Rippling down the street, a wave of earth came at us, which threw us all to the ground with remarkable violence. The giant corpses here shook and shivered, and we all fell with a variety of exclamations and curses. I dodged tiles coming down from the ruined roofs above but lost my footing nonetheless.
From my back, looking up, I saw the winged forms through the mists had grown closer – and it would seem, they were much larger than simple carrion vultures. In fact, I recognized them:
Gurragal. War-vultures of the Cairn Jale. We were the most glorious air cavalry of any nation, fearsome and vicious, any enemy beneath the wings of our Gurragal were doomed to defeat. Our mighty beasts were ridden by our best warlocks, wielding the powers of the Hells that (I hate to admit this) Barikdral showed us. We bred them as killers, and we bred them to show themselves thusly – skull-looking patterns on each wing.
These were riderless. But they were gurragal nonetheless. And they were circling us, in classic attack pattern. I shouted warning to the others and grappled the stones to rise to my feet.
As I did, the rippling ground exploded next to Karac, and it seemed the earth verily vomited a giant armored snout, pointed and glinting in the strange light. It snapped at Karac, exposing teeth the size of daggers, wickedly serrated. At the same time, it lashed out at Sered with a forefoot adorned with claws that must have been as long as my forearm. A roar that sounded more like a gallery of horns came out of that gaping maw, and it bit down on Karac like a dog on a rope-toy.
A landshark – another animal we bred specifically for the battlefield. As with the gurragal, this was untended, but still lethal enough.
What it didn’t bargain for was Karac’s axe – which was inside its mouth with the top half of Karac. I heard it hammering around in there, with him shouting at it, while his stubby little legs flailed at the edge of the thing’s “lips.” Sered dodged the claw somehow, and brought down his greatsword on the offending leg, just above the knee. A great welt of blood leaked from the new gash as he twisted around to bring the blade down – futilely – on it’s enormous armored back. I saw a shower of sparks and an occasional scale flip off the thing, littering the ground around Sered as leaves in autumn.
It spit Karac out almost immediately, who fell at its feet in a sputtering heap of mucous, blood, and what I can only assume are some of the richer of the curses available in dwarvish.
Just to the left, about fifteen yards up the street, Deimos was lining up on the land-shark and missed the sweeping slash of a gurragal’s talons, that sent him sprawling and twisting on the ground. It hadn’t got as good a hold as it had hoped, his cloak ripping loudly as it sailed overhead. Probably had been trying to lift him bodily up into the air for a long drop. He lashed out with his staff at it, scoring a line across its underbelly feathers with a slice of lightning. I also saw the lightning do something else…it was as if the thing actually accelerated in the air as the sparks danced along its gut.
I noticed as it flew by that this – and, I assumed, its partner – was different from the battle-bred individuals I’d seen. These were still of the same size, but they had more serpent or lizard to them than the ones I’d seen. The gurragal of Bael Turath were the size of rocs, but were almost purely vulture in nature – these had extended snakelike necks and a long serpent’s tail. Not that it made much difference from what I could see in their behavior, but they had obviously been warped somehow by the magical conflagration that had brought Vor Kragal low.
I levied a curse on the landshark, feeling a solid grip on its spirit, and threw my fey-borne Eyebite upon it, blinding it to my presence. Given its burrowing nature, I was sure it would be able to home in on my footsteps, but there was no sense it giving it any visual assistance in attacking me. As soon as my attack sank home and I gave its soul a sharp twist, it leaped impossibly from the earth in a fountain of loose rock and dirt to come down nose-first and burrow into the earth with a speed that I can only term as magnificent. Its back glinted red as it did – it was encrusted with rubies, some as big as a hen’s egg. I wasn’t sure how this had come to pass, or whether it was there accidentally, but I certainly had a sudden desire to make sure we took this beast down.
Come to think of it, a gurragal would make a stupendous mount, much less a trophy.
