Expedition to Orieb
Overview
During the Summer Solstice 384YE, Vaclav Mladenovich Kosti the Minister of Historical Research instructed the Department of Historical Research to send an expedition to the Palace of Orieb in the Drownbark Forest to investigate the structure and uncover its secrets. As is becoming something of a tradition with the Department, the Imperial Archivist Leontes dispatched the Imperial Orcs scholar Snowstorm Henk to lead the expedition. Henk was accompanied by Skywise Slu, Blackbeak Ussa, and Snowstorm Makka, and engaged the services of Mika Seskarovna Bolotnikov as a "local guide." What follows is the result of Snowstorm Henk's investigations, presented in his own words.
Palace of Orieb
The settlement of Orieb lies in the damp depths of the Drownbark Forest in south-eastern Ossium. The "town" is a former Druj settlement surrounding a sprawling and labyrinthine palace, the home of Zask Bonetwister, the Buruk Tepel of the Bone Serpent. Neither she nor her apprentices have been accounted for, although it is very likely they were slain by either the Thule or the Druj orcs during the peculiar events at Orieb during Spring 383YE of which more later. Orieb itself appears to be prospering - we visited the "Stinking Market" during our time there to speak to some of the wagon raiders involved in the initial conquest of the palace and the place was as busy as any Marcher marketplace or Dawnish fayre. There is still a fundamental oddness to Ossium I think, perhaps compounded by the presence of the enchantment infusing the marshes with the power of the Night realm.
I've never met so many people convinced the Druj are about to invade - even during my visits to Holberg - and so resigned to that inevitability. There is a lot of what I might call "bleak humour" among the people of Orieb, who greet news of Druj sighted in the eastern forests - or indeed the entire recent invasion of the Echofell - with a shrug and a dark joke. As I say, an odd experience.
The palace itself defies mapping - not because of any magical quality but because it appears to have been built by a madman, or a succession thereof. The layout makes no sense. It appears that successive generations of Buruk Tepel have added more and more rooms to some core structure, in some cases incorporating entire other buildings that were built too close to its encroaching walls. Blackbeak Ussa described it as like being inside the mind of a Buruk Tepel, while Snowstorm Makka said it was more like being in a park designed by someone who had never been outside.
Living areas, dormitories, private sleeping areas, apothecary workshops, torture rooms, prisons, bathrooms, and dining areas rub up against one another in a hurly-burly of architectural styles, interspersed with countless herb gardens, terraria, and greenhouses. For all its ramshackle appearance, there is clear evidence of the Druj expertise with raising plants wherever one cares to look. Cunning pipes and furnaces allow water to be heated with surprising precision to feed one room given over entirely to the cultivation of plants suited to a more tropical climate, while another uses a series of filters to cleanse the water for use in another where bladeroot plants thrive. Some areas are open to the elements, while others have misshapen glass roofs or walls, or cunning shutters that allow the effects of rain and sun to be carefully regulated. There are also whole sections that are flooded - in some cases this appears to be incidental or accidental, but there are certainly areas where the marshes have been intentionally invited inside the walls of the palace. The one thing there is not is much in the way of underground areas - the water level in Orieb makes cellars impracticable if your intent is to have anything other than a room completely full of dirty water.
It is important not to understate just how many plants there are here - not only herbs and flowering vegetation but in some cases actual trees are part of the palace, spreading leafy limbs across the rough slate roofs. There are a few areas where it seems entire buildings have collapsed, undermined by roots or with roofs burdened down with plants and earth such that they could no longer stand unsupported. There is evidence of shoring up, but it is as haphazard as anything else about this place. It's very hard sometimes to remember that one of the most powerful orcs in Ossium lived here.
Some of the former slaves made a spirited attempt to gut the palace before Imperial civil servants requested that they stop and allow an inventory of the contents to be completed, which again compounds the difficulty of navigating the palace. The most extensive damage appears restricted to the outer areas - even in their fury the former slaves appear to have been reticent to venture too far into the palace of their oppressor - and to the larger apothecary workshops where many of them were forced to labour by their Druj masters.
The Vault
After several days simply wandering around the structure in ones-and-twos with the aid of our host, we determined to try a more methodical approach. While Skywise Slu and Blackbeak Ussa resolved to explore and try and map the perimeter, myself and Snowstorm Makka sought to find the heart of the structure. We reasoned that given the way the palace appears to have spread over the years, the core rooms would certainly be the oldest and by extension most likely the most important.
We located the chambers of Zask Bonetwister with relative ease. Despite the damage caused by treasure seekers, it's clear that some of the Buruk Tepel lived in conditions of profound opulence, surrounded by beautiful and disturbing things.. There are signs around Orieb that some of the local septs took advantage of the fall of the Bone Serpent clan to exact a little revenge on their absent masters with hammer and torch - but there is no such evidence here. The rooms are broadly untouched, and our exploration told a tale of desperation and hurried flight, where the inhabitants barely paused to pack their bags before fleeing.
