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Aphonion Tales: The Archducal Council -- Unedited notes; later posts are edited transcripts (posts MWF, update 3/1/23)
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<blockquote data-quote="CPaladin" data-source="post: 8922868" data-attributes="member: 7030144"><p>[Session 147, cont'd]</p><p>They summon the Dwarven ambassador. He's in the process of remaking his embassy all by himself. It's getting a new facing.</p><p></p><p>"We thank you for attending on us. We have a matter of some substantial concern, and we wanted to find out whether your people have faced a similar difficulty, and whether there's any insight that you could give us. A very large number of human stone masons from all over the continent have been hired to travel and to engage in what we can only assume is an enormous great work. But we don't know what they're doing or where they're going exactly. We know where in rough terms, but not who is hiring them, not where they are precisely, and not what their project is. And so our first question is, Have your people been having stone masons hired for a great expedition, perhaps a few at a time in the last few years?"</p><p></p><p>"I can assure you we have not been approached on such a thing, which seems odd indeed."</p><p></p><p>"The second part of that is, these are substantial enough that we are now finding that that the ordinary stonework projects within Canberry, for example, or in Enclaves, or in any number of other places are being delayed. There are not sufficient skilled stone workers to carry out things as quickly and reliably as we would expect. We would assume that, for example, some of the people in our guilds would maintain contact with some of the people in your equivalent of our stone masons guild, and they might suggest that some of your people might seek employment here for some years. Have you been aware of any of that?"</p><p></p><p>"Well, no, but your guild master's a little tricky..."</p><p></p><p>"Yes, but I'm not just talking about from here."</p><p></p><p>"Oh, aye, there have been some calls from a couple of the kingdoms. We've actually even sent some masons over to Masque. It's a hell of a trip, though. You have to go so far south to remain safe, and then back, so there is a little of that."</p><p></p><p>"But not as much as you might expect."</p><p></p><p>"Well, they didn't tell us why they needed it. They just said they needed this, and they offered a very lucrative deal. Our guild master could hardly refuse. But yes, and some other realms have called. They also didn't tell us why. We just assumed they wanted our superior stone masonry skills, begging your pardon."</p><p></p><p>"Do you continue to have regular contact with the people who have gone on those tasks?"</p><p></p><p>"Oh, yes, they're doing fine. The tasks are coming along nicely. They say they aren't very many human workers but you can hire rock carriers and rock splitters. That's easy. You just go on the street and offer the silver, and you get them. But as far as the skilled folk, they say there are only a few there. I just figured it was a human thing--more into wood, you know."</p><p></p><p>"That would be true up to a point under normal circumstances, but there are fewer than even a human would consider normal. The next question we had was, do you know anything about the Barrier Mountains in the area to the far west of the Barrier Mountain chain as it approaches the ocean?"</p><p></p><p>"Aye, the Great Mine, but that hasn't been touched in millennia."</p><p></p><p>"The Great Mine?"</p><p></p><p>"Yes, horrible, horrible place. We delved there, and we knew it was dangerous, but we delved there anyway, and unfortunately, we unleashed something on ourselves. We don't normally speak of this but since Your Majesty asked, and I'm the ambassador... The history is quite dire."</p><p></p><p>"Is this a sort of place where 10,000 skilled stone masons might turn up things that would be less left in the ground?"</p><p></p><p>"We only had 3,000, and we turned up some things that best left in the ground. There were a variety of things that were valuable--some adamantium. There was a lot frisia, but what do you do with that, besides throw it into a corner? There was some lead, largely worthless except for certain crafts. A small vein of diamonds, worth considerable wealth, along with some precious metals. But there were a lot of things best left in the First Age, when they came from. They accidentally uncorked something. Oh, you know we're accountable for that. There were layers of orichalcum they broke through. Orichalcum is a very powerful item. It can be used for the great seals. It can be used to seal away chaos. It can be used to destroy the ancient enemy."</p><p></p><p>"Were there deliberate seals in place, or just natural ones?"</p><p></p><p>"That's hard for me to say for sure. But a certain part of my people are, I'm afraid to say, very greedy, Your Majesty, and seeing several ounces of orichalcum in a seal, I might suspect that there was one or two of them, and they opened them to claim the orichalcum. They probably assumed whatever was behind them was gone, of course, from old age or something."</p><p></p><p>"Would it make sense for there to be for work in the Great Mine to be done by stone masons and not by miners?"</p><p></p><p>"Yes, particularly if you deal with the more precious things, you've got to sustain the mine. If you don't sustain the mine it collapses on itself. The masons are absolutely required, unless you want thousands of casualties from mine collapses."</p><p></p><p>"That also suggests that there would likely be regular miners as well."</p><p></p><p>"Oh, certainly depending on who it is, they'd have brought in tens of thousands of those from wherever they could."</p><p></p><p>"So the other question is, where are the miners coming from?" No one has an answer for that, so Alistair asks another question. "Are you aware of the substance called ember?"</p><p></p><p>"By reputation. If you're asking if that was found there, not that I know of, although the presence of the great seals might indicate that the great elves knew of ember there and wanted to seal it away. In any event, once the seals were broken, the entities inside cut through our ranks like butter. I've only heard of a couple hundred survivors."</p><p></p><p>"Do you know what the entities were?"</p><p></p><p>"I know what we suspect they were. But no, none of the clergy survived to escape with a definite report. Our suspicion is that we released a pair of balrogs. Hard to imagine a couple of ancient dragons sealed in there, and what else could it be? I suppose there might be other fell powers as powerful as balrogs, but those are the ones we know and hate."</p><p></p><p>"That makes sense. Presumably you could also seal up a deity if you were sufficiently powerful."</p><p></p><p>"Aye. And let's face it some of the great elves were that powerful. But to seal them up with orichalcum... If our guesses were right here, that would mean it was an awfully evil deity."</p><p></p><p>"Yes, it would."</p><p></p><p>The ambassador focuses for a moment, then says, "You suggest stone masons and miners have been taken into the Great Mine? That's been forbidden territory for generations of our folk. Who would do such a thing? It's insane. No one would dare mention it to a dwarf, I'll tell you that right now."</p><p></p><p>"Which is why they didn't ask you. If there were two balrogs..."</p><p></p><p>"There are more surely. Besides, we don't know who started that mine. We only discovered it."</p><p></p><p>"It wasn't dwarven work originally? And from the First Age, you said?"</p><p></p><p>"Oh, yes, that we could tell."</p><p></p><p>"I assume that you could tell that it wasn't human work, either."</p><p></p><p>"Nay, not human. Not human, not dwarven, and not gnomish. Not halfling, either-- not that the poor dears could ever work a stone well."</p><p></p><p>"Drow?"</p><p></p><p>"Drow? Could have been. It wouldn't have been them early in the First Age, but I can't say that they couldn't have after the Kinslaying. But it's so near the surface to them."</p><p></p><p>"The frisia is very important to them."