Cali Ramifications

Harlequin attempted to ensnare each to his cause; Balar & Tiella were under his thumb from the beginning. Luna claimed she had no contract with the divine jester, but Balar’s insistence that she’d taken a blood oath, or its equivalent, placed Luna’s denial in question. Dim turned down the offer for recompense, but had accepted the job nonetheless; an unpaid contract? And at any rate, Dim was...cognitively challenged so tricking him into service was a foregone conclusion. The dwarf…she would probably not survive to see another sunrise. Cali was not a particularly skilled healer. Her skills leaned in the opposite direction. And Cali did not understand the Jotun’s place in all this, but the two had not spoken more than a few words and perhaps they were not to see him again. It had not escaped her notice that she had yet to be approached for any bargain or negotiation, but she was already bound and committed to the dead - and certainly elements of the party’s cause. She knew Olin was not free to go his own way, but surely a god could break whatever bind the necklace and thereby Cali had over the Scratti? Regardless, she knew at some point he’d be released and perhaps by her own doing. But not any time soon. His services were just too enticing.

That left Kespin and he was hard to read, but clearly Harlequin knew something that he wasn’t sharing. There was knowledge in the old man’s head Harlequin wanted, or wanted revealed to Kespin. It was the wielders of magic who fell so loosely into the structure of this party. It was the magic users with whom Harlequin seemed to have no covenant and perhaps that was as it should be. Magic exacted its own covenant - perhaps the magic users weren’t free to commit themselves to the trickster god’s plotting.
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Cali sat across from Kespin, staring at the old man for over an hour. He’d painted his arms with intricate markings, drawn from the fire’s ash and some inspiration or memory within his own head. Her attention was occasionally pulled or divided while she conversed quietly with the empty air near her ear. In those times she alternated from looking imperius and regal, in command of herself and whatever she spoke with, or chastised, reminded of some debt she could never hope to forget. Finally she got up and moved to sit by Kespin’s side. “I believe you and I both stole something from Hel in our escape from her domain. Even the dead want what is theirs. Especially the dead.”