last night was the boring part
the train made an unannounced stop because an old acquaintance of spark's named "herringbone" was discovered stowing away in one of the cargo cars
the guards were going to kick them off the train but spark offered that they could stay in the private cargo hold in our car and that was fine with everyone and the train picked right back up
this becomes relevant later i promise
our next actual stop was in "hatheril junction" which is a little squeaky fart of a town that only exists because the mayor of hatheril didn't want the see the lightning rail anywhere near her city so they built it just out of visible range and stuck the bare necessities in to call it a distinct town
it's not that i'm shocked by such pettiness or anything
it's that this instance is almost comfortingly banal
anyhow the train stopped to rearrange cars
it may not be as dramatic to tell it this way but it lakes less sense in the order we came into things so here's what happened chronologically
i don't know if i've mentioned "thrane" yet but apparently they're a country of zealots who don't mind using force and deceit to spread the glory of their favorite god and you can probably guess how i feel about that
thrane has been sending "missionaries" into the mountains the dwarves call home
a charming couple of dwarves in the very posh "first-class" car were bringing mining equipment and weapons back to said mountains to aid in defense
some jerks from thrane planned to abduct them
so they set up a distraction in the form of a brightly-armored loud-mouthed human demanding tithes from everyone in the steerage car in return for not killing the unbelievers
oh and they somehow convinced herringbone to defend them from us
it's kind of funny now because i asked them why they were trying to shake down the folks in the cheap seats when there was way more wealth to be had in first-class
i was legitimately confused by their approach though now it seems silly to have even asked
anyhow they answered by pointing their holy symbol at me and i decided that i was probably not the one to handle negotiations and when i left that car i saw the group trying to breach the first-class car
i did my best to gently discourage them from proceeding but one of them hit me with a ray of light that really hurt
i admit that my patience and capacity for absorbing surprises was already bottoming out so i did use that spell i have that basically just redirects malicious intent back as magical force
i keep telling myself that's justified as a sort of "you did this to you" but i still don't like doing it
the important thing is that i helped stop them
at the end of it all nobody got hurt except the criminals and me and zer' healed me up quickly enough so i'm happy with that outcome
spark convinced the guards to let herringbone go provided that they run directly to a place called "flamekeep" which is relevant to their spiritual interests
the dwarves were pretty happy about not being taken hostage so they gifted us with a really nice bit of jewelry enchanted with a defensive spell
oh and i just found out that the generic term for a shiny religion-motivated loud-mouth is "paladin" except that this one in particular was possessed by some sort of spirit of dark flame called "bel shalor"
and flamekeep is the seat of the "church of the silver flame" which is the religion that paladin claimed to be part of and also the one that thrane is all about trying to push on their neighbors at swordpoint and herringbone is a fan
just ... ugh
oh but i also found out that the ring those dwarves gave us – the one with six gems in rainbow colors – has a particular meaning or at least the colors themselves do
it's called a "pride rainbow" and is meant to represent pride in living in the way one feels is right regardless of pressure from those who feel differently
just a reminder that this place isn't nearly all bad