Guildd Baltimore

Hello . Her name is Jezra Vaunt. She is a loner by choice. But what would her D&D class be?

Post your suggestions in the comments.

So this past Saturday was National Cheese Pizza day. And we put down our bows and arrows and jumped in the cockpit of X-Wings and TIE Fighters...... Old Line Spirits. Great time, good people, delicious cocktails.

Maybe this can become a once a month event(?).

As we mentioned, your world should not stop living just because your PCs are off on a dungeon crawl. So while our PCs are off on a desert island, this happened last night with one of the main NPCs.....

We are sad to say one of that greatest bards has been called by GOD to be HIS songwriter and musician. 🥲 She will be missed and her songs will be sung in her honor in the dining halls of the local taverns. Rest well Dolly, the Rose of the Silver Strings.

Dawn breaks over Freeport, painting the harbor in gold and chasing the shadows from its streets.

For a city built on secrets, danger, and restless tides, morning still brings the promise of something better.

A new day. A new chance. A little hope on the horizon.

Fun night painting and enjoying good company. Looking forward to continuing working on the tavern.

The Hand at the Threshold
The circular platform broke open beneath Karaina’s feet.
The seam appeared first—a narrow black line cutting through the marble between her and the statue. Then ancient gears turned below the stage with a grinding roar, dragging the two halves apart.
Cold air surged from the widening shaft.
It smelled of iron, rain-soaked earth and something older than either: the sealed breath of a place that had not been opened in generations.
The downward draft caught Karaina’s gown and pulled its concealed pleats toward the darkness. Loose strands of her dark-auburn hair whipped across her face. Candles guttered throughout the theater, their flames stretching toward the statue before nearly extinguishing.
The bidders scattered.
Several ran for the doors. Others overturned chairs in their haste to escape the stage. A masked woman screamed when the main doors slammed shut before she reached them.
The statue’s fingers tightened around Karaina’s right wrist.
Do not let it take me.
The voice entered Karaina’s thoughts without sound.
She looked into the marble woman’s closed eyes.
“You told me it was choosing someone to go below.”
It was.
A chain rattled in the shaft.
Now it has chosen two.
Something struck the underside of the platform.
The impact lifted one edge of the circular display several inches before dropping it hard enough to fracture the surrounding stone. Cracks raced across the stage. Candleholders toppled. The auctioneer staggered behind his lectern and clutched its sides to remain standing.
Karaina did not move.
She could feel the statue’s heartbeat beneath her captured hand.
A second heartbeat answered from the shaft.
The two beats fell into the same slow rhythm.
Stone scraped against stone below.
Then the hand appeared.
Four immense fingers rose from the darkness and curled around the broken edge of the platform. Each was constructed from overlapping plates of smoke-veined stone joined by blackened iron hinges. Ancient pins the width of a man’s wrist turned within the joints. Fragments of mortar and wet earth fell from the moving fingers as they tightened around the rim.
The hand was large enough to close around Karaina and the statue together.
The nearest bidders recoiled farther.
One of the guards dropped his club.
“What in the gods’ names is that?” he whispered.
The auctioneer’s face had gone colorless.
“Release the statue,” he commanded.
Karaina glanced toward him.
He was no longer pretending to conduct an auction. The pleasant theatricality had vanished from his voice. One hand remained hidden beneath the lectern.
“Open the doors,” Karaina said.
“That is no longer possible.”
“Then you have very little authority left to bargain with.”
The gigantic hand pulled.
The statue lurched toward the opening.
Because its fingers remained locked around Karaina’s wrist, she was dragged with it.
Karaina stepped forward rather than fighting backward. The concealed pleats of her gown opened with her stride, allowing her to lower her center of gravity without tearing the velvet. Her leading boot struck the platform near the shaft’s edge. Her rear foot slid back and found solid stone.
The hand pulled again.
Marble ground against the platform as the statue moved another few inches.
Let me go, the woman whispered inside Karaina’s mind.
Karaina’s eyes narrowed.
The statue’s voice trembled now.
If you remain joined to me, it will take you as well.
“That appears to be the intention.”
You do not understand.
“No,” Karaina replied quietly. “I rarely do at the beginning.”
Her thumb found the concealed catch on her folding fan.
The black lacquered ribs snapped outward.
Dark-green silk spread into a wide semicircle, but beneath the fabric, reinforced steel slid through hidden channels. The ribs extended beyond the fan’s edge as narrow polished blades.
Karaina turned with the next pull.
She allowed the creature’s momentum to draw her forward, then drove the opened fan downward with both precision and the full weight of her twisting body.
The steel ribs struck across two articulated fingers.
Sparks flashed where metal met the ancient iron joints.
The bladed fan buried itself against the broken platform rim, trapping both fingers beneath it.
The enormous hand stopped.
A metallic shriek rose from the shaft.
It was not the sound of a wounded animal. It was the protest of machinery forced to move against its design—the scream of iron pins twisting inside stone that refused to yield.
