10 October

A day and a half of searching had brought them to a section of the coastline with sheer cliffs sixty feet or so over the water. They had camped a little earlier than usual, finding exploring the coast carefully to be more difficult in the rocky terrain. Krinn had windwalked out over the water, examining the cliffs as best she could, and had spotted nothing. After a quiet meal, everyone except Delrin and Cookie, who had first watch, had gone to sleep.

Delrin walked quietly around the camp. He enjoyed these times more than he cared to admit. It was a cold night... he noticed a skim of ice on a nearby puddle and amended that. A very cold night. The stars shined down from a crystal clear sky, and he breathed deeply of the crisp, cool air. He looked out to sea, his eyes adjusted to the black of moonless night, scanning the horizon. The normal phosphorescence of the ocean as it crashed into the cliffs below was the only glimmer of light other than their small campfire. He glanced to his right as a particularly powerful wave crashed into the cliff walls in the direction, and his breath stopped.

"Coo..cooo... Coookie!" he gasped.

The troll moved over as quickly as prudence would allow in the dark near a sixty foot cliff. "What hooman?"

"A ghost... I saw a ghost over to the right!"

Cookie looked carefully. "I see nothing, hooman. Maybe left over from mushroom soup last night."

Delrin shook his head. "No, I swear, I saw something. A large, maybe twenty foot figure, glowing white with its own radiance. It was fuzzy... I couldn't make out any features, just a general shape."

They watched for a while, but whatever it had been, it did not reappear.

Delrin decided to wake the rest of the party. After all, this was the first unusual thing they had seen since they started searching the coast. Glorm woke up blinking and cursing, El Sid did his normal magic trick and sprung up as if he had never been asleep, and the rest of the group fell somewhere in-between. After a few minutes of discussion, they had a plan of action. Delrin would keep his eyes open for any kind of nocturnal bird, and if one did show up, use his bird's-eye view spell and try to get a look at the area. In the meantime, Glorm would rappel down the cliff face and look for anything unusual. Fuji would stay and guard the horses and Cookie's spices.

They bundled together rope, belaying pins, and other climbing materials, and started south, paralleling the cliff and about sixty feet from the edge. Two people carried torches; it made them clear targets, but the terrain was such that it would have been unsafe for anyone other than Glorm to move with no light, and from what they had seen earlier it seemed unlikely that anyone was out here to take advantage of the situation.

They moved cautiously, covering the distance slowly. Delrin let out an evil twitter. El Sid said with some exasperation "Delrin, keep it down."

Delrin blinked. "That wasn't me." The party stopped. Took a step back. Dropped the ropes and things and grabbed sword handles. The evil twitter sounded again, louder this time, "He-he-he-he-he." Derlin began to prep his lightning bolt.

OLD ART

It had been an otherwise slow month. The weather had getting colder and his lumbago was beginning it's seasonal flare. Ah, well, that's what comes from a hard life in service to the High Council and old age, he figured. Art had been in semi-retirement for about ten years now, ever since he took a sword thrust in the chest in an alley in Cherifyr. The surgeon-priests had saved part of his left lung but he'd never fully recovered his speed and agility after that. Possible brain damage from blood loss, one priest had said. Hadn't affected his cognitive abilities, however.

Arthur Thadius Cromwell missed the espionage life he had lead for thirty years. Yep, put out to pasture, that's me, he reflected. Of course, he was still doing a job, he was good at it, and it was an important one. Not many could stand the loneliness of an isolated field assignment for years on end. He'd been stationed on these blustery bluffs overlooking the sea for about seven years now. Time enough to reflect. To come to peace within himself for the loss of his only son in the fight that nearly took his own life. Grant had followed him into The Service after he had completed his army Scout's training. He'd had a real flare for linguistics. Read and spoke flawlessly in over a dozen languages. He'd had a real future ahead of him, yes, a real future. Would have gone far. Then, suddenly dead. Cut down at the age of only twenty seven years. Darts poisoned with aflatoxin. Instant paralysis. Suffocation. Brain damage in four minutes. Complete death in six. Strong, talented, able. Dead at twenty seven in an ambush meant for his father.

After a decade, it still hurt.

Art sighed, shuffled on his shabby, grimy cloak and left the shelter of his hut for the night's task. Time to signal with the beacon. Art guarded a lonely stretch of cliffs. Dealt with those who got too nosy or too lucky. The cliffs held one of the most secret naval bases in human history, one that still had functioning visibility shields and other high-tech magic artifacts almost five hundred years after the fall, almost seven hundred since they have been installed. Bethalen Station. Natural caves had been enlarged hundreds of years ago when mankind was still in it's ascendancy to harbor the most potent, secret weapon that man had devised: the nuclear ballistic submarine ship. Powered by almost inexhaustible magic-antimagic reactors, armed with STAM crystals charged with the mana of some of mankind's best MUs, capable of cutting one of today's Kethem Heavy Warships in half, the subships had prowled the depths of the seas. Hidden. Waiting. Safe. All gone now. Lost in the Fall. There had never been very many of the expensive boats. Only a half dozen had been in service at any given time. They'd been potent. Lost in the explosion that had created the Lantolis Atoll.