</p><p></p><p>"Aye. I don't know why it is, it's worthless, but they care about it nonetheless. So they might have been there for the frisia, and then realized there was something else there, and tried to block it up."</p><p></p><p>"Or it might have been the Enemy originally. I was asking about the timing, because we know they were there in the First Age."</p><p></p><p>"The same people who are organizing it now--that would explain how they would know to look there. But where are the miners coming from? Ambassador, have any of your people been called in to substitute as miners the way they have been to substitute as stone masons?"</p><p></p><p>"Aye, we've had some calls for miners all right. Before the disaster from Hanal, they for some reason had lost a huge number of their miners."</p><p></p><p>"That makes sense. They send the miners from Hanal to open the Great Mine again. Then they realize they're going to need a lot of stone masons to maintain it. So they go around recruiting stone masons..."</p><p></p><p>"Your Majesty," asks Dame Brionna. "Do we know for sure that they haven't recruited miners from here as well?"</p><p></p><p>"I suppose we haven't--we've only investigated the stone mason angle. Miners, gem cutters, metal smelters, and smiths are all categories that we might that we might logically guess might also be part of this work, so we should check whether any of them have been disappearing as well."</p><p></p><p>"If there were gem cutters missing, I think we would have heard about it," notes Kit. "That's the sort of thing where the absence would be noticed in the upper city."</p><p></p><p>"Makes sense. But right now, we need to start searching for 10,000 missing miners, in addition to figuring out what all those missing masons had in common."</p><p></p><p>"I'd be thinking it would be more than 10,000. They lost more than 10,000 out of Hanal alone. You know how much iron they use."</p><p></p><p>"So looking for a lot of missing miners, and figure out why they recruited the specific stone masons that they did. I wonder if it's just about greed, willingness to travel, and absolutely no connection to the dwarves, because, as you said, Ambassador, no dwarves would go anywhere near there. Anybody who was trained by dwarves or with any dwarf ancestry would be counted out immediately."</p><p></p><p>"There might be lines of masons with dwarven influence. Aye, there might at that."</p><p></p><p>"We can test that easily," says Kit. "We can ask some of the people who were not recruited, whether they what what the Great Mine means to them."</p><p></p><p>"Makes sense. If their response is, 'Oh, you can't work there. It's forbidden,' then we know what's going on. The obvious first person to ask is your father, of course."</p><p></p><p>"They might have approached people who they thought were particularly greedy," says Dame Brionna. "They would want to minimize the number of people approaching them because they wanted to choose them very carefully, without any word getting out."</p><p></p><p>"Aye, but you folk found out."</p><p></p><p>"Eventually, so not as well as they wanted to, but they still kept it quit for a long thing. I wonder if it might also be psionic susceptibility that might be leading people in, so they can then Coerce them."</p><p></p><p><<Interesting that Tang and Thar Ingmath were left out.>> thinks Kit, switching to the mindlink. <<Maybe they thought the threes were too weird. I think there was something else they were left out of.>></p><p></p><p><<They were also left out of the attacks on royal lineages. But then, neither of them have royal lineages in the way that we would understand them. Some fraction of the children are just born as Ones, and then they are treated as aristocracy, so their lineages can't be interfered with in the same way that a regular dynasty could be.>></p><p></p><p><<But maybe that's one of the keys-- maybe what they're after in the masons is something hereditary and not about training, and the way heredity works in Tang and Thar Ingmath is just too different for them to be able to track that way.>></p><p></p><p><<If it's something about lineage and heritability, then the person to talk to is that archmage advisor who's very interested in those things.>></p><p></p><p><<Yes, the one who likes silver things, but for no particular reason.>> thinks Kit with a smile. <<He would absolutely know. And he might also know about those other ancient things.>></p><p></p><p>Out loud, Alistair says, "Thank you very much, Ambassador."</p><p></p><p>"A great pleasure, Your Majesty. Dame. You're a baroness now, aren't you, I should be calling you Lady..."</p><p></p><p>"I am, but it's all right, Ambassador. Dame still works just fine."</p><p></p><p>"She technically has the style of 'Your Grace,' actually," says Alistair, wanting Kit to receive the respect that is her due.</p><p></p><p>"Oh, a human ducal style yet."</p><p></p><p>"Correct."</p><p></p><p>"Well, Your Grace, I'm sorry for having shorted you," he says with a wink.</p><p></p><p>"Oh, from a dwarf that joke is terrible."</p><p></p><p>"Aye, but my king made me an ambassador, not me. If I'm guilty of making bad jokes, that's his fault, not mine."</p><p></p><p>* * *</p><p>The Council reaches out to the archmage who they know to be a silver dragon, very interested in descent and heredity.</p><p></p><p>"Your Majesty, Councillors."</p><p></p><p>"Thank you for responding so quickly. We have become aware that a large number of stone masons have been hired selectively and moved to a specific project. Are you familiar with this?"</p><p></p><p>"I am aware of that in my homeland. Does it go beyond there?"</p><p></p><p>"It is continent-wide. We're trying to figure out why the individuals that were selected were selected. We believe that they might be working on the Great Mine."</p><p></p><p>"The one of legend."</p><p></p><p>"Yes. One of the things that occurred to us was that it might be some heritable factor that was determining which ones were being solicited for this, and which ones were not, and given that we know that you have an interest in tracing ancestries and genealogies, we wondered if you noticed anything about the ones who have disappeared."</p><p></p><p>"In Debonai, we didn't realize masons were being recruited until we had need to rebuild a fortification and found out we did not have sufficient masons. However, all the ones that we still had shared an involvement with the vestigial stone workers' guild that dated back from the dwarfs."</p><p></p><p>"Sounds like we were right that there was a dwarven guild tradition. Were there any promises that you made to be a member of that guild?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm not a guild member, so I don't know for certain what the promises are. I do know that their rituals were very complex and require solemn oaths. I would add that the ones that remain have a higher propensity towards unusual skill with stone. They can almost speak to the stone. We had to seek masons from elsewhere, however, to complete the project, due to the numbers."</p><p></p><p>"I wonder where my dad's master was trained," comments Kit. "You said that this vestigial guild is dying? Do they mostly recruit their own children, but they don't have enough children to replace themselves?"</p><p></p><p>"Occasionally a favorite apprentice, but yes, that's correct. Your insights never cease to amaze me. Interesting, isn't it?"</p><p></p><p>"That would be highly consistent with a small amount of dwarven blood still running in that guild, wouldn't it?" asks Alistair.</p><p></p><p>"Certainly. I wish I could tell you what their secret rites were or what's in their teachings, but I do not know. They're secret, after all."</p><p></p><p>"Thank you. Just that much information is very helpful. We understand that you also know of the Great Mine. What else do you know about it beyond the legends of its existence, and that it's forbidden to the dwarves?"</p><p></p><p>"I know that the great elves condemned it."</p><p></p><p>"Both branches, I suppose."</p><p></p><p>"Yes. Or all three, really. I also believe that generations ago, Moriquendarim bombarded it to seal the entrances, and that's why it's lost from the air."</p><p></p><p>"I presume that could be cleared with sufficient labor?"