Croaker's journal, being the writings of the last Sergeant of a Company of Mercenaries

[Mooj]

The crew took note of me, all bedecked in my dress blue fineries and my spectacles, and noted that I made myself like a new man, that is, on account of the fashionable changes, and being possessed of gentile words fit if not for court, then at least the courtyard.

But therein lies the rub of soldiering, for to the man-at-arms there is no distinct difference between being in field gear and being in parade dress. Both are aspects of that man, just as both the spit-toothed mudder, with its hackles raised and all a-snarling, is the same beast as the shiny-coated creature with his chest puffed out, standing at attention with ears pricked, so far as a dog can.

And like Big Brush and Whiskers kept just such kennels, so to does the payor what takes on a mercenary keep such a dog. There is the mercenary what is bestial and raw and raging, and the one what stands erect, all "Yes, sir, no, sir, if I may, sir." And if you have hired your self a good soldier, they are one and the same, just as a dog with nothing but a rabid tooth, all angry all the time, is a useless dog unfit to take inside by the hearth, and the dog what is nothing but show, what sits on the laps of delicate nobility, is just as useless (for he can never protect his owner), the soldier what can't be a well disciplined killer and a respectable household guard is not a soldier. If only the former, then you have hired a brigand; the latter, a chamberlain.

In so far as the Master of this bordello (for I cannot be convinced otherwise) and his jolly crew believe they have found a different Croaker, though they have not, asking me as they are what so changes the nature of a man, alls I can say is, the same what changes a hound no longer rooting through the mud, but bathed and brought inside, and with all such loyalties due the ones what feed them, whether those loyalties are generated by mutt or mercenary.

[Mooj]

In so far as a remembrancing goes, the Captain deserves one as well, despite his fall from grace and his betrayal of the Company, for before those last few days, the Captain was a man of great integrity and trust, propelling the Company through campaigns across Faerûn.

I do not know what the Captain's adopted name was since -- like the Sergeant-Major -- there was only one Captain, the most senior of the officers, he merely assumed the title and in so doing, lost his name. That too is steeped in tradition, for where the more junior officers and men of the lines of battle are called this or that to distinguish them, these most senior of the ranks of flag and field are distinct and unique, being occupied by no other officer or sergeant, and in so far as they are ones of great power, the Company expected also they be ones of great servitude, and in assuming those offices, one abandon's one name what one was called for years before on campaign. It was a great taboo within the Company to refer to the Captain -- or the Sergeant-Major -- as ought but those ranks in recognition of that servitude and responsibility assumed ex officio.

Whereby the Captain had enlisted his self into the Company decades prior (he being a man of years, at least in his sixth decade, though the fitness of campaigning kept him looking much younger), I never knew his name and on account of such taboos as would be speaking it, never asked and would certainly never repeat it.

I first met the Captain when I enlisted after hopping off the luggage-train of the lizard-folk from the Servants of the Royal Egg what made their way out of the swamps of home and headed in some-direction-or-the-other, where he seemed like a giant of a man to one such as myself, having giving himself over fully to the stature of his office and rank and, with great pleasure and a smile, signed his self on to my enlistment papers along with my guarantor from the enlisted men, Rolly, and the Quartermaster, Dog-face, who was there to witness my sponsorship for the equipment loaned me by the Company. But the Captain signed not as a sponsor of fighting personnel or fighting materiel; rather he bore witness as the Company itself, he being its most senior leader, and thereby brought me into the fold. And a stroke of luck, too, for the Company's contract was about to expire and they preparing to go on campaign again, I would have missed them had they set feet to march.

The distance between the Captain and the enlisted men narrowed as those men climbed the ranks to corporals and sergeants, having greater interactions with the man, and it was in my capacity as a corporal with the skirmisher's cohort that I first got to truly know the man behind the trappings of the office, when he invited me to the headquarters tent and asked my thoughts on Gem, the sergeant of that cohort, for the Captain was given to the disposition (having once been merely an enlisted man his self) that such opinions were valuable and, since he was given over entirely to servitude to his position, understood that responsibilities were a cross-roads, where the power to order men to their deaths meant also a devotions to their lives. I told the Captain truthfully that Gem was a fine leader, and what men served under him could trust him, and what private soldiers served under me might find that I had modelled my own leadership, such as it was, on Gem's own, and the Captain took great thought of what I was saying, and told me that sometimes men what are called to headquarters sometimes tell tales that they believe are pleasing to the ears of leadership, for the capacities of subordinates reflect on the higher-ups ability to gauge and judge their limitations, or sometimes men fear retaliation, but he told me he trusted I was speaking plainly and honestly, as I seemed like an honest sort not giving to trappings of pageantry, and such was a demonstration of capacity for leadership, and asked had I learned my letters and figures and sums, to which I replied in the affirmative too.