Their base had been shared from time to time by surface ships, which brought needed supplies and replacements. In very heart of these cliffs they'd been based. The subships had entered through one of two old volcanic lava tubes. After the magma had subsided, almost perfectly circular tunnels had remained. The surface ships entered at night at the peak of the monthly high tide through a false surface in the cliff face. A 200 ton facade slowly swung inward to allow ingress through an illusionary rock section. A beacon briefly lit above the entrance to guide ships through the critical last hundred meters of rocky shoals and beach rock. No beacon, no hull bottom. No intruders. It could also be used to warn ships off if uninvited guests were in a position to see their arrival. As it was this particular night.

Tonight was one of the possible delivery windows for the bimonthly shipment. The KNI had always kept it's retirement fund separate and secret from the bulk of governmental pensions. No need for any outside The Company to know just how good those benefits could be for the highly placed. Or how they were 'augmented'. The Pension Section ran a lucrative trade in smuggled narcotics, illegal magics, forbidden necromancies and, occasionally, slavery, generally of young children. Pension's base was here, in what was left of the long-abandoned subship harbor. Very few people knew that. Strictly Need to Know stuff. Arthur was privy. He was one of the few surface sentinels. Pension had always been of the opinion: if there's no smoke, no one looks for fires. That philosophy had been the basis for a sound security for well nigh a century now. Never a breach. Tonight, a snag. Proximity alerts had sounded below; someone was on the cliffs. They had contacted him on his amulet, sent him out to investigate, while they warned off the ship if it showed up this evening.

Arthur worked his way down the path. He heard the crash of a large wave, saw a glimmer of light halo-ing the cliff edge. Damn. Bad luck, that. Sometimes, when the waves crashed into the cliff hard enough, spray would make it up high enough to catch the light of the beacon. Pension had started a ghost story about it the better part of eighty years ago. All the locals, such that there were, knew the story. It was reinforced from time to time by the demise of those who dismissed it as poppycock. That was part of Arthur's job too. Locals knew *never* to stargaze off the cliffs on the nights of the high tide. Must be vagrant wanderers. Damned white trash, he thought, complicate a simple task. He hustled along the cliff wearing his best Crazy Art face.

"Hee-hee-hee..." he cackled (he knew most people avoided crazy people like the plague, feared it might be contagious). Then he got a good look and nearly swallowed his tongue. A TROLL! HUH?? Other figures emerged out of the night quietly voicing orders and replies. DAH? How many of these pests were there? And ARMED! Arthur saw the gleam of more weapons on bodies then he'd seen since the last Tribble invasion. Holy JEZU! These guys looked to be Pros! He mentally rallied. Best to play this by the book and find out what they wanted. Two were passably disguised as Kanday Asses but their accents needed a bit more work. They were Kethermers. Governmental Internal Affairs?? Was the jig up?? Play this cool, Art, real c-o-o-l, he cautioned himself. A rustle to his left. A real Kandayan emerged with a sword that gleamed gems. A nobleman, then, but young. An odd, short but burly, figure stepped up. What was THIS?! No species HE knew! Arthur's mind raced! WHAT IN SABRINA'S LEFT TIT WAS GOING ON?? Fear tickled his back momentarily before he fought it down. Too late to call for backup, although he would call in as soon as he could without making it obvious... the amulet was easy to work, but you still had to concentrate and a professional would pick it up. Still, reinforcements would have to come up the back tunnels to Hofstedder's farm, then hoof it out hear, unless they wanted to burn a few fly spells. They would if he asked them too, but calling a panic when it wasn't necessary would be embarrassing. He'd have to tough this one out. Taking a deep breathe to calm his nerves and slow his racing heart, Arthur Cromwell, Esq., Colonel (ret.), KNI Spec Ops., began his gambit...

GLORM

The group prepped for combat, trying to discern the source of the strange laugh. Suddenly, out in front of them, a man walked into the torch-light. "He-he-he-he-he... no need to fear old Far Seeing Art, no sir-ee." He was thin, almost emancipated, dressed in rags and covered with dirt, and talked with the typical heavy Pranan accent. His age was indeterminable under the grime, but El Sid guessed from the voice that he was about fifty. "What are you boys doing trotting along a cliff face in the dark? He-he-he-he, not a good idea, I don't think. Could get hurt, yes, could get hurt."

