Appendix B · Notable Characters

People

Beau

Beau Alden. Late twenties, dirty blond, weathered from outdoor work, not from trouble. Did what was needed and didn't make it a thing. Carried his uncle Berno's armor and sword; Land Ho knew them on sight. A Chuul took him at the salt mine and went back to the sea. We toasted him in Land Ho, later than we should have.

Eslin

Runs the Silverwatch the way a forest runs itself. Plain clothes, no insignia; everyone in his district nods to him without knowing why. Knew when we'd come up out of the sewer before we did. Sent us east. Says the enemy's claws are deep.

The Silverwatch

Silverport's watch. Snipers on the rooflines when you aren't looking. Pulled Tylsa off the boards after the Black Eel burned. Not all of them are what they seem; Eslin says so himself.

Gashak

Half-orc, enormous, wound in chains that make a sound older than metal. Once the Black Barnacle, a pirate on the Trackless Sea. Now he helps people walk away from lives like his. Gave me a carved wooden bird: speak to it, and they come.

Nathaniel Silverblade

Found me in the woods when I was a boy and taught me what grows there. Retired to Vogler. Frail now — ink on his fingers, the same grin. Said a name I didn't know, Gemerwid, and that he was sorry. I haven't worked out for what. A long conversation is waiting at the end of the road.

Darrian Felwind

Fish trade, Vogler. Everyone knows him and nobody has a bad word. His salt came from Serenholme until it stopped. Sent his nephews to find out why. His mark is a fish, pressed in wax.

The Felwind Nephews

Darrian's nephews, Nicholas and his brother. Went to Serenholme ahead of us asking after Ern Lindsor, then north to the salt mine to find him. Good gear, dinner clothes, money counted out careful. They were alive for most of what happened to them.

The Taurin

Big men, thick through the shoulders, the look of Land Ho folk. Fish further out than anyone. East Point would like to be like them. Pedro says it isn't.

Dallah, Serk and Hannah

A family on the coast below Land Ho. The fish-folk came up out of the surf and set the house burning; Dallah held the line until we got there. Serk went down and got back up. There's a baby. Hannah waves with her whole arm whenever we come through.

Mord Maxon

Land Ho. Greets you like he's been expecting you without knowing it. Gives the speeches in the feast hall. He was the one who said we'd never sent Beau off properly, and raised the glass.

Svala

Land Ho's healer, up the hill. Pipe in her mouth; the hut smells like twelve things burning. Sent me looking for fish-tongue and gave me an herb kit for the leaves. Her tincture puts you down till evening. Wouldn't keep the black jar or the journal. Old and evil, she says.

Ern Lindsor

Ran the salt out of Serenholme for years. Signed himself Ernesto. Fine silk shirt, potions, money ready for travel, a letter written and not sent. He was trying to leave. Someone else was living in his house after, answering to his name.

Mayor Regan Cromwell

Serenholme's mayor. Middle-aged, well dressed, met us on horseback. Merle said something was wrong with him. Came for Bodean with three boys in armor and the authority to take him. Ordered the feast.

Elara Sangray

Kept the Sea-stone. Six months without visitors, glad of any. Things were much better now, she said, the way people say it when they've decided to. Cooked us the feast. Said something as we left that had the shape of a threat without quite being one.

Mica Strongbow

Serenholme. Dropped a cloth in the road: speak with Merle, help us. Her husband Stend went out in the storm. We carried him back to her. She thanked us for what came after. She's out of Serenholme now. Good.

Merle

Hut west of the church, hides drying, a still. "Serenholme is dark and full of evil." Kept Mica upright when nobody else did. Wasn't a hermit, whatever he looked like — the chest under his bed said he'd been something else a long time. Stend killed him.

Devy Cromwell

The mayor's wife. Found her in the road clacking two rocks together, talking about children and dancing. "Something has tainted the land. Slithered from the ocean." Nothing divine on her. She just wasn't there.

Stend Strongbow

Mica's husband. Found him face down on the sand north of Serenholme, starved over weeks, hands salt-white. "Monsters. Coming and going." Next time he was dragging two children toward the sea, talking in two languages at once, black running from his eyes. Not Stend. Something in Stend.

Boyd

Strongbow house. Stood in the doorway and watched. Went for Merle the night the voice came out of Stend.

Bodean

Living in Ern Lindsor's house, doing Ern's business. Hands up: "You have caught me." Then a knife with dried blood on it that didn't fit the dead. Something dark came out of him at the church. Corrupted, Mirabelle said. The mayor took him.

The Seawatch

The coast's soldiers. Stop at East Point now and then to resupply. Merle kept one of their old uniforms. The rat-folk opened two of them at the well and burned a cutter with its crew aboard.

Ned and Nerris

Mistyvale hunters. Archers. A week gone by the time we heard. We found them in the west passage of the old mine and buried them where the ground was soft enough.

Ketch and Hayden

Two boys out of Mistyvale. Found in the back of the mine, laid out with their arms crossed, by someone who kept the dead like records. One was still holding a red stone. Prudence carried them home.