The Captain was not a man of particular scruples, however, past the Company's interests, in so far as some mercenaries do have scruples as to where their daily rations come from, and joyfully signed contracts with nations such as Thay, devoting the company to servitude of the Red Wizards, on the capacity of an internal campaign, garrisoning this place or that to keep a civil peace, in so far as such peaces can be maintained in what places keep slaves and host blood sports, on account of it was a fair contract fairly dealt, and the company's philosophy being much the same as mine, that is, "whose goodness and whose laws?"

But even there the Captain did a great speech, knowing some men of the Company, enlisted and officers, had been trapped in servile positions before, some having joined the Company to flee the yokes of bondage, and made much of the fact that the Company, well-disciplined and well-ordered, would preserve peace in its garrisonings, and reduce casualties and sufferings, and that we would, in that capacity of peace-keepers, do our duties as diligently as when we acted as peace-makers, though the difference between keeping the peace and making the peace was that in making peace, one must first wage war that peace might be obtained, but keeping it was such that war must be avoided, and with the increasing rumblings of rebellion among the folk what was counted as chattel by the Red Ones, such war threatened to brew.

We made too some new enlisted men in Thay, where some of the servile populace, seeing an opportunity to escape their lot, eschewed their names and such marks and brands what might have been given them, to take up arms with the Company, and in so doing parade around when we were given such freedoms of the cities, and march directly past their old captors, invisible as they were in plain sight, and that gave some of us some measure of pleasure at our cleverness.

And the Captain maintained that the Company be paid in a timely fashion, and in full, and what contractees would not would find themselves of a sudden lacking strength in arms, so that never once (and with the assistance of Dog-face and his manner of dealing with what negotiations delivered to the Company purse) did the Company lack for food or equipment, even when the time between campaigns was long and our trade meager, and it was such philosophies of saving for lean times that the Captain encouraged the men to save for their retirement, to not live in the today but the tomorrow, and make sure what men made it to being long in the tooth had a trove to get them through the sunset of their years, if they chose not to move on to dignified positions of soldiers no longer able to fight, such as the stewards.

It was at the end of his time as Captain and, for that matter, the end of the time of the Company, that the Captain signed a contract with Ten Towns or, speaking more accurately, the fisher-folk what call those places home, in the Icewind Dale, on account of the banditry and larceny that was afoot, and such that the men what wanted to make trade by setting themselves to sea and lake and catching fish might do so unmolested by criminality, and so the Company agreed to such terms, the tradesmen and labourers of that land having pooled their money to take on such a force as ours, and set us to efforts to restore law to a lawless land through martial means.

And then too did the Captain make such a speech, as as before in Thay, many of the men who enlisted with our Company had come up through criminal means, such as The Laugher, and reminded us of our drills and disciplines and for those among us who had engaged ourselves as road agents and second-storey men in yesteryears might remember that today we were soldiers, and not to look on the highwaymen that plagued the fisherfolk as kin, and what of them might give up their ways and join us might do so, in so far as they were willing to give themselves over to discipline and that what sergeants guaranteed them did so knowing the price of picking up such soldiers inclined to thiefing.

And for some months the campaign was good, alleviating the sufferings as we'd been hired to, and restoring as much semblance of peace as can be restored where men-folk live, whose hearts are always drawn towards lawless proclivities in so far as this is the universal failing of folk, and the Company honoured its end of the contract and the people of Icewind Dale honoured their end.

