Boots

Talia- as I promised, here’s the file on the boots stored in the Vault. While it is one of the most heavily secured items in the vault, it’s not a particular secret, unlike some of the other items in the Vault. Still, the rules around any Vault Contents report mean that I’ll need this report back after you’re done with it, so don’t lose it or copy it.

-Alustin

Skyhold Vault Contents Report: The Assassin Boots, also known as the Traitor Shoes, also known as the Bane of Kings, also known as the Sole Eaters, etc, etc, etc.

Official Skyhold Designation, as assigned by Kanderon Crux: Those Damnable Boots

Appearance: While the boots have maintained the appearance of battered but well-made leather workboots since they’ve been in Skyhold’s possession, historical reports of them have described them in a variety of different ways- gilded riding boots, enchanted glass dancing slippers, even comfortable house slippers.

Capabilities: Largely unknown, but theories have included teleportation, mental manipulation, the ability to command birds, probability distortion, possessing an extradimensional digestive system, being the cast-offs of one of the [redacted] and bearing some of their power, and simply of being normal boots that have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Given that the last theory has been given by literally dozens of people struggling to free the boots from captivity, often to the point of self-injury, and being unable to listen to reason, that does tend to lend credence to the mental manipulation theory.

Other traits: Those Damnable Boots are, so far as we can tell, entirely indestructible. It’s also widely suspected that they’re sentient or even sapient, though no absolute evidence exists for that.

Origins: Those Damnable Boots are widely agreed to be from another world. They have no spellform marks, and seem to behave in an entirely alien manner to our own magic. The leading speculation is that they are possessed by a [redacted] from the world of [redacted], but the usual methods for detecting a [redacted] have come back negative.

Containment measures: Those Damnable Boots are locked up behind three layers of wards, a spatial distortion constructed by Kanderon, and an enchanted obsidian cage crafted by Skyhold’s enchanters specifically for the boots. 

Reasons for Preservation: Despite the fact that Those Damnable Boots absolutely meet the qualifications for being destroyed instead of being locked within the vaults, we’ve simply been unable to destroy them. Attempts have included:

- Burning: The combined might of Skyhold’s fire mages was unable to singe the boots.

- Crushing: While a sufficiently large boulder (quite larger than a dragon) was able to smash the boots flat, they repaired themselves quickly.

- Acid: The boots drank the acid. At least some of it was later spat out on a Skyhold mage, who thankfully survived with minimal scarring. 

- Separation, then destruction: The boots were taken almost a hundred leagues apart, then subjected to dozens of different destruction attempts. All failed.

- Starbolt: Kanderon Crux herself fired several starbolts at the boots. Each was enough to incinerate a dragon, yet somehow, at close range, Kanderon missed every shot.

- Destructive resonance: Several dozen objects were enchanted with the specific goal of triggering a chain reaction destructive resonance event. Several hundred feet of the Endless Erg were turned to glass, with greater destructive power than could be reached by most great powers. As an important side note, this actually led to Project [Redacted], the products of which largely remain locked up inside the Skyhold vault as well. 

It was later found that someone had forgotten to place the boots in the blast zone. Whether this was accidental or manipulation by the boots is unknown, but the expense was judged too high to try again.

History:

The first suspected appearance of Those Damnable Boots was around two hundred years after the fall of the Ithonian Empire. A minor warlord in what is now the northern Alikean borderlands tripped and fell down a staircase, breaking her neck. Given that she was a gravity mage of unusual power, it’s widely accepted that she was likely assassinated, but attributing it to Those Damnable Boots does seem to be a bit of a stretch. Still, we include it in the report because there is one reference to the incident in a letter that remarks on the fact that her shoes went missing a few minutes after her death.

There are a few other suspect deaths during the following decades, but none that can be confirmed. Political assassinations during this period were extraordinarily common, even by already-high Anastan standards.

It was fifty years later when the first confirmed report occurs. A high-ranking member of the Alikean Parliament, while proposing new funds for sewer repair in the capital— a frequent expense, given how frequent earthquakes are in the city from the adjacent volcano— had his feet bitten off by his own shoes. Healers were unable to stop the bleeding. The shoes went missing soon after, but cautious examination by means of a long stick revealed that the shoes seemed empty, with no trace of the missing feet inside. The shoes vanished within the hour.

The next two decades were the most active in the history of the boots, averaging two to three assassinations a year. There seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason, or any discernible motive— the boots targeted powerful figures of any nation it could, seemingly at random. It seldom used the same methods twice, save for a few reliable favorites, including tripping the wearer on stairs, biting their feet off, and the overwhelming favorite, summoning a flock of birds to peck the wearer to death. 

The boots don’t seem especially picky about what birds it summons. Waterfowl, especially geese and swans, are a special favorite, but everything from seagulls to sparrows to chickens to, on one particularly notable occasion, hummingbirds, have been used.

The overwhelming majority of the time, the boots have been on the feet of the person they’ve assassinated, but there is something of a reporting bias, there— historical accounts of assassinations seldom report on the footwear of the people around a victim at the time of death. There are, however, one or two reports of captured assassins who were found barefoot that lead us to suspect the actual kill rate of Those Damnable Boots are considerably higher than suspected. 

A few of the more noteworthy suspected assassinations of that time period:

- Causing the reigning Queen of Ctesia to slip and fall off a seacliff. Her corpse was found shoe-less, though it’s possible she had just been wearing normal shoes lost in the waves.

- Forcing the head of a powerful Tsarnassan family to dance for two days straight, until he died of heart failure. His legs were, apparently, lent absurd magical strength by the boots, to the point that even mages were unable to stop him without injury.

