STORY 3 - INN OF THE FORSAKEN: STROKE OF MIDNIGHT

The autumn wind off the Midgewater Marshes carried a biting chill, rattling the rotten shutters of The Forsaken Inn. Within its damp, grease-stained walls, a distinct lack of harmony presided over a lone corner table. Echelandir, the Captain, was far to the north, leading the main host of the Company through the windswept hills of the North Downs on a protracted campaign that would keep him away for at least three tedious weeks.

Left in his stead to govern the remaining outcasts was Echelannia, a loremaster of the sun-drenched climes of Harad. She sat rigid, her dark eyes flashing with unvarnished fury, her fingers tightly gripping her carved staff. To her profound displeasure, she had been relegated to the role of a nursemaid to two of the most unprincipled scoundrels the Company had ever harbored.

Across from her sat Echelwardir, a warden from Bree whose veins ran with more cheap ale than honest blood, and Echelarea, a rogue of an elf who defied all woodland grace by wearing clanking, battle-scarred heavy armor and carrying twin wicked longswords. Both were brigands and cutpurses in their hearts. Yet, despite their lawless nature, they kept their heads down under Echelannia’s stern gaze; they well knew that her temper was a volatile thing, prone to summoning rolling thunder and scorching columns of arcane flame.

“Oh well I will tell you the last one, as my throat is dry and I need to drink more” yelled Echelarea.

“I am waiting, hit me with the best you have!” was also yelling Echelwardir.

“Prepare then” she started”:

“It is said in the tavern-lore of the Westfarthing that old Barnaby the Miller possessed two great loves: a cellar filled with the potent, dark Shire Stout, and a prize-winning, exceptionally stout sow named Bella.

One winter evening, after imbibing a few mugs too many of his own dark brew, Barnaby staggered into the pitch-black darkness of his barn, his vision clouded by the spirit of the barley. Mistaking the warm, heavy, and remarkably round form of his sleeping prize sow for his dear wife, Primula, the old miller clumsily climbed into the hay beside the beast.

He wrapped his arms around the bristly, plump creature, sighing with great affection, <<Ah, my sweet Primula! Never have I felt thee so warm, though I confess, thy winter cloak is unusually coarse tonight, and thy embrace smells wondrously of the autumn acorns!>>

The heavy sow, disturbed in her slumber but thoroughly enjoying the gentle scratching behind her ears, let out a deep, satisfied, and echoing: <<Oink.>>

Barnaby, blinking through his drunken stupor, patted the beast's flank and murmured with an amorous smile: <<Nay, my love, do not speak to me in that foreign tongue of the Southfarthing... but I completely agree, we should leave the lantern unlit!”

yelled rather told the story Echelarea.

“Bwahahaha ohohohoh” yelled even lauder spitting alcohol around Echelwardir, his beard whole wet and with some crumbles of bread on it.

The whole Inn also laughed, well in the number of two, because it was empty…

"We are here on an errand of mercy, not a tavern crawl," Echelannia hissed, her voice cutting through the smoky room like a knife.

The contract had come from Anlaf the Forlorn, the desperate proprietor of this ramshackle waypoint. For weeks, an agonizing, ghostly wailing had echoed directly through the basement walls at midnight, driving away what few patrons remained and threatening to ruin his fragile business.

As the midnight hour approached, a dreadful, blood-chilling shriek vibrated through the floorboards—a mournful howl of the damned.

"Dreadful stuff," Echelwardir grunted, “Hey be quiet there you dead people!” he yelled and hitting with his large boot the wooden floor, entirely unphased as he wiped foam from his beard. He leaned over to Echelarea. "But you know what's louder? My thirst. I reckon Anlaf keeps the good vintage downstairs away from the wailing. Let's liberate a few kegs of Forsaken Ale while the loremaster is brooding."

Echelarea grinned, her elven eyes glinting with larceny. "Aye, a cask or three will compensate for this miserable weather."

“Five…” hissed Echelwardir.

Slipping away into the shadows of the cellar under the pretense of investigating, the two thieves began rummaging through the darkness. Echelwardir grabbed a massive wooden shelf to see if any bottles were hidden behind it, but as he pulled, the heavy unit swung outward with a grinding screech of stone. It was a hidden door. Below lay a gaping, ancient crypt system, cold and silent.

Before they could even contemplate the dark steps, a man stepped from the gloom of the passage. He was a shifty, sharp-eyed fellow who introduced himself as Umín.

"Ah, travelers," Umín purred, offering a shallow bow. "I know these depths. I can translate the runes and guide you through the ancient traps."

