Dwarf Gate battlefield monument

The Dwarf Gate battlefield monument is a worked stone on the old battlefield of the Dwarf Gate, surrounded by flowers and inscribed with the words "where he fell". In the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign, Kemp Corvus, Sarah and Ephorus came there to meet the unknown writer of a letter.¹

The battlefield

The Dwarf Gate is where Emperor Conrad II, advancing with a small guard after a rebellion had been put down, met a great force hidden in mists by the magic of Gelts, and was struck down by three cursed black arrows shot from afar. He was the first emperor ever to fall in battle.²

In the Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel") campaign, Castor looked through a portal onto that battle. Beyond it he saw the huge stone gate of the fortress of Gazat, opening into the mountain and being battered from within, while a small band of legionaries and priests faced a great orc army and hosts bearing the banners of many nobles and elector counts.³

Spoiler: Castor at the battleRevealSpoils: Mürekkep ve Çelik #11 · Say what you have read

Castor threw himself in front of the emperor and took arrows in his back, yet Conrad fell; he was the first emperor, the first red eagle, to die on a battlefield.⁴⁵

Long afterwards bones still lay on the old battlefield, and there were patches of black magic or hellfire where no grass would grow. Sarah heard the voices of wandering spirits there, smelled burning and felt her head ache.⁶

The meeting

An anonymous letter, added to Kemp's family post on different paper, warned the companions that the threat facing them was one of the greatest in the realm's history and that The Puppeteer did not like those who spoiled his plans. Its writer offered help and called them to a meeting "where the eagle fell". Taking this for the old battlefield, they came to the monument, where among the crowd and the flowers one of them knelt in respect, and waited.⁷⁸¹

Near the meeting place they found drops of blood. The trail looked less like a struggle or a flight than the wandering of someone dazed, and the crowd made it hard to follow, even from above or by Kısmet's nose. Close by lay a man plainly dead, his eyes rolled back and blackened around. In his bag was a sealed letter in the same paper and ink as the first, written more hastily, saying that meeting there was not safe; as one of the companions read it, the writing rearranged itself before his eyes into the words "I am here".⁹¹⁰¹¹

The vision

For about ten seconds the companions then seemed to see some forty people around the monument kill one another and themselves in a trance, and the words "I am here" appeared on the stone in blood. A moment later everyone around them was going about their business alive, with no bodies, no blood and no writing on the stone. All three had seen the same horror and believed that someone had played with their minds; only on their paper did the words "I am here" remain.¹²¹³

A real scream followed. On the road lay the body of a young man, freshly dead, gripping a thin dagger driven down towards his heart. The watchmen let the companions examine the dead until a cart arrived, and the first body was taken down from the monument and laid near the second.¹⁴¹⁵