But in those last days, the change that came over the Captain was startling, for we had never seen such before from him, and his inclinations were such that he used his influence to hold sway over the other officers that came to him, The Widow being the most dangerous, her being a wizard in command of wizards, and began speaking of his visions of pain and sorrow and despair, and skin that would separate from meat and bone in a glorious shadow, and the sights of his beloved lady what, from a man who was nearly as virginal as a Paladin, having never had time for a woman on campaign, let alone a wife, and was married to the Company, seemed like an obsession with the opposite sex virtually unimaginable to us, and we fretted and wondered if this was merely words to sway the locals by adopting strange customs that were known to them, the men in the Company from Icewind Dale told us that they had never heard such depraved speech before, and we knew something was amiss with the Captain.

Indeed, the Captain was not one to tolerate insubordination, for it broke rank and was brutally undisciplined and he meted out floggings what he, having taken poll of the most junior of enlisted men, had utmost confidence in the fairness of on account of his similar utmost confidence that the leadership in the Company was as fine as it could be, and that orders fairly given were to be followed, and so such derelictions of duties were never tolerated. So when Ari rose in mutiny against the Captain, in so far as one can call such mutiny, and we did not, for we saw that the Captain and indeed the office of captaincy had mutinied against the Company, the Captain paid it no mind, as if a small cadre of loyal followers with the rest of the camp in disarray, some standing in rebellion, some standing in confusion, was of no bother to him.

The Captain, when we awoke that terrible morning, was one of the casualties of the violent revelries that took place in the final night of the Company, not only by a mere headcount, but on account of we found his skin, virtually intact, with the tattoos and markings and scars the Captain wore, and we knew that his own mad gibberings, having taken firm hold of him, had extinguished his life and the life of his devotees along with the Companymen what did not follow him, such was his reward and the tender ministrations he could expect from whatever dark thing what he gave his final days over too.

A man of such upstanding nature as the Captain ought not to the be forgotten, but nor should the dark words and ill deeds he visited on those what followed him, and I will likely never know the sorts of him again, what both stood so tall and, having only that much farther to fall for it, debased himself beyond measure.

[Mooj]

We, being the crew and myself, ventured north of Soubar to the Serpent Hills on an impromptu hunt and a practicing of our skills, in so far as we needed practice, and set ourselves to perishing from this world the snake-folk, or Yuan Ti as they are sometimes called, who inhabit the hills -- though I do not know if the hills are named for they or they for the hills, though I would find it highly amusing if they selected such by co-incidence, some serpent-man hissing through forked tongue that such places were fine for them to inhabit and inviting, since they already bore their name -- and ventured into the temples within those hills, where the snake-folk make their worships.

I am befuddled once again by the strange and oddly specific fascination with intimate proclivities of the Sword Coast, for nearly everything has about it an air of indulgence of the physical lusts, and their temple is no different, resembling a well-appointed bordello in its own right, though one that caters to the darker sort of sensual tastes in that high-class way, resplendent with wrought braziers wafting incense into the rooms and corridors made from stone-masonry, rather than what one might in the cities, where dim lanterns and perfumed employees sit snug in cozy rooms bedecked with patterned wall-papers.

But of utmost curiosity is the fact that the Yuan Ti seem to have, besides what sets their cloacae all a-flutter, a fascination with lending libraries, where one might find shelves of books in hallways and siderooms, ready for any one what slithers upon the ground or walks erect to read, such as those might be placed to and fro in their temple.

And so to do they have a fascination with throw rugs, which are small and geometrically spaced about their stone floors (and which I must wonder how the snake-folk do not set themselves to dragging about when they slither over it after trans-forming into their true selfs), such that if one wandered in, one might think one's grandmother had given herself over to serpent-worship.

The snakes are also given over to locking some areas behind magical access, what required us to tele-port using a horrible kind of portal suspended in the air, its dwimmers taking us to that place where shut eyes still see and, emerging from the enchanted sphincter like turds deposited by the planes, did battle with a massive Yuan Ti what struck down one of our number who had rushed ahead.

In all, the place is perturbing in so far as a locale can be, in that it is given over to what passes for serpent lusts, and yet comforting in the same, for so much here is given over to strange perversions, that I at once felt an alien presence and one of comfort and familiarity.

[Mooj]

I must say this, for I had hoped I would acclimate to his presence, but I have not. The child what makes his way around the courtyard at the Arm unnerves me, for he does not toddle as one of his size should, but has a queer gait and what cadence he marches time to is constantly fast-paced, and he has the proportions of a small man.