Echelwardir let out a loud, drunken bark of laughter, drawing his spear. "Listen here, mate. We don't know you, and we don't trust you. You’re going to open every bloody door in this hole, or I’ll test the sharpness of this tip on your ribs. Understand?"

Echelannia appeared at the top of the stairs, her staff illuminating the crypt with a harsh, white light. She cast a long, calculating look at Umín. She sensed the rot of deceit on him, but she stepped down into the dark regardless. "Lead on, guide," she said coldly. "But remember my companions' words. They are violent people."

What followed was not a cautious exploration, but a loud, chaotic massacre of the unliving. The deep caverns were crawling with skeletal remains, shuffling zombies, and weeping spirits. To the absolute delight of the two brigands, there was finally something to kill.

"Have at thee, bone-rattlers!" Echelwardir roared, half-inebriated and utterly euphoric as he smashed his shield into a charging skeleton, obliterating it into a cloud of calcium dust. He swept his spear in broad, reckless arcs, demolishing ancient sarcophagi and structural pillars in his joy.

Beside him, Echelarea was a whirlwind of heavy steel. Her heavy armor clanked like a blacksmith’s shop, but her twin swords were mercilessly precise. She sliced through undead flesh and ancient shrouds one by one, laughing maniacally. "Gold! There must be gold at the bottom of this hole!" she shouted.

Echelannia walked behind them at a distanced, regal pace. With casual flicks of her wrist, her magic erupted, sending waves of blinding fire that incinerated the remaining ghouls into ash. Yet, one eye was permanently fixed on Umín.

As they neared a massive stone gate covered in interlocking gears, Umín stopped to read the glyphs. He glanced at Echelarea’s heavy gauntlets and sneered, "For a burglar, you seem rather useless at picking locks. Perhaps you should let someone with finesse do the work."

In a blur of steel, Echelarea’s longsword flashed, slashing Umín’s cheek with thin cut. "Make another comment about my trade, old man, and I'll carve those fancy lock-picking fingers right off your hands," she whispered with a terrible, eager grin. Umín turned pale, wiped blook from a thin wound and quickly turned back to the mechanisms.

Soon, the tunnels opened into a gargantuan, subterranean cavern. To the shock of the companions, a massive, seafaring pirate vessel sat nestled in a subterranean lake, preserved perfectly away from the sun. It was an old corsair base from a millennium ago, its captain and crew cursed to roam the dark forever.

"A pirate ship! In the middle of the Lone-lands!" Echelwardir yelled, his eyes widening. "Think of the treasure, lad! Think of the chests!"

They fought their way onto the deck of the ancient vessel, shattering the cursed crew. Finally, they reached the captain’s cabin, where a glowing, malevolent amulet rested on a pedestal.

Umín stepped forward, his eyes burning with sudden, unhinged greed. He grabbed the amulet, and the room grew instantly colder. "Foolish outcasts!" Umín laughed, his voice twisting as a colossal, vengeful ghost—the Spirit of the Necklace—rose from the amulet, swirling around him with an agonizing shriek. "I have no further use for you! You shall rot in this tomb, while I take the secrets of the deep!"

Echelwardir and Echelarea looked at each other and burst into hysterical laughter.

"Oh, look, the rodent finally found some teeth!" Echelwardir cackled.

"I thought he'd never try it," Echelarea chuckled, drawing her twin blades. "Let's give him a proper Bree-land thrashing! I will cut you many times…"

The final battle was brutal, but entirely one-sided. Umín lashed out with dark magic, and the Spirit of the Necklace conjured a vortex of freezing despair. But they had underestimated the sheer, unbridled violence of Echelandir’s ruffians. Echelwardir lunged through the freezing wind, his shield taking the brunt of the ghostly curse. He delivered a ferocious shield slam straight into Umín's face, fracturing his jaw and sent him flying. Echelarea moved like a phantom, her heavy armor clanking as she sidestepped the spirit’s spectral claws and systematically carved through Umín's defenses, leaving him bleeding on the wooden deck stabbing him many times in fury. Yet ghost was using Umín as a puppet, so even gravely wounded he didn’t died yet.

To the absolute horror of the ghost, Echelannia’s eyes burned with white-hot Haradrim fury. "You dare invoke the old spirits in my presence?" she bellowed. She raised her staff, and using ancient elven-taught arts, she conjured a localized storm of magical force. Piercing bolts of lightning arced across the cabin, snaring the Spirit of the Necklace in a cage of pure energy, preventing it from dematerializing or escaping. Echelwardir to this day says he heard ghost to gulp in fear, even if its of course not possible.