</p><p></p><p>"Yes, with sufficient labor, but it's something that any elves or dwarves would know to be a foolish act."</p><p></p><p>"Presumably why they avoided dwarves."</p><p></p><p>"But even then, you would think that both the dwarfs and the elves in particular would have left warnings that would have meant that at least the first people would have had to be knowingly disregarding warnings. I'm sure that they set their seals on it. Someone would have had to have broken them, and they will defend themselves within limits."</p><p></p><p>* * *</p><p>They decide to speak with Lord Davion to get the perspective of the great elves. They also send a scout voller at a very high altitude to pass over the Great Mine and observe with telescopes and a barrage of protective spells. Kit contacts her people to look for people trying to hire masons for this, to try to grab some of the recruiters. They also suspect that the ones who were killed after they were approached were ones who recognized what the Great Mine was and planned to report the contact to their guilds.</p><p></p><p>Once Lord Davion joins them, they launch into a conversation. "We wanted to discuss a problem area that we think has developed that we know very little about. We understand that there is a place in the Western Barrier Mountains that the dwarves refer to as the Great Mine and prohibit approaching."</p><p></p><p>"Indeed."</p><p></p><p>"We believe that somebody, presumably the Enemy though we do not know that for sure, has been recruiting tens of thousands of humans to conduct an enormous mining operation."</p><p></p><p>"The Great Mine was sealed by the House Moriquendarim, before which they bombarded it with a small battle group of voller men-of-war, and then sealed it with the Great Seal of Anatar."</p><p></p><p>"Would this be before the dwarves mined there?"</p><p></p><p>"No, no. The dwarves unleashed things within that mine. Those things slaughtered the dwarves, and what few of them could survive then fled. We were only aware of it because of the fresia deposits, but we simply marked it and ignored it. They explored it. It's a natural cyst but when you begin expanding the mines, it threatens the integrity of the entire structure, which is what Moriquendarim took advantage of when they sealed it. One of the two creatures they unleashed left, and was eventually dealt with by a man-of-war of House Curinirim carrying a mighty lord of that House. The Moriquendarim took slaves in that area, and the creature that remained in the Mine was taking whole villages and seeking to capture more. House Moriquendarim viewed that as a threat to their endeavors, and as they are the weakest of my people's houses, they decided to simply bombard the area and seal it within the Mine. Presumably that creature never left again. The villages stopped disappearing."</p><p></p><p>"Unless they've started disappearing again. There are no settlements that survive in that area, and efforts to establish new settlements have failed entirely. We think the mining operation may have re-entered that area. The dwarves suggested that the creatures would kill human miners coming in, unless their masters reached some agreement with it. They believe the creatures to be balrogs."</p><p></p><p>"Yes. But if the villages in the area are disappearing again, that suggests they did reach an agreement."</p><p></p><p>"We also understand, or at least suspect, that the that the creatures were originally deliberately sealed with seals of orichalcum in the First Age."</p><p></p><p>"I believe that may well have been done by the House of Curinirim, but I think there were more than two of them, and I think there may have been a greater evil there as well than the balrogs."</p><p></p><p>"What would a greater evil than a fallen Maia be?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm not a mage, as you know, but my understanding is that it was not only the host of the Maiar that had many defections, but also from among the regiment of the Valar themselves. And several balrogs would follow one of the greater Valar. The only of the greater Valar who remain known are in close service to Lord Morgoth. But we believe there are at least three: one encysted in the Borderlands near the Shadowlands on Zest'qua; one encysted in the Badlands on Khamista, and one that fell here on Drucien and is generally believed by my people to be sealed in the bottom of the cyst that became the Great Mine. I cannot speak to the veracity of this. The Princess might be able to."</p><p></p><p>"A fallen Vala would be the on the order of a god, is that right?"</p><p></p><p>"Certainly."</p><p></p><p>"And having been encysted since the First Age, might it be willing to treat with the ancient Enemy with an offer, should it be reached?"</p><p></p><p>"Yes, but you must understand: these Valar were the enemies of all that is on Aphonion. They wished to extinguish the Prime and start over, the three of them. They were even enemies unto Lord Morgoth himself. As I said, all those that are known remain in close servitude to him. These did not accept lordship from anyone."</p><p></p><p>"Are these related to the entities that ember is related to?"</p><p></p><p>"They are not made of ember, but they are related. Yes, yes. Even I do not speak lightly of ember, or of these three who are nameless to us. It is forbidden. We had warned the dwarven folk before they began, that we believed that area to be dangerous. To be fair, that warning was from the Queen of Singing Leaves. But we could not seem to get through their greed, and we counted ourselves lucky when all that they released were two of the balrogs. That is why Moriquendarim sealed that with the Great Seal of Anatar. It should have kept it from anything."</p><p></p><p>"Apparently not. What kind of power would it take to break that seal?"</p><p></p><p>"It is more sensible to ask, how long ago did Anatar start to be weakened?"</p><p></p><p>"Is Anatar one of the Valar that serve Morgroth?"</p><p></p><p>"No, no! But his power should be greater than any mortal could break. He ascended from beneath, as some of our people did. However, they began to drain his strength before he knew it. They might have begun by draining the seal for some time, for it partakes directly of his power."</p><p></p><p>"They might even have set out to do that as as part of the goal," observes Alistair.</p><p></p><p>"Yes, if they've been following that plan for a hundred years like they have everything else, then that may have been a step in their plan to absorb Anatar. If they free one of the three fallen Valar, and this is the only one I can conceptualize them being able to reach--they have several possibilities. On the one hand, they might form an alliance with it. On the other hand, it might create enormous difficulties for all of us while pursuing somewhat similar goals. And on the third hand, there master might simply consume it and grow in power."</p><p></p><p>"The second one seems most likely because even if we succeed at defeating it, then we've just turned our attention towards it for a very long time and away from our other enemies, and if we don't succeed in defeating it, then it achieves the same goal that our enemies wanted to."</p><p></p><p>"Exactly."</p><p></p><p>"I think we need to speak with Princess Curinirim about this, if that may have been her house's seals."</p><p></p><p>"I'm sorry that I could not give you better news."</p><p></p><p>"At least we think we now understand something about what is going on. We were contemplating sending a scout voller at high altitude, with protections, to try to observe the area physically. Does that seem useful?"</p><p></p><p>"It will show you if they have developed buildings outside. It will show you if the mine mouth is open. It will show you things of value, but be sure that they are at high altitude. I do not believe there is anything they possess that can reach high altitude at this time. Note that almost nothing will pass through a field of fresia, so any thing that they have in the Great Mine will be undetectable. But you would be able to see surface works. It should be able to confirm, for example, whether the mine has been reopened, and if there are settlements nearby that are providing supplies."