Karac’s head tracked the leap directly over him, raising himself to his feet as it passed overhead. I could see the rage boiling on his face as it passed over, wiping bluish-grey slime off his face with the back of his hand. “Not gonna get away from me that fast, no freaking way! Stone have you!” And with that oath, he leaped directly into the hole behind the burrowing beast and out of my sight. I could hear him, though, voice muffled by the loose earth around him, but he was still in there, running after the thing.
The third gurragal was having it out toe-to-toe with Morin, whose hammer was lit with fire. They were sparring from a distance, its head snaking this way and that as he tried to intercept it with a solid blow. Both I and Deimos unloaded spells almost simultaneously, both of which arced across the feathers of its right wing.
Scorched feathers have a strange smell – a bit like hair burning, and in this case mixed with the smell of fish on a grill. Not an entirely bad smell, just strange.
The thing turned its gaze on us, and snapped out at me, giving me a nice gash along my side as I dodged frantically. But our attacks had met with the success we’d been looking for – it took its eyes off Morin. The solid dwarf had charged straight in and swung his hammer in a full three-sixty vertically as he leaped at the beast. He connected so strongly with the chest of the thing that the sound was painful for me to hear, and I can only imagine that being on the receiving end of that blow was tremendously painful. The gurragal confirmed my suspicion with a scream that nearly burst my eardrums, and it swept him aside with a swift kick.
As we ran towards Morin, the vulture struggled its way down the street away from us, flapping its wings desperately. It did eventually take to the air, but it flew with great difficulty and strain.
Away. Just so long as it kept going away, that was fine with me. I couldn’t see the other one, but I could feel the ground still rumbling beneath us as the landshark burrowed around, no doubt looking for a clean shot at one of us up here.
We confirmed Morin was okay just as the ground beside Sered broke and the nose of the shark rose up to attack him. A great claw pinned him to the ground as its mouth descended, teeth glinting.
And it met the point of Sered’s blade almost perfectly directly. He’d braced it against the cobblestones he was pinned against, and the point of it met the nose of the beast straight on. The weight of its bite drove it fully two or two and a half feet down onto the blade, and it shrieked in agony, spraying Sered with upwards of a gallon of saliva. It retracted its face from him, and used the foot that was pinning him to hook around the hilt of the blade and shove it away from its face. The sword spun through the air and skittered across the stones a few yards further away.
Just as it was turning its attention back to a vengeance I’m sure it wanted badly, its eyes widened in surprise and it let out a little yelp. I swear, it sounded like a puppy whose tail has been stepped on. Again it pulled off one of those impossible leaps, flinging itself through the air to land further from Sered and digging into the ground there.
I ran towards Sered, and tried to leap the first hole through which the landshark had come.
And missed. I gracefully hit face-first against the wall of the opposite side of the hole, neatly giving myself a rather good knock on the head against a protruding stone. I fell in a very disorganized heap at the bottom of that hole, and looked up to see Morin clear the space with embarrassing ease. I heard some additional sounds, none of which really struck me as more important than my need to get out of this hole, while I struggled to extricate myself.
Eventually (which means, after falling twice more) I pulled myself up over the edge to see everyone wiping mud and dirt off themselves and breathing heavily. I walked cautiously to join them. “The other vulture?”
Karac pointed off in the direction of the first. “That way. Took off after its matey, looked like.”
Sered stood a few feet away, wiping off his recovered greatsword. He was dirty, but otherwise seemed to have survived without undue harm. Morin was tending to Karac’s arm, and passed me a bandage for my side.
Sered stood straight, looking behind me, a look of alarm on his face.
I turned, getting ready to fight once again.
In the midst of our battleground, a single humanish figure stood, robed. From beneath its cowl it looked about at the wreckage, nodding before finally turning the dark face of its hood in our direction.
“You survived, and that is well.”
“Who are you, and what do you want?” Sered said, moving his grip on the sword to a more utilitarian hold.
The figure raised a hand and drew back the cowl.
Zenith.
His face was paler than I remember, and considerably older than it should have been.
“I do not have much time, and that I do will have little more consistency than that of a dream for any of you. Know that I became a Shrouded Sage of Taer Dian Loresh not for power,”
“Yeah, heard that one before,” Karac mumbled loudly.
