Chapter 10.1: A Presence in Brisban

Christoff Veritas was sweating profusely. It had been days since he’d felt any need to wear his coat; he wondered why he’d brought it to begin with, having stripped down to just an undershirt virtually the moment they’d passed out of Kessex Hills and into the wildlands. He swatted furiously at another mote of flies drawn to his body moisture. In his opinion, this whole, juicily verdant place was disgusting.

It had been some time since Christoff Veritas had last traveled outside of Kryta. Really it had been years since he’d even been outside Queensdale, and now he found himself and a dozen of his best men stepping into the very edge of the Maguuma jungles.

Years before, when Christoff had been initiated as a chief and set in charge of his own cell, the Demagogue had opted to reassign him to the Queen’s Forest, far from his family’s holdings in Kessex. That was where he and his group had remained ever since, pilfering what benefitted them, taking hostages when possible, troubling merchants and monks when the mood hit them, and occasionally striking intentional government targets along the road. Whether assigned to specific tasks or simply raising hell at random, their actions always managed to keep Divinity’s Reach off balance, forcing the young Queen Jenna to lean into ministerial oversight. Everything was always part of the greater plan—a plan that someone of his rank was frustratingly not privy to.

Now here he was in Brisban, the wildlands, far from everything he’d established, where the closest thing to human authority was other groups of bandits sequestered away from civilization in a region that looked like a garden but felt like a fetid bathhouse. What Christoff would have given for a bathhouse.

Nine days prior, he and a sizeable number of his cell had departed their lair in Queensdale, leaving it in the hands of a contingent team large enough to continue causing minor trouble on the road and finish cleaning up the mess left by that sylvari. The sylvari— just the thought of him set Christoff to cracking his knuckles irritably. And yet—

Reaching again to tap the secret pocket inside the waistband of his trousers, Christoff could feel the gentle thrum of that stone he’d pilfered off the honorable Sergeant. He smiled slyly. Yes, the sylvari and his group had ravaged their base of operations, but it was also that very sylvari who had given him the item and information so valuable that it drove them all the way out into this overgrown den of criminal and otherwise unsavory elements.

Other cells affiliated with his own, independent human groups interested in who-knew-what, Nightmare Court, and innumerable teams of asura performing deviant experiments outside their own law—all of them found their way to the Brisban Wildlands. Christoff and his group hadn’t had interactions with any of them thus far, but they’d heard enough to know they were here. The almost utter lack of local law enforcement made it clear why.

Amid all that, though, it was a particular cell of his own order that concerned Christoff as they finally made their way south into Vandal’s Claim. In fact it was the cell who had built and held Fort Vandal, the stronghold for which the area was named, that they sought.

They descended a subtle, grassy incline and rounded a monolithic outcropping stretched like an enormous finger from the foothills. Up a long incline on the other side of the stone formation and receded into the feet of those low mountains was the fort, which, to Christoff’s envy, deserved to be called a fort.

“Balthazar’s beard,” Gregor gasped, pointing at it. “Is that it, boss?”

Christoff rolled his eyes. “Yes, Gregor, that’s it.”

“It’s big. Real big,” Gregor replied, still staring at the twenty-foot wooden gates set inside a wall that easily spanned a two-hundred-yard gap between one rockface and the next. Behind it, his eyes caught sight of the second gatehouse, standing twice as high further up the hill and hiding all but the highest tips of three towers erected behind it. He turned back to Christoff, suddenly looking like an enormous, sniveling child. “How come we don’t got a fancy fort like that?”

Christoff shook his head impatiently and exchanged a glance with Remi, who shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind it,” the marksman agreed.

The leader put a hand to his temple. They wondered why they had lesser accommodations; he wondered why he had lesser men. “We don’t have a fancy fort like that because we’re assigned to Kryta, where we sit right under the queen’s nose, not two-hundred miles outside the reach of her childish hand. We have to operate covertly. Do you know what covert means?”

“No,” Gregor replied all too readily. For a moment, all eyes turned blankly to the large man.

“It means not seen, you twit,” Remi chided, not even raising his head high enough to make eye contact from under his wide-brimmed hat.

Gregor squinted. “But boss, we’re seen all the time when we kidnap travelers.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Christoff interrupted, halting the conversation as he started again toward the fortress up the hill. “Remi,” he sighed, looking back over his shoulder and waving his hand dismissively, “help Gregor understand.”

