so his knowledge on them was sub-par. Nix also shared with the group that if all they need to do to get Vic back is impress the Proprietor, the easiest way to do that would probably be to catch a fierce and interesting beast and deliver it for his use in the Garden of Sands.

At the end of the meal, Nix and his imp took their leave and the party found rest in a hotel called Cloud Nine, agreeing to meet Nix at sundown the next day at a small homestead in Riverside called the Thatchroof.

Messages between the party and Duster can be found here

Do me a favour and give some feedback about the state of the game Template:Navbox Part Two