Calmont Trenault

Calmont Trenault spent several years as apprentice at the Reliant Book Company, which is to say he spent several years doing the parts of bookselling that Voz Lirayne did not want to do. He managed the daily business, dealt with customers, kept the accounts that she found tedious. He was useful in the way a well-maintained tool is useful. She did not confide in him. She let slip enough about the elf gate network beneath the citadel that he began to understand it was valuable, which was the mistake, and when she told him the fire mephit parchment had gone missing from her back room, she was telling herself a story she preferred.

Calmont had stolen it. He had plans.

The Fire

The plan was not sophisticated. He would summon the mephit, set the fires, disrupt the Call for Heroes, drive the council into crisis, and use the resulting chaos to get to the citadel ahead of anyone else. Voz had told him enough: there was something beneath the hill worth finding, something worth money, and he saw no reason why she should be the only one who profited from it.

The fire mephit required negotiation. Calmont managed this, which speaks to something, though not quite the competence he believed it demonstrated. The fires took in the town hall. People panicked. He ran.

What he had not worked out: disrupting the council did not clear the path. It produced exactly the opposite effect — the council hired the heroes on the spot and sent them directly to the hill. By the time Calmont reached the citadel, he had accomplished the one thing he'd meant to prevent.

Voz told anyone who asked that she had fired him days prior.

The Citadel

Calmont spent time alone in the upper citadel working out how to get to the dungeons below. The Bumblebrashers were in his way. His solution, when the party arrived to find the standoff already in progress, was to hold their chieftain Helba at knifepoint on the battlements and demand cooperation.

He was wild-eyed and shouting. The bravado covered something that was not quite confidence. When Trisiel raised a protective tree between Calmont and Helba, and William closed the distance projecting the kind of calm that suggested he had done this before, the position became obviously hopeless. Theo told him plainly how the arithmetic worked: arson, a hostage, and a party of adventurers who had now climbed all the way up here specifically to deal with him.

He let Helba go. He surrendered.

Interrogation

Captured, he talked. He had not intended to tell anyone about Voz, but captured and disarmed and looking at the prospect of returning to Breachill to face the town council, the calculation shifted.

He described her as a human who had recruited him with promises of power and purpose: access to something hidden beneath the citadel, something elven, something that could change his circumstances permanently. His task had been to create chaos and clear the approach. The mephits were supposed to kill witnesses. He had believed, at the time, that he was being let in on something.

The party took his shortbow. The rest of his gear went with him.

Return to Breachill

The party escorted him back to town. Falwan, when she eventually departed the citadel, noted with something approaching satisfaction that he was facing justice. What that justice consisted of specifically, the record does not say. The council had wanted him alive for questioning. They got what they asked for.

Whether Calmont understood the full scope of what Voz had been doing — the Scarlet Triad correspondence, the guild she intended to found, the actual significance of Alseta's Ring — is unclear. He knew enough to steal the parchment and start the fire. He knew the gate network existed and was valuable. He did not know what it connected to, and Voz had taken care to keep it that way.

Voice

Calmont's manner in captivity ran to moroseness and periodic appeals to just be let go. Under the knifepoint standoff he had defaulted to shrill threats and bravado, which collapsed the moment the tactical situation stopped supporting it. He was not stupid — he had read the situation correctly in the end, and surrendering was the right call. He had simply misjudged every prior step.

The adventure text describes him as hunched, hair wild, gestures manic. That tracks with someone who had spent several days alone in a partially collapsed citadel, talked himself into escalating hostage-taking, and was running out of options before the party arrived. He had convinced himself this was still salvageable until the moment the tree went up and it clearly wasn't.

What he had actually wanted was to matter. Voz's operation had looked like a way in. He was wrong about that, too — she had let him handle the parts of her plan she found disposable, which included him.

Statistics

AC 20  |  HP 35  |  Speed 25 ft.

Fort +6, Ref +11, Will +6  |  Perception +6 (keen eyes)

Str +2, Dex +4, Con +1, Int -1, Wis -1, Cha +2

Skills Acrobatics +9, Deception +7, Society +7, Stealth +11, Thievery +11

Melee ◆ dagger +9 (agile, finesse, versatile S), 1d4+4 piercing

Ranged ◆ shortbow +9 (deadly 1d10, range 60 ft., reload 0), 1d6 piercing

Ranged ◆ dagger +9 (agile, thrown 10 ft., versatile S), 1d4+4 piercing

Deny Advantage Not off-guard to hidden, undetected, or flanking creatures of level 3 or lower.

Nimble Dodge ↺  |  Quick Draw ◆  |  Sneak Attack 1d6 extra damage to off-guard creatures.

Surprise Attack If Calmont used Deception or Stealth for initiative, creatures that haven't acted are off-guard to him on the first round.

Equipment Dagger, leather armor, lesser healing potion ×2, thieves' tools. (+1 shortbow and 20 arrows confiscated by the party.)