Wine and Punishment
Wine and Punishment, a Story of Love, Betrayal, Pleasure, and Pain by Sally Dald
Written by S.D. belatedly for the occasion of the party of EP and dedicated to M.D. and EP and with many thanks to R.K.
Part One: Joy and Betrayal
Ceri Howell was a young woman who lived in the Southern Ward of the city of Waterdeep with her parents. She was a pretty, curvy woman, with a tangle of red hair, and freckled face with a ever-present smile. She was raised by her parents to always smile, and to always bring pleasure to other people.
Her father was from Caer Callidyrr, a great walled city on the Moonshaes island of Alaron, and was a brewer and a tradesman and part of the Vintners', Distillers', & Brewers' Guild that was headquartered in the Southern Ward of Waterdeep. He had come to the city to brew Callidyrr mead and export wine and ales back to the Moonshaes. He was a successful man and owned the Rose Petal festhall, where the wealthy and noble of the city came to indulge in many pleasures.
Her mother was from Calimport and was raised in the traditions and part of the clergy of Sharess, and she was the one responsible for keeping the festhall running. Ceri, too, worked in the festhall, serving wine to the patrons as they dined and laughing at their jokes while avoiding their many crude overtures.
Ceri dreamed of a life beyond serving the leisure and entertainment of others. Her father told her that joy in life came from being successful, and that she could find that too, if she tried, through trade or through a skillful marriage. Her mother raised her with the teachings of how to make others happy and bring them pleasure, but there were times that her mother seemed sad somehow, as if her own needs were abandoned in taking care of others. Pleasing others was important, Ceri told herself, but surely one should please themselves as well.
His name was Xenos Amcathra, he was a noble. He was escorted to his own chair at the Rose Petal, and he saw Ceri serving the wine there. The Amcathra family was known in Waterdeep and beyond for their trade in wine and for supporting the Distillers' and Brewers' Guild that Ceri's father was now a part of. Xenos was a stocky man, with a look of determination on his rugged face. Over his noble clothes he wore a long, black cape that was trimmed with fur. Ceri liked his look and his taste in wine, and so when he called her over she was attentive.
Ceri spent many days serving Xenos at the Rose Petal. He admired her beauty and her willingness to be in his company, and her lack of restraint in his private room. Ceri came to find Xenos was vigorous, and exciting in his way, and she found she was able to overlook some uncomfortable fancies. These she accepted dutifully to please him as he seeded her ear with superlative comparisons of her beauty. She began to see herself as a good match for this noble, and imagined that the other nobles frequenting the festhall did admire her. She felt a great swell of emotions. Ceri came to think that perhaps she would become his noble lady.
She soon would find that she was wrong.
On the holiday of the Grand Revel, a tall lady with a supercilious air and bouncy blonde curls arrived at the Rose Petal. She was dressed in an elegant silk gown and a fur and a sparkling necklace. On her gown she had a bejeweled pin marking her as a noble of the Cassalanter family. She wasted no time in asking for Ceri, who was called away from her duties in the dining hall put herself to any request the noble lady might have. From beneath her fur cloak, the lady presented her with a bundle of letters and a look of displeasure along with a suggestion that she should stay away from Xenos Amcathra, and then dismissed her and departed in a whirl. Perplexed with this stranger, Ceri returned to her chamber to read the letters and there discovered they were from Xenos and addressed to a Lady Gwen Cassalanter.
In his letters, Xenos bragged of his easy conquest at the Rose Petal, spoke crudely and proudly of the ways that Ceri had debased herself for him, and mocked her lack of wit and will, and how he would soon give up this indulgence and propose to Lady Gwen. Then in the next lines, the author was extolling the many virtues of Lady Gwen and how her cheeks that put blushing red roses to shame, about how her lips felt fresher than flowers kissed by the rain, and her eyes sparkled brighter than diamonds.
Ceri now imagined that the other nobles in the house were not looking at her with admiration, but rather were looking at her with a secret pity. She felt a burning shame. She prayed to Sharess. She couldn't imagine being hurt by anyone. But that had changed. Her great swell of emotions was broken. She felt unworthy of affection, and that she deserved to suffer for the audacity of imaging herself with a nobles. She deserved the contempt of Lady Gwen. And of Xenos.
Part Two: That we all may be sisters
A friend of Ceri's named Star tried to comfort her by getting her away from the Rose Petal for a while to forget themselves in other pursuits. Star was a Kozakuran woman with slender, shapely figure. She had straight, long, and dark hair that draped down to her lower back. Star had a reserved manner, rarely showing emotion, yet she had a great fondness for drugs and wine, and she was responsible for bringing the many bottles of wine from the cellar to the servers at the Rose Petal.
Star took Ceri for her first visit to the Cat's Claw, another festhall in the Dock District known for its wild parties and debaucheries. It was not a place for bashful people, and was known to have drugs smuggled in from the docks. They were warmly greeted to the festhall by a buxom, bouncy woman, but looming quietly behind her there observed a well-dressed lean, wiry man with lank, shoulder length blonde hair and pale blue eyes that Ceri found unnerving. Ceri and Star found that the street level of the building was featured a burlesque show, which they watched for a while.
