Harper Reply: The Najara Question

Leosin Erlanthar's reply to Gootcha, returned through the Nightingales' notebook on Hammer 17, 1489 DR, three days after her dispatch was filed.

Provenance

The reply wrote itself into the notebook overnight, in Merrivet's small copying hand, under one marginal note of her own: copied exact.

The letter

Gootcha,

Your bridge dispatch is filed, all five items. It is good work, and the Othovir recruitment is the best of it, which I will come back to.

Four matters, and I want the fourth read slowly.

One, Varram. I have been through what Berdusk holds on him twice and there is nothing in it that a yuan-ti should want. He is the Cult's man and his value is to the Cult, and every account we hold has the serpentfolk indifferent to the Cult's whole enterprise. I do not know why they are looking for him. I will not guess at it, and I ask you not to fill the gap with a guess of your own. I have put the question to our own people in the south, and when something comes back you will have it unasked.

Two, the watchers at the bridge. Standing watchers keyed to one man are paid for, and paying for them means somebody with a treasury believes Varram will cross that water. Until shown otherwise, treat any stranger's interest in your own party's route as part of the same purchase.

Three, Othovir. Approved, and tell him nothing about the four. A keeper at a crossing hears everything and is seen by everyone, so assume from the first day that other people have also thought of him. What he sends is worth most before anyone knows he is sending it.

Four, Najara. Since midsummer we have had three reports of serpentfolk in the Backlands claiming to speak for a kingdom of that name. One came from a drover out of Soubar, one from a Zhentarim supply clerk who did not know what he was telling us, and the third I have promised not to source. I would trust two of the three. The archive lists Najara as a legend of the Serpent Hills, and that entry has not been touched since before I was born. If the serpentfolk are a kingdom rather than scattered bands, then most of what we hold on those hills is wrong, and wrong in the dangerous direction.

So, a standing instruction in place of anything you might have asked me. Send back whatever crosses your path that bears on the serpentfolk acting as one body. Shared signs or tokens. Orders carried between bands. Tribute moving in a single direction. Any of them speaking of a king. Do not go looking for it. What finds you on that road will be enough, and I mean that as an instruction.

Keep your eyes sharp. The watchword was chosen before my time and I have not improved on it. In the whole of our records I cannot find one account of the yuan-ti wanting the thing they first appeared to want, and I checked again before writing this.

— Leosin

P.S. The breath orb. We have seen its like twice, both times in Cult hands. Spend the charge if you need it, but before you do, write down every person who asks after it. The asking will tell you more than the orb will.

See also

• Correspondence — the campaign's letters, gathered
• Nightingale Dispatch: Eyes at the Bridge — the dispatch this answers
• The Nightingales · Gootcha · Leosin Erlanthar