OOC - Author's Note:
This is a two-part story, with both parts now available below. Use the quicklinks to jump to each part. Other characters used with their author's permission. Part of the chronicle: "Where Webs Whisper".
Author’s Note: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written, and gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own (as adapted from live-play with others naturally), but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI support in producing it ultimately.
“A Marketplace Mystery”
The battered fellowship crested the ridge overlooking Ost Guruth just as twilight bled its last hues from the sky. The settlement lay silent beneath a veil of mist, its ancient stone walls dark and weathered, thick with moss and the ghosts of forgotten battles and former kingdoms. A now familiar weight of weariness settled heavily on their shoulders, each step toward the walls a mixture of relief and dread.
For within the guarded confines of Ost Guruth, the air was heavy and unwelcoming… In fact in the marketplace, the air had grown thick with suspicion as the fellowship had returned from their harrowing journey.
The Eglain traders, wrapped in their wary silence and guarded glances, were less inclined than before to part with their goods, once again. Their eyes flicked with distrust toward the ragged fellowship; breefolk, elves, wanderers and ne’er-do-wells is what they saw… a band that was clearly ill-prepared for the wilds.
Supplies that might have once been offered with cautious generosity were now met with tight lips and stiff prices, as though the merchants feared their wares would be wasted or stolen in the unforgiving lands the fellowship sought to cross. Ever were the Eglain wary that their wares would find a route into the hands of their enemies.
Vratni stepped into this atmosphere with the practiced ease of a seasoned peddler, but even his usual bluster and charm met a wall of resistance. He traded tales of distant forges and rare goods, offering trinkets both semi-genuine and questionable, spinning just enough stories to keep the negotiations alive. Yet beneath his words, he could sense the traders’ doubts… each coin weighed against the likelihood that these battered travellers might not survive to use what they bought.
It was a dance of patience and sharp wit, with Vratni pushing hard to secure more than the bare essentials, all while feeling the sting of the traders’ silent judgment and the pressing weight of the journey still to come.
Though the mood now seemed unfriendly, the Eglain weren’t a cruel people. The fellowships’ wounds were tended to, once again, with steady hands, and supplies eventually secured with cautious barter, once again. Quiet conversations hummed under the low flicker of lantern light well into the night, and the night after that, and the night after that. In truth, the party needed the time to heal, once again.
---
On the third day, at the camping spot afforded to outsiders, Vratni shouldered his pack with a grunt. The dull ache of his bruises a fading echo compared to the sharper pain of other’s loss surrounding him. Of note was Locksley’s satchel and the weathered hatchet it once carried both were gone. Swallowed by the spider-webbed ruin of Amon Ros. The thought stung Vratni.
He gazed at the worn leather satchel he’d purchased that very morning to replace the one lost in the ruins. Oh, it was just a simple thing by comparison, sturdy but unadorned. It certainly held nothing of the sentiment its predecessor had borne, but he felt the weight of it more in his heart than in his hands.
He’d always thought of such things as mere tools or gear, easily replaced by coin or craft. He’d learned to not store his memories in objects, because all too often he’d find himself in a situation that required him to part from them, either willingly or unwillingly… but now, knowing what that plain old satchel had meant to her… the memories it carried, the quiet strength it gave her… well, he couldn’t shake a sharp pang of regret.
“Aye,” he muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his neck, “some things ain’t just gear. They’re pieces of who we are, aren’t they…. passed down they are like tales, held close through the best of times and worst of times…. I might be a merchant of wares and whispers, but this… this loss. Her loss… I feel it too…” His fingers brushed the cold leather, a silent vow stirring within. For his part in losing the hatchet especially he felt a gesture was needed. “I’ll do right by her as best I can with this perhaps. It may be new, but it carries the weight of every step she’s yet to take.”
As Vratni muttered his quiet vow to himself, his words drifted softly through the morning air. Cirvalad, ever standing sentinel for the group, caught the sentiment beneath the dwarf’s gruff exterior. The elf’s keen eyes softened briefly, reflecting an understanding born of shared burdens and unspoken hopes. Without interrupting, Cirvalad simply nodded once, a small gesture of respect and solidarity that spoke volumes in the shadowed quiet between them.
Vratni shifted uneasily. The memory of the orc encounter still twisted in his mind… the strange power the elf had wielded, the unsettling calm in the face of death. It was more than respect; it was a wary fear, a hesitation he struggled to hide beneath his usual gruffness.
Clearing his throat, Vratni forced a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Aye, well, I’m takin’ this satchel to the leather smith,” he said, voice rough but steady. “Gonna have them put a ‘T’ on it, for Tivlyn you know. Nothing fancy, mind, but enough so she knows it’s hers.”