</p><p></p><p>"Which would be an easier target, both for getting information from the supply chain and cutting off the supply chain."</p><p></p><p>"Would Lolthian Drow be similarly unwilling to work in this area?"</p><p></p><p>"They've been avoiding it for years. As much as they wish fresia, there are other deposits that are substantially less dangerous. You should also be aware: None of those who have worked in this mind should have children. You know this? A member of Goldurim could explain this better than I can, but it alters the offspring. Females generally become incapable, but if it is the male progenitor, it causes changes."</p><p></p><p>"They're systematically seeking to send men in."</p><p></p><p>"Oh, so another way they win," comments Kit. "If the miners survive and go out, then their children will be corrupted."</p><p></p><p>"Correct."</p><p></p><p>"Is it corrupted? Is it just made weak?"</p><p></p><p>"Have you heard of the Brown Lands?"</p><p></p><p>"Remind me."</p><p></p><p>"It is a section of the Empire of Masque that they restrain the inhabitants of through the use of several of their legions. The level of mutation and of corruption among the children born in the Brown Lands and in Yar, which is associated with them, approaches 100%. It's the reason for the masking. They mask so that those who have been mutated but retain their humanity, their alterations will not be noticed and preyed upon by those who were pure of blood and pure of appearance. Therefore, the entire culture masks, except the unmasked, who are the lowest and among the unmasked here and there you will see the mutations. But among those that cannot leave the Brown Lands, the mutations are much worse. They affect the mind, they affect morality, they affect everything, and of course the stability. That is one of the reasons that the largest female order in Masque, the Order of the Spider, is one of the orders that guards the walls to restrain the hordes of the Brown Lands: because they're an ever-virgin order."</p><p></p><p>"And the Brown Lands were caused by a fresia explosion."</p><p></p><p>"Correct, fresia is very dangerous in its own right, except to the Drow, and there's an argument made among my people that the Lolthian Drow have already been altered by the fresia. Within themselves, the cadet houses are not immune. It could be a gift of Lolth, I suppose."</p><p></p><p>"Right. So all of those poor people now must never father children. We need to talk to the Reverend Mother of Gunora, because we know there are halflings among them, and that particular aspect is an even deeper offense against halflings."</p><p></p><p>"I wonder whether they might be able to cure that."</p><p></p><p>"I would hope, but honestly, before curing, we need to prevent families."</p><p></p><p>"Oh! And they set up another plot, because if a man is having fertility problems, who would he turn to?"</p><p></p><p>"But thus far, we haven't had any reports of anyone actually returning. They were told by the recruiters that they would be gone for a number of years, and they were given significant earnest money to give to their spouses and children and were told how much they would receive upon their return, which was also from what we've been able to gather a significant amount."</p><p></p><p>* * *</p><p>The duty psion does the usual connection to Princess Curinirim, and they appear ethereally in a room full of crystal musical instruments.</p><p></p><p>She waives a hand, and all the crystal instruments stop playing.</p><p></p><p>"Your Majesty."</p><p></p><p>"Your Highness, we have very troubling tidings, and we hope that you might be able to provide us some more information about what we should be aware of. We believe that someone, presumably the Eldritch Enemy, though we do not know this for certain, is gathering tens of thousands of human and halfling craftsmen to excavate the Great Mine."</p><p></p><p>"Truly? I haven't had an overflight of that area in some time."</p><p></p><p>"We have just sent one of our vollers to do a high-altitude overflight. Of course, we cannot scry on it in any of the normal ways."</p><p></p><p>"It has a heavy fresia deposit there."</p><p></p><p>"Exactly. We're concerned that with Anatar's present discomfort, it is possible that they could have broken the seal. We are concerned that they may be seeking to break the older seals from the First Age that might still be there."</p><p></p><p>"It's insane. The dwarves broke two of the lesser seals and released two of the host of the balrogs. You believe that they hope to open the seal to the nameless Vala? Do they have any idea what they're unleashing?"</p><p></p><p>"Yes, that's the bad thing. They know exactly what they're unleashing. We presume that they have some form of agreement with the remaining balrog."</p><p></p><p>"Probably. They can offer it an agreement that it will obey, and it can show them the way to the seals and a route to attempt to release a Vala who respected neither the Creator nor his Brother, who will wreak havoc on the land about, or who, if they can find some agreement which it will follow for a period of time, will only wait for the expiration and go about its purposes. One of its first purposes will be to free its siblings. It is good that you have told me this. I wish that I could promise a more robust help than I can. We will stage our efforts from your tower, with your permission."</p><p></p><p>"By all means."</p><p></p><p>"Expect my man of war to join you in three days. Even if this is not the Eldritch Enemy, this is clearly a matter that concerns us all. If it is not the enemy, it is utterly insane. With the Eldritch Enemy, I can see one possible ambition for this thing, if the enemy in question is the One Other: to consume it to add to his power. He's already determined that he can never get in power beyond the two elven gods without the other two. He's also determined that if they are here, they will only destroy another plane and move on, while he believes he can live here indefinitely by simply siphoning the energy of all living beings off slowly, which, in some ways, is more dire than if he sought to consume us all rapidly. If he could consume a Vala or two or three, he could ascend to a point where he is more powerful than any of the other human gods."</p><p></p><p>"Might the more nihilistic demons not be interested in a similar goal to the fallen Vala?"</p><p></p><p>"Yes, they would certainly have a similar goal. Yes, yes, so it could be them, I suppose. But it is certainly not the two that are still locked out, for it would do them no good, and I also think that their star is fading. Interesting. His star, blue though it may be, is growing. Perhaps he outsmarted them through all the endless ages, and this will all be his, and he knew that they'd be locked out to starve, while he gorges himself on energy for the rest of eternity. I'm sorry. That is a dire pronouncement.</p><p></p><p>"My man of war will join you. My general will be with it, and some of my Shadow Elves. We expect no hospitality that we do not pay, for we know that your kingdom is strapped with its growth in the Southlands and elsewhere. Your stability is essential to your wife's future, therefore permit my general to pay for the supplies he needs. He will carry my purse. Do you have anywhere his lesser men can revel?"</p><p></p><p>"Yes."</p><p></p><p>"Then permit him to pay them to revel. Then I will send a scout in the direction of the Uncommitted under a banner of truce to discuss this with them as well. It is of great interest to all of the old elves."</p><p></p><p>"We will, of course, need to reach out to certain other elven peoples. It also matters to them."</p><p></p><p>"I understand. I will, with your permission, notify Lord Moriquendarim, simply to make his day longer and harder than it already is."</p><p></p><p>"As you see fit. We will also work to coordinate with your general, and with any other elves that may take an interest to avoid any unfortunate proximity."</p><p></p><p>"We trust you with this. You have managed to avoid collisions between the Singing Leaves and the House of Aufaulgautharim."</p><p></p><p>"And while we would ordinarily insist that no payment was necessary for allies coordinating with us on a military operation that serves all of our needs, we will nonetheless honor your request and allow you to pay as you see fit."