Krauss von Espy
First Post
Sitting in a small private study in the City of Greyhawk with the famous wizard Mordenkainen is enough to make anyone feel a little self-conscious, even for adventurers of no little renown. The summons had gone forth that the Circle of Eight required assistance, and you had known better than to turn it down...or perhaps worse, ignore it. The opportunity was simply to promising to pass up. Who knows what good could come of counting one such as Mordenkainen in one's debt?
"Let me begin with a little history," the archmage offers with no preamble and no formality. "A thousand years ago, Oerth was a very different place. Hundreds of thousands of civilized westerners fled east from the horrors of the Twin Cataclysms, as I'm sure you well know. With these vast migrations the entire continent became a frontier. Pockets of civilization held their own against the natural dangers of an untamed land.
"The wickedest migrants were the Suel. They mourned the loss of their decadent empire, whose unthikably potent Mages of Power had called down the Invoked Devastation upon hated enemies only to find themselves annihilated by the retributive Rain of Colorless Fire. Of the Mages of Power, only Slerotin survived the conflagration. Slerotin the Wily, The One Possessed, a wizard with no equal in the ways of arcane science, no peers in sheer imagination and prowess.
"Slerotin died within weeks of his last great work, the magical creation of a miles-long tunnel that allowed eleven Suel tribes to flee their devastated homeland for safety in the east. A clutch of Suel warlocks, servitors, artists, intellectuals, petty nobles, and cultists split from their fellow migrants after reaching fertile ground in the shadows of the mineral-rich Abbor-Alz Mountains. Under the leadership of Slerotin's eight mighty apprentices, these...misfits, for lack of a better term...formed House Maure, a new "family" built upon the precepts of arcane exploration and immorality. They ruled their subjects from the imposing Maure Castle, a monolithic edifice carved of night-black granite.
Mordenkainen continues, as though lecturing a group of students. "As decades passed, the scions of House Maure grew more and more insular. Public appearances by the family's eldest members grew less and less frequent. Those who lived under the Maure's brutal rule whispered tales of dark winged figures alighting upon the structure's crumbling towers and a nocturnal grating cacaphony emerging from below Maure Castle. Eventually, the Maure sealed themselves within their own castle, abandoning the outside world to focus on their own concerns.
"Given Maure's proximity to this famous city...charming haven that it is to explorers, adventurers, and thieves...it was only a matter of time before the greedy and the curious penetrated the structure's magical seals. Until the early part of the last century, the upper levels and first several dungeon floors of the complex served as a training ground for tomb robbers and thrillseekers. Survivors looted countless bags of treasure and priceless corpses of unusual creatures from the edifice, spreading word of Maure riches as far as the Great Kingdom and Blackmoor.
"Then, several levels below the surface, explorers encountered a seal they could not penetrate. Within months, Maure Castle's accessible passages and chambers were barren of wealth. Only a few of the most dedicated explorers remained at the site, uniformly men of dark character whose desperation to unlock the castle's forbidden arcana drove them ever onward.
"One such explorer was the demon-handed Eli Tomorast. After years of patient study, Tomorast and his companions, fellow members of an exploration society known as the Seekers, discovered a downward-sloping underground passage west of Maure Castle. Hoping to unearth a secret entrance to undiscovered levels of the castle's dungeons, they descended to the tunnel to encounter an imposing set of Unopenable Doors. Tomorast turned to the magics of a newly acquired grimoire, the Tome of the Black Heart, to see himself through. With the assistance of a demon lord bound to the Tome, Tomorast and his agents explored the ruins, but found no path to the greater secrets of Maure Castle. Tomorast resolved to set up camp within the ruin, creating by demonic agency a new level from which to dig a passage eastward to the bowels of the castle.
"A decade later, an adventurer who had discovered Tomorast's passage but failed to penetrate the Unopenable Doors spoke of his exploit in the Green Dragon Inn, here in the city. From that point, it was only a matter of time that his words passed to my ears. Thus, I, along with my then-apprentice Bigby, Yrag the Lord, and Riggby, patriarch of Boccob the Uncaring, set out to try our hands at passing the unpassable. With the aid of an artifact known as the Silver Key of Portals, we entered the dungeon twenty-five years ago. We slew Tomorast and most of his agents, relieved the place of much lore and wealth, and departed for greater challenges elsewhere.
"Now, Bigby fears that evil may have waxed once more within Tomorast's ruins in the years since our last visit. Other business renders us unable to secure the location ourselves at this time. I entrust to you the Silver Key of Portals, which will grant you access to the ruins, just as it did for us years ago. I trust you will return it when you are through borrowing it, yes? I require only information as to the current inhabitants of the dungeon, and their activities...anything else you find there is yours to keep. Now, then, other matters require my attention. I trust you know the way out."