Zenith looked at him pointedly. “…but for knowledge. Still, those of us among the Jessil Kerith feel these are aspects of the same gemstone, so perhaps your barb is more true than I care to admit.”
“I regret that I kept this from you during our travels, but I hope you will understand that I had cause for keeping these patterns in the weave hidden from you.” He strode forward, his other hand going for something in his robe.
“Know this then – the Infernal that Azrael banished into the Fading Dream, whose name was Cull, is a lesser creature but whose eyes and ears gathered more than even it could have knowingly revealed. We have drunk from the well of his dreams and tasted his imaginings, and we now understand a level of Morvrey’s gamble. Redleve Summoner lives, and he hides in shadows cast by the Lord of the Ruby Rod. Trust no one who wears the collar.”
He extracted a long bone tube from his robes, holding it forward.
“We have watched long enough. Too long, far too long, for the likes of some, but we can simply watch no more. Now is our time to act. Take this, go to Banner, and seek the one called Addaweyr of the Night. He will tell you what we know, what you need to know. From there, you may walk what paths you will, but hopefully your actions will be more directed and less the aimless bumblings you’ve been going through.”
He smiled at us, calmly. “At least the path will be better lit, and you’ll see the traps you step into.”
He vanished with a soft pop, and the bone he’d been holding out clattered to the stone before us.
I retrieved it. “Well, more questions than we had before, but at least one or two answers.” I opened the threaded tube, to reveal a small scroll. Sered looked it over, and his eyes widened.
“These are sigils for a portal circle.”
I nodded. “And according to the text, it is somewhere in Banner. Thoughts?”
Karac had wiped most of the goop from his armor. “I think that’s a lot closer to beer than we are now.”
“And a lot less travel time, as well,” I nodded.
“So you wish to leave here?” Sered asked me.
“I would certainly rather stay, if that’s what you’re asking me. I think I stand to gain a lot of information, and I’ll admit a temptation to seek out some of the relics of my homeland here. But these have waited for me for what, eight centuries? I feel a little more rushed to get moving on this and intercept Morvrey if we can.”
He nodded. We spoke for a little while more, before deciding to return to Serim’s camp to gather our things before heading out.
We spent the night there, sipping tea and quietly discussing our plans, and when light came again to us, we set forth from Serim’s hospitality. Travelling about an hour from his place, we pulled up in the scrub desert at a suitably flat place. Deimos pulled out his ritual book, and referencing the scroll several times, opened a smooth gate before us. Leading the horses by the bridles, we walked through as a group.
…to find ourselves in a large room, which felt like it was deep underground. We were surrounded by no less than ten hooded men, and a large number of lit candles around us. Directly before us, two men were unmasked – one a rough fellow of average height and a military demeanor. The other, we knew him.
Masen. The head of the temple of Erathis back in Al’Veydra.
While we stood with our hands open, the horses breathing loudly, the rougher man stepped forward and extended a hand.
“I am Addaweyr. You were expected, as you probably can tell.” He waved around to the others, who began to disperse.
“These men were a precaution, my apologies.” He waved to two of them. “Take care of their mounts.” The two nodded and collected up our reins.
Addaweyr walked to one of the walls, holding up a worn leather-bound book to the light of the candle there. He closed the book and looked back to us. Waving it gently for emphasis, he said:
….and after the Ill’ithid and their living ships of bone and blood departed the Vaer, their slaves, which we know as the First Men (including the Halfwise ), crawled from beneath their master’s skinkeeps and spread outward into a new dawn. Little more than squabbling tribes, they sought safety among the Dwur and the Eldurin , fought amongst each other with weapons of bone and iron, and hunted the monstrous thralls bred and then released by the Ill’ithid upon the land.
“I remember my father writing those words, and repeating them to me many a night. He scribed them with a black swan’s feather that had a bone and golden nub. Never seen a pen like that since, and I have looked throughout all of my travels. I have found treasures I would never have believed, and artifacts from empires long lost. I’ve watched some slip away from me, and some spend through my fingers like spilled ale. Yet I’ve never seen such a treasure as that quill pen. It’s interesting to me that such a simple thing could hold such sway over me, that it could hold more precious to it than any sword. But if anything has become clear in my wanderings, it is that the pen and parchment, knowledge recorded on such, can be more valuable than any gemstone, can cut far more deeply than any blade.”
