Scene Three
The Place: The Super-Continent of Erebus
The Time: The Age of Rebirth, Year 137 to Year 197
The Cast:
Dain the Caswallan:
An archmage with ideals and a revolving bedroom door, prefers the library to the throne
Tebryn:
Much to Erebus’ disappointment, he’s still alive. Much to his disappointment, so is Erebus
Capria:
Ms. Militant, has not been mellowed out much from worshiping the Fellowship of Leaves
Daracaat:
An arachnophile with a lot of Erebus caught in his web, recently placated into peace with Dain
Hannah:
Captain of the distant Lanun, likes (in no particular order) looting, pillaging and plundering
Valledia the Even:
Cunning and cut-throat, hard to keep track of despite being unable to cast Invisibility
Hemah:
A mage whose sleep blurs the line between the waking world and dreams, has a late bedtime
Dain paced his bed chamber, unconsciously tracing sigils with his left hand in time to the song Tilania was singing in the shower. Occasionally her (
slightly flat) notes would be at just the right frequency to interact with his cantrip and a
burst of color and sound would linger in Dain’s wake. Such is the
power of an archmage; when their
mind wanders, so too do the
local laws of creation. Dain paced (to a chaotic form of fanfare) with one thought buzzing in his mind:
One city,
six adepts (
three battlecasters,
two generalists,
one summoner),
the Beadels, and one node of
death mana. That’s all the Amurites’ had. Daracaat was content with the price of their peace for now but eventually he would
return to feed his brood. After a particularly sour note resulted in a
small, purple explosion, Dain realized what he had to do (
his mind is funny like that). There was no certainty that the Amurites had any way to stave off the
Archosian Annexation but if anything was going to save Kylorin’s progeny it would be
MAGIC. To access such power would require brilliance on the part of the Amurite researchers and Dain was a freakin' sherpa of
Mount Mana. In truth, he wasn’t a particularly
good ruler, nor was he an especially
good lover or
fighter. His only claim to leading and laying the people of Cevedes was
his enormous… talent with magic. He was a
nerd and it was high time he started
acting like one. Let Valledia keep the empire running (
such as it was), Dain was going to hit the books and
hit them hard! But first, he should probably
put on some pants.
Under Valledia’s guidance, the Sheaim forces were routed and pushed back all the way to Gavelhome. Though the capitol (
and only) city of Tebryn’s was too heavily guarded to be conquered, every
farm,
hamlet and
mine within Sheaim lands was
razed and, in select places,
scorched by a
generalist. The scorch marks did only superficial damage to the landscape but Valledia was quite explicit about
where they were to be created and
what would happen to the hapless adept that screwed it up. From his summoning chamber, within the tallest spire of the Sheaim palace, Tebryn alone was privy to the message
burnt into the very face of Erebus by a woman scorned. It wasn’t a
pleasant message.
The lowest tier of magic is more
useful than
deadly.
Spring can make the
desert bloom,
Haste can allow reinforcements to arrive in
half the time,
Loyalty can ensure your people will
fight to the bitter end rather than defect but only the
Death sphere allows an adept to directly harm a foe. But even skeletons, essentially
highly-expendable warriors, lacked true
offensive might. For almost two centuries the Amurites had only the
meekest of force with which to secure their empire and that was the direct cause of their
resulting decline. The second tier of magic, however, is
MIGHTY. Adepts may be able to enhance a civilization but Mages can
conquer one. There are very few problems in life that can’t be solved with
enough summoned minions and
fire.
Capria’s envoy was led by a Beadel through the labyrinthine academy, past rooms shielded by
pulsating runes, others suffused with
crawling shadows and still others barred by
heavily iron doors with notes that read like “
For the love of Oghma, do NOT open! EVER!” A section of the library had been emptied, furnished and soundproofed. Unfortunately, the sound proofing was not up to the
challenges it faced on a daily basis, so the Bannorian envoy was led red-faced into the room as two women
adjusted their robes and left.
“
I apologize for the wait; because of my added responsibilities as head thaumaturgist, I’ve had to double up on some of my other obligations. You look flushed; I can lower the temperature if you like. I tend to keep it warm in here because the cold makes it harder to-”
“
THAT WON’T be necessary, Caswallan; I don’t have long before I must tend to other duties. I come on behalf of Capria, who wishes to extend to you the opportunity to
redeem yourself and your people.”
“
If this is about converting to the Fellowship-”
“No, Caswallan, Capria feels that your people have been
driven back because they were unable to fend off the warriors of Daracaat. Their reliance on the
unwholesome and the
eldritch has failed them and we wish to offer you the support you need to
reform. This is not a world for philosophers; it is a world where only the
righteous and the
disciplined can hope to survive. Already, our axmen have reclaimed Udenarat from the spiders. If you cease courting the
magic of death and destruction, train your people in
honorable combat and join us in our
grand crusade than you will be welcomed and, in so doing, be
redeemed.”
Dain was silent for a long while. As he spoke his face
grew as red as the envoy’s and the
air thrummed in response to his volume, making the very room seem to
grow hostile along with the Caswallan. “
Tell Capria that my people are ready to join arms with the Bannor. However, tell Ms. ‘Most Likely to Cry Jihad’ that we do not need her charity, her redemption nor her condescendence. Of course you have driven back the Daracaat, they wield clubs while you have weapons of bronze. It isn’t your righteousness that garners you victory; it’s those same ‘soft headed’ philosophers that realized copper and tin, when fused, make a metal that is sharper and stronger than either! We have forces mightier than your feeble weapons; we aspire to wield the power of the Gods while you content yourselves with sharpened rocks! We go to war, you simpleton; be sure to stay out of our way once the fireballs start to fly so we don’t accidentally melt your pathetic little alloy.”