- During the speech of a Sican merchant guild leader, his boots began growing up his legs. Within around a minute, they’d completely covered his body, vanishing after he suffocated to death.

- Set an Alikean parliamentarian on fire.

- Another Alikean parliamentarian was carried off into the air by what bystanders claimed to be a pigeon. Not a giant, magically enhanced one, just a standard pigeon. The woman’s final fate is unknown, but several bystanders agreed that her shoes both fell off in midair. It should be noted that nearly a third of deaths on record are from Alikea.

- An archmage ruling over Themesere was stabbed to death by his shoes in the second year of his reign, after overthrowing its previous government. We remain unsure how footwear stabs someone to death, though reports claim a sword was used.

- Choked at least two members of the Alikean parliament to death. This one’s most notable for the fact that it choked both of them to death at the same time, that it’s unknown how the boots got into their throats, and by the fact that one parliamentarian was human and one was a dragon. The first boot shouldn’t have even been able to fit inside the human, and was nowhere near large enough to choke the dragon to death, but it nonetheless killed both successfully.

Following that twenty-year period of activity, the boots went quiet for almost seventy-five years. Their activity or location during that time remains largely unknown. Most speculate that they traveled to Gelid or another continent, though a vocal minority suspect them to have traveled to another world during that time. Regardless, we’ve never managed to find any evidence of its activities during this interregnum.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence for the boots being sentient, or even sapient, revolves around the fact that the boots’ existence had only been discovered in the last two years of the twenty-year active period. Despite the absurd methods of the boots, no-one had thought to speculate that it was footwear killing people. Alikean security forces were the ones who finally made the connection, after the aforementioned incident where the two Alikean parliamentarians choked to death. It took quite some effort on their part to convince anyone that they weren’t mad.

The second, and final, major period of activity before the capture of the boots only lasted for five years, but they were the five bloodiest years of the boots’ activity, measured both by frequency of assassinations— the boots averaged eight assassinations per year— but also by the sheer number of collateral casualties. Before, the boots had largely been more precise with its assassinations, with only a small handful of collateral casualties— mostly among those who had previously attempted to stop the killings.

Something had changed, however, when the boots reappeared. Not a single assassination by the boots failed to have collateral damage during this time period. 

- The boots forced an Alikean parliamentarian to go on a bloody rampage, kicking seventeen people— including two dragons— to death before mages incinerated the man. He’d died earlier in the rampage, but the boots had continued animating his legs afterward.

- The boots fell from the sky, slamming into a construction site to collapse a scaffolding onto a Tsarnassan family head overseeing the construction of a new tower in Lemannen. Three dead. 

- The boots drove the court of a king of Ruhn mad during a ball, forcing them to throw themselves at the king like mad beasts. The king at that time was an accomplished bone mage, and slaughtered nearly two dozen of his family and friends before he fell beneath the tide of bodies.

It was the Oxbow Ford incident, however, that ultimately led to the downfall of the boots.

Over a period of seven months, the boots carried out a campaign of assassinations, sabotage, and espionage in Alikea and Tsarnassus, which escalated into a major border clash between them. Border clashes have always been common between the two largest states in Northeastern Ithos, but this one was particularly bloody, with almost three thousand dead in the battle of Oxbow Ford. 

It might have turned into a full-blown war— though it says a lot about the size and strength of the two nations that three thousand dead didn’t count as a war for them— but Alikean security forces had found the old theory about the magic boots that murdered people in their archives, and an internal investigation had convinced them of what happened. As the victors of the battle for Oxbow Ford, who also had unquestionably been wronged more heavily in the preceding months, they were in a unique position to simply step back and end the fighting. 

Their investigation had somewhat conclusively proven that the boots were involved, and had orchestrated the whole thing— which also happens to be the single largest piece of evidence for the boots being sapient.

While we don’t know for certain that the Lord Mayor of Oxbow Ford was the primary target, all activity by the boots around the incident ceased when the Mayor died as a side-casualty of the battle, and quite a few of the intelligence documents that had been altered to lead to the incident had been specifically altered to indicate the other side was specifically moving on Oxbow Ford, which had relatively little tactical significance otherwise- there were plenty of bridges over the river both upstream and down from Oxbow. 

It should be noted, importantly, that Oxbow Ford was a village of less than four hundred souls, and that the Lord Mayor of the town also doubled as the tavern-keeper, was well liked by everyone in town, and whose position was almost entirely ceremonial. The portly, cheerful fellow was, by all accounts, “mostly in it for the hat.” 

The hat, which was apparently quite large, over-decorated, and impressive, vanished during the battle.

If nothing else, it just goes to show that the boots had absolutely no sense of proportion— it had put far more effort into the Oxbow Ford incident than any other on record.

After that, over a dozen nations and city-states, as well as several independent great powers, all united in a hunt for the boots. Within three months, it had been captured and turned over to Skyhold for disposal or containment. The capture itself was, somewhat unsurprisingly, in the aftermath of yet another Alikean parliamentarian being assassinated by the boots— this time by the old “death by birds” favorite. Owls during the day, specifically.

When attempts to destroy the boots failed (see above), the boots were placed into the vault, where they’ve remained safely ever since. 

There is one additional odd detail to the story, however. Five years after the boots were placed in the vaults, during a Midwinter audit of its contents, a somewhat alarming and exceptionally odd change occurred.

A hat, by all accounts perfectly matching the description of the mayor of Oxbow Ford’s ceremonial headgear, appeared inside the obsidian cage holding the boots.

It has remained there alongside the boots ever since, as it’s judged too much of a security risk to open the cage and investigate.