September 5th 973
Two days after Pfinder’s flamboyant unveiling of the first two decrypted letters, the party once again assembled at the Rusted Nail. They had spent the intervening time tying up personal affairs—lodging notices of absence, paying off debts, purchasing waterproof cloaks of questionable quality—but they had not been idle. Each had also stolen quiet moments to pore over the remaining ciphers, scratching notes on napkins and muttering about letter frequencies over soup.
Now, over steaming bowls of barley porridge and eggs of uncertain provenance, they leaned in, quietly exchanging theories and half-formed patterns.
Then—the door burst open.
A well-dressed mountain dwarf swept into the room with the practiced ease of a man who had rehearsed his entrance and committed to the bit. With a theatrical flourish, he doffed an imaginary hat and bowed deeply to the tavern at large, his beard—carefully scented and braided with understated pride—swishing forward like a stage curtain.
Several heads turned. Then, as before, realizing no violence was imminent, the regulars resumed chewing with a communal grunt of disappointment.
The dwarf’s eyes scanned the room and then danced across the rest of the party with a twinkle. Apparently satisfied, he strode—inasmuch as one can at just under four feet tall—over to the adventurers’ table and announced:
“Wolfgang Spicebeard here! Culinarian, brewer, and aspirant dungeon-gastronomer. Mr. Crezia—delightful fellow—suggested I might find you here.”
He bowed again, this one even more complex, as if daring Pfinder to match it.
Pfinder, naturally, rose to the occasion. “Ah, Comrade Spicebeard! So good to see another practitioner of the noble art of personal flair. Welcome, sir! I am Pfinder; the ‘P’, of course, is silent as in ‘pshrimp’ and ‘phalibut’. Please be seated and avail yourself of some of GUC-1’s bacon and eggs. For I assure you that no food tastes better than that which can be found on another person’s plate – seasoned, as it always is, with the piquant spice of larceny!”
GUC-1 subtly slid his plate a few inches to the left, away from both Pfinder and Spicebeard; seeing this, the dwarf laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “No need to worry, lad. My interests lie in cooking brilliant meals, not in stealing them!” Giving the air an inquiring sniff he continued, “However, it is my considered professional opinion that your meal, while prepared quite competently, could benefit from the addition of a certain, shall we say, augmentation? Allow me, my good friend.” And he reached into an inner pocket of his overcoat and carefully withdrew a bottle of spice and placed it carefully next to GUC-1’s plate.
“A blend of spices from the lowlands of Drakkia! Just the thing to complete what the chef of this fine establishment has already begun!” GUC-1 picked up the bottle and eyed it suspiciously as Spicebeard straightened up to regard the rest of the party. “And how might the rest of you be called?”
Pfinder, ever the natural maître d’ of any social occasion he happened to occupy, took it upon himself to introduce the rest of the table. With a courtly sweep of the arm that nearly overturned the salt cellar, he gestured to each of his companions in turn.
“This,” he began, “is GUC-1, whose eggs you have just improved, and whose trust you are well on your way to earning. To his left sits GUC-2, a soul of admirable discretion and suspiciously well-maintained daggers. Across from him, Vren, who can spot a lie from a hundred paces—or forge one from two. And finally, we have Cassyndra, seer of omens, walker between worlds, and collector of a rather alarming number of notebooks.”
Cassyndra, glancing up from one such notebook, offered a faint, enigmatic smile. “Welcome to the table,” she said, voice even and oddly formal, “We can always use another eccentric.”
Meanwhile, GUC-1 had—after a hesitant glance at Wolfgang—dotted a cautious corner of his eggs with the lowland Drakkian spice. His eyebrows rose in surprise. A second bite followed, larger. Pfinder, noting this development with a practiced eye, executed a graceful lean-and-swipe, forked a mouthful for himself, and chewed with exaggerated approval.
“Delightful,” he declared. “Like sunrise in a canyon—if the canyon had been filled with paprika and ambition.”
Wolfgang beamed.
With introductions complete and everyone back to eating, the dwarf pulled up a chair and sat down with the air of a man finally reaching the hearth after a long and theatrical journey.