For most of the duration up the slope, he could just make out chatter between his lieutenant and his muscle. He didn’t know what they were saying and he didn’t care, as long as Gregor was out of his hair. The man had his uses, certainly. In a previous life, he’d been a lumberjack, and he still had the body to prove it, but for all the power he had in his shoulders, Veritas thought he could have used a bit more between his ears. He was easy enough to cow, but when he thought he understood something, his questions and his advice were equally insufferable. Even more insufferable to the bandit chief at this particular point was that he knew Gregor was actually right about something: this was certainly a formidable fort, much more daunting than any lair Christoff and his men had ever inhabited. He ground his teeth.

At the end of the rise, Veritas and his entourage stood expectantly at the first gate. For unwelcome guests, it was a harrowingly well guarded obstacle: atop the walls were at least a dozen archers and gunmen who, judging by their expressions and armaments, would have been more than capable of ending the twenty men and women below them. Even Remi showed signs of heightened perspiration as Veritas addressed the guards overheard, presenting his party and requesting an audience with the master of the fort, Daren Thorne.

Most bandit cells held a common creed and purpose, but not all were welcoming to others. Fortunately, Veritas knew this one was, at least to him. After awaiting a response from within the fort’s keep, the gatekeepers were given permission, and the heavy oaken doors were drawn back to accept the travelers inside.

Following a guide who greeted them on the other side, they passed through the gate and into the first courtyard, a narrow, grassy channel between towering wooden walls likely as tall as the trees they were cut from. Even worse off than they’d been on the outside of the fort, they were heavily out-gunned by ranged attackers behind the crenellations on not just the wall behind them, but now also the second wall ahead of them. Their strategic disadvantage in this position was clear to anyone with half a wit. Veritas looked back at Gregor, who seemed to have at least that much. The more nervous members of the party continued to look over their shoulders even as they passed beneath the enormous second gate and crested the rise into the fort’s central courtyard.

Unlike the space between the first walls, which was all but deserted, Christoff noted that this interior yard was dirtier than it was grassy, obviously due to the number of people crossing it every which way. There were a few standing about talking, eating, or playing a lively game of dice in the corner, but for the most part, the people he saw seemed to be dutifully engrossed in errands and tasks of various sorts. And there were dozens of them, possibly a hundred or more, walking into this structure or that, moving weapons and provisions, cutting wood, stoking furnaces, cooking meals over an open fire; it was a bustling village they had nestled into the crook of the mountains behind those imposing walls, with enough bodies and weapons to overrun a seraph hold if necessary. He gritted his teeth again, quickly reminding himself that covert operations were still the lifeblood of their greater mission. A battalion of this size was not half as useful. At least not yet.

The dark-haired woman who’d led them through the the gates came to a stop, and Christoff’s party slowly formed into a tiny mob just behind her. A man, tall and slender, cut through the foot traffic toward them. “Chief Thorne,” their host greeted dutifully before introducing them with a wave of her hand. “The Queens-Forest cell, led by—”

“Christoff Veritas,” Thorne finished. A genuine grin spread across his face without parting his lips. “Thank you, Leena. I’ll take it from here.” The woman’s fine hair swished forward as she nodded her assent and walked off across the courtyard toward one of the rear towers. Thorne continued, “How long has it been, Veritas? Our last meeting was—”

“Six years past. Beeltetun.”

Thorne nodded, reflecting. “Yes, Beetletun. Great party. Terrible wine. That man has got to hire a better steward.” Both smirked, stepping forward to grip forearms in greeting. “To what do I owe the visit? We don’t receive many travelers out this way—at least not intentional ones.”

Though he could play by the slow-paced politics and pleasantries of Kryta’s upper crust when necessary, Thorne had always been more business that courtier, concerned with appearances only so long as they either fed efficiency or amused him. Veritas knew this from working alongside him in the bandit cell they’d both been trained in. It was clear from his sharp stride, unusually crisp overcoat, and well manicured face and hair that little had changed in the man’s tendencies. He may have selected a broad mohawk as some manner of self expression, but each hair was placed exactly as he would have it.

“I’m here in hopes of finding some information,” Christoff replied. “Information I’m hoping you can provide, Daren.”

“Hm,” Thorne mused absently. “Well, my friend, come with me, and we’ll see about that.” He turned and began to lead the way to his chambers when he stopped and added, “Your men can stay out here and do as they like.” Christoff turned to his party and nodded them away, only beckoning Remi to accompany them as he followed his old associate.