</p><p></p><p>"Thank you, Your Majesty, and thank you for this heads up. I had not looked in that direction. One cannot look everywhere."</p><p></p><p>"We fear that we came to this more slowly than we should have. I will also take it upon ourselves to contact the Hastur to warn them that there may be a similar effort in the area that is under their supervision."</p><p></p><p>"Excellent."</p><p></p><p>"Who would guard the Badlands on Khamista?"</p><p></p><p>"Generally, no one. You might wish to speak to, ahem, Her."</p><p></p><p>"Her? I don't take your meaning, Your Highness."</p><p></p><p>She looks helplessly around the chamber and repeats, "Her. You know, Her."</p><p></p><p>As the vision fades, she turns to her crystal instruments and says, "The concert is over for now. As soon as the catastrophe is averted." They see her walking out of the chamber.</p><p></p><p>Sometime later, Alistair realizes, with a certain sense of amusement, that Princess Curinirim was referring to Whimsey, but did not dare to say her name.</p><p>[End Session 147]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CPaladin, post: 8922868, member: 7030144"] [Session 147, cont'd] They summon the Dwarven ambassador. He's in the process of remaking his embassy all by himself. It's getting a new facing. "We thank you for attending on us. We have a matter of some substantial concern, and we wanted to find out whether your people have faced a similar difficulty, and whether there's any insight that you could give us. A very large number of human stone masons from all over the continent have been hired to travel and to engage in what we can only assume is an enormous great work. But we don't know what they're doing or where they're going exactly. We know where in rough terms, but not who is hiring them, not where they are precisely, and not what their project is. And so our first question is, Have your people been having stone masons hired for a great expedition, perhaps a few at a time in the last few years?" "I can assure you we have not been approached on such a thing, which seems odd indeed." "The second part of that is, these are substantial enough that we are now finding that that the ordinary stonework projects within Canberry, for example, or in Enclaves, or in any number of other places are being delayed. There are not sufficient skilled stone workers to carry out things as quickly and reliably as we would expect. We would assume that, for example, some of the people in our guilds would maintain contact with some of the people in your equivalent of our stone masons guild, and they might suggest that some of your people might seek employment here for some years. Have you been aware of any of that?" "Well, no, but your guild master's a little tricky..." "Yes, but I'm not just talking about from here." "Oh, aye, there have been some calls from a couple of the kingdoms. We've actually even sent some masons over to Masque. It's a hell of a trip, though. You have to go so far south to remain safe, and then back, so there is a little of that." "But not as much as you might expect." "Well, they didn't tell us why they needed it. They just said they needed this, and they offered a very lucrative deal. Our guild master could hardly refuse. But yes, and some other realms have called. They also didn't tell us why. We just assumed they wanted our superior stone masonry skills, begging your pardon." "Do you continue to have regular contact with the people who have gone on those tasks?" "Oh, yes, they're doing fine. The tasks are coming along nicely. They say they aren't very many human workers but you can hire rock carriers and rock splitters. That's easy. You just go on the street and offer the silver, and you get them. But as far as the skilled folk, they say there are only a few there. I just figured it was a human thing--more into wood, you know." "That would be true up to a point under normal circumstances, but there are fewer than even a human would consider normal. The next question we had was, do you know anything about the Barrier Mountains in the area to the far west of the Barrier Mountain chain as it approaches the ocean?" "Aye, the Great Mine, but that hasn't been touched in millennia." "The Great Mine?" "Yes, horrible, horrible place. We delved there, and we knew it was dangerous, but we delved there anyway, and unfortunately, we unleashed something on ourselves. We don't normally speak of this but since Your Majesty asked, and I'm the ambassador... The history is quite dire." "Is this a sort of place where 10,000 skilled stone masons might turn up things that would be less left in the ground?" "We only had 3,000, and we turned up some things that best left in the ground. There were a variety of things that were valuable--some adamantium. There was a lot frisia, but what do you do with that, besides throw it into a corner? There was some lead, largely worthless except for certain crafts. A small vein of diamonds, worth considerable wealth, along with some precious metals. But there were a lot of things best left in the First Age, when they came from. They accidentally uncorked something. Oh, you know we're accountable for that. There were layers of orichalcum they broke through. Orichalcum is a very powerful item. It can be used for the great seals. It can be used to seal away chaos. It can be used to destroy the ancient enemy." "Were there deliberate seals in place, or just natural ones?" "That's hard for me to say for sure. But a certain part of my people are, I'm afraid to say, very greedy, Your Majesty, and seeing several ounces of orichalcum in a seal, I might suspect that there was one or two of them, and they opened them to claim the orichalcum. They probably assumed whatever was behind them was gone, of course, from old age or something." "Would it make sense for there to be for work in the Great Mine to be done by stone masons and not by miners?" "Yes, particularly if you deal with the more precious things, you've got to sustain the mine. If you don't sustain the mine it collapses on itself. The masons are absolutely required, unless you want thousands of casualties from mine collapses." "That also suggests that there would likely be regular miners as well." "Oh, certainly depending on who it is, they'd have brought in tens of thousands of those from wherever they could." "So the other question is, where are the miners coming from?" No one has an answer for that, so Alistair asks another question. "Are you aware of the substance called ember?" "By reputation. If you're asking if that was found there, not that I know of, although the presence of the great seals might indicate that the great elves knew of ember there and wanted to seal it away. In any event, once the seals were broken, the entities inside cut through our ranks like butter. I've only heard of a couple hundred survivors." "Do you know what the entities were?" "I know what we suspect they were. But no, none of the clergy survived to escape with a definite report. Our suspicion is that we released a pair of balrogs. Hard to imagine a couple of ancient dragons sealed in there, and what else could it be? I suppose there might be other fell powers as powerful as balrogs, but those are the ones we know and hate." "That makes sense. Presumably you could also seal up a deity if you were sufficiently powerful." "Aye. And let's face it some of the great elves were that powerful. But to seal them up with orichalcum... If our guesses were right here, that would mean it was an awfully evil deity." "Yes, it would." The ambassador focuses for a moment, then says, "You suggest stone masons and miners have been taken into the Great Mine? That's been forbidden territory for generations of our folk. Who would do such a thing? It's insane. No one would dare mention it to a dwarf, I'll tell you that right now." "Which is why they didn't ask you. If there were two balrogs..." "There are more surely. Besides, we don't know who started that mine. We only discovered it." "It wasn't dwarven work originally? And from the First Age, you said?" "Oh, yes, that we could tell." "I assume that you could tell that it wasn't