He led us through a tunnel, carved out ages ago, as he continued.
“My father, Rabago, was a mapmaker, and an adventurer such as yourselves. He was a member of Seven’s Ring, and carried for a while one of the Rings of Acarot, but beyond that he was a member of the Jessil Kerith…the Collectors…adherents of Ioun. The Jessil Kerith was founded in the heyday of Nerath; a strong presence in every city of any appreciable size, maintaining great libraries and archives. The order was nearly destroyed in the chaos surrounding Banner’s destruction and the fall of Nerath, and the massive collections of tomes and scrolls were lost to the winds, mere memories of glory.”
I looked around at the tunnels we were passing through. “Are you all members of the Jessil Kerith? Is this one of your libraries?”
He shook his head. “No, this is simply an old tunnel used in the lifetime of Banner. Before the fall it was used to shuttle troops between different garrisons. The surviving Jessil Kerith held a conclave in their greatest library, once the ashes had cooled, above us in Banner. They worked through the histories that remained, and those remembered by the members, to draw an understanding of how Bael Nerath had gone so wrong, had fallen so easily to chaos. They came to a conclusion – this was no accident. Some strange machinations had manipulated the human empire to its disastrous end, and that this was not the first time that such events had crippled our race’s ambitions.”
He led us into a small chamber with chairs and a few tables. A single man, wearing a scarf over his face, stood by a large pair of candelabra, slowly lighting each candle with a taper in his hand. This man turned to us. Addaweyr waved at him. “Fetch food, water, and cots.”
Addaweyr then turned to us. “You’ll stay here tonight, after you have heard my offer.”
Sered, who had taken the taper from the departing man, finished lighting the candles. “You mentioned a conspiracy that brought your race low. Do you know any more of it?”
“Yes, but before I continue, you must know how this knowledge came to us. The Jessil Kerith split its ranks – intentionally, and peacefully, not out of schism. We became three – Chroniclers who would travel the world, or what was remaining, seeking out prophets, experts, and seers, recording all knowledge they could. Excavators, who were to brave the ruins and the dangers within to seek out what remained of our empire. It is they who retrieve valuables and artifacts for study and possible use against those who defeated us – and those who intend to defeat us again. Finally, the Seekers, who ferret out the names and the identities and methods of these agents, to strike them down before they can fulfill their purposes. Each of these groups, members of the Trigon, create and maintain their own outposts where they can, and keep them secret from one another, so the destruction or discovery of one will be of only limited harm to the whole. We meet only in small numbers in person, and generally in neutral grounds far from our nominal homes.”
“Thus, my father was an Excavator, as am I, and have been since I was a boy. Since I watched my father write these words,” he waved the journal for emphasis, “and then turn turned to tell me his story.”
“Over the years, we have crossed paths with other noble groups; the Celestian Order and the Sestus Wyr, all of us exchanging knowledge and resources as we each seek our redoubts in the shadows. You, or rather Fellbane, came to our attention through Dierdre, and Iounian priestess who was corrupted in Mindspring trying to recover the Tear of Ioun from the clutches of Malachi the Mad Mage.”
He waved to Masen, who stepped to him from the doorway. Masen stuttered slightly, his voice soft in the quiet room. He would probably have been a soprano had he voice to sing. “We have been there, silent, watching, trying to understand what role you, Fellbane, play in all this – what threads you represent in the Weave. We watched through Sered’s relationship to the Celestian Order, through Caswaer the Druid of the Sestus Wyr, who resides now in the Trollhaunt Weld, through me in Al’Veydra, through Zenith. We have watched you cross paths with Hesrith Andelyn and the wizards of Morvrey and Marbryndan. Watched as you fought down the threats of Malachi and Veyd and Casava and the Lord of the Fading Dream.” He looked carefully at me as he said this.