The living quarters included one of the best equipped apothecary workshops I have ever encountered. Snowstorm Makka is more familiar with the herbal arts than I am, and we knew intellectually that the Buruk Tepel are masters of apothecary, but we were not prepared for how extensive this equipment was. We were also surprised to see that some of it, especially the more delicate glassware, was Imperial in origin! Zask Bonetwister owned a fair number of flasks, alembics, distillation coils, and phials marked with the sigils of the glassworks of Holberg, no doubt captured during the invasion or the Druj occupation. There were obvious spaces where particular pieces of equipment - probably the most expensive or irreplaceable - had been removed with haste.
We also found a locked room here whose weirwood door resisted our efforts to open it until Mika Seskarovna Bolotnikov sent a runner down to the Stinking Market and secured the services of two stout wagon raiders with hammer and axe, who smashed the thing in in return for a few crowns and a bottle of mead. Inside was a room of shelves covered in bottles, flasks, and pots. A cornucopia of potions, some of them looking very old indeed. A store of elixirs, philtres, salves, and infusions no doubt prepared by the Buruk Tepel and their apprentices. Investigation showed that there did not appear to be anything here that was not known to the Empire in one form or another - Mika Seskarovna Bolotnikov claimed them in the name of the people of Orieb and they will apparently be either distributed or sold at the market.
We asked the wagon raiders to remain with us for the rest of the day, and they were happy to do so for a few more crowns and another bottle of mead. Their assistance proved very useful when we made our second discovery of the day - a door behind a tapestry depicting a winged skeletal serpentine horror that, if our calculations were correct, was likely the heart of the palace (or as near as makes no difference). It too was of weirwood, bound in mithril, and proved impossible to shift. In the end, our helpful wagon raiders found it easier to smash down the wall next to the door than to get the portal open.
Inside, we found what must have been Zask Bonetwister's private garden. A dome of triangular pieces of glass held in a mithril frame surmounted a septagonal room partially overgrown with vegetation. The floor of the room consisted of a weirwood walkway around a sunken central area that appeared to be the natural mud and water of the marshes themselves. There was surprisingly, nothing we could identify as a familiar magical herb here - no bladeroot, no mazzarine, no rosweald, no marrowort, no vervain. The plants appeared to be the same that we had seen on our approach to the settlement - the natural plants that flourish in the marshes of the Drownbark Forest.
A weirwood walkway extended into the middle of the chamber, to where the pools of water were deepest. At the end of that promontory was... nothing. A pool of water with lily pads and reeds. After some discussion among ourselves, and with our host, we met up with Skywise Slu and Blackbeak Ussa and using our precious supply of crystal mana we performed the Clear Lens of the Eternal River. You can imagine our surprise and excitement when the answer to "What is the historical significance of this place?" turned out to be "This is where the Bone Serpent clan found their black lotus, and where generations of Buruk Tepel have tended to the precious plant."
The Black Lotus
Unfortunately, that is all we found out. We used the last of the mana entrusted to us by the Department to perform the Shadowed Glass and discovered that the mystery or secret associated with this place was "The heart of the Bone Serpent beat here down through the long generations, a single thread connecting the past to the present, severed in fear and flight." I would venture to guess that this means that the black lotus plant was very important to the Bone Serpent - intrinsically tied up with their identity as a Druj clan - and that the reason it was no longer present was that it had been removed by the Buruk Tepel when it was clear that Orieb was going to fall to the armies of Otkodov, Dawn, and Varushka. What follows involves a little speculation on my part, but is supported by some testimony we were able to secure from eyewitnesses in the Golden Axe.
While Orieb was falling to the allied armies, the Thule Shard of Winter army suddenly pulled ahead of the advancing line, recklessly carving a path toward the east, to intercept a column of Druj attempting to escape into the Forest of Ulnak. There was a vicious fight, but the Druj notably refused to simply flee into the woods - they stood and fought the superior Thule forces. then, without warning, a second Druj force appeared and rather than attack the Thule, they attacked their fellows! The fleeing orc column was torn to pieces by a combination of Thule warriors and these treacherous attackers, and then the new Druj disappeared south through the trees. By the time the Talons of the Wind and the Golden Axe arrived, the fighting was over. Eyewitnesses said that the Thule of the Shard of Winter were clearly not happy. They had stripped and searched every body, and gone through every wagon left behind by the slaughtered orcs of Orieb. According to a wagon raider I spoke to, several of the wagons contained valuable-looking apothecary supplies and tools, including living plants in pots of earth (now mostly trampled in the mud).
Here my speculation becomes more tenuous but I think the facts support it.
The Buruk Tepel of the Bone Serpent possessed a living black lotus plant. When it was clear the Bonebark Forest was being overrun, they attempted to flee with the plant to the presumed safety of the Forest of Ulnak. The Shard of Winter - the Thule army that has again demonstrated it's plunderous tendencies in the Sermersuaq campaign - were waiting for this. They immediately moved to try and capture the black lotus and perhaps even the Buruk Tepel who was escorting it. The Druj wouldn't flee because doing so would have meant abandoning their black lotus - rather they fought to the death. Both groups were surprised when a third group of orcs - either from out of the Barrens or the Forest of Ulnak - attacked. They were also motivated by a desire to claim the Bone Serpent black lotus, and were ultimately successful. Either that or the black lotus of the Bone Serpent was destroyed in the three-way fight. Regardless, the Shard of Winter were stymied in their efforts to claim the plant.
