The Puppeteer

The Puppeteer (Kuklacı) is a powerful and hidden enemy of Kemp Corvus, Sarah and Ephorus in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. The name first reached them in an anonymous letter of warning, and for a long time they did not know whether the Puppeteer was a person, a spirit or a creature.¹²

The warning

The letter came with Kemp's family post, added on different paper. Its writer called the threat facing the companions one of the greatest in the realm's history, said the Puppeteer did not like those who spoiled his plans and that his choices had narrowed after the events at Eski Yurt, and offered help, asking them to meet "where the eagle fell". The hand was fine and careful, the paper cheap and straw-like, the ink a dark burgundy rather than black; the companions searched it for ciphers, acrostics and marks, but found nothing that tied it to any order or scribe.³⁴

The companions wondered whether the writer was someone following them, perhaps linked to the chain-bearers or another organisation. Much later, in the mines beneath the mountain, a man called O.C. introduced himself among the bodies of dead duergar and acknowledged the letters he had sent; he sat down with the companions to talk about the enemy they shared.²⁵

The trail

The companions suspected that the celestial dust they had found inside a black amethyst, a stone left by a devil, might be a means of controlling the devil or the beings the Puppeteer used. They came to believe that the true object of their search was still the black amethyst ring of Ephorus's dream, and wondered whether their whole journey was a trap of the Puppeteer's to draw them into the dwarven mines.⁶⁷

In Gazad they told an officer that someone called the Puppeteer was looking for a black amethyst ring, and asked how the stone was taken out and sold; the officer showed no sign of knowing the name. Ephorus asked about it loudly over the gaming tables of a crowded tavern, and found that no one there had heard of it.⁸⁹

In a secret meeting in Gazad, the wandering warrior Hermes warned that by asking the Puppeteer's name openly they endangered others drawn into the matter. He had fought the being unwillingly but never seen its face, and thought the companions were following its trail into the past rather than to where it now was. He believed the Puppeteer very strong but not without limits: his research had shown that the way of making people kill themselves while whistling did not work on everyone, and that it had been spoken of in the region since old times.¹⁰¹¹

O.C.'s account

O.C. said that the Puppeteer sought out and killed people like himself, and was trying to bring about the opposite of what was written in the book that O.C. followed. He said the Puppeteer could change memories, force people to act against their will and build illusions that seemed as real as reality, and needed only small tools to do harm, such as making an innkeeper put rat poison in the soup and then forget it. He did not know whether the Puppeteer was stronger than the mightiest mages of the Archon.¹²¹³

He had seen amethyst fragments on those who followed the Puppeteer of their own will, and spoke of accounts that those under control heard a voice as beautiful as an angel's before they died. When the companions later tried to pass on, in writing or mind to mind, what they had learned of the Puppeteer and of the being called Mimar, The Architect, those who listened could not understand.¹⁴¹⁵

Spoiler: The Puppeteer's pastGösterAçık ettiği: Sürgün Günlükleri #41 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

In a dated duergar research ledger found in a walled-up ruin beyond the amethyst galleries, the companions read of a young Archon mage named Vilfort, or Wilfort. He had fallen into the hands of the mind-wielding beings that once enslaved the duergar and had resisted them without losing his mind; since his mind could not be bound, he was held in physical chains while the duergar searched his mind piece by piece for the secret of resisting their own past slavery.¹⁶

Already a mage versed in enchantment, through the experiments he gained mental powers beyond a human's and a lengthened life. The duergar who wished to make a weapon of him slowly lost control, until they took him for a god and set him free; he had left the place about twenty years before. The companions concluded that this former Archon mage was the Puppeteer, a threat of human origin grown out of old experiments, though the ledger did not say why he gathered amethyst.¹⁷¹⁸

The threat

Spoiler: Lotus's houseGösterAçık ettiği: Sürgün Günlükleri #48 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

In the house of Lotus, a gambler the companions knew, a glowing blue cage hung in the air, and at the table sat the man they knew as the Puppeteer, with a short-haired, bearded mage they had met on the road. He demanded the two stones and Uzun, who had escaped him, and said that since he could not frighten them with their own lives he would harm their acquaintances and families. As he spoke, Lotus stabbed themselves and lay bleeding, and he warned that he could make others do the same.¹⁹²⁰²¹

Asked about the dreams in which he had appeared, he claimed that someone else had shown him in their dreams and that he could not do such dream work himself. He gave them three days to come with the stones and Uzun. Then he pointed to their loved ones and to an empty grave and whispered a word, and Lotus's heart stopped. Weapons and breaking glass were heard, and his image flickered and vanished. The companions swore to tear him apart with their own hands rather than bow to his demand.²²²³²⁴

Returning to Osterhn, the companions warned their friends that the Puppeteer could make those he controlled wound and kill themselves, so that open attack was not the only danger. They thought he avoided coming in person and set others in front of him, and planned to use his obsession with respect and humiliation to anger him into showing himself. The idea of drawing him into a narrow pocket plane, to limit his movement and his reach to other people, was also weighed, with the risk of being watched and trapped themselves.²⁵²⁶²⁷

Spoiler: The battle of OsterhnGösterAçık ettiği: Sürgün Günlükleri #50 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

After midnight a crowd came on, with whistling, inhuman creatures, running feet and explosions. The Puppeteer sent feelings and images into minds and held the allies still, saying he was saving his strength by controlling the crowd. Then a warrior in tattered clothes, with eyes the blue of death, came and destroyed one of his arms with a single blow, and with his control broken the fighting below began again.²⁸²⁹³⁰

In the main chamber a blade was driven into him and left there to hamper his movement and his magic. After a heavy blow he tore open his robe: many eyes opened on his back, chest and shoulders and fixed on their targets, and outside one eye burst in each of the creatures he controlled. He fought as if struggling with someone other than himself, crying "let me go", and one of the companions mocked him for trying to become a god after being made a plaything like a child.³¹³²³³

After the last blows he fell, the structure in his chest broke apart and burst, and he died; the struggle was won without the death of any of the main travellers. A few hours later crowds and imperial soldiers filled the town, and things about the stones that had been forgotten began to come back.³⁴³⁵