Northgate
217, multiple seasons
The Art - Spring 217
It was during Luke Bastion’s first invitation to the Silverun estate when Ethan first became enamored with the statue. In a cocktail room, squeezed into a nook buried in the farthest corner, there stood a porcelain statue of Ithelis Silverun, the man widely considered responsible for the family’s current status within the city. The statue had an unsightly, crooked nose and lanky arms that appeared too long for his body. His forehead was broad and his eyes were just slightly too far apart. The man looked wholly unremarkable; but the artistry on display was incredible.
The sculpture did not bare any hint of exaggeration—nothing of its design appeared mean-spirited or spiteful. As he looked into the colorless, stone eyes Ethan felt as though he were staring at the man himself, frozen in time, transformed into marble.
Luke’s fascination eventually drew the attention of Jesiria Silverun who used the opportunity to share some of the family’s history. Ethan was not at all interested in the man the statue depicted but rather the artist who brought it to life. Jesiria Silverun provided some of the story of the artist, but most of it was uncovered later by the rogue himself, over the course of several weeks.
In the months following Garbon’s death, most Ethan’s attention was focused on maintaining the illusion of two entirely separate lives – Luke Bastion, the wealthy houseguest with an endless stream of titillating stories for the Silverun Family, and Jon Dough the simple baker whose street cuisine became a daily routine for so many. But in the rare moments he had any time for himself, his mind wandered back to the statue and his efforts were applied to learn more about the artist who created it.
Eventually, Ethan felt he had learned the story of the man as well as anyone could after nearly a century of being forgotten…
The Sculptor
Alistair Keyman was a talent beyond his years. Born into a respectable family, he took to sculpting at an early age. While still just a teenager, he was selected (over the master who trained him) to sculpt works that would serve as commemorations of the Jorendon House. This honor, and the positive reception of the work he produced, made him one of the most in-demand artists of his day, sought after by any family with the means to afford his time.
For many years he worked like a man possessed, moving from one work to another, each a masterpiece. Yet in spite of all of the money and notoriety his efforts achieved him, Alistair grew increasingly distressed. He hated his creations, it was said; he was frustrated the demands of the families who hired him, feeling they restrained his gifts. Each depiction of the nobles he created looked the same.
‘They all wish to create a man or woman that never existed – one who was tall, handsome, flawless…’ he lamented.
With the now infamous demise of Northgate’s most powerful family, his works – many of which were crafted exclusively for the Jorendon House and displayed on their grounds – were thought to have been destroyed along with all the other traces of that family.
After the upheaval, it would be decades before the new Great Noble Houses successfully divested themselves of Swan control and once again felt a sense of independence from the Barony, and Ithelis Silverun had as much a hand in the return of Northgate’s relative independence as anyone.
Having successfully brought his family through the disruptive times and emerging as one of the most powerful names in the entire city, Ithelis Silverun decided to commission a statue of himself. He wanted to emulate the beauty and stature created for Jorendon House. He wanted one of the great works by Alistair himself – to chisel his grandeur into granite or marble, just as the once-great Jorendon House he’d seen so many years before. It was to be the final jewel of his legacy, depicting the man for the admiration of succeeding generations, both Silverun and otherwise.
But in the years that passed, Alistair had changed. He was no longer willing to create ‘lies’ of plaster, wood or stone. His hands, he decided, would create the truth or they would create nothing at all.
There is no consensus on whether this intention was made clear to Ithelis. What is agreed on, is the time and expenses that was paid as commission to the artist, and the reception the work received upon being revealed.
The work was completed shortly after Ithelis’s death. As part of his will, Ithelis insisted that the work, once finished, should remain on the grounds “in plain view,” for others to admire thereafter. Months after his funeral, before a crowd of nobles – friends, family and rivals – the statue was unclothed to reveal a spitting image of the man who paid for the work. There was no grandeur or prestige. The statue was a simple reflection of the person who had lived. Every inch of it carved in pursuit of truth.
The Silverun family swore Alistair would never work again.
Some of this story Ethan learned. Some parts he inferred. And some have been laid bare to you alone to help you understand the nature of a man time may otherwise forget.
The portions of the story he learned captivated Ethan’s imagination for reasons he couldn’t fully explain. But what turned this interest into an obsession was the discovery that the artist was still alive. He lived in Northgate. On a street very familiar to Ethan.
First Meeting - Autumn 217
Ethan felt a sense of dread as he approached Alistair’s house for the first time. All the signs of faded glory could be seen from the street. From its cracked stones stairs to the rusty iron gate and dilapidated shudders, the house told a tale of age and neglect. For the first time, Ethan realized the artist himself may be nothing like the man he had created in his imagination. Secondhand stories about the life of a stranger from decades in the past were hardly the most reliable of sources.
Yet there was an undeniable excitement inside him too.
The feeling was strange as Ethan could not recall the last time he felt nervous at the prospect of meeting someone. When the opinion of others mattered to him at all, he was confident in his ability to shape those opinions to suit his needs. Yet as he climbed the stairs of Alistair’s porch, his pulse quickened and perspiration dotted his brow.
The heavy door knocker whined as he timidly tapped his unannounced arrival into the large, wooden door. He waited for several minutes before tapping again, slightly harder this time. Still there was no response. He was about to give up when he remembered that Alistair would be of a similar age to his uncle in his last years, and his hearing had often been spotty. Steeling himself, he rapped on the door again, slamming the knocker against frame with a clatter hard enough to avalanche a small patch of snow from the roof and draw an unintentional answer from the house next door.
From inside the home, a raspy, ragged, disgruntled voice called out in response; before the old man answered, Ethan caught the eye of a confused neighbor who was checking his front door in response to the banging. Spotting Ethan, the neighbor understood the mistake, scowling at him as he closed the door. Shortly thereafter, the correct door in front of Ethan was opened revealing a tiny, thin, balding wisp of a man. His clothes were unkempt, his fingernails dyed black and broken. His skin and clothes were covered in plaster, dust and bits of wood, all spotted with stain. The man’s eyes were almost completely clouded over as he squinted against the late afternoon sunlight, a reaction that was more reflex than need. The man’s ears were large - even by half-elf standards – but it was his hands more than anything that caught Ethan’s attention. The gnarled, rough, wrinkled skin was stretched across hands that seemed two sizes too large for the tiny figure before him. And though weathered by time and use, they looked strong enough to crush bricks, even if the arms attached to them seemed incapable of lifting one.
There was a pause between them and although the man’s eyes looked too weak to see sunlight on a cloudless day, Ethan felt he was somehow being examined. For a moment, neither spoke, just starring at one another. Whatever conclusions this first impression was going to provide, the old man came to his before Ethan reached his own.
“Who are you?” he barked, startling Ethan into fishing for a response.
“I—” he started.
“I don’t want to buy anything.” The old man interjected.
“I’m… not selling anything.” Ethan replied.
“Good.” The old man said.
Seemingly satisfied with the exchange, he began closing the door.
“Wait!” Ethan started. He reached forward, blocking the door from closing. It was not a difficult struggle.
“Ah, wait, wait. Mr. Keyman! I’m… here to ask about your work!”
At first, the old man seemed determined to test his stubbornness against the younger man’s strength, but when Ethan used his name and mentioned his work the heaviest pressure against the door abated.
Another long pause passed between them.
“I don’t work for coin anymore. I don’t need it. Don’t want it.” He said dismissively, although he did not return to fighting the battle for the front door in earnest.
“I know,” Ethan said. “I just… I just want to talk to you about a job. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to take it… and I’ll pay you for the time you spent listening.”
Silence again followed for a moment. Still squinting and now slightly flushed, the man’s head slowly peaked around the door, tilting in such a way to capture Ethan with the one good part of his eye that might still work.
“Five gold gets you five minutes.”
“Ok,” Ethan said. “Sounds…”
Expensive, he thought.
“…fair,” he said.
A giant hand that had no business being attached to the old man’s body snaked its way to the door’s exterior, an upturned palm waiting expectantly. Ethan’s sighed through his nose in exasperation as he pulled five of the ten gold pieces from a pocket deep within his clothes. He placed the coins in the giant palm. The cupped hand tossed lightly tossed the coins judging their weight before a rough thumb pressed the material against an index and middle finger, testing its pliability. Satisfied with the results, Ethan watched as the hand closed around them and moved away slowly, like an imperious god accepting an offering.
The pressure from the door was relieved and he was allowed inside.
The Museum
The interior of the house matched its exterior only in terms of neglect. Otherwise, the two could not be more different. Whereas the exterior of the home looked perfectly nondescript, settled comfortably amongst its neighbors, the interior was the most lavishly decorated setting Ethan had ever seen. Not in terms of its furniture – which was itself as worn and weather as the old man’s skin – nor in terms of the trinkets or other common luxuries reflecting the staples of wealth. Instead, it was the walls and structure itself. As Ethan followed the small man through a narrow hallway, past a couple doorways and through rotunda housing the stairwell. Each wall was a canvas; rooms of the house were divided by murals carved out of the walls themselves. In fact, every single surface that could be sanded, shaved or chiseled was elaborately decorated with carvings of every conceivable variety. Handrails became tree branches, ceilings became skylines, tables became statues of men supporting the weight of a force bearing down on them. In addition to the fixtures and furnishings, each room was seemingly filled with busts and statues, some posed but many just littering the floors and tables, each one stunning in its detail.
Ethan saw all of this through the dingy haze of a home shuddered against sunlight, uncleaned for countless years. The air was dusted with a fine powder of shattered rocks and flayed wood. The smell of stain was so thick it burned the lungs.
Yet in spite of all the neglect, the beauty inside was undeniable. This was how the man had spent his years. The house reflected the life’s work of those godly hands.
As they made their way to a breakfast nook, the man pour himself a cup of coffee mixed with wine, his hands shaking ever so slightly. The area would have provided a generous space if it were ever cleaned, but chairs and ladders lined the walled and leaned against the counters. The old man ignored them completely stepping over and between each as though it were a fixture of the house rather than clutter before taking a seat at a small table, claiming the only unburdened chair. Ethan hesitated before clearing off another chair for himself, his mind flashing back to the years spent living with his uncle where clutter was feverishly protected, his uncle’s last desperate attempt to keep hold of a mind that was losing itself. But Alistair didn’t seem to notice (much less care) as Ethan cleared a space for himself.
“Five minutes,” he said bringing the cup to his lips. The man tapped out ashes from blackened pipe, before filling it with a fresh pinch of stale tobacco. The smell was almost rancid, but the old man’s throat and lungs seemed so thickly lined with dust they were insulated against the effects.
Ethan began speaking, offering a version of the short, scripted pitch he had prepared. He began talking about Alistair’s history and what Ethan had managed to learn of him. He spoke of admiration of the man’s work that he saw at the SIlverun estate and praised the man’s talent. He had used just over three minutes of his time when he noticed the man’s left hand; while the right occupied itself with the pipe, the left sat perched on the table between them, the index finger rhythmically tapping against the table. Ethan had attributed this as an unconscious tick, the way some might bounce their leg or pull at their beard when nervous. But as he mentally counted down the time was allotted, Ethan realized it was no tick. The tapping occurred every three seconds. The old man was literally counting down the time.
Realizing his pitch was not working, Ethan stopped talking.
The finger tapped on against the table seven more times, the soft padding of his ancient skin drumming quietly against the wood, the only sound in the otherwise silent, crowded room.
You’re failing, Ethan thought.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
With his time dwindling, he again considered for a moment for why he was here – why he had bothered to actually come to meet this man. What he really wanted from him.
He looked at the old man. He looked around the room where they were sitting.
In the silence, he reconsidered his approach. After months of deceiving everyone he met, hiding in the safety and shadows of a fiction he perpetuated every day, Ethan chose to set aside the mask of lies he carried with him and speak truth.
He took a deep breath letting it out slowly. His face shifted – subtly, but distinctly. The confident, relaxed smile fell away and his friendly, perceptive, cheery eyes vanished. What was left was young man who looked equal parts sad and dangerous. Ethan looked at the old man with this new face as that finger counted out the seconds left between them.
“I came here to tell you about my friend Garbon.” Ethan said, his voice noticeably deeper.
And at this, the man’s finger stopped.
The Final Meeting - Winter 217
As Ethan exited the red door of the Inn where Vanja, Sav and the others were staying, he pulled his clothes tighter around him. The last light of the late afternoon was fading quickly and the breeze from the north was increasing.
He made his way across town to the house of Alistair Keyman. He last visited several months ago, not long after Danica’s surprise return. He was traveling there again for what he knew would be the last time.
When he arrived, he pounded the cold metal knocker loudly and confidently, holding his cloak over the device to shield the rest of neighbors from the sound. The cloak was thankfully thick and heavy (as it always had been) enough to muffle the sound.
Ethan smiled at the almost familiar sounds of indignant shouting that came from within. When the door opened, the old man looked even thinner than Ethan remembered, something he would have thought impossible. The faded, stained layers of once fine clothing hung over his skeletal frame like a bedsheet draped over a line to dry. The old man knew who Ethan was immediately, although he insisted on pretending otherwise even as he let Ethan in from the cold. After this ruse, he transitioned into shouting what felt like the usual obscenities and once again threatening Ethan with all manner of violence for disturbing him, all the while leading Ethan back into the breakfast nook where two chairs were still cleared and awaiting guests.
The man poured himself another cup of coffee and wine and took a seat. After several sips, the shaking in his hands – a little worse than Ethan remembered – settled as well. He packed his ancient pipe with a fresh pinch of stale tobacco and settled into silence.
Ethan was smiling slightly as settled his own frame into the heavy wooden chair, closing his eyes and breathing in the stale air, inhaling the comforting mix of smells so thick they threatened to permanently coat his lungs and infuse themselves into the leather of his shoes.
Ethan would miss this place, he realized.
He smiled, a genuine smile that light up his face with a warmth rarely seen. A smile that faded quickly, replaced by a subtle, bittersweet grin.
“I want to tell you about some more friends that I knew…” he started.
The old man said nothing, simply drawing another breath of acrid smoke and nodding.
Ethan told the old man stories of children he once knew.
His spoke of a golden child, gifted with all the natural talents a person could be born with – strength and grace and beauty. A figure so tall and powerful his presence alone demanded crowds to part before him as though shifted by an invisible field. A laugh that was so raucous it would shake the walls of the tavern it echoed from and convinced others to join in even when they couldn’t explain why. The favored son for whom the world, if sensible, would lay down before him and grant his every demand. For if anyone was worthy of such treatment, it was him.
Next, he spoke of a half-elf with one crooked ear and a brilliant smile; a smile worn to shield the world from the brokenness inside him. A boy forced to suffer by those most responsible for protecting him from harm. He told of a pain the boy carried with him and his efforts to escape it by bathing himself in simple pleasures, distracting his mind from the suffering that always threatened to reclaim him. And of the misguided prayers the boy never voiced, wishing himself to be healed from the trauma that broke him, convinced it was required before he would be worthy enough to call himself a hero.
And Ethan told the old man of things he never thought to tell that friend: how heroes who are perfect aren’t real, but the broken who carry on are all heroes; how each earnest smile and laugh that he claimed flaunted itself in defiance of the jealous pain that wanted to consume him; and that none of the suffering he endured had ever been his fault.
He told of times almost forgotten.
Of the time when Talith, maybe six years old, caught Roland teasing his sister. Not knowing what flirting was he moved between them, his arms protectively held behind him, wrapping his sisters’ legs as though shielding her from an attack. His face terrified and confused but defiant as he stared up at Roland. Standing between the girl almost twice his size and young man easily three times. Yet he held his ground until lovingly reassured by his sister that she was ok; the older, handsome young man standing by awkwardly, temporarily forgotten.
He recalled a different time when Talith and another friend, Rowen, had a fight, each having somehow learned the other was refusing to speak to the other ever again. Upon hearing this, the other claimed to do the same in-kind.
The two were forced together when the group was playing a game of Knights at Oak Keep. The two children eventually found themselves next to each other in a circle as Ethan and Danica argued over some rules, the game coming to stop as they debated who was right and why. Either Talith or Rowen got upset, hurt that the other was standing next to them and refusing to speak; one of them started crying and the other followed immediately after. Roux made them to both shake hands and changed the teams up, placing the two of them on the same side. By the end of the game, it was as though the fight never happened… although both of them hated any mention of the story for years afterward.
“They couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old at the time.” Ethan concluded, thoughtfully. He paused before offering a soft chuckle. “And I was right,” he said. “Danica had the rules mixed up. I feel like that’s really the important part of that story…” he smiled as he said this, seemingly unaware of the tears.
He told other stories, speaking long into the night; memories that would likely return to obscurity, fading into the recesses of his mind once again after he left. All the while the old man just puffed from his pipe and nodded along.
When he was done, he looked at the old man who stared back at him through those milky white eyes, clouded further than when they first met. But still the man held his gaze as though seeing somehow more clearly than Ethan ever would.
Unconsciously, Ethan wiped his eyes and stood to leave, the old man following behind him as he made his way out the door. He left a small coin purse on the desk next to the front door which the old man threw out after him as he made his way down the broken stone staircase. He’d left another, more generous bag in the breakfast nook which the old man would discover later and have to keep. As the door closed behind him and the warmth from inside the house cut off and the smells were carried away by the cold night air, Ethan felt a sense of relief that warded off any chill the winter’s breeze could muster.
There was one last stop to make before he laid such burdens down as best anyone ever really could. But that would wait for another night. For now, he made his way back to guesthouse where he would rest for the night. Tomorrow he would wake and prepare for his final performance as Luke Bastion.
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S12 E22 - The Lady Lace
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