From my own experiences of dealing with the Thule, I don't think asking them for their version of events will yield anything other than stony silence or evasion but I might be wrong. Snowstorm Makka posited the theory - probably impossible to prove - that the entire reason the Shard of Winter were in Ossium at all was to try and seize this impossibly rare herb. Or even that the Thule support for the invasion was motivated by the knowledge there was a black lotus here. Snowstorm Makka does sometimes let his imagination run away with him.
Scorpion and Serpent
While myself and Snowstorm Makka were busy chasing rumours of black lotus, Skywise Slu and Blackbeak Ussa continued to investigate the palace. In particular, they were exploring a number of peculiar chambers focused around apparent veneration or propitiation of supernatural entities containing statues surrounded by a profusion of flourishing plants of all kinds. Most of the "shrines" - for want of a better word - appeared to have a decorative or ceremonial purpose - some depicted scorpions, others depicted twin serpents coiled around each other. The effigies were made of smooth wood inlaid with dragonbone, beautifully made if somewhat disturbing in aspect.
Two statues however are very different in nature. A statue of a large scorpion, about twice the height of an orc, stands in the centre of an open courtyard absolutely thronging and overgrown with marsh plants and true vervain. Without anyone tending to the palace, the plants have grown in riotous profusion and even begun to spread out from the garden-courtyard to occupy some of the surrounding passages and chambers. A second statue, of two entwined serpents. Both serpents are of weirwood with mithril fangs - one skeletal and the other scaled but stained crimson with old blood that had sunk into the wood itself, surrounded primarily by night-blooming plants. These two "shrines" were some distance apart, and to the surprise of Skywise Slu and Blackbeak Ussa both appeared to anchor regio - one associated with the Spring realm and the other with the Night realm. Speculation suggests that if they have a connection to eternals - and not all regio do - then they are likely connected to Arhallogen and possibly Azoth.
The two researchers then showed initative and went out into the town proper to speak with some of the former slaves still resident in the new Varushkan town. They were met with some initial suspicion by folk who mistook them for Thule, but who became much friendlier when they discovered they were dealing with Imperial Orcs. They were able to confirm that when the palace was still under Druj control, these two "shrines" were used for ceremonies in which the ghulai of the Bone Serpent clan made offerings to their "spirit patrons" and in return received "treasure" - magical syrup and shards of frozen flame. Skywise Slu believes that this likely refers to two forms of vis known in the Empire - vital honey and crystal fire.
They were unable to uncover the specifics of the ceremonies, but it appears the scorpion was propitiated by chewing poisonous stalks and chanting in praise of the arts of stealth and murder, while the serpentine statue was honoured by long improvised chants while consuming hallucinogenic berries. In both cases the plants needed grow in the shrines themselves. Obviously, neither Skywise Slu nor Blackbeak Ussa experimented with these shrines in any way.
We have however handed our findings in this regard over to the civil servants at Lomaa who we understand are making their own trip out to the Palace to investigate further and will prepare their own report into the possibility of continuing to gather vis via these "shrines". They estimate it will be ready to be presented around the same time that our own findings are published more widely.
Conclusion
The Palace is fascinating, and I don't doubt that over time more insights might be gleaned from it into the role of the Buruk Tepel or the history of the Bone Serpent clan but such things might take years. I stand by my speculation about black lotus, but it is difficult to know for sure one way or another. We've not been able to find a single human or orc in Orieb who knew anything about it - or if they do they are refusing to talk about it. It seems the chamber was secret, and its location adjacent to the Buruk Tepel's personal chambers suggests they may well have been the only person to have access to it. The only people I can think of who might in theory know more are the Sept of the Menrothat; they seem almost suspiciously familiar with the habits of their Druj masters and may be able to confirm or disprove my speculation as to the three-way fight that took place during the conquest of Ossium. Likewise, the Thule may be prevailed upon to explain the actions of the Shard of Winter. I will not hold my breath however - neither group seems disposed to reveal its secrets merely for the asking.
The "shrines" are another matter. For all their magical nature they seem to represent a practical treasure that might be exploited by the Empire, either by the Apothecary of Orieb or by a new title via the Imperial Conclave similar to the Cabalist of the Hollow Stone. If there is an obstacle to this, it seems likely to be that the process apparently required to claim the vis involves something that looks a lot like "veneration of an inhuman force" which obviously causes no problems for the Druj but on which our own Synod might conceivably take a very different stance.
For my part, I've very much enjoyed my trip to Ossium. There are fascinating parallels between the people there - building new lives for themselves after having been subjects - and the experiences of the Imperial Orcs building their own nation in Skarsind. I'm not sure I would be in a hurry to go back, though. Not until the immediate threat of the Druj has been dealt with.