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="JollyDoc" data-source="post: 1959991" data-attributes="member: 9546">INTERLUDE:  STRANGERS IN STRANGE LANDSIkon Daywalker arrived in Cauldron at the worst possible time.  It seemed that the entire city was literally going to Hell in a hand basket.  He had passed a refugee camp full of evacuees on the way up the main road and had been told that the volcano had become active the day before and was in danger of imminent eruption.  The big warrior shook his head.  Why should the end of his journey be any easier than the beginning?______________________________________________Ikon was adopted as an infant by a high clerist of Kelemvor named Caderon Daywalker.  The priest had stumbled upon the babe during an assault on a rival temple of Umberlee, saving the newborn from sacrifice by the priestesses of the Queen of the Deeps.  Caderon had not immediately known what race the infant came from, but he was obviously not human.  His skin was the color of stone, and tough like leather, and his entire body was hairless.  Nevertheless, Caderon knew that the child was now his responsibility, and he took him to raise with his own family.Young Ikon grew to monstrous proportions in a very short time.  He quickly outsized his adoptive older brother, Kylon, while they were still in their early teens.  Caderon started knighthood training for the two boys at about this same time.  Kylon took to the discipline with ease, and understood the chivalric code as if he’d been born to it.  Ikon was not a quick learner, and he would inevitably resort to brute strength rather than tactics.  While he understood the concept of fair play, he was never quite convinced that an enemy should be given this courtesy.  In fact, Ikon’s idea of a warning shot was to aim for his opponent’s thigh rather than his heart.  After completing his training in arms and combat, Ikon took to wandering the countryside, pitting his skills against any challengers.  One day, while stalking a large elk in the high mountain passes, he came across a hidden cave.  Inside, he was astonished to discover an unconscious being that looked remarkably similar to himself.  As he worked at freeing the creature from the chains that bound him, he was surprised by the arrival of the hill giant occupant of the cave.  Ikon made short work of the brute, and then freed his captive.  The creature was equally amazed at seeing Ikon, and even more so when he discovered the warrior knew nothing of his race or his origins.  As it turned out, Ike was a goliath, a race of mountain dwelling giant-cousins.  However, the goliaths and the giants were bitter enemies, due to the fact that the latter frequently made slaves of the former.  Ike returned with the rescued goliath to his home clan, and there was immersed in the full culture of his people.  In time, he was given a goliath name, Ganguokia Elaoinlimu, and was trained as a goliath liberator, a warrior adept in the arts of battling giants in order to free his captured brethren.Years passed, and Ike divided his time among his adoptive people, and his blood kin.  His brother Kylon fully embraced the teachings of the church of Kelemvor as a holy paladin, and left home to pursue his duties to his religion.  Then, a day came when Caderon lay on his deathbed.  As his last testament, he left his lands in Ike’s care, but willed his holy sword to Kylon.  His final request was that Ike find his brother and deliver the sword.  Ike did not hesitate in undertaking the journey, and his quest ultimately led him to the Turmish, and the city of Alaghon.  There, however, he was given more tragic news.  It seemed that Kylon had been sent to a small, frontier town called Cauldron.  The local church of Kelemvor there had become corrupt, and the older Daywalker was assigned to set matters straight.  Sadly, the paladin was killed in the line of duty, and his remains were interred in the church, whose evil had been rooted out by Kylon and a group of allies called the Bright Axes.  Once again, Ike knew his own duty.  Guessing his father’s wishes, he left the holy sword in the care of the temple, but resolved to go to Cauldron and retrieve his brother, so that he might take him home, and there lay him to rest with his father.And now here he was, at the end of his road, only to discover that the city was about to be consumed by a volcano.  A local priestess of Tyr seemed to be in charge of the evacuation, and she told Ike that another threat had struck the city just this morning.  A dragon had attacked, and the Bright Axes had been dispatched to deal with it.  The battle had carried over back into the abandoned town, and the adventurers had yet to be heard from.  Ike thanked the priestess, and said he would go on to Cauldron and lend what aid he could.  He had no difficulty finding the site of the conflict, since a huge, dead dragon was a hard thing to miss, but he saw no sign of the Bright Axes.  He was just about to continue his search, when beneath his feet, a brilliant portal of multicolored energy opened…_______________________________________________________Houshang stood in zulkir Trelame’s study, eager for the opportunity this meeting presented, yet at the same time wary of the danger involved.  The head of the Conjuration school was a difficult man to read.  He was known for being secretive and guarded, and his motivations were never what they seemed.  Houshang was an up and coming member of the academy, having reached his status as Red Wizard a full three years before his contemporaries, and now recently attaining the coveted title of Archmage.  And here he was, summoned before the most powerful zulkir in the academy.The memory began to fade from the confused mage’s mind, as most of his thoughts did these days.  Only fleeting reminiscences of a life dimly remembered.  He recalled zulkir Trelame telling him of an ancient artifact called the Blade of Fiery Might, and how a warlord on the battle plane of Acheron was laboring to reforge it.  The warlord, Imperagon by name, had gone so far as to abduct the souls of some of the greatest smiths in history to aid him in his undertaking.  The Red Wizards, Trelame had informed him, were very interested in this artifact.  They wanted Imperagon to complete his work on it, but did not want to see it put to use by him.  Houshang was to journey to Acheron and retrieve the blade, and return it to Thay.  At the time, Houshang had instantly understood the duel nature of this quest.  On the one hand, it was an honor that he could not refuse, to undertake such a prestigious mission.  If he should succeed, his esteem and power would increase considerably.  On the other, it was a quest Trelame knew he had no hope of completing, and in assigning it, the zulkir would be ridding himself of a potential rival.  Houshang had been well and truly trapped.Again, the memory faded.  Now Houshang vaguely recalled his arrival on the battle plane.  The Plane Shift had brought him to Avalas, the first layer of Acheron.  Once there, he had planned to teleport to Kolyoral, the supposed location of Imperagon’s iron fortress.  However, he quickly discovered that such travel was somehow blocked on that particular cube, and so he had to resort to more mundane means of travel, namely flying, to reach Imperagon’s domain.  Kolyoral itself was huge, a metal cube nearly one hundred miles on a side.  It was going to take Houshang days to find the iron fortress…and the cube was not uninhabited.  Though free from the endless battles that plagued other cube worlds on the battle plains, Kolyoral was still home to many diverse groups of creatures.  It was Houshang’s misfortune to stumble across one such group…formians.  The intelligent, ant-like creatures were not native to Acheron.  Their home plane was the clockwork realm of Mechanus, but they frequently brought their hive enclaves to other planes in attempts to colonize.  When Houshang came upon this colony on Kolyoral, he sought to use his great magical power to ‘convince’ the formians to aid him in his quest.  It was his thought that with a small army behind him, he might actually have a chance to succeed in his suicide mission.  But he underestimated his supposed slaves.  The formians were no stranger to the concept of slavery and thralldom themselves, and they often utilized ‘lesser’ creatures to do their manual work for them.  The myrmarchs of the formians were specially bred to be able to control the minds of other creatures, and when Houshang encountered his first group of them, their combined mental powers quickly overwhelmed him.  The great Red Wizard and Archmage came under the influence of the myrmarchs, and all memory of his origins and his mission began to fade…more and more each day.</blockquote>

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