Karaina held the fan in place with her left hand. Her forward knee remained bent, her rear leg braced behind her. The statue stood beside her, one stone hand still locked around her wrist.
Pale marble dust coated Karaina’s bare forearm.
Her face remained composed.
Around her, panic consumed the theater.
The trapped bidders hammered on the locked doors. One man tried to climb into the lower balcony, only to fall when the decaying rail broke beneath his weight. The guards abandoned their posts and joined the crowd at the exits.
Only the auctioneer remained onstage.
His concealed hand moved beneath the lectern.
Karaina saw the motion.
“If you pull that lever,” she said, “I will assume it is important to you.”
His hand stopped.
The vast fingers flexed beneath the fan.
The silk trembled, but the steel ribs held.
“You cannot restrain it,” the auctioneer said. “You are delaying what has already been decided.”
“By whom?”
His eyes shifted toward the statue.
That brief glance answered more than his words could have.
Karaina pressed harder against the fan.
“You did not bring that woman here to sell her.”
The auctioneer said nothing.
“The auction was bait,” Karaina continued. “The bidders provided a room filled with potential sacrifices, and the statue selected the one your master wanted.”
A murmur spread among those near enough to hear.
Several bidders turned toward the auctioneer.
He tried to recover his practiced composure.
“You came here willingly.”
“So did everyone else. I am merely the first person who read the invitation correctly.”
The enormous hand twisted.
A third finger struck the platform beside Karaina’s boot, cracking the marble. The fan remained locked across the other two, but she felt the strain travel through its reinforced frame and into her shoulder.
The statue’s voice returned.
The fan will break.
“Eventually.”
You cannot defeat him here.
“Him?”
The statue fell silent.
Karaina looked at the auctioneer.
“You called that thing ‘it.’ She calls it ‘him.’ Which of you is lying?”
The auctioneer’s gaze hardened.
The genial host was gone completely now. Beneath the expensive coat and polished manners stood a man who had watched others descend into that shaft before.
“You believe composure makes you powerful,” he said. “It merely makes you interesting.”
Karaina’s lips curved—not into a smile, but into the faint expression of someone who had just heard an opponent confess more than he intended.
“That explains the invitation.”
She turned her attention back to the statue.
“Why does it remember me?”
The marble fingers around her wrist trembled.
Not from the creature pulling below.
From fear.
I cannot answer while he is listening.
“Who?”
The statue’s heartbeat stumbled.
The vast hand beneath the fan immediately matched it.
One beat.
Then another.
Then both stopped.
The sudden silence was worse than the noise.
The mechanical strain vanished from the enormous fingers. They no longer pulled against Karaina’s weapon.
Throughout the opera house, the candles steadied.
The cold draft from the shaft faded.
For several seconds, nothing moved.
A bidder near the doors gave a nervous laugh.
“It stopped,” he said.
No one answered him.
Karaina did not ease her stance.
The auctioneer slowly withdrew his hand from beneath the lectern.
He had been holding a short iron lever.
Now he released it.
The lever returned to its resting position with a soft click.
“What did you do?” Karaina asked.
His attention was fixed upon the hand.
“I did nothing.”
For the first time that evening, she believed him.
The colossal fingers relaxed under the bladed fan.
One joint at a time, they unfolded.
The enormous hand did not retreat into the shaft. Instead, it rotated beneath Karaina’s weapon, grinding its stone plates against the broken platform until its palm began turning upward.
The statue’s grip became painfully tight.
Do not look at it.
Karaina kept her gaze on the moving fingers.
“What is in its hand?”
Not in.
A fissure appeared in the center of the stone palm.
Behind.
The crack widened.
Dust spilled from it in thin streams. Interlocking slabs separated like the shutters of an ancient window, revealing not gears or hollow darkness, but a smooth wet surface beneath the stone.
The auctioneer stumbled away from his lectern.
“No,” he whispered.
The bidders fell silent.
Even those at the doors turned toward the stage.
The opening in the creature’s palm widened into the shape of an enormous eyelid.
The statue pulled Karaina closer.
It has never seen you before.
The lid opened.
A vast human eye stared up from the center of the hand.
Its iris was hazel-gray.
Golden flecks burned around its pupil.
Karaina’s eyes.
The creature focused upon her face.
Every remaining candle in the opera house went out.
In the darkness, something far below drew its first breath.
Then Karaina heard her own voice rise from the shaft.
“You came back.”

The Heart Beneath the Marble

The invitation had arrived without a messenger.

Karaina found it resting on her private desk shortly after sunset, sealed in colorless wax and addressed in a hand she did not recognize. No one at the Maiden’s Shield had seen it delivered.

No door had opened. No window had been disturbed.
Inside was a single line:

Bring no servant. Bid only on what remembers you.

That was why Karaina came to the abandoned Celestine Opera House alone.

The building had been deserted for nearly thirty years, but someone had restored just enough of its former grandeur for tonight’s clandestine auction. Hundreds of candles burned beneath the tarnished balconies. Burgundy curtains concealed the worst sections of collapsed plaster, while wealthy collectors sat beneath them wearing masks, jewels and expressions of cultivated indifference.

