Summary – Part 1

Intelligence report of House Thrune. Classified. Part One. Concerning events in the city of Kintargo, in the fall of the year 4715.

The situation at the outset. By order of Her Infernal Majestrix, Queen Abrogail II, His Excellency, Paracount Barzillai Thrune, has taken over the administration of Kintargo. The rightful Lord-Mayor was removed from office and taken away. Martial law has been in force ever since.

On the Night of Ashes, the homes of the unreliable burned. Those taken away that night have not returned. Seven proclamations now regulate the life of the city. The citizen obeys. Or the citizen disappears.

So far, everything had gone according to plan. Until that first day of Rova, when a rabble of malcontents gathered in Aria Park to protest the proclamations. A good fifty people. Hardly worth mentioning, we thought.

The Five Elements

That morning, five figures, strangers to one another until then, suddenly stood side by side and drove our people back. We have since designated them as Elements. Their files have been opened.

Element C. Call sign Chess. A hellspawn, red-skinned, with a disturbing gift for fire. She was the one who brought order to the riot.

Element G. Grizzly. A human, nearly two meters tall, brutish and heavily armed. When blades are drawn, his is the first. Thinking takes him longer.

Element L. Lorax. A fetchling, with a milky-white face and eyes almost devoid of pupils. He wears shadows as others wear a cloak.

Element Q. Call sign Quinn. A slip, barefoot, solemn. Far more dangerous than his size would suggest.

Element V. Vergylius, of House Aulorian. A half-elf, a student at Alabaster Academy. He appeared in disguise. He did not want to be recognized. That alone should have warned us.

Aria Park, the Birth of a Gang

The protest outside the opera house spiraled out of control. The five fought their way clear. Against our Queensmen, against Lady Nox, against a hell hound. They captured one of our own, the Queensman Gellius, and squeezed out of him what he knew.

While fleeing, they rescued a young nobleman. Rexus, the last scion of House Victocora. In his hands was a letter from his murdered mother. And that letter spoke of a name we had thought dead.

The Silver Ravens. A band of rebels crushed seventy years ago. Crushed by us, mind you.

Beneath the old Fair Fortune Livery, they opened a hidden cache. Inside lay six small silver raven statuettes and an old signet ring. That day, five strangers became a fellowship. We realized it too late.

A Traitor, a New Name

They took up new quarters. The Long Roads Coffeehouse, run by Laria, with a hidden entrance to the sewers. From an encrypted manual of the old Ravens, they learned how to build a rebellion. Rebellion by the book. Even to rebel, they need a manual.

And here Element V confessed what this report had long known. He had once been our man. Planted by the inquisitor Tiarize, kept obedient by a hostage. His lover, Valeria. Yet instead of exposing him, the Ravens let him keep playing his part. As a double agent. Now against us.

The slip revealed his true name. Not Quinn, but Quell. In the sewers, he confronted his archenemy Koff and killed him. Four stranded tengu sisters joined the gang. The first of many.

The Silver Ravens Return

The gang found support from the innkeeper Setrona and her tavern, the Tooth and Nail. Their hideout, however, remained the Wasp Nest beneath the Long Roads Coffeehouse.

At Sallix Salt Works, they overpowered the overseer and freed the forced laborers. For the first time, they acted openly under their own name. The Silver Ravens. Spoken again, aloud, in our city.

Then the murders in Devil’s Nursery, the hellspawn quarter. They offered themselves as bait and slew eight fey from the First World. They were too late for the child who had been sacrificed there.

In those days, the leaflets multiplied. A satirical poet calling himself Poison Pen mocked House Thrune in verse. He had already been at it for over a year. We have not found him to this day.

Network and Shadows

The gang grew. Young Victocora deciphered the history of the old Ravens, founded more than a hundred years ago by an elf named Jackdaw. A war of words at the Chained Devil Inn sowed doubt among our own Queensmen. They negotiated safe passage across the river with the marauding River Talons in exchange for coin. A capricious faerie dragon named Vendalfek, who had once lived in the burned-out Thrashing Badger, joined them. A dragon barely larger than a cat. The Ravens take what they can get.

They freed Rinston Jon, the proprietor of Clenchjaws, from the dog kennel in Aria Park where we had put him on display. Soon afterward, a message from the Rose of Kintargo reached them. To this day, we do not know who hides behind that name. She urged patience. No premature strike.

And our investigator picked up their trail. The harrower Zella Zidlii. One of the tengu sisters paid for her curiosity with her life. The Ravens will meet Zella many more times.

At Humbright House, they crushed the Red Jills gang. The city began to whisper about them.

The Monastery Beneath the Fantasmagorium

Young Victocora revealed a secret. The Ravens’ old headquarters had once been in the opera house. Now the seat of the exalted Paracount Barzillai Thrune. And a song played a role in it. The Song of Silver.

A lead took them to Hocum’s Fantasmagorium. Even there, a horror awaited them. Young Rexus’s own family, turned into undead. Among them Valeria, the traitor’s lover. They had to lose her a second time.

Here, Element G also confronted his mother’s murderer. Azvernathi Raul. He fell beneath Grizzly’s blade. Only then did they descend into the monastery of the Asmodean redactors. In the final chamber, Lady Nox. Her hell hound fell, her redactors fell. Nox herself escaped through a dimension door. Twelve soul tomes remained.

A first victory for the insurgents. Let it be recorded, through gritted teeth.

The Order of the Torrent

In his wisdom, the Paracount dissolved the Order of the Torrent with the ninth proclamation. The city’s old Hellknights. Their property passed to the Order of the Rack.

It would prove a mistake. For the Ravens sought out the order’s deposed commander. Octavio Sabinus. And they forged an alliance. The price: They broke into the Holding House, where the kyton Ghenemahl tortured her prisoners. They overcame the inquisitor Sabo, known as the Spider, and freed the armigers. Without spilling the blood of our rank-and-file guards. A fact for which their new allies gave them much credit.

In the preceding weeks, their following had steadily grown. Dozens of new supporters, donations from the circle around the teacher Mialari Docur, a growing network of eyes and ears in every district of the city.

Octavio survived an attempt on his life and joined the gang for good. He pointed them toward a possible new hideout. The sealed Lucky Bones casino, deep in Old Kintargo. Still unexplored and in other hands.

Assessment

Let us summarize. Five insurgents thrown together by chance have become an organization. With a name the city whispers again. With allies in the sewers and among the nobility. With a headquarters. And with an entire order of renegade Hellknights.

The Silver Ravens’ threat level is to be raised. From low to serious. Nothing more. Serious is not dangerous.

The files are to be updated. To be continued. For the Queen. For House Thrune.