human work, either." "Nay, not human. Not human, not dwarven, and not gnomish. Not halfling, either-- not that the poor dears could ever work a stone well." "Drow?" "Drow? Could have been. It wouldn't have been them early in the First Age, but I can't say that they couldn't have after the Kinslaying. But it's so near the surface to them." "The frisia is very important to them." "Aye. I don't know why it is, it's worthless, but they care about it nonetheless. So they might have been there for the frisia, and then realized there was something else there, and tried to block it up." "Or it might have been the Enemy originally. I was asking about the timing, because we know they were there in the First Age." "The same people who are organizing it now--that would explain how they would know to look there. But where are the miners coming from? Ambassador, have any of your people been called in to substitute as miners the way they have been to substitute as stone masons?" "Aye, we've had some calls for miners all right. Before the disaster from Hanal, they for some reason had lost a huge number of their miners." "That makes sense. They send the miners from Hanal to open the Great Mine again. Then they realize they're going to need a lot of stone masons to maintain it. So they go around recruiting stone masons..." "Your Majesty," asks Dame Brionna. "Do we know for sure that they haven't recruited miners from here as well?" "I suppose we haven't--we've only investigated the stone mason angle. Miners, gem cutters, metal smelters, and smiths are all categories that we might that we might logically guess might also be part of this work, so we should check whether any of them have been disappearing as well." "If there were gem cutters missing, I think we would have heard about it," notes Kit. "That's the sort of thing where the absence would be noticed in the upper city." "Makes sense. But right now, we need to start searching for 10,000 missing miners, in addition to figuring out what all those missing masons had in common." "I'd be thinking it would be more than 10,000. They lost more than 10,000 out of Hanal alone. You know how much iron they use." "So looking for a lot of missing miners, and figure out why they recruited the specific stone masons that they did. I wonder if it's just about greed, willingness to travel, and absolutely no connection to the dwarves, because, as you said, Ambassador, no dwarves would go anywhere near there. Anybody who was trained by dwarves or with any dwarf ancestry would be counted out immediately." "There might be lines of masons with dwarven influence. Aye, there might at that." "We can test that easily," says Kit. "We can ask some of the people who were not recruited, whether they what what the Great Mine means to them." "Makes sense. If their response is, 'Oh, you can't work there. It's forbidden,' then we know what's going on. The obvious first person to ask is your father, of course." "They might have approached people who they thought were particularly greedy," says Dame Brionna. "They would want to minimize the number of people approaching them because they wanted to choose them very carefully, without any word getting out." "Aye, but you folk found out." "Eventually, so not as well as they wanted to, but they still kept it quit for a long thing. I wonder if it might also be psionic susceptibility that might be leading people in, so they can then Coerce them." <<Interesting that Tang and Thar Ingmath were left out.>> thinks Kit, switching to the mindlink. <<Maybe they thought the threes were too weird. I think there was something else they were left out of.>> <<They were also left out of the attacks on royal lineages. But then, neither of them have royal lineages in the way that we would understand them. Some fraction of the children are just born as Ones, and then they are treated as aristocracy, so their lineages can't be interfered with in the same way that a regular dynasty could be.>> <<But maybe that's one of the keys-- maybe what they're after in the masons is something hereditary and not about training, and the way heredity works in Tang and Thar Ingmath is just too different for them to be able to track that way.>> <<If it's something about lineage and heritability, then the person to talk to is that archmage advisor who's very interested in those things.>> <<Yes, the one who likes silver things, but for no particular reason.>> thinks Kit with a smile. <<He would absolutely know. And he might also know about those other ancient things.>> Out loud, Alistair says, "Thank you very much, Ambassador." "A great pleasure, Your Majesty. Dame. You're a baroness now, aren't you, I should be calling you Lady..." "I am, but it's all right, Ambassador. Dame still works just fine." "She technically has the style of 'Your Grace,' actually," says Alistair, wanting Kit to receive the respect that is her due. "Oh, a human ducal style yet." "Correct." "Well, Your Grace, I'm sorry for having shorted you," he says with a wink. "Oh, from a dwarf that joke is terrible." "Aye, but my king made me an ambassador, not me. If I'm guilty of making bad jokes, that's his fault, not mine." * * * The Council reaches out to the archmage who they know to be a silver dragon, very interested in descent and heredity. "Your Majesty, Councillors." "Thank you for responding so quickly. We have become aware that a large number of stone masons have been hired selectively and moved to a specific project. Are you familiar with this?" "I am aware of that in my homeland. Does it go beyond there?" "It is continent-wide. We're trying to figure out why the individuals that were selected were selected. We believe that they might be working on the Great Mine." "The one of legend." "Yes. One of the things that occurred to us was that it might be some heritable factor that was determining which ones were being solicited for this, and which ones were not, and given that we know that you have an interest in tracing ancestries and genealogies, we wondered if you noticed anything about the ones who have disappeared." "In Debonai, we didn't realize masons were being recruited until we had need to rebuild a fortification and found out we did not have sufficient masons. However, all the ones that we still had shared an involvement with the vestigial stone workers' guild that dated back from the dwarfs." "Sounds like we were right that there was a dwarven guild tradition. Were there any promises that you made to be a member of that guild?" "I'm not a guild member, so I don't know for certain what the promises are. I do know that their rituals were very complex and require solemn oaths. I would add that the ones that remain have a higher propensity towards unusual skill with stone. They can almost speak to the stone. We had to seek masons from elsewhere, however, to complete the project, due to the numbers." "I wonder where my dad's master was trained," comments Kit. "You said that this vestigial guild is dying? Do they mostly recruit their own children, but they don't have enough children to replace themselves?" "Occasionally a favorite apprentice, but yes, that's correct. Your insights never cease to amaze me. Interesting, isn't it?" "That would be highly consistent with a small amount of dwarven blood still running in that guild, wouldn't it?" asks Alistair. "Certainly. I wish I could tell you what their secret rites were or what's in their teachings, but I do not know. They're secret, after all." "Thank you. Just that much information is very helpful. We understand that you also know of the Great Mine. What else do you know about it beyond the legends of its existence, and that it's forbidden to the dwarves?" "I know that the great elves condemned it." "Both branches, I suppose." "Yes. Or all three, really. I also believe that generations ago, Moriquendarim bombarded it to seal the entrances, and that's why it's lost from the air." "I presume that could be cleared with sufficient labor?" "Yes, with sufficient labor, but it's something that any elves or dwarves would know to be a foolish act." "Presumably why they avoided dwarves." "But even then, you would think that both the dwarfs and the elves in particular would have left warnings that would have meant that at