He glanced away quickly, fiddling with the strap of his pack, hoping to deflect whatever thoughts Cirvalad might be nursing. “Figured it’s the least I can do… after all that’s gone missin’ back in those cursed ruins. I’ll be back by evening.”
---
A little workshop for leather was tucked away in the corner of the marketplace, if you could call it that. Smelling rich of tanned hides and beeswax polish, Vratni stepped inside, shifting the satchel onto the counter with a soft thump, and tugged at his beard as the trader looked it over.
“Fine piece, that,” the trader said, eyeing the worn leather with a mix of respect and business-minded calculation. “Who’s the lucky owner?”
“Tivlyn Locksley,” Vratni replied, voice low, as if the name itself was a rare jewel not to be wasted. “Need it marked proper-like. Something to show it belongs to her, see?”
The trader nodded and reached for his carving tools, but as Vratni’s gaze wandered, it caught on something else… etched deep into the back wall, partially hidden by shelves of hides and tools, was a rune.
Not just any rune. It looked old, like the ones Vratni had glimpsed in the webbed ruins of Amon Ros and the cold dark cavern beneath it that they had found themselves escaping from. The curling form hinted at more elven script, but not any Vratni could read.
“See that?” Vratni said, pointing with his finger, voice dropping a notch as if sharing a secret. “That Rune. What’s that all about. Strange, don’t ye think?”
The trader shrugged without looking. “Runes like that? They’re all over the market, if you know where to look. Markers, old signs, bits of stories forgotten. No one knows all their meanings. They just put ’em up to keep the place feeling... lively, I suppose.”
Vratni snorted softly, brushing his fingers over the satchel’s leather. “Lively, eh? Or maybe a warning. A market’s no different from a ruined place in some ways… lots of hiding, watching, and secrets. Maybe this one’s just waiting for the right eyes to read it.”
The trader laughed, a dry sound. “Dwarves and their secrets. You’ll be the one to crack it will you? Go on then, keep yourself busy and out of my way…. meanwhile, I’ll mark your satchel.”
The carving began, each cut precise and deliberate, and Vratni leaned in, feeling the weight of meaning behind both the rune and the letter ‘T’ soon to be etched side by side…. marks of ownership, and perhaps, fate.
---
With the satchel freshly engraved, Vratni stepped back into the market’s bustling heart, his keen eyes already scanning anew. The rune on the workshop’s back wall had stirred something in his mind, a whisper of the forgotten and an ever growing awareness of the arcane. The market, with its jumble of stalls, worn stone, and murmuring crowd, seemed suddenly less ordinary… more a place of secrets than mere trade. And Vratni loved secrets…
He began to move deliberately, trying to find these runes dotted about. Tracing the faded markings that were carved, often in hidden corners, on battered beams, weathered stone pillars, and even scuffed cobblestones beneath the merchants’ feet. Pulling parchment and charcoal from a tucked-away pouch, Vratni made careful rubbings; delicate impressions of angular shapes and curling lines, each more curious than the last.
To any casual observer, these would be naught but strange scribbles, but Vratni’s mind was sharp, trained by years of haggling over delicate goods and half-lost histories. The letters were clearly Elven… no doubt of that, but the more he collected, the clearer it became that they were more than simple markings.
Some runes had been defaced, their graceful curves bent and scratched out. Others were contorted in impossible loops, twists that seemed to mock understanding. A pattern emerged… a hidden message woven beneath the surface, locked behind layers of distortion and careful hiding.
Night drew its curtain as Vratni sat beneath a lone lantern near the edge of the market square. By flickering candlelight, he pieced together the fragments, turning the runes over in his mind like a puzzle box.
The scratches were no random acts of vandalism but deliberate camouflage. Underneath the scratches lay…. a pattern. Encoded in the broken script, guiding the reader in… directions.
His breath caught as he aligned the rubbings side by side, the shapes forming a trail, a code meant to be followed.
All paths, all directions... pointed toward one place.
The well.
That humble stone well standing at the market’s centre, unassuming by day, its depths unknown and largely ignored. There were other wells in Ost Guruth, bigger, and maintained… this one seemed to lay idle. A relic of the past, within a relic of the past. He looked around at the crumbling fort.
The market emptied as the final echoes of footsteps faded into the night. Lanterns flickered out, shadows lengthened and curled around crates and carts as they did. The vendors had long since gone, leaving only silence and the slow settling of dust in the still air.
Vratni rose, rolling his parchment with care and slipping it safely into what would become Locksley’s new satchel. He had noted his findings to share with the others when he returned. The weight of what he had uncovered pressed on him… not in coin, but in promise, danger, and the thrill of the unknown.
Sure wasn’t that why he’d left Bree to adventure with them in the first place? All the way back in the Midgewater Marshes, and now in the Lone-lands?
