Irolt Reads the Respite

Stealing from a church is just too much.

That had been Irolt’s take going into their scam investigation earlier in the evening.

He tried, more or less, to be a decent person. He had to make certain moral compromises - especially since meeting up with Belthor and even more so since meeting Franza. It was not always easy to be a good, or even decent person, when traveling with a thief and a hedonist. Generally speaking however, he tried to take actions that he thought contributed in some way to the greater good.

When they had interrogated equally destitute people on the streets of Irolladice, they had been led to believe that the culprits were headed for the church, which had outraged the half-dwarf in a way he couldn’t quite explain. He had never been particularly pious, and did not know which of The Twelve Gods was being slighted, but he found the whole situation deplorable nonetheless. People who needed something to believe in were the last people who needed to be in danger of losing everything.

Stealing from a church is just too much, he had thought.

After visiting the church in question, however, he better understood the impulse.

In his twenty-six years of living he had never been so deeply annoyed, and that counted all of the times that week that Franza had been singing at him. One minute he’d been chatting with his companions about bringing a little justice into a corrupt town, and the next he was getting shushed by an entire room full of people - his companions included.

“What the -”

But before he could finish asking his question, he was being shushed again and Belthor had an elbow buried in his side.

“Ow,” he muttered, and the angry eyes of all the churchgoers bore into him with more intensity. “My bad,” he added.

He didn’t feel like it was his bad, though. He had been trying to help the people, to prevent them from getting scammed. There was no one standing at the pulpit, no one talking, so it wasn’t like he’d interrupted a sermon or anything that would be more important than keeping their funds protected.

Maybe they don’t know I’m trying to help.

Irolt approached the only priest in attendance, or at least, a tall siren-man whom Irolt assumed to be a priest. He was wearing dull green robes and reading intently from a book with silver-gilded pages.

“Hello, we-”

He was silenced immediately by the priest, who raised a webbed finger to his lips and glared down at Irolt.

He was a loud guy, but he did his best to lower his voice in observance of the rules. “My friends and I were just-”

But the man raised his fingers to his lips again, and the glowering intensified.

This is going to get annoying real fast.

In his exasperation he looked over to Franza, their unofficial diplomat. The dog was making frantic miming gestures at him, the meaning of which was utterly incomprehensible. He watched blankly until they looked as frustrated as he felt by the whole day. They gave up with a huff, and pointed to Belthor, who handed him a book.

It was bound in olive green velvet, and on the front an empty silver circle was embossed with the words ‘The Respite.’

He flipped through the book, not entirely sure what he was looking for.

‘What shall we call you?’ Asked the disciple.

The God met their eyes, and not a single word came forth.

The disciple knew that the lack of sound did not equate to a lack of answer. The God had a name, but one that did not need to be known, nor should it be. Speech was not needed to convey this message, and it therefore stood to reason that speech may not be needed to convey any holy message, or any message. Sound may not be needed at all.

Irolt understood then, ruefully, that he had embarked on a journey to help a Church of Silence - perhaps the most irritating group of people to try and help. He flipped through their holy text, hoping to find something that could help him communicate.

He began to write down the tenets of faith that were transferred to his mind from his God.

Sounds break silence.

Sound breaks concentration.

Silence is concentration.

Concentration is power.

Anything can be achieved through silence.

The Silence must not be broken.

But what are they trying to achieve? Irolt thought, as he looked around the room. They’re all just sitting there staring.

He continued to thumb through the thick pages.

It takes silence to ascend in the church.

The higher that a priest climbs, the more he is rewarded with silence. Eventually, he will no longer be permitted to speak at all. This is the closest he will come to our God. This is the closest he will come to perfection.

Only few will ascend so highly, and they will be referred to, reverently, as the Neverspoke.

That sounds like a pretty lousy promotion.

In addition to that, it was not helpful. He flipped through to another page.

-and when they read the tenets of faith, they read them quietly, with awe. So it came to be that the religion spread, and new followers took vows to contribute less to the noise infecting our world.

He gave up and closed the book, about to hand it back to Belthor before he realized that his friend had probably already swiped a dozen more copies.

Why couldn’t there have been something in here about how sometimes there are exemptions for protecting your church in an emergency? Or a basic sign language pamphlet or something?

Irolt tried to remind himself that he was not there to pass judgment on strangers or their belief system, but the whole thing struck him as utterly absurd. It was hard to buy into the concept that silence made people more productive when in the middle of a situation where silence was so greatly hindering his progress.

Franza was making a bunch of nonsense gestures again that he just couldn’t wrap his brain around until finally they pointed emphatically to the door.

Right.

Since they were clearly not allowed to speak inside the church, their best bet was to inform the priest of the danger by taking him outside. If he wasn’t a Neverspoke, he might be able to provide them with some information about the people they were looking for. Worst case scenario they could tip him off to the fact that hooligans had been hanging around his place of worship.

Franza tried their poor charade style sign language at the priest, who either didn’t understand or didn’t care. Irolt, who was strongly of the belief that it shouldn’t be this hard to help people, grabbed the priest by the robes and dragged him outside of the church to what he considered a safe distance.

After having to wait so long to speak to this guy, Irolt wasn’t about to beat around the bush.

“Here’s the deal.” He was relieved when he wasn’t shushed, and so he pressed forward boldly. “Me and my friends here got scammed by a cup and ball game. We asked around and it’s been happening around here a lot lately. People have told us that the culprits have been known to frequent this church. Do you know anything about that?”

The priest put a finger to his pursed lips.

Well fuck.

Luckily, Franza was on hand to hit the holy man with a full dose of puppy dog eyes. The priest regarded them at some length before walking further away from the church, across the courtyard and onto the path leading back to the town center. When they were entirely off of church property, he addressed them.

“It’s true that they come here often. They have a small operational base behind the church.”

Even when he spoke, he was quiet, his answer barely louder than the wind. There was little inflection to his speech, and he seemed more bothered by his voice than by the prospect of thieves amongst his own.

Is he in on it?

Come to think of it, he hadn’t read The Respite closely enough to know if they had any tenets of faith outside of how much they were allowed to talk. Perhaps it had been wrong of him to assume that they followed the same moral compass as any other belief system.

“Does the church…?” He trailed off, knowing there was no way to politely accuse a man of faith of participating with a bunch of thieves.

Franza on the other hand had no such qualms, and had apparently gotten a similar impression. “Are you helping them steal from people?”

The whole thing made a sick sort of sense. Most of the people they had spoken to had been targeted at least once, meaning that the operation was huge or the primary pool of people being victimized were those who were less likely to be in the church.

Rather than to answer the dog’s question, the priest raised a finger to his lips.

Well that’s suspicious.

Irolt was losing patience with the situation. Stealing from a church was terrible, but a church stealing from other people was even worse. He let his frustration guide his new method of getting answers. “People are losing their livelihoods over this, and if you know anything, I think you’d better tell us!” He cracked his knuckles to accentuate his point.

The priest sprinted back to the church before any of them could react.

Did he run back because he’s guilty? Or because I threatened him?

He didn’t know, and it made the whole ordeal seem utterly pointless.

“At least we know where to look for them now,” Franza pointed out.

“Right, let’s go.” He said as he headed begrudgingly back toward the church of silence.

It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was all they had, and it was getting late.