“Well,” he said, steepling his fingers and looking around the table, “since we are, as they say, all friends now—or at least breakfast acquaintances—I must tell you how I came to be here. You see, I spotted your Adventurers’ Guild posting a week ago, but I only just yesterday found the courage to march in and see Crezia in person.”
“Unfortunately,” Wolfgang continued, “he informed me that your fine company had already taken the job. But, on hearing my ambitions,” he added with a self-deprecating grin, “and perhaps detecting in me a certain indefatigable spark, he explained the mission’s outline and told me that if I truly wished to prove myself, I might do well to seek you out here at the Rusted Nail. And so here I am!”
A pause followed. Then Vren asked, “Have you seen the letters?”
Wolfgang’s habitually cheerful face fell ever so briefly. “No, I have not. Crezia told me about them but advised that he had given his only copies to you.”
GUC-2 reached into a satchel and retrieved the now slightly dog-eared packet of letters. He set them on the table with a thump, flipping past those already decoded and tapping the still-puzzling pages.
“If you’re serious about joining,” he said, “best see what kind of mind you bring to the table. And maybe,” he added with a sly glance, “what kind of breakfast you’re capable of cooking.”
Wolfgang cracked his knuckles, pulled a magnifying lens from an inner pocket, and grinned—a bright, earnest grin that threatened to turn into a full-blown chuckle. “Riddles and recipes? My favorite kind of puzzle. Let’s see what we’re working with.”
He quietly scanned the letters with brow furrowed and lips pursed in concentration before pausing on a specific page. “Ah-ha!” he exclaimed, tapping the bottom margin with one finger. “Cipher holds: Our friend Vigenere.”
GUC-1 raised a brow. “Vigenere? Isn’t that just vinegar for the nobility?”
Wolfgang chuckled. “Perhaps… but it’s also the name of a certain clever code-maker.” He leaned forward, warming to the explanation. “You see, the Vigenere cipher isn’t like your basic substitution—you can’t just swap E for R and call it a day. No, this one’s layered. You take a key word—a phrase, even—and repeat it beneath the message, letter for letter. Then each letter of the plaintext is shifted not by a fixed number, but by the alphabetical position of the matching letter in the key.”
Blank stares met him from most of the party. He tried again.
“Think of it like seasoning a stew,” he said. “Not one spice for the whole pot—but a different dash for every bite. The same meat, but each mouthful tastes a little different depending on what it was paired with.”
Cassyndra, who had been scribbling quietly in one of her notebooks, spoke without looking up. “So instead of just one spice per dish, you season each mouthful based on… a recipe sequence?”
Wolfgang beamed. “Exactly! The ‘key’ is your recipe. Repeat it until it matches the length of the message, and then adjust each letter accordingly.”
Cassyndra flipped back a few pages in her notebook, her expression suddenly sharp. “Wait. That word—‘Kestrel.’ It was important in the earlier cipher. Appeared in that very first unencrypted letter… the bottle of Kestrel’s Flame that they used to share. And… wasn’t there something odd about the key table for the encrypted letter that followed? It was based on the word Kestrel, right?”
GUC-2 nodded. “Yeah. Once we sorted it alphabetically, the pattern lined up with that. Could he just have used that word again in this cipher?”
They leaned in, the clutter of breakfast—napkins, forks, half-drained mugs—clearing as parchment and ink took over. Cassyndra flipped to a clean page and, with the air of a librarian preparing for battle, began transcribing the cipher in precise rows. Beneath it, she neatly inked KESTRELKESTRELKESTREL, the key stretching like a charm of protection. Pfinder peered over her shoulder, counting out letters on his impeccably manicured fingers and murmuring vowels like they were ingredients in a spell.
It didn’t take long. Within minutes, whole sentences emerged from the jumble.
Vren, eyes widening, tapped the parchment. “A full Colonel gone to the dark side? That’s not good.”
“An opinionated apricot brandy enthusiast, yes?” murmured Pfinder. “Loud voice, louder medals?”
“Apparently also an eldritch horror now,” Cassyndra said dryly.
“Or a pawn of one,” GUC-2 added grimly. “The symbol described here—split circle with red blood sounds like some sort of unholy seal.”
They sat in silence a moment longer. Then Pfinder broke it, in his usual tone of forced cheerfulness: “Well! It appears we’ve gone from breakfast to hideous undead in under half an hour. A record, surely.”