Kaldalis met up with Garyung to let him know that their quarry had ditched his cloak, and that another cloaked Vathon had dropped down by the bakery. From Garyung’s end of things, it seemed rooftop travel wasn’t terribly uncommon, as it only took twenty minutes of going door-to-door - and greasing palms - to get three other reports of people jumping back down to street level around here. But none of his reports were of Vathon, so Kaldalis’s search had been slightly more fruitful.

Without any fruitful description of their quarry, they were out of options. They could keep asking around, but the only thing they knew was that they were looking for a Vathon. They didn’t know his skin tone, and they barely knew what he was wearing. They knew to look for leather armor, but neither had been paying close enough attention to it in the middle of the fight to describe it. And Kaldalis was keenly aware - and grateful - that there was no way to tell on sight if someone was hiding a War Weapon in their inventory.

“Well,” Kaldalis said, “maybe we’ll have more to go on after the next assassination attempt.”

“I was hoping for a plan that doesn’t lean on someone trying to murder me again,” Garyung snapped. “But I guess that was too much to ask for.”

“Their plan is flawed,” Kaldalis said, patting Garyung on the shoulder to try and calm him down. “They needed us to make a series of big mistakes to be able to actually kill you, even if they have the perfect setup to . You’re tougher than anyone else I’ve met, and they only sent one guy. Same with their previous attack. They went through a lot of trouble just for a chance for the horse to run at you, just for a chance of the trample to proc instant death.”

“Yeah, what’s your point?” Garyung asked, though he did seem to be visibly mellowing a bit.

“They’re dependent on making a lot of attempts,” Kaldalis explained. “Their hope is that you fuck up and get got. And in the absence of any other options, our plan is the same. Our hope is that they fuck up and leave a trail back to the boss.”

“I fail to see how this should be making me feel better.”

“Look at it this way: every attempt they make is depending on you to fuck up the one thing you’re good at without trying. The one thing you’re better at than anyone else in the game.” Kaldalis thumped a fist against Garyung’s armor. “Meanwhile, every attempt they make is going to be desperate and clumsy. They’re clearly not hiring the best in the business. We know that from a broken syringe and a broken nose. If I had to bet my life on whether they’d fuck up before you did, I’d take that bet in a heartbeat.”

Garyung tried to put on a grimace, but Kaldalis’s words had clearly puffed his ego up a little bit. “I’d rather get myself a little more protection, but I think I see your point.”

“I understand,” Kaldalis said, “and if you beef up security at your estate, you can make sure that if they succeed once, you’ll have the ability to respawn somewhere safe, and they won’t get a second shot at you.”

“I think I’ll go get that underway,” Garyung said with a nod. “I can afford it, after all.”

Kaldalis nodded. “I’ve got some things to take care of before the War Council meeting tonight. If you’re going to be shopping for security options, I assume you’ll be alright until then?”

“Sure,” Garyung said, though his brow furrowed uncertainly. He clearly wanted to ask what Kaldalis had to do, but was too polite to pry. Polite, or socially anxious. “Just don’t be late. I don’t know how they’ll react if I try to stall for time for you to get there.”

Garyung headed back to his estate, and Kaldalis started to make his way back to the inn. He was glad Garyung hadn’t asked because he didn’t actually have something to do. In the wake of the attack, though, he found himself feeling a vague sense of unease. Without knowing who was behind the attacks, he was mildly anxious that they had jumped to conclusions thinking Garyung was the only target. He worried that the whole affair was one big distraction. What if his other friends were in danger, too?

He wasn’t sure what he was more worried about. If Onirioago was in fact behind it, she might have been using attacks against Garyung to keep Kaldalis busy, while a more devoted assassin made a move on Bangen. If the War Council was behind it, then the attacks might have targeted all the PCs from Cotanaku, so Reno, Ess, Balrim, and Myrin could have been suffering similar attacks this whole time.

He also had to acknowledge the new faction he’d met, the Glorious Chapel. If any of his friends had used their Lataxinan abilities, they might have been taken into custody and questioned. The Contender had felt more like a cop than a cleric, and so Kaldalis couldn’t put it past him to have sent the assassin as an undercover agent to get him to use Kaia’s Flicker with his guards waiting near at hand to bring him in for further questions.

With all those concerns swirling in his head, he was happy to see Bangen, Reno, and Ess all sitting together in the common room, safe and sound.

“Kaldalis!” Bangen said suddenly when she saw him come in. “I’ve been waiting for you!”

“I’ve been looking for you all, too,” Kaldalis said. He cast another glance around. “Have you seen Balrim and Myrin lately?”

“They’re probably up at the castle,” Reno said. “They’re at some part of the questline that involves the king, so they’ll be there for the rest of the day, I think.”

“Good. Or bad. I’m not sure.” Kaldalis stepped up to join them, sitting down with them. “I just got arrested by the church because I used Kaia’s Flicker. I was interrogated for a long time. Garyung just barely got me out of there, and I don’t know if he could use the same tricks again. I wanted to make sure that you all didn’t make the same mistake.”

“Shit,” Reno said with a low whistle. “Just for the Flicker? That doesn’t sound right.”

“They must believe it’s evil magic,” Bangen said. “Was it the Contender?”

