NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DoctorB" data-source="post: 278396" data-attributes="member: 903">A Tolnan RitualIt was night when the Tolnan patrol caught them.  For three days, Hevian had led the Champions around the battle lines and into Tolna.  The brooding trees seemed to give up an arrow, which bounced off Joy’s armor.  As the Champions prepared for battle, Hevian ran out to stop the fighting.  He demanded to see the Aina, the wood elven queen.  After several minutes of discussion, the patrol leader agreed to take them to the nearest of the Maragil, the clan of leaders.After hours of walking into the deep night, the Champions found themselves in a clearing facing an elven woman wearing no armor, but with a star shaped earring.  She called herself Iluve and insisted that she could speak for the Queen on the intruders.  Hevian argued fervently for allowing the Champions in to try and heal the Heart Oak, but Iluve would hear nothing of it.“They may leave in peace.  I will grant them this much,” she said.  “But if they stay, their lives will be forfeit.  You are fortunate that elves do not harm their own, Hevian, for it was a foolish thing to bring them here.”Hevian sighed as though he expected this outcome.“Then I will undertake the Ritual of Adoption,” he declared.“Nothing like this has been done in hundreds of turnings!” Iluve objected, but she seemed unable to refuse Hevian’s demand.  Resigned, she subtly signaled with her hand and a score of wood elves appeared out of the forest.  Even Liana had failed to notice that so many were close.Iluve seated the Champions in a circle around Hevian, with the Tolnan rangers surrounding them.  All of them carried bows on their backs and stone knives at their sides.Hevian raised his voice to a chanting shout as he lifted his hands to the canopy of trees.  The flowing elven words seemed rough as he spoke them.“I take the otherness of these people onto myself,” he chanted.  “Let my blood be their blood for one turning of the seasons.”He then turned to Cobbe.“I take your strangeness to myself.  My blood is now your blood for one turning of the seasons.”With each of the Champions he repeated the phrase, facing each in turn.  When he had finished he cried out.“Now my blood flows in their veins.  No longer are they strangers, but of the People!”As his words echoed through the clearing, the waiting Tolnan rangers rose as one, drawing their daggers.  Rushing past the shocked party, they savagely stabbed Hevian to death.  This was no cold ritual killing, but the death of a hated enemy.  They stabbed him again and again, even when he was clearly already dead.Joy hoped to save Hevian’s body so he could be raised, but finally Cobbe and the others helped burn him in the clearing. Numb with surprise at the death of their guide, they sat and waited.Iluve calmly approached them.“I will take you to the Aina,” she said.</blockquote>

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