I suspect he may be a halfling fugitive, all young in the face, merely disguised as a child.

If he is a child, and although I should not think such things, then I wish ill upon him, for he sets my stomach something uneasy. Though I do not wish for him to die, I hope such ill is enough that he is laid-up in his bed, unable to gallivant about the merchant's stalls with that strange walk of his.

[Mooj]

I stopped by the Friendly Arm Inn, as I often do when making journeys between the Gate and Beregost. There I happened upon Mustache, who is no longer Codpiece but Mustache once again (on account of hiding that fabulous codpiece of his, as if he was a coward ashamed of his groin), and set to drinking with him.

As we sat at our table, quietly sipping away at our beverages (for tonight was not a night of carousing, but contemplations), we saw a woman possessed of the bearings of a celestial being accosted by a man I'd seen several times before, who was trying to lure her away. It did not seem to be for licentious and scandalous reasons, but something more sinister than common and depraved criminalities, for murmurs that this man was of the Zhentarim met my ears afterwards, and explained much of jabberings to the woman of a life orbiting around pain and fear and lies.

Such jabberings set my ears a-listening, on account of their similarities to what rolled off the Captain's tongue in Ten Towns, where similar states of fear and lives lived in darkness were much to the Captain's ado, and I questioned the Sky-child as to their intentions, asking "who were those men?" and "what did they want?", to which she replied with some ignorance, explaining that she did not know their intentions but sought to lure her away, having tried first to pay for her drinks and then later making direct overtures of her coming with.

Like I said (and this shockingly for the Sword Coast, which seems filled with perverts) such overtures did not seem intimate in nature.

And she said too he was with another man, paired as they were in some ill intent. And she said too that she had been accosted by such before, and had been protected in turn by another fellow who, in describing, I recognized as Goldenrod, the man what cannot tell a lie.

Mustache and myself kicked in a door in the upstairs of the Arm, which we assumed was theirs on account of Mustache having said he had heard them muttering prayers, though the pair did not look much like god-botherers to me, and investigated their lodgings. Their window offered no particular view. A journal, unwritten in, sat open on a desk. There was nothing under the bed, no arcane symbols, nothing scrawled on the walls or floor or ceiling.

I alighted to the courtyard to investigate further, where I found no signs of the two, and went back inside, offering to escort the Sky-child to the city, hoping that vexing the two men would set them on my path, and allow me to conduct an analysis of their intentions and motivations in greater depth, what might lead me back to the scent of the Captain's last days.

And upon escorting the Sky-child out to the draw-bridge which surrounds the Arm, in the company of Mustache, I found the two men lingering, having encircled the establishment (in so far as two men can encircle anything, though they did have a view to the single point of ingress), talking -- and here I only heard a snippet -- of "sending in somebody to get her," her I assume being the Sky-child.

I confronted the accosters, asking if such was there plan, to which they shrugged and played non-chalant but I knew I had spoiled what I am sure they believed was a grand plan but what truly was backwards. They then walked off in the direction of the Sharp Teeth, and, in so far as we could tell, left. I saw the be-turbanned elf Mica, and asked that he shadow us, and ensure we were not followed, recruiting him to our plan, such that I see plenty of tails around the Gate, but those belonging to tieflings are one thing, and those belonging to an escort sortie another, and did not wish to acquire such a tail myself.

We made our way back to Baldur's Gate, and there Mica assured me in the tongue of elves that we were not followed, save by he, and I thanked him, and the Sky-child conversed with him in some celestial tongue for a while, I having not acquired that on my campaigning on account of cloud-folk not thinking much of mercenary work in general and thereby having no time to turn my ear for tongues towards it.

The Sky-child said she would stay at an Inn in the Eastern District, but I insisted instead that she come aboard the ship, and that I would abuse what little authority I had to give her a room, certainly, and that it was more secure than an inn on the main drag of the Gate, with only its single point of entry, and its many guards, I being one, and told her that she would likely have a reunion with Goldenrod there, as well. And so we retired to the boat, and I apologized to her for the decor, for she seemed the delicate sort not given over to understanding the Twilight Rose's nature as a den of sin set upon the waves.