Echelwardir lifted the broken, weeping Umín by his collar, shaking him like a ragdoll. "Where is it? Where is the gold? The chests? Speak, you miserable rat!"

The imprisoned ghost, paralyzed by Echelannia's magic and utterly terrified by the raw savagery of these mortals, wailed in a very different tone. "There is no gold! There are no riches! We were poor corsairs! Fleeing from the southern fleets, shipwrecked in the deep earth! We died beggars! Hence the curse!"

Silence fell over the cabin.

“What a dreadful story they cursed themselves…” started Echelwardir in kinda sad tone, but didn’t finish phrase, because he saw something far worse.

Echelannia’s face went through several terrifying shades of red. Her beautiful face began changing from rising fury. She had spent hours playing babysitter to two drunken degenerates, listening to awful pig and alcohol jokes, trekking through filth and ancient dust, dealing with reeking undead, only to be deceived by a worthless, dishonorable scoundrel over a hoard of nothing.

"No honor... no gold... weak dark magic…just mud and lies," Echelannia whispered, her voice trembling with a rage so profound it made the ship's timbers groan.

Seeing the imminent magical meltdown, Echelwardir and Echelarea exchanged a quick look of pure panic. Without a word, the two hardened killers dived in unison behind a row of empty rum barrels, covering their heads.

"Flame of the desert, consume this deceit!" Echelannia roared.

A cataclysmic eruption of fire and lightning exploded from her staff. A series of thunderous detonations ripped through the ship. The ancient wooden hull erupted into a roaring inferno. The stone cavern walls began to tremble, crack and rumble as the magical shockwaves brought down the ceiling. Umín was consumed in an instant by the blast, nothing left of him. The Spirit of the Necklace, its binding amulet shattered by the heat, was violently ripped from its curse and vanished into the ether, free but utterly traumatized.

Up above, in the main common room of The Forsaken Inn, the entire structure violently lurched. The floorboards groaned, and with a tremendous crack, the center of the roof collapsed inward, showering the room in splinters and thatch. Fortunately, because the ghostly wailing for many days before the arrival of heroes were scaring patrons and were so terrible, there were no patrons inside to be harmed at this moment.

Through the settling dust of the ruined basement stairs, three figures emerged. They were covered in soot, ash, and the stench of burnt wood.

Anlaf the Forlorn stood behind his bar, trembling, his jaw hanging open as he stared at the sky now visible through his roof. "What... what by the Valar happened down there?"

Echelarea strode forward, her heavy armor soot-stained, and slammed her hand onto the bar. She leaned in close, her eyes wild. "Listen to me well, Anlaf. This is not one of those happy quests of rats in the basement. Your evil ghost is gone. Your basement is currently a burning lake of fire. And our loremaster standing here is currently looking for something else to incinerate. Pay us. Pay us ten gold pieces right now, or she will blow this miserable shack to the Iron Hills."

Anlaf looked past her to Echelannia, whose staff was still crackling with residual static electricity and floating embers. Pale with fear, the barkeep scrambled beneath the counter and pulled out a pouch, counting out ten gold coins with shaking fingers. "Take it! Take it! But I have nothing left... nothing to rebuild my roof..." he whimpered.

Meanwhile Echelwardir shrugged, casually hoisting a large, unblemished barrel of Forsaken Ale onto his broad shoulder. "Well, you won't be having guests anytime soon anyway, mate. Shame to let this spoil."

Echelarea sighed, tossing a charred, uncursed large chain of pure silver onto the counter—the remnant of the amulet. "Here. Take this old trinket. The elves in Rivendell like old rubbish, Elrond will probably pay you a pretty penny for it. You can tell him that a mysterious elf in a black cloak left it for you. Call it a tip."

Turning away from the ruined tavern, the three walked back onto the Great East Road as the first light of dawn broke over the Lone-lands.

"I've decided," Echelwardir muttered, taking a swing from a smaller flask. "Ghosts and pirates are a terrible combination."

"It's worse than that," Echelarea grumbled, adjusting her twin swords. "They were bloody poor ghosts and pirates."

Echelannia, her temper finally cooling as the crisp morning air hit her face, adjusted her robes. "Look on the bright side, companions. The land is cleansed of the wailing. In a few years, the inn might actually prosper. Assuming Anlaf buys a new roof."

“It’s a bit of a shame that the ship burned down, old Anlaf could have turned it into a museum. Just think—a pirate museum! With regular fights on the deck!” Echelwardir mused half drunk passing bottle to the laughing Echelarea.

The closer to Bree, Echelannia felt she is feeling more tired with every step, and every joke about pigs and alcohol she heard…