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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Velenne" data-source="post: 984131" data-attributes="member: 1856">El’Duran sat blindly in his ‘cell’ trying desperately to hold onto his sanity.  He had only been imprisoned four times in his extensive life.  The first was in Elinday, capitol of the Twilight Elven kingdom before the Fiend Wars.  His father had paid for his freedom then.  Soon after he forsook his inheritance and become a freedom fighter.  During the Wars, he was nearly sent to the Abyss as part of demonic ritual before his friends set him free.  Soon after the Magelords came to power, he had been in Dal Iridum when he attempted to barter illegal weapons to a disguised agent of the magocracy.  He should have known better, being in the capitol of Illusion.  But back then, the mages weren’t nearly as efficient as they had become now.  His escape had been child’s play.It seemed they had acquired quite a proficiency at imprisonment since that time.  In Northope, he had been suspended in a frigid substance.  It seemed to him as if he had been put in and subsequently pulled back out.  An unpleasant baptism, to be sure.  He picked up Lupinas’ voice from behind his blindfold, “Things have been more complicated than you can understand, Maturis.  This is truly for your own good.”That had been an indeterminable amount of time ago.  Days?  Weeks?  A month?  He recognized the teleportation, could smell the sea salt and hear the gentle crashing of waves before he was plunged into utter sense deprivation.He had determined his cell to be ten steps on each side.  The walls, if they could be called such, were pure black and did not echo any noise.  His darkvision was worthless as he could make out no corners.  At first he had struggled to escape but whatever magic they used to hold him was beyond his ken.  Then he tried music, physical exertion, and now he resorted to dreams.  His meditation was vivid and in it he tried to remember all that had happened.The meeting had gone horribly wrong.  The ‘Honor Guard’ Bythius had supposedly been assigned was some sort of strike force.  The tiefling had appeared in the tree next to him and struck hard.  He remembered calling out a warning, but little else as a massive hand reached up and snapped off the limb he had perched on.  The titanotrope was massive, dwarfing the tree itself.  El’Duran hesitated and the creature made him pay by sweeping the tree limb across his chin.  The world spun, his stomach jumped into his mouth, he remembered stumbling off of some ridge and falling.  The creature must have thought him dead.  He somehow survived the fall and had enough wits to disappear again.  After some time, he ascended the ridge and saw the cabin lying in ruins.  A cautious search revealed only a small tooth.  He had no clue whom it belonged to, maybe one of the assailants, maybe Bythius, maybe one of his friends.  If it was the latter, he could find a way to bring them back.He trekked overland directly for Northope where Frazner would be waiting.  During the trip he tended his wounds as best he could but the strain of such travel did nothing for his broken jaw.The appointed time came and Frazner was true to his word- somewhat.  He appeared alone, and after a brief parlay began a dazzling assault on El’Duran’s weakened form.  The Night Elf’s natural resistances saved him only so long.  He tried to flee, but Lupinas followed him from the air, taunting him in his mind.  At last, one of the spells broke though and he lie in the dirt utterly defeated.The roof of his cell brightened suddenly.  El’Duran looked up but it was only the Keeper of Questions.  The fool-dressed man spoke into his mind as he was want to do,“Are you hungry?”He was, he had to admit it.  But for more than food, he was hungry for anything that would stimulate his mind and senses.  The Keeper merely tossed down a bowl of stew that bounced off the unseen floor and spilled into a corner.  “Would you like to answer more questions?  More about this mythal?  More about this past?”“No,” El’Duran replied curtly.  He could resist only so long.  Each day the size of the meal grew smaller and smaller.  He had grown used to the stench of his waste but threatened to wretch at the thought that it may be the only food he had left before long.“Would you rather I took them from your mind, little fool?  How could you be so weak, so ineffective?  Do you know what the others do to defy me?  How much longer do you think you will last?”In response, the Night Elf crossed to the other corner and began picking up chunks of beef from the spilled soup off the floor.  When the Keeper of Questions had gone, he found himself licking up the broth.  Some prisoners starved themselves as an act of defiance, or to protect them from what they believed was poison.  Well, even if it was poison, El’Duran needed to eat while he could.  He still had his hope, though now it was a fleeting thing.  As he licked his fingers on one hand and rubbed his smooth, aching skull with the other, he wondered, How much longer, Sallinan?  Had you ever seen such hopelessness as this when you said ‘Hope is the poor man’s shining gold’?</blockquote>

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