“In doing so we have read the pattern you’ve woven in fate, if it can be said to be a pattern at all. At best your path has been erratic; trying to determine if you were only a puppet on the hand of the forces that we have sought for so long, or acting out of free will and lack of information, operating at the behest of those we fight. Perhaps, you may even be a blade that we can use to stab once and for all into the heart of those we fight – and this is my hope. I believe you have been tempered and sharpened…”
I couldn’t stop myself from muttering, “And broken on more than one occasion,” but did my best to say it gently.
Masen nodded. “We have work ahead of us, and if I have read your intention correctly I believe you’ll find that our work shares common purpose with yours.”
The food arrived. Cold meat, bread, a wheel of cheese the size of my chest, and a small cask of wine. We all started in on it while Masen continued.
“We believed for some long while that it may have been some agency of the Far Realm’s madness that might have corrupted Bael Nerath, but other evidence has finally led us to a different conclusion. We know the history of Vor Kragal and House Barikdral, and of Dal’Morvrey the void lich. Although Dal’Morvrey had no role in Nerath’s final fortunes, his black blood stains us all since the time of Bael Turath. It may not surprise you, given the history of Connor Reyar and the Galleon, that we believe that the Mirror Codex stolen by Dal’Morvrey from Sharvast the Mirror King, lies within Al’Veydra. That book is said, among other things, to reveal the future, and I have been there for years searching for it.”
Addaweyr handed him a cup and motioned him to sit. “The reason he brings up the Mirror Codex,” he said, his voice all dust and gravel in spite of the wine on the table before him, “is that we feel it may confirm our suspicions. We are certain enough now to begin action, but it would lock in certainty what we believe to be true.”
“We believe we finally know the enemy…and it isn’t from the Far Realm, or the Fading Dream. The fall of Nerath, and the corruption of Bael Turath before that, the very inception of your race,” he waved to myself and Deimos as he said this, “…are not the acts of distant and dark gods whose names are no longer remembered. Not even the progenitor Illithids from which the Vaer escaped to seed this world with mankind. No, our fates are much closer to home. The Infernals and the Abyssals are our culprits. We are proxies and pawns in the subtler Blood War that has continued since the Abyss first sprang from the heart of the Chaos. It is a war between order and enslavement, versus chaos and destruction. The battlefield has been the Bannerlands – our home. And the spoils have been the souls of its people.”
I nodded. “It makes sense. The Middle World is where the formless chaos germinates into spirits, into souls. Those souls are valuable commodities in the heavens – as sources of worship to the gods, slaves, even nourishment to some forms. To own the world, to engineer the paths those souls take from their point of origin, that is a powerful power base.”
Addaweyr waved a sandwich at me. “That’s right. Bael Turath was the first experiment – creating an entire society designed from the top down to funnel souls to Hell, and itself a massive weapon to strike against the Abyss and its demon lords. Those lords – Orcus in particular – sought to dismantle the Shadrim empire, to destroy the power base Asmodeus had crafted. Corrupting house Barikdral was probably more than he could have hoped for, but he did foster their fall – and with it, gained the influence needed to push the Turathians into war against Arkhosia. This bled both empires white, and left the lands in a state of chaos. That Barikdral was the one house that enjoyed the favor of Asmodeus himself was simply adding insult to injury – which to our knowledge rankles the Lord of the Ruby Rod to this day.”
Deimos swallowed loudly and drew a knife point across the wood of the table. “So this Kaenig, he really is going to rebuild Bael Turath?”
Addaweyr shook his head. “No, from what we gather, Kaenig is an elaborate vengeance against Barikdral. The insult against the Lord of the Rod was very significant, and to drag a scion of that house out and prop him up, only to tear him apart again seems in character for him. Hesrith Andelyn is gaining favor with the King of Hell, his alliance with Morvrey and Morvrey’s aid from the Infernals leads us to believe that the Lord of the Rod wishes to prop another in the throne this time. We suspect Kaenig will bring his army here only to find his support withdrawn – just as it was centuries past – and to be crushed at the foot of Andelyn’s own force.”
