Klam Ezor

Klam Ezor is a stranger whom a band of adventurers met in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"), sitting by a fire on the top of Fırtına Tepe. At first glance he looked like Deimos, but he was not. He wore his hair short and his beard grown long but well kept, and a thin robe too light for the weather; he carried no visible weapon and no mark on his clothes. He seemed educated and sure of himself, and though he did not tell everything, he did not seem hostile.¹²³

His own account

He said that he had lately come from far away, that he had once done work of making and carving and had been caught up in wars he did not want, and that he had been in the southern Empire and elsewhere. Bandits he had met two or three days before, he said, had found nothing to take, let him go and given him a flask of water; only what was in his tent was his own. In the tent Sticks found a water skin, a bedroll and a few apples, apples not native to the continent but able to be brought to Aquila. He said that he had arrived that morning and had not noticed the cave beneath the hill, though the road passes in front of it, and that he wished to go to Aquila. He drank his own tea, which Bruno recognised by its taste as fig tea of the Blue Grove.⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹

The question game

Klam and the band set up a game in which whoever threw the higher die asked a question, both sides promising to answer truly; fives came up again and again. In his answers he said that he had been a teacher, of many things but above all of literature, not in any imperial school, and that his first pupils were elves. He hinted that he was much older than he looked and had come to the continent before the sea road was opened. He said that he was no mage, that he was not a dragon now nor a dragon in changed shape, and, asked what he was, that he was not of this plane nor of those below.^{1011121314151617}

He asked about their plans against Deimos, and they admitted they wished to stop him but had no settled plan; he asked what they feared, whether they hoped to succeed by themselves or through allies, and whether they would give up and leave once their own wants were met. He said he had heard of Deimos in many places and that someone he trusted had told him of the danger. He asked whether the stain they carried frightened them, and offered them tea.^1819202122

His counsel

Asked whether he knew how to defeat Deimos, Klam said that he had many ideas: the Empire could overcome him by force without much trouble, but getting near him was the hard part. He urged them to drink the fig tea and accept that only they could do the work, which, he said, had first belonged to another old man who came off a ship, before plans changed. He told them to put stopping Deimos before their own lives and to make peace with the chance of not surviving, and spoke of many possible futures rather than a single fate written by the gods. He read the coming together of one who knew nature, one who knew the underworld, a healer and one who understood the mixing of magic and science as if they had been chosen, noting that they lacked a learned elder.^2324252627

When they asked where the scholar Orson was, he named Perses Castle, now under Deimos's control, and urged them to get him out in secret before going back to Aquila. Bruno asked whether anyone else had seen the great shadow he had glimpsed passing over the hill; Klam called it a dragon's shadow while saying that he had not seen it.²⁸²⁹³⁰

Gone by morning

Klam said he would spend the night there and be there in the morning, and the band, not wholly trusting him, kept watch among themselves. He left the dice with them, advising that in a moment of grave indecision a five might be a lucky sign. In the morning he was gone, and no one had seen him leave.³¹³²³³