With those abrupt words, Mordenkainen waves his hand and vanishes in glowing curtain of blue light. Resting on the desk where he had been seated seconds before is a silver skeleton key and a scrap of parchment with a hastily scribbled map upon it.
Actions?
"Let me begin with a little history," the archmage offers with no preamble and no formality. "A thousand years ago, Oerth was a very different place. Hundreds of thousands of civilized westerners fled east from the horrors of the Twin Cataclysms, as I'm sure you well know. With these vast migrations the entire continent became a frontier. Pockets of civilization held their own against the natural dangers of an untamed land.
"The wickedest migrants were the Suel. They mourned the loss of their decadent empire, whose unthikably potent Mages of Power had called down the Invoked Devastation upon hated enemies only to find themselves annihilated by the retributive Rain of Colorless Fire. Of the Mages of Power, only Slerotin survived the conflagration. Slerotin the Wily, The One Possessed, a wizard with no equal in the ways of arcane science, no peers in sheer imagination and prowess.
"Slerotin died within weeks of his last great work, the magical creation of a miles-long tunnel that allowed eleven Suel tribes to flee their devastated homeland for safety in the east. A clutch of Suel warlocks, servitors, artists, intellectuals, petty nobles, and cultists split from their fellow migrants after reaching fertile ground in the shadows of the mineral-rich Abbor-Alz Mountains. Under the leadership of Slerotin's eight mighty apprentices, these...misfits, for lack of a better term...formed House Maure, a new "family" built upon the precepts of arcane exploration and immorality. They ruled their subjects from the imposing Maure Castle, a monolithic edifice carved of night-black granite.
Mordenkainen continues, as though lecturing a group of students. "As decades passed, the scions of House Maure grew more and more insular. Public appearances by the family's eldest members grew less and less frequent. Those who lived under the Maure's brutal rule whispered tales of dark winged figures alighting upon the structure's crumbling towers and a nocturnal grating cacaphony emerging from below Maure Castle. Eventually, the Maure sealed themselves within their own castle, abandoning the outside world to focus on their own concerns.
"Given Maure's proximity to this famous city...charming haven that it is to explorers, adventurers, and thieves...it was only a matter of time before the greedy and the curious penetrated the structure's magical seals. Until the early part of the last century, the upper levels and first several dungeon floors of the complex served as a training ground for tomb robbers and thrillseekers. Survivors looted countless bags of treasure and priceless corpses of unusual creatures from the edifice, spreading word of Maure riches as far as the Great Kingdom and Blackmoor.
"Then, several levels below the surface, explorers encountered a seal they could not penetrate. Within months, Maure Castle's accessible passages and chambers were barren of wealth. Only a few of the most dedicated explorers remained at the site, uniformly men of dark character whose desperation to unlock the castle's forbidden arcana drove them ever onward.
"One such explorer was the demon-handed Eli Tomorast. After years of patient study, Tomorast and his companions, fellow members of an exploration society known as the Seekers, discovered a downward-sloping underground passage west of Maure Castle. Hoping to unearth a secret entrance to undiscovered levels of the castle's dungeons, they descended to the tunnel to encounter an imposing set of Unopenable Doors. Tomorast turned to the magics of a newly acquired grimoire, the Tome of the Black Heart, to see himself through. With the assistance of a demon lord bound to the Tome, Tomorast and his agents explored the ruins, but found no path to the greater secrets of Maure Castle. Tomorast resolved to set up camp within the ruin, creating by demonic agency a new level from which to dig a passage eastward to the bowels of the castle.
"A decade later, an adventurer who had discovered Tomorast's passage but failed to penetrate the Unopenable Doors spoke of his exploit in the Green Dragon Inn, here in the city. From that point, it was only a matter of time that his words passed to my ears. Thus, I, along with my then-apprentice Bigby, Yrag the Lord, and Riggby, patriarch of Boccob the Uncaring, set out to try our hands at passing the unpassable. With the aid of an artifact known as the Silver Key of Portals, we entered the dungeon twenty-five years ago. We slew Tomorast and most of his agents, relieved the place of much lore and wealth, and departed for greater challenges elsewhere.
"Now, Bigby fears that evil may have waxed once more within Tomorast's ruins in the years since our last visit. Other business renders us unable to secure the location ourselves at this time. I entrust to you the Silver Key of Portals, which will grant you access to the ruins, just as it did for us years ago. I trust you will return it when you are through borrowing it, yes? I require only information as to the current inhabitants of the dungeon, and their activities...anything else you find there is yours to keep. Now, then, other matters require my attention. I trust you know the way out."
With those abrupt words, Mordenkainen waves his hand and vanishes in glowing curtain of blue light. Resting on the desk where he had been seated seconds before is a silver skeleton key and a scrap of parchment with a hastily scribbled map upon it.
Actions?