least the first people would have had to be knowingly disregarding warnings. I'm sure that they set their seals on it. Someone would have had to have broken them, and they will defend themselves within limits." * * * They decide to speak with Lord Davion to get the perspective of the great elves. They also send a scout voller at a very high altitude to pass over the Great Mine and observe with telescopes and a barrage of protective spells. Kit contacts her people to look for people trying to hire masons for this, to try to grab some of the recruiters. They also suspect that the ones who were killed after they were approached were ones who recognized what the Great Mine was and planned to report the contact to their guilds. Once Lord Davion joins them, they launch into a conversation. "We wanted to discuss a problem area that we think has developed that we know very little about. We understand that there is a place in the Western Barrier Mountains that the dwarves refer to as the Great Mine and prohibit approaching." "Indeed." "We believe that somebody, presumably the Enemy though we do not know that for sure, has been recruiting tens of thousands of humans to conduct an enormous mining operation." "The Great Mine was sealed by the House Moriquendarim, before which they bombarded it with a small battle group of voller men-of-war, and then sealed it with the Great Seal of Anatar." "Would this be before the dwarves mined there?" "No, no. The dwarves unleashed things within that mine. Those things slaughtered the dwarves, and what few of them could survive then fled. We were only aware of it because of the fresia deposits, but we simply marked it and ignored it. They explored it. It's a natural cyst but when you begin expanding the mines, it threatens the integrity of the entire structure, which is what Moriquendarim took advantage of when they sealed it. One of the two creatures they unleashed left, and was eventually dealt with by a man-of-war of House Curinirim carrying a mighty lord of that House. The Moriquendarim took slaves in that area, and the creature that remained in the Mine was taking whole villages and seeking to capture more. House Moriquendarim viewed that as a threat to their endeavors, and as they are the weakest of my people's houses, they decided to simply bombard the area and seal it within the Mine. Presumably that creature never left again. The villages stopped disappearing." "Unless they've started disappearing again. There are no settlements that survive in that area, and efforts to establish new settlements have failed entirely. We think the mining operation may have re-entered that area. The dwarves suggested that the creatures would kill human miners coming in, unless their masters reached some agreement with it. They believe the creatures to be balrogs." "Yes. But if the villages in the area are disappearing again, that suggests they did reach an agreement." "We also understand, or at least suspect, that the that the creatures were originally deliberately sealed with seals of orichalcum in the First Age." "I believe that may well have been done by the House of Curinirim, but I think there were more than two of them, and I think there may have been a greater evil there as well than the balrogs." "What would a greater evil than a fallen Maia be?" "I'm not a mage, as you know, but my understanding is that it was not only the host of the Maiar that had many defections, but also from among the regiment of the Valar themselves. And several balrogs would follow one of the greater Valar. The only of the greater Valar who remain known are in close service to Lord Morgoth. But we believe there are at least three: one encysted in the Borderlands near the Shadowlands on Zest'qua; one encysted in the Badlands on Khamista, and one that fell here on Drucien and is generally believed by my people to be sealed in the bottom of the cyst that became the Great Mine. I cannot speak to the veracity of this. The Princess might be able to." "A fallen Vala would be the on the order of a god, is that right?" "Certainly." "And having been encysted since the First Age, might it be willing to treat with the ancient Enemy with an offer, should it be reached?" "Yes, but you must understand: these Valar were the enemies of all that is on Aphonion. They wished to extinguish the Prime and start over, the three of them. They were even enemies unto Lord Morgoth himself. As I said, all those that are known remain in close servitude to him. These did not accept lordship from anyone." "Are these related to the entities that ember is related to?" "They are not made of ember, but they are related. Yes, yes. Even I do not speak lightly of ember, or of these three who are nameless to us. It is forbidden. We had warned the dwarven folk before they began, that we believed that area to be dangerous. To be fair, that warning was from the Queen of Singing Leaves. But we could not seem to get through their greed, and we counted ourselves lucky when all that they released were two of the balrogs. That is why Moriquendarim sealed that with the Great Seal of Anatar. It should have kept it from anything." "Apparently not. What kind of power would it take to break that seal?" "It is more sensible to ask, how long ago did Anatar start to be weakened?" "Is Anatar one of the Valar that serve Morgroth?" "No, no! But his power should be greater than any mortal could break. He ascended from beneath, as some of our people did. However, they began to drain his strength before he knew it. They might have begun by draining the seal for some time, for it partakes directly of his power." "They might even have set out to do that as as part of the goal," observes Alistair. "Yes, if they've been following that plan for a hundred years like they have everything else, then that may have been a step in their plan to absorb Anatar. If they free one of the three fallen Valar, and this is the only one I can conceptualize them being able to reach--they have several possibilities. On the one hand, they might form an alliance with it. On the other hand, it might create enormous difficulties for all of us while pursuing somewhat similar goals. And on the third hand, there master might simply consume it and grow in power." "The second one seems most likely because even if we succeed at defeating it, then we've just turned our attention towards it for a very long time and away from our other enemies, and if we don't succeed in defeating it, then it achieves the same goal that our enemies wanted to." "Exactly." "I think we need to speak with Princess Curinirim about this, if that may have been her house's seals." "I'm sorry that I could not give you better news." "At least we think we now understand something about what is going on. We were contemplating sending a scout voller at high altitude, with protections, to try to observe the area physically. Does that seem useful?" "It will show you if they have developed buildings outside. It will show you if the mine mouth is open. It will show you things of value, but be sure that they are at high altitude. I do not believe there is anything they possess that can reach high altitude at this time. Note that almost nothing will pass through a field of fresia, so any thing that they have in the Great Mine will be undetectable. But you would be able to see surface works. It should be able to confirm, for example, whether the mine has been reopened, and if there are settlements nearby that are providing supplies." "Which would be an easier target, both for getting information from the supply chain and cutting off the supply chain." "Would Lolthian Drow be similarly unwilling to work in this area?" "They've been avoiding it for years. As much as they wish fresia, there are other deposits that are substantially less dangerous. You should also be aware: None of those who have worked in this mind should have children. You know this? A member of Goldurim could explain this better than I can, but it alters the offspring. Females generally become incapable, but if it is the male progenitor, it causes changes." "They're systematically seeking to send men in." "Oh, so another way they win," comments Kit. "If the miners survive and go out, then their children will be