The Vintner
You hear the yammering howl of the coyote. It is the call of Grandfather Coyote, the Trickster. He says, “Hear me! This is my descendant, my heir, a child of the water. In their blood courses my blood, the water of life.”
Evad, Zar, Evets and Naes staggered drunkenly about the Vintner’s Hall of Bottled Spirits. They uncap half a dozen bottles filled with bottles of mystical spirits. Unseen vapors rise from the uncorked bottles and they quickly inebriate the four adventurers, but eventually they unseal the proper bottle that allows that allows them to travel deeper into the Citadel. What their wine-blurred eyes don’t see is an invisible spectre standing in the center of the room reaching out to Naes. The spectre’s silent words and ethereal touch go unnoticed.
Centuries later,
Chells, Mathellyn and Raith sit in the same hall drinking Spirits of the Years.
As they imbibe zeitgeists, they learn of the history of Fallenstar and its
founders. Once again, the spectre stands unseen amongst them and reaches out to
another medium, but Chells’ senses are intoxicated by the Nectar of the Gods to
detect the subtle presence before him. The Vintner reaches out ineffectually but
his hands grasp nothing.
The spectre shudders in frustration and impotent anger, but then the Wheel of
Fate finally turns in the Vintner’s favor. Raith, in a moment of
uncharacteristic forgetfulness, leaves behind his enchanted blade, Soul-Cutter.
Raith had quested for his patron deity the Jack O’Lantern to empower the blade
with the power to touch spirits. An unseen side effect of the enchantment is
that spirits can touch it as well. The blade has become an interface between the
physical and spiritual planes and as such the Vintner was able to hide within
the blade itself. As the Vintner hid within the sword, a translucent being
detached itself from the walls but this was no spirit like the Vintner. It was a
living being’s essence had been held within the Vintner’s Hall. The aquatic
being assembled itself and grabbed the hilt of Soul-Cutter just as Raith casts
Summon Item from Fallenstar. The Vintner and the water being, freed from the
Citadel, wander the town of Fallenstar in their individual searches.
The Vintner continues to wander the lands bottling spirits in its quest to find
the one spirit it lacks. Gathering and bottling the essence of water children,
the Vintner continues to slowly gain the power it needs to enact a potent hex to
reclaim what was stolen from it long ago.