Karac paused him. “But Andelyn can barely hold this city together, how will he ever direct an army of respectable size?”
“We believe he’ll be replaced soon after Kaenig is brought to heel. But you’ve already seen – Andelyn once held favor with Orcus’ own. So not only is the King of Hell plying his works on the field of battle, he plans a counter-betrayal to throw the insult back at Orcus. Still, make no mistake – this battle’s outcome will decide whether the Bannerlands will fall into order and enslavement, or chaos and destruction.”
He continued on. “As the Infernals are beginning to show up with Morvrey’s elements, we believe they will be the spigot from which the Lord of the Rod’s influence will flow. They were so in Bael Nerath’s time – when Orcus turned the houses against each other. Asmodeus then wished to avoid a long civil war as he does now – such strife interferes with the laying down of a proper societal framework. At that time, he convinced the Grand King through his agents among the Morvreyans to Dal Avar, to destroy that city by unleashing the Angreal River upon it. It ended the war, but had unintended results – the Grand King was so overcome with shame and horror that he sent his younger brother as emissary to the Court of Stars to see if he could beseech them to reverse the flow of time and undo the destruction. That brother, Carifal Nerath, was lost somewhere in the Feywild.”
“Orcus then sprang his final trump – the invasion of the Morrigu. In the midst of our weakened condition, the Morrigu ended our empire like a storm puts out the morning embers of your campfire. We lost two centuries to darkness with this.”
“Gavilan, the blind boy who had competed with Hesrith Andelyn for the throne, was a long descendant of a bastard son of Carifal Nerath, and the Lord of the Rod had had hopes that he could start the empire afresh with him, put his gears back into working order. As you have seen, that did not play out as desired. Redleve Summoner had been guide and mentor to the boy.”
Sered held his cup in both hands as he contemplated this. “But Hesrith Andelyn opposes him, and removes him from the stage.”
“Indeed. Funny, that – it would have been his father, Danner, had Danner not been slain by wandering adventurers six years past, adventurers traveling under the name Fellbane.” He raised his eyebrows as he said this. “But the most interesting point is what has happened most recently – Gavilan was simply a pawn, an easy target to expose in order to draw out the opposition into the light. Orcus never intended the weak-minded son of Andelyn to rule, he wished him simply to end the fledgling empire. But Asmodeus has a card up his sleeve yet – by winning over Andelyn, he has set himself up for a double victory: when Andelyn’s force defeats Kaenig, he’ll be a hero as well as a potential Grand King. Asmodeus can then set him on the path of rebuilding an empire the way he wishes.”
Morin finally spoke up. “But Kaenig has armed his force at Vor Kragal, and no doubt will bolster his abilities on this adventure into Arkhosia.”
“What do you think the Morvreyan’s are doing right now? What do you think they were doing in Vor Kragal? They were retrieving weapons and artifacts for use against Abyssals. When all this is done, Hesrith will set humans on a course to rebuild Asmodeus’ empire on the same path he set for us when he created the first Shadrim empire.”
“Now, here we are. But you, Fellbane, are an interesting wild card in this game. We have decided to reach out to you, based on your proclivity for disrupting the plans of the powerful, and also because of a scrap of prophecy we have had access to – one which we wish to find the rest of. Which is what brings me to my request of you. By the best of our knowledge, the rest of the prophecy we seek is in the remains of an Iounian library beneath this very city. I have located it, and I have been tasked with finding it. The sage Gaulus originally penned it, and we believe his writings can be found there. But I haven’t the men in strength or experience to go digging about as Excavators.”
Wrack & Ruin,
Lit by Hell’s spiral flame,
Carved souls of petty knights,
Jousting the Ruby Rod’s game…
Pinions of feather spin golden rings,
Holding eyes high aloft,
Black pawns and Fell’s Dark bane,
And treason’s twice cost…
A King’s lost hope,
Set sail o’er a sea of bone,
The Rook and the …
“If you will enter this library, if you will find the rest of this prophecy, I will induct you all as Excavators of the Jessil Kerith. I think we both seek a similar set of answers, and – it makes sense to pursue them together, wouldn’t you say?”
