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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Son of Meepo" data-source="post: 6173124" data-attributes="member: 78756">Minor Quest Complete:  Deliver the card to Lady OakleyLady Oakley takes the package and carefully opens it.  Revealing only a corner, you can tell that she is not happy to see the contents.  She opens the package half way and then sighs, closing it again."Marra!"Mere seconds later, the matronly lady appears."Yes, milady?""Please see make sure we are not disturbed.""As you wish, milady."Marra turns and exits.  You hear her muffled voice somewhere further into the manor."You have delivered to me an ominous portent...  There is a place in the hills not far from here, in a land now the domain of the savage orcs known as Gardmore Abbey.  It was founded by my ancestor Gardrin the Hammer. He was a paladin of Vulkar.  The Abbey was built to be part temple, part fortress.  It was a place where a great many magic items were forged.   Legends say the priests of the Abbey began to hear the walls whisper to them, driving them slowly mad.  One day they severed all contact with the outside.  Few knew what had happened, but I do...""Gardrin told his wife," Lady Oakley gestures to the painting that dominates the room, "that Vulkar himself told him in a vision to build a great temple there.  But we suspect that it was no god, but a malign being of Chaos that tricked him.  Essa, was not convinced, but he would hear none of her protests.  He gradually spent more and more time in his workshop.  The guards were instructed not to let even his wife interfere.  When Essa discovered that he was creating an artifact of Chaos, she left and built this keep to defend the rest of the island from whatever was corrupting the Abbey.   That artifact was a deck of cards that spread Chaos wherever it turned up, spreading both boon and curse with little regard for consequence.  Eventually no one would enter or leave for over five years... Then, the first demons emerged from the Abbey.  Lady Essa's forces were able to keep the demonic threat contained, and eventually it disappeared."  "That is, until a few years following Lady Essa's passing.  Athea, my great-great-grandmother, Essa's oldest daughter found one of Gardrin's cards in her favorite childhood book in the library.  No one recalled seeing it before and had no idea how it had gotten there.  Lady Essa certainly would not have taken it.  But misfortune began to fall upon the House of Oakley, sickness, strife, and strange accidents weakened the keep.  When the demons came again, it almost fell.  Only Athea's noble sacrifice won out in the end.""The same thing happened each generation since.  Pieces of the deck would appear, misfortune followed, and then the demons came.  We've managed to repel the demons each time but at ever greater cost."Lady Oakley takes a breath and grits he teeth. "I am to be married this summer, but I cannot think of bringing a family into this world knowing the curse that would fall over them.  I am determined that this artifact will be destroyed or that the House of Oakley will end with my generation.  But I have no hope of doing this alone and I do not believe that your arrival was accidental.  Mayor Brunt was one of only a few people that knew of the curse outside my immediate family.  I am hoping he chose you wisely and that you would be willing to help."</blockquote>

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