“Things hadn’t exactly gone to plan,” he said quietly to himself, “no, no… but they’d made it through tough spots, and they were together, with new friends… yes… friends…”, he rolled the word around in his head and decided to adjust back to ‘companions’.
He moved slowly toward the well, his footsteps measured but certain. The air was cooler here, the market’s day-warmth fading into a chill that clung to his bones.
Why point to the well?
What lay beneath that well?
A forgotten secret?
A treasure?
Or a trap set long ago, waiting for a fool brave, or desperate, enough to seek it out?
Vratni’s hand rested on the worn stone rim, his eyes glinting with the fire of curiosity, the kind that had led many a dwarf to both fortune and folly.
Tonight, the market held more than wares and whispers.
Tonight, it held a secret calling to him.
“Well, I Never”
Vratni’s hand rested lightly upon the worn stone rim of the well. The rough surface was cool beneath his fingers, its age marked by centuries of weather. Around the well, the market square lay empty and silent, the day’s bustle vanished like smoke on the wind. He looked about the well carefully with his eyes, stone blocks carefully fitted, but naught but the plainest marks visible. No runes. No signs. Just the markings of use over time, though it appeared to have fallen out of us some time ago.
He placed Locksley’s new satchel carefully to one side, its leather catching a stray sliver of moonlight as clouds in the night sky parted momentarily. Unbeknownst to him, the charcoal rubbings he had carefully tucked away in her newly engraved satchel bore a chilling secret that the elves among their party would be able to read… among the swirling elven script and defaced runes, the letters spelling out one dark word would become clear: HARLOEG. A name marked not just in shadow and warning by the Eglain, but also one the party had come across escaping the caverns beneath Amon Ros.
Vratni settled himself on the low stone curb around the well. The night air was still, and it was quiet in the marketplace now, save for the faint rustle of a cat milling about.
As he sat, his thoughts wandered, pulled back by a memory…
Long ago, before the road had hardened his boots and the markets his tongue, there had been a small forge nestled in the Blue Mountains, where more respectable members of Vratni’s family shaped copper during the day and sang songs in the tavern each evening. He was but a young dwarf then; wide-eyed, eager, and far less clever than he liked to think.
One evening, as the firelight flickered against stone walls and the air smelled of sweetened pipeweed, Vratni’s grandfather had taken him aside. The old dwarf’s hands, calloused but steady, were holding a small, roughly carved wooden box.
“Vratni,” he’d said softly, voice low but firm, “this here is no ordinary box. It holds what’s most precious… not gold, nor gems, but memory and trust. You will carry it safe henceforth, and it will carry you through hard times.”
Vratni had looked inside, eyes wide as a child’s almost, finding not treasure but a simple folded piece of parchment; an old family song, written in runes he’d yet to understand.
The memory of those moments warmed Vratni still… the importance of the bond between kin, a promise held in fragile things.
He shifted, brushing dust from his coat, and glanced back at the well. If those stones could hold memory, if they could keep secrets like his grandfather’s box, then maybe the answers weren’t carved plainly for all to see.
Maybe the secret lay within.
A slow grin crept beneath his beard as he rose to his feet.
“If the well’s hidin’ a story, I’ll be needing a look within,” he muttered, reluctantly now, voice barely more than a whisper.
Carefully and with steady hands, Vratni peered over the well’s edge into the inky blackness within.
For a moment, there was nothing to see… an abyss so black it swallowed the very shape of the well’s interior. The cold night pressed close behind him, silence wrapping the market square like a shroud.
Then, as his eyes began to adjust, a faint glimmer caught his attention. Not a reflection of moonlight or distant lanterns, but a soft, steady glow… like the embers of a dying fire flickering in deep shadow. But he could swear that it had the faintest greenish hue to it. His gaze fixed on it, and there, just within arm’s reach, etched into the smooth stone wall far above any waterline he could discern, was indeed a rune.
The shape was intricate: curved lines curling into sharp angles, a rune of Elven design, unmistakably similar to those he’d gathered rubbings from across the market. It was also contorted too, yet this one was different. It continued to pulse faintly with a subtle light, alive with some trace of the arcane…. it unsettled him. And yet… he was drawn to it.
Vratni stared at it, a cold knot twisting in his gut. Only weeks before, such things were nothing more than tavern tales… fanciful stories for wide-eyed halflings and drunken Men. Now here he was, increasingly face to face with the strange and the arcane, with mysteries too real to ignore and too deep for coin or craft to explain. It unsettled him more than any rival’s market takings, yet beneath the doubt burned a stubborn spark of dwarven grit. Whatever lay below, he’d see it through… no turning back now.
