ON THE ROAD TO THE SLAVERS STOCKADE
I, Silversun, Magic-User of Greyhawk—disciple of Balan Xos of Alhaster, blooded son of Jace Kasmina, twice-named and reborn beneath the Third Moon by the deliberate hand of Xos himself—do now set quill to rare and costly papyrus, my mind unclouded, my body unbroken, and my soul properly aligned to the mother Greyhawk.
By will, by study, and by witnessed truth, I declare that all which follows is a faithful accounting of this age and the bodies, deeds, and atrocities herein entangled, recorded not as rumor nor fancy, but as fact—for those who yet live, and for those who will dare to remember.
We buried Dixon where the road bent and the stones were easy to steal.
We stripped his armor first—his death by Vampire ensuring we prepared his body correctly—and then we laid him down, pale and empty, beneath a cairn stacked by tired hands. His beard was still stiff with dried blood. No prayers were spoken. No song dared rise. Only the wind marked his passing, whispering through the grass as if the world itself wished to forget him. When we left, we carried less weight in coin and more in guilt, and whatever absolution we once chased felt farther away than ever.
The road does not remain empty for long.
Lalaith joined us soon after—a half-elf Jester with bells that laughed when she did not, and eyes far too sharp for someone who wore mockery so easily. Where Dixon had been iron and stubborn certainty, she was masks and misdirection, humor stretched thin over old wounds. I watched her carefully. I always do.
Blood followed us regardless.
While Terry Or knelt apart from the camp, murmuring prayers and preparing new spells, and Dog ranged ahead as he always did, the southern ridgeline betrayed itself—movement against the sky, large silhouettes advancing with intent rather than hunger.
Dog was back in moments, breath steady, eyes hard.
“Company,” he said. “Big. Not subtle.”
There was no panic, no wasted words. The decision came clean and sharp: we would meet them on the road, not let them crash into us blind and howling.
At ninety yards the mist thinned just enough for truth to emerge. These were not common gnolls—no scavengers or rabble. Their armor was heavier, their spacing deliberate. Flinds. I felt a cold knot settle in my stomach.
Dog loosed first, an arrow flying true before they could break stride.
I weighed Fireball, then Web and dismissed them—too risky, too soon. Terry Or instead cracked a prayer scroll, divine words snapping taut around us like tightened straps on armor.
When the lines met, the world collapsed into violence.
Irving surged forward without hesitation, charging the largest brute head-on, faith and steel carried like a battering ram. Tiger Wong slipped past him, arrows hissing toward the monk as he vaulted into a flying kick that rocked the flind leader backward, teeth spraying blood.
Lalaith stayed just behind the line, her voice sharp and merciless as she hurled insults in the gnoll tongue—mockery meant to fray discipline and rot courage.
Terry Or began a Hold Person—and screamed as an arrow punched through his shoulder. The spell shattered mid-syllable.
Slash dropped Entangle late. Roots erupted violently from the roadbed,
clawing and twisting, snaring enemy and ally alike.
“Sorry!” he shouted, even as the spell turned the melee into a slaughterhouse.
Steel rang. Bone cracked. Chance itself seemed to roll across the dirt.
Tiger tore free just in time, bloodied and gasping. Irving crushed a morningstar wielder into the mud. Dog and Slash worked with brutal efficiency, dropping targets clean and final.
When the surviving axemen finally broke and ran south, morale shattered, Dog and I ensured they did not get far.
Silence reclaimed the road.
Slash wiped gore from his blade, scowling at the bodies.
“Those weren’t gnolls,” he said quietly. “Flinds.”
I stared at their fallen forms, at their better steel and disciplined formations.
That explained everything.
The order.
The funding.
We knew better than to leave such a sign.
We dragged corpses into ditches and brush, snapped backs hauling dead weight through thorns, ground blood into mud beneath our boots. By the time we were done, the road looked abandoned—empty, not murdered. Appearances matter.
Still, unease gnawed at me.
I knelt among the flinds, prying apart ruined armor plates with a dagger. Symbols had been etched into the metal—jagged, deliberate, wrong. They clawed at my memory, tugging at half-forgotten lectures and forbidden marginalia from Greyhawk’s deeper stacks. No name came. No sigil answered.
That disturbed me more than recognition ever could.
Whatever armed these beasts did so with purpose. The Slave Lords’ shadow was longer than we feared.
After a full day’s march we sighted the Drachensgrab Hills, their shapes hunched and watchful against the dying light. Dog found us a defensible camp as the sun sank low. The night, improbably, was calm. Terry Or made his devotions at dawn, pulling clean water from nothingness while Dog hunted fresh game. Order, faith, and survival—each of us clinging to what we knew.
Morning came wrapped in mist.
We had not gone far when Dog raised a fist and froze us in place. A figure lay by the roadside. Time stretched thin as he crept forward. At last he waved us over.
She was a woman—comely once, perhaps—now hollow-eyed and broken, her body telling a story of chains and hunger long before her mouth did. We gave her food and water. She devoured both like a dying thing.
Her name, she said, was Lady Morwen Ellisar.
She did not say from where.
She did, however, name the fortress we sought: the Fattening Grounds.
That alone set every alarm ringing in my skull.
Lalaith glanced at me, her eyes asking what her mouth would not. I answered in kind—I did not trust this “noblewoman” either. Tiger Wong and Lalaith circled her with polite questions sharpened like knives, probing for cracks. I never let her leave my sight.
The others fawned.
Dog, Terry Or, Irving—they offered comfort, praise, protection. She collapsed from exhaustion before nightfall, and darkness followed swiftly.
Morning came again, mist-thick and sound-heavy.
Morwen insisted on guiding us to the fortress, on helping us kill the slavers. Before I could object, the world itself spoke.
At first it sounded like distant thunder.
Then we all recognized it.
Marching.
Too many boots to count. Dog hissed for us to hide.
I did not hesitate. I vanished from sight, weaving invisibility around myself and moving away from the others. Tiger Wong did the same in his own way, flowing into shadow. Dog dragged Morwen into the tall, wet grass and vanished with her. Terry Or and Lalaith flattened themselves beside him, breathing shallow and still.
I searched for a place where I could safely cast a fireball should things collapse into chaos.
That is when I saw him.
Standing alone. Unmoving. Waiting.
Irving the Reluctant—Paladin of Cuthbert—defiant as a statue, honor welded to his spine, refusing to bend even now.
“Fool,” I muttered. “He’ll be stripped of his powers again, and we’ll all be chasing redemption like idiots.”
I clenched my jaw, watching him square his shoulders toward the sound of marching boots.
“He needs to meet them honorably,” I scoffed. “Bah. All brawn, no brain. I’m not even sure that counts as an honorable death.”
No sight of them yet only footfall…