"We be asking you the same thing." said Glorm.

"Me, I live here, yes sir-ee. This is my land, the land of Far-seeing Art. I saw your torches from my hut. Thought I would come and take a look-see."

"Do you know anything about a ghost at the end of this cliff?" asked El Sid. If the man lived around here, he should know something about it.

Instead of answering, the man cocked his head. "You're Kethemers, yes sir-ee. Spot that phony Kandayan accent in a heartbeat. Kethemers. What are you doing out here?"

"Well Mr. Far-Seeing Art," answered Glorm, "since we be traveling upon your lands, perhaps we can make recompense by offering you some left over dinner and some brandy. My friend the troll here be quite a cook, and my brandy be more than passable. While we eat perhaps you can be telling us a bit about yourself and your title 'Far-Seeing'. We be merely adventurers, hearing rumors of some interesting goings on hereabouts. We had settled down for the night, when Delrin here saw something down at the base of the cliff. We were just investigating when you dropped in."

"Hmmm... hmmmm... dinner and Brandy, you say?"

Shortly, they were back at the camp. "Here, let me fill up your snifter" offered Glorm. "Would you care for a smoke, old chap?"

The man looked even more decrepit in the better light of the campfire. "He-he-he, a smoke for me. Yes sir-ee, a smoke for me." He took the pipe Glorm offered and was soon puffing contentedly. He squinted at the party. "Adventurers. Bah. There ain't anything in these parts of interest, 'cept for the ghost of the cliffs, and she only lures fools to their death."

"What do you mean?" asked El Sid.

"It's just an apparition. Lures people to the cliff edge, then over they go. Get dizzy, or something. Long as you stay away from the cliff, you're OK."

El Sid paused to digest this piece of information. Glorm spoke up. "Where did you get the name Far Seeing Art?"

The man laughed. "I live at the top of a cliff, you fool. Yes sir-ee, it's hard not to see far when you live on top of a cliff. Course, not everyone calls me Far Seeing Art. My friends call me Farce. 'Sept my really close friends, they use something even shorter. They call me..."

"No, no, no" groaned El Sid. "Not more bad puns, please. Just get on with it."

"Not much more to tell. What were these 'interesting stories' you heard about the place?"

SID

Well, this was another interesting diversion from their current mission. Sid thought back to Bung's Hole. He had been *so* sorely tempted to turn Invisible, Silent, Blurred, Anti-ESP and Shadow and push one of those ludicrous priests into the hole. Just to see what would happen. He had forgotten to ask the high priest if other Believers had thrown themselves into the curious pit in the past (he assumed any number of the religious whackos must have, but he wanted to see the result for himself). He more than figured that he could pull it off: the others would assume that the fasting priests had gotten dizzy or had a fit of religious zeal. But he had been deterred by the priests' legend.

Now, astronomy wasn't one of Sid's fortes, but he figured that if the legend were true, he would have heard about it. After all, he thought how often does an entire *moon* disappear, for Sabrina's Sake. You'd think that it would be a memorable occurrence spoken of in children's tales. At a minimum, all the poets would be upset: fewer celestial bodies to wax uselessly poetic over.

On the other hand, he had learned that kernels of truth could well exist amidst myth and superstition. He recalled tale of the Land of the Double-Jointed Oobangy Women. There was, in fact, excellent historical documentation that both the expansionist OlBoy Hegemony and the MasMacho Protectorate had tried to force their influence into that small peninsula. Curiously, after initial gains, even crack forces of their best hand-picked men had lost their martial spirit, defected and peaceably settled down in that land never to return home. Even when, in what Sid considered an inspirational move, the tobac juice-spitting leader of the MasMacho, BigOlOaf the Third, sent in a sacred band of Village People to the fight, they too bogged down. It was rumored that, after initial success, the band had adopted the DJ women into their households. Their leader, a rich, powerful Senator named Buttboy, had sent a message home stating 'It doesn't get any better than this.'

After that fiasco, all wise nations avoided the area. The defeats were ascribed to the local goddess Victoria's underground fertility cult (known as Victoria's Secret), which was alleged to have the power to cloud men's minds and occupy their attentions.

While Sid retained his own opinion on that particular historical episode, it was clear that past reports of supernatural interventions could hide more mundane, but equally interesting and useful, facts and occurrences. Hence he had refrained from experimenting with the earth priests. You never knew. He cocked his head skyward. Mess with the moons and the tides changed. Quite an impact on shipping and coastal areas. Best he didn't trifle with it until he knew more. Besides, he figured that there would always be plenty more of the Faithful with which to indulge his curiosity, thank the Great P.T.

