Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

- Gandalf



Place more importance in activities that help others than on strict adherence to rules, rituals, and the dictates of your seniors.

- Dogma of Lathander

Know your foes.

- Dogma of Helm

Consorting with the faithful of good deities is a sin except in business dealings or to corrupt them from their beliefs.

- Dogma of Shar



12. Run Viccy Run

In the sparse woods of Peldvale, a drow woman ran, cursing the thinness of the trees. So hard to hide in these wide-open, empty, endless-sky surface lands. Except in the thickest forests, where the canopy of trees formed a cavernous cover, she always felt horribly exposed in this strange above-ground world. The sky was such a massive, open pit; she almost felt as if gravity were about to reverse and send her falling, not down, but up , up into the endless emptiness.

Night, the domain of her Goddess though it was, was little better. The stars were like gleaming spear points at the bottom of a wide, deep pit. But now, the sun, how it burned. The pale sky harbored no clouds, only that furious orb which so many fool surfacers worshipped , of all thinigs.

And every time she stumbled in her panicked flight from the soldier pursuing her, she didn't want to get up, she wanted to cling the grass, afraid of falling into the sky. But she would get up again as the clangs and threats grew louder behind her. He had been chasing her for miles, and her meager stamina was almost used up, as were the spells that she otherwise might have used to fight rather than flee, to smite this pathetic rivvil . She was panting and sweating heavily. Protect me Shar, please. From the fanatical spider queen below and the fanatical men above.

She had a stitch in her slight side, she was panting and sweating, and she stumbled to the ground again. She tried to get up, and she could hear the soldier behind her shouting for her to halt. Tears welled up in her eyes and she was a hair from giving up and preparing for death, against her nigh-undying survivor's nature, when she caught through her tears five figures ahead.

"Help me!" she called to them, forcing a desperation into her voice that was genuine, but stung her drow pride. "If you don't help me, they'll kill me!"

"Calm down, we'll help you. Just tell us who you are," shouted the one in the lead, a tall man whose armor betrayed no allegiance of any sort.

"My name is Viconia," she gasped. "I...I'm not from around here, thank you so much for helping."

She looked over the group. A less acute, perhaps surfacer, eye would have noticed that this first man seemed to be leader and very confident, but Viconia's eyes had been trained by decades upon decades of Underdark politics, power struggles, and intricate and dangerous social situations, and she could tell from the subtlest hints of his movements that he was not an entirely confident man, but one who was green with inexperience, confused by his surroundings, and fearful of something.

Next to him stood a shorter, stockier man who was similarly armored, wearing an open-faced helm that showed fat cheeks and beady eyes, and on his chest he bore an emblem that Viconia recognized as that of the surface-god Helm. Oh Shar no, she thought, Not Helm. Please, not Helm. Very, very unpleasant memories flashed through her mind, not altogether different from her current predicament at the hands of the Flaming Fist. Some worse.

A third man stepped beside this one, much shorter and slimmer but similarly equipped, and Viconia instantly recognized him a tu'rilthiir . A female half-breed stood beside him, holding a quarterstaff and glaring.

The fifth figure, a slim human girl in bright purple leathers, stood next to the first man and held his hand; from their mutual body language she marked them as undoubtedly brother and sister. The girl peered at her curiously. Far more curiously than most surfacers peered at her. It seemed foregin to her, for it was not the ubiquitous stares of disapproval or simpleton's amazement, but the friendly, optimistic curiosity of a highly intelligent child.

She heard the clanking close behind her, and turned.

"Step aside travelers, I am a member of the Flaming Fist," the solider ordered in a gruff voice as his human eyes made out this group and he came upon them and her. "The woman you are harboring is wanted for murder of the foulest sort. She is a dark elf; it should be obvious that she is evil."

"He lies, I've done nothing wrong," Viconia protested, turning to the five.

---

Onyx's eyes darted back and forth between these two. The soldier moved for the drow, but feeling a skeptical twinge, he strode forward and she scurried behind him as he held up an empty palm towards the Fist. "Whoa, slow down," he managed in his friendlist voice, "Murder? Of whom?"

The soldier balked. "She is a drow! Isn't it obvious? We have reports from respected citizens of her sacrificing children to her spider god and feasting upon their blood!"

"That would be Lolth," Onyx's eyes darted to the corner of their sockets, a textbook in his mind's eye, "Yet her belt bears the holy symbol of Shar. Odd testimony. Has she been tried?"

The Fist snarled impatiently. "Well, we erected a pyre but she fled! For that I sentence her to death!"

Onyx protested, "But I'm not convinced she's doing anyth-"

"Can't you sense it?" Ajantis spoke up alongside him. "She's evil!"

