1.2.4 - Over claw and tide

You came back from saving the elves to find the Hand eating itself, and Brelka holding the knife.

You torched the Uzzikh warehouse behind you and slipped through the alleys with Veylith and the freed elves pressed close, the whole way feeling watched and never finding the eyes. You hid them in a cellar built by old elven hands beneath a tailor's shop, the Tattered Loom, in the Western Elf Shallows. Veylith looked at you with exhaustion and gratitude both, and said he would remember what you did for his people.

Then back to the Black Tide, and something wrong in the air of it. Too many bodies, too late at night, all of them awake and alert and watching the door. Even Varka had noticed. It was not right, she muttered, nobody here to drink, maybe a new drug on her streets she needed to trace.

The source walked into the backroom. Brelka and Grettir, two of those jittery patrons at their backs, twitching with the same restless energy Brelka always carried. She held the room like a blade. She reminded Kvarrac of the family the three of them had built from nothing in the smuggling caves, then named him soft, a killer gone caretaker for orphans and elves. She told him that when food runs short, rats eat each other. Then she put her dagger into his chest, again and again, and her body broke open into matted fur and claws and a long rodent snarl. Her companions changed with her. The walls and floor split apart, and the rats came pouring through. You fought for the tavern in the wreckage of it. Grettir went down, Varka herself accounting for him and a heap of the vermin besides. Brelka slipped away into the dark.

Remember For Next Time

• Kvarrac is dead: Brelka, The Riptide, murdered the Rat King and revealed herself a wererat. She turned the Hand against itself and fled.
• Grettir is dead: killed defending the Tide. Varka was a terror in that fight.
• Veylith is safe: hidden with the rescued elves beneath the Tattered Loom. He owes you, and he knows it.

Where We Are

Standing in the blood and splinters of the Black Tide Tavern. Kvarrac dead, Brelka loose, the Hand in pieces.