But back to FarSeeing Phil. So, people blacked out and fell off of the cliff, heh. Hmmm...could be the effect of a strong neural suppressive field associated with a piezoelectric effect. Then again, it could be people in a drunken stupor. Or a spell. Or almost anything.

They should be able to safely investigate the cliff by roping their explorers. If they passed out, they might bang a shin or two, but nothing more serious than that. Would seem that a neural suppresser field would be an effective defense against the casual investigation. This party, however, was hardly 'casual'.

Sid caught Cookie's eye and subtly gestured. Maybe a bit more pipeweed and a mushroom 'appetizer' would loosen this old Farce's tongue enough to get to the real truth of the matter...

A short while later, Cookie and Glorm had gotten Art (if that *was* his name. Sid never accepted anything at face value. this old coot could be an undercover agnet for just about any organization he knew of.) pretty schnookered. "So, Arse, what more can you tell use about this 'ghostie'? Who was she and why does she haunt these cliffs? Why hasn't anyone laid her spirit to rest? We also heard rumor of Pre-Fall ruins in these here parts. That true? Also," and here Sid leaned forward conspiratorially, "We also hear tell that there are caves in the cliffs around here. BIG caves. Maybe a cave or two suitable ta base a quiet, little 'import/export business', do'n 'cha known," laying a finger aside his nose. "Might be we could use a good 'local agent'. Money's good in the 'import/export' business for thems that know the in's and out's, do'n 'cha know. Got yer a skiff 'round here abouts, Arse?.."

Far Seeing Art looked at him queerly, not surprising since the man was probably seeing a purple and yellow stripped Halaxi by now. "She that haunts the cliffs is all that's around here... why would anyone lay her to rest, their ain't nothing here that mak' it worth the effort. Prefall ruins? Bah, no sir-ee, this area wasn't even really settled pre-fall, maybe a few small farms, like Hofstetter's place bout' a quarter mile inland, but more of 'em. No cities, not even a town. Nothin'. No caves round here either, and let me tell ya', I've been over every square inch of this place, including the shoreline where you can get to it, which ain't many places, and only at low tide. You want adventure, my advice is to head north, yes sir-ee, plenty of adventure up Nyquet way, with them Urakai and their battlemagic and gold and gems. Where are ya' hearing these stories, by ghod? The last think I want is a bunch o' rowdy adventurers, all hacked off at finding nothing and taking it out on old Far Seeing Art, no sir-ee. Who's been spreading these lies?"

Krinn watched the wretched old man wasting Glorm's fine brandy and weed. So far he had revealed nothing much of any value. He looked pathetic and old, but Krinn knew from personal experience that looks could be deceiving. So as Glorm refilled his snifter, Krinn excused herself to take care of personal business. She walked off behind a bush and made some noise to cover the sound of her casting. The new spell tripped lightly off her tongue and she was glad for Corbel's able tutelage. As she finished her spell, she stepped out from behind the shrub to see what kind of magical aura the old dirt bag possessed. She looked the old man over from top to bottom, saw nothing, and shook her head "no" to the Sid, confident he would know what she was doing. Then, as she circled around in front of him, she saw the glimmer shining from under his frayed tunic, about where a pendant on a chain would hang. The mauve tinge, from Corbel's description, would make it communications chain magic. She gave the Sid a sharp glance and casually tapped herself on the chest, making it look like a nervous habit when deep in thought.

Glorm picked up on it and scuffed his boot in the dirt and let out a little mewl while jerking his head to the side in the general direction of rosebud. Delrin, unexpectedly catching on, cross his arms across his chest with his fists clenched and let out a small wolf howl. El Sid's eyes narrowed. What? These fools wanted to follow the man!?! He coughed loudly and pulled his finger across his throat, making it look like a thoughtful gesture. The Dom's eyes widened a bit, and he smacked himself on the back of the head and then twisted one of his fingers back hard. Krinn jumped up and down and stuck a finger in her nose. Fuji farted. Glorm emphatically shook his head, neighed, and pawed the ground with his left foot.

Cookie went over to Far Seeing Art with the pot of soup and his ladle. "Want more soup, hooman?" Seeing Art nodded sagely and held out his bowl. Cookie carefully measured out a ladle full of soup, holding it off to the side to avoid spilling it on the man, put down the pot, and with both hands swung the heavy, cast iron ladle into the side of Far Seeing Art's head. The man went down, but not unconscious, and he reached under his rags. The Dom tackled him, then rolled off choking as the man gave him a chop across the throat with the stiffened end of his hand. He was trained in unarmed combat, obviously. It distracted the man long enough, however, for several people to jump him. It only took a few seconds to relieve him of his amulet and two slim daggers of some quality, fighting blades with clean, polished and sharpened blades out of sorts with Far Seeing Art's demeanor and dress. It took a few seconds more to tie his arms behind him and his ankles together.