After many drinks at the edge of the stage, they made their way to the lower chambers, which smelled of halx and salts, and had many colored magical lamps and sparkling orbs for those partaking of the blue beetle and even more exotic substances. With her mind spinning with these delights, Ceri took her past a red curtain, to red painted passage leading to a third level below, saying that is where they would find Mina. Ceri's heart raced as she heard moans echoing through the halls from behind closed doors that they passed.
At the far end of the red painted passage there was a room dominated by a human woman's presence. Mina. She was slim and beautiful human with long straight platinum-blonde hair that draped well down her chest. She wore black shoulder-length silk gloves and high boots. Her black robe was lined with crimson silk, and below all this an leather harness across her body, bold in its wickedness and hints of carnal pleasure. In one hand, a barbed six-foot whip in her hand, and in the other hand a bottle of wine. In the center of the room was a lit candle set on an iron holder. Mina seemed to circle the candle as she regarded Ceri and Star.
The room itself was surrounded in candelabras and colored jars, and the walls were decorated with paintings of thorned trees and rites and celebrations of Lovitar depicted in deathly, monochromatic hues. Star called out to her, addressing her as Sister Mina, who in turn gave a mischievous smile to Star and told her to come to her, addressing her as Taystren.
Ceri's pulse quickened and her mind reeled at the scene that unfolded before her with Mina and Star, Mina leading Star around the candle, bringing her closer to it, watching as Star stoically held her hand over the flame until at last she gave the slightest gasp of pain. And still Ceri stood frozen, watching, until Mina gave a laugh and salacious glance, and told her to come forth and embrace her fate as a Kneeling One. Flustered, desperate, Ceri stumbled in fright back down the corridor, through the festhall, and out into the night.
Some days later at the Rose Petal, Mina had arrived to see Ceri. Mina was not dressed as she was before, but rather in a suit of lightweight armor, pleated to resemble scale mail, and accentuating her form. Mina told Ceri in a polite but firm manner that she should return to the Cat's Claw. Ceri demurred at the suggestion, protesting that she was a Celebrant and not given to pain. Mina then countered with a smirk that pain, in Loviatan doctrine, paved the path to many blessings. Only through its experience could genuine pleasure be attained.
Ceri quietly reasoned that even The Lustful Mistress Sharess experimented with this darker side of pleasure. And why not, if all were in consent? Her thoughts turned to exploring with Mina. She felt she could trust her, and tell her of her shame with Xenos. That Mina could free her from that. She couldn't imagine wanting to hurt someone else. Not like Mina did. Not really. She prayed to Sharess to help her untangle this mystery. Perhaps if the key was one's self, perhaps Mina could come to love Sharess the way Ceri did.
Ceri asks Mina to stay at the Rose Petal for a while, and to her surprise she accepted this invitation. Star brought them many bottles of fine wine from the cellar to share. Ceri asks about some marks on Mina arms, wondering if she too was the subject of pains at the Cat's Claw, which for some reason intrigued her. But Mina told her they were scars left by Fogwart, a Whipmaster of Lovitar who runs the Cat's Claw, made when she had to repel his unwanted advances while at the same time maintaining her graces in her sect. She had to constantly fight him off, she confided in Ceri, but added with hope that someday soon she would be free of him. Ceri took this fellow Fogwart to be the icy-blue eyed man she had seen at the door of the Cat's Claw.
In turn, Ceri told Mina of Xenos, and his cruelty. Together they shared their sufferings. And as the night went on, together they shared their pleasures among tangled sheets with their tangled bodies. In the morning Ceri found a note on the table next to her bed. Mina was returning to the Cat's Claw to collect her things and be done with the place and would return soon.
When Mina did not return for several days, Ceri and Star set out to the Cat's Paw. Oddly as they entered they spotted Xenos in his black fur lined cape, and the blue-eyed man, Fogwart laughing in a close conversation. The pair quieted and then silently watched as Ceri and Star passed quickly by. In Mina's room they found a scene of destruction. Broken mirrors and furniture. A torn farewell note to Fogwart. Mina's barbed whip lay on the floor. With growing emotion, Ceri took up the whip to examine. She thought of Xenos and Fogwart, and the people who deserve to be hurt. The whip felt natural in her hands. She began to feel that there were people that she had to hurt, and knowing that must be done no great emotion. Hearing footsteps in the hallway she knew that it would not be long. In that moment she prayed to the Lady of Pain to guide her hand.
Star and Ceri met Xenos and Fogwart in the red hallway. Star calmly crippled Xenos with her serrated dagger. Ceri leapt on Fogwart and tangled Mina's whip around his neck, strangling him to his death with a possessed fury. A desperate Xenos offered a scroll of resurrection and where Mina's corpse could be found, begging for them to spare his life in exchange. Ceri felt nothing for Xenos then, lacking any pity towards him and only wishing him pain. She accepted his scroll, but refused him the mercy and whipped him until he moved no more. Mina's body was found in one of the rooms off the hallway and was returned to life and into the arms of her two companions.
From the Cat's Claw the three moved swiftly to the docks to find a ship with passage out of Waterdeep. There would be questions about the death of a noble at a festhall in the Docks District, and the three made plans to quickly be gone. The first ship that they found was bound to the distant Island of Skaljard where in the times to come they soon become widely known as the Three Sisters of Pain and not at all the sort to be trifled with.
[On the inside of the back flap, there is written: Crane & Crow Publishing (c) 188 AR.]