Tessa

Mistyvale. Half-orc, tall enough that a room recalculates around her. Carves. Pointed us at the mine and told us about the hole in the ground. We reported to her first when we came out.

Bram

Mistyvale. Told Tessa the ground north of town had shifted and opened. He was right.

Fabri

Gnome jeweler. Mistyvale, then the road, then East Point. Puppets, panic, a dagger. Knew the red stone the moment he saw it. Talks about Seacrest the way people talk about an old injury. Paid Mirna in faceless platinum, the same coin a false priest gave Cain. Stood over our animals at East Point with his dagger out. I believe that part.

Calan Muscgrove

Herbalist at the shaded end of Mistyvale. Elf on his father's side; the ears say so at the tip. Sobered in fifteen seconds and read the sorceress's notes: Poskadari, wild elves from across the sea. Told me to learn more about the Emerald Enclave. Hugged me like an apology.

Ilara Muscgrove

Shares Calan's name and his shop, and keeps its door. Lost a great deal of stock in the break-in.

The Emerald Enclave

In Helmar, western Etheryn. Maron talks to them the way you talk to someone down the road. Calan says I should learn more about them, especially heading north. I mean to.

Brookdor

Land Ho. Pedro beat him once. Named his son Halad Pedro Brookdoreson. People come a long way now to wager against him.

Elias Trent

Old fisherman at East Point. Its mayor now, though nobody's said it aloud. Told us how the night went. Gave Victor his own knife and a sealed account to carry to Thornwall Keep.

Mayor Harry

East Point's mayor. We found him at the well without his head. The head was in the dwarf's sack. Elias sent it up the path with a boy, to Anna.

Mirna

Seamstress, East Point. Good cloth, better seams, worn fingers. Told Fabri he wasn't staying until he put a platinum coin in her hand. Out of practice, she says. Made Pedro a legend for a hundred gold.

Adversaries & Entities

Tylsa

Red hair, a wink through the bars, a shortsword in hand when the wagon door came off. Worked the Black Eel, for the Brass Dominion, sort of. Surrendered in the sewer on her own terms. Says she's done with smuggling. I believed her. Left with Gashak and gave Zephyr her horse.

—

The big one out of the prison wagon. Used his shield like a battering ram. I lit him gold and lost him in the crowd. Eslin says they found a barbarian hanged. I think it was him.

The Brass Dominion

Smugglers. Comfortable in a city's soft spots — the sewers under the Market District, the routes nobody maps. Their reach runs longer than Silverport's alleys. Colivik Arandé is their face, according to Gashak's man.

Sorel

The crossbowman in the sewer. Pedro punched him dead. Carried a letter: find out what they know and then kill them. Signed C.

C.

Signs with one letter. Told Sorel to kill us. Put Cain's name and a skull on a scroll and handed it to bandits on the east road. Same economy of hand both times.

Colivik Arandé

Dressed as a priest of Kelemvor. Caught Cain alone in a Silverport alley, thanked him for a death and paid him in faceless platinum. Offered more to deal with Tylsa. Fabri carries the same coin.

Kelemvor

Cain's god. Death as a ledger, everything accounted for. His spaces have order to them. Mirabelle called him false.

Mirabelle

Young for the work. Was turning the church on the hill over to Valkur, stone by stone. Called me man of the coast and met my eyes the right amount. "I am sorry. But my master demands this." I put the knife in her throat. Her journal is still with us. Nobody wants it.

Valkur

Sea god. Serenholme's church is his: in combat, at the helm, a platter of fish. Someone wrote Liar across every page of his book. His symbol turned up in a chest under the church, tips snapped off.

The Tainted

Serenholme folk with black running from their eyes. Came for us with cudgels in the night at the inn. Didn't stop and didn't run. Something drew some of it out of Bodean at the church. Not all.

—

On a table under the church, in a room older than the church. Black, slow. Eyes in it, human, dozens. The black from eight eyeless dead was running into it. We burned the tunnels. The eyes went one after another.

Kamosh

A god of death, older than ledgers. Arms spread, palms out, in the stone under the field north of Mistyvale. The seven-pointed star is his. He offered each of us something. I said no; the rest is smoke. Then: "So be it. Fools." And the dead got up.

—

In the cave past the Mistyvale mine. Threw fire, then a ball of it that came back on her. Clothing left. Green rope on her wrists and her creatures'. Wrote in Poskadari, badly. Someone taught her.

—

Came through Land Ho at night from the Serenholme road, going south. A dark horse, hooves too light. A wail from above. Svala says it was no rider. Something wearing a woman.

—

North of East Point. Red hair, no beard, a face too young for the armor — bone and shell, not metal. One axe of black glass, one of wood that rings like iron. Carried the mayor's head in a sack. I took his off. A dwarf, or something wearing one.

—

Worked a pick and a whip at the pit, talking down into it in a tongue I'd never heard. Pedro dropped him with one punch and he burst into acid. Took a rat with him.