Vratni’s fingers itched to reach out, to trace the shape, but caution held him back once more. He squinted harder, trying to see if the glow revealed any further markings or secrets hidden nearby, but all else around was swallowed in blackness… an endless void. His eyes should have adjusted to it, but they hadn’t.
“By Durin’s beard…” he muttered under his breath as he stretched out with his hand.
His fingers could now brush lightly against the pulsing rune, the stone cool and alive beneath his touch. A shiver ran through him, not from cold but from something darker, an old warning whispered in the marrow of his bones. He didn’t dare look deeper, nor would he descend into that yawning blackness…
Then, without warning, a small spider emerged from a crack beside the rune, its many legs skittering up the stone wall with eerie purpose. The single creature multiplied, twisting into a steady stream of crawling shapes, then a steady flood, until, with a sudden whoosh, a great swarm burst forth like a living storm, upwards.
Before Vratni could shout or shift, the swarm surged over him, a tide of writhing legs and glistening bodies. He was knocked clean off the well’s edge, landing hard on his back on the cold cobblestones, the market’s silence shattered by the hiss and scuttle of countless arachnids pouring forth around him.
He struggled to rise, lungs burning, when from the well’s dark throat came a new horror… a massive spider, its carapace gleaming with the same eerie light he’d glimpsed before. Like the monstrous things of the Midgewater Fort, it moved with deadly grace towards him.
Without hesitation, it unleashed a webbing thick and swift, lashing out to entangle Vratni. The sticky threads wrapped around his limbs, creeping fast, relentless, tightening like cold chains. Panic clawed at him as the silk began covering his mouth, stifling his voice. His screams were swallowed beneath layers of suffocating thread.
Then, a shout rang out…. an Eglain guard, who only by chance was drawn by the strange sounds, rushed toward the well to aid the fallen dwarf. The man had terror in his eyes but was carried forward by his duty nonetheless. But before he could lend his aid, the great spider turned and struck again. This time sinking fangs deep into him. The guard’s cry was cut short, brutal and final. He fell dead to the ground. Eyes wide open with that same glassy look of terror on his face, now forever etched.
Vratni, trapped and helpless, could only watch in his own terror as the monstrous creature turned back and wove him further into its cocoon… his muffled screams lost to the night, unheard and unanswered.
And then, from the same well, a figure emerged…. cloaked in shadow, eyes glowing an unnatural green. It was the Stranger. He stepped forward, silent and watchful, the dark light in his gaze flickering like embers in the gloom.
The Stranger’s voice was low and smooth, carrying with it a cold malice.
“Foolish dwarf… you and your party were meant to die in Amon Ros. That would have been a mercy, compared to what awaits if you continue on this path to Harloeg… a place where darker things preserve my hold on the spiders across the lone-lands… Alas, your own fate is soon sealed, though death will not come swiftly enough for your liking. I have plans for you yet, Vratni Copperhand… plans beyond your understanding, and beyond your escape.”
His gaze flickered briefly over the fallen guard, then back toward the cocooned form of Vratni, struggling still.
Without another word, the Stranger turned, his cloak billowing like smoke as he slipped back toward the well’s maw. His figure vanished into the darkness, descending swiftly and silently into the abyss below.
For a moment, silence fell.
Then, the swarm of spiders stirred anew, writhing and pulling at the cocoon that held Vratni prisoner. The larger spider gripped it tightly with its many legs, dragging the shrouded dwarf toward the well’s edge.
Panic surged through Vratni like wildfire. His heart was pounding a frantic rhythm, it felt like it would burst forth from his chest, his eyes wide with the desperate, helpless knowledge of the abyss awaiting below.
Slowly, inexorably, the cocoon tipped upward.
Time seemed to pause as it teetered on the rim… then, with a final shudder, it fell over the edge, disappearing into the black void below.
The market square lay completely still once more. The faint glow of the rune within the well flickering like a dying ember before fading into the surrounding darkness
Only the lifeless form of the guard remained, sprawled near the well’s base, and beside him, the satchel Vratni had intended to give to Tivlyn, marked with the simple letter ‘T’, resting quietly against the cold stone.
As Vratni was pulled deeper into the abyss, his thoughts blurred and dimmed. The binding of the silk, the cold pull of the spiders, the deafening sound of skittering as he was being pulled… and echoes of the Stranger’s ominous words all pressed upon him.
Yet somewhere beneath the terror, a single, stubborn thread of hope remained… hope that his companions would find the satchel, and see its carefully tucked and folded note listing his discoveries… that they might realise something had happened… and that they might figure out where he had been taken…
In the suffocating blackness, Vratni’s last fading thought was a desperate wish, a fool’s hope… but it was all he had.
[the story more broadly continues in the chronicle: "Where Webs Whisper"]