Dain was still angrily pacing (this time the sigils tended to summon
brief figments of
very nasty creatures) when Lirara contacted him.
“I have a message from Valledia. She wants to know ‘
how we are supposed to challenge Daracaat, let alone the gods, when we can’t even create a fireball.’”
“
Oh we can, we just haven’t figured out how to throw the darn things yet. Still, Tilania is making swift progress... while the rest of her associates regenerate after last month’s incident. Tell Valledia we should have the kinks worked out soon.”
The following morning, Dain awoke to find a note
mysteriously placed on the pile of books that served as his nightstand. Dain had heard no one enter and all his wards were still intact. The note contained Valledia’s neat handwriting and, shortly after Dain read it, the note
smoldered and ignited. The words still danced in front of Dain’s eyes, well after the note
was soot; “
It better be, or else you’re fired.” MAN, that woman creeped him out.
SORCERY! It may as well be called “
Salvation” because that is what separated the Amurites from
life and
death. With specters and fireballs, with floating eyes, haste and skeletal body guards the
Amurites conquered. Mother’s warriors and Mother’s webs were
burned to ash by the arcane fire that issued from
numerous spellstaves. Acterul was breeched and captured by fireballs and
battlecasters. Agunias was captured without flame so as not to harm the
Song of Autumn, an amphitheater of trees from which a
primal melody issued forth. Anta was not to be captured, merely bombarded, but somehow Valledia’s messengers got Dain’s orders
confused because the city was occupied and Mother’s cave was
put to the torch. Two tickets to
Middle Earth were found purchased by one ‘
Shelob’ and ‘
Gollum’; it is speculated that Mother and Daracaat fled Erebus under assumed names.
With Daracaat driven out and the FoL holy city in their grasp, the Amurites adopted the world’s dominate faith and, over the course of centuries, went on to unite the majority of Erebus through its worship. Years after the Unification of Leaves, Hemah wandered Agunias, trying to stay awake. He liked to travel the Amurite lands because a man in robes emanating arcane energy was practically commonplace there. Also, the whole empire had a “college town” mentality, making stimulants common and nights active. Such things helped Hemah fight off slumber; things got weird when he slept. However, the archmage, soothed by the incense from the nearby Temple of Leaves, laid his head down on the table he was sitting at and had a most peculiar dream. In it Agunias was the site of something new and strange; a religious faction calling themselves the OO vied with the Fellowship for worship. It all made sense to Hemah, in the way that dreams can no matter how bizarre they truly are, and so it made sense to all the others in Hemah’s dream... Of course we should listen to the mad priests about their sleeping god. Of course we can hear the eldritch whispers of the ocean despite Agunias being many days from the shore. Of course the Amurites embraced this faith, despite the prevalence of so many others.
!!!VRREEEEEAAAP!!!*
*
The sound of Existence being Retconned
Hemah awoke to the smell of the incense being burnt in the side-by-side temples of the OO and the FoL. Nearby, a crowd was gathering as a group of cultists began calling the faithful to the Dance of the Tide. It was odd; his dream was already slipping from his memory but he faintly remembered it being about Agunias... but with less of a cephalopod-theme. Of course, the OO had always been worshiped in Agunias, it had just been done in secret until the Amurites liberated the city from the Archos. It had always been this way, but had it always been this way before he took his nap? Hemah shook his head; such speculation never went anywhere and made him sleepy. The mage got up from his seat and disappeared into the crowd of crazed dancers. As he left, a few errant wrinkles of realty were smoothed into the new shape they were newly, but had always, formed.
“There have always been wizards and archmages among the Amurites; a fact which seemed to surprise the distant (
and now extinct) Lanun, the
secretive Sidar and even your people, Capria. How could a nation which has had practitioners of the
second and
third tiers of magic since the start of the Age be driven back by a mass of
primitive jocks with
sticks and a
spider-fetish? The answer is because a single practitioner can only call upon so much magic before the ambient supply is
exhausted. Some of the
greatest casters of the
Age of Magic were
overwhelmed by mobs of rabble and soldiers (a part the Bannor played with
zealous regularity during that distant age) precisely because of the limits imposed on a single caster. It took the advances made by
Othmar the Astrologer to make the first tier of magic
available to the common Amurite and so we were capable of training
entire squads of adepts. With the advances made in the
Abruel Azburgoh Academy, we can train those adepts
en masse into wizards. When a number of practitioners congregate and work in concert, they are able to draw upon
exponentially more mana than is available to the solitary mage. And so, with the advent of
Sorcery, the Amurites are able to bring the
Pax Arcana beyond our
ivory towers and across the surface of Erebus. A brilliant researcher, one
Delent Payne, has brought us to the cusp of another breakthrough we are calling ‘
Arcane Lore’. From there, we are confident we will soon understand how to bring the level of
archmage within the grasp of those wizards with sufficient
strength of will. We once were few and therefore weak, but now our casters number
in the hundreds, if not thousands, and as such, we have the
power and
reserves to endure a prolonged engagement. We are not the casters of old, who can be set upon and burned away in some '
cleansing fire' of mob justice. It is for that reason that I urge you,
Capria, to reconsider your recent
declaration of war upon the Amurites. We have proven that, though we
lack soldiers, we do not
lack strength of arms.
Sincerely,
Dain the Caswallan”
“Dear Capria,
Don’t make your people be
sent to Hell by fire a
second time. This is your one and only warning to back off,
b****!
Velledia the Even
P.S.: I prepared
explosive runes this morning.”
...
...
BOOM!
End Scene Three
Will of course have to balance the spawn rate, but that'll come in patches.
