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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 9440728" data-attributes="member: 7028554">Lady Markelhay answers a knock at her study door. Loremaster Seekingstone shuffles in, followed closely LIEF, granting the older man the dignity of not being manhandled, but remaining in his personal space, claws bared and ready to drive into his spine at the first sign of arcane mumbling or twitching. VORN steps in last, closing the door behind him.The shifter and the vigilante wait. Seekingstone's eyes are a trapped animal's, darting around the room. As they settle on Markelhay his shoulders slump. Genuinely embarrassed, too wilted to be petulant or defiant, he stares into the fire and rattles off his crimes, and the crimes he induced others to commit. All in the name of power—not obeisance to or fear of the Hidden Mogul, "another petty spirit costumed as a god," but out of naked ambition and the settling of so many scores, scratched out in journals and carved into his withered heart.Lady Markelhay listens, not surprised—she knew something was rotten in Fallcrest, and in her keep, but not who. She underestimated this weasel before her, thinking him a prattling scholar. A sorcerer! Now that was news.Her face betrays none of this—traitors don't deserve honesty.[HR][/HR] Lief Minor Quest: Warn Lady Markelhay about the Elect in her midst. RESOLVED[HR][/HR]When Seekingstone is done, his skin seeming to sag as his will deflates, Lief speaks up. "Why Renne?" he says. Then, to the Lady, "his apprentice," he explains.The Loremaster laughs, loud and without mirth, ugly and sharp. "An imbecile. My greatest disappointment. Well, until..." he gestures at his situation, "this. He discovered the plans for the ritual I was helping the Elect with, the great draining of this land's vitality in preparation for the culling. The idiot! The moron! He brought my own evidence to me! Thought he'd found a traitor under our noses. Pathetic!" Seekingtone brushes the air like shooing a fly. "I gave them to him. Said to take him, experiment on him. Turn him into a vessel—an avatar of something greater. Something worthwhile."Lief swallows bile. His vision swims. He's too ashamed to be angry. He wants the totemic stag to be there, silently judging him, so he'd have something to rage against. But whatever it is—his broken mind, his ruined soul, some sad spirit bound  to him for gods knows why—it's too wounded, and so is he. And he doesn't need it anymore. He doesn't need to be nudged or nagged to do what's right.He only needs to kill them all.[HR][/HR] Lief Minor Quest: Ingratiate himself with Loremaster Seekingstone, to find out why the Elect had Lief kidnap his apprentice. RESOLVED</blockquote>

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