corrupted." "Correct." "Is it corrupted? Is it just made weak?" "Have you heard of the Brown Lands?" "Remind me." "It is a section of the Empire of Masque that they restrain the inhabitants of through the use of several of their legions. The level of mutation and of corruption among the children born in the Brown Lands and in Yar, which is associated with them, approaches 100%. It's the reason for the masking. They mask so that those who have been mutated but retain their humanity, their alterations will not be noticed and preyed upon by those who were pure of blood and pure of appearance. Therefore, the entire culture masks, except the unmasked, who are the lowest and among the unmasked here and there you will see the mutations. But among those that cannot leave the Brown Lands, the mutations are much worse. They affect the mind, they affect morality, they affect everything, and of course the stability. That is one of the reasons that the largest female order in Masque, the Order of the Spider, is one of the orders that guards the walls to restrain the hordes of the Brown Lands: because they're an ever-virgin order." "And the Brown Lands were caused by a fresia explosion." "Correct, fresia is very dangerous in its own right, except to the Drow, and there's an argument made among my people that the Lolthian Drow have already been altered by the fresia. Within themselves, the cadet houses are not immune. It could be a gift of Lolth, I suppose." "Right. So all of those poor people now must never father children. We need to talk to the Reverend Mother of Gunora, because we know there are halflings among them, and that particular aspect is an even deeper offense against halflings." "I wonder whether they might be able to cure that." "I would hope, but honestly, before curing, we need to prevent families." "Oh! And they set up another plot, because if a man is having fertility problems, who would he turn to?" "But thus far, we haven't had any reports of anyone actually returning. They were told by the recruiters that they would be gone for a number of years, and they were given significant earnest money to give to their spouses and children and were told how much they would receive upon their return, which was also from what we've been able to gather a significant amount." * * * The duty psion does the usual connection to Princess Curinirim, and they appear ethereally in a room full of crystal musical instruments. She waives a hand, and all the crystal instruments stop playing. "Your Majesty." "Your Highness, we have very troubling tidings, and we hope that you might be able to provide us some more information about what we should be aware of. We believe that someone, presumably the Eldritch Enemy, though we do not know this for certain, is gathering tens of thousands of human and halfling craftsmen to excavate the Great Mine." "Truly? I haven't had an overflight of that area in some time." "We have just sent one of our vollers to do a high-altitude overflight. Of course, we cannot scry on it in any of the normal ways." "It has a heavy fresia deposit there." "Exactly. We're concerned that with Anatar's present discomfort, it is possible that they could have broken the seal. We are concerned that they may be seeking to break the older seals from the First Age that might still be there." "It's insane. The dwarves broke two of the lesser seals and released two of the host of the balrogs. You believe that they hope to open the seal to the nameless Vala? Do they have any idea what they're unleashing?" "Yes, that's the bad thing. They know exactly what they're unleashing. We presume that they have some form of agreement with the remaining balrog." "Probably. They can offer it an agreement that it will obey, and it can show them the way to the seals and a route to attempt to release a Vala who respected neither the Creator nor his Brother, who will wreak havoc on the land about, or who, if they can find some agreement which it will follow for a period of time, will only wait for the expiration and go about its purposes. One of its first purposes will be to free its siblings. It is good that you have told me this. I wish that I could promise a more robust help than I can. We will stage our efforts from your tower, with your permission." "By all means." "Expect my man of war to join you in three days. Even if this is not the Eldritch Enemy, this is clearly a matter that concerns us all. If it is not the enemy, it is utterly insane. With the Eldritch Enemy, I can see one possible ambition for this thing, if the enemy in question is the One Other: to consume it to add to his power. He's already determined that he can never get in power beyond the two elven gods without the other two. He's also determined that if they are here, they will only destroy another plane and move on, while he believes he can live here indefinitely by simply siphoning the energy of all living beings off slowly, which, in some ways, is more dire than if he sought to consume us all rapidly. If he could consume a Vala or two or three, he could ascend to a point where he is more powerful than any of the other human gods." "Might the more nihilistic demons not be interested in a similar goal to the fallen Vala?" "Yes, they would certainly have a similar goal. Yes, yes, so it could be them, I suppose. But it is certainly not the two that are still locked out, for it would do them no good, and I also think that their star is fading. Interesting. His star, blue though it may be, is growing. Perhaps he outsmarted them through all the endless ages, and this will all be his, and he knew that they'd be locked out to starve, while he gorges himself on energy for the rest of eternity. I'm sorry. That is a dire pronouncement. "My man of war will join you. My general will be with it, and some of my Shadow Elves. We expect no hospitality that we do not pay, for we know that your kingdom is strapped with its growth in the Southlands and elsewhere. Your stability is essential to your wife's future, therefore permit my general to pay for the supplies he needs. He will carry my purse. Do you have anywhere his lesser men can revel?" "Yes." "Then permit him to pay them to revel. Then I will send a scout in the direction of the Uncommitted under a banner of truce to discuss this with them as well. It is of great interest to all of the old elves." "We will, of course, need to reach out to certain other elven peoples. It also matters to them." "I understand. I will, with your permission, notify Lord Moriquendarim, simply to make his day longer and harder than it already is." "As you see fit. We will also work to coordinate with your general, and with any other elves that may take an interest to avoid any unfortunate proximity." "We trust you with this. You have managed to avoid collisions between the Singing Leaves and the House of Aufaulgautharim." "And while we would ordinarily insist that no payment was necessary for allies coordinating with us on a military operation that serves all of our needs, we will nonetheless honor your request and allow you to pay as you see fit." "Thank you, Your Majesty, and thank you for this heads up. I had not looked in that direction. One cannot look everywhere." "We fear that we came to this more slowly than we should have. I will also take it upon ourselves to contact the Hastur to warn them that there may be a similar effort in the area that is under their supervision." "Excellent." "Who would guard the Badlands on Khamista?" "Generally, no one. You might wish to speak to, ahem, Her." "Her? I don't take your meaning, Your Highness." She looks helplessly around the chamber and repeats, "Her. You know, Her." As the vision fades, she turns to her crystal instruments and says, "The concert is over for now. As soon as the catastrophe is averted." They see her walking out of the chamber. Sometime later, Alistair realizes, with a certain sense of amusement, that Princess Curinirim was referring to Whimsey, but did not dare to say her name. [End Session 147] [/QUOTE]
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Aphonion Tales: The Archducal Council -- Unedited notes; later posts are edited transcripts (posts MWF, update 3/1/23)
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