Non-Human Things
Same Day
Bon-Ihrno's Home in Exile, Secret Caves of Upper Avernum
Bon-Ihrno poured tea for human guests again; this was good. But what he had to say to them was far less pleasant than what he had to say to those humans back during the war.
Albert said, "Thank you for your help back there. I don't think we would've gotten out of that cell alive without you." When the vahnati had caught them, he had been sure they'd die in that cell - but no good thinking about that now. Bon-Ihrno had helped them escape, and they defeated the Crystal Souls and reached this remote home.
Bon-Ihrno told them, "You are welcome. My comrades shame us all. It had to be done. And more has to be done, which we should now discuss."
He honestly hadn't thought the Avernites would be able to defeat the Crystal Souls. Escape them, perhaps, but defeat them? But they had done so with assistance from Avernite mages, who made an artifact - mages who would not be here to help them with the next task.
Sschass asked thoughtfully, "Are there more like you? I ask a hard thing, to face your own people, but if you and others could help us in the last battle, it would be a great boon."
Bon-Ihrno's mouth stretched a bit and he finally said, "It has taken all my power of will to serve killers of Crystal Souls in this temporary abode. I do not trust myself with a blade near you."
"We would not ask you to go against your conscience," Sschass assured him, trying to tamp down his own annoyance. "And we are aware of your pain. Frruh, Albert, Helen, and I - we have all had to kill members of our people, servants of evil."
Perhaps it was a vahnati sigh Bon-Ihrno gave before continuing, "If you succeed, I must help my people change, and grieve, and from here, I can at least guard your rear. And from the rear, if vahnati come, they will only be foes.
"It is hard to put vahnati politics into your language. Suffice to say that my influence is far, far less than that of three Crystal Souls. And Rentar-Ihrno's successes in carrying out the Crystal Souls' desire for revenge gives her prestige greater than mine. Not all vahnati agree with them, no, but many do, and you will find those most devoted to the cause ahead of you. Losing the Crystal Souls -" he paused a moment, set down his cup, and continued more composedly - "losing them will make Rentar-Ihrno and the others fear you. But their hatred will become rigid."
Helen said quietly, "I feared that. This must've been years in the making, this plan, those factories. They can't abandon their revenge so easily."
Albert asked, "Do you know why? I mean, why they didn't tell Avernum?"
Bon-Ihrno tapped on the table, then said, "They suspected you would not approve. We do not understand your ways, as you do not understand ours. The limits you place on vengeance is not known fully to us. But we learned from your plans for the future with us; your willingness to partner with us to go to the surface, but never discussing finishing off the Empire - we knew you feared it, but we began to suspect it went further. And those who insisted on vengeance beyond the war knew they could not risk telling you - or risk me telling you. If I had not anticipated this and gone into hiding, I would've been killed soon after the war. I did what I could, but it was never enough, and now we are at this point."
He reached into a tube by his side and spread a scroll on the table, then gestured at the map depicted on it. "Here you see the last monster factory. It is located underneath Rentar-Ihrno's keep. She built it in secret, here in this part of what you call Upper Avernum, that we never told you about, and there are no passages to the caves with your forts. My people secretly teleported up themselves and materials for the keep, even as we helped you with the teleporter to the rest of Upper Avernum. Though you were able to break in this way, from the surface, the mountains will make it hard for the Empire to discover it or reach it unharried, and even if they reached it, the keep would be difficult to assault. Thankfully no one has been mad enough to bring children or aged to the keep - it is a place of work and war. It is heavily defended. Its only weakness is the machinery which makes the monsters. If you can reach the control panel, you can close off the tubes that channel magical materials throughout the factory - without turning off the flow of those materials. This should detonate the whole facility - but I do not know that you can escape in time."
They stared at him.
He reminded them, "You are asking me to aid you, who have destroyed Crystal Souls, and who have and will destroy more of our people."
Frruh purred - but it sounded somewhat odd to Albert- "Bon-Ihrno, I appreciate your aid to us in this heartbreaking situation. But surely there is some alternative to embarking on a suicide mission. Or is thinking of that beyond the help you can give to people who battle mass murderers?"
Helen shouted reproachfully, "Frruh!"
"I apologize, Helen, I shall make the accusation more directly-" Frruh yowled, springing to his feet. Albert's mail clinked as he also rose, shouting, "I'm with you, Frruh. For shame, Bon-Ihrno! Entire families incinerated by golem beams! Alien beasts wandering through ruined cities! And that's the best you've got to defeat that? A suicide mission! This is about more than your crystal souls!" Helen and Sschass began to shout over him, trying to calm him down.
Bon-Ihrno was still seated, but finally spoke in a loud voice, saying, "I understand you not talking over each other!" He took a deep breath and raised open hands. His louder voice now had a note of clear pleading. "Please understand! This language is still difficult for me. I mean -I meant- to say that I do not trust myself. I know my people are wrong, but even I trouble take - no, no, struggle, struggle to recall that, even this long after I learned of it. I do not trust my heart, my mind, to say that this is the best plan, but it is the best plan I have been able to make, with what I have been able to learn."