Karaina recognized several of them.

A shipping magnate who purchased relics from drowned temples.

A magistrate who publicly condemned necromancy but privately collected the bones of saints. Two foreign ambassadors who pretended not to know one another.

None appeared to recognize her.

The Midnight Collector Ensemble had done its work. The blackened-emerald velvet gown marked her as wealthy without identifying her loyalties. Its narrow gold embroidery suggested an old house whose name polite society would be embarrassed to admit it had forgotten. The concealed pleats allowed her to move freely, and the narrow stiletto hidden inside one of them rested comfortably against her thigh.

Her closed folding fan hung loosely from one hand.

She had not placed a single bid.

The first lots had been impressive but predictable: a silver astrolabe recovered from a sunken observatory, a goblet said to poison only liars, and the preserved hand of a royal executioner whose fingers still tightened whenever someone nearby spoke the name of the dead king.

Karaina watched the bidders rather than the objects.

By the time the auctioneer announced the final lot, she had already identified the armed guards, the concealed exits and the three guests most likely to begin killing if the evening turned against them.

Then the curtains at the rear of the stage opened.

Four laborers rolled forward a circular platform covered by a heavy black cloth. They moved too carefully for men transporting ordinary stone. One was sweating despite the chill inside the theater. Another refused to look beneath the cloth.

The auctioneer waited until the platform reached the center of the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “what you are about to see has never before been offered for private acquisition.”

He pulled away the covering.

The statue beneath it depicted a woman in flowing robes, carved from pale, smoke-veined marble. She was beautiful, though not with the exaggerated perfection favored by fashionable sculptors. Her features possessed tiny asymmetries. A shallow crease rested between her brows. Individual strands had been carved into the hair beside her ear. The faint depressions beneath her closed eyes suggested exhaustion rather than sleep.

She did not resemble an artistic ideal.

She resembled someone who had been forced to remain still.

The room became silent.

Then every candle flame in the opera house bent toward her.

Not flickered.

Bent.

Karaina’s expression did not change, but her attention sharpened.

The auctioneer began reciting a history involving a ruined estate, an extinct noble family and a sculptor who had supposedly murdered himself after completing the work. Karaina ignored him. The laborers were retreating from the platform. The guards near the eastern exit had quietly drawn their clubs. Beneath the perfume and candle smoke, she detected the cold mineral scent of freshly opened earth.

Then she heard it.

A single, heavy beat.

It did not come from the orchestra pit or from the machinery beneath the stage.

It came from inside the statue.

Several bidders shifted uneasily. One laughed beneath his breath, attempting to dismiss what he had heard as part of the performance.

The heartbeat came again.

The candle flames leaned farther.

Chairs scraped backward as the nearest collectors retreated. The auctioneer’s rehearsed composure faltered. Only for an instant—but Karaina saw it.

He had expected something unusual.

He had not expected this.

Karaina stepped onto the platform.
“Madam,” the auctioneer said, “physical inspection is not permitted.”

She continued forward.

The concealed pleats of her gown opened naturally with her stride. Her shoulders remained relaxed. The folding fan stayed closed beside her thigh, but her thumb now rested against the lacquered spine where a hidden catch could transform it into something considerably less decorative.

“Then you should have placed it behind glass,” she said.

She stopped before the marble woman.

Up close, the illusion of life became more disturbing. Fine veins appeared beneath the stone of her throat. The corners of her lips were slightly dry. A faint scar crossed one eyebrow—an imperfection no sculptor would have added without reason.

Karaina raised her hand.

The auctioneer took an involuntary step toward her.

“Do not touch it.”

That was the first honest thing he had said all evening.

Karaina placed her palm against the statue’s chest.

The marble was cold enough to hurt.

For one breath, nothing happened.

Then the heart beneath her hand struck once.

The impact traveled through the stone and into her bones.

Karaina kept her hand in place. Her face remained calm, her gaze fixed upon the statue’s closed eyes. Around her, the audience withdrew farther into the shadows.

A second heartbeat followed.

This one matched her own.

A third came half a breath later.

Not matching her now.

Following her.

Learning her rhythm.

Karaina felt something brush the edge of her thoughts: darkness, salt water and the crushing weight of stone. She saw iron doors far beneath the opera house. She smelled wet earth and heard chains dragging across a floor she could not see.

Then the statue’s right hand moved.

Stone fingers closed around Karaina’s wrist.

Gasps swept through the theater. Several bidders ran for the exits, but the doors slammed shut before they reached them.

Karaina did not pull away.

The statue’s eyes remained closed. Its lips did not move. But a woman’s voice whispered inside Karaina’s mind.
"He is not selling me."

A deep metallic bolt slid open beneath the stage.

The marble fingers tightened.

"He is using me to choose who goes below."

The circular platform shuddered under Karaina’s boots.

From somewhere beneath the opera house, something vast answered the statue’s heartbeat.

And began climbing toward them.

See you there.