Painting of Avlor Aten

The Painting of Avlor Aten is a large, flat, rectangular magical painting of the Geroni city of Avlor Aten, in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"). The band found it under the heaps of silver in the vault of Willow house; once cleaned, it showed a city of shining walls, giant statues and driverless golems, with the city's name written beneath. The city was real, and one could reach it by stepping gently into the picture, though that was not the only way in.^{1 2 3 4}

The passage

The band would not give the painting to Travis and leaned it against a wall at their shop, Doktorun Yeri. While they rested, the room grew cool and a breeze rose and strengthened until it drew them towards the picture. Sticks was swept through first; Bruno fixed his rod in place, Fauna tied the pup Hobo to it by the chest, and the others followed. Only the living were pulled; coins and things on the floor stayed where they lay.^{5 6 7 8}

They tumbled through a swirling blue, Sticks striking his head on the frame and losing his senses, with no opening behind them to go back by, and fell onto the stone floor of an old, decaying temple whose sharp, angular art was nothing like the round city of the picture. Some of them thought Willow must have used the painting to escape; others doubted it.^{9 10 11 12}

The way out of the temple led onto a street of Avlor Aten through a temple mural on a wall. Explaining how they had come, the band told the head consul that the painting they took had drawn them in against their will; he knew from history books that the arcanists of old shut objects and places away in pocket worlds inside paintings.^{13 14 15}

Taken and returned

Finli came to think the painting might once have been stolen from the Geroni. When the band returned to their shop, the painting was gone, while the gold on the table and their other things had been left and the dog fed; it did not look like common theft.^{16 17 18}

The dog's account led to Travis, who said he had taken it for safekeeping. He had his man Kevin bring the wrapped painting up from a windowless store and gave it back, and the band carried it home to the clinic.^{19 20 21 22 23}

The buyer

In an empty building of the New Quarter, a pale, thin-moustached man flanked by masked companions told the band that he sought the painting of Avlor Aten. It had lain, he said, in the vault of a powerful but thoughtless mage who had lately fled, and who had seized it wrongfully. He offered a great sum in gold if it proved sound and was handed over that night, warned that buyers without money might use force, and when the band pushed the price far higher, offered a lower but still great sum, with two days' time, payment in diamonds or through a go-between. Nothing changed hands.^{24 25 26 27 28}

When the band were attacked soon after, no one could say whether the buyer was behind it. The Geroni head consul Orpi suggested that destroying or closing the painting's twin on the other side might make the passage safe, and wrote on a scrap of paper, for fear of listeners, that the attackers might be after the book rather than the painting.^{29 30 31}

Spoiler: Where the painting wentRevealSpoils: Yeni Dünya #19; Yeni Dünya #20 · Say what you have read

The band took the painting with them to a meeting aboard ship, drew it from its bag and handed it to the attendants behind the governor, who carried it away. Travis reported that the band had refused a higher price rather than let it fall into hands they thought evil. He later said that those who had sought it were still in the city and had not been found, and that they might now be after information instead.^{32 33 34 35}