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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JollyDoc" data-source="post: 1495445" data-attributes="member: 9546">Well, welcome one and all to our all of our readers abroad!  I love being multi-national!  And now, as promised...INTERLUDE:Dalthon Spellmason watched in stunned silence as the massive form of the giant half-dragon plummeted to the ground barely twenty feet from him.  The impact made a second, smaller crater next to the gigantic one formed by the Fane.  Dalthon shook his head in disbelief.  These were they people he was supposed to save?  What could they possibly need saving from?  Still, one could not question fate, especially when it came literally knocking on your door in the middle of the night…______________________________________________________Dalthon had been working late in his library, researching a new spell to aid in the restoration of the basalt bastions, the mighty fortifications built over three centuries ago by his ancestor, Surabar Spellmason.  Unexpectedly, there came a light tapping at his front door.  At first Dalthon dismissed it as his imagination.  After all, who in Redgorge would be coming to see him at this hour?  True, the members of the inner circle of the Chisel had been pressing him even more than usual of late to join their little club, but he didn’t think even they would have the audacity to intrude upon him at all hours.  When the tapping continued, he sighed and angrily pushed himself away from his desk.  Throwing open the door, he was fully prepared to unleash a chain of expletives on the rude individual on the other side, but he suddenly found himself at a loss for words.  Standing on the step was the most beautiful woman Dalthon had ever seen, though he wasn’t entirely sure if she was actually a woman.  For one thing, her skin had a bluish tint to it, and for another, the large pair of white, feathery wings sprouting from her back certainly marked her as other-wordly.  She radiated a soft, golden light, and the sorcerer could practically feel the aura of holiness about her.  He quickly fell to one knee before this angelic being, sure that his time had come, and that he was being summoned to the after-life.  “Rise,” the woman’s melodic voice gently commanded.  “You have nothing to fear from me.  Do you know me, Dalthon Spellmason?”“N…n…no my lady,” Dalthon stammered, struggling to meet her gaze.“I am called Nidrama by the people of this region.  Do you know me now?”Dalthon had of course heard legends of the guardian angel of the land, but he had dismissed the stories as tales for children.  But now he stood face-to-face with that legend.  “How may I serve, my lady?”“You are known to me as well,” Nidrama said.  “After all…blood calls to blood.”Dalthon’s mouth dropped open, and he gasped involuntarily.“You know the words I speak are true,” Nidrama continued, “You have sensed the spark of the celestial in you for many years now.  You have always known that you stood apart.  I knew your ancestral grandsire, Surabar…knew him, and loved him.  Alas, our love was not meant to last.  It has always been a fault in my kind that we find ourselves to entwined with the fate of our charges.  Sometimes our best judgment is overcome.  So it was with Surabar and I.  For a time, we knew happiness and joy.  I bore him a son, but alas time is fleeting for mortals, and so it was for Surabar.  His time passed, and that of my son as well, but my line has lived on, and you are the last of it.  So I come to you now to remind you of duty to family.  Hear me well.  A fortnight hence, a star shall fall, but a star unlike any seen before.  It will come to earth west of here and west of Cauldron.  Great evil shall surround its arrival, and many innocents will die.  Many more will perish if the evil carried within the star spreads across the land.  There are those who will journey to stop this from happening.  They do not realize it yet, but their role in the future of this land, and perhaps the entire world, is vital.  You shall go to them, Dalthon…my son.  You will aid them in whatever manner they require, and travel as one of them.  This do in my name.  There is one among them especially that you must watch over, for upon him rests a great doom.  He is called Caine, and though he personally affronts me, you will serve him as my emissary.”_____________________________________________________The star had fallen, exactly as Nidrama had said, and Redgorge had felt its destruction even from a distance of almost fifty miles.  Dalthon had traveled to ground zero, and had witnessed the devastation and suffering.  Finally, he had reached the crater, just as the climactic battle high above had ended.  Now he stood, witness to the power of these people Nidrama had entrusted to him, and he couldn’t help but wonder…why me?</blockquote>

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