Albert took a deep breath, then said firmly, "That was harsh of me. I understand now. And we do appreciate what you're doing, really." He eyed Frruh, who finally replied, "You have spoken well, Bon-Ihrno, and dealt with us honorably. We will not fear a death with purpose, but will not take your counsel until we convince ourselves there is no other course."
He and Albert sat down together. After a long moment, Helen proposed, "I was wondering - why don't we - my apologies, Bon-Ihrno, but why don't we kill Rentar-Ihrno and the other vahnati who still are working on the plan? Maybe some will even surrender."
Bon-Ihrno took a long sip of tea, then finally said, "I did not believe the heroes of Avernum who visited me in the war could kill Garzahd, the great mage of the Empire. Yet they did. Still, it was a fierce battle. You face a task of similar magnitude infiltrating Rentar-Ihrno's keep, let alone defeating her. And unless I miss my guess, you have no secret weapons to counter a live vahnati, as you did for Crystal Souls. Finally, the machines there may be capable of producing monsters even if no one runs them, until they finally fall apart. I know of no safe way for anyone to destroy or disarm them - the raw materials are very dangerous. How many more monsters will be made if you do not do this? Who will risk his life to destroy the machines if you don't?"
After a moment, Frruh confirmed, "Then if there is no other course, our course lies that way."
Excusing himself, Albert stepped outside the hut. For a few moments, he could busy himself adjusting the straps on his mail or surveying the rest of the cavern for edible or useful fungi, but soon he only had his thoughts to occupy himself.
"Now I know you won't like this, Albert," Helen started as she left the hut, "because I don't like it myself. But it's possible the Empire will give us some sort of help."
He looked at her.
She shrugged, "I'm not counting on it, either, but they do have an interest in our success."
"True," he allowed.
A moment later, he told her, "Weird, huh? Plenty of times I thought I'd die, up here, or down in Avernum. But I knew even if I had to give up on my dreams about a life on the surface, at least I'd be ensuring Sschass or Frruh or you would get to go on living, and someday the rest of Avernum would live there. Marching to my own death, though - it's different from knowing an enemy maybe will take my life by force."
Helen asked, "So, the difference between having your life stolen, and having to lay it down?"
"Yeah," Albert agreed. "I mean, I know I should lay it down, for the faith, for my friends. But I don't wanna. But I should."
With a slight smile, she said, "And I've been very glad of that. Wanting to live is usually a good thing. It's something I like about you. Rather basic, but good. I don't want to die, either. But this really looks like the only way. If there's another, tell me, I'll take it, and I'll drag all of you along it if I can, and if I miss it, you drag me on it. But if this is where we must be sacrificed - we've got to do it, or we'll be sacrificing something else."
He looked her in the eye. "I wanted to ask you, you know. If you wanted to be part of that dream where I start a farm and a family on the surface."
"Can you maybe actually ask?" she asked, a little piqued and somewhat happy.
"Will you be part of that dream, Helen?" he asked. "Will you marry me? You know, if we don't die?"
"Yes," she said, clutching him, "even though I really don't want to die now."
Frruh emerged from the hut with Sschass just in time to hear it all, and he complained to Albert, "Your timing is terrible." Albert muttered in Helen's ear, "Apparently," and she whispered back amusedly, "Definitely." Meanwhile, Frruh was saying, "We need to be resigned to death there."
"We don't know that," Albert retorted. "And I like to think we'll do this better, even if we perish, if we have hope."
"You're probably right," Frruh agreed, while motioning a shrugging "Humans!" to Sschass. Sschass sighed in resignation at Frruh's obstinacy while Albert complained, "I saw that!"
Sschass put a hand on Frruh's shoulder and said, "Come on, Frruh, it's time we settled up." They put their heads together. Albert and Helen looked on curiously, catching only occasional phrases: "-that was two weeks in, I was sure of it!" "-oh, that doesn't count-" "-far beyond original timeframe-" "-just call it even-" "Fine!" Then they shook hands, looked at the blissful, baffled humans, and smiled.
"What's going on?" Helen asked, curious.
"Non-human things," Sschass said simply.
"What sort of non-human things?" Helen pressed.
"They wouldn't be non-human things if we told you," Frruh pointed out.
"Now you're giving me another reason I want to live, Frruh," she warned him. "Why can't you two tell us?"
"Life is full of disappointments," Sschass mused aloud.
Helen looked at Albert significantly.
"What?" he asked.
She tried to make her facial expression show more clearly that she was looking at him significantly.
For perhaps the first and last time in the rest of their lives, he actually caught her meaning from this, and replied, "If they were going to tell us, they'd have told us!"
"I'll have to figure this out myself," she said aloud.
Author's Note: It's been awhile since I've seen Bon-Ihrno in any Avernum game, so he may be OOC (out of character) here. Hopefully he was at least as interesting as he is in the game.
Also, the vahnati, especially Rentar-Ihrno's faction, may be slightly out of character, but I think I'm at least very close. I mention the possibility because it's my interpretation of what we're told of them, their culture, and their motives.
Further, the Empire may've made a more firm offer of assistance to the adventurers in particular, as well as Avernum as a whole, but I don't remember it, and this way kept with the characterization and conflicts I was using.
Finally, it's been awhile since I've played through the Ornotha Ziggurat, so I don't recall how you survive that adventure.