The Langedale Crier
Being a true & faithfull accompt of deeds, disgraces and sundry marvels within the West Marches
Langedale. — It is the settled custom of this city that a Master of Dungeon keep a cold distance from the creatures he sets in his corridors. Employ them, feed them, wind them up and point them at the door — but do not, on any account, be found with their hands upon your shoulders and a smile upon your face.
That custom was broken on Tuesday last, some forty fathom beneath Sallow Hill, and the whole of Langedale has spoken of little else since.
The gentleman in question — Master Berrold Quaine, licensed these eleven years to keep and provision the Sallow Hill delve — was discovered in the third vault at an hour when no delve should have been occupied at all. With him were Grix, Ulvo and Mother Hessle, three goblins carried upon his own payroll as Hazard Wardens.
There was no fighting. There was, by every account, considerably worse: conversation.
The Warden's Account
"They were laughing," said Deputy Warden Ansel Roke, who came upon the party whilst making his rounds. "The four of them. Laughing, in a hazard vault, on a Tuesday. I have served the Wardens' Office nineteen years and I have never been so put out."
Master Quaine offers no denial. He offers, instead, an argument, and it is one this paper is obliged to report in full.
"They are the best hazard crew in the Marches and I have never once had to replace one," he told the Crier from the steps of the Guildhall. "Grix has held that third vault six years. Ulvo trains every new hire that comes through my door. Mother Hessle has pulled two dozen delvers out of collapsed shafts, and half of them are the same delvers now writing to complain of me. I am told fraternizing is unbecoming. I am told nothing at all of what is owed them."
A Matter of the Ledger
What is owed them appears to be the crux of it. Papers laid before the Guild of Delvers this week show the Sallow Hill hazard crew paid in copper and cave-melon at a rate one-fifth that of a human warden of like standing, with no lamp allowance and no death-price payable to kin.
Master Quaine, it emerges, had been petitioning quietly for the correction of this these three seasons, and had been quietly ignored these three seasons.
The Guild has opened proceedings. Master Quaine's license is suspended pending their finding. The hazard crew, notably, has not been suspended, upon the grounds that nobody else at the Guild knows how the third vault works.
Mother Hessle, asked for comment, declined at length, then reconsidered. "Write down that we came to the picture willingly," she said. "Write down that he asked first."
The Crier's position, plainly: the scandal is not the hand upon the shoulder. The scandal is the ledger.
The Guild sits again upon Ninthday. The third vault, meanwhile, remains open, remains hazardous, and remains held by three goblins working at one-fifth wage whilst the city debates the propriety of their employer's manners.
The Widows Walk Again After Thirty Years
A Relic Comes Up Out of Delian's Tomb
The name was thought buried with the generation that first bore it. It is not. Three figures came up out of Delian's Tomb this month with a relic of the old world in hand, and when asked at the gate who they were, gave the answer no one under forty expected to hear in their lifetime.
They are Nimuë, a wode elf shadow who is seen chiefly when she wishes to be; Orien, a censor of devilish stock and — the Crier is assured by two separate priests — good repute; and Wendell, a human null, who reportedly ended a fight in the tomb's antechamber by walking into the middle of it and letting the magic die.
Of the artifact itself they will say nothing beyond that it is old, that it is theirs to keep for now, and that it is safer with them than under Delian.
Langedale Quite Loses Its Head Over the Wode Elf Nimuë
Forty-One Letters in Nine Days — Thirty-Nine of Them in Verse
Two of the Widows are spoken of for what they have done. The third is spoken of rather differently.
The consensus — which the Crier reports and does not pretend to have resisted — is that no elf so beautiful has walked the West Marches within living memory. Hair the pale gold of new-threshed wheat, worn loose; a pair of eyes that glow a soft and steady rose, giving light enough to read by and no warmth whatever; and a figure so generously and unfairly proportioned that the Painters' Guild has abandoned three commissions rather than fail at it a fourth time. Voluptuous is the word arriving most often in our post, and, we note, the word most frequently misspelled.
It is the eyes that undo the poets. Reese, keeper of the Featherbed Inn, reports that when the lady takes the corner bench and the lamps burn low, the pink of them carries the length of the room, and that trade in that quarter of his house has become impossible to conduct.
Reese has laid on extra benches upon the nights she is expected, and reports his takings doubled and his breakages tripled. A cooper's apprentice walked into the mill race on Sixthday whilst looking over his shoulder. He is recovering. He says it was worth it.
The lady herself is unmoved. Asked by this correspondent whether she was aware of the sensation, Nimuë replied that she had noticed, that she had been beautiful rather longer than Langedale had been standing, and that it had never once stopped anything from trying to kill her.
Readers are reminded that she is a shadow by trade. Three gallants who thought to follow her home from the Featherbed woke at dawn upon the wrong bank of the river with their purses untouched and their dignity nowhere to be found. The Crier counsels admiration at a distance, and in writing.
The Gilded Hand Found Gilt Only on the Outside
Two Chapter-Captains Fled — A Third in Custody and Talking
The Marches' most decorated company stands accused this week of the oldest trick in the trade: selling the danger it was paid to remove. Seized correspondence indicates the Gilded Hand accepted retainers from three border hamlets whilst accepting a second purse from the raiders troubling them.
Hamlets holding a Gilded Hand contract are advised by the Wardens' Office to consider it void, and to say so loudly.
Island Stronghold Passes Into Better Hands
The Wraiths Broken — Their Chief Slain in His Own Hall
For eleven years no cargo crossed Langedale's water without the Wraiths taking their cut of it. The arrangement ended abruptly when their leader was killed in his own hall.
The island keep now flies no colours and answers to no council. It is held privately by the Widows as a base and a house of refuge, and the harbour-masters report the first honest quarter the docks have seen in a decade. The city has not asked too many questions of the arrangement, and does not appear inclined to.
Dwarven Captives Returned to Their Kin
The Tower Stands Empty
A line of dwarves came down the tower road this fortnight, thin and blinking, having been held some months by a sorcerer whose name the Wardens have asked us not to print. All are accounted for. The tower stands empty. The sorcerer does not stand at all.
Notices & Wants
Wanted — Hazard wardens, any ancestry, Sallow Hill delve. Lamp allowance provided. Wages posted openly at the gate. Enquire of B. Quaine, presently at liberty.
Lost — One reliquary key, iron, tooth-shaped. Taken from Delian's Tomb by parties unknown. No reward offered. No questions will be answered.
For sale — Gilded Hand tabards, forty-two, lightly worn, crest removable. Best offer. Discretion assured.
Notice — The ferry to the island keep runs at dawn and dusk and carries the desperate without charge. Do not attempt the crossing otherwise. The water is watched.
Sought — A rhyme for Nimuë. The Poets' Circle of Cooper's Row will pay three silver for one that scans and does not embarrass the subject. Eleven submissions received. Eleven rejected.
Sought — Any soul who served alongside the first Widows, thirty year gone. Speak to the Crier's office. Your name will be kept.
Printed at the sign of the Quill, Cooper's Row, Langedale — set in Fell types & struck upon the hour — the Crier prints what it can prove, and prints the rest as rumour, plainly labelled