“Yeah,” Kaldalis said, nodding. “He was… Kinda intense. I don’t even know if the Lataxinan stuff even counts as magic, let alone evil, but he seems more than willing to jump to conclusions. I’m not sure what to do besides, you know, keep it under our hats until we can get back to the frontier.”

“We should try and get to Balrim and Myrin fast, then,” Reno said, reaching over and tapping Ess’s shoulder. “We’ve done enough of the questline that we have access to the castle interior. We can probably find them there and warn them before they fuck up big time.”

“I was hoping to get a snack while we were here,” Ess said with a sigh. “My sweet tooth is aching for something.”

Kaldalis blinked a few times before reaching into his inventory and getting the lemon pocket he’d bought from the bakery, pushing the bag across the table to her.

“Ooh!” she didn’t even hesitate, pulling the pastry from the bag and taking a deep whiff of the fresh-baked good. “Is this lemon?” She didn’t wait for him to respond, taking a big bite with a happy satisfied sound.

“Fuckin’ guy,” Reno grumbled. “Supposed to be my brother and doesn’t bring me baked goods.”

“I can walk and eat,” Ess said around a mouthful of pastry. “Every minute Balrim and Myrin are out there without this information, they might make a big mistake. The sooner we get to them, the better.”

Reno and Ess said their goodbyes and left quickly, leaving Kaldalis with Bangen. She had a slight grimace for a moment, but quickly started to rifle through her inventory.

“I’m sorry, I almost forgot I was looking for you,” Bangen said. She produced a slim handwritten notebook and slid it across the table to him. “I copied this down for you from the library. I think it’s the best thing you could find without getting into more technical texts.”

The notebook was written in Bangen’s handwriting, so clearly she manually copied it for him. The top of the first page read “The Ulun Island Incident: A Hobbyist’s Guide To The Calamity At Sea! (Excerpt)” and despite the title - and Bangen’s assurance - the text seemed pretty dense. Near as he could tell, it involved some horrible event.

“Thanks,” Kaldalis said. “I hope this has some useful information for me.”

“It only has vague allusions to the Lataxinans, and nothing about the Jormongumo,” Bangen said, excitedly getting out of her seat and moved to sit next to Kaldalis. “But this is probably the most important historical event in the world. It wasn’t until I started digging for you that I figured… You know. That your… Type… Might not have this basic background information.”

Kaldalis tried not to take it personally, but he started to read. If Bangen thought this was important enough to copy by hand, he could at least repay her kindness by reading over it right away.

Despite the density of the text, it wasn’t too difficult to follow. It seemed to assume some baseline level of historical knowledge of this world, but with Bangen with him, he was able to muddle through. It had some loose details about a fallen “unknown kingdom” that sounded very similar to the Lataxinan society they’d uncovered, but the focus was a description of a great explosion. According to the account, the explosion was visible in the sky all across the world. There were historical records in Baimer’s histories describing it, as well as in the histories of many other coastal countries and cities.

There were a few ellipses in this section where Bangen explained that the text had gone into detail of local reactions in those cities that could see it. It wasn’t important to Kaldalis’s purpose, but the sight had been taken for an omen that led to a bloody coup in Baimer, and had caused one of the smaller religions in the northern region of Iwen to self-destruct as they believed it to be the sign of the end times, and many prominent figures committed ritual suicide. Details that were historically interesting, but, as Bangen said, weren’t important to Kaldalis.

The explosion itself was quite a sight. Not simply a fireball or a cloud of ash, but a multicolored wave of energy that pierced the heavens and outshown the sun. It persisted as a beacon in the distance for nearly an entire day. And over the course of that day, the most important historical event of the world took place.

It was called the Great Change. In its wake, the world became as Kaldalis knew it now. The text described things before the change in a mystical light. Being blinded by pitch blackness. Moving sluggishly in water. The monsters of the world being placid and interested only in survival and not combat. A person’s physical might being measured by their body and not by numbers. Not having a UI or an inventory. People being able to kill each other with any random weapon, and not needing special-made tools for the job.

In other words, the world of Rundan hadn’t had game mechanics until the explosion that had, presumably, wiped out the Lataxinans and unleashed the Infernal Horde on the archipelago.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kaldalis said, turning to Bangen. “I’m willing to accept that the game mechanics are canon, but you want me to believe that the lore is that there was a system apocalypse?” He tapped the page before him. “Does Tao Wong know about this? Is he getting a cut from Monsoon?” He looked up and away, wondering what angle his stream was viewing him from. “Somebody find him and ask, okay? It’s gonna bother me if I don’t know.”

Bangen just gave him a blank look. He wondered if the NPCs actually heard him when he made explicit pop-culture references, or if they might have not been programmed to recognize them. It was hard to tell.

“Anyway,” Kaldalis said, turning back to the book. “This is useful information. I think I’ll look over the details later. I just need to process this for a bit or else just one more weird lore tidbit is going to push me over the edge and I’m gonna go fucking apeshit.”

“Um,” Bangen grimaced. “If you need a distraction, I know what you could go and take care of.”

“What’s that?” Kaldalis asked, even though the look on her face made him nervous to answer.

“I found Haldir’s family for you.”