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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Altalazar" data-source="post: 3976684" data-attributes="member: 939">Book XXVII – A Book of Future Historical Importance    Baron Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Ninety-Five – The King’s Ire    A small voice filled my head, urgent and familiar.  “Cordozo, my uncle is really, really mad!” it said.  “He will be calling you any minute!”      As I contemplated that, I then heard another voice, this one not mental, but magic, sent to me by a royal spell.  “The King wants you here NOW!”  was all it said.  I presumed “here” was the capitol.  While the message was urgent, I decided some caution was called for.  I contacted my companions and prepared to depart.      I tried to contact Skylar.  She was not available.  Apparently she was paranoid enough after the dream incident to have Tuvstarr mindblank her.  No matter.  I sent my mind out to the city at large and found one of my followers was walking nearby Tuvstarr’s library.  Bettran.  I sent him to contact Tuvstarr and determine what was going on.      By now, the small voice contacted me again and told me, in response to my query as to what was wrong, “I don’t know, something the worm said made him real mad.”      “Worm?” I asked.    “Dragon.” She said.    “What dragon?  What is his or her name?  What is its color?  Metal?”    “Her name is Melves.  She is Grey, not metallic.”      I figured as “Dragonslayers” it would be prudent to know if a Grey was good or evil.  And if it was possibly influencing the king, not in a good way.  Bettran’s voice interrupted my train of thought at this point.      “Baron, I have reached the library.”      “Ask Tuvstarr about Grey dragons, specifically, about one named Melves.”      “Yes, my Baron.”  Then a pause.  “Skylar says that Tuvstarr is not here.”  She’s probably with the King already, I thought.  “Ask Skylar to see if she can answer that, then.”  “Yes, my Baron.”  Then another pause.  “Skylar says she will ‘look it up.’”  By now, my companions had either joined me or had already transported (by their golem warhorses) to the Capitol.  I decided I had figured out as much as I was going to on short notice, so I took Larch and Nin by the hand and we all joined together in the waiting room of the great castle.  I was unsurprised to see Tuvstarr and Posiedon already there.  Apparently our station truly is elevated.  We only waited five minutes for an audience.  Though we heard plenty of shouts from the king, including sputtering commentary such as “Just because he’s a king doesn’t mean he can . . . he can . . . behave like this” and other equally irate snippits, when we actually saw the King’s face, he was calm, with just a hint of red in his cheeks.  He then spoke his piece.  Baron Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Ninety-Six – A Library Looting“There is a library at a school called Westphalen,” the King began.  “It is located in a small town on the outskirts of the northwestern reaches of the kingdom known as Withers.”  I silently noted to myself that this was one of the smaller communities, one that currently lacked a Cordozo presence.  That would soon be remedied.  The King continued.  “Stop them from looting it!” he shouted.  “Utterly destroy them!  Get back as soon as you can.”  I noticed that as he said this, the number of guards in the halls increased, more than double what it usually was.  I noticed guards in places usually left empty.  The King was obviously greatly disturbed.  The King continued.  “This should not be happening!” he said.  “If the library is looted, all of humanoid kind gets destroyed!”  So, I thought to myself.  Either the King is crazy or the world is about to end.  Either possibility did not leave me with a warm feeling in the pit of my noble stomach.  The King was rather insistent about us leaving right then, so Tuvstarr and myself transported all 12 of us to Withers.  Baron Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Ninety-Seven – Burning Books, Crying TuvstarrThe village was a small one.  Twenty buildings, if that.  The school probably was the only thing of note in the entire place.  I immediately set out to make it twenty-one buildings.  I summoned forth an “establishment team” of my followers, two dozen in all, to began preparations for building an inn here and establishing a presence.  Obviously, this town, small though it is, is of some importance.  As my followers arrived from the teleportation platform, I surveyed the scene.  The library of the school was on fire.  It was surrounded by several dozen blue “eggs” of unknown origin.  As we watched, another blue “egg” descended from above.  A door opened in its side and some creatures streamed out of it into the library.  We quickly closed the distance.  As we ran toward the flames, Tuvstarr began an interesting monologue about how the eggs must be from the “Great Beast,” a creature that studies the universe “at large.”  At times she spoke so fast, it was hard to keep up with what she was saying, but it was clear that she was excited even as she was also horrified to see a library on fire.  I distracted her by asking her about grey dragons.  Her long, rambling reply eventually included the magic words, “they are usually good,” which reassured me, at least for the time.  When we reached the entrance to the library, we found two guards with crossed glaives blocking the way.  Apparently they were not the normal guards for the library.  They were covered from head to toe in strange leather armor with silver runes covering every surface.  They even had masks with runes covering their faces.  As we tried to enter, they blocked our way.  “Move along, move along.  Nothing to see here,” they said in unison.  “Step aside, we have business in here,” Tuvstarr told them insistently, the fire reflected in her eyes.  The glaives burst into flame.  “You have no business here.”“Move aside in the name of the King,” I told them, “Our authority is his authority, and you must obey.”  “We recognize no authority,” was their only reply.  That was all that I needed.  Clearly, they were now in violation of several statutes, including the primary statute that required all to obey us as agents of the king.  Thus established as not the legitimate staff of the library, combined with our status as King’s agents, combined with the King’s specific orders to “annihilate them” that were looting the library made it my carefully considered legal opinion that we were fully within our authority to beat these two guards like red-headed step children.  And so it began.  Baron Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Ninety-Eight – We Put Out the Guards, then the FireAs we approached the door, one of the guards made three swipes of his glaive against Morwen while the other sent three against Ee.  None connected with Morwen, but Ee was hurt slightly.  Tuvstarr was urging that we keep them alive so we could question them.  I decided to help in that regard by turning the minds of one of them inwards into a closed loop, cutting his perception off from the world, making him inert.  Unfortuantely, it was soon moot, between Nimue’s lightning bolt, Ee’s axe, and Posiedon’s large fists (he had made himself a mountain troll yet again) soon had the guard a bloody pulp upon the ground.  Ironically, the other guard survived because Morwen and Tuvstarr only subdued him.  Not stopping to examine their bodies (or their possessions) we pressed onward.  Not wishing to leave anything behind, I summoned some of my followers to take care of the bodies (and their possessions) while we entered the burning library.  Inside, we found an empty foyer.  Smoke poured in from under the door to our right.  Not wishing to see Tuvstarr cry any further, I felt deep down inside my mind for an alternate reality, one where everything was the same, but the flames were snuffed out.  Fortunately, I only had to bend, not totally alter, reality, or I would have been severely weakened.  The flames out, we explored the smoking room, finding nothing of interest.  Either the books there were gone or there were never any to begin with.  We quickly headed forward, to the main door of the foyer.  Through that, we saw a wondrous sight.  From floor to ceiling, in many cramped rows of shelves, we saw books.  Books were crammed into every last available space.  There were so many books it defied counting them.  I pulled out an embroidered silk hankerchief and handed it to Tuvstarr.  She took it and absentmindedly wiped her chin free of the drool that was pooling there.  I politely declined her offer to return the now drool-soaked hankerchief back.  I diplomatically offered that she may have further need of it given all of the books here.  Something else we saw in the room was a man in full plate armor, three others dressed in strange hardened, black armor, and a Beblith.  It was apparent that they could not see us, courtesy of a blinding brilliance that Tuvstarr had brought forth on herself just moments before we opened the door.  Apparently those not of sufficiently pure heart cannot see beyond its blinding light.  And the light extends very far.  Guessing that the Beblith was summoned, rather than native, I dispelled it, sending it back to the foul plane where it spawned.  Morwen plunged into the room and then plunged her rapier into the hearts of several of the creatures in the room.  Tuvstarr chained a bolt of lightning through all of them.  Nin moved next to the man in plate armor, his chains ready.  The man began to voice an incantation, asking for a miracle.  Alas, his prayer went unanswered as Nin smashed the man’s mouth with his chain, ending his invocation before the final words could be uttered.  The man’s miracle denied, he and the others remained blind, allowing us to make short work of them.  We continued to explore beyond the room, finding a spiral staircase leading up to the rear and many more doors to either side.  I had my followers continue their clean-up work behind us, taking care of these new bodies.      Tuvstarr and Morwen insisted on going right up the stairs.  Ee and Nin lingered.  I talked briefly to an old man we found hiding in a study.  His name was Professor Barrymore.  He did not seem to trust us, but after I talked to him and soothed him, he was quite happy to see us.  I offered to return him to the Capitol, but not immediately.  He seemed eager to go.  I sent him to the care of my followers while we continued our search of the building.      Baron Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Ninety-Nine – Stairs up to Praxis Tome?    On the top floor, skipping a floor with doors, we found a large classroom occupied by Beaulabre, apparently the chief scholar of the school.  He explained that the intruders were looking for a single book, something called the Praxis Tome.  As he described it, the book was a non-magical book, probably the most important non-magical book ever.      “It could change the course of human history,” he said.      “How so,” asked Tuvstarr, enthralled at the concept of such a book.    “It could inspire an entire generation of scholars and philosophers,” he said.      To myself, I wondered why, if the book was so wonderful, and non-magical to boot, there weren’t already many copies of it floating around.  To me, a book can only change the world if people know about it and read it.  Otherwise it is just a pile of dead-trees.  Moreover, if it was so wonderful, why hadn’t anyone heard of it.  I was rather skeptical of the whole thing.  I did believe, however, that the invaders thought this book was important.  Given that, we would have to find it.  The old man was not much help.      “We don’t have that book and I have no idea where it is,” he said.      It is good we left at least one alive to question, then.  Perhaps we can find out from him where they would look for this tome next, and meet them there.  But first we had the rest of the library to explore.</blockquote>

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