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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Urko" data-source="post: 2233700" data-attributes="member: 30822">Aldinis’ Tale (Eff Flat, Erin, Sanae, Xavier)When Xavier and Sanae become almost threatening in their negative reactions, Aldinis throws the cloth over the crystalline object. The unnatural light fades and the strange emotions it evoked diminish, but do not disappear entirely. ”A very...unusual effect, wouldn’t you say?” Sanae peers at it with the sight granted her by the Silver Flame. She detects no evil, but, more disturbingly, she cannot sense it at all; it's as if it isn't there.Aldinis wraps the object up completely and pushes it back into the tube. All of you feel a return to normalcy when she replaces the lid. ”I apologize for upsetting you. Perhaps I should have warned you what to expect. But the scholar in me wanted to see your reactions.”“I found this in Xen’drik, at the site of an ancient battle. The devastation of the place was unimaginable – barely one stone stood on top of another. And yet this seemingly fragile object was intact, unscathed – except that its odd shape seems to imply that it is not. There must be another half.” She smiles and pulls a small journal, stuffed with loose sheets of paper, from a pocket.“This is going to be a bit of a disjointed story, I’m afraid.  Rather the nature of the Prophecy.”  She sighs and looks momentarily weary.  ”Anyway, when I found this, I was affected as you were. Still am, but it becomes more...manageable with repeated exposure. The case it’s in has a thin layer of lead, which seems to block its power entirely.“I knew at once it was an object of immense power. Such a thing should have created a ripple within the Prophecy – some trail that I could track to understand its nature and purpose.”  She absently thumbs through the journal.  ”You may imagine that as a scholar my research is done in libraries, but the Prophecy is not written in dusty books or crumbling scrolls. It is written in the heavens, in the movements of the stars and moons. It is written in the land, in the slow ebb and flow of rivers and mountains. It is written in life itself, in our interactions with each other.”  Aldinis trails off with a laugh.  ”I’m sorry, I’m digressing and telling you more than you need to know. I think I missed my calling as a lecturer at the Library of Korranberg. I’ll try to be brief and come to the point. With careful observation and the help of a diviner, I figured out that this object has a ‘pull’ to a certain place. Somewhere in the jungles of Q’Barra. With that as a clue, I looked for portions of the Prophecy dealing with that region.”“When I said the Prophecy isn’t written, that was a bit of an overstatement. Portions of it have been written down, mostly by the dragons of Argonnessen. But the Prophecy is difficult to translate into words – our languages, even the dragons’ language, are too imprecise. The results are usually hard to understand until after the events they describe have already come to pass.”She pulls a yellowed, flaking sheet of paper from the journal and unfolds it. Thick black draconic pictograms fill the center of the page. Translations and notes in Common have been made in the margins in a scrawling, difficult-to-read hand. ”This is a page from a transcription of the Codex Alaraxus. To give you an idea how old it is, the verse was originally believed to pertain to a group of hobgoblin princes who fought together in a mercenary band just after the battle of Duur’shaarat.”  She passes the page around for each of you to see.In the aftermath of the destruction of a mighty empire, Six broken souls will come together on a new throne. A weary soldier, self consuming a mouthful at a time;  A servant of the childrens’ light, denied the forgiveness given freely others; One high born, thrust from house and cut off from long accustomed privelege; One forged in war, but made incomplete and hollow within; Another created by artifice, touched by melody and set to wander; An aged servant of the divine, finding youth in adventure. A seemingly simple path is not what it appears, If the onion’s layers are peeled away, that which slumbers will be exposed. Making whole that which was split is the key To empowering the dream or unleashing the nightmare.</blockquote>

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