And with certainty we did discover Goldenrod there, who was shocked at the Sky-child's treatment at the hands of the Zhents, and thanked us, being me and Mustache, for intervening for her safeties, and he too asked her many questions, though his did not go in the direction mine did, and finally she retired for the night, after having complimented the honour of my selfs and Mustache, which I took to be odd on account of not being familiar with honour so much.

I lead her to her room below-decks and I offered then to stand guard outside for the night, for she was taken of fright and feared fitful sleeps and even more fitful wakings at the hands of the two black-clad brutes.

She declined my offer.

I stood watch anywise.

[Mooj]

I have found myself aching as of late, lost in nostalgic melancholies.

The Sky-child's innocence has set a fire in me something fierce, and wildly protective, not in the way a man protects his lover, but in what way a mountain sets itself between the wild sea-borne winds and the delicate flowers what would break subjected to such gales.

I was married, as mentioned prior, and quite young, on leave in the City of Coin in Amn, to a serving girl named Clara, who was fetching in the way only simply peasant stock can be. I joked she looked like a horse, but there was a gentle truth to that: sturdy, thick, and hard-laboured, but with a sweetness and flowing grace to her that I am sure she saw in some way reflected in me, not the fen-man corporal but the dashing knight, and though our marriage lasted only a tenday, on account of my soldiering and my youthful obstinate ways, she fell pregnant and, long before we set to march again, gave birth to a daughter -- my daughter -- we named Elly.

I saw her no later than a child toddles, at most two, but I loved her and still do, and remember clearly buying trinkets for her in the marketplace, little wooden toys of wagons and horses and soldiers, like her da, and the way she'd clap with delight when she'd play with them, unable to close her fingers so her open palms slapped together in that way that is terribly uncoordinated but so distinctly child-like.

We knew that I would not only be a horrible husband, but a horrible father -- not in the way my da was, but in a way that would be absentee, on account of the mercenary's life -- and she could never come with me, so when I left Athkatla, I said my final good-byes to my little girl.

She would be a young woman now, of an age to marry herself, and I've not once seen her since. When my mind turns to the Captain and Ari and Big Brush and Giblet and Dog-face and Noodles and Whiskers and Widow and Crisper and Tall Yon and Goggles and the hundreds of others, there is a rage that can be sated with revenging myself, but where my mind turns to Elly, there is only a hole that can never be filled, because I have closure for the others, and know their fates, but I do not know if she is well or ill or passed on, or if she is married or alone, or if she even remembers her father.

I hope she has kept a toy to remember me by, and I hope she looks at it fondly, and with happy memories of chubby little hands applauding.

I hope Clara found another man to raise Elly with her, and show her all the things she should expect of a man, none of them qualities of mine.

I hope he truly loves her.

I hope Elly calls him father.

[Mooj]

I had wandering into the brothel owned by the Darius fellow what's situated on the docks (rather than near-by and afloat) when I found a grand party assembled, with the familiar faces of the Skipper and his mate (in the literal sense, not that of the ship) in shabby, tattered clothing. I made inquiries as to what was afoot in this establishment, as so often strange things happen here to slake the perversions of the patrons and owners. Thereupon they informed me that they had assembled such a party, including Bird and Goldenrod, they being most familiar to me, to investigate pugilism among the destitute and indigent in the sewers beneath Baldur's Gate.

I thought the investigations strange, and I did not rightly know why they were doing this, and so they informed me that this was being done to espy a tiefling who had been up to nefarious things in the city, whereupon I said that tieflings seemed to compose roughly half the city's populace, and a certain greater specificity was required. The tiefling was up to deviltry, they said, and I recalled the story of the critter what had attacked Red and company some time back, and agreed to go.

I fetched some shabby clothing, and rolled around in the filth some, and headed into the sewers.

In the sewers I made up a legend that I was from Athkatla, and had been a bare-knuckled pugilist there in the alleys, but found such creative lyings were unnecessary to infiltrate the place.

The man posted as a guard there invited me to touch some mushrooms what was luminescent, and upon handling the funguses I was covered in similar glowings, and invited to drink an ale to stave off the effects.

The ale was disgusting.

Eventually lead by the others following a heavily bandaged man, we made our way deeper into the bowels of the sewers, where trails of blood seemed to call from a distance that sinister things was afoot below the streets of the city, in the deepest areas of Baldur's Gate, and we were waylaid by eldritch things not -- by definition of being eldritch -- of this world.

We encountered there the heavily bandaged man, who melted his self into a pile of blood and goop, and trans-formed through such sacrificial rituals into a great devil what emerged from the magical sphincter where the liquefied remains had pooled, and then the devil in turn was transformed into a chicken, and the chicken killed. Then our party discovered its plans was to stockpile such bodies as had been infested with wicked blood magics and detonate explosives, as the miners of the Company had, beneath the streets, to send the tainted blood thither and yon across the area of the Gate.

We melted away the barrels and the explosives with acid, where they receded down the drain, though we could do naught with the wall of corpses, for there were too many.

At some point Goldenrod chose to thrust his hands into the wall of corpses -- I know not why -- and I had to drag him physically out of there.

Pressing deeper into the sewers, we encountered a man reading a giant book. I made such inquiries as to whether the abomination he worshipped was of a size what would consider that book to be light reading, and was informed that yes it was, and made a point that perhaps we should deal with this individual before he felt the need to bring his dark master into the world. I then yelled profanities at him, and questioned his goodness of character, and then cussed him out some more, and he too opened a magical sphincter to the hells and rallied reinforcements.

The reinforcements were slain, but two of our party lost, and brought back from the brink of death by parchments written by the god-botherers to contain their holy words. Goldenrod was one of their number, and lay helpless. Having as part of my standard campaign kit many medical supplies, not such that I would ever be confused for the Company chirurgeon, but sufficient that one wounded under my command might make it back alive for more proper care, I set about cleaning his wounds with cotton gauze and stitching his wounds. And yet every time I stitched, Goldenrod grew more feverish, and his eyes welled with tears, such that at first I thought it was merely the pain of the beating and stabbings and the suturing, but realized as Bird told us, it was rather that he had been envenomated, and such poisons might leave him dead if we dabbled too much in healing attempts, specially concocted as it was to foul the efforts of healers.

He being stiff as a board and me being the strongest of the unit, I hoisted him aloft and had Bird take his legs, where we were tele-ported back to the surface, and carried him to the Temple of Ilmater. I was of a sort, hollering at the god-botherers to minister to his needs, and when Bird's preferred healer was not in for the night, I demanded they get her in, and was ill of temper on account of feeling as if these misadventures were my fault, given my hurling calumnies at the diabolist and his giant tome.

As we waited, we debated the merits of trying different treatments for Goldenrod, whereupon I made it clear that even with Bird's protestations that certain ones would be agony, I fully supported them as pain was survivable, and while Goldenrod might wish he were dead for a while, he would then be grateful that he had not died.

Little Cloud and Goldenrod's lover then came round, and fretted over him while Bird and I (both of us being pragmatists) discussed his fate rather openly, setting aside delicate sensibilities in favour of effecting solutions. Bird wished for some samples of the toxin before continuing, and while she being more diplomatic than I asked Goldenrod's belle to speak in his place, I simply took the most expedient solution of dispensing with such and stripped away his shirt, whereupon Bird took that as her cue to dispense with pleasantries, and she went about sniffing at his wounds, though he smelt so much of toxicity and sewage little could be determined. Having been the one who sutured him, I took it upon myself to explore his torso, and identified likely sites of injury where the poison had been introduced, based on them being suppurated and more inflamed than I remembered, and gave Bird some cotton from my kits to sample it with.

Bird's professed preferred healer then arrived, and tended to Goldenrod, and at once he became ambulatory again, though numb, his paralysis having worn off, and set the Little Cloud and his elf lover's mind at ease.

I insulted him because I was fretting, and though he is not the sort to understand such logics normally, I think he took it well.

Bird said some must stand watch, and I volunteered to do so, as she said that the healer's shadow was "twitchy." I still know not what that means.

For his healing, I fetched him a loose-fitting tunic and pants what will not bunch up around the wounds and will show blood should they re-open, and light enough and fashioned to open at the front should he need to sweat and be cool.

I made sure such dress was appropriately hideous, for my own merriment.

[Mooj]

I am currently in the north, harassing the devils with Bird.

I am demonstrating for her and her watchfolk brethren how I keep my journal; that is, I hold the stylus stationary and erect and then slap the book onto the nib and move it about. I have learned it this way on account of teaching myself my letters, and have been told it is backwards, but am set in my ways.