"Paladins, eh?" the Fist smiled. "I knew she was evil! Well boys, let's smite the witc-"

"Wait!" Onyx shouted, his voice rising. "That's like a thought crime! That can't be leg-"

"She is sentenced, boy," the Fist barked.

"We cannot break the law to of all things, harbor evil!" Ajantis concurred.

Onyx shook his head in desperate denial. "No, no, this can't be right."

Tethtoril placed a holy symbol in the hands of Onyx of twelve.

"There are three aspects of law.

When it promotes freedom and combats its infringement, it is justice.

When it serves no purpose good or ill save as an obstacle, it is bureaucracy.

When it punishes the innocent and devours freedom, it is tyranny.

You must uphold one and only one of these aspects. Never misunderstand which."

"It has to be!" Ajantis shouted, to himself as much as the others.

The Fist glared at Onyx. "Stand down boy. Ah am tha law."

"No," Onyx exhaled, now quite confidence and calm. "You're a tyrant in a teapot."

Ajantis took a step forward, turned and stood abreast of the Flaming Fist soldier. "Stand down!" he cried to Onyx. "You can't attack us!"

"I'm not," Onyx nodded his head backwards, "We're defending her." Jaheira stepped astride him in Ajantis's place, planting her quarterstaff firmly on the ground. Khalid stepped up beside her, with a hand on his hilt, forming a three-strong wall between Viconia and the two who wished her dead. Behind them, Imoen's knuckles whitened on her bow.

"A stupid decision!" the soldier cried. "For harboring a murderer I sentence you all to death!" He made a clumsy charge, and Ajantis alongside him.

Jaheira backed up and chanted an exotic phrase like flowing water, and vines sprang up from the ground around Ajantis, snaking around and around his legs as he came upon Khalid, who, true to form, began his melee engagmenet with a leap backwards, landing him just outside of the Helmite's now-limited reach.

The soldier made a crude overhead swing at Onyx, who blocked it by raising his shield, and thrust his own sword forward at belly height, twisting his body and putting his weight and shoulder muscles behind it. His sword tip cleft between two plates of the Fist's mail, he then twisted and removed it, and kicked the gutted soldier to the ground.

Ajantis, his legs grappled by vines but his arms still free, was swinging his sword about wildly.

"Use your bow," Jaheira snorted.

He stopped dead still and dropped his sword when Imoen pointed her drawn arrow at him. He glared at the group angrily.

Behind them, the laughter of the drow woman resonated is sharp, confident contrast to her last utterances. She grasped the mace at her belt, and raised it high and came forward again unlike the hunted creature she had been a moment before, intending for Ajantis's helmed head. " Lil Alurl! For Shar!"

"Stop, miss Viconia!" Onyx's left arm and shield flung out, and he turned toward the drow. "He's harmless now."

She snorted, and turned to face him and his companions, "I thank you for risking yourselves on my behalf," her voice grew breathy and slightly desperate again, "I know what you are thinking, you see my dark skin and won't trust me for it. I am a dark elf, but I'm an outcast. I need your help. As you noticed, I no longer receive my powers from the spider gods you surface dwellers fear so; the Goddess Shar grants me wisdom, and she is a surface divinity. If you'd let me join your group, I would be most grateful. I have no where else to go," she bit her lip, choking back the pride in her throat.

"We would welcome that," Onyx nodded, "Strength in numbers. I myself," he smiled at her, "Am a hunted fellow, and I don't even know why. Perhaps we can protect one another against this sort of thing."

"Don't do it, Onyx!" Ajantis shouted and wobbled. "She's evil!"

"Yes, once again, I can see," Onyx responded tiredly.

Is he a paladin too? Viconia wondered. I must be wary. Sometimes the only thing worse than one of these surfacer warriors who wants to kill you immediately is one who has a reason not to.

Turning to Viconia again, Onyx managed a warm smile. "As long as you'll not rob or harm myself, my companions, or innocent townsfolk and such while in our company, I see no reason a paladin and a Sharran cannot watch each other's backs on the dangerous roads in such dark days as these."

"I won't disappoint you, I promise," Viconia stated.

"See that you don't," Onyx nodded, "We are headed south, to Nashkel, by way of Beregost, where we mean to investigate a purported taint of the mined iron in that area. A cleric would be most useful in our party, but we'll understand if such a potentially dangerous exploit is not to your tastes."

"I am not afraid, male!" Viconia stuck her nose up. "Show me the way!"

The party left the scene with as many members as it had come, with Ajantis shouting after them and struggling as he hacked and wrestled with the vines.

"My Order will hear of this!" he shouted, his voice cracking, "So will the law! You haven